Re-education camp for Trump supporters

 A.F. Branco cartoon at Legal Insurrection:

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Jon Voight on Keeping the Faith

It’s a 10-minute video by Jon Voight, with a few minutes of President Trump’s “most important” speech on election integrity inserted in the middle.  We all need some encouragement and inspiration these days.

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Sundance on civil disobedience

 

Over at Conservative Treehouse, Sundance reports on a shop owner in North Carolina who is not requiring customers to wear masks.  He includes a link to the store so that readers can have a way to show their support.  And he expands on the options we all have to stop petty tyrants – governors, county officials, etc. – from exceeding their authority.  Here’s a brief extract:

Local, regional and state officials know they can control the behavior of an individual. If one barber shop opens, the owner becomes a target. However, those officials also know they cannot control the behavior of the majority. If every barber shop and beauty salon in town opens… there is absolutely nothing the government can do about it.

If one restaurant and/or bar opens, the state can target the owner. But if every bar and restaurant in town opens; and if everyone ignores and dispatches the silly dictates of the local, regional or state officials; there isn’t a damned thing they can do about it.

The power of the local, regional or state authority comes from the expressed consent of the people. As soon as the majority of people in that municipality deny that consent, those officials and state authoritarians lose all of their power.

Yes, it really is that simple.

They want you to think otherwise, but it is not true.  If WE THE PEOPLE demand freedom and stand together the control authority is useless.

Those who construct the systems of control need to weaponize fear.  Fear of arrest; fear of losing a business; fear of losing liberty or financial security.  Local, regional and state officials rely on fear.  As soon as the people are no longer fearful, the control ends.

The overwhelming majority of dictates around COVID-19 mitigation are not laws. There was no debate; no input from representative government; and no option for the public to weigh-in on the decisions.

All unilateral rules are arbitrary, and despite many proclamations to the contrary, they rely upon voluntary compliance.  As soon as citizens no longer voluntarily comply, the term of the rules has expired.  If masks are so effective then why didn’t government give masks to prisoners, instead of releasing the inmates?

Read the entire posting here.

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Media tries to drag Biden over the finish line

We were in a Sportsbar over the weekend, and the TV screen dialed to CNN had a headline on the crawl to the effect that Joe Biden is declared President.  Huh?  Since when does the media declare the winner of a Presidential election?  Later on Saturday evening, Greg Gutfield opened his show by making jokes about what a Biden presidency would do.  So he was framing the question in terms of a probable Biden Presidency – as in a done deal.  Nuts.  To frame the questions that way is to give up on Trump’s re-election, to fall victim to the media propaganda to take the air out of our tires, so to speak.  We changed channels. 

On Sunday, many bloggers and commentators enumerated the procedural steps involved in a contested election.  We all know that the respective Secretaries of State have first to certify the vote counts.  Some of those SOSs may be reluctant to certify tallies they know to be fraudulent.  So that’s one potential check on the process.

Clarice Feldman at American Thinker has more and is, as usual, one of the best:  

Apparently, they are under the impression that [the media] decide election results. They don’t. On December 14, electors chosen by state legislators cast their votes. No one else but the state legislators have that right. (Article II, Sec. 1,§2 of the Constitution). Certainly not the press, nor state boards of elections, secretaries of state, governors, or courts.

If they have reason to believe the elections in their states were unlawfully conducted and the results fraudulent, they can act to override them. (You can see a detailed history of this section of the Constitution in this fine article by Daniel Horowitz.) The Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania  legislatures are majority Republican. At first glance these states -- particularly the precincts in Milwaukee, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia -- are the most suspect.

Is there ample evidence of fraud sufficient to have altered the will of the legal voters in these states? It sure looks that way.

. . .

If the [Pennsylvania Supreme Court] Court had applied the Constitution, then we wouldn’t have this mess, for it’s clear under Article 1 Sec. 4, cl 1--that the Pennsylvania court had no constitutional power to change the “times, methods, and procedures of elections.” 

That provision specifically applies to the election of senators and representatives, both of whom were on the ballots in question.  And what if there is no clear winner by Inauguration Day?  We’ve been reading a lot about how Mm Pelosi would become President, as the Speaker of the House is third in the line of succession,  But Ms. Feldman again explains:

What if There’s no Winner Declared by Inauguration Day?

I’ve seen lots of assertions that in such a case Nancy Pelosi will be the interim president. Nope. Should that eventuality occur, the House votes for an interim president and the Senate for an interim vice president. (The House votes are by state -- one vote each -- and the Republicans hold a majority of 26 states. Our founders were geniuses. Never forget that.)

As Ms. Feldman closes:  “Never give up the good fight. Never hamstring your will to fight on with pessimism.”

Her article is here.

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More on today's Revolution

 

Yesterday’s link was to Victor Davis Hanson’s “The Fragments of A Civilization” and a section subtitled “Sleepwalking to the Revolution.”  Today, Ron Lipsman at American Thinker expands on that theme and summarizes what conservative Americans are up against with the Progressive left.  In “The Revolution the US Is Experiencing, and What If It Succeeds?,” he concludes:

Two final thoughts. First, even if by some miracle, the Dems do not take control of the Presidency and both Houses of Congress in January, it is just a matter of time until they do. The flood of illegal immigration and the brainwashing – in school and by the media – continue unabated. It is inevitable that conservative America will be reduced to a voting minority. And then the revolution will be unstoppable.  

On the other hand, perhaps I am underestimating the strength, character and wisdom of the American people. I recall vividly the fear I felt in 1967 and 1968 when American cities were burning, a savage war tore at the very fabric of our society, riots determined the selection of a president, and we seemed on the cusp of revolutionary change. It didn’t happen. The good sense of the American people prevailed as we restored order and proceeded to rely on our traditional beliefs and values to right the ship.  Perhaps we shall again.

Mr. Lipsman’s article is here.  Some of the comments published with the article are perceptive, if rather depressing.

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Lockdowns vs the Constitution

Here’s a glimmer of sanity during our months of house arrest. Thomas Lifson at American Thinker reports:

Two state supreme courts have stepped up to constrain abuse of civil rights in the name of fighting an epidemic.  The concept of a "state of emergency" can be used to suspend constitutional limitations on the powers of government, as has been the case with the response to the Wuhan virus pandemic.  But under our system of justice, there has to be a reckoning, and finally we are beginning to see state supreme courts acknowledging what Barack Obama notoriously called "negative liberties," also known as limits on governmental powers, also known as protections against tyranny.

Using their respective state constitutions (which generally mirror the U.S. Constitution when it comes to fundamental rights), the supreme courts of Wisconsin and Texas have spoken up for liberty in the face of two months of "state of emergency" punishing restrictions on liberty.

. . .

In Texas, Justice James D. Blacklock, the majority [opinion held that] the default position must always be to protect rights, and any contravention of thise rights must be minimal and justified.  This is what our revolution was fought to protect.

. . .

These judicial actions — and there will be more later — will help solidify the growing public revulsion against loss of liberties in the name of fighting an epidemic that, while concerning, has not lived up the scary estimates driven by computer models that have not proved out as remotely realistic.  Politically, Democrats have wagered that the public will remain frightened enough to accept a new Great Depression in the name of avoiding a phantom catastrophe . . .

Read the article here; it includes extracts from the judicial rulings.  

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Your Weekend Must Read: AG Bill Barr on the Executive branch

Quite a few blogs are linking to AG William Barr’s recent speech at the Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society, and with good reason.  It is excellent for his insights into the present political landscape, and also in tracing the provisions in our founding documents as influenced by earlier European history. A short extract:

I wanted to choose a topic for this afternoon’s lecture that had an originalist angle. It will likely come as little surprise to this group that I have chosen to speak about the Constitution’s approach to executive power.

I deeply admire the American Presidency as a political and constitutional institution. I believe it is, one of the great, and remarkable innovations in our Constitution, and has been one of the most successful features of the Constitution in protecting the liberties of the American people. More than any other branch, it has fulfilled the expectations of the Framers.

Unfortunately, over the past several decades, we have seen steady encroachment on Presidential authority by the other branches of government. This process I think has substantially weakened the functioning of the Executive Branch, to the detriment of the Nation. This evening, I would like to expand a bit on these themes.

. . .

Let me turn now to what I believe has been the prime source of the erosion of separation-of-power principles generally, and Executive Branch authority specifically. I am speaking of the Judicial Branch.

In recent years the Judiciary has been steadily encroaching on Executive responsibilities in a way that has substantially undercut the functioning of the Presidency. The Courts have done this in essentially two ways: First, the Judiciary has appointed itself the ultimate arbiter of separation of powers disputes between Congress and Executive, thus preempting the political process, which the Framers conceived as the primary check on interbranch rivalry. Second, the Judiciary has usurped Presidential authority for itself, either (a) by, under the rubric of “review,” substituting its judgment for the Executive’s in areas committed to the President’s discretion, or (b) by assuming direct control over realms of decision-making that heretofore have been considered at the core of Presidential power.

Read the full speech here. I hope Mr. Barr’s words are followed soon by indictments.

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Impeachment vote? Sundance explains

image credit: thecollegefix.com

Everyone has read that Speaker Pelosi is holding a vote on Thursday to authorize impeachment proceedings against President Trump.  If you are suspicious of the announcement, you should be.  Sundance at ConservativeTreehouse explains what is really going on, and the bottom line is that this vote is intended as a sleight-of-hand.  It intends to create the impression of following the requirement to vote to begin the impeachment process, while actually not voting to authorize – as a Constitutional authorization would give the President and his defense team due process -- to face his accusers, subpoena their own witnesses, cross-examine witnesses, and so on. Here’s Sundance getting into the weeds:

The rules for an “impeachment investigation” would provide rights for the minority and also rights for the Executive branch.

So instead of having a House vote to authorize an impeachment investigation, with subsequent rights for the minority; they are having a House vote to affirm the “impeachment inquiry” with an entirely different set of House rules that do not include rights for the minority.

. . .

Lawfare is hoping that through this Thursday vote scheme they will be able to twist the legal process into providing their House inquiry judicial enforcement authority, or punishment possible for the executive not complying with a House committee subpoena.

. . .

Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler and Lawfare are attempting to create “judicial enforcement authority” without having an actual and constitutional vote to authorize an official “impeachment investigation”.   That’s what this Thursday House resolution is all about.

The Thursday House resolution is intended to authorize and validate the pre-existing Pelosi “impeachment inquiry”, and then expand the authority within the rules to create the impression of a full House impeachment investigation; without actually having a House  “impeachment investigation vote”…. because that would open-up rights to the minority and rights to the executive.

. . .

Pelosi et al have the full support of the complicit media to promote this charade.  Read the whole thing here.

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Circumventing the Electoral College

Jeff Parker cartoon credit: capoliticalreview.com

The 2020 elections will probably involve so many types of corruption that Al Capone would be envious. Stuffing the ballot box. Voters casting ballots more than once, including in different states. Voting early and often. Counting the votes of the deceased. Tampering with electronic voting machines. There are efforts to grant felons the right to vote – while they are serving their sentence. The Democrats don’t play by the rules, so they are busy trying to change the rules.

At American Thinker, David Horowitz of FrontPage Magazine explains the Democrat party’s plan to end-run the Electoral College. It’s a must-read. Here’s the opener:

While you were sleeping, the Democrats (abetted by some deviant Republicans) have been working on a plan that would destroy the diversity of the American political system and bring the nation to the brink of civil war. The plan is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and tens of millions of dollars have already been spent over several decades trying to implement it. Fourteen blue states and the District of Columbia have already joined the Compact, which means they are 70% on the way to making their proposal the law of the land.

The Democrats’ plan is designed to eliminate the influence of the Electoral College in choosing the nation’s president, no doubt because while Hillary won the popular vote she failed [to] win necessary votes in the Electoral College. Eliminating the influence of the Electoral College would end the diversity now embodied in the federal system with its division of powers between Washington and the fifty states. 

The fact that a party which presents itself as a defender of diversity should be leading the charge to eliminate the nation’s most powerful source of diversity should be all that is required to understand the threat their agenda poses to what has been the nation’s constitutional way of life for 232 years.

The Electoral College and the division of powers are features of the Constitution. But the National Popular Vote movement does not propose to amend the Constitution because it doesn’t have the votes to do that. Instead, in the name of “democracy,” it proposes to circumvent the Constitution and its requirement of large national majorities for amending what has been the fundamental law of the land. Think how Orwellian that is, and how concerning it should be for anyone believing the Founders created the most practical, realistic, democratic, diverse and successful polity the world has ever seen.

This is how the Democrats’ circumvention of the Constitution and its provision for an Electoral College would work. Instead of abolishing the College, which would require the support of two-thirds of the states, they are hoping to put together a coalition of states representing 270 electoral votes that would agree to award all their votes to whoever wins the national vote. In other words, if the popular vote is won by 10 votes, every state in the Compact would award 100% of their votes to that party, even if a majority of the voters in their state voted against them.

The bottom line (and goal) of this devious plan is to eliminate the influence of rural voters or “Middle America” and create an electoral lock for the large urban population centers, e.g., California and New York, which would then decide the direction of the country.

The rest of Mr. Horowitz's article is here. The good news: Ohioans dodged a bullet this time, as the organizers dropped plans to try to get the issue on the ballot in November 2019:

[April 2019] Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced in a press release Tuesday that the amendment had been formally withdrawn by its backers, Ohioans For Making Every Vote Matter. The group said in a statement there wasn't sufficient time to gather enough signatures to qualify for the Nov. 5, 2019 ballot.

On Twitter, LaRose called the decision "nothing but good news." 

"The only thing this flawed amendment would have accomplished is to make sure your vote for president is essentially meaningless," he wrote.

The bad news: This issue surely will not go away.

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What is their endgame?

image credit: theburningplatform.com

I go hot and cold on Mark Levin. But his column yesterday was the lead link at Doug Ross’s Director’s Blue blog, and it’s a good one. Here’s his conclusion:

Challenge socialists on this single point: What is their endgame?

When is enough government control enough? Why won’t socialists -- or Democrat Socialist -- share their blueprint for society? What industry is a “bridge too far” for socialism? Why can’t they tell us what their limits are on taxation, control of industry, and how much of society should be dependent upon their handouts?

Conservatives know their endgame: it is called the United State Constitution. These four pages of wisdom, condensed instructions gleaned from thousands of years of human experience, ended up germinating the most magnificent nation-state yet to arise from humanity’s tumult.

And a great percentage of our fellow citizens neither recognize nor appreciate the magnificent society with which they have been bequeathed. They take for granted this unique and precious anomaly in the context of human history.

Only education can help them. Not all of them, to be sure, but many: those who possess both open minds and a willingness to learn.

He asks a good question, one which my ultra-liberal friends and relatives might have difficulty responding to. The full article is here. 

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Steve Hilton on the genius of America's founders

image credit: floridatoday.com

We celebrate our Independence Day this coming Wednesday. Steve Hilton published a thoughtful piece on what we love about America entitled “I didn’t get the true genius of America’s founders till I moved here. Here’s what worries me now.” The full article is here, but below are a few excerpts:

It wasn’t until I actually lived in the U.S. that I started to understand the true genius of America’s founders and what they put in place two-and-a-half centuries ago. I saw it in the way that contemporary political debates are conducted with reference to the framers’ intent. I saw it in the huge importance of Supreme Court rulings – reported and debated with a prominence commensurate with the judiciary’s status as a co-equal branch of government – but totally alien to someone familiar with the British system.

And I saw the genius of the Founding Fathers most vividly of all in a family visit to Philadelphia a couple of years ago. While there, I took my two sons to the National Constitution Center, a truly wonderful place that all Americans should visit if they can.

The highlight of the Constitution Center is a regular live performance telling the story of the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, the years leading up to the Constitutional Convention – and then of the momentous deliberations that produced the U.S. Constitution itself.

That performance literally moved me to tears as it brought to life in the most immediate and powerful way the beautiful idea at the heart of America: liberty under the law, an idea that had never before been expressed and guaranteed by any nation.

From that idea, and from those incomparable founding documents, come all the things that are special about America – things that are so different to (and, frankly, so much better than) what you find where I grew up, in England. And of course vastly better than what my parents experienced where they grew up in Communist Hungary.

. . .

The melting pot; decentralized government; a republic of equals; a Constitution enshrining the precious ideal of people power. It is all under threat this Fourth of July – and we need to fight for it.

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Long Live the Tea Party

dontgive-uptheship-blog-blog.tumblr.com

I don’t usually agree with Rick Moran, who posts at PJ Media. But his piece “The Tea Party Is Dead, Long Live the Tea Party” was linked on Instapundit, and it had a few good thoughts, going back to the inception of the Tea Party groups in 2009:

But the tea party's real value to the country is that for the first time since the ratification debates over the Constitution, millions of people across the country were actually reading and discussing our founding document.

These weren't constitutional scholars sitting around some Ivy League lecture hall esoterically discussing the foundations of America. These were millions of ordinary people sitting at kitchen tables, in small church meeting rooms, on front porches and backyards probing the reasons America came into existence.

. . . What mattered was that ordinary people had taken a keen interest in preserving the spirit of the Constitution and the essence of our founding principles that are "self-evident" in that document at a time it has been under relentless attack.

. . .

This side of the tea parties was never widely reported on by the media, for very good reasons. The left hates getting into a discussion about what the Constitution says because they can't defend most of their ideas. Despite the fact that the founders wrote the Constitution so that basically anyone who could read could understand it, the left keeps insisting the Constitution says things that it doesn't.

Any clever lawyer or willing judge can twist the meaning of the Constitution so that it says anything they want it to say to accomplish any end they wish to accomplish. So the budget deal may have killed fiscal sanity in Washington and -- perhaps -- the tea party's political power to some extent. And the GOP may have co-opted most of the larger tea party groups to do the party's bidding.

What remains of the tea party is, to my mind, the best part. The desire of ordinary people to govern themselves, to take personal responsibility for their own lives, and to try to do something about the denigration and increasing irrelevance of the Constitution.

As Glenn Reynolds concluded: Don’t give up the ship.

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Update: teaching our history in Ohio schools

 art credit: Mr. Donn's American History

Some Cleveland Tea Party readers will have called members of the Ohio School Board to keep our Founding Documents (Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers) in school curricula. Here’s the Update by Patrick O’Donnell from cleveland.com:

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Don't shortchange America's "founding documents," the state school board was told Tuesday, by trying to axe tests that make sure students learn them.

School board members have been under pressure from across the state to cut how many standardized tests students have to take. Some members have sought to cut any tests not required by the federal government, which would eliminate some math, English and science tests.

It would also wipe out the American History and American Government tests that all high school students must take.

That didn't sit well with some legislators and activists who fought to require these documents to be taught -- and included on state tests -- in 2012. That's when Senate Bill 165, called the "Founding Fathers Act" or the "Founding Documents Act" by some, mandated them.

That means the board can't cut them on its own, but can only ask the legislature to do so.

Don't bother, Senate President Larry Obhoff, a Medina Republican, told the board through an aide Tuesday. He said the legislature won't change the law, regardless of any recommendation from the board.

. . .

Despite more than 90 minutes of debate, most of which centered on procedural issues with motions and amendments, the board took no action on any tests. It delayed any vote until later this year.

Those calls and messages made a difference.

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Richard Dreyfuss on Fox

Photo credit: pinterest

 

When Fox News dumped Bill O’Reilly and 'The Factor,' it moved Tucker Carlson into the 8pm slot. While I have not watched most of his debut week, I did watch his interview with Richard Dreyfuss. This was not your usual Hollywood celebrity interview. Have a look (Dreyfuss segment starts around the 1:15 mark):

 

 

Dreyfuss's website describing the initiative to reinstate civics in school curricula is here. 

 

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The Electoral College and the popular vote

Michael Ramirez cartoon (via Bookworm Room)

"The US Election Without the Electoral College"

William Sullivan at The American Thinker has a good article on the subject, well worth reading in light of the ongoing temper tantrums we are seeing:

By now, you’ve heard the disgruntled leftists parroting the sentiment that the Electoral College is an archaic relic that is either racist (what else?), or has obviously outlived any usefulness it may have once had.  Therefore, in the interest of progress, it must be abolished.

Outgoing California Senator Barbara Boxer has recently introduced a doomed-to-fail bill meant to do just that.

This argument is, of course, painfully dim and tiresome.  The Electoral College is one of many safeguards against what de Tocqueville would later describe as the “tyranny of the majority” that our Founders feared, or more specifically, the threat of a concentrated majority in a state that happened to be more populous than another.  After all, it’s doubtful that Rhode Island would have chosen to ratify the Constitution and join these United States if they believed that their state’s unique desires at the federal level would be perpetually overruled by the much more populous New York, for instance.

In the simplest terms, the United States was conceived as a voluntary union of sovereign states which were unified under the limited federal government which bound them -- one which could only act within the very strict guidelines enumerated in our Constitution.  It is very much by design that the prerogative of each sovereign state is influential in the election of our president, and the Electoral College helps to ensure that. 

But I won’t beat that dead horse.  There is ample reading material to inform interested parties about the wisdom of the Electoral College, in contrast to a strictly popular vote where highly-populated urban strongholds located in a minority of states might disenfranchise the will of the large majority of other states in presidential elections. 

Read the rest here.

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Left’s latest assault on free speech

Art credit: rslblog.com

From The Hill via Tea Party Patriots:

December 02, 2014, 02:00 pm

Left’s latest assault on First Amendment nothing new

By Jenny Beth Martin

During the last week of October, when media attention was focused on the impending midterm elections – and President Obama’s forthcoming executive action on amnesty – an issue of critical importance slipped almost unnoticed into the news cycle. Democrats on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) are getting serious about stifling free speech on the Internet. 

At issue is an obscure anti-Obama ad from Ohio that wound up on YouTube. Because the spot was placed for free, it fell within the “Internet exception” the FEC has recognized – across party lines – since 2006. Internet ads of a political nature would seem the very embodiment of “free speech” contemplated by the Founders in the Bill of Rights. Democrat members of the FEC – and the American Left in general – see criticism of their Dear Leader as a serious matter, however, and in need of government regulation. They’re going to need to see your papers. 

The Obama Machine, whether in campaign or governing mode (is there really any difference?) has long viewed the First Amendment as an impediment to its agenda of “fundamentally transforming” the country. During the 2008 campaign, Democrat prosecutors in Missouriannounced the deployment of truth squads to “immediately respond” (in an ominous, yet unspecified way) to any derogatory information about then-Senator Obama. They backed down after being called out for their “police state” tactics by the then-governor. 

Once elected, the post-partisan president let it be known he’d brook no second guessing, let alone dissent. In 2009, vocal critics of the healthcare takeover could’ve found themselves on the flag@whitehouse enemies list, had they spread information deemed “fishy” by the administration.  After Robert Gibbs’ feeble insistence that of course the White House wasn’t keeping names and email addresses, the site was dismantled. 

Obama uses the bully pulpit to let his subjects know what a danger the First Amendment poses to his post-partisan agenda, and the 2010 State of the Union address was an ideal setting. Displeased with the recent Citizens United ruling, he took the unprecedented step of rebuking Supreme Court justices as they sat on the front row. Separation of powers and even basic rules of courtesy and decorum take a back seat, when the Cult of Personality needs to see its enemies’ donor lists. 

Following his 2010 mid-term “shellacking,” (and while his IRS was systematically targeting his perceived enemies), President Obama stepped up his assault on dissenters. In an absurd, "middle school hall monitor meets police state" story, Attack Watch was born. Concerned supporters of the president everywhere were asked to monitor and report any and all derogatory information. Knowledge is power, especially when informing on your neighbors.  And again, they certainly kept no list of names…not the folks who ask folks to document the content of group prayers. 

While it’s comforting that Attack Watch died relatively quickly (and mostly from ridicule), the sentiment behind the buffoonery is both serious and scary. The Left views criticism of their president as dangerous; the Bill of Rights is secondary. 

Democrat FEC Vice Chairman Ann Ravel is unambiguous about both the perceived threat to her president and the way to combat it. When her attempt to overturn the 2006 “Internet exception” ruling failed on a 3-3 party line vote,  Ravel took serious offense. Because the FEC wouldn’t force free Internet advertising into the same classification as paid ads on radio or television, she needs to shake things up. “A reexamination of the commission’s approach to the Internet and other emerging technologies is long overdue,” she said, as if regulating political speech is the logical next step. 

This is not Ravel’s first attempt to wipe her feet on the Bill of Rights.  Two years ago in California, she attempted to bring bloggers and "online commentators" under state regulation. Unbowed by her failure at the state level, she now wants to take her speech-stifling act national. If Ravel and her Democrat FEC colleagues have their way, bloggers and websites like The Drudge Report will answer to the federal government. Attack Watch was silly; these proposed new regulations are deadly serious. 

Ultimately for the Left generally and for Obama in particular, this is about control. Their nationalization of the health care system was a means to get the government more involved in people’s individual lives. Things that get in the way of that control – like the Constitution – are mere impediments to be dealt with. The President shredded Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution so he could control immigration. 

Does anyone think he sees the First Amendment as an obstacle to his controlling the Internet? 

People are criticizing him, after all. 

Martin is co-founder of Tea Party Patriots.

# # #

Tea Party Patriots Adopt-a-School Program

“….in Order to form a more perfect Union,….”

 Written 223 years ago, those words changed the course of history, establishing the freedoms and rights Americans enjoy today. Yet, many of our schools have ignored teaching the meaning and significance of our nation’s founding documents. For this reason, Ohio Tea Patriot groups are launching an initiative to bring awareness to Constitution Day/Week, which begins September 17th, among parents, teachers and school districts.

Did you know?

Schools that receive federal funds MUST teach the Constitution.

In 2004, Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2005 into Public Law 108-447. Section 111 of that law mandates that "each educational institution that receives federal funds for a fiscal year shall hold an educational program on the United States Constitution on September 17 of such year for the students….”  This joint resolution designated September 17th as “Constitution/Citizenship Day” and the week beginning September 17th and ending September 23rd of each year as “Constitution Week.”

Patriots across the country are concerned that students in the public schools are not being taught about our founding documents. Tea Party Patriots are mounting a national campaign for 2011 Constitution Week to pressure our public schools to comply with a law passed by Congress in 2004 requiring an educational program on the Constitution be taught in all public schools during Constitution Week (September 17-23).

Here is How it Works in Three Easy Steps:

1. “Adopt a School”
2. Send a series of 3 letters to the school board, superintendent, and/or principal, and local media in your community. One letter will be sent in May 2011, one in August, and one in September. Sample letters can be found at www.TeaPartyPatriots.org/constitution and can be personalized for use in your community.
3. Help Your School Implement a Program. Visit www.nccs.net or www.ConstitutionWeekUSA.com for Constitution Week materials, resources, and additional ideas.

If you find resistance from your school toward implementing the program, or need further information, please contact us at; clevelandteaparty@gmail.com.

We want our children and grand children to be taught the meaning and significance of the fundamental documents that created our incomparable nation.

Constitutionalism

Below is a great column by Charles Krauthammer....

For decades, Democrats and Republicans fought over who owns the American flag. Now they're fighting over who owns the Constitution.

The flag debates began during the Vietnam era when leftist radicals made the fatal error of burning it. For decades since, non-suicidal liberals have tried to undo the damage. Demeaningly, and somewhat unfairly, they are forever having to prove their fealty to the flag.

Amazingly, though, some still couldn't get it quite right. During the last presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama, asked why he was not wearing a flag pin, answered that it represented "a substitute" for "true patriotism." Bad move. Months later, Obama quietly beat a retreat and began wearing the flag on his lapel. He does so still.

Today, the issue is the Constitution. It's a healthier debate because flags are pure symbolism and therefore more likely to evoke pure emotion and ad hominem argument. The Constitution, on the other hand, is a document that speaks. It defines concretely the nature of our social contract. Nothing in our public life is more substantive.

Americans are in the midst of a great national debate over the power, scope and reach of the government established by that document. The debate was sparked by the current administration's bold push for government expansion - a massive fiscal stimulus, Obamacare, financial regulation and various attempts at controlling the energy economy. This engendered a popular reaction, identified with the Tea Party but in reality far more widespread, calling for a more restrictive vision of government more consistent with the Founders' intent.

Call it constitutionalism. In essence, constitutionalism is the intellectual counterpart and spiritual progeny of the "originalism" movement in jurisprudence. Judicial "originalists" (led by Antonin Scalia and other notable conservative jurists) insist that legal interpretation be bound by the text of the Constitution as understood by those who wrote it and their contemporaries. Originalism has grown to become the major challenger to the liberal "living Constitution" school, under which high courts are channelers of the spirit of the age, free to create new constitutional principles accordingly.

What originalism is to jurisprudence, constitutionalism is to governance: a call for restraint rooted in constitutional text. Constitutionalism as a political philosophy represents a reformed, self-regulating conservatism that bases its call for minimalist government - for reining in the willfulness of presidents and legislatures - in the words and meaning of the Constitution.

Hence that highly symbolic moment on Thursday when the 112th House of Representatives opened with a reading of the Constitution. Remarkably, this had never been done before - perhaps because it had never been so needed. The reading reflected the feeling, expressed powerfully in the last election, that we had moved far, especially the past two years, from a government constitutionally limited by its enumerated powers to a government constrained only by its perception of social need.

The most galvanizing example of this expansive shift was, of course, the Democrats' health-care reform, which will revolutionize one-sixth of the economy and impose an individual mandate that levies a fine on anyone who does not enter into a private contract with a health insurance company. Whatever its merits as policy, there is no doubting its seriousness as constitutional precedent: If Congress can impose such a mandate, is there anything that Congress may not impose upon the individual?

The new Republican House will henceforth require, in writing, constitutional grounding for every bill submitted. A fine idea, although I suspect 90 percent of them will simply make a ritual appeal to the "general welfare" clause. Nonetheless, anything that reminds members of Congress that they are not untethered free agents is salutary.

But still mostly symbolic. The real test of the Republicans' newfound constitutionalism will come in legislating. Will they really cut government spending? Will they really roll back regulations? Earmarks are nothing. Do the Republicans have the courage to go after entitlements as well?

In the interim, the cynics had best tread carefully. Some liberals are already disdaining the new constitutionalism, denigrating the document's relevance and sneering at its public recitation. They sneer at their political peril. In choosing to focus on a majestic document that bears both study and recitation, the reformed conservatism of the Obama era has found itself not just a symbol but an anchor.

Constitutionalism as a guiding political tendency will require careful and thoughtful development, as did jurisprudential originalism. But its wide appeal and philosophical depth make it a promising first step to a conservative future.

And to the Republic, for which it stood

We have all pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. But what is a flag? It is mere thread, stitching and colored dye. It is a mere symbol. What we are pledging allegiance to is the Republic! The Republic, for which the flag once stood.

John Adams wrote, “A republic is an empire of laws, not men.” A republic’s ruler is the law; its ruler is the rule of law. And no law is more supreme in this land than the U.S. Constitution; its subjects are princes and paupers alike.

Yet we have elected representatives to our federal government whose first official act of office is to lie. They place their hand upon the holy bible, and make the most sacred of oaths to defend the Constitution against all foes, both foreign and domestic. Yet they turn around, almost immediately, and break it. They are the domestic foes.

Beware the representative who comes to you touting a staunchly conservative voting record, giving lip service to the Constitution. What you should instead hear is, “I am perfectly willing to discharge my duty to uphold the constitution when politically and ideologically expedient.”

If the tea party movement is to be about anything, it must be about restoring the Republic; it must be about reestablishing the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. But here forth lies our challenge: We must be as willing to oppose unconstitutional legislation or action rooted in conservative ideology, as we are willing to oppose unconstitutional legislation or action rooted in liberal ideology. If not, we are no better than they are. If not, the Constitution will continue to be relegated to a mere relic, and we shall forever be an empire of men, not law.