Add lying to the many attributes obama has....

...trying to improve his bottom line on Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. The CEO of Goldman Sachs visited Mordor on the Potomac, the Red House, four times last year? This must be a racist misprint. Well, let me see here. McClatchy news services on the story yet again. “While Goldman Sachs’ lawyers negotiated with the Securities and Exchange Commission over potentially explosive civil fraud charges, Goldman’s chief executive visited the White House at least four times.” Nothing to see here. Move along. You didn’t hear that. No, this is the most pure, transparent administration in the history of transparent administrations.

By the way, unemployment numbers are out today. You may have heard the AP radio news, Jon Belmont doing cartwheels down the hallway there. Hey, Jon, just a little advice for you, one actual news person to one wannabe news person who is actually a propagandist for the state. If you read the fourth paragraph in your own Associated Press dispatch, you will find the operative and the most important part of today’s unemployment news. Would you like me to read it for you?
Here’s what the fourth paragraph says, ladies and gentlemen. The four-week moving average of new unemployment claims, which irons out week-to-week volatility, rose 2,750 to 460,250 claims. There is no cause for jubilation. Obama hasn’t done a G-damned thing other than continue to muck up the works and to see to it, and this is part of his plan, that more and more hundreds of thousands of my fellow citizens are out there unemployed. This is not going to change. We should do a “where the jobs are” segment here, folks, because this is just becoming despicable. I can’t tell you how disheartening it is to have to continue to report this news. I do not revel in depressions. I’m a businessman. I want an economic boom. But it’s not going to happen, not under these conditions.

And I keep telling people this. Guys, guys, you’re not – come on, man, use some common sense. Borrowing is not productivity. It is not an increase in wealth. Matter of fact, if you read one of my favorite blogs out there, and if you visit LewRockwell.com every day or go to Mises.org, you’ll know this. You already know this. You know the headline today. One of the best economists and market players out there is a guy named Jim Rogers. Jim Rogers was so fed up with what was going on in the United States back in the ‘90s, he left. He moved to Singapore. He took his money and his investments and got the hell out of Dodge. Rogers is saying that, if you thought the 2008 recession was bad, you just wait until this Obama, Pelosi, Bernyankme, Geithner-inflated bubble explodes.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, brother. Obama will be standing up there going, [mimicking President Obama] “And I told you we’re going to prevent a second great recession, or depression, and I want you bitches to listen to me. We took measures to spare you a second Great Depression. And all you tea party bitches out there do is complain. You ought to be thanking me. I cut taxes for so many of you. And now that the new recession’s here, let me just say to you that I promise to you absolutely deplorable, miserable conditions, worse than any American has ever experienced. This is what I call change we can actually see and believe in. But you’ll have a government bureaucrat to wipe your ass for you, send your kids to school, and make sure that you have Michelle’s approved celery stalks in their lunch.”

You know what the news is today? You see the headline? You hear that CNBC digital media file of Obama not ruling out the VAT tax? Folks, the man is trying to start a revolt. There’s no other way to explain this. The numbers are against him. The public is against him. Mathematics are against him. And yet he presses on. He’s out there on CNBC yesterday promoting, floating the air biscuit or the trial balloon that, “Well, there’s people that are getting all these great benefits that I’m providing. These bitches are going to have to understand, somebody’s got to pay for this [beep] up in here. And I’m just the guy to make ‘em do it. I will, now, let me be clear, I will not rule out a VAT tax. Works great in Europe, it’ll work great here.”

[Clip] John Harwood: Could you see the potential for a value-added tax in this country?

President Obama: You know, I know that there’s been a lot of talk around town lately about the value-added tax. That is something that has worked for some countries. It’s something that would be novel for the United States. And before, you know, I start saying this makes sense or that makes sense, I want to get a better picture of what our options are. And my first priority is to figure out how can we reduce wasteful spending so that... [End clip]

Go back into February/March of 2009 and find me the promises to root out all the waste, fraud, and abuse in the budget. [Mimicking President Obama] “I’m going to go through this damn budget. Let me explain something to you bitches. I’m going to go through this budget line by line, period by period, comma by comma. And we’re going to take a scalpel to this thing and find out all the waste, fraud, and abuse that could be in there.”

Now, this goes all the way back to – you could even go back to the campaign if you want. And I’m so tired of talking about this, and I’m so tired of bringing it up. I don’t even bring it up as a reason to continue to oppose Obama because that’s already in the bag. I don’t even have to do that anymore. I’m just simply trying to illustrate to you that, for the people out there, your friends and neighbors that are more worried about who’s going to be picked #1 tonight at the ESPN NFL draft than they are about whether or not their kids are going to grow up in a free country, those people may be buying this garbage,“Yeah, why can’t we be like Europe and have a VAT tax, hmmmmmm.....uh?
Well Mr. Conservative? you don’t want to pay for the services.” No I don’t want to pay for these services, Let me be perfectly clear, I dont want your damn socialist services!!!

As my good friend Mike Church says,"This is not a Fox News program where we have to be fair and balanced. I am balanced. And I’m not fair because the damn socialist communist punks, they’re not fair. They’re not fair to my family. They’re not fair to my children, who don’t have a vote or a say-so in whether or not they get born, or when they graduate into the workforce, they have $436,000 worth of debt on their head. That’s not fair."

How much more do they want you to sacrifice in the name of social fairness?

Barack is going to ask you to sacrifice. No, they weren’t talking about that kind of sacrifice. They were talking about you sacrificing more of your income. By the by, if you didn’t make a Tea Party rally yesterday, I think we should stop calling these things “protests.” They’re not protests. They are affirmations of our liberties. That’s what they are. They are affirmations, and they are demand letters, in verbal form, from me, from you, and from everyone that goes to these events, that attends a weekly Tea Party meeting. They are demands that our leaders lead, and they lead by example, by taking their oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, take it seriously and literally till death do you part. They are demands that our liberties be respected. That’s what they are. They’re not protests. They are affirmations.

Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them to another.” Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the point where many of you, and you are right to do so, desire to dissolve the political bands that have connected us to another. Because I am not paying for zero liability voters, as Wilkow calls them, anymore. I am not yo’ daddy. I am not yo’ baby’s daddy. You go find yo’ baby daddy, and you make him pay. Hey, I got a better idea. Stop making babies. Stop bringing children into a world without fathers. How about that? Why don’t we try that one on for a little while? Hmm? Just for fun maybe.

By the by, the person that said that freedom and liberty sound really good to almost all humans, and many people claim to be for liberty and freedom, they love the sound of the word, but for the actual process and the actual work of living free with your liberty, most people don’t care for it. It’s hard work, liberty.

let’s see here, here we go. “Of the various Tea Party rallies today, there was at least one that portends good things for conservative constitutionalism.” Boy, you know, that Constitution was brandished all day long yesterday. Beautiful thing, people running around talking about the Constitution. Living it. Breathing it. Carrying it with them. Invoking it. Getting in people’s faces. “Hey, where do you find that in the Constitution?” Let’s see here. “That happening is in Kalamazoo [MI], where a man named Jack Hoogendyk” – hope I’m pronouncing that right – “is announcing his candidacy to challenge Congressman Fred Upton,” who is a Republican, “in this year’s Republican primary for a seat in the U.S. House” of Representin’ up in here.

“Upton has been a member of the House of Representin’ since 1987. A quick glance at his record of late makes him the walking embodiment of everything that is wrong with long-serving politicians regardless of party affiliation. Upton voted for the Obama [porkulus succubus] spending bill. He has supported legislation handing over more power to the federal government in healthcare, the automobile industry, and education. Upton often brags about his willingness to work with Democrats. What is useful about politely handing a match to [Nazi] Pelosi as she heads for the National Archives? This sort of Potomac Fever is cured only by permanent quarantine outside the District of Columbia.”

So another constitutionalist rears their beautiful head out there somewhere across the amber waves of fuel. Well, I am not a proponent or a fan of the elected class showing up at these events in a sort of de facto – or performing a de facto commandeering of the people that are there for their own elections and what have you. I can only speak for myself.
I just think it’s shameless when politicians show up for the purpose to promote themselves. The reason we’re here is ‘cause you guys suck. The reason this Tea Party is being held is because of you. You want the stage? Go get your own stage.

Again, these people are not our friends on the other side of the aisle. We don’t have a political disagreement. This is not an argument over 39 percent tax rate versus 36 percent. This is an argument over whether or not we’re going to have the freedom that is our birthright to take that money and keep it as our own. Because it is ours, Mr. President. And it’s not just about taxes. I wasn’t there just complaining about taxes. As a matter of fact, I only heard taxes discussed about 10 percent of the time last night. People were complaining and were protesting their government for a redress of grievances about your healthcare monstrosity, about your EPA, about the things you’re doing to the trucking industry, and all the other stuff that you’re doing. And the things that President Bush did, the suspension of the Fourth Amendment under the so-called Patriot Act and what have you.

Here are a few responses to the Article 5 meeting on April 9th

on April 9th 2010, Mike Church with the co-operation of Sirius/XM sponsored a meeting at the XM Satellite Radio Studios in Washington DC to discuss the causes and remedies of our federal crisis.
The guests at this meeting included Dr. Kevin Gutzman, Tom Woods, Randy Barnett, and Bruce Fein.




Mike: Just a comment here. What you just heard about the structural changes and what the gentleman proposed about, okay, what if we do amend it, how you going to enforce it? Kevin Gutzman.


Kevin Gutzman: Well, I do think that education is a big part of the solution here. But I think we haven’t identified one major element of the problem that Bruce Fein referred earlier to the culture we live in. One element of that is that people are taught about the Constitution, not by reading the history of the Constitution, but by reading case law, which often is absolutely opposite the Constitution. And so I would correct that tendency. It seems to me that, if you have kids in college, or if you’re interested in the Constitution, tell them to avoid constitutional law classes. Go take a history course.

Mike: This isn’t good for business for you two.


Kevin: Sorry. Don’t read what — well, I teach constitutional history, not constitutional law. So just get out of the tendency of saying to yourself, what does the Establishment Clause mean, let’s ask Justice Black. That is not the way to find out.


Mike: Bruce?


Randy Barnett: Even though I do teach constitutional law, let me just say I agree a hundred percent with Kevin about this. Constitutional law, as given by the Supreme Court, is not the same thing as the Constitution itself and is often contrary to it.


Mike: Okay. Bruce Fein?

Bruce Fein: First, it’s just not the public that’s unschooled in the Constitution. I am regularly before Congress. The ordinary member of Congress does not have a ghost of an idea what’s in the document. I say, “You know, you took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Do you know what your limitations on authority are? Do you know what your obligations are?” Nothing. Staring. Well, you raised a constitutional issue today. Well, who cares about that? We’ll leave that to someone else.


Mike: Or you get Ms. Pelosi laughing at you [laughing].


Bruce: So it’s, yeah, it’s something like that. Well, what’s the Constitution amongst friends? And that’s sort of the attitude. So the problem of ignorance is far greater than just a general public problem. Remember also, the Constitution in some sense is intended to trump public opinion, our natural instincts, because it says in a Constitution, you can’t do this even if the majority wants to do it. So to some degree, the Constitution has to rise above the culture. To my mind, what has destroyed the major features of federalism is the income tax amendment. Because once you give the federal government money, they bribe anybody. Bribe states, they bribe localities, hey, you do X, we’ll give you the money. So we need to repeal the income tax amendment. And that would solve a huge amount of problems.


Mike: There’s a home run of the day.

Bruce: The second thing, and this is what Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson proposed. He never introduced it. But he had an idea prohibiting the federal government from borrowing money. He didn’t want that to be available for the same reason. You give — it’s like the golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rules. That’s just the way things are going to operate. And then you can have specific prohibitions about what the government can do. How about a provision that says the government cannot own Citibank. It can’t buy the stock of General Motors or AIG. That’s very simple. It’s an absolute prohibition like the prohibition on infringing freedom of speech or freedom of religion. It [indiscernible] institutional change, says you just can’t go there as a government. The last thing I’d want to say about — I think that it’s just that leaders can make a difference. It is true that institutions and popular culture produces recurring patterns. But individual decisions can count.


And let me recount one that I know Tony will remember from the Reagan administration, that I view as one of the last great lost opportunities to really put teeth in federalism. And it was the first appointment to the United States Supreme Court that opened under President Reagan, Ronald Reagan. Potter Stewart was the one who resigned. He was a moderate. I was at the Justice Department, and we had a list of candidates to replace the first justice, even before there was a vacancy. And the one who was on the list who was about five universes above everyone else was a gentleman called Robert H. Bork. He had been solicitor general under Richard Nixon. He had written books. Fabulous speaker. Principled man. A marine. He was there, and he did tough — made tough decisions.

What happened before we could even get Bork’s name over to the White House, there’s a gender gap. Find us a woman. Find us a woman. Wait a minute. We’re here about principles. We got elected on original intent. That was the theme. No longer the jurisprudence of idiosyncrasy. And then we got a dictate, it has to be a woman. So we ended up with a search, oh, who can we find? And we ended up with Sandra Day O’Connor who was, you know, a huge, huge disappointment. I tell you, like Lloyd Benson about Dan Quayle: Sandra Day O’Connor, I’ve met her, she is no Robert Bork.

Mike: Tom, you’ve been listening in on all this. You and I have talked, and you and Dr. Gutzman have talked for years about this, about an amendment convention. What do you have to add to what you just heard and what you’ve been writing about for years?

Thomas Woods: Well, first of all, I am a pathetic pygmy next to the people you have on that panel. So I’m very honored that you’d have me in this discussion at all. Well, let me first note, as I think you’ve discovered, Mike, is that, if you even raise this issue, it’s enough to get you dismissed and viciously smeared by a certain wing of what we might call the “liberty movement.” And they immediately — you’re suspect, your intentions are suspect. And I think that’s just got to stop. I mean, for heaven’s sake, you know, we have to listen to each other and what we’re saying here. And my view is that it seems pretty unlikely at this point that Washington’s going to be reformed. I mean, what’s the alternative plan, that we vote for Mitt Romney? I mean, c’mon. I mean, how many times can we be, we’ll just say taken advantage of by these people?


Now, one argument that’s made is that, if an amendment is introduced, well, you know, the federal government ignores the Constitution now. Maybe they would ignore the amendment. I want to answer that because I think there are two good answers to that. Number one is, even if an amendment that we introduce, like let’s say making sure that the Commerce Clause is correctly interpreted, even if all we’re doing is just clarifying what should already be obvious, the Tenth Amendment clarified what should already have been obvious, and we don’t think the Tenth Amendment was a waste of time.

But secondly, let’s say we amended the Constitution to clarify the Commerce Clause, and the federal government still continued to regulate every aspect of American life in defiance of the amendment? Then I would favor simultaneously introducing a structural change to the system that would restore some kind of state negative that was taken away by the Seventeenth Amendment. It could take the form of what Kevin has proposed, something like if two thirds of the states say no to a federal law, then that’s it, it’s overturned. We need to reintroduce an ability to say no after the federal government has said yes to itself.

Mike: Okay. So let’s start on the end here with Dr. — with Professor Barnett here because Tom, he’s actually — this is part of your amendment; right? And Kevin, this is one of your amendments, you call it the Federalism Amendment here, an amendment to basically install or institute a Council of Revision, is I think how you called it? Professor Barnett, I’m not sure how you called it.

Randy: Article 6, Amendment 6 of the Bill of Federalism that I’m proposing says, “Upon the identically worded resolutions of the legislatures of three quarters of the states, any law or regulation of the United States identified with specificity is hereby rescinded.”

Mike: Kevin?


Kevin: It’s fantastic; right?



Tom: Well, I would agree, except I would make it easier. I don’t know why three quarters. I’d say two thirds, if not a bare majority. Let’s not get — let’s not run away with the idea of deference to Congress here.



Randy: I will accept that amendment. We will make that change right now. I’ll accept that amendment.
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Links submitted by Professor Randy Barnett:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/20/bill-of-federalism-constitution-states-supreme-court-opinions-contributors-randy-barnett_print.html

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691123764?ie=UTF8&tag=mikechurchdot-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0691123764

http://constitutionrestoration.blogspot.com/
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Tom: A friendly amendment.


Randy: It’s a friendly amendment.


Bruce: But even so, there’s...


Mike: They like it, they like it. Bruce?

Bruce: There’s ambiguity in that. What happens if a state ratifies and then rescinds? Does the rescission count if it is done before you get the two-thirds benchmark or the three-quarters benchmark?



Randy: Well, that’s, by the way, true right now in Article V. You’ve got the same ambiguity in Article V. Bruce: Yes. It is — that is true. But we should probably try to clarify it. But the other thing, it seems to me, Mike, we have to ask why do we care about federalism? Why do we want these issues restored to the states? And it seems to me there are two reasons.


Mike: Okay.


Bruce: One is, Cicero said, “Freedom is participation in power.” The citizen is too remote from Washington. You don’t participate in power here. It’s so far away. The second thing, and may even be more important, is federalism creates competition in good government. If a state does something stupid, people can pick up, they leave, businesses go, and they’ve got to reform. I remember it wasn’t long ago where in West Virginia the surgeons said, unless you put a cap on medical practice damage awards, we’re leaving, and we’re not performing any operations here. And you know what, they changed that law in about five seconds. Because there was options to move.


And this is critical. Because legislators are not going to respond to stupidity and imbecility unless they see harm out there. When the Congress acts, everybody’s saddled with the same burden. You can’t go anyplace. So you don’t get the feedback that’s available that said you’re voting with your feet, you’re voting with your taxes. That is why federalism matters. That’s why you see even in some small way that the states compete for trying to attract investment into their states. We’ll give you a tax write-off or a tax holiday. That’s good. It stimulates states to think creatively about creating jobs. Congress, does that ever happen? No

Mike: No.


Bruce: Because it can’t go anyplace.


Mike: Right.


Bruce: So it’s not just an abstract proposition. It has real, real concrete effects on how we’re governed and why we have continuing feedback and improvement.


Mike: He just quoted your former boss, basically, if I heard right. President Reagan said, you don’t like it, vote with your feet; right? Tony?

Tony Blankley: Yeah. You know, absolutely. But, you know, this whole discussion, when it talks about the details of the provision, I think that’s getting the cart before the horse. The key thing is the public to have an impulse and a passion to amend. We should first get there. Yes, there [indiscernible]. I practiced law for eight years before I got full-time into politics. I understand the details are important. But if we debate the details too much upfront, we’ll divide ourselves and dissipate the unity that is emerging out of the Tea Party movement. So I think we have to focus on first get to yes, yeah, we’ve got to do it, and then we’ll have the committees that’ll work out the details.


Mike: I concur. Final comment from Professor Barnett. And Tom, if you’d hang on, because we’ve got to take a break. But go ahead, Randy.


Randy: One thing the Tea Party movement could do is they could demand of their congressmen that they enact procedures for having a convention. So — of the kind that have already been proposed and have already been drafted. They just have to put it into law. And that would be something that it would be nonpart- it could be nonpartisan. It would be neutral. And that would lower the risk of having a convention. It’s one reason why Congress won’t want to do it. But it’s something the Tea Party members can ask of every representative that they decide to support or not support.....

Government Doesnt Understand Profit

Government is not a profit industry, for-profit industry. It consumes profit. Therefore, by its very definition, you don’t attract the best people unless you want to change that and say you attract the best parasites, the best people who couldn’t make it in the real world, who threw their hands up in disgust, “[Indiscernible], I got student loans, I’m tired of the rat race and competing in corporate world, man. Maybe I can get a job where they just give me things. I don’t even really have to show up.”

Back to Kathleen Sebelius. “It’s about giving people the tools they need", speaking to Mike Allen. “Helping them make better choices, answering questions right away. There is so much, I would say, misinformation and confusion about what happens and when it happens. We need to be the face of competent government,” said Ms. Sebelius, “the face of a help desk that can really respond to personal issues and questions and make sure we do that well and competently.” Again, you’re in the government. You do nothing competently. You are by definition incompetent. This is like saying, oh, we’ve got great people that work at the DMV. Customer service is our number one objective. We have great people to work in the post office. Sure, you go in there during Christmastime; and no, they didn’t bring any extra postal service workers in there, knowing that every person in the entire city was going to be dropping packages off. No, no, no, we just have to deal with the lines for hours and hours and hours.

Have you ever been to a post office, ladies and gentlemen, as have I, in the middle of an afternoon rush or, God forbid, heaven forfend, a Christmas rush where you’re standing on line, you walk in the post office, and [gasping] there are lines and lines of people waiting to put the priority mail stamp on their packages. And you get up there in that line, and you stand in that line, and you’re waiting and waiting and waiting, with the customer service representatives from the postal service. And right in the middle of this rush, and remember, now, the post office hasn’t game-planned for this. They haven’t planned for increased business whatsoever. There’s not a solitary extra soul. They have three wait windows – can somebody that works at the postal service answer a question for me? Why do you have eight customer service windows and only three postal workers at Christmas? Can anyone explain that?

And then right in the middle of this rush, three postal service workers taking, putting the priority mail stickers on the packages. One looks at his watch, “Why, it’s 1:00 o’clock. It’s my time for lunch. Hell yeah, hell fire, I’m out of here.” And then he takes the little sign and turns it to “This position closed” and then disappears into the cavern, into the maze that is the back of the postal service. You don’t see him again. And you’re wondering, this isn’t happening, man. Where’s the manager? Well, it’s the post office, dude. They don’t have a manager. Well, yeah, they kind of do. And this is what they’re erecting at the Health and Inhuman Disservices Department. This is ridiculous. And so now we have people calling up insurance companies, wondering where their free ObamaCare is. I wonder if someone’s going to ask, or if anyone will ask, Robert “Liar Liar” Gibbs about this.

In the pages of The New York Slimes today you’re going to want to read this editorial, read it carefully, and spread it to your friends. It’s written by this absolute just – I run out of adjectives to describe this man, David Leonhardt, this – let’s just call him a libtard for argument’s sake here. This is an elite libtard extraordinaire. This is the guy that wrote two weeks ago about the narrow-minded Tea Partiers and what have you here. Today in his post in The New York Slimes Leonhardt confesses to anyone that reads this that ObamaCare does and will and should ration care, get used to it.

Here, let me read you the first line, and we’ll get into it in greater detail as we get underway here today. Here is the first line: “In Medicine, the Power of No” is the title of the piece. Okay? “In Medicine, the Power of No,” by David Leonhardt. Here’s line number one. Are you ready? Now, this is all about ObamaCare. This is all about reforming the “healthcare system. This is all about making everything work, Really? Here’s the first line: “How can we learn to say no?”

And the rest of the entire piece, the entire column is about encouraging all the new bureaucrats that are going to be running this and that and the other to say no. “Hey, Granny, unplug that damned defibrillator, that’s expensive.” Remember the lawyer in “Jurassic Park,” the first movie, the one that got eaten by the Tyrannosaurus? Remember that? Remember when the kids were fumbling around in the back of the Jeep, the Jurassic Park Jeep for a light? And they picked something up, and the lawyer turned to the back as the kids were fumbling around in the back seat looking for a light, and one of the little kids said, “What is this?” And the lawyer says, “Is it heavy?” And the kid said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Well, put it down, it’s expensive.” Well, they’re going to have people like this running ObamaCare. “Hey, is that expensive?” “Yeah, put it down. Unplug that sumbitch, it’s expensive. Besides, the windmills aren’t turning, there’s no electricity.”

By the by, one more point here on David “the Lionheart” Leonhardt’s column today in The New York Slimes, “In Medicine, the Power of No,” “How can we learn to say no?” Wait a minute. Wait wait wait wait. I thought Tea Partiers and right-wing nut jobs were the party of no. What happened to Republicans who oppose this stuff being the party of no? I thought only crazed kook nuts who believe in limited government, who want their freedom and their liberty preserved and don’t want this monstrosity rammed down their throats were the party or the people of no. Now Kathleen Sebelius will be the Emperor, the Tsarina of no. Oh, Obama’s going to create, oh ho ho, an entire army, raised from the depths, from the pit of Mordor on the Potomac to say no.

Remember obama was out there chirping about how the right was just scaring the common folk, how we(conservatives) were just full of crap and lying to "the american people"???
Now they are all coming out and stating what we already tried to tell the lemmings who follow obama like little hungry kittens trying to gob onto their mommies teet....
oh, but the right are just crazy pieces of crap, right? YEAH RIGHT!

Obama’s drilling deception

I dont real listen to too much of what miss malkin says, but in this case she nailed it!

The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.

The proposal — a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations — would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.

If this were a sincere change of heart and an honest, stand-alone effort to wean America off foreign oil, it would be worth heralding.

But as always with this administration, there’s a catch, via the American Energy Alliance:

“One major flashpoint in the negotiations has been whether to share drilling revenue with states and to allow states to opt in or out of drilling along their coastlines. It was unclear late Tuesday whether Obama endorses revenue-sharing for states. “It appears the Northern Atlantic and entire Pacific Coast will now be under a de facto ban” for drilling, said Patrick Creighton, a spokesman for the Institute for Energy Research. Even if drilling is ultimately allowed in part of the Atlantic, Creighton said, revenue sharing is an essential incentive for states. The administration’s plans could meet resistance from at least 10 Senate Democrats representing coastal and Great Lakes states who last week raised concerns about “unfettered access to oil and gas drilling” that could jeopardize fishing, tourism and military exercises. The Interior Department retooled the current schedule of offshore leases governing 2007 through 2012 after a federal appeals court last April ruled that the second Bush administration had not done a sufficient environmental review of expanded drilling off the Alaskan coast.

GOP Rep. Mike Pence adds:

“As usual the devil is in the details. Only in Washington, D.C., can you ban more areas to oil and gas exploration than you open up, delay the date of your new leases and claim you’re going to increase production.

“The President’s announcement today is a smokescreen. It will almost certainly delay any new offshore exploration until at least 2012 and include only a fraction of the offshore resources that the previous Administration included in its plan.

“Unfortunately, this is yet another feeble attempt to gain votes for the President’s national energy tax bill that is languishing in the Senate. At the end of the day this Administration’s energy plan is simple: increase the cost of energy on every family in America and trade American jobs oversees at a time when millions of Americans are looking for work.”

Read THIS: Tom Woods complete. detailed smackdown of a Princeton "history professors" distortion of Jefferson's view of nullification

The Ivy League Hates Nullification
by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Recently by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.: Left and Right Against War, Part 87


Over the past few years, but especially during the past several months, there has been an extraordinary revival of interest in Thomas Jefferson’s idea of state nullification of unconstitutional federal laws. According to Jefferson, if the federal government were to monopolize constitutional interpretation, it would of course interpret the Constitution in its own favor and consistently uncover previously unknown reservoirs of additional federal power. Only a fool would consent to such a system, thought Jefferson, and the peoples of the states were not fools.

Needless to say, nullification is nowhere to be found on the three-by-five card on which our betters have written out the range of allowable opinion, so it has been greeted with the usual hysteria from predictable quarters.

The latest, and to my mind most laughable, example comes from Sean Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton, writing in The New Republic. The subtitle of Professor Wilentz’s article "The Essence of Anarchy" is "America’s long, sordid affair with nullification." What Professor Wilentz omits in his alleged history of that "long, sordid affair" could fill an entire book, and indeed just weeks ago I announced the impending release of my own book on precisely this subject. (Nullification will cover the origins and theory of nullification, its forgotten nineteenth-century history, modern applications of the idea, and much else.) For now I’ll note the New England states that appealed to nullification (or interposition) against President Jefferson’s embargo, against what they considered the unconstitutional calling up of the New England militia during the war of 1812, against the use of military conscription, and against a law providing for the enlistment of minors.

Pretty "sordid," huh?

In addition to other examples, we might also refer to the legislature of Wisconsin, which as late as 1859 was quoting from Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 in opposition to unconstitutional aspects of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Sordid, I tell you. Here’s the text of a handbill that circulated in Milwaukee in the 1850s:

All the People of this State, who are opposed to being made SLAVES or SLAVE-CATCHERS, and to having the Free Soil of Wisconsin made the hunting-ground for Human Kidnappers, and all who are willing to unite in a STATE LEAGUE, to defend our State Sovereignty, our State Courts, and our State and National Constitutions, against the flagrant usurpations of U.S. Judges, Commissioners, and Marshals, and their Attorneys; and to maintain inviolate those great Constitutional Safeguards of Freedom – the WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS and the RIGHT OF TRIAL BY JURY – as old and sacred as Constitutional Liberty itself; and all who are willing to sustain the cause of those who are prosecuted, and to be prosecuted in Wisconsin, by the agents and executors of the Kidnapping Act of 1850, for the alleged crime of rescuing a human being from the hands of kidnappers, and restoring him to himself and to Freedom, are invited to meet at YOUNGS’ HALL, IN THIS CITY, THURSDAY, APRIL 13TH, at 11 o’clock A.M., to counsel together, and take such action as the exigencies of the times, and the cause of imperiled Liberty demand.

What’s that? A "state league" to defend "state sovereignty" on behalf of human freedom against the "flagrant usurpations" of the federal government? How sordid!


Do you suppose Professor Wilentz teaches that at Princeton? Does he even know about it?

What Professor Wilentz also omits, and perhaps doesn’t know, is that abolitionists who opposed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 expressly endorsed nullification and even referred to John C. Calhoun by name in support of their ideas. A shame Professor Wilentz wasn’t around to tell them that only a "racist" would refer to the wicked Calhoun, and that mature adults should never be allowed simply to consider his ideas on their merits.


Wilentz spends some of his time giving us a 60-year-old interpretation of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, where nullification and interposition were first expressly advanced, as if no scholarship had appeared since then. He tells us that Jefferson was "in a panic" when he drafted the Kentucky Resolutions. In other words, Jefferson wasn’t really in his right mind, so we can excuse him for dreaming up crazy constitutional ideas that irritate Princeton professors.

Whether he realizes it or not, Wilentz is here repeating the thesis of Adrienne Koch and Harry Ammon, from their 1948 William and Mary Quarterly article "The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions: An Episode in Jefferson’s and Madison’s Defense of Civil Liberties." Koch and Ammon suggest that nullification was really just an ad hoc response to an emergency situation rather than an enduring constitutional doctrine in its own right.

Unfortunately for Wilentz, the subject has been explored a teensy bit further in the six decades since then. As Kevin Gutzman shows in his book Virginia’s American Revolution: From Dominion to Republic, 1776–1840, Jefferson did not invent nullification in a moment of haste. The germ of nullification is directly traceable to the Virginia ratifying convention of 1788 (and indeed even into the colonial period). There, supporters of the Constitution insisted that the federal government would possess only the powers "expressly delegated" to it, and that Virginia would be "exonerated" should the federal government ever reach for a power beyond those delegated. Edmund Randolph and George Nicholas assured Virginians of these principles in so many words. Both men served on the five-man committee that was to draft Virginia’s ratification instrument. Randolph went on to serve as U.S. attorney general, and Nicholas as attorney general of Kentucky.

Throughout the 1790s, Virginians kept returning to the assurances they had been given in 1788. To give just one example: appalled by Alexander Hamilton’s financial program, and particularly the federal assumption of state debts, Patrick Henry introduced a resolution, passed by the Virginia legislature, that cited Hamilton’s program as an example of precisely what Virginians had been assured could not happen – the exercise by the federal government of a power it had not been delegated. Henry reminded his fellow Virginians that they had been sold the Constitution on the grounds that the federal government would have only those powers expressly delegated to it, and that the state government would be a sentinel watching over federal officials and remaining on guard against federal encroachments. Is that really so far from what Jefferson would later say?


By the time Jefferson drafted the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, therefore, he was merely developing these longstanding principles. He certainly was not spinning out an ad hoc response. Much less was he acting merely "in a panic."

My favorite part of the whole piece comes when Wilentz offers us this aside: "Madison also wrote of nullification that ‘[n]o man’s creed was more opposed to such an inversion of the Repubn. order of things’ than Thomas Jefferson’s."

Folks, Wilentz may not know it – and the automatons posting the fawning comments at the New Republic’s site obviously don’t know it – but that remark alone proves he has no idea what he is talking about. First of all, Madison’s statement about Jefferson is clearly false, as any competent historian knows. Jefferson included the very word "nullification" in his draft of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798! How can Wilentz, a Princeton historian, not know this?


But here’s the real kicker. Wilentz neglects to mention that the elder Madison, in his zeal to separate nullification from Jefferson’s legacy, tried denying that Jefferson had included the dreaded word in his draft of the Kentucky Resolutions. Madison had seen the draft himself, so he either knew this statement was false or was suffering from the effects of advanced age. When a copy of the original Kentucky Resolutions in Jefferson’s own handwriting turned up, complete with the word "nullification," Madison was forced to retreat.

You see what this means? Nearly 180 years later, Sean Wilentz is still trying to defend a claim that Madison himself withdrew. Whether that speaks poorly of Wilentz’s honesty or his competence is something only he himself can know.

As for Madison’s claim at an advanced age that the Virginia Resolutions had never contemplated nullification, and Wilentz’s related claim that nullification supporters wickedly and perversely misinterpreted Madison, my book addresses this point directly. For now we might note that (1) the other state legislatures understood Madison at the time as saying precisely what Madison (and Wilentz) later tried to deny he was saying; (2) Madison did not correct this alleged misunderstanding when he had the chance to in the Report of 1800 or at any other time during those years; and (3) the text of the Virginia Resolutions clearly indicates that each state was "duty bound" to maintain its constitutional liberties within its "respective" territory, and hence Madison did indeed contemplate action by a single state as supporters and opponents alike took him to be saying at the time.

Faced with a bipartisan, cross-ideological push for the decentralization of political power, all Sean Wilentz can think to do is – you’ll never guess! – revive the specter of 1950s resistance to civil rights. Few today would defend the indignities to which American blacks were subject at that time, though it seems safe to assume that the grievances of civil-rights activists would have been greatly alleviated from the start had the constitutional remedy of enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment been actively and consistently applied. But I wonder if, just as Wilentz expects us for that reason to repudiate the principle of decentralized power, we can expect him to denounce his own beloved federal government – after all, didn’t Woodrow Wilson’s decision to enter World War I lead to the deaths of 116,000 Americans for no good reason? Weren’t Japanese individuals rounded into detention camps in the 1940s? (Incidentally, I wonder how "sordid" it would have been had California and Washington state interposed to prevent the internment of these poor souls.)


And really, even Wilentz’s acute hypochondria would presumably stop short of declaring that the fourteen states allowing medical marijuana in defiance of the federal government’s prohibition must be a bunch of "racists" who secretly aim to oppress people. California is even considering legalizing marijuana across the board – a clear act of nullification. What, pray tell, does this have to do with race? May it be possible that people who advocate decentralized power might actually favor – wait for it – decentralized power? Or do we automatically assume that their stated principles conceal a sinister conspiracy to oppress, even though centralized power is what made possible the unprecedented oppressions and atrocities of the twentieth century?

To be sure, Wilentz grudgingly concedes that nullification supporters are "not currently concerned with racial supremacy" (not currently concerned, you understand – you never know what people who don’t subscribe to The New Republic may think of next). But then why smear them by writing an entire article on the subject that never soberly considers the relevant questions on their merits, and instead associates the idea exclusively with racial oppression? Hitler despised states’ rights; does that make him a model of enlightenment and toleration?


Wilentz is not entirely wrong, of course. Dangers exist at all levels of government. Libertarians understand that better than anyone. The question that supporters of the states against the federal government are asking today is this: right now, where are the greater threats to our liberties liable to come from, Utah or D.C.? I cannot come up with an adequate word to describe someone who, having observed the enormities of twenty-first-century Washington no matter which party is in control, is more concerned about the potential for abuse of power in Boise or Santa Fe.

I suppose I don’t need to tell readers what we are all supposed to do now that Professor Wilentz has handed down his ex cathedra pronouncement, but I’ll tell you anyway. We’re supposed to abandon all non-approved opinions forthwith; promise in the future to run everything by Sean Wilentz first, lest we incorrigible haters fall back into our wicked ways; and show proper remorse for having disturbed our left-neocon overlords at The New Republic. Here they are trying to drum up another round of war propaganda (which has nothing to do with hatred, you understand), and we have the gall to distract them with Thomas Jefferson!


Oh, and Sean: nobody buys the "racism" smears anymore. No one in his right mind believes, with Keith Olbermann, that people who drive pickup trucks are likely to have sinister intentions, or that "arrogant" as an adjective to describe Barack Obama is a "racist code word." That game is over. The non-zombie population, which is growing all the time, just tunes it out. At this point, "racist" now encompasses, at the very least, the Tea Party, the GOP, constitutionalists, libertarians, anarchists, anyone who has ever said a kind word about the South (since what reason other than "racism" could anyone have for doing that?), anyone who opposes Obama, and anyone who opposes health mandates. That pretty much leaves, as a working definition for "racist," someone who doesn’t subscribe to The New Republic.

All these groups I’ve just mentioned probably amount to more than half the country. If the American population is so full of "hatred" and "racism" that every other person is liable to be a Klansman, I wonder if Professor Wilentz can explain to us why he favors open immigration. Doesn’t he instead have a moral obligation to warn potential immigrants to stay away from such a cauldron of "hatred"?

Supporters of nullification today, says Wilentz, "take refuge in a psychodrama of ‘liberty’ versus ‘tyranny.’" He then says that the constitutional doctrine they promote would allow "racial segregation and inequality up to the point of enslavement." So people who are concerned about a government that makes up the rules as it goes along are engaged in "psychodrama," but people who think the repeal of the Thirteenth Amendment is likely enough to be worth mentioning are the very model of reason.

Sean Wilentz is supposed to be a great Princeton professor. He is a reliable court historian of the regime (which by some definitions may indeed make him a great Princeton professor). He thinks he can parry opponents of the central government by means of distortions, omissions, outright falsehoods, hysteria, and name-calling. This is the best the Establishment can do against nullification? Professor Wilentz’s poor students should demand their money back.

April 6, 2010

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. (visit his website; follow him on Facebook; send him mail), holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and his master’s, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University. His nine books include the critically acclaimed study The Church Confronts Modernity (Columbia University Press, 2004) and two New York Times bestsellers: Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. His new book, Nullification, will be released on June 29.