harmonicminer

Andrew McCarthy makes the case that The Gitmo Volunteers are no more noble in volunteering to represent the Guantanamo prisoners than a restaurant owner who gave free food to Al Qaeda. It’s all worth reading, and it’s difficult to refute, I think.  He has some especially pointed observations about how the legal profession sees itself as being above the rest of us, particularly the left-liberal wing of it.  Read it all if you can.  Here’s the ending bit:

America’s enemies are no more entitled to counsel in pursuing legal claims than, say, a pro-life group that chooses to file a lawsuit. If I went out of my way to contribute my services for free to a pro-life group, do you suppose the New York Times would have the slightest hesitation about drawing the inference that I was sympathetic to the pro-life cause? Of course not. The Gray Lady wouldn’t pretend that I was just, in the Gillers lexicon, promoting “the administration of justice.” After all, no one would have forced me to take that case. There are countless causes that a lawyer willing to donate his services can find. When you’re a volunteer, you’re doing what you want to do, not what you have to do.

As the law is currently understood, it is legal for a lawyer to volunteer his services to America’s enemies. It is absurd, however, to suggest that we have to applaud that decision. And it is equally ludicrous to suggest that we are forbidden from drawing the obvious conclusion that a lawyer who makes such a decision is predisposed to condemn the United States and to sympathize with America’s enemies on some level.

Here’s the landscape: The Obama Justice Department is staffed with many lawyers who volunteered their services to America’s enemies. Since those lawyers have been running the department, there has been a detectable shift in favor of due-process rights for terrorists, a bias in favor of civilian trials in which terrorists are vested with all the rights of American citizens, a bias against military tribunals, the extension of Miranda protections to enemy combatants, a concerted effort to publish previously classified information detailing interrogation methods and depicting the alleged abuse of detainees, efforts to subject lawyers who authorized aggressive counterterrorism policies to professional sanction, the reopening of investigations against CIA interrogators even though those cases were previously closed by apolitical law-enforcement professionals, and the continued accusation that officials responsible for designing and carrying out the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies committed war crimes.

You may think this is a coincidence. I don’t. And I’m not going to pretend it is because some lefty lawyer screams “McCarthyism.” This isn’t demagoguery. It is cause and effect. And if it is hurting President Obama politically, that is because he deserves to be hurt for indulging it.

Obama supports a wannabe dicator for Honduras instead of the protections of constitutional law sought by its people. After a very nice summary of the situation to date, JUDE says this:

And here stands our American President, atop what was once the beacon of liberty throughout the world, telling the people of Honduras that they have to suck it up and endure the man who wants to rule them forever, throwing away their own silly little constitution.
Because he just knows better than them? Because he’s a fan of the Leftist tyrants club? Because…?
Because he is wrong.

If Obama is willing to treat the Honduran constitution with such disrespect and to set himself and his own judgement above that of the duly elected officials and the Supreme Court of Honduras, who are, after all, following their own constitution and laws (with considerable restraint, I might add), what makes anyone think that he has any higher a view of the US Constitution?

To no one’s surprise, he doesn’t.

Is the USA a “Christian nation”? Depends on what you mean by that, I suppose. But its origin in Judeo-Christian principles is clear, based on founding documents, acts of congress and presidents, and the writings of the founders.  The recognition and celebration of that heritage has been nearly universal among US national leaders until very recent times.  You can decide if that was a good thing, or a bad thing, but you can’t pretend it is a non-thing.

Obama is proceeding with “immigration reform” (spelled a-m-n-e-s-t-y) in spite of the fact the American people clearly and unequivocally voiced their opposition to this the last time it was proposed.  Why?  Because amnesty and citizenship for illegals qualifies them for union membership.  And an increase in union membership is an increase in Democrat voters.  Obama has made no effort to disguise this as his motivation.

Obama is radically pro-abortion.  He is in favor of the killing of unborn infants with no restrictions, paid for with a government check.  He is also in favor of killing children born alive as a result of a botched abortion.  He is in favor of forcing doctors to perform abortions even if those doctors have a moral objection.

Does anyone remember Obama’s soft-spoken, relaxed and seemingly innocuous little comment to Joe the plumber?  “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody”.  We now see that what he meant was a wholesale destruction of capitalism and a premeditated effort to replace it with socialism.

Obama is robbing our future generations of any hope of prosperity by an orgy of federal spending unheard of in our country.

Obama is reaching into the board rooms of private companies and firing employees.  He has crossed a line between public and private sectors that is unprecedented.

Obama has just completed an international trip with the message of appeasement to our enemies.  When, in the course of human history, has appeasement ever worked?

Iran is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power.  Is there ANYONE who thinks this is a good thing?

The laundry list of Obama appointees who were revealed to have unpaid taxes is shameful.  Is there ANY private citizen who could get away with this wanton disregard for tax laws by simply saying “Oops, I’m sorry”?

The Republican Party is currently populated with political eunichs.  Where is the voice of opposition?

Obama wants to socialize medicine.  If this happens it will complete his coup d’état and America as we know it will be gone forever.

Many citizens of this great country are simply left speechless by this apparently unstoppable. radical, ultra-liberal assault on America.  So many of us feel a combination of powerlessness and outrage in the face of what is happening.  Many are asking, “What can I do to stop this madness?”  Not all of us have a public forum from which to vent our frustrations.  Not all of us are eloquent of speech or skilled in writing.  But we all have family and friends.  We all live lives that are made up of relationships.  This is where the battle must be fought – one friend, one family, one realtionship at a time.  Those of us who do believe America is essentially good – that it was founded and made great on a firm foundation of Judeo-Christian beliefs, that it is a place where people can be free, that perserverance and hard work will be rewarded and that anyone can acheive the American dream – must share our convictions and persuade our family and friends that it is an America worth fighting for.  For outrage is not enough, feeling helpless and powerless is no excuse, and inaction is not an option.

Yeah, I know it’s starting to sound like there should be a choir humming “My Country Tis Of Thee” in the background.  I don’t care. It is a battle worth fighting…but we had better start now.

H/T: Jonah Goldberg

Once upon a time….

Be it myth, legend, tale or fable we all know these four words and understand them to be a preamble to the telling of a make-believe story (though possibly based on fact).  Such stories serve many purposes, not the least of which is to teach an object lesson to the very young, a meaningful and memorable way to instruct children about great and noble virtues such as loyalty, honor, courage and truth.

Chicken Little is one such story. The diminuitive foul who determines Armageddon is at hand after being struck on the head by an acorn.  The story proceeds with Chicken Little determining the best course of action is to tell the king whereupon a journey commences and various encounters with other creatures ensue.  Depending on which version of the story is told, a final encounter with a deceitful fox who manipulates the circumstances brings about a close call or bad ending to the story.

I find several interesting parallels to current events.

Continue reading “The Sky Is Falling, The Sky Is Falling!”

I love it when the libertarians and conservatives square off and start punching. It’s always instructive, and is a good tonic for those who believe “the right” is monolithic.

Claremont Institute fellow Michael M. Uhlmann has a dismissive review of The Cult of the Presidency in the current issue of National Review: “It’s Not Just the Executive,” September 15, 2008. (Here it is if you get NR Digital, otherwise it’s available in the print edition). It seems to me that the review largely consists of inaccurate characterizations, unsupported assertions, and non sequiturs. But hey, I’m the author, and understandably biased, so check it out and judge for yourself.

Uhlmann writes that “The bulk of Healy’s book is devoted to various sins, offenses and negligences of the Bush administration.” That’s a bizarre statement, given that the book has nine chapters and an introduction, and only three of those chapters cover GWB’s tenure. In fact, the “bulk of the book” is devoted to demonstrating that, as I write in Chapter Two, “the problems of the modern presidency did not begin when George W. Bush emerged victorious from 2000’s seemingly interminable Battle of the Chads” and that–despite what some on the Left seem to believe–those problems will not vanish in January 2009 when he heads back to the ranch to cut brush.

Read it all.

So, here is a civics test for prospective voters. The test’s author, Doug Patton, has devised a 27 question test that 8th graders would once easily have passed. He thinks you should be able to score at least 18 in order to vote. That’s 66.6%, a “D” when I was in school.  Patton’s introduction to his test:

I have never been an advocate of the popular notion that “everyone should vote.” Some people look at me as if I am somehow un-American when I say that I am not in favor of encouraging people to vote who would otherwise never darken the door of a polling place. I really don’t want someone on the streets of Hollywood, who just failed to identify the vice president of the United States on one of Jay Leno’s “Jay-Walking” segments, helping to select the person who will lead my government for the next four years.

Take the test here.

I have to report, sadly, that enormous numbers of high school graduates cannot pass this test (that is, get a score of 66.6%). More college graduates than I would wish are similarly unprepared. Yet this test is not hard, for anyone who has the vaguest notion of how our government functions, and the barest minimum of knowledge about current events. I know it is politically impossible that a test such as this will ever be adopted. But if you can’t pass it, you should be embarrassed to be voting. And in all honesty, I think the author of the test was too generous. In my opinion, if you can’t score about 24 out of 27, you should go out to lunch on election day (since you’re already there…), and then go home, and read a book or something.

Continue reading “Not a voter “literacy” test: a civics test instead”

How many people understand that we were one vote from losing the Bill of Rights in the Constitution? That if judges could simply decide the words don’t mean what they say, and what they plainly meant at the time they were written, then the words mean nothing whatsoever, and the law is simply what some black-robed oligarchs decide it means?

Randy Barnett, writing in the Wall Street Journal: News Flash: The Constitution Means What It Says

Justice Scalia’s opinion is the finest example of what is now called “original public meaning” jurisprudence ever adopted by the Supreme Court. This approach stands in sharp contrast to Justice John Paul Stevens’s dissenting opinion that largely focused on “original intent” – the method that many historians employ to explain away the text of the Second Amendment by placing its words in what they call a “larger context.” Although original-intent jurisprudence was discredited years ago among constitutional law professors, that has not stopped nonoriginalists from using “original intent” – or the original principles “underlying” the text – to negate its original public meaning.

Of course, the originalism of both Justices Scalia’s and Stevens’s opinions are in stark contrast with Justice Breyer’s dissenting opinion, in which he advocates balancing an enumerated constitutional right against what some consider a pressing need to prohibit its exercise. Guess which wins out in the balancing? As Justice Scalia notes, this is not how we normally protect individual rights, and was certainly not how Justice Breyer protected the individual right of habeas corpus in the military tribunals case decided just two weeks ago.

So what larger lessons does Heller teach? First, the differing methods of interpretation employed by the majority and the dissent demonstrate why appointments to the Supreme Court are so important. In the future, we should be vetting Supreme Court nominees to see if they understand how Justice Scalia reasoned in Heller and if they are committed to doing the same.

We should also seek to get a majority of the Supreme Court to reconsider its previous decisions or “precedents” that are inconsistent with the original public meaning of the text. This shows why elections matter – especially presidential elections – and why we should vet our politicians to see if they appreciate how the Constitution ought to be interpreted.

This all swung on a single vote. Imagine if the vote had been on “free speech” or “freedom of assembly” or “freedom of religion”? A 5-4 ruling would have been terrifying in its implications for our nation. It should be unanimous that the Constitution’s plain wording means what it says.

The Left wants desperately to pack the Court for the next generation during an Obama presidency. To the Left, specific issues they care about are more important than our nation’s fundamental character as a constitutional republic.

So I am happy at the outcome. And I am terrified of what could have been, and may well still be.

hat tip: addisonrd