Empire Despotism Upon Us, Restore the Spirit of 1776 Liberty, Let's Create a Real Republic
Caught spying on Americans, the Bush administration has begun a propaganda "blitz" to justify a secret program that we are told is for our own security. Of course, the program is so secret that Bush won't reveal any details and will only give a brief overview to a few loyal Congressional insiders.
Last December, under considerable pressure from Congress, President Bush signed into law the Defense Department Appropriation Act, even though it included guidelines he had earlier opposed prohibiting the use of torture to extract information from detainees. The newly passed law bans “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” against individuals, regardless of nationality or physical location, held in custody by the U.S. government. It was an action befitting a leader of a civilized nation. But within hours of signing the bill, Mr. Bush issued a bill-signing statement reserving the right to interpret the law according to his increasingly broad definition of presidential power.
Sorry, but the Constitution cannot be amended by arrogant public officials who don't wish to bother with it. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and if the American people allow it to be violated at will, then they will deserve the loss of liberty that will surely follow. We do not need to become a dictatorship just to catch terrorists. Nor does a declaration of war (which Bush, by the way, doesn't have) suspend the Constitution.
On Dec. 16 — on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" — Bruce Fein, former associate deputy attorney general in President Reagan's administration, and a continually challenging conservative constitutional scholar — explained why this continuing debate on the sweeping powers of "the unitary executive" is the most crucial of all controversies during the Bush presidency so far:
Every American school child is taught that in the United States, people have “unalienable rights,” heralded by the Declaration of Independence and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Supposedly, these liberties can’t be taken away, but they are now gone.
The dependency on government generated by welfarism and warfarism, made possible by our shift from a republican to a democratic system of government, is the real scandal of the ages. If we merely tinker with current attitudes about the role of the federal government in our lives, it won’t do much to solve the ethics crisis. True reform is impossible without addressing the immorality of wealth redistribution.
East Coast activists want to build the 'Lost Liberty Inn' on the property of U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter. The measure is on the March 14 ballot in the small town of Weare NH, where Souter resides. This Sunday activists staged rally in Weare to 'turn the eminent domain tables' on Souter.
I freely admit that if I could, I would choose to live in the past, but we can’t. The only world we’ve ever had, have now and ever will have is the present moment. Whatever living we are going to do we must do right now.
Twenty-five years ago today was a critical turning point in our nation’s history. On that day, Ronald Reagan was inaugurated president of the United States. He inherited an economy that was in shambles. Inflation was running rampant, penalizing work, savings, and investment. The top marginal income tax rate stood at 70 percent, punishing our most productive Americans and discouraging them from working. Our confidence as a nation was fragile.
Corporate welfare cuts to the core of political self-governance, because it is perpetuated in large measure through campaign contributions and the subversion of procedural and substantive democracy; and because the perpetuation of corporate welfare itself misallocates public and private resources and exacerbates the disparities of wealth, influence and power that run counter to a functioning political system in which the people rule. The current reform moment is the time to address the problem.
The Senate hearings regarding the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court demonstrated that few in Washington view the Constitution as our founders did. The Constitution first and foremost is a document that limits the power of the federal government. It prevents the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court from doing all kinds of things. But judging by last week's hearings, the Constitution is an enabling document, one that authorizes the federal government to involve itself in nearly every aspect of our lives.
The Bush administration notified federal trial judges in Washington that it would soon ask them to dismiss all lawsuits brought by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, challenging their detentions, Justice Department officials said Tuesday.
The Abramoff scandal has been described as the biggest Washington scandal ever: bigger than Watergate; bigger than Abscam; bigger than Koreagate; bigger than the House banking scandal; bigger than Teapot Dome. Possibly so. It’s certainly serious and significant.
His friends and admirers saw W. Cleon Skousen as a deeply religious man who wasn't afraid to publicly marry his faith with his interpretation of constitutional principles and his disdain for communism.
Milwaukee's innovative school choice program has become a beacon of hope for reformers everywhere. But the educational establishment has never accepted its success and is now striking back. A cap on the number of students that can attend the city's private choice schools has been reached, and starting Feb. 1, education officials will implement a rationing plan to allocate the program's available seats. That could disrupt up to 4,000 families and create such chaos among the participating schools that several could be threatened with closure.
The Next Conservatism should strongly advocate repeal of all unfair advantages the two major parties have given themselves. Then, if one or the other of the major parties does not make room for real conservatism, that party should either be replaced by a new party or shaken up enough by a third party showing that it will correct its course.
Most Republicans have been curiously silent about the recent news reports that President Bush has engaged in warrant-less eavesdropping on American citizens. This is surprising given their general hostility towards government power, and stands in stark contrast to their outrage over the Supreme Court’s Kelo v. City of New London decision this past summer. That case held that the government could take private property for use by other private entities as long as the government determined that there was some public benefit. After the Kelo ruling, prominent Republicans took to the floor of Congress and demanded immediate action to prevent such an egregious usurpation of individual rights.
We Americans are now engaged in a New Civil war, testing whether this nation, conceived and dedicated as we are, will endure.
January 17th, 2006 marks the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin. Since his death 216 years ago many volumes have been written that explore his numerous accomplishments in a wide variety of endeavors. Despite so much time passing, Franklin’s list of achievements and his life’s work still stand tall among the achievements of the many generations of Americans that have followed.
Darwinists must be an endangered species. How else to explain their 80-year need for court protection to ensure their survival?
A new Zogby poll indicates a majority of Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval.
Political analysts in Europe and the United States a month ago reacted with horror to the news that a native-born Belgian woman had become the first female Western convert to Islam to blow herself up for "martyrdom." It's as if being born and raised in the West were a vaccine against religious extremism.
The ultimate pipe dream of the reformers is a rigidly egalitarian society, where government makes sure that every individual’s influence over politics is exactly the same, regardless of his wealth. Scrutinize the pronouncements of campaign-finance reform groups like the Pew-backed Democracy 21, and you’ll see how the meaning of “corruption” morphs into “inequality of influence” in this sense. This notion of corruption—really a Marxoid opposition to inequality of wealth—would have horrified the Founding Fathers, who believed in private property with its attendant inequalities, and who trusted to the clash of factions to ensure that none oppressed the others. The Founders would have seen in the reformers’ utopian schemes, in which the power of government makes all equally weak, the embodiment of tyranny.
W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006), prolific supporter of God, family and country, peacefully passed away at his Salt Lake City home on January 9, 2006, of causes incident to age, just 11 days shy of his ninety-third birthday. He was lovingly surrounded by his family and wife Jewel, with whom he was anticipating their 70th wedding anniversary in August.
When President Bush signed the new law, sponsored by Senator McCain, restricting the use of torture when interrogating detainees, he also issued a Presidential signing statement. That statement asserted that his power as Commander-in-Chief gives him the authority to bypass the very law he had just signed.
Universal moral theories – like any scientific, mathematical or logical theory – must be absolute, consistent and independent of time – otherwise, they are mere subjective opinions. Certainly any moral absolutes that are to be enforced through state coercion must satisfy those criteria, since the legal power of the state is absolute and universal! If we advocate irrational and contradictory moral laws, we will inevitably end up with an irrational and contradictory legal system, which always leads to dictatorship.
What’s at stake here are provisions of the Bill of Rights. Do we or do we not have the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee that all Americans shall “be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizure”? Do we or don’t we have assurance that such a God-given right “shall not be violated” without a warrant demonstrating “probable cause, supported by Oath of affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized”? Provisions of the Patriot Act now set to expire effectively cancel this essential guarantee.
“America has lost its capacity for being indignant,” Cherif Bassiouni of Chicago’s DePaul University and one of the world’s great jurists commented. “Where has our capacity for indignation gone? The problem of a nation that loses its respect for its Constitution and treaties—what is next? Hasn’t every totalitarian or undemocratic regime started like that?”
During the past generation, the American middle-class family that once could count on hard work and fair play to keep itself financially secure has been transformed by economic risk and new realities. Now a pink slip, a bad diagnosis, or a disappearing spouse can reduce a family from solidly middle class to newly poor in a few months.
U.S. officials can open personal mail arriving from abroad as part of the fight against terrorism, and do so when they deem it necessary to protect the country, a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said on Monday.
It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.
The Department of Energy may soon be paying a visit to a certain shower-head manufacturer in Arizona. The company is Zoe Industries Manufacturing. It runs Showerbuddy.com, a popular site that sells amazing equipment for bathrooms.
President Bush proudly announced last month that he is violating federal law. He declared that in 2002 he ordered the National Security Agency to begin conducting warrantless wiretaps and email intercepts on Americans. He asserted that the wiretaps would continue, regardless of the law.
Although the present angst of some members of Congress might prove to be good theater (and we are living in an era of bread-and-circuses, after all), in the long run it will serve to strengthen the executive branch of government at the expense of the Constitution. If we wish to rid ourselves of the Jack Abramoffs of the world, there is a better way: smash the state apparatus that makes lobbying so lucrative in the first place.
Much of law since the 18th century has been based on the idea that society runs best if judges don't act as legislators, but rather apply and follow the law - and not make it (or do whatever they think best). Critics of this "legal formalism" - or the conforming of new decisions to past decisions - say it doesn't advance rights fast enough or pays too much deference to executive or legislative authority. Alito, in this view, has "erred" by paying due deference to law and elected authority.
The Unitary Executive Versus Judicial Supremacy
There are principles that must be a part of the lives of the people of any nation desiring freedom and prosperity, for after all, it is men who cause governments to run. Governments depend upon men more than men depend upon governments. If men are good, the government cannot be bad.
One of Washington's most powerful business groups vowed Wednesday to continue its fight against House-passed immigration legislation that would tighten border controls and increase pressure on businesses to verify the legal status of their workers.
Headlines proclaiming victories often apply only to the day they are published. When it comes to politics there are no “final victories” and I fear that will be the case with our so-called win at the recent meeting in Tunis of the World Summit on the Information Society. Headlines proclaimed “U.S. to Retain Oversight of Web” but one victorious battle for America does not mean that the war has been won. What is at stake is our continued control of our wealth and technology.
In America, within living memory, all these things were true:
To those who say "But times have changed in our post-9/11 world," I humbly reply that times have been changing since the beginning of time, and always will change; but Democracy never changes; Freedom never changes; Justice never changes; Equality never changes; Liberty never changes; government of, by and for the People never changes; and the principles, the guidelines, the checks-and-balances which made America great must likewise never change, or America herself will change to a nightmare far inferior to the unique beacon of light she has always been.
Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday confirmed that it took down the blog of outspoken Chinese journalist Zhao Jing, saying that it was complying with China's laws.
Back in the 1930s, when confronted with clear evidence he had violated the law, Georgia's then agriculture commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Eugene Talmadge popped his bright red suspenders and dared those accusing him of corruption to do something about it, declaring, "Sure, I stole, but I stole for you." He was elected Governor in 1932. Accused of breaking the law in the current debate over electronic spying, President George W. Bush has, in his own way, dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of our Constitution, I hope they will.
This has always been one of my three favorite American cities – along with my native New York and San Francisco. In the early 1970’s, I ran a line of West Indies freighters out of here when this port was known as the Casablanca of North America.
Former NSA intelligence agent Russell Tice condemns reports that the Agency has been engaged in eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without court warrants. Tice has volunteered to testify before Congress about illegal black ops programs at the NSA. Tice said, “The freedom of the American people cannot be protected when our constitutional liberties are ignored and our nation has decayed into a police state."
The December 11 Seattle Times offered a valuable update on that process, which has been underway for more than a generation. “Mental-health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and some patients are disabled by these beliefs,” reports the paper. “As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis. Advocates have circulated draft guidelines and have begun to conduct systematic studies. While the proposal is gaining traction, it is still in the early stages of being considered by the professionals who decide on new diagnoses.”
“Clearly,” said Adam to Eve as they departed the Garden of Eden, “we’re living in an age of transition.” A joke, of course—but also not quite a joke, because when has the history of the world been anything other than one damned transition after another? Yet sometimes, in certain realms, transitions seem to stand out with utter distinctiveness, and this seems to be the case with the fortune of printed newspapers at the present moment. As a medium and as an institution, the newspaper is going through an age of transition in excelsis, and nobody can confidently say how it will end or what will come next.
The Liberal Loonies represents the one time of the year when liberals get all of the “praise” and recognition that they truly deserve.
Don't worry. Just a few pages, to give you some flavors from the recent past.
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