Soylent Blue

Soylent Blue
©2012 Ross Williams

A major event is currently unfolding at the speed of bureaucracy in Illinois: the Democrat governor – Quinn, the empty suit sitting in the Lieutenant’s chair when our previous Democrat governor, Blagojevich, was convicted of graft and corruption in not even trying to hide his Illinois Democrat behavior by openly selling political favor and influence – ... anyway ... the governor is announcing a series of massive cuts to the state’s Medicaid program.

These cuts follow a few specific events that are worth mentioning, and several non-specific socioeconomic issues that are not, and essentially can’t be helped. Of course, the Democrats on the Illinois Street are indignant about this coming ... now ... in Illinois ... 5 months before their Messiah, promoted to National Savior, is up for reelection, and just 1 month after their Hair Club For Men governor donned his orange jumpsuit and matching anklets for the bus ride to the federal penitentiary. Democrats are feeling a little bit vulnerable in general, and a lot humiliated in Illinois, and when one of their own does something that violates the Democrat Creed they are likely to disown him.

The Democrat governor Quinn, announcing substantial cuts to Medicaid, has been declared to be a Republican by pouty Democrats. All the usual denunciations are being churned out, including the “most vulnerable people” whine. I’m constantly amazed at how frequently the most vulnerable people in our nation, state or community keep bouncing from group to group. It’s like they’re playing some massive game of political tag, and whoever’s “It” – and what a coincidence this is – is usually the very same group of people whose program funding is currently being debated.

I’ve seen, in just the last year, the Most Vulnerable People label used on [in no particular order]:
1] the mentally ill
2] the poverty class
3] the elderly
4] children of “underwater” mortgage owners
5] the unemployed
6] “native Americans” who don’t like school mascots depicting them
7] those without employer-provided health insurance
8] AFSMCE union employees who may lose their bloated pensions
9] ...ad infinitum

It’s either a testament to our society’s continual betterment of the disadvantaged that allows last weeks’ Most Vulnerable People to leapfrog the pack so consistently, or it’s an indictment of our society’s cruelty that pushes so many groups in totum to the bottom of the pack one right after the other.

Seeing as ours is still the most wealthy nation on the planet in the history of human civilization, and which third- and second-worlders still strive to enter, criminally if necessary, I’m going to go with the betterment thing. The alternative is that Most Vulnerable People is a meaningless political meme for the purpose of dishonest political demonization ... and we should all know that never happens.

The Illinois legislature recently passed a law requiring address verification of the people on the Illinois Medicaid list, after an audit [a.k.a., when Republicans do it, “data mining operation”] discovered that 6% of those who receive medical coverage “for free” from Illinois live in other states. It’s simply a matter of switching the bureaucracy from one state to another if the move was recent and benign; it’s a matter of fraud otherwise. Illinois got the idea that they should not give this 6% an Illinois Medicaid ID card, and thus save the state some money.

Keen idea right?

Apparently not. Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services does not want Illinois [and I suspect other states either] cutting down on Medicaid fraud. HHS Immediately threatened Illinois with a funding cut for the federal portion of Illinois’ Medicaid budget. This would require Illinois to make up that funding out of the Illinois general revenue to properly cover the state’s Most Vulnerable People.

Ju-u-ust one problem, though ... Illinois has no general revenue to speak of. Because Illinois’ other Most Vulnerable People – the AFSCME union employees in the state’s DMV offices and Department of Human Rights slumber pens – have an absolutely gorgeous pension system which gives them, in retirement, three or more times what their highest annual salary had been as a surly DMV toad or napping Human Rights weenie.

It seems that, yes, even socialists have to come to grips with running out of the money they believe grows on trees. And when they do, they start cutting back on all those programs they promised to the gullible voters who traded their votes for government handouts.

Among those handouts is health coverage. ...what some socialists still insist is a right. Socialists are sometimes correct: it IS a right. But as such, the only person that could stand between a citizen availing himself of his right to health care and that citizen NOT availing himself would be that citizen himself; the government would be obliged to get the hell out of his way.

But, alas, healthcare for certain people is, instead, treated as an entitlement. Entitlements are bestowed upon the citizen by the government. And what the government giveth ... the government can taketh away.

Try to not be too melodramatic, you poverty stricken people, as you endure the government rationing your healthcare. Die with dignity, now; you wouldn’t want to disturb the retired state workers.

Suicide Squeeze

Suicide Squeeze 

©2012 Ross Williams

Ozzie Guillen, one-time manager of the Chicago White Sox, had a tendency to put his foot in his mouth on the South Side. I particularly liked his Jay Mariotti is a fag episode. People who say what other people are thinking are quite refreshing, and they’re significantly easier on the long-term conscience than those who mince words, beat around bushes and tip-toe ever so delicately past the graveyards of cowardly non-confrontationalism littering our world.

He’s now the manager of the Miami Marlins, and has been for all of 4, 5 games at this point. A few games ago he was interviewed by Time magazine, and among the questions he was asked – as a professional baseballer – was his thoughts on Castro.

Not Starlin Castro, the Cubs shortstop that he’ll be seeing next week when the Cubs come to town; Fidel Castro, the Cuban el heffe. ...because as the manager of a baseball team world politics is so-o-o relevant.

Guillen declared that he loved the guy. After all, he explained, “people have wanted to kill [him] for the last 60 years, but that fucker is still there.” Actually, Oz, it’s closer to 50 years, but who’s counting? 

Needless to say, half the folks in Miami are Cuban exiles who live in Miami because Castro overthrew our boy Batista, and started imprisoning everyone who liked Batista, and everyone who liked anyone who liked Batista, and everyone who liked anyone who liked anyone who ... you get the picture. The Cubanos are in Miami because the alternative was the Cuban prison that many of their relatives reside in. They don’t like Castro, and for very good reasons.

Which means that they don’t like Guillen’s comments much. But their reasons are not so good. The consequences of those reasons are even worse. Disastrous, actually.

First, there’s Ozzie’s specific situation: he’s Venezuelan. Venezuela is currently in the hands of a Castro-lite by the name of Hugo Chavez who takes every opportunity to confiscate the private wealth of his people, or allow it to be confiscated – which is much the same thing in his type of government. By Venezuelan standards Ozzie Guillen is wealthy, and Hugo is best buds with the Castro boys. If you can give Ozzie credit for having forethought [I wouldn’t place any money on it, but it’s possible], his answer may have been gauged to ensure the good graces of Señor Presidente Chavez.

And if so, give him a break. Venezuela is the Somalia of the western Hemisphere in certain regards. It wasn’t all that long ago, last November actually, that Wilson Ramos, catcher for the Washington Nationals, was kidnapped in Venezuela by “criminal gangs” seeking ransom. Several ball players and especially their families have been kidnapped in the past seven years, and the government of Venezuela is more likely to allow such kidnappings to solve themselves rather than to put out a tremendous effort in finding the kidnappers, despite assurances from – not to put too fine a point on Venezuela’s similarity to Somalia – their Justice Minister ... Tareck El Aissami.

Yorvit Torrealba’s son and brother-in-law were kidnapped and released last year without police involvement. Victor Zambrano’s mother was kidnapped and rescued by police. Henry Blanco’s brother was kidnapped and killed in 2008. And Ugueth Urbina’s mother was held for months while the police did nothing.

Insulating yourself and your family from the whimsy of idiot dictators and their henchmen is always prudent.

But so is doing everything to undermine those dictators.

This is where the US, through its official policy regarding Cuba, has failed miserably. The US brought down the entire Soviet Empire and its Eastern European bandwagon, winning the hearts of their people with – arguably – rock music and blue jeans. Sure, the Star Wars missile defense system forced the Soviets to spend money they didn’t have and couldn’t earn, but the table was set by the Beatles, Elton John, and Wranglers insinuating themselves into the Eastern Bloc people... who were the ones that tore down the Berlin Wall under the noses of East German soldiers.

We set the table by engaging the socialist tyrants of Eastern Europe. Engaging means giving trifling little gifts – such as blue jeans to visiting ballet troupes. Then insulting their leaders. Then cajolery with free tickets to an Elton John concert for the families of dignitaries.

Additionally, China is now becoming more capitalist at the same time we are becoming less so; this hasn’t happened in a vacuum, either. That was accomplished, also, through engagement. Give China a lesson on the practical benefit of letting individuals make their own money and taxing them on it rather than the government making money for them and thus having nothing to tax all the while doing all the work, followed by snide commentary on their civil rights...

The entire Soviet bloc fell to pieces and China out-profits everyone on the planet except us... and we can’t bring down a puissant little turdball island nation like Cuba?

There’s a reason for that, and the Cuban exiles in South Florida aren’t going to like hearing what that reason is. The reason is them; we haven’t brought down the tinpot tyranny of the happy-go-lucky Castro boys because our own Cuban exiles demand we don’t. Our Cuban exiles scream bloody murder when the subject of engaging Castro comes up. Sympathetic American ideologues then lend their political support in a spate of pandering, and the possibility of bringing down Cuba with ... let’s just say baseball for grins ... never gets attempted.

The Cuban exiles in the US have unnecessarily prolonged Cuba’s misery with their vanity and pride. No, we can’t trade with Cuba, because that just puts money in Fidel’s pocket. No, we can’t allow tourism to Cuba because that makes it seem like Castro isn’t the bad guy in all this. The result? Castro gets to pluck the strings of world sympathy by portraying himself as the victim of American “economic warfare” – sniff sniff boohoohoo.

The result of this is that we look like the bad guy for being a bully rather than him being the bad guy for being a despot. And Fidel has played this victim card with regularity in the 53 years since he putsched Batista off his perch.

Cuba prides itself on its cigars and its baseball. Fidel Castro played college baseball back in the 40s, reportedly being quite good, and he smokes cigars like they grow in his back yard. It wouldn’t be terribly difficult to play on his own pride and vanity, here. Greasing the political skids by trading Cohibas for a visit by the World Series winner each year, not to mention allowing Cubans to enter the Major League draft without having to defect first might well have put the Castro regime on life support as soon as the Berlin Wall fell. ...which in turn wouldn’t have allowed Chavez to manipulate Venezuelan politics the way he did either.

...Chavez took control of Venezuela, and is holding it, with not inconsequential assistance from Cuba’s military.

Cuba was, and still is, dependent on wealthier socialist nations to provide them their daily bread; oil-rich Venezuela is simply the most recent.

There are several ramifications to not engaging Cuba and none of them benefit us; damned few benefit the Cuban people still living in Cuba. And all to allow the Cuban exiles in South Florida to jut out their chin and puff up their chests and declare that Castro didn’t really win.

Well, compadres, he did, and he’s still winning by compelling you to convince our idiot politicians to pretend he doesn’t exist by your whining and carrying on.

Don’t worry; when I cruise close enough to Cuba to see land I still extend my middle finger and give a hearty “Fuck you, Fidel!” And Ozzie Guillen has fallen on your sword for you, as so many before him have done – the Marlins have suspended him “indefinitely” for five games.

Congratulations, mi amigos. I hope this makes you feel better as you sip your rum and Coke with a twist of lime and a dash of irony. Cuba Libre indeed.

Bearing False Atheism

Bearing False Atheism 

©2012 Ross Williams

I have nothing against people who don’t believe in God. I don’t care why they don’t. They’ve often got a good point. It’s “illogical”? Yes, it is. It’s a non-falsifiable construct – it cannot be proven. Similarly it can also not be disproven, either. It’s non-falsifiable, remember?

It’s only when the atheist is an ideological peabrain that I get involved, for the ideological atheist declares that not being provable is the same as being disproven. It doesn’t work that way; they are taking their good point way too far. Non-falsifiable means that it can neither be proven nor disproven. Smugly announcing “non-falsifiable construct!!” doesn’t do a thing except admit to participating in a useless discussion in which nothing can be accomplished.

But, yes, God is illogical. Just like love, beauty and wisdom are. Leave it there. Many people are happy being illogically religious just as others are happy being illogically in love with an illogically beautiful woman. Illogical wisdom would suggest that you shut up about it, for yammering to a known – and unchanging – conclusionless conclusion is illogical.

Another good point often brought up about religion is that it has a nasty habit of being used as a cudgel with which a government beats its own citizens ... and others’. And that is indeed [sometimes] the case. But not nearly so often as atheists claim, and to nowhere near the extremes they assert. While there are, in fact, “religious wars” most of the wars they claim are “religious” are instead plain old political wars with a religious difference being a coincidental non-factor.

The Spanish-American War, for example, is often cited as religious. Catholic Spain versus the [largely] Protestant US. The war was not about theological disputes, however; it was about who controlled territory in the Caribbean and Far East.

Then there are the wars that have been simmering for centuries around which religious difference have grown. Northern Ireland is the perfect example of this. Catholic England invaded and conquered a portion of Catholic Ireland ... because England wanted it for themselves. They’ve been at war ever since. A few generations after invading, Henry got into a pissing contest with the Pope, declared himself no longer Catholic and ... the war in Northern Ireland is now for religious reasons? No; it’s still because England wants it for themselves.

Atheists love to claim that “religion causes more wars” than anything else. This would be true, except that it isn’t. Well, hey, it was fifty-fifty ... they just guessed wrong. Then they like to claim that “religion has inspired more killing” than anything else. Again ... fifty-fifty, they come up wrong. In all actuality, it has been the state-imposed lack of religion during the Communist era of the 20th century that has caused more deaths than anything else. Religion can’t hold a candle to atheism on the death-and-misery scale.

In the United States, however, atheists have refined their atheism to be God-specific. In the US, it is not merely religion which has caused more wars than any other reason, it is Christianity. Which is patently false. Most of the wars fought by Christians have been for non-religious reasons – including the Crusades, by the way – and most of those have been fought against nations or kingdoms of the same religion as them. The wars Christians have fought against other religions and for religious reasons were confined to the Catholic war against England for Henry pissing on the Pope, a handful of French wars against its own heretical splitters, Spain’s Inquisition against the Jews [using the tricks played upon the Spaniards by the Muslim Moors], and possibly one of the English civil wars. Beyond that ...? Nope.

The Crusades? The Byzantine Empire was the defender of Europe from Asian invaders, and had just ceded the lion’s share of its territory to the Turks – who had eyes on Europe, judging by their attacks around the Byzantine flank [not to mention 800 years of subsequent occupation]. Europe responded with their own flanking maneuver. Religion was simply a means of eliciting popular support.

The Conquistadores? The Spanish discovered the New World, and they wanted it for themselves. Religion had bupkus to do with it – unless gold was their God. Cortez gladly allied himself with ancestor worshipping, human sacrificing, ritually cannibalistic heathen to conquer the Aztecs.

Another dopey claim made by American atheists is that the only reason Christianity is so widespread is because of the wars they started for the purpose of spreading Christianity. Gibberish. Christianity spread in Europe to the boundaries of the then-stagnant Roman Empire once Christianity had supplanted Roman paganism. It spread into Europe beyond those borders only when post-Roman Christian provinces were conquered by pagans pursuing land and wealth; Christianity spread to cover Europe by losing wars it didn’t even start.

Once Europe was Christianized, the Christian nations spread to the New World because they wanted it; once they had it they spent virtually all their time fighting amongst themselves. When Christianity has come up against other religions and had wars of religious inspiration it was almost always – as with European pagans – because the other religion started it. And the other religion, when not paganism, has been Islam.

Islam is a religion that began on the point of a sword – Mohammed conquered Mecca because its city elders refused to accept his pious dictates upon the pagan idols in town; it has spread specifically because the religion requires it to be forcibly imposed upon infidels as well as upon other believers of “The Book” who refuse to submit to it ... otherwise known as infidels. War is a doctrinal necessity in Islam.

Yes, Islam spreads by war as its primary means. Atheism as well. Judaism, throughout its history, has spread mostly because no one else wanted it near them and they pushed it to the farthest reaches, and Christianity spreads by a combination of losing wars and by greedy coattails.

But you can’t convince American atheists of this. It’s like love, and beauty, and wisdom ... and religion to them. Nevertheless, they’re provably wrong. And they’re also provably hypocrites, which is delicious as their most common denunciation of religion is its institutional hypocrisy. Again, they have a point, but it’s not terribly convincing of anything worth proving.

How about these for hypocrisy:

1] School administrators fearful of atheist panty-wetting change the lyrics of “God Bless the USA” in a 4th-grade concert until too many parents protest and not one atheist shows up to quibble, but a Muslim hymn in a public school choral competition skips by unchallenged by anyone except one [Christian] student – who is called bigoted and unenlightened for saying “Hey, waydaminnit!”

2] Crosses marking historical and funerary sites across the nation are being sued into dust by various atheist groups as an unallowable “state-sponsored religion”, yet not one atheist whimper over the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act which lends official government sponsorship of the religious supremacy of Indian historical and burial sites.

3] The prayer which convenes Congressional sessions, the word ‘God’ on our currency and government buildings, the National Day of Prayer and the President’s traditional participation in the National Prayer Breakfast are routinely pouted about by our atheists, yet the Agriculture Department holds its second annual “Food and Justice Passover Seder”, at which the Ag Secretary quotes Leviticus – nary a peep.

American atheism: against all religions in equal terms, so long as it’s Christianity.

Chalk Dust – April 5 2012

Chalk Dust – April 5 2012
©2012 Ross Williams

Headline: Christian Student in Egypt Gets 3 Years for Insulting Islam

Article Synopsis: Muslims went on a rampage, burned Christians’ houses and many Christians were injured.

Reaping What Ye Sow: The 17 year old student, Gamal Abdou Massoud posted his insults on Facebook. He was also convicted of passing sacrilegious cartoon around his village. The three year sentence was the maximum available.

There is no word on how many arrests for arson and assault were made among the muslims who attacked his village.

Conclusion: This is what happens when you believe that free elections are indistinguishable from freedom. When the most popular politics is the politics of authoritarianism, a free election is simply the path of least resistance to a tyranny. An elected tyranny is no better than any other.


Headline: IL High School Investigated for NFL QB Drop-in

Article Synopsis: A Springfield IL christian high school had a banquet in March at which Cleveland Browns quarterback Colt McCoy spoke about being a Christian in the NFL. Afterwards, he threw a football with several of the school’s football players. A formal complaint lodged with the Illinois High School Athletics commission accused the school of holding an out of season practice and is seeking appropriate punishment for the school.

Go to the Punch Bowl and Cut Right ... on Three: The state official who filed the official complaint is now claiming that no official complaint was filed, even though no investigation can occur without one. Whatever, dude.

Absent from this titanic issue is an explanation as to how catching a football thrown by a real-life NFL quarterback while wearing an ill-fitting leisure suit handed down by dad and in a banquet hall at the local Ramada Inn constitutes a practice. Perhaps McCoy is looking to transfer next season? The Browns didn’t do so hot as I recall last year, so maybe that is the case.

Conclusion: First ... “Colt McCoy”? That’s a made-for-porn name if there ever was one. Second, perhaps if state athletic commission officials were to spend more time masturbating to porn, they’d spend less time masturbating on their own power.


Headline: School Removes ‘God’ from ‘God Bless the USA’

Article Synopsis: A Massachusetts elementary school scheduled a concert to showcase both its students’ ability to sing off-key in unison, and their knowledge of American geography; among the songs scheduled to be performed was Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless the USA’. At first the school changed the lyrics to “We love the USA”, but that met with stern parental disapproval. The song has now been pulled completely from the pageant. So have all the others.

They Dost Protest Too Much: I find it interesting how many school-related news items hit the various on-line news sites, and they have to do with the same general theme. One day it’ll all be school administrators hyperventilating about too much hugging and other brainless Zero Tolerance alarmisms, and the next it’ll all be on religious extremism.

Or, in this case, religious extremism juxtaposed to IRreligious extremism. A Massachusetts elementary school is willing to conduct a musicless concert rather than to *>gasp!!!<* use a song in the concert’s theme which has the word ‘God’. Is that all it takes to inspire nose-cutting face-spiters to come unglued?

How, exactly, is this different in principle from Egypt’s Muslims who went all nanners over Facebook sarcasm and cartoons? Getting so pious over including the word ‘God’ [now there’s an irony] that the only solution is to call the whole thing off is the definition of extreme overreaction; the only thing missing was gunfire and arson. Intolerance is intolerance, it doesn’t matter who dishes.

For the record, Lee Greenwood refused to allow the use of his song with altered lyrics.

Conclusion: I suppose musicless concerts were the next inevitable step after educationless curricula and physical activity-less recess. Public school is slowly becoming an object lesson in social inertia.

Afterword: The school district’s superintendant has reversed the lame-brained edict implemented by the hands of the principal and the music teacher by implying that it was the students who originally objected to the word ‘God’ in the first place. The Superintendant’s statement says that the children “will be allowed to sing or not sing the words”.

Second Conclusion: They weren’t the issue, dinkus, nor was it their parents. Disingenuous buck-passing is disingenuous buck-passing.

Take the Fifth, Barry

Take the Fifth, Barry
©2012 Ross Williams

Barry Hussein, current President of the US, rose to prominence as a Community Organizer®, yes. But before that he was a Constitutional Law professor at Harvard. What I find most annoying about those who are Constitutional Law professors is how little they actually know about the Constitution. I’ve had occasion to describe the utter ignorance of several such twits in the last several months here. And Barry falls into that category himself.

Here’s the thing about the Constitution that most Constitutional Law professors, not to mention most Constitutional Law loyyers, as well as state and federal judges, fail and refuse to understand: it takes no special talent or knowledge to read the Constitution and figure out what it means. You don’t need a law degree – and frankly, a law degree usually only gets in the way.

The Constitution was written to be understood by semi-literate 18th century farmers. It was not written to need Joseph Smith’s magic glasses being worn by a legal shaman in order to divine its magical properties and nuance. When the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, then no law can be written, no rule prescribed, no policy enacted, and no edict ordained which contradicts it.

Period.

When the Constitution is a limitation of the powers of government, the upper limit on government, then the Constitution cannot be “interpreted” into being instead the government’s starting point allowing the government to do what it wants, when it wants, and just because it wants.

Period.

Which is what makes it all the more curious that Constitutional Law professor Barry Hussein, after the three days of Supreme Court hearing on Obamacare’s constitutionality, declared that while the Court has the final say, they need to “show deference” to the duly elected Congress on this matter. He said that failure to do so would be “unprecedented” “judicial activism”.

Excuse me? What would the Administration’s position be if Congress had, for example, passed a law requiring blacks to sit in the back of the bus, and the High Nine had declared that law an unconstitutional abrogation of Equal Protection? “Activist”? Would such a law require “deference”?

And yes, it is the same thing. Whether the legislature which passes laws is “duly elected” or not, their ability to do what We The People want – or in the case of Obamacare where popular support for the law was under 40% nationwide, what We The People do not want – is limited by the wording of the Constitution; unless the Constitution gives Congress the authority to legislate on a given topic, Congress can’t legislate on that topic. This isn’t difficult.

So what happens when Congress does legislate on a non-authorized topic? Can the Court say, “No, you can’t do that; you can’t make black people jump through hoops just because a majority of Americans are suspicious of them”? or is the Court required to accept the law on its face as the result of our holy democratic process, and ignore what we are actually allowed to do to each other, by inventing a desperate and disingenuous rationalization of why up is actually down?

As always, the answers to these and other probing questions is determined by which political party you lie down with. A Republican is very likely to view the Court overturning Obamacare as a proper response to a legislative overreach, while a Democrat is almost certain to see it as an “activist court” “legislating from the bench”. On the other hand, when the Court struck down the California referendum prohibiting gay marriage – the unquestionable Will of the People – Democrats were most likely to declare it the correct response to populist tyranny of the sort our Constitution was written to prevent, while Republicans were more likely to see it as an “activist court” “legislating from the bench”.

In truth, everyone’s partly right and everyone’s partly wrong ... except me. I am the only one I know of that is correct regardless of the legal issue under discussion. The Court was right to strike down the California referendum against gay marriage because Equal Protection isn’t limitable by mob rule; the Court will be right when it strikes down Obamacare because forcible inTRAstate commercialism is not a governmental authority, not even under the close-but-no-cigar inTERstate commerce clause. And if it doesn’t, the Court – as is often the case – will be wrong once again. The Constitution is not so hard to figure out that nine ninnies in black robes are needed to do it.

The Will of the People has no authority – through direct democracy, or by republican representation either one – to contravene the limitations of governance defined by our Constitution. We are not simply a democracy in this country. Democracy is, in its original form, little more than a posse, a mob of vigilantes with pitchforks and torches who demand to string up the local outcast for being unpopular.

A republic – if arrived at democratically – is often little more than the same mob of vigilantes once removed: pass the responsibility for lynching the outcast up to senior management. [If arrived at UNdemocratically, a republic is nothing more than a tool of the tyrant]. Both democracies and republics can abuse rights and vacuum up governmental power every bit as well as the basest of dictatorships can. ...and all three will cite Rule of Law as its excuse for doing so.

We are, instead, a constitutional democratic republic, with very clear and narrow limitations on the power of the government to boss its people around and we properly live under Rule of Liberty. The fact that the courts have failed to perform their jobs faithfully in tens of thousands of cases by turning the Constitution on its ear and rationalizing why up is down does not mean that their doing so is proper.

Even if Obamacare had been supported by more than 40% of Americans let alone the 50% that would have comprised a majority, it does not justify the Court allowing it to stand when the law’s requirements violate the Constitutional rules by which our country was defined to operate. Barry Hussein, the Constitutional Law professor, knows this, but he doesn’t seem to care.

If we don’t like the rules by which our country is defined to operate then we are free to change those rules, but we cannot simply pass laws which sidestep those rules as if they don’t exist. Barry Hussein, the Constitutional Law professor, knows this as well, but once again doesn’t seem to care.

A federal appeals court, hearing a legal motion made by Texas on yet another aspect of the disastrous Obamacare monstrosity which was being defended by Barry Hussein’s Justice Department, headed by Shyster General placeHolder, asked the Justice Department to please inform it what the Obama Administration thinks about the concept of Judicial Review. The judge[s] hearing the case were troubled by what seemed like an Executive Branch challenge to the authority of the Judicial Branch to check the power of the Legislative and Executive branches. This would be the most brazen and self-righteous challenge to the Judicial branch since Andrew Jackson overtly defied the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of the Cherokee by saying, “That’s a fine ruling; now let’s see them enforce it.”

Jackson then ordered the Cherokee out of Georgia and forced them to walk all the way to Oklahoma ... just like the Court said he could not. It made all the papers, not to mention the history books, and has been uniformly frowned upon as an imperial abuse of Presidential power.

Abusing power is not wrong when it treats Indians like second class citizens, but acceptable when it does something the President believes is “good for the nation”. I’ll just remind us that forcing the Cherokee out of Georgia was viewed as “good for the nation” at the time it happened, as well. Abusing power is wrong, period, because it is an abuse of power.

Passing laws that exceed the power limits imposed by our Constitution is an abuse of legislative power. Implementing laws that exceed the power limits imposed by our Constitution is an abuse of Executive power. Telling the Court that it has no authority to defy legislative will democratically elected to pass laws of excessive power and to implement laws of excessive power is a broadside challenge, and essentially declares an intent to subvert our form of government. It’s bad enough when TSA and EPA and all the rest do this by teaspoon increments; the smug arrogance of Barry Hussein’s Administration is astounding.

This is why when Shyster General placeHolder submits his three page single-spaced brief to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals explaining the Administration’s official position on Judicial Review, he has three options:
1] Continue to defy the Separation of Powers in a Jacksonian fit of pique and go down in history as a spoiled brat willing to turn yet another democracy into a dictatorship;
2] Reverse course and indicate to his acolytes and adherents that he is not the infallible National Savior they all believe him to be; or
3] Claim the 5th Amendment right to refuse to provide evidence against himself.

Take the Fifth, Barry. You’re all about blazing new trails. What’s one more?