Republicans, Immigration, The Constitution, & Is It Time For A Third Party Yet?

President Obama, with his Immigration plans, has brought us to the point of a Constitutional crisis. He is unilaterally making new law with his plan to give millions of illegal aliens social security numbers, and work permits, and apparently, retroactively available Earned Income Tax credits. (It's hard to buy loyalty without taxpayer cash, of course). Regardless of the policy, whether one thinks it right or wrong, it is the President's unilateral act that must be the focus.

The Presidents immigration plan is not "executive discretion," its legislation that, per Art. 1 Sec. of our Constitution, only Congress has the authority to authorize. It is a textbook act of tyranny of the kind over which we fought a Revolution. If this is allowed to stand, it will be the single most corrosive act taken in oppression of our "liberties" since our founding. And as a practical matter, it is an act that threatens long term repercussions for our economy and politics.

Fortunately for this nation, we just elected the largest Republican House majority in a century and gave Republicans a comfortable majority in the Senate. Surely, they will act decisively to check this act of tyranny. They have full control of the public purse. And yet . . . within the past few days, the House and Senate have passed bills fully funding Obama's immigration orders. The roll call for the House vote is here. It was House Speaker Boehner's choice to bring a clean bill to a vote, and the vote succeeded 257 to 167, with 75 Republicans voting for approval.

This has been a supreme act of treachery and cowardice by the Republican leadership and by all who supported these votes.

The Republican Party can no longer be relied upon to protect the Constitution or the interests of this nation. We must now rely on the Courts to correct this obscenity, but given the partisan and compliant nature of our Courts, that is a forlorn hope indeed.

It is time to support a third party. It is the last remaining peaceful alternative.

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Stonewalling & A Government Unafraid

In 2012, Landmark Legal Foundation submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to EPA. By law, EPA was required to timely respond. They didn't, and indeed, they seem to have purposely clouded their actions so that, even at this date, it is not clear whether the EPA ever fully responded to the request and whether they destroyed evidence. The Landmark Legal Foundation brought suit against EPA for these failures, and in a depressingly useless 25 page opinion issued yesterday, Judge Royce Lamberth castigated the EPA, found misconduct, yet held no one, including the EPA itself, liable. There are no criminal or professional referrals. Indeed, the Judge even bemoaned the fact that the EPA would very likely continue its pattern of misconduct despite the findings in the case.

This is par for the course in our country today. No one is held liable. There are no consequences for those in government.

- The travesty of the IRS investigation has been going on for two years now. The IRS may well have tipped the balance in the 2012 election. We now know that people have been lying about the availability of documentary evidence, and yet no one is being held accountable.

- In Benghazi, the government refused for years to provide relevant information. They claimed to have conducted an internal investigation -- a whitewash that deliberately excluded the upper echelons of the State Dept. -- and reassigned a few people.

- After years of stonewalling on the Fast and Furious documents, the Obama administration claimed executive privilege, turning discovery into a snails pace.

- We have Obamacare today because the DOJ prosecuted Sen Ted Stevens of Alaska under false pretenses. Stevens lost his re-election bid but the DOJ attorneys, whose "egregious" acts included hiding evidence from the defense. To date, those in charge of the prosecution in the upper levels of the DOJ have not been held liable.

- In 2007 we suffered the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. While it's causes were firmly rooted in government, at least some aspects of our economic system were criminally corrupted, in particular the bond rating companies that gave AAA status to subprime loans. Yet not a single individual has been held liable for any of that, and with Dodd Frank, many of the practices that led to our economic crisis are being repeated.

As Hillary famously asked about Benghazi, "what difference does it make?"

Well, to answer, it's the difference between liberty and tyranny. It is the difference between repeating catastrophic errors and or correcting for them. But, because the DOJ and the MSM are, today, largely arms of the Democrat Party, and because Congress is largely supine, none of this will be addressed. It will not change. Judge Lamberth can shake his fist at the EPA all he wants. Until there are heads on pikes, it is useless. And until then, our government will become ever more corrupt.

Update: The NYT has broken a story apparently leaked from the Benghazi Select Committee being chaired by Congressman Trey Gowdy. One of the mysteries surrounding the Benghazi intestigations has been why so little correspondence was produced from then Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. Today we learn, because Hillary, in a clear violation of protocol and almost certainly the law, routed all her correspondence while Sec. of State through a personal e-mail account, one that she set up on the day of her confirmation hearings for Sec. of State. I really want to hear her under oath asking "What difference does it make?" The likelihood that she'll be held to account for this . . . I won't recommend holding your breath.

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Seraphic Secret On Utopianism and Big Government

From Richard Avrech at Seraphic Secret, an insightful essay on utopianism versus reality and Big Government statism versus capitalism that appears as part of a post on the Health Care bill. He captures in a few paragraphs what I struggle in far more to say:

Seraphic Secret believes in the power of the individual, the power of free markets to effect positive results for a majority of the people.

There is no such thing as a solution for everybody.

That is called utopia and utopian models always end in tyranny if not outright genocide.

Seraphic Secret strongly believes in religious charities such as The Jewish Health Care Foundation of Los Angeles.

Charities flourish when government is least intrusive. But when government assumes control of private initiative charity declines because high taxes drain wallets and people assume that, y'know, the government is taking care of everything.

Remember when computers and other innovative electronics cost the earth? Private industry and competition drove prices down and quality up. The same free market model should and could be used for health care reform.

But Obama and the Democrats have no faith in free markets, no faith in a free American citizenry.

Obama and the Democrats believe in big government, they believe in, well, themselves—a ruling elite.

But big government does not innovate.

Big government does not create new jobs or new markets.

Big government is a cumbersome beast that is concerned, primarily, with maintaining and expanding its own power.

And Big government is the enemy of freedom and decency. Because when you relinquish control of your life to government, you relinquish free choice, you give up on the American dream.

And that is the plague called socialism/communism/collectivism, recast by modern liberals as, ahem, social justice.

You—yes you—are about to sink into a world of new taxes and a grim swamp of government health care.

G-d help us.

Do read Robert's entire post. Robert's essay is a good compliment to one of my favorite Thomas Sowell essays: The Prejudices Of The Elite. If you don't already read Seraphic Secret on a daily basis, I would highly recommend you start doing so.

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Happy Fourth Of July

Art: The Declaration Of Independence, John Trumbull
_________________________________________________________

In Congress, July 4, 1776,

THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That, to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed. That, whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such Principles and organizing its Powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the right of Representation in the legislature; a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the People.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of Peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens, taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions, We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free People.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in GENERAL CONGRESS assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, DO, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly PUBLISH and DECLARE, That these United Colonies are, and of Right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Bri tain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that, as FREE and INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of right do. AND for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

JOHN HANCOCK, President

Attested, CHARLES THOMSON, Secretary

New Hampshire:

JOSIAH BARTLETT, WILLIAM WHIPPLE, MATTHEW THORNTON

Massachusetts-Bay:

SAMUEL ADAMS, JOHN ADAMS, ROBERT TREAT PAINE, ELBRIDGE GERRY

Rhode Island:

STEPHEN HOPKINS, WILLIAM ELLERY

Connecticut:

ROGER SHERMAN, SAMUEL HUNTINGTON, WILLIAM WILLIAMS, OLIVER WOLCOTT

Georgia:

BUTTON GWINNETT, LYMAN HALL, GEO. WALTON

Maryland:

SAMUEL CHASE, WILLIAM PACA, THOMAS STONE, CHARLES CARROLL OF CARROLLTON

Virginia:

GEORGE WYTHE, RICHARD HENRY LEE, THOMAS JEFFERSON, BENJAMIN HARRISON, THOMAS NELSON, JR., FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE, CARTER BRAXTON.

New York:

WILLIAM FLOYD, PHILIP LIVINGSTON, FRANCIS LEWIS, LEWIS MORRIS

Pennsylvania:

ROBERT MORRIS, BENJAMIN RUSH, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, JOHN MORTON, GEORGE CLYMER, JAMES SMITH, GEORGE TAYLOR, JAMES WILSON, GEORGE ROSS

Delaware:

CAESAR RODNEY, GEORGE READ, THOMAS M'KEAN

North Carolina:

WILLIAM HOOPER, JOSEPH HEWES, JOHN PENN

South Carolina:

EDWARD RUTLEDGE, THOMAS HEYWARD, JR., THOMAS LYNCH, JR., ARTHUR MIDDLETON

New Jersey: RICHARD STOCKTON, JOHN WITHERSPOON, FRANCIS HOPKINS, JOHN HART, ABRAHAM CLARK

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Glimpses Into Chaos - Iran, 24 June

The Iranian demonstrators of 1979, whose children are demonstrating today, would not have dreamt that the turban was simply going replace the crown and that Iran would go from one repression to another. However, it is not the labelling of a state as "Islamic" that makes it just or unjust, but its structures: does it have sufficient checks and balances between the branches of government, is the leader accountable and replaceable by the people freely; are the people sovereign or the clerics?

Asim Siddiqui, From Imam To Dictator, The Guardian, 24 June 2009

From today's protests in Iran. "Death to the dictator."



This from a CNN Interview with an unnamed woman in Tehran discussing what she saw happening in Iran today:

I was going towards Baharestan with my friend. This was everyone, not just supporters of one candidate or another. All of my friends, they were going to Baharestan to express our opposition to these killings and demanding freedom. The black-clad police stopped everyone. They emptied the buses that were taking people there and let the private cars go on. We went on until Ferdowsi then all of a sudden some 500 people with clubs came out of [undecipherable] mosque and they started beating everyone.

They tried to beat everyone on Saadi bridge and throwing them off of the bridge…. And everyone also on the sidewalks. They beat a woman so savagely that she was drenched in blood and her husband, who was watching the scene, he just fainted. I also saw people shooting, I mean the security forces shooting on people, on Lalezar. Of course were afraid….

They were beating people like hell. It was a massacre. They were trying to beat people so they would die. They were cursing — saying very bad words to everyone. They were beating old men. And this was exactly a massacre. You should stop this. You should stop this. You should help the people of Iran who demand freedom. You should help us.

And this from a medical student working in an Iranian hospital translated from farsi and posted at The Guardian.

only want to speak about what I have witnessed. I am a medical student. There was chaos at the trauma section in one of our main hospitals. Although by decree, all riot-related injuries were supposed to be sent to military hospitals, all other hospitals were filled to the rim. Last night, nine people died at our hospital and another 28 had gunshot wounds. All hospital employees were crying till dawn. They (government) removed the dead bodies on back of trucks, before we were even able to get their names or other information. What can you even say to the people who don't even respect the dead. No one was allowed to speak to the wounded or get any information from them. This morning the faculty and the students protested by gathering at the lobby of the hospital where they were confronted by plain cloths anti-riot militia, who in turn closed off the hospital and imprisoned the staff.

The extent of injuries are so grave, that despite being one of the most staffed emergency rooms, they've asked everyone to stay and help--I'm sure it will even be worst tonight. What can anyone say in face of all these atrocities? What can you say to the family of the 13 year-old boy who died from gunshots and whose dead body then disappeared?

This issue is not about cheating (election) anymore. This is not about stealing votes anymore. The issue is about a vast injustice inflected on the people. They've put a baton in the hand of every 13-14 year old to smash the faces of "the bunches who are less than dirt" (government is calling the people who are uprising dried-up torn and weeds). This is what sickens me from dealing with these issues. And from those who shut their eyes and close their ears and claim the riots are in opposition of the government and presidency!! No! The people's complaint is against the egregious injustices committed against the people.

As this woman indicates, part of the modus operandi of the government is to try to prevent the people whom they have slaughtered from becoming martyrs, with people coallescing around their graves. The dead are carted off and buried, the bodies not returned to their families, and memorials are outlawed. In the case of Neda Agha-Soltan, murdered while standing in the street at a protest on Saturday, it has gone even beyond that, with her family forcibly removed and no longer contactable:

Neighbours said that her family no longer lives in the four-floor apartment building on Meshkini Street, in eastern Tehran, having been forced to move since she was killed. The police did not hand the body back to her family, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques, the neighbours said.

It appears Iran's regime continues its brutal crackdown making large scale use of hired thugs. This from the Guardian:

Newspaper Roozonline has an interview (in Persian) with one of the young plainclothes militiamen who have been beating protesters.

UPDATE: Robert says the man is paid 2m rial per day, which would be about £1220 for ten days of work. A hefty fee, even by UK standards. A reader writes: "You can imagine what that kind of money means to a villager from Khorasan".

The Guardian's Robert Tait sends this synopsis:

The man, who has come from a small town in the eastern province of Khorasan and has never been in Tehran before, says he is being paid 2m rial (£122) to assault protestors with a heavy wooden stave. He says the money is the main incentive as it will enable him to get married and may even enable him to afford more than one wife. Leadership of the volunteers has been provided by a man known only as "Hajji", who has instructed his men to "beat the counter-revolutionaries so hard that they won't be able to stand up". The volunteers, most of them from far-flung provinces such as Khuzestan, Arak and Mazandaran, are being kept in hostel accommodation, reportedly in east Tehran. Other volunteers, he says, have been brought from Lebanon, where the Iranian regime has strong allies in the Hezbollah movement. They are said to be more highly-paid than their Iranian counterparts and are put up in hotels. The last piece of information seems to confirm the suspicion of many Iranians that foreign security personnel are being used to suppress the demonstrators. For all his talk of the legal process, this interview provides a key insight into where Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, believes the true source of his legitimacy rests.

Clashes occurred throughout Iran, with possibly the largest being in front of Iran's Parliament building. Hundreds of basij, the theocracy's nazi style "brown-shirt" army of thugs, attacked protestors throughout the day and sped into action whenever groups of ten or more people were seen.

It is now night in Iran and, in what must be the most ironic twist to this revolt, people are acting in the same fashion that Ayatollah Khomeini, father of this theocracy, told Iranians to do three decades ago as a sign of their desire to overthrow the regime. Cries of “Allahu Akbar!” are being shouted throughout Tehran “with deafening intensity.”

A final look at today, with police clubbing men and women on the streets, though no protest is apparent:

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Should The Right To Keep & Bear Arms Be An International Human Right

Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

Sir George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries, 1803

One can hardly argue with the centuries old observation of Sir George Tucker set down in the first American edition of Blackstone's Commentaries on the law. An unarmed populace is subject to brutality and repression from a tyrannical government. The picture of an unarmed youth shot by basij in Iran speaks a thousand words on the topic.

Iran required gun owners to register their weapons in the late 1970's and then banned gun ownership, as opposition to the Shah coallesced. Iran's theocracy has kept that ban in place. As we watch the people in Iran, disarmed, fall to the predations of armed thugs and riot police of the theocracy, I wonder if we should not be arguing that the right to keep and bear arms should pursued as an international human right.

It is the most repressive regimes that seek to ban private ownership of weapons - and the UN. This from Janet Ellen Levy writing in the American Thinker two years ago:

In the international arena, the United Nations is at the forefront of a global movement to limit worldwide gun production and eliminate private firearms ownership. Total disarmament of civilian populations is the U.N. goal. For the past five years, the United Nations has convened an annual, international gun control summit to discuss strategies to forestall the "proliferation of small arms and light weapons." Participating countries have included Iran, China, Algeria, Nigeria and Bangladesh, among others, as well as anti-firearms, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which have pressured governments worldwide to eliminate civilian gun ownership.

The images of today from Iran should hammer home why the more repressive the government, the more the push on their part to disarm their populace. And it should equally hammer home the stark need for people to have an absolute right to own weapons. As James Madison famously said "People should not be afraid of their government. Government should be afraid of their people." It seems to me that "human rights" begins and ends with that observation.

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A Descent Into Corruption & Abuse Of Power Is Not The Change For Which We Had Hoped

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins."

William Pitt The Elder, Speech to the House of Lords, 1770

The Democrats have achieved what amounts to complete power in America. And the far left wing of the Democratic Party, led by Obama, are skirting if not violating the law in order to get their way. Numerous acts of intimidation and abuse of power are showing up everywhere you look. That includes at least two egregious acts that have come to light just this day - the intimidation of a witnesses and Obama's unilateral decision to fire the Inspector General (IG) for Americorps who had recently investigated and received a judgment against a major Obama supporter.

*************************************************************

In the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies, we have seen extortion and strong arming from Obama and his "car czar" to trample on statutory and constitutional rights of secured creditors. With the nations major banks, we have seen the Obama administration refuse to allow repayment of loans and then use their control to influence bank decisions as regards Chrysler and GM. Even now, though allowing repayment, the government is maintaining warrants that they could exercise at any time to take over the effective ownership of every major banking institution in America. We have seen the White House take direct control of the 2010 census and insert the deeply corrupt ACORN into the counting process. We have seen the Obama DOJ make the inexplicable decision not to prosecute voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers. And we have the Obama DOJ ignoring a recent Supreme Court case and making decisions that can only further promote voter fraud.

In the House, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats repeatedly refused to allow ethics investigations of numerous Democratic lawmakers who are reeking with the stench of corruption. Indeed, even the NYT editorial board is starting to choke on that one. Tax fraud Charlie Rangel and "friend of Angelo" Chris Dodd still not only retain their seats in Congress, but their chairmanships. And we have the left protecting ACORN at every turn, cancelling hearings to investigate their corruption and insuring that all attempts to block robust funding of ACORN on the taxpayer's dime are rebuffed.

And today, there is more. First up are charges of witness intimidation. Democratic Rep. Ed Markey, co-author of the Waxman Cap and Trade bill, sent a letter to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asking FERC to investigate MidAmerican Energy Holdings on the same day that company’s CEO was set to testify before the energy panel on the dangers of a carbon cap and trade system. In another instance, health care lobbyists were warned by two senior democratic staffers not to meet with the Republican leadership to discuss the proposed health care plan. As they reportedly said, doing so would be a "hostile act."

But by far the worst act is Obama's unilateral decision to fire Gerald Walpin, the Inspector General of AmeriCorps. An inspector generals job is to investigate for waste, fraud or abuse of federal funds. Walpin had recently investigated Kevin Johnson, an Obama supporter, and the nonprofit St. HOPE Academy that Johnson headed. Walpin found six instances of funds being diverted or wrongly used, none of which were disputed by Johnson. Walpin handed his findings over to the DOJ. The DOJ then found sufficient cause to order St. Hope to repay about half of nearly $847,000 in federal grants they had received from AmeriCorps. On the heels of that, not only did Obama act to fire Walpin, but Obama failed to comply with an act he voted for last year meant to protect Inspector Generals from political pressure. That law requires Obama to allow allow thirty days to pass after informing Congress of the intent to fire an IG, and to provide specific reasons for the firing. Obama did neither. Byron York has the definitive postings on this one. He also adds that this situation with Walpin may be the tip of the iceberg, stating that a "number of inspectors general around the government have been expressing concerns to Congress recently about threats to their independence."

On a final note, not included in the bill of particulars above are the highly questionable procedural games that the Democratic majority is playing in Congress. Major bills are not being written in committee. Instead, they are being written in secret by the far left wing of the Democratic party then pushed out with calls for an immediate vote. Nancy Pelosi virtually wrote the porkulus bill behind closed doors, and then referred to Republican complaints about the lack of bipartisanship in drafting the bill as mere "process arguments." And it is not just Republicans. The NYT reported last month "[f]orty-five House Democrats in the party’s moderate-to-conservative wing have protested the secretive process by which party leaders in their chamber are developing legislation to remake the health care system." Then there is Obama's proposal for ramming socialized medicine legislation through by grossly misusing the "budget reconciliation" procedure in the Senate.

Obama and the far left are drunk with power and vastly overreaching. Indeed, any number of Obama's acts to date would have, had they been done by Bush, resulted in substantive calls for impeachment. There is a reason Dafydd ab Hugh of Big Lizards tagged Obama as "Lucky Lefty." But with a press corps that more resembles a smitten school girl - indeed, so much so that one of the editors of the left wing SF Examiner is complaining - utterly none of these tyrannical acts designed to skirt law and democracy are being followed up by the MSM. This is not the hope and change Obama promised - but it is the reality his background clearly foreshadowed.

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Interesting News - 1 February 2008

Behind Obama’s soaring rhetoric, his post-partisan promises, his Kennedyesque visions, lies . . . the member of Congress with the single most far left voting record of 2007.

I’ve been meaning to write on Obama a more, but each time I have readied the quill, I’ve found that Bookworm Room has expressed my thoughts in a post of her own and done so more eloquently then I could have. Do see her post on the Great Bloviator and this one, where she asks the very pertinent question in light of his voting record, What Will Obama Change?

Hillary is every bit the liberal that Obama is, and indeed, her socialist economic views could be disastrous. Beyond that, Victor David Hanson opines that whether the Democratic nominee is Clinton or Obama, their views are so dangerous and so far to the left that any conservative angst over McCain will disappear by midsummer. That said, there is a tremendous amount of huffing and puffing at the moment.

JoshuaPundit has pulled together some incisive punditry looking at the political lessons to be learned from the campaign to date.

Apparently, being a leftie is a genetic disease.

The Economist has a damning indictment of the performance of the U.S. intelligence community with the seditious NIE on Iran’s Nuclear Weapon’s Program which, as the Economist notes, was written even as "the enrichment machine spins on." You can read Reza Pahlavi thoughts on all of this here.

Also from the Economist: "Who would have thought that a friendless theocracy with a Holocaust-denying president, which hangs teenagers in public and stones women to death, could run diplomatic circles around America and its European allies? But Iran is doing just that. And it is doing so largely because of an extraordinary own goal by America's spies, the team behind the duff intelligence that brought you the Iraq war."

Red Alerts has a good post on the fallacy of grievance based terrorism.

Lionheart will be returning to the UK today. This is the blogger facing arrest for his criticism of Islam on his blog.

Who is Hesham Islam and why is he directing our DOD to make outreach efforts to the American chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood?

And why is our DNC appointing a radical Deobandi cleric, Imam Malik Mujahid to the DNC credentials committee? From LGF via Jawa Report.

I say we need to work with the locals to establish a Berkley Awakening Council.

Are we entering into a (hopefully) Little Ice Age?

Cat at Brits at Their Best discusses a point that I’ve made previously. The Britain of today now has a tyranny of Parliament. There are no substantive checks and balances within Britain’s current form of government. Cat discusses this within the historical irony of the first earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, who established the first political party in order to fight against what he saw as the tyranny of the Crown. Now things have come full circle, with the majority party, Labour, exercising the powers of a tyrant.

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