An Instant Classic

This is hilarious. A union leader in Wisconsin is interviewed by CNN and seems to be able to hear quite well, until she is asked to opine on the fact that Wisconsin Senate Democrats have gone into hiding in order to thwart democracy in the state. Huh? You're breaking up?

I do hope every taxpayer in the U.S. is paying very close attention, not only to left-wing idiots like this one, but to the role of Obama and the DNC in fanning this assault on democracy.



(H/T Hot Air)

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5. California: From Riches To Public Sector Unions To Ruin
6. Detroit's Public School System, School Board & Teachers' Union
7. Unions & Teachers: The Alpha & Omega
8. Living With Public Sector Unions
9. Public Sector Unions
10. Obama, The Stimulus & Teachers' Unions
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12. Grand Theft Democrat
13. Another Win For Teachers Unions, Another Defeat For DC Students
14. Reason 10,001 Why Public Sector Unions Need To Be Outlawed
15. Public Sector Unions Go To War To Prevent Democratic Change In Wisconsin
16. Change You Can't Have: Obama & The DNC Interfere In Wisconsin State Politics
17. Do Public Sector Workers Have A Fundamental Right To Organize?

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The New EU Superstate's Ramifications For The U.S. & For Our "Special Relationsship" With The UK

After eight years of popular rejection, political cajoling, and endless hand-wringing, the EU has finally ratified the Lisbon Treaty without a shred of democratic legitimacy or public support.

The Treaty contains all the essential components of an EU superstate, including a single legal personality, a permanent EU presidency, an EU-wide public prosecutor, and the position of foreign minister in all but name. The Lisbon Treaty shifts power away from nation-states to Brussels in critical areas of policymaking -- such as defense, security, foreign affairs, criminal justice, judicial cooperation, and energy . . . It restricts the sovereign right of EU member states to independently determine foreign policy and poses a unique threat to the Anglo-American Special Relationship. Above all, it is a treaty that underscores the EU's ambition to become a global power and challenge American leadership on the world stage.

Testimony of Sally McNamara To The Committee on the Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Europe, of the U.S. House of Representatives, 15 Dec. 2009

The EU Superstate -the result of the world's slowest coup - became official within the past month. As I have written before, it is the world's largest experiment in anti-democratic socialism. It is an experiment that is destroying the UK demographically and, quite likely, irreparably, through open borders immigration. Britain's socialist Labour government has further contributed to the mass immigration in order to shore up their power base and, through multiculturalism, to destroy the traditional foundations of British society. Melanie Phillips, in an article a few months ago, called Labour's acts nothing less than "treason." That said, both Labour and the "conservative" Tory party have been fully complicit in Britain's national suicide. And as recent as last month, the Tory leader, David Cameron, all but announced that he will not challenge Labour's coup in transferring British sovereignty to the EU without a promised referendum of the British voters. For the rank and file of Britain, neither major party offers actual representation. There is a near complete disconnect between the ruled and the rulers that British democracy, as currently constituted, is systemically unable to cure.

But the deal is done. We no longer can deal individually with the UK, France, Germany, or any of the other 24 EU members. All are now provinces of the EU - (and as an aside, the UK has actually been subdivided into two separate provinces). This is problematic on many fronts. First and foremost is the fact that this EU superstate is no more a legitimately elected democratic government than is the Ahmedinejad regime in Iran. And that is the tip of the iceberg, as Ms. McNamara, quoted at the top of this post, explained in her testimony to Congress:

The Lisbon Treaty was born from the twice rejected European Constitution, which was voted down in public referenda held in France and Holland in 2005. The Lisbon Treaty itself was rejected in a referendum held in Ireland in 2008, until Dublin was forced into holding a second referendum in October 2009. Ireland's EU Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy stated that if the Lisbon Treaty had been put to a public vote across the European Union, it would have been rejected by 95 percent of EU member states.

In one of the biggest acts of political betrayal in modern British history, the Labour Party denied the British public a long-promised referendum on the Treaty, despite overwhelming support for a public plebiscite. The widespread lack of public support and legitimacy suffered by this Treaty should be of concern to all institutions who uphold the democratic values of openness, honesty, rule of law and transparency.

As with past EU treaties, one specific policy area has been heralded as critical to further European integration. The Single European Act brought about the Single Market and the Maastricht Treaty instituted the single European currency. Undoubtedly, the major success of the Lisbon Treaty will be the EU's power-grab of foreign and defense policy, which is vital to realizing the EU's ambition of becoming the world's first supranational superstate.

The EU boasts that the Lisbon Treaty compels member states to speak with a single voice on external relations, and with a single legal personality Brussels will now sign international agreements on behalf of all member states. The Treaty formally abolishes the EU's pillar structure that provided for nation states to maintain the lead role in foreign affairs. Brussels' elites are claiming to finally have one telephone line to Europe.

All of this may sound enticing to the United States, which has long called for Europe to shoulder a greater share of the burden for global security. However, it is worth considering what has taken place to date as a forewarning of what is to come.

Prior to the Lisbon Treaty, the EU already had an extensive sanctions arsenal through the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) but has repeatedly chosen not to use them. The EU has consistently frustrated the prospect of tougher sanctions against Iran, and has acted, in the words of Joschka Fischer, as a "protective shield" for Tehran against the United States. The EU even rolled out the red carpet for brutal Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe in 2007, officially suspending its own travel ban to welcome him to Lisbon. In Afghanistan, the EU has been nothing more than a bit-part player with a police training mission criticized by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly as too small, underfunded, slow to deploy, inflexible, and largely restricted to Kabul. . . .

The Lisbon Treaty's ability to rein in its members from taking independent action should also concern Washington. Under the Lisbon Treaty, EU member states are now required to consult the other members before undertaking international action and to ensure that their decisions are in line with EU interests. Giving the EU the ability to supersede the autonomy of its member states in areas of foreign policy--such as the decision to join the United States in military action--will seriously impair the ability of America's allies in Europe to stand alongside the United States where and when they choose to do so. It will see America isolated and facing hostility from an organization which is designed to serve as a counterweight to American "hyperpower."

The Lisbon Treaty poses the biggest threat to national sovereignty in Europe since the Second World War. It erodes the legal sovereignty of European nation-states and hands power to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats and foreign-service officers far removed from member states. It duplicates NATO's role and function and decouples America from Europe, killing the concept of indivisible security which has kept the peace in Europe for 60 years.

The institutional and political constraints imposed by the Lisbon Treaty will severely limit Britain's ability to build international alliances and independently determine its foreign policy. The biggest damage would be done to Britain's enduring alliance with the United States. . . .

Further, the imposition of qualified majority voting in 40 new areas represents a significant loss of sovereignty for member states, and a removal of Britain's ability to block the most egregious aspects of EU policy. For example, French President Nicolas Sarkozy successfully removed the EU's policy commitment to free and undistorted competition from the Lisbon Treaty. Sarkozy did not even attempt to hide his intention in doing so: "The word 'protection' is no longer a taboo," he said. The EU has already been described by the International Herald Tribune as the "global antitrust regulator." The Lisbon Treaty confirms the EU's move away from the Anglo-American free market economic model, toward a statist sclerotic Rhineland model.

It is vital that the United States recognize the value in dealing with its enduring allies on a bilateral level. On issues of foreign affairs, defense, security, justice, and home affairs -- including counterterrorism cooperation and intelligence sharing -- bilateral relations are especially important to the U.S. However, in its desire to create a United States of Europe, the EU has pursued policies which downgrade the possibility of traditional alliance-building by the United States. Replacing individual European allies with a single EU Foreign Minister means inevitably, even if unintentionally, American interests will lose in the discussions that matter most. . . .

Europe doesn't need a constitution. The European Union is not the United States of Europe. The EU is a grouping of 27 nation-states, each with its own culture, language, heritage, and national interests. The EU works best as an economic market that facilitates the free movement of goods, services, and people. It is far less successful as a political entity that tries to force its member states to conform to an artificial common identity. The Lisbon Treaty will bring Europe much closer to the French vision of a protected, integrated European Union than the British vision of a free-trading, intergovernmental Europe. It will do huge damage to American interests in Europe; and contrary to any democratic tradition it is a self-amending treaty which can aggrandize power not explicitly conferred on it by the Treaties. As Lady Thatcher states in her seminal book Statecraft: "That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European superstate was ever embarked upon will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era.

That the citizens of these 27 countries have allowed this coup to occur after repeatedly voting against it utterly mystifies me. I do not understand - and likely never will - why there is not blood filling the streets over this.

I don't know if I agree with PM Thatcher. The suicidal policies of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) crowd - embraced by the EU as a means to accrete power (and even written into their constitution as settled fact) - may in fact give the EU a run for its money in the competition the most "unnecessary and irrational" projects of our era.

I would add a further note. Everyone should study how the EU coup came about. It was incremental movements towards the accretion of power over a period of decades. I see exactly the same thing being attempted by the UN through their "balls to the wall" push to see international treaties signed on AGW that are to be administered by and through the UN. I am anything but a conspiracy theorist. That said, my belief is based on the obvious parallels between how the EU accomplished its anti-democratic coup, slowly accreting power over six decades, and how the UN is pushing AGW. These people are dangerous.

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The Democrats' Assault On Deliberative Democracy

"Democracy go to hell" - that's the message from our far left Democrats today. The latest comes from Harry Reid's insidious machinations in the Health Care Bill. According to Hot Air, buried deep within the bill is a provision that would require a supermajority of 67 votes in the Senate " to overrule the bill’s rationing board, the Independent Medical Advisory Board, whose purpose (stated on page 1001) is to “reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending.” In legalese, this is known as "entrenchment" - i.e., placing a condition within legislation to make it more difficult for the same body acting in the future to amend or repeal a provision. It is of dubious constitutionality.

A supermajority is only constitutionally required for four things: to override a Presidential veto (Art I, Sec. 7); to make binding a treaty signed by the President (Art I, Sec. II); as part of the process of amending the Constitution (Art. 5); and to declare a President disabled and unable to discharge his duties (Amendment 25). At no other place in the Constitution is anything other than a simple majority authorized or required.

U.S. Const. Art. I Sec. 5 provides "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings . . ." The Senate has formed its rules into a book called "The Standing Rules Of The Senate." It provides at rule 22 that to end a filibuster requires three fifths of the Senate (60 votes) "except on a measure or motion to amend the Senate rules, in which case the necessary affirmative vote shall be two-thirds [67] of the Senators present and voting . . ."

Reid wants to insure that when the backlash to our far left socialists comes starting with next year's election, that the Health Care bill remains a 'bridge too far' to amend or repeal by the normal democratic process. He seeks to accomplish this by changing a Senate Rule. Yet because he cannot possibly get 67 votes for his proposed change, he has slipped it into the Healthcare bill which will likely soon pass by a simple majority vote.

This is a patent violation of Senate Rule 22. Yet you can listen to the video below as the Democrats take the position that the change proposed in the Healthcare Bill is only to "procedure," not to a "rule." In so doing, they create a distinction utterly without a difference and continue their destruction of deliberative democracy in America. Moreover, since Senate rules are Constitutionally obliged, Harry Reid's unilateral negation of the rules ought to be unconstitutional. That said, given our Supreme Court's penchant for rewriting the Constitution per their whim, its constitutionality must remain an open question.



I look back to the Bush days when the far left charged the right with destroying the Constitution. In each instance, the basis for the charge was that the Bush Administion did not agree with the far left's radical reinterpretation of Constitutional provisions. The MSM provided the far left with constant repetition of their message, while the right responded weakly and, even then, was given little play in the media. Looking back on that time with the benefit of a comparison to what the far left is doing today, even a blind man could see what an utter canard that was. There is no force on this earth more inimical to democracy and the text of the Constitution than Obama and the far left who hold the reins of power in America today. And in their effort, the far left continues to enjoy near unanimous support of the MSM.

I do hope Republicans are paying close attention. The far left is playing for keeps. If Republicans listen to the MSM noise machine and do not fight these anti-democratic socialists with equal ferocity and utter ruthlessness, America will lose. Bipartisanship under the Obama administration is naught but an empty concept used by Democrats to beat conservatives over the head for failing to fully acquiesce to the far left's blueprint for American national suicide. We are in a zero sum war for the future direction of this country, if not its very soul.

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Is Taps Appropriate?

Accross the pond, the United Kingdom, as a sovereign nation, passed from history today. The Treaty of Lisbon, the EU's Constitution, has come into force, creating a single European government with sovereignty over all member states. This was not the will of the people of Europe, and certainly not the will of the people of Britain. Despite promises from Labour, Brits were never given a say. Instead, this anti-democratic socialist empire came about as the result of the world's slowest coup.

Dr. Richard North at EU Referendum provides a short obituary for his once great country:

From today, as the Lisbon treaty comes into force, we are no longer masters in our own house. Our prime minister, as a member of the European Council, is obligated under this new treaty to promote the aims and objectives of the European Union, over and above those of the UK, and is bound by the rules of the Union.

Of course, this will make no immediate difference. It simply renders de jure what has been de facto for several decades, but the coming into force of the treaty marks an important symbolic turning point. We are no longer an independent country, de jure. Our prime minister and his government are now working for an alien government, based in Brussels.

In effect, that makes us an occupied country, . . .

The worst of it is that, in the streets today, nothing will appear to have changed. Everything will look much the same as it did yesterday. In No 10, a man by the name of Gordon Brown will still be calling himself prime minister. In the Houses of Parliament, there will still be MPs and peers, and the Union Jack will adorn the building.

But everything is different. We are a satellite state of the Greater European Empire, ruled by a supreme government in Brussels. And things will stay different until we have regained our freedom. Until then, as I remarked before, we owe this government neither loyalty nor obedience. It is not our government. It is theirs. It is our enemy.

This is indeed a sad day.

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A Socialist Coup (Updated)

At least one rule of the EU is simple and unambiguous. A failure of any one member country to ratify an EU treaty (or in this case, the Constitution disingenuously renamed a treaty to get around the need for national referendums) means the Treaty does not come into force. But the EU is not going to let democracy or its own laws stand in the way. It has brushed aside the one democratic referendum held the other day in Ireland and plans to enforce the Treaty of Lisbon regardless. There is a true coup going on in Europe. The rule of law and democracy have been tossed out, and what is being created in their stead is something both both Marx and Orwell would recognize.
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If you believe in democracy and the rule of law, what you see today across the pond and in Europe should be horrifying. The Irish referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon, blogged below, by law should have ended this socialist coup. But it has not. The EU Referendum quotes a press release from Hans-Gert Pöttering, the president of the EU parliament:

It is of course a great disappointment for all those who wanted to achieve greater democracy, greater political effectiveness and greater clarity and transparency in decision-making in the European Union that the majority of the Irish could not be convinced of the need for these reforms of the European Union. We must not forget, however, that the European Union has experienced crises and times of difficulty several times before. Today, as in the past, we must keep a cool head.

The rejection of the Treaty text by one European Union country cannot mean that the ratifications which have already been carried out by 18 EU countries become invalid. The ratifications in the other EU Member States must be respected just as much as the Irish vote. For that reason, the ratification process must continue in those Member States which have not yet ratified. . . .

Read the entire post.

There is nothing democratic or transparent about the manner in which the EU operates. And indeed, the opacity and centralization of power without any institutionalized system of checks and balances will only increase significantly once the EU is operating under its Constitution. Pöttering's rejection of EU rules regarding complete ratification of the Treaty by all EU member nations as a prerequisite for the Treaty going into effect is unlawful - but it tells you precisely how undemocratic and how utterly determined the intelligentsia of Europe are to impose the EU upon its citizens, wholly irrespective of whatever the wishes of the citizens may be.

And this from the Times:

Britain is pressing on with the tortuous ratification of the European Union’s Lisbon treaty, despite Ireland rejecting it in a referendum.

Jim Murphy, the Europe minister, said today the Irish would be left isolated when the other 26 EU member nations passed the treaty into law later this year. The treaty would establish the offices of a European president and foreign minister, and would reduce the power of individual nations to veto reforms.

Gordon Brown, the prime minister, has rejected calls for a referendum on the treaty, but in Ireland, where constitutional law obliged a referendum, citizens rejected it overwhelmingly.

. . . Legally the treaty requires the ratification of all 27 member states to come into force - but Britain has joined France and Germany in signalling that it will look for a way around that technicality [emphasis added].

. . . The treaty was still good for Britain, he insisted, and the onus was now on Ireland to propose a means of resolving the crisis when EU leaders meet in Brussels next week.

The rest of the EU could proceed with the document in some form without the Irish, he signalled, and would finish ratifying it at the end of this year.

He said: “It is important to reflect then, is it 26 governments who have ratified and is it one that hasn’t? And then we discuss the way forward.”

. . . European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso said the treaty was not dead. France and Germany, too, have urged the EU to press ahead with the project despite admitting that the referendum result was a serious blow.

Read the entire article. And there is this, also in the Times, from socialist Labour MP, Dennis MacShane. He gives you some idea of the mindset of those determined to make the EU super-state a reality, democracy be damned:

It took hundreds of pages of the Federalist Papers, a few dozen men locked for weeks in a sealed room in Philadelphia and a bloody civil war for the US constitution to be accepted. So the little local difficulties in France, the Netherlands and now Ireland must be seen in a broader perspective.

Anti-Europeans are lacing their champagne with Guinness as they celebrate the “no” vote and proclaim with W.B. Yeats “all changed, changed utterly”. Yet the EU, its Commission, existing treaties and directives will still be in place tomorrow. Europe has been here before and will be again.

. . . Ireland and the rest of Europe will wake up on Monday with a headache but not much else. Not a single Eurocrat will lose his job. . .

The big losers are Turkey and Croatia. British Tory Eurosceptics hypocritically proclaim their support for Turkish accession, but know that demanding referendums on future treaties means an end to enlargement [emphasis added].

No EU treaty can come into force until all signatory nations ratify it. But Ireland represents 1 per cent of the EU's total population and some old-fashioned democrats may feel that 1 per cent does not outweigh the rest of Europe's nations which are saying “yes” to the treaty [emphasis added].

But the rules are clear. Had the Irish voted “yes” and the British Parliament voted “no”, it is unlikely that Open Europe and Stuart Wheeler would describe the Irish popular vote as superior to one by Britain's sovereign parliament.

But amid the clamour from anti-EU campaigners in Britain and other nations to ignore sovereign parliamentary decisions, some way forward will have to be found.

. . . “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,” Yeats wrote, and its complacent political establishment may feel that Ireland is falling apart. Yeats added that “anarchy is loosed upon the world”, and an anarchic bust-up is what many Eurosceptics hope for. But it won't happen. Europe will go on its summer holidays. Perhaps when it comes back, ways will be found to make the treaty work, or the parts of it that do not need any treaty change.

. . . As the hysteria dies down, ways will be found to make Europe work, with or without the treaty. For both pro- and anti-Europeans, things have not changed so utterly at all.

Read the entire article. Mr. MacShane seems to be a little off in his U.S. history. There was no civil war involved in the crafting of the U.S. Constitution. Nor was it a thing crafted in hiding. Indeed, the Federalist Papers he cites and the like are a testament to just how open and democratic the process was in crafting the Constitution. That stands in stark contrast to everything about the EU. Indeed, every effort has been made to muddle the water. The Treaty of Lisbon stood for months as hundreds of pages of incomprehensible amendments apart from the original documents being amended - thus making it impossible for the average person to make heads or tails to what the Treaty actually said or to compare it to the Consitution from 2005. Indeed, it is hard to think of a more grotesque and improper comparison than that which Mr. MacShane makes between the U.S. and the socialist coup that is occurring today in Europe.

And how Orwellian is it for MacShane to appeal to "democracy" to reject the "no" vote of Ireland? The reason only 1% of the citizens of Europe voted against this socialist nightmare is because only 1% of Europe's citizens have yet to be given a vote on it, at least under its current disingenous categorization as a "treaty" rather than a "constitution." When it was named the latter, both the people of France and the Netherlands voted it down in 2005. Which is precisely why the EU renamed it a treaty and sought to ram it down citizen's throats without their opportunity to vote on it.

And what does it tell you of the thought process of Mr. MacShane to attack the Tory party over a referendum on EU enlargement, claiming hypocrisy on the Tory's part because they, the Tories, know a referendum to enlarge the EU will fail. These people have nothing but utter disdain for democracy and a complete belief in their right to impose their will. They are dangerous.

Update: More from EU Referendum on the plans impose the Treaty of Lisbon irrespective of the Irish vote here.

The people of Britain and Europe have collectively shrugged their shoulders and allowed their democratic votes to be taken from them without, seemingly, any concern. I do not understand how this can occur without blood in the streets. I will never understand this mindset and apathy. What is going on in Europe is no less a coup with a bare patina of democracy than was Hitler's accretion of power in the 1930's. I expect the long term ramifications of this grand experiment in socialism to be no less disastrous.

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A Tip O' The Hat To Democracy, A Tip O' The Knickers To The EU

Ireland, the only country out of 27 given an opportunity to vote on the new EU Constitution, have just saved the other half billion people in Europe. They have pulled Britain's crown jewels out of the fire. They have voted no to the Treaty of Lisbon. One can only imagine the number of Guiness Stouts being poured across Britain and the rest of Europe today.

As I blogged below, Britain had three last chances to stay out of the EU. One was the a vote on ratification of the EU Constitution by the House of Lords, an institution radically altered by Labour PM Tony Blair when they were not seeing things his way. Unfortunately, but predictably, they voted with Labour to approve the transfer of Britain's sovereignty to the EU. A second chance was a law suit to force a referendum in Britain based on Labour's pre-election promises to the nation. That one is ongoing. The third chance was the Irish vote. And they have not disappointed.

The Irish just tossed a huge wrench into the anti-democratic wheels of EU. Every other nation in the EU was having the new Constitution imposed on them by their political class. Ireland was required by the terms of its Constitution to hold a referendum. And hold it they did. All 27 nations have to agree for the Treaty of Lisbon to come into effect and the new EU super-state to be born - at least according to existing treaties. There are without doubt thousands of socialists in Brussels right now combing every possible nuance of every EU treaty to see if there is a way around that.

The EU Referendum, whose raison d'etre has been to fight this EU coup in Britain, should have the first word on this:

Overall result so far: 53.6 - 46.4 for the "noes", but Corbett speaks (see bottom of this post) - and so does Barroso. Despite that, there is no way that the "colleagues" can get round this. Spin they might, but the fact is that, in the ONLY referendum on the treaty, the voters said Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! . . .

OPENING A NEW FRONT: As this is not the end, the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning, a new front has been opened in the war. In a day or so there will be more about the BrugesGroupBlog and the thinking behind it.

What you will now hear is loud squealing from the direction of Brussels as the incredibly anti-democratic folks who are determined to make an EU super-state wholly irrespective of the wishes of Europe's citizens try and figure a way around this. And as the EU Referendum documents, it has already started:

UPDATE: Reuters is reporting that France's secretary of state for European affairs, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, is saying that an Irish "no" should not stop other member states ratifying the treaty. "The most important thing is that ratification should continue in other countries and I have good reasons to think that the process of ratification will continue," he told LCI television. "We would have to see with the Irish at the end of the ratification process how we could make it work and what legal arrangement we could come to."

So, the mice are gnawing away at it already. We told you this would happen! . . .

UPDATE: David Heathcoat-Amory says on BBC Radio 4 that the Conservatives should press for the UK ratification to be abandoned. Some chance!

UPDATE: Ahern says: "We're in uncharted waters." You bet!

UPDATE: The founder of Libertas, Declan Ganley, says: "The Irish people have rejected the Lisbon Treaty. "it is a great day for Irish democracy ... This is democracy in action ... and Europe needs to listen to the voice of the people." Ganley adds that Brian Cowen, "has a mandate to go back to Europe and do the best job possible".

Socialist Party leader Joe Higgins has said the likely "no" vote is a "huge rebuff to the political establishment" but a vindication of the rights of "tens of millions of workers" in the European Union. He believes the "no" side "won the argument", despite the fact that the main political parties and "big business" were in favour of the treaty. . . .

UPDATE: Poland's President Lech Kaczynski's office says he will still sign the treaty. "The president has already said the issue of ratification is a done deal," Mariusz Handzlik, head of the foreign affairs department in the president's office, told Reuters.

UPDATE: Andrew Duff, Lib-Dim leader says, "we cannot accept this result". Corbett on his blog says, "there are 26 other member states whose opinion matters too. It is inconceivable that all of the others will simply say 'too bad - one country has said no to the package as it stands, so let's forget reform and stick with the current system for evermore."

UPDATE: Deutsche Welle reports: "A feeling of gloom and uncertainty fell on Brussels on Friday after Ireland's justice minister said it appeared that the 'no' camp had pulled ahead in the referendum on the European Union's new reform treaty." The eurosceptics, meanwhile, have decamped to Kitty O'Shea's - yards from the commission building - drinking pints of Guiness while they hold an impromptu press conference.

UPDATE: EU commission President Jose Manuel Barroso is still calling on other members states to ratify the treaty. "I believe the treaty is alive and we should now try to find a solution," he says.

UPDATE: Minister for Justice Brian Lenihan says Ireland has lost influence in Europe. He was "very, very disappointed" with the outcome, adding: "I think it is a very sad day for this country and for Europe as well." It was a "serious matter for Ireland," he said, then declaring:"We have to accept the decision of the people… and that's democracy and I accept that." . . .

Read the entire post. This certainly ought to be a signal to Tory Leader David Cameron to finally get off the fence and start challenging this stealth coup being imposed on Britain. And hopefully it will put much more pressure on Labour and Gordon Brown to stop the ratification process.

We will give the last word on this to Brits At Their Best who say a very sincere "Thank You" to Ireland:

We think the Irish have said NO to the EU with gusto!

They alone, three million of the half a billion people in the 27 nations of the European Union, had a democratic vote on the undemocratic EU constitution.

Read the entire post. The war is hardly over. But think of this as Dunkirk. The socialists are not defeated, but they just lost their best opportunity to destroy the allies.

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Britain's Final Chances

The EU will become a super-state once its Constitution, embodied in the Treaty of Lisbon, is fully ratified by all member countries. The EU is an anti-democratic experiment in socialism that stands in contradiction to Britain’s anglo-saxon traditions of representative democracy, individual rights and capitalism (see here, here, here and here). While membership in the EU has proven a boon for Britain’s political class, it has proven very bad for the rest of Britain in innumerable ways that only portend to worsen.

Britain's integration as an EU province is also very bad for the U.S. Britain has been America's closest European ally. As Britain is subsumed into the EU, so goes both its special relationship with the U.S. and, in a larger context, a critically important member of the anglosphere whose traditions and values animate the freest and most prosperous nations on earth.

Britain is at a tipping point on the EU membership in many ways. Things look bleak at the moment. Gordon Brown and Labour are determined to transfer Britain’s sovereignty to the EU without any vote of the people. The "conservative" Tory Party is little more than a light version of the socialist Labour party. As I posted here, it is led by David Cameron, a weak man driven by political expediency rather than conservative principles who has said that he will treat Labour’s actions as a fait accompli. What is going on in Britain is a stealth coup by a disingenuous political class that is being largely supported by British media though minimalist and superficial coverage.

We are down now to the last three chances to derail British ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and transfer of the bulk of its sovereign powers to the EU. The House of Lords must vote on the Lisbon Treaty this week. Ireland is the only country to hold a referendum on the treaty, and they do so on Thursday. Lastly, there is a court case seeking to force Labour to uphold its pledge and hold a referendum on the EU. Speaking on these issues are Melanie Phillips, John Bolton and EU Referendum’s Dr. Richard North.
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Author Melanie Phillips has written an exceptional article documenting the current situation and the stakes at issue:

. . . The EU is the issue that all politicians are ignoring in the hope we will forget about it. Most immediately, they hope we have forgotten to be concerned about the European Constitution, which is masquerading as a bog standard treaty over which we need lose no sleep.

This constitution, which would bring into being an unprecedented bureaucratic super-state and end once and for all what remains of the independence of EU member nations, was dumped after it was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. It was then resurrected in all but name as the Treaty of Lisbon, which Parliament is in the process of ratifying. This week, that constitution faces a triple test.

Today, businessman Stuart Wheeler's legal challenge to Labour's refusal to honour its manifesto pledge to put it to a referendum reaches the High Court. On Wednesday, the ratification Bill reaches the House of Lords. This Bill was ruthlessly shoe-horned through the Commons. This week we will see whether their Lordships will also spinelessly roll over, or recall their historic role as a last- ditch defence of this country's interests against such abuse of power.

But something else is happening which our politicians didn't bargain for. As we know, the constitution has to be approved by every member state or else it falls. On Thursday, Ireland votes on the treaty - and it looks as if it might vote against it.
The Irish government is filled with panic and horror at the possibility that the Irish public might actually be thinking for themselves. For the EU has always relied on bamboozling the public about the joys of EUtopia and terrifying them that their whole world will collapse if it is thwarted.

More and more people, however, are realising that they have been lied to, not only about the constitution but about the whole EU project. In Britain, we were told from the start that it was only an economic union which would entail no loss of sovereignty.

That was the very opposite of the truth. The dirty little secret is that, even without the constitution, political power has simply drained away from Westminster to Brussels.

In a little-noticed but quite devastating speech in the Commons last week, the Tory MP Peter Lilley recorded that last year the EU passed no fewer than 177 directives - more or less equivalent to our Acts of Parliament - and 2,033 regulations enforceable in the UK, as well as making 1,045 decisions which affect us.

Our own Trade Minister has admitted that 'around half of all UK legislation with an impact on business, charities and the voluntary sector' stems from laws passed in Brussels. . . .

Now the former Tory policy adviser Lord Blackwell is arguing that Britain should renegotiate the terms of its EU membership, restricting it to trade agreements and common security and environment policies, but rejecting EU control over monetary policy, foreign affairs, defence and justice.

An opinion poll run by his group Global Vision suggests that more than a third of voters across all parties would back a prospective Conservative Government pledge to negotiate such a change, and that people would support it in a referendum by more than two to one.

The fact is that those opposed to the creation of a European super-state are not the 'xenophobes' or 'Little Englanders' of the overheated Eurofanatic imagination.

. . . The EU is fundamentally an anti- democratic project, based on the belief that the individual nation is the source of the ills of the world and that by contrast supra-national institutions offer the solution to all its problems.

It is that absence of democratic transparency which is now corrupting not just European politics but our own. The fresh outbreak of 'Tory sleaze' over the expenses gravy train is rooted in Brussels, where corruption is the accepted way of EU life.

Yesterday, the Irish government said that a 'no' vote over the constitution would be a crisis for Europe. What rubbish. The plain fact is that the EU has brought about a crisis for democracy within Europe. Which is why it is essential that we should renegotiate our place within it.

Politicians, however, run a mile from any such suggestion. The terror of acknowledging the true nature of what has happened, in case he is required to address it, has propelled David Cameron into a cul-de-sac.

His pledge to allow the British people a vote on the constitution is worthless since - as he has only now admitted explicitly - once the treaty is ratified it will be almost impossible to do anything about it.

But since his party has warned that the constitution will spell the end of British self-government, this turns Mr Cameron into the Hamlet of the European debate - an awesome talent for speeches denouncing tyranny, but a complete inability to act against it.

Mr Cameron is paralysed by fear of reigniting the Tories' internal civil war over Europe. But the Tory Europhiles are now moth- eaten has-beens who have comprehensively lost the argument with the British people.

The fact is that Parliament is now so emasculated it is becoming the equivalent of Westminster regional council in the Republic of Euroland.

. . . It is time to end this charade. Whatever happens to the constitutional treaty in Ireland or anywhere else, Britain must now re-negotiate its relationship with the EU. The politician who does so will be a hero to the nation. Which is why Mr Cameron should ignore the faint-hearts and suede-shod Euro-fanatics in his ranks. This country must rediscover its identity and sense of purpose, or else it is finished. It can do so only if it regains the power to govern itself.

The issue is quite simply whether democracy in Britain has a future at all. It could not be more fundamental. . . .

Read the entire article. Former UN Ambassador John Bolton spoke at the University of Dublin against ratification of the EU treaty, both because it is anti-democratic and its effects on NATO and the US-British relationship:

The Lisbon Treaty poses a threat to NATO and undermines democracy by handing more power to Brussels, a former senior advisor to President George W Bush has warned.

John Bolton, . . . said the new Treaty could hurt the military alliance between Europe and the US.

He was speaking only days before Ireland hold a referendum on the EU Treaty, the only member country to do so, with the latest polls showing the Yes campaign slightly ahead.

But an Irish vote No on Thursday will mean the Treaty, which abolishes dozens of national vetoes and creates the new post of EU president, cannot come into force in any of the 27 member states.

. . . Mr Bolton has previously warned the deal threatens Britain's special relationship with the United States and yesterday said he would not understand the Irish giving "more powers to bureaucrats."

He added: "The only people you elect have a very limited role and I think this treaty will further enhance the power of institutions in Brussels without extending democratic authority to people."

. . . A Global Vison/ICM poll published yesterday found 64 per cent of Britons would back a renegotiated looser relationship with the EU in a referendum, against 26 per cent who would oppose it.

Read the entire article. Dr. Richard North, who runs the EU Referendum blog, added his own thoughts to those of John Bolton:

. . . For sure, the official US view is very much at variance, expressed in a report last month from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. This stated that Washington would support a more "muscular" EU, provided that European defence spending was sufficient for a radical improvement in military capabilities on this side of the Atlantic. Some four months previously, in a speech in Paris, Victoria Nuland, the US ambassador to NATO, had overtly supported a militarily stronger European Union . . . That support, though, was conditional on the Europeans embarking on a "radical improvement in military capabilities, with a far more focused policy on defence spending.

"While we cannot say that Bolton's view in any way reflects official US policy, it may be a straw in the wind. From the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, we recently had a report indicating that many of the EU member states were having trouble meeting their existing defence commitments. While between 2001 and 2006, France, Britain and Spain spent more than three percent of gross domestic product on defence, Italy spent only 1.47 percent, and spending in Germany and Sweden sharply declined.

Even more recently, we had seen reports that the French military is in trouble, with most of France's tanks, helicopters and jet fighters are unusable and its defence apparatus on the verge of "falling apart".

Elsewhere on this blog we recorded the difficulties EU member states had in equipping its force for Chad and latterly we concluded that – in terms of military performance, the idea of European defence was an "unrealisable dream".Despite this, we have seen continued attempts by the EU to create a "European Army" – but all that actually amounts to is a "dedicated military headquarters", more structures and oversight of the military function by the EU parliament.

. . . For some member states . . . the objective of pooling military structure is to spend less money on defence.

Going back in history, one must recall that one of the greatest supporters of the nascent European "project" – in the fifties and sixties – was the US government, with CIA money being channelled into the European Movement. Not least, the US then saw in a united Europe a bastion against the emerging threat of Communism which threatened to engulf the whole of Europe.

Now, if Bolton is seeing the EU defence ambitions as a threat, he cannot be the only influential American to take that view. This may reflect the assiduous work of a number of British teams who have been over to the States, working through right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation – warning them of the dangers.

As did it help the EU on its way, therefore, there is now a glimmer of hope that the US could be instrumental in prising away the UK from the "project", having seen – at last – that the EU represents a danger to the interests of democracy and global security.

Read the entire post. NATO as it is has significant, possibly existential problems. Most NATO nations other than Britain do not field a functional military and most NATO members are not fully supporting the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Moreover, given the anti-democratic nature of the EU, having all of the member nation’s forces integrated and under EU central control could prove problematic down the road for any states whose restive populations decide they no longer want to be part of the grand socialist experiment that is the EU.

At any rate, we are nearing the end of Britain's chances to sidestep the transfer of their sovereign rights to the EU. Much will be decided by week’s end.

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The Insidious EU & Election Funding

As I have blogged before, the EU is a grand experiment in anti-democratic socialism. Paul Belien has a very good and troubling article on some of the more anti-democratic aspects of the EU in today's Washington Times. For those of you who believe McCain Feingold is an incredible assault on democracy, you will have your breath taken away by what is happening in the EU:

Politicians who run for office need loads of campaign cash. . .

. . . In anti-capitalist Europe, the state is the largest benefactor of politicians. In Germany and the Netherlands, political parties receive a third of their income from government subsidies. In Scandinavian countries such as Norway, state funding accounts for three quarters of the parties' income. In France, Spain and Belgium, an even higher proportion is state-funded. In Belgium it is illegal for politicians and parties to accept donations from companies, while private individuals may only give a maximum of $725 per year to politicians.

European political parties receive state subsidies in accordance with the number of votes they gain. In Europe too, however, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Europe's politicians have to obey the state.

Two years ago, authorities in the Netherlands stopped funding the SGP, a fundamentalist Calvinist party, because it does not put forward women candidates for election. The SGP, which happens to be Holland's oldest political party, believes politics is a man's business, not a woman's. Most of the Dutch voters do not agree. The party has only two of the 150 seats in the Dutch Parliament.

In September 2005, a court in The Hague barred the SGP from receiving the amount of subsidies to which it was entitled in accordance with the number of its voters because the party is a sexist organization which discriminates against women. . .

In Belgium the governing parties have initiated proceedings to defund the Vlaams Belang. The VB is Belgium's largest opposition party. It strives for the dismemberment of Belgium and the independence of Flanders, Belgium's Dutch-speaking northern half, and is opposed to non-European immigration. Some, including Ms. Hirsi Ali when she visited Belgium two years ago, argue that the party is a racist organization and hence has no right to exist, let alone receive government subsidies. Others, such as professor Marc Uyttendaele, the legal advisor of the Belgian government, argue that a state cannot be forced to subsidize its mortal enemies.

In a country like Belgium, where private donations above $725 are illegal, depriving a party of state subsidies is a way to kill the opposition. Belgium's example seems to have inspired the European Union authorities in Brussels.

In 2004 the European Parliament (EP) decided that only parties which form transnational alliances with likeminded parties in other European countries and which "accept the fundamental European values" are entitled to receive government funds. So far the EP decision has only been used to bar so-called "racist" parties from government subsidies. The EP decision can, however, also be used to deny subsidies to so-called "Eurosceptic" parties. The latter, which oppose further European political integration and defend the national sovereignty of the EU member states, are considered to be enemies of "Europe," i.e. of the EU project.

Last December representatives of the four major groups in the EP — the Christian-Democrats, Socialists, Liberals and Greens — proposed to restrict EU subsidies to their groups only. As the Eurocrats argue: Why should the EU subsidize its enemies? The "Eurosceptics" saw this coming. Three years ago they launched a legal challenge against the decision to establish state-funded European political parties. When the EU Court, which sees it as its role to support deeper European integration, turned down their complaint a "Eurosceptic" EP member from Poland observed: "This is exactly how the communists maintained themselves in power in my country. They didn't ban elections — we had elections every four years. They just banned their opponents from contesting the elections."

Democracy means that citizens are allowed to vote for whomever they please. If Americans fear that one of their candidates will be too servile to big business, they can vote for someone else. In Europe, however, the state has begun to disqualify parties because of their opinions, so the citizens can only vote for the politicians whom the state pleases.

Read the article here. Watching the EU take shape is like reading The Animal Farm at the speed of about a paragraph a day.

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