I’m going to play a little exchange of the intro of Bret Baier asking the question, and then Krauthammer’s shocking response.
[Clip] Woman: And the Constitution says you cannot deny a person due process. You cannot deny them life, liberty, property, without offering them due process.
Goldberg: The Constitution says Congress can declare war, and everyone agreed that that was a declaration of war.
Woman: But we have seen the Supreme Court rule over and over that, even if he was an enemy combatant, he still has constitutional rights. He’s an American.
Goldberg: I guarantee, I will bet you the Congress, the Court does not have a problem with this.
Charles Krauthammer: We had the Civil War in which our side mowed down American citizens, Confederate soldiers who were recognized – never recognized as the members of another country, in battle after battle. In Pickett’s Charge, we didn’t send lawyers out to interview Confederate soldiers and ask them if they were Americans, read them Miranda Rights, which of course that didn’t exist until a hundred years later. We shot them.
Woman: But they were wearing uniforms.
Charles Krauthammer: That doesn’t – but they were American citizens.
Woman: Right.
Goldberg: Confederate spies in the North were shot on sight.
Woman: No, but they...
Charles Krauthammer: The point is that American citizenry protects you. It doesn’t apply in insurrection. Now, normally people will say only insurrection on American soil, though why should your presence in Yemen protect you? Here was a guy who was fomenting insurrection, trying to get Americans to turn against the United States and to attack America in the homeland. [End clip]
Now I ask you, do you agree with this assessment?
Did you hear Goldberg jump in there? “Well, Southern spies, Confederate spies were ordered shot on capture.” Oh, just bathe in the blood of the Confederacy, Jonah Goldberg, you hack. I mean, ladies and gentlemen, this is just sick. And Krauthammer, “Well, we mowed down entire armies of Confederate soldiers.” I beg to differ with you, sir. “They never were recognized as citizens....” Recognized by who, that tyrant tinhorn dictator, Abraham Lincoln? You have got to be kidding me. The reason there was an alleged “war” that was started by Mr. Lincoln was because the South separated. Those, you know, this really just pisses me off. The Southern soldiers swore an oath to protect and defend the Confederate Constitution, or the Constitution of their state in the absence of the Confederate Constitution being ratified. I mean, this is beyond-the-pale macabre, here.
So the longing for the Neocon wing of the Republican Party is, look, if you guys don’t go along with us, we’ll be perfectly justified in shooting all of you Tea Party hacks that try and secede again. Oh, yeah, we’ll take you out. Even if you declare yourself citizens of Texas, Obama will be justified, or President Romney will be justified in sending the Army out to kill you. Anything else you’d like to do to me, Charles? Any other deprivation of life and property you’d like to visit upon me while you’re bathing in the war blood of people that have decided they do not want to be governed by you and your idolatry to Abraham Lincoln any longer?
I mean, folks, really, this is the end sum game here, and this is where there is a divide that ought to be talked about, ought to be debated, and ought to be exploited. If the citizens of this country decide – and when I say “country,” I mean those living in a state. If they decide that they have had enough of the federal Leviathan, that they’ve had enough of their fiat currency, that they’ve had enough of their sons and daughters being called into never-ending wars, that they have had enough of the tyrannical EPA, that they’ve had enough of the devaluation of their properties, that they’ve had enough of federal Georges coming into their states and their localities and telling them they can’t pray in public, that they’ve had enough of all the three-and-a-half batrillion kadrillion kajillion things that this federal monster of Mordor on the Potomac River does, and they choose a different form of government, different from what is currently in force here, that is their natural, God-given, human right to do so. But to invoke Lincoln mowing down indiscriminate – well, I shouldn’t say “indiscriminately.” There was a battle, and the South did shoot back, so scratch that. But to invoke Pickett just mowing down Confederate citizens as the justification for this?
You see now that the conservatives in the Republican arm or the DeceptiCon wing of the Republican Party has no problem with the size and the gargantuan nature of the state, ladies and gentlemen. They have no problem with the state exercising and using brutal, lethal force against you or anyone else.
Now dont get me wrong," I am not comparing Awlaki to the Confederates, but the statement is clear. We have taught people what happens if they don’t agree with our government.”
To me this is the whole point!
To restore and uphold the sovereignty and rights of the individual States as guaranteed by the tenth amendment of the United States Constitution, which states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Rand Paul on Empire and Non-Interventionism
Mike speaks with Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky about his father's campaign for President, a return to a humble foreign policy, and the economic reality we as a nation currently face.
Mike: Now to the Dudemaker Hotline, my friend and many of yours, the great senator from the great state of Kentucky and son of Ron Paul, Rand Paul with us. Rand, it’s been a while. How are you, my friend?
Senator Rand Paul: Good, good to be with you.
Mike: Yeah, it’s good to hear from you. So does it bother you to still hear, though, the ideas which are ancient and timeless that your dad espouses, does it bother you to hear the pejorative terms that are still associated with it? I don’t hear it directed at you as much as it did when you first ran for office. But towards your dad, they still have – “they” being the industrial news complex, seem to have no problem still hurling these just unfounded insults at it. How do you, as a son, how do you take that?
Rand: Well, a lot of it still means that, you know, people start out with their preset notions, particularly on foreign policy, that everything that is not, you know, all out interminable war is called “isolationism.” So anything less than that really is given that pejorative term. And really what I tell people is, is that there are two polar extremes. One is that we’re everywhere all the time, and one is that we’re nowhere any of the time. And right now I think we’re towards the extreme of being everywhere all the time. So backing away from that is not isolationism. That is much less intervention.
But it’s also, I think people are coming around to that viewpoint, even others on the Republican field, because they realize we’re running out of money. They realize we don’t have enough money to be everywhere all the time. And I think they also are starting to see that the Constitution really should be obeyed. It’s easier for them to see when there’s a Democrat in the White House; but they are seeing it through the Libya action, even though in practical purposes it looks like it’ll be successful, it wasn’t approached from a constitutional fashion, and there are severely bad precedents with going to war that way.
Mike: Is it tough to take this stand in the United States Senate still? Or are you finding that there are now more people, more senators that are more aligned with and are at least open to the discussion about, okay, Senator Paul, yeah, let’s talk about this interventionism. Is it getting better, or is it status quo?
Rand: I think it’s much better, actually. There are 47 Republicans in the U.S. Senate. And I’d say there’s a good solid 10 to 12 who are at least circumspect about endless intervention and about going to war with no declaration of war and whether the President should have this power versus Congress. So there really is a debate occurring. We, during the last session, brought up the President’s words from 2007 when he campaigned and said that no president should unilaterally go to war without congressional authority. We had a vote on that.
Now, the Democrats, I think, were embarrassed, and none of them voted to support the President’s own words. But we had 10 Republicans who did, and it was a symbolic vote. But, you know, 10 out of 47 shows that there’s at least some divide. It’s not as monolithic as it used to be. And I think that bothers some of the extreme on the side of, you know, the perpetual war faction is bothered by it. But really there is a healthy debate now in the Republican caucus. You saw on the House side that they actually, you know, voted against sanctioning the Libya venture. So, you know, really I think there is a serious discussion, even within Republican circles now.
Mike: Well, and that’s good, and that’s started by your father. I mean, your father has been out there blazing this path now. It’s refreshing at least to hear that it’s being discussed. Let’s move on to a subject I know near and dear to your heart, economics here. The President is slated to give this address here after Labor Day and to tell us how our magisterial federal overlords are going to help us overcome all of our economic problems. I know you to be a student of the Austrian school of economics. That may not apply in the United States Senate. But if given the chance, aren’t there things that can be undone, that would immediately unleash capital and job creation in the United States?
Rand: Absolutely. I think tomorrow or yesterday you could lower the corporate income tax and bring a lot of capital home from foreign countries, and that’d be a huge infusion into our economy. Right now, you know, our corporate income tax is actually twice what Canada’s is. And I never thought I’d be complimenting Canadian public policy, but they actually have a much lower income tax than we do. So that’s the first thing you can do, and that would help quite a bit.
The second thing you can do is quit doing what you are doing, and that’s adding new regulations every day. The President now is going to back off and say, oh, he’s going to reduce $10 billion worth of regulations. Well, just this year he added $60 billion. That’s not counting ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank. So, you know, really, I tell people I think this is the most anti-business President we’ve had in my lifetime.
Mike: Yeah, and it’s not only it’s anti-business, it’s anti-small business. Take it from someone who’s a small businessman, before you were in the Senate, you were a privately contracted ophthalmologist. You were a small business. This stuff matters here. When you get letters in the mail like the one I received the other day informing me that, because of the 2008 Economic Recovery Act, if I don’t fork over certain documents to my bank, the IRS is going to come in and assess me a 28 percent tax on all of my sales. What can you do as a member of the United States Senate to stop some of this stuff?
Rand: Well, here’s the scary thing. The courts haven’t been on our side on this either. But for several decades now the courts have ruled that your banking records have no right to privacy. And I say if my banking records have no right to privacy, I don’t have privacy because everything I do is through credit cards or banks. If you can track my credit card, you can tell when I go to the doctor, what kind of medicine I take, who I associate with, whether I drink alcohol, whether I gamble. I mean, really, I think your banking records are a large part of your life, and we need to protect them. But we need to change some court decisions. We need to legislate and say your banking records are private.
You know, these Suspicious Activity Reports that they do under the Patriot Act, there have been eight million of them sifted through in the last 10 years. If you talk to bankers, the bankers don’t like being policemen. They don’t like doing it. It adds cost to their business. But you can’t get anybody in Washington to try to reform that process. In fact, we were discussing the Patriot Act on the floor, and I brought up SARs, and a couple of members of the Intelligence Committee were standing there, and they were like, huh? What is an SAR? They didn’t even know what they were, and we’re doing eight million of them over the last 10 years.
Mike: That is just – that is unprecedented. Now, I remember back in June I got a letter from your office, an email letter, and they had included in that email letter a letter that you had written to the head of the FBI. And you had asked him certain things about what you’re talking about here, and under what clause in the Constitution was he finding the authority to conduct these warrantless wiretaps and these other investigations. Did you get an answer to that query? I’m just curious.
Rand: I don’t think there is an answer that’s acceptable coming from them. They just simply said they have the authority under the Patriot Act. Whether or not the Patriot Act agrees with the Constitution, they’re sort of quiet on that subject. One of the things I did get from the meeting is that I think they are trying to do a better job of screening those folks they’re bringing in from Iraq. But my point of view is, is that I’m not sure why we need to bring in, you know, 18,000 people from Iraq every year when their country’s been liberated, has a democratic government now. And I think they need to be staying home and fixing up their country rather than, you know, coming to our country and living on welfare.
Now people I have to ask you, hows that for a clear and to the point response to a very serious problem?
My thanks to Mr Rand and Mr Church for thei time and wisdom in this matter....
Mike: Now to the Dudemaker Hotline, my friend and many of yours, the great senator from the great state of Kentucky and son of Ron Paul, Rand Paul with us. Rand, it’s been a while. How are you, my friend?
Senator Rand Paul: Good, good to be with you.
Mike: Yeah, it’s good to hear from you. So does it bother you to still hear, though, the ideas which are ancient and timeless that your dad espouses, does it bother you to hear the pejorative terms that are still associated with it? I don’t hear it directed at you as much as it did when you first ran for office. But towards your dad, they still have – “they” being the industrial news complex, seem to have no problem still hurling these just unfounded insults at it. How do you, as a son, how do you take that?
Rand: Well, a lot of it still means that, you know, people start out with their preset notions, particularly on foreign policy, that everything that is not, you know, all out interminable war is called “isolationism.” So anything less than that really is given that pejorative term. And really what I tell people is, is that there are two polar extremes. One is that we’re everywhere all the time, and one is that we’re nowhere any of the time. And right now I think we’re towards the extreme of being everywhere all the time. So backing away from that is not isolationism. That is much less intervention.
But it’s also, I think people are coming around to that viewpoint, even others on the Republican field, because they realize we’re running out of money. They realize we don’t have enough money to be everywhere all the time. And I think they also are starting to see that the Constitution really should be obeyed. It’s easier for them to see when there’s a Democrat in the White House; but they are seeing it through the Libya action, even though in practical purposes it looks like it’ll be successful, it wasn’t approached from a constitutional fashion, and there are severely bad precedents with going to war that way.
Mike: Is it tough to take this stand in the United States Senate still? Or are you finding that there are now more people, more senators that are more aligned with and are at least open to the discussion about, okay, Senator Paul, yeah, let’s talk about this interventionism. Is it getting better, or is it status quo?
Rand: I think it’s much better, actually. There are 47 Republicans in the U.S. Senate. And I’d say there’s a good solid 10 to 12 who are at least circumspect about endless intervention and about going to war with no declaration of war and whether the President should have this power versus Congress. So there really is a debate occurring. We, during the last session, brought up the President’s words from 2007 when he campaigned and said that no president should unilaterally go to war without congressional authority. We had a vote on that.
Now, the Democrats, I think, were embarrassed, and none of them voted to support the President’s own words. But we had 10 Republicans who did, and it was a symbolic vote. But, you know, 10 out of 47 shows that there’s at least some divide. It’s not as monolithic as it used to be. And I think that bothers some of the extreme on the side of, you know, the perpetual war faction is bothered by it. But really there is a healthy debate now in the Republican caucus. You saw on the House side that they actually, you know, voted against sanctioning the Libya venture. So, you know, really I think there is a serious discussion, even within Republican circles now.
Mike: Well, and that’s good, and that’s started by your father. I mean, your father has been out there blazing this path now. It’s refreshing at least to hear that it’s being discussed. Let’s move on to a subject I know near and dear to your heart, economics here. The President is slated to give this address here after Labor Day and to tell us how our magisterial federal overlords are going to help us overcome all of our economic problems. I know you to be a student of the Austrian school of economics. That may not apply in the United States Senate. But if given the chance, aren’t there things that can be undone, that would immediately unleash capital and job creation in the United States?
Rand: Absolutely. I think tomorrow or yesterday you could lower the corporate income tax and bring a lot of capital home from foreign countries, and that’d be a huge infusion into our economy. Right now, you know, our corporate income tax is actually twice what Canada’s is. And I never thought I’d be complimenting Canadian public policy, but they actually have a much lower income tax than we do. So that’s the first thing you can do, and that would help quite a bit.
The second thing you can do is quit doing what you are doing, and that’s adding new regulations every day. The President now is going to back off and say, oh, he’s going to reduce $10 billion worth of regulations. Well, just this year he added $60 billion. That’s not counting ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank. So, you know, really, I tell people I think this is the most anti-business President we’ve had in my lifetime.
Mike: Yeah, and it’s not only it’s anti-business, it’s anti-small business. Take it from someone who’s a small businessman, before you were in the Senate, you were a privately contracted ophthalmologist. You were a small business. This stuff matters here. When you get letters in the mail like the one I received the other day informing me that, because of the 2008 Economic Recovery Act, if I don’t fork over certain documents to my bank, the IRS is going to come in and assess me a 28 percent tax on all of my sales. What can you do as a member of the United States Senate to stop some of this stuff?
Rand: Well, here’s the scary thing. The courts haven’t been on our side on this either. But for several decades now the courts have ruled that your banking records have no right to privacy. And I say if my banking records have no right to privacy, I don’t have privacy because everything I do is through credit cards or banks. If you can track my credit card, you can tell when I go to the doctor, what kind of medicine I take, who I associate with, whether I drink alcohol, whether I gamble. I mean, really, I think your banking records are a large part of your life, and we need to protect them. But we need to change some court decisions. We need to legislate and say your banking records are private.
You know, these Suspicious Activity Reports that they do under the Patriot Act, there have been eight million of them sifted through in the last 10 years. If you talk to bankers, the bankers don’t like being policemen. They don’t like doing it. It adds cost to their business. But you can’t get anybody in Washington to try to reform that process. In fact, we were discussing the Patriot Act on the floor, and I brought up SARs, and a couple of members of the Intelligence Committee were standing there, and they were like, huh? What is an SAR? They didn’t even know what they were, and we’re doing eight million of them over the last 10 years.
Mike: That is just – that is unprecedented. Now, I remember back in June I got a letter from your office, an email letter, and they had included in that email letter a letter that you had written to the head of the FBI. And you had asked him certain things about what you’re talking about here, and under what clause in the Constitution was he finding the authority to conduct these warrantless wiretaps and these other investigations. Did you get an answer to that query? I’m just curious.
Rand: I don’t think there is an answer that’s acceptable coming from them. They just simply said they have the authority under the Patriot Act. Whether or not the Patriot Act agrees with the Constitution, they’re sort of quiet on that subject. One of the things I did get from the meeting is that I think they are trying to do a better job of screening those folks they’re bringing in from Iraq. But my point of view is, is that I’m not sure why we need to bring in, you know, 18,000 people from Iraq every year when their country’s been liberated, has a democratic government now. And I think they need to be staying home and fixing up their country rather than, you know, coming to our country and living on welfare.
Now people I have to ask you, hows that for a clear and to the point response to a very serious problem?
My thanks to Mr Rand and Mr Church for thei time and wisdom in this matter....
Friday, July 29, 2011
GOP offers Continued Lip Service to Constitutional Fidelity
Speaker of the House, John Boehner aptly demonstrates the theory that he and the GOP’s reascension to the majority is nothing but a “mere shuffling of the deck chairs.” Whether on matters of the nation’s fiscal solvency or unilateral military actions undertaken by President Obama, fidelity to the Constitution continues to remain nothing more than lip service to an electorate exhausted from decades of political-theater.
So we have that. This story here about John Boehner here, this is just – and if you needed any evidence that the new Deck Chair Party is just that, and that there really isn’t much, there’s not too much difference between your basic DeceptiCon fake phony fraud conservative Republican and your basic Democrats, your entry-level Democrat, well, this ought to assuage you of that notion.
Here: “Freshman House Republicans are already putting House Speaker John Boehner in a bind over the budget, with a contingent of Tea Party-backed fiscal conservatives refusing to vote for any more continuing resolutions. Now a group of libertarian-leaning Republicans are balking at Obama’s missile strikes in Libya.” Why isn’t Boehner balking at the missile strikes in Libya? He is the Speaker of the damn House of Representin’. The Constitution is clear on this. If Obama wants to bomb the snot out of a Middle Eastern country and send them back to the Stone Ages, he has to get a Declaration of War from Congress. Unless he has actionable intelligence that none of us know about, that somehow Muammar Gaddafi was planning a WMD attack against the United States, well, then, the Constitution is clear on this.
I mean, even dimwits like Dennis Kucinich know this. Now, how sad is this? Seriously, folks, how sad is this? You have a rogue president who has done everything humanly possible to destroy capital formation in this country, to destroy capital incentives in this country, to jerry-rig and to continue the process, the corrupt process of transferring wealth from the little that we have, that would be we in the middle classes, of transferring our wealth, through the tax system, through the Federal Reserve, through corporatism, from us to his buddies.
This is what – you’ve always got to follow the money here, folks. It’s never really about power. It’s always about money. With a guy like Obama, it’s about money. He’s got a bunch of masters he has to pay back. This isn’t hard to figure out here. You follow the money. And the money trail ultimately leads right to Jeffrey Immelt of GE’s door, ultimately leads right to Warren Buffett’s door and all these other clowns that you see going in and outside of the White House. The big labor unions and what have you, they’re all being paid. I mean, hey, it’s great work if you can find it. The federal government is expanding at a rate unprecedented in modern history. Not even Franklin DelanObama Roosevelt expanded the federal government at the rate that Obama has. Obama seems impervious, seems oblivious to all of the people out here that have grave concerns about our financial situation and our financial malaise. He continues to just thumb his nose at any sort of congressional role in any of this and continues to thumb his nose and just to ignore, and sometimes with impunity, this thing called a Constitution.
Matter of fact, I got a note last night from Professor Kevin Gutzman – I had sent him the question, hey, what do you think about this Obama declaring war thing. And Gutzman writes back, “Well, the Constitution obviously is dead. It doesn’t have any authority to stop these madmen from doing anything. Hmm, somebody ought to write a book about this,” Kevin writes back to me. And he’s joking because he wrote a book called “Who Killed the Constitution?”
So you have Obama acting with impunity at every possible stage here. And you have a change in parties in the Congress, in the House of Representin’. And for the life of me I don’t understand why this is so hard to figure out. I mean, look, all you DeceptiCons out there, you warmongering Republicans, you can have your war. At least try and get the current president to let’s back it off a notch, okay. I know we’re the world’s policemen. I know we have to take care of everyone. There are behinds that need wiping out there. There are French little tooty-baby hands to hold. There are little tea-and-crumpet British hands to hold. “That’s right, mate, can you come help us over here [sobbing] because we’ve got to take care of this Kaddafi fellow.” Set the precedent, Mr. Boehner. Do what’s right. Demand that this president stop. Threaten to defund him. According to the administration’s own propaganda ministers there’s no troops in harm’s way. Am I right about that? We don’t have any boots on the ground, according to Obama; right?
Although I have read reports of a fighter jet going down with mechanical issues already....and that’s just great. Wonderful. Yeah. I wonder how much that jet cost? Hmm. Let’s see, we could go to the used jet lot over there in the United Arab Emirates and kick the tires and see if we can get a replacement. What kind of – hey, Abdul, what kind of deal can you make us on selling us back one of our own fighter jets? But we’re not supposed to have any boots on the ground, so you can’t use this lame-ass excuse, oh, we’re not going to defund our troops. You’re not going to defund any troops in harm’s way because we’re not supposed to have troops in harm’s way.
So where’s Michele Bachmann and the Constitution, hmm? Where are all these freshman Tea Partiers that were taking this document that I hold here in my hand and flailing it about back in January? “Oh, it’s all about being constitutional conservatives.” It is? Well, you have a president that is in need of impeachment here, that has obviously done a 180 around the Constitution. And this is not just according to radical nut jobs like me. This is according to another radical nut job in his own party, Dennis Kucinich. Here, listen to this. Here’s Bill Hemmer asking the pertinent questions of Kucinich on America’s Newsroom yesterday morning, Fox News.
[Clip] David Hemmer: This is what the House Speaker John Boehner said just yesterday: “Before any further military commitments are made, the administration must do a better job of communicating to the American people and to Congress about our mission in Libya and how it will be achieved.” My next guest calls the assault “grave” and “lacks constitutional authority.” Dennis Kucinich is the Democratic congressman from Ohio, and welcome back here to America’s Newsroom. What’s the problem going after Kaddafi?
Dennis Kucinich: Well, here it is. And I’m going to read this, and then I’ll tell you who said it. “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Now, that was Barack Obama who said that on December 20, 2007. [Mike: Oh, really.] We’ve got to be very sure here that we follow the Constitution. And President Obama didn’t do that.
David Hemmer: Well, even if Congress came back and voted on it, would it pass?
Dennis Kucinich: And, you know, it’s after the fact now. I mean, there is a serious matter here that relates to the president going ahead, ordering a strike against Libya, and not involving the Congress. And your guests have talked about the cost. We’re probably into this for a half a billion dollars already. And then you think about there’s no imminent threat, there’s no endgame, are they still after regime change. We could be strengthening Islamic extremists who could be setting up camp in Eastern Libya. There are people who want to divide that nation. This is a nightmare. [End clip]
Yeah, it is a nightmare. And then the next question up is Bill Hemmer’s going, yeah, but if we don’t act, we’re going to have blood on our hands. This has been the media’s line. The members of the fringe media, the members of the Parrot Press Corps have all been out there with the exact same handwringing, oh, woe is me line. Well, if the U.S. doesn’t do something, we’re going to have blood on our hands. Why isn’t anyone else going to have blood on their hands? Why aren’t the Australians going to have blood on their hands, hmm? Why aren’t the Samoans going to have blood on their hands? Why isn’t the blood on the hands of the new democracy fighters in Egypt? And all of the wonderful democracy movements all across the Middle East? Are we going to have blood on our hands if we don’t stop the bloodshed and the violence that’s going on in Yemen? We going to have blood on our hands if we don’t stop the bloodshed and violence that’s going on in Bahrain? It’s all over the place over there.
Hey, we’re going to do this, let’s do it right. Again, start the draft up. It’s unconstitutional, but go ahead. Start the draft up. We’re going to need an army of about 10 million. We’re going to have to send them over there. Every aircraft carrier we have, every tank, every piece of munition.
What about defending the homeland you say?” Screw the homeland. Screw the United States. We don’t need to defend anything here.
We’ve got to go over there and do all these things. And of course this is all free, too. It doesn’t cost anything; right? We may already be a billion dollars into this, and it’s only been four days. Now, wait a minute. The Republicans, the DeceptiCons, say they’re saving us $2 billion a week. We’re spending half of it in Libya. So the savings of now, now the savings are down to a mere billion.
So we have that. This story here about John Boehner here, this is just – and if you needed any evidence that the new Deck Chair Party is just that, and that there really isn’t much, there’s not too much difference between your basic DeceptiCon fake phony fraud conservative Republican and your basic Democrats, your entry-level Democrat, well, this ought to assuage you of that notion.
Here: “Freshman House Republicans are already putting House Speaker John Boehner in a bind over the budget, with a contingent of Tea Party-backed fiscal conservatives refusing to vote for any more continuing resolutions. Now a group of libertarian-leaning Republicans are balking at Obama’s missile strikes in Libya.” Why isn’t Boehner balking at the missile strikes in Libya? He is the Speaker of the damn House of Representin’. The Constitution is clear on this. If Obama wants to bomb the snot out of a Middle Eastern country and send them back to the Stone Ages, he has to get a Declaration of War from Congress. Unless he has actionable intelligence that none of us know about, that somehow Muammar Gaddafi was planning a WMD attack against the United States, well, then, the Constitution is clear on this.
I mean, even dimwits like Dennis Kucinich know this. Now, how sad is this? Seriously, folks, how sad is this? You have a rogue president who has done everything humanly possible to destroy capital formation in this country, to destroy capital incentives in this country, to jerry-rig and to continue the process, the corrupt process of transferring wealth from the little that we have, that would be we in the middle classes, of transferring our wealth, through the tax system, through the Federal Reserve, through corporatism, from us to his buddies.
This is what – you’ve always got to follow the money here, folks. It’s never really about power. It’s always about money. With a guy like Obama, it’s about money. He’s got a bunch of masters he has to pay back. This isn’t hard to figure out here. You follow the money. And the money trail ultimately leads right to Jeffrey Immelt of GE’s door, ultimately leads right to Warren Buffett’s door and all these other clowns that you see going in and outside of the White House. The big labor unions and what have you, they’re all being paid. I mean, hey, it’s great work if you can find it. The federal government is expanding at a rate unprecedented in modern history. Not even Franklin DelanObama Roosevelt expanded the federal government at the rate that Obama has. Obama seems impervious, seems oblivious to all of the people out here that have grave concerns about our financial situation and our financial malaise. He continues to just thumb his nose at any sort of congressional role in any of this and continues to thumb his nose and just to ignore, and sometimes with impunity, this thing called a Constitution.
Matter of fact, I got a note last night from Professor Kevin Gutzman – I had sent him the question, hey, what do you think about this Obama declaring war thing. And Gutzman writes back, “Well, the Constitution obviously is dead. It doesn’t have any authority to stop these madmen from doing anything. Hmm, somebody ought to write a book about this,” Kevin writes back to me. And he’s joking because he wrote a book called “Who Killed the Constitution?”
So you have Obama acting with impunity at every possible stage here. And you have a change in parties in the Congress, in the House of Representin’. And for the life of me I don’t understand why this is so hard to figure out. I mean, look, all you DeceptiCons out there, you warmongering Republicans, you can have your war. At least try and get the current president to let’s back it off a notch, okay. I know we’re the world’s policemen. I know we have to take care of everyone. There are behinds that need wiping out there. There are French little tooty-baby hands to hold. There are little tea-and-crumpet British hands to hold. “That’s right, mate, can you come help us over here [sobbing] because we’ve got to take care of this Kaddafi fellow.” Set the precedent, Mr. Boehner. Do what’s right. Demand that this president stop. Threaten to defund him. According to the administration’s own propaganda ministers there’s no troops in harm’s way. Am I right about that? We don’t have any boots on the ground, according to Obama; right?
Although I have read reports of a fighter jet going down with mechanical issues already....and that’s just great. Wonderful. Yeah. I wonder how much that jet cost? Hmm. Let’s see, we could go to the used jet lot over there in the United Arab Emirates and kick the tires and see if we can get a replacement. What kind of – hey, Abdul, what kind of deal can you make us on selling us back one of our own fighter jets? But we’re not supposed to have any boots on the ground, so you can’t use this lame-ass excuse, oh, we’re not going to defund our troops. You’re not going to defund any troops in harm’s way because we’re not supposed to have troops in harm’s way.
So where’s Michele Bachmann and the Constitution, hmm? Where are all these freshman Tea Partiers that were taking this document that I hold here in my hand and flailing it about back in January? “Oh, it’s all about being constitutional conservatives.” It is? Well, you have a president that is in need of impeachment here, that has obviously done a 180 around the Constitution. And this is not just according to radical nut jobs like me. This is according to another radical nut job in his own party, Dennis Kucinich. Here, listen to this. Here’s Bill Hemmer asking the pertinent questions of Kucinich on America’s Newsroom yesterday morning, Fox News.
[Clip] David Hemmer: This is what the House Speaker John Boehner said just yesterday: “Before any further military commitments are made, the administration must do a better job of communicating to the American people and to Congress about our mission in Libya and how it will be achieved.” My next guest calls the assault “grave” and “lacks constitutional authority.” Dennis Kucinich is the Democratic congressman from Ohio, and welcome back here to America’s Newsroom. What’s the problem going after Kaddafi?
Dennis Kucinich: Well, here it is. And I’m going to read this, and then I’ll tell you who said it. “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Now, that was Barack Obama who said that on December 20, 2007. [Mike: Oh, really.] We’ve got to be very sure here that we follow the Constitution. And President Obama didn’t do that.
David Hemmer: Well, even if Congress came back and voted on it, would it pass?
Dennis Kucinich: And, you know, it’s after the fact now. I mean, there is a serious matter here that relates to the president going ahead, ordering a strike against Libya, and not involving the Congress. And your guests have talked about the cost. We’re probably into this for a half a billion dollars already. And then you think about there’s no imminent threat, there’s no endgame, are they still after regime change. We could be strengthening Islamic extremists who could be setting up camp in Eastern Libya. There are people who want to divide that nation. This is a nightmare. [End clip]
Yeah, it is a nightmare. And then the next question up is Bill Hemmer’s going, yeah, but if we don’t act, we’re going to have blood on our hands. This has been the media’s line. The members of the fringe media, the members of the Parrot Press Corps have all been out there with the exact same handwringing, oh, woe is me line. Well, if the U.S. doesn’t do something, we’re going to have blood on our hands. Why isn’t anyone else going to have blood on their hands? Why aren’t the Australians going to have blood on their hands, hmm? Why aren’t the Samoans going to have blood on their hands? Why isn’t the blood on the hands of the new democracy fighters in Egypt? And all of the wonderful democracy movements all across the Middle East? Are we going to have blood on our hands if we don’t stop the bloodshed and the violence that’s going on in Yemen? We going to have blood on our hands if we don’t stop the bloodshed and violence that’s going on in Bahrain? It’s all over the place over there.
Hey, we’re going to do this, let’s do it right. Again, start the draft up. It’s unconstitutional, but go ahead. Start the draft up. We’re going to need an army of about 10 million. We’re going to have to send them over there. Every aircraft carrier we have, every tank, every piece of munition.
What about defending the homeland you say?” Screw the homeland. Screw the United States. We don’t need to defend anything here.
We’ve got to go over there and do all these things. And of course this is all free, too. It doesn’t cost anything; right? We may already be a billion dollars into this, and it’s only been four days. Now, wait a minute. The Republicans, the DeceptiCons, say they’re saving us $2 billion a week. We’re spending half of it in Libya. So the savings of now, now the savings are down to a mere billion.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
By not defending "The Marriage Act", obama has opened up a can of worms....
The people who founded America and wrote and ratified its Constitution had great foresight, but they did not imagine that it would ever be necessary to define marriage in the Constitution. But shortly after World War II, the United States Supreme Court twisted the First Amendment beyond recognition by misrepresenting it as requiring governmental neutrality between religion and irreligion and prohibiting governmental support of religion generally. Behavior that had been deemed to be criminal — abortion and sodomy — eventually were deemed to be constitutionally protected by activist judges.
The Clinton years involved a tragic downward spiral on the morality front. Polling on the question of whether homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle in 1992, when Clinton was elected President, and now, shows that acceptance has increased substantially. In part because President Clinton supported ONLY a federal law to protect marriage, not a constitutional amendment.
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate dictionary defines marriage as "the mutual relation of husband and wife" and "the institution whereby men and women are joined in a special kind of social and legal dependence for the purpose of founding and maintaining a family."
Of course, homosexual, lesbian or same-sex unions are not marriages Because marriage requires one man and one woman. But, Humpty Dumpty told Alice, in Wonderland: "A word means precisely what I want it to mean, neither more nor less." So many homosexuals and lesbians are demanding that marriage be redefined to include their unions. They cleverly claim to be arbitrarily excluded. But it is they who are being arbitrary. They have found some success with some activist judges, but not with most voters.
President Bush, human and therefore imperfect, remains much better than his predecessor or the alternatives offered by the Democrats in 2000 and 2004. Especially on fundamental moral issues.
Set forth below in full are President Bush's recent remarks reiterating his support for a constitutional amendment to protect marriage instead of to permit its mockery.
"Good morning. Eight years ago, Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage for purposes of federal law as the legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.
"The Act passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 342 to 67, and the Senate by a vote of 85 to 14. Those congressional votes and the passage of similar defensive marriage laws in 38 states express an overwhelming consensus in our country for protecting the institution of marriage.
"In recent months, however, some activist judges and local officials have made an aggressive attempt to redefine marriage. In Massachusetts, four judges on the highest court have indicated they will order the issuance of marriage licenses to applicants of the same gender in May of this year. In San Francisco, city officials have issued thousands of marriage licenses to people of the same gender, contrary to the California family code. That code, which clearly defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, was approved overwhelmingly by the voters of California. A county in New Mexico has also issued marriage licenses to applicants of the same gender. And unless action is taken, we can expect more arbitrary court decisions, more litigation, more defiance of the law by local officials, all of which adds to uncertainty.
"After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence, and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization. Their actions have created confusion on an issue that requires clarity.
"On a matter of such importance, the voice of the people must be heard. Activist courts have left the people with one recourse. If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America. Decisive and democratic action is needed, because attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country.
"The Constitution says that full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts and records and judicial proceedings of every other state. Those who want to change the meaning of marriage will claim that this provision requires all states and cities to recognize same-sex marriages performed anywhere in America. Congress attempted to address this problem in the Defense of Marriage Act, by declaring that no state must accept another state's definition of marriage. My administration will vigorously defend this act of Congress.
"Yet there is no assurance that the Defense of Marriage Act will not, itself, be struck down by activist courts. In that event, every state would be forced to recognize any relationship that judges in Boston or officials in San Francisco choose to call a marriage. Furthermore, even if the Defense of Marriage Act is upheld, the law does not protect marriage within any state or city.
"For all these reasons, the Defense of Marriage requires a constitutional amendment. An amendment to the Constitution is never to be undertaken lightly. The amendment process has addressed many serious matters of national concern. And the preservation of marriage rises to this level of national importance. The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honoring — honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society.
"Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society. Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all. Today I call upon the Congress to promptly pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife. The amendment should fully protect marriage, while leaving the state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage.
"America is a free society, which limits the role of government in the lives of our citizens. This commitment of freedom, however, does not require the redefinition of one of our most basic social institutions. Our government should respect every person, and protect the institution of marriage. There is no contradiction between these responsibilities. We should also conduct this difficult debate in a manner worthy of our country, without bitterness or anger.
"In all that lies ahead, let us match strong convictions with kindness and goodwill and decency."
The key point: "Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society. Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all."
The problem, of course, is secular extremism run amok.
Reverend J. Grant Swank, Jr. summarized the situation confronting the United States Senate sensibly, strongly and succinctly:
"All morality is at stake — now and for the future.
"God has given to us the definition of marriage. God states in His divine revelation that a man shall leave his parents to be joined unto his wife, the two becoming one flesh.
"God also states that practicing homosexuality is an abomination.
"For the United States to counter God is to ask for the wrath of the divine to come our nation. God abides by His own holy nature; He will and must act according to who He is. Therefore, divine judgment in condemnation will come upon those who purposefully disobey God. Judgment of commendation will come upon those who purposefully obey God.
"All moral individuals in America must contact their Congressmembers about this issue — now. The time is short. Ask them to vote for the Marriage Protection Amendment.
Unsurprisingly, a substantial majority of Senate Republicans are co-sponsored the proposed constitutional amendment to protect marriage and is opposed by an even bigger majority of Senate Democrats, led by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the state with an activist judiciary that whimsically decided to recognize "gay marriage" as a right instead of an oxymoronic wrong. This is the same Senator Kennedy who supports abortion as a constitutional right, yet professes to be a Roman Catholic instead of admitting to being a heretic who has excommunicated himself by his perverse political choices.
The message for all good people: support candidates who support marriage instead of mock it.
A constitutional amendment will stop homosexual marriage from becoming the law of the land, reaffirm the fundamental values on which America was founded, and protect America's youth and posterity.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would be for it.
The attitude of the Founders on the subject of homosexuality was expressed by William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws — the basis of legal jurisprudence in America. In addressing sodomy (homosexuality), he found the subject
"What has been here observed . . . [the fact that the punishment fit the crime] ought to be the more clear in proportion as the crime is the more detestable, may be applied to another offence of a still deeper malignity; the infamous crime against nature committed either with man or beast. A crime which ought to be strictly and impartially proved and then as strictly and impartially punished. . . .
I will not act so disagreeable part to my readers as well as myself as to dwell any longer upon a subject the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature [sodomy]. It will be more eligible to imitate in this respect the delicacy of our English law which treats it in its very indictments as a crime not fit to be named; 'peccatum illud horribile, inter christianos non nominandum' (that horrible crime not to be named among Christians). A taciturnity observed likewise by the edict of Constantius and Constans: 'ubi scelus est id, quod non proficit scire, jubemus insurgere leges, armari jura gladio ultore, ut exquisitis poenis subdantur infames, qui sunt, vel qui futuri sunt, rei' (where that crime is found, which is unfit even to know, we command the law to arise armed with an avenging sword that the infamous men who are, or shall in future be guilty of it, may undergo the most severe punishments)."
George Washington, America's Father and first President (as well as President of the Constitution Convention), forbad and punished homosexual acts in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief of America's revolutionary forces. See his general orders for March 14, 1778:
"At a General Court Martial whereof Colo. Tupper was President (10th March 1778), Lieutt. Enslin of Colo. Malcom's Regiment [was] tried for attempting to commit sodomy, with John Monhort a soldier; Secondly, For Perjury in swearing to false accounts, [he was] found guilty of the charges exhibited against him, being breaches of 5th. Article 18th. Section of the Articles of War and [we] do sentence him to be dismiss'd [from] the service with infamy. His Excellency the Commander in Chief approves the sentence and with abhorrence and detestation of such infamous crimes orders Lieutt. Enslin to be drummed out of camp tomorrow morning by all the drummers and fifers in the Army never to return; The drummers and fifers [are] to attend on the Grand Parade at Guard mounting for that Purpose."
No wonder the Founders never dreamed a definition of marriage needed to be included in the Constitution!
Jefferson and the other Founders distinguished between liberty and license and surely did not conceive of the pursuit of happiness as an authorization for "gay marriage."
Look at Jefferson's writings on sodomy.
Such as Jefferson's letter to Edmund Pendleton, written on August 26, 1776.
"The fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes...was never mine. It is only the sanguinary hue of our penal laws which I meant to object to. Punishments I know are necessary, and I would provide them strict and inflexible, but proportioned to the crime. Death might be inflicted for murder and perhaps for treason, [but I] would take out of the description of treason all crimes which are not such in their nature. Rape, buggery, etc., punish by castration. All other crimes by working on high roads, rivers, gallies, etc., a certain time proportioned to the offence... Laws thus proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with. Let mercy be the character of the lawgiver, but let the judge be a mere machine. The mercies of the law will be dispensed equally and impartially to every description of men; those of the judge or of the executive power will be the eccentric impulses of whimsical, capricious designing man." — Thomas Jefferson to Edmund Pendleton, 1776. Papers 1:505 (Emphasis added.)
Three years later, Jefferson drafted a bill concerning Virginia's criminal law providing that the penalty for sodomy should be castration. See Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew A. Lipscomb, ed. (Washington, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904) Vol. I, pp.226-27, from Jefferson's "For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments."
The bill read: "Whosoever shall be guilty of rape, polygamy, or sodomy with a man or woman, shall be punished; if a man, by castration, a woman, by boring through the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch in diameter at the least." (Virginia Bill number 64; authored by Jefferson; 18 June 1779)(Emphasis added.)
When the Constitution was ratified, a majority of the states (New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Connecticut, Virginia, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Jersey) provided the death penalty for those who committed sodomy. All states prohibited it.
What IS irrational is finding that the Constitution prohibits criminalizing behavior viewed as criminal by the people who drafted and ratified the Constitution.
Many thanks to Michael Gaynor
The Clinton years involved a tragic downward spiral on the morality front. Polling on the question of whether homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle in 1992, when Clinton was elected President, and now, shows that acceptance has increased substantially. In part because President Clinton supported ONLY a federal law to protect marriage, not a constitutional amendment.
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate dictionary defines marriage as "the mutual relation of husband and wife" and "the institution whereby men and women are joined in a special kind of social and legal dependence for the purpose of founding and maintaining a family."
Of course, homosexual, lesbian or same-sex unions are not marriages Because marriage requires one man and one woman. But, Humpty Dumpty told Alice, in Wonderland: "A word means precisely what I want it to mean, neither more nor less." So many homosexuals and lesbians are demanding that marriage be redefined to include their unions. They cleverly claim to be arbitrarily excluded. But it is they who are being arbitrary. They have found some success with some activist judges, but not with most voters.
President Bush, human and therefore imperfect, remains much better than his predecessor or the alternatives offered by the Democrats in 2000 and 2004. Especially on fundamental moral issues.
Set forth below in full are President Bush's recent remarks reiterating his support for a constitutional amendment to protect marriage instead of to permit its mockery.
"Good morning. Eight years ago, Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage for purposes of federal law as the legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.
"The Act passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 342 to 67, and the Senate by a vote of 85 to 14. Those congressional votes and the passage of similar defensive marriage laws in 38 states express an overwhelming consensus in our country for protecting the institution of marriage.
"In recent months, however, some activist judges and local officials have made an aggressive attempt to redefine marriage. In Massachusetts, four judges on the highest court have indicated they will order the issuance of marriage licenses to applicants of the same gender in May of this year. In San Francisco, city officials have issued thousands of marriage licenses to people of the same gender, contrary to the California family code. That code, which clearly defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, was approved overwhelmingly by the voters of California. A county in New Mexico has also issued marriage licenses to applicants of the same gender. And unless action is taken, we can expect more arbitrary court decisions, more litigation, more defiance of the law by local officials, all of which adds to uncertainty.
"After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence, and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization. Their actions have created confusion on an issue that requires clarity.
"On a matter of such importance, the voice of the people must be heard. Activist courts have left the people with one recourse. If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America. Decisive and democratic action is needed, because attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country.
"The Constitution says that full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts and records and judicial proceedings of every other state. Those who want to change the meaning of marriage will claim that this provision requires all states and cities to recognize same-sex marriages performed anywhere in America. Congress attempted to address this problem in the Defense of Marriage Act, by declaring that no state must accept another state's definition of marriage. My administration will vigorously defend this act of Congress.
"Yet there is no assurance that the Defense of Marriage Act will not, itself, be struck down by activist courts. In that event, every state would be forced to recognize any relationship that judges in Boston or officials in San Francisco choose to call a marriage. Furthermore, even if the Defense of Marriage Act is upheld, the law does not protect marriage within any state or city.
"For all these reasons, the Defense of Marriage requires a constitutional amendment. An amendment to the Constitution is never to be undertaken lightly. The amendment process has addressed many serious matters of national concern. And the preservation of marriage rises to this level of national importance. The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honoring — honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society.
"Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society. Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all. Today I call upon the Congress to promptly pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife. The amendment should fully protect marriage, while leaving the state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage.
"America is a free society, which limits the role of government in the lives of our citizens. This commitment of freedom, however, does not require the redefinition of one of our most basic social institutions. Our government should respect every person, and protect the institution of marriage. There is no contradiction between these responsibilities. We should also conduct this difficult debate in a manner worthy of our country, without bitterness or anger.
"In all that lies ahead, let us match strong convictions with kindness and goodwill and decency."
The key point: "Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society. Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all."
The problem, of course, is secular extremism run amok.
Reverend J. Grant Swank, Jr. summarized the situation confronting the United States Senate sensibly, strongly and succinctly:
"All morality is at stake — now and for the future.
"God has given to us the definition of marriage. God states in His divine revelation that a man shall leave his parents to be joined unto his wife, the two becoming one flesh.
"God also states that practicing homosexuality is an abomination.
"For the United States to counter God is to ask for the wrath of the divine to come our nation. God abides by His own holy nature; He will and must act according to who He is. Therefore, divine judgment in condemnation will come upon those who purposefully disobey God. Judgment of commendation will come upon those who purposefully obey God.
"All moral individuals in America must contact their Congressmembers about this issue — now. The time is short. Ask them to vote for the Marriage Protection Amendment.
Unsurprisingly, a substantial majority of Senate Republicans are co-sponsored the proposed constitutional amendment to protect marriage and is opposed by an even bigger majority of Senate Democrats, led by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the state with an activist judiciary that whimsically decided to recognize "gay marriage" as a right instead of an oxymoronic wrong. This is the same Senator Kennedy who supports abortion as a constitutional right, yet professes to be a Roman Catholic instead of admitting to being a heretic who has excommunicated himself by his perverse political choices.
The message for all good people: support candidates who support marriage instead of mock it.
A constitutional amendment will stop homosexual marriage from becoming the law of the land, reaffirm the fundamental values on which America was founded, and protect America's youth and posterity.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would be for it.
The attitude of the Founders on the subject of homosexuality was expressed by William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws — the basis of legal jurisprudence in America. In addressing sodomy (homosexuality), he found the subject
"What has been here observed . . . [the fact that the punishment fit the crime] ought to be the more clear in proportion as the crime is the more detestable, may be applied to another offence of a still deeper malignity; the infamous crime against nature committed either with man or beast. A crime which ought to be strictly and impartially proved and then as strictly and impartially punished. . . .
I will not act so disagreeable part to my readers as well as myself as to dwell any longer upon a subject the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature [sodomy]. It will be more eligible to imitate in this respect the delicacy of our English law which treats it in its very indictments as a crime not fit to be named; 'peccatum illud horribile, inter christianos non nominandum' (that horrible crime not to be named among Christians). A taciturnity observed likewise by the edict of Constantius and Constans: 'ubi scelus est id, quod non proficit scire, jubemus insurgere leges, armari jura gladio ultore, ut exquisitis poenis subdantur infames, qui sunt, vel qui futuri sunt, rei' (where that crime is found, which is unfit even to know, we command the law to arise armed with an avenging sword that the infamous men who are, or shall in future be guilty of it, may undergo the most severe punishments)."
George Washington, America's Father and first President (as well as President of the Constitution Convention), forbad and punished homosexual acts in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief of America's revolutionary forces. See his general orders for March 14, 1778:
"At a General Court Martial whereof Colo. Tupper was President (10th March 1778), Lieutt. Enslin of Colo. Malcom's Regiment [was] tried for attempting to commit sodomy, with John Monhort a soldier; Secondly, For Perjury in swearing to false accounts, [he was] found guilty of the charges exhibited against him, being breaches of 5th. Article 18th. Section of the Articles of War and [we] do sentence him to be dismiss'd [from] the service with infamy. His Excellency the Commander in Chief approves the sentence and with abhorrence and detestation of such infamous crimes orders Lieutt. Enslin to be drummed out of camp tomorrow morning by all the drummers and fifers in the Army never to return; The drummers and fifers [are] to attend on the Grand Parade at Guard mounting for that Purpose."
No wonder the Founders never dreamed a definition of marriage needed to be included in the Constitution!
Jefferson and the other Founders distinguished between liberty and license and surely did not conceive of the pursuit of happiness as an authorization for "gay marriage."
Look at Jefferson's writings on sodomy.
Such as Jefferson's letter to Edmund Pendleton, written on August 26, 1776.
"The fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes...was never mine. It is only the sanguinary hue of our penal laws which I meant to object to. Punishments I know are necessary, and I would provide them strict and inflexible, but proportioned to the crime. Death might be inflicted for murder and perhaps for treason, [but I] would take out of the description of treason all crimes which are not such in their nature. Rape, buggery, etc., punish by castration. All other crimes by working on high roads, rivers, gallies, etc., a certain time proportioned to the offence... Laws thus proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with. Let mercy be the character of the lawgiver, but let the judge be a mere machine. The mercies of the law will be dispensed equally and impartially to every description of men; those of the judge or of the executive power will be the eccentric impulses of whimsical, capricious designing man." — Thomas Jefferson to Edmund Pendleton, 1776. Papers 1:505 (Emphasis added.)
Three years later, Jefferson drafted a bill concerning Virginia's criminal law providing that the penalty for sodomy should be castration. See Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew A. Lipscomb, ed. (Washington, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904) Vol. I, pp.226-27, from Jefferson's "For Proportioning Crimes and Punishments."
The bill read: "Whosoever shall be guilty of rape, polygamy, or sodomy with a man or woman, shall be punished; if a man, by castration, a woman, by boring through the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch in diameter at the least." (Virginia Bill number 64; authored by Jefferson; 18 June 1779)(Emphasis added.)
When the Constitution was ratified, a majority of the states (New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Connecticut, Virginia, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Jersey) provided the death penalty for those who committed sodomy. All states prohibited it.
What IS irrational is finding that the Constitution prohibits criminalizing behavior viewed as criminal by the people who drafted and ratified the Constitution.
Many thanks to Michael Gaynor
Saturday, June 25, 2011
You’re hearing the proponents of never-ending war
You’re hearing the proponents of never-ending war, like McCain and Graham and these 37 frauds that claim to be conservatives that signed this letter that I read to you that they sent to House Republican leaders, said don’t you dare withdraw funding for our important mission, our American values-based mission in Libya. You’d better not do it. Here, “Conservatives Warn House Republicans.” These people are not conservatives. And if they are, well, then, you can count me out. That means that I’m not a conservative because they’re not trying to conserve anything.
But anyways, here, think about this. Here’s the point. You’re hearing these people saying, why, the public opinion polls are turning against the war now. Vast swaths of the American electorate are turning against the war. The public is diametrically opposed to the bombing of Libya. The public is diametrically opposed to bombing Yemen back into the Stone Ages, from conducting any more affairs or operations in Somalia or any place else, for that matter. Syria, you name it. And the public now is by a majority diametrically opposed to the continued occupation of Afghanistan.
Now, what does that mean? Well, if you listen to Lindsey Graham, and you listen to John McCain, and you listen to the rest of the DeceptiCons, that doesn’t mean anything. That means that the republic is a bunch of misinformed louts. “Why, these are people that don’t know what the hell – we know what’s good for you. Hah, screw ‘em, screw ‘em. You don’t know what’s good for you. I know what’s good for you. Screw ‘em. Screw you. We’re going to stay over there forever. If we say we’re gonna – we’re smarter than you. We’re politicians. We’re senators. We’re congressmen.” Oh, yeah? Think about this. And I have Lindsey Grahamnesty on this very subject. Here, play the digital media file here.
[Clip] Lindsey Graham: What the President does tonight, if he takes the political track of trying to basically play to the polls, then I think he will put our nation at risk at a time when we’re beginning to show success.
Rolling my eyes: “We’re beginning to show success.” Success as measured by whom? If he starts paying attention to the polls, if he starts doing this for political reasons, well, ladies and gentlemen, there is a reason why the power to declare war and the power of the purse which has to fund the war is vested in the House of Representin’, because the House of Representin’ was at the time the people’s house. This is where you sent your representative to go decide the great questions of the day, as it applied to the then-nascent union. Declaring war would have been one of those great questions. And if you chose wrongly, or if you chose war when the people wanted peace, well, then, you’d get unelected. And they’d send new people there that would upend what you had done and would bring an end to these wars. That’s why we weren’t engaged in any of these excursions. We weren’t engaged in any of these things until Teddy Roosevelt forced us into them in the Spanish-American War. That’s a different show for a different day.
But folks, the point is, is that the reason why the framers of the Constitution left this power in the hands of the representatives is because they wanted to leave it in the hands of the American sheeple. They wanted to provide a mechanism that would prevent presidents, tyrants, and rogue nut job senators like McCain and Graham from ramming war down our throats. They wanted to provide an out. They wanted to provide a check against it. So these people that are saying, why, you can’t read the polls on this, why, you can’t pay attention to the people, you’re missing the entire point, and you’re missing the entire point of why the Constitution and why our federal system was set up the way it was.
Remember, the Constitution was sold on the basis that it would discharge a very few, very limited set of things, very limited set of powers was it to discharge. And security, providing for the common defense, as the Preamble calls it, was one of them. But still, as Joe Pesci says in that famous clip that we have from “With Honors,” the people don’t trust the President, so they vest this power in the House. Why? Specifically so the House of Representin’ does have to take a poll. They do have to respond to their constituents. Have you ever wondered why there is a difference between the electoral terms? Have you ever wondered why there’s a difference between the term of a United States Senator and the term of a member of the House of Representin’? Has that ever posed a question to you?
You know what the explanation is; right?
No, okay. Well, this is talked about in the Federal Convention. The explanation is, is that the members of Congress need to be returned back from whence they came to go answer for what they have done, for what the federal government has done. So that if they got off track, they could be unelected. They could be kicked out of office, and someone new could be sent there to go correct the problem. The reason the Senate was chosen the way it was is because they were supposed to be the steady hand, the august body. And remember, ladies and gentlemen, under this system, the senators must be chosen by the state legislatures, remember that? Seventeenth Amendment changed all that, unfortunately. And now the senators are just long-term members of the House of Representin’. That’s all they are.
But the Senate was set up to be the august body that would provide clarity. It would be of the – the Senate was supposed to be comprised and composed of the wisest men of the era, those that had studied, those that were statesmen, those that were not kneejerk, and they didn’t have to be kneejerk. And the reason that they wanted the Senate to be like this is because they wanted the Senate to be a further check. They wanted United States senators in most instances to say no. To say no. This is why, if you study the debates on the Fourteenth Amendment, which is the greatest debate that was held on an amendment, you’ll find out that almost all of the important stuff that was ever said about the Fourteenth Amendment was said in the Senate.
And so my point is, and it’s a long way to get around to it, but I love talking about history, the point is, is that when the people are saying no more war, you people in the House of Representin’ better pay attention because we will elect people that are going to go there and are going to end this war. Whether you do it right now or whether we have to elect someone in 2012 to end this madness, we will do it.
But anyways, here, think about this. Here’s the point. You’re hearing these people saying, why, the public opinion polls are turning against the war now. Vast swaths of the American electorate are turning against the war. The public is diametrically opposed to the bombing of Libya. The public is diametrically opposed to bombing Yemen back into the Stone Ages, from conducting any more affairs or operations in Somalia or any place else, for that matter. Syria, you name it. And the public now is by a majority diametrically opposed to the continued occupation of Afghanistan.
Now, what does that mean? Well, if you listen to Lindsey Graham, and you listen to John McCain, and you listen to the rest of the DeceptiCons, that doesn’t mean anything. That means that the republic is a bunch of misinformed louts. “Why, these are people that don’t know what the hell – we know what’s good for you. Hah, screw ‘em, screw ‘em. You don’t know what’s good for you. I know what’s good for you. Screw ‘em. Screw you. We’re going to stay over there forever. If we say we’re gonna – we’re smarter than you. We’re politicians. We’re senators. We’re congressmen.” Oh, yeah? Think about this. And I have Lindsey Grahamnesty on this very subject. Here, play the digital media file here.
[Clip] Lindsey Graham: What the President does tonight, if he takes the political track of trying to basically play to the polls, then I think he will put our nation at risk at a time when we’re beginning to show success.
Rolling my eyes: “We’re beginning to show success.” Success as measured by whom? If he starts paying attention to the polls, if he starts doing this for political reasons, well, ladies and gentlemen, there is a reason why the power to declare war and the power of the purse which has to fund the war is vested in the House of Representin’, because the House of Representin’ was at the time the people’s house. This is where you sent your representative to go decide the great questions of the day, as it applied to the then-nascent union. Declaring war would have been one of those great questions. And if you chose wrongly, or if you chose war when the people wanted peace, well, then, you’d get unelected. And they’d send new people there that would upend what you had done and would bring an end to these wars. That’s why we weren’t engaged in any of these excursions. We weren’t engaged in any of these things until Teddy Roosevelt forced us into them in the Spanish-American War. That’s a different show for a different day.
But folks, the point is, is that the reason why the framers of the Constitution left this power in the hands of the representatives is because they wanted to leave it in the hands of the American sheeple. They wanted to provide a mechanism that would prevent presidents, tyrants, and rogue nut job senators like McCain and Graham from ramming war down our throats. They wanted to provide an out. They wanted to provide a check against it. So these people that are saying, why, you can’t read the polls on this, why, you can’t pay attention to the people, you’re missing the entire point, and you’re missing the entire point of why the Constitution and why our federal system was set up the way it was.
Remember, the Constitution was sold on the basis that it would discharge a very few, very limited set of things, very limited set of powers was it to discharge. And security, providing for the common defense, as the Preamble calls it, was one of them. But still, as Joe Pesci says in that famous clip that we have from “With Honors,” the people don’t trust the President, so they vest this power in the House. Why? Specifically so the House of Representin’ does have to take a poll. They do have to respond to their constituents. Have you ever wondered why there is a difference between the electoral terms? Have you ever wondered why there’s a difference between the term of a United States Senator and the term of a member of the House of Representin’? Has that ever posed a question to you?
You know what the explanation is; right?
No, okay. Well, this is talked about in the Federal Convention. The explanation is, is that the members of Congress need to be returned back from whence they came to go answer for what they have done, for what the federal government has done. So that if they got off track, they could be unelected. They could be kicked out of office, and someone new could be sent there to go correct the problem. The reason the Senate was chosen the way it was is because they were supposed to be the steady hand, the august body. And remember, ladies and gentlemen, under this system, the senators must be chosen by the state legislatures, remember that? Seventeenth Amendment changed all that, unfortunately. And now the senators are just long-term members of the House of Representin’. That’s all they are.
But the Senate was set up to be the august body that would provide clarity. It would be of the – the Senate was supposed to be comprised and composed of the wisest men of the era, those that had studied, those that were statesmen, those that were not kneejerk, and they didn’t have to be kneejerk. And the reason that they wanted the Senate to be like this is because they wanted the Senate to be a further check. They wanted United States senators in most instances to say no. To say no. This is why, if you study the debates on the Fourteenth Amendment, which is the greatest debate that was held on an amendment, you’ll find out that almost all of the important stuff that was ever said about the Fourteenth Amendment was said in the Senate.
And so my point is, and it’s a long way to get around to it, but I love talking about history, the point is, is that when the people are saying no more war, you people in the House of Representin’ better pay attention because we will elect people that are going to go there and are going to end this war. Whether you do it right now or whether we have to elect someone in 2012 to end this madness, we will do it.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Restoring Republicanism as the Proper Form of American Governance
go to ImaginativeConservative.org
There you will find Brad Birzer’s review of Mike Churches new movie "The Spirit of 76", but it’s also a lot about the country. It’s a lot about the people. And as Birzer points out, the term “republic” comes from the Greek “res publica.” And that was Greek for that which is good. This is why the Greeks organized republics, because they thought they were good. We think that they’re good. We don’t have a republic anymore. And Birzer was recounting, and I found this amazing, being the history buff that I am. that as early as 1805, there were Mike Churches in 1805. Her name was Mercy Otis Warren. Yeah, I know. Go ahead and laugh.
Mercy Otis Warren was an early historian of the early country, of the early republic. And 1805, a mere 30 years, or 29 years after the American Revolution commenced in earnest, she was already seeing the beginning signs of the decay of the republic, the decay of republicanism. And she resolved, and Birzer quotes her here, to go ahead and write down what it was that the struggle for independence meant, what it was that drove and inspired the men that instigated it, that fought for it, that executed it, that stood by it, that pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to it and what have you. She did all these things. And she wrote them down, and it’s a history of the American Revolution, I believe is what – I think you can get it at Google Books. It’s probably in print, too. Mercy Otis Warren.
And what Birzer was recounting is that we have tried every remedy – and I just thought this was just so poignant and so relevant to today’s discussion. The people in this country have tried every remedy. We have bought every snake oil remedy there is out there. We bought porkulus. We bought stimulus. We bought tax cuts. We bought new presidents. We bought new congresses. We bought new policies. We created agencies. Why, we managed the air, we managed the land, we managed the sea, we managed everything. We regulated banks. We regulated stocks. We did this. We traded with the world. We entered world leagues. Hell, we fought the entire world. We fought terrorism. We did all these things, and we’re still continuing to do all these things. We managed our crops. We paid people to not grow crops. We ruined free trade in our own hemisphere. We tried that. We’ve tried everything. We’ve subsidized industries.
We’ve tried everything except – and this is Brad Birzer’s brilliant, salient point here. We have tried everything to fix our current malaise except republicanism. That gift, that glowing, burning, beautiful gift that those men called the Founders left us. We tried everything except that. That’s the only thing that is left on the damn table unused. That’s criminal. And there are some of us that see that as our escape hatch, as our way out of this. And there are some of us that recognize that it is not the best laid plans of men that lead to success, that lead to prosperity, that lead to happiness.
He also points out that, back in the Founders’ day, happiness was not to be found in an iTunes download. Happiness was not to be found in just abject economic prosperity. Happiness was not to be found at the end of a rainbow filled with gold coins. Happiness was being free. Happiness was having the liberty to govern yourselves. Happiness was having the liberty to move about the countryside without having to show ze papers. Happiness was knowing and was resting comfortable that you had finally established a government that was going to protect and safeguard your liberties, protect the value of your earnings through hard money, gold and silver coins. Happiness was being able to go to your town hall, your church, and debate amongst your friends and your peers and determine the answers to the great questions of that day. Not have them settled for you by nine bandits in black robes. That’s what they thought happiness was. None of this crap that we think it is.
So we’ve tried everything, Brad points out, except what the Founders left us. “Your probably asking why should we do what the fuddy-duddy idiot slave owners in the 17th, 18th centuries did, you idiot?” Well, dropping the slave-owning part, I would say that they were far more successful than Obama has been. I would say they are far more successful than any president in the modern era has been. Yes, that includes Ronald Reagan. I would say that a return to at least those ideals and at least those principles has to yield better results than Obama’s council of economic advisors, which is now poised to leave all of us high and frickin’ dry.
Why, there was going to be a new era, a new green energy economy we’re all going to prosper under so mightily. And the men and the women that designed this nightmare and engaged in it and forced us through the compulsion of government to participate in it, now that it hasn’t worked, now that it’s an unmitigated, inarguable disaster visited upon the good people of these states, now, what are they doing? They’re running for cover back in their universities. They’re running for cover. They get to go back and cash in. Do you get to cash in? What are we left with?
Thanks, Austan Goolsbee. Thanks, Christina Romer. Thanks, Lars Summers. Thanks, Peter Orszborg, Orszag. They’re all gone. They’re all making millions and millions of dollars – gee, I wonder how that happened – back in the “private sector.” But it’s really not the private sector any longer. They did just fine. What they did to us didn’t hurt them one iota. As a matter of fact, they benefited it from it mightily. Boy, talk about serving your country. Hah. How about serving yourself?
There you will find Brad Birzer’s review of Mike Churches new movie "The Spirit of 76", but it’s also a lot about the country. It’s a lot about the people. And as Birzer points out, the term “republic” comes from the Greek “res publica.” And that was Greek for that which is good. This is why the Greeks organized republics, because they thought they were good. We think that they’re good. We don’t have a republic anymore. And Birzer was recounting, and I found this amazing, being the history buff that I am. that as early as 1805, there were Mike Churches in 1805. Her name was Mercy Otis Warren. Yeah, I know. Go ahead and laugh.
Mercy Otis Warren was an early historian of the early country, of the early republic. And 1805, a mere 30 years, or 29 years after the American Revolution commenced in earnest, she was already seeing the beginning signs of the decay of the republic, the decay of republicanism. And she resolved, and Birzer quotes her here, to go ahead and write down what it was that the struggle for independence meant, what it was that drove and inspired the men that instigated it, that fought for it, that executed it, that stood by it, that pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to it and what have you. She did all these things. And she wrote them down, and it’s a history of the American Revolution, I believe is what – I think you can get it at Google Books. It’s probably in print, too. Mercy Otis Warren.
And what Birzer was recounting is that we have tried every remedy – and I just thought this was just so poignant and so relevant to today’s discussion. The people in this country have tried every remedy. We have bought every snake oil remedy there is out there. We bought porkulus. We bought stimulus. We bought tax cuts. We bought new presidents. We bought new congresses. We bought new policies. We created agencies. Why, we managed the air, we managed the land, we managed the sea, we managed everything. We regulated banks. We regulated stocks. We did this. We traded with the world. We entered world leagues. Hell, we fought the entire world. We fought terrorism. We did all these things, and we’re still continuing to do all these things. We managed our crops. We paid people to not grow crops. We ruined free trade in our own hemisphere. We tried that. We’ve tried everything. We’ve subsidized industries.
We’ve tried everything except – and this is Brad Birzer’s brilliant, salient point here. We have tried everything to fix our current malaise except republicanism. That gift, that glowing, burning, beautiful gift that those men called the Founders left us. We tried everything except that. That’s the only thing that is left on the damn table unused. That’s criminal. And there are some of us that see that as our escape hatch, as our way out of this. And there are some of us that recognize that it is not the best laid plans of men that lead to success, that lead to prosperity, that lead to happiness.
He also points out that, back in the Founders’ day, happiness was not to be found in an iTunes download. Happiness was not to be found in just abject economic prosperity. Happiness was not to be found at the end of a rainbow filled with gold coins. Happiness was being free. Happiness was having the liberty to govern yourselves. Happiness was having the liberty to move about the countryside without having to show ze papers. Happiness was knowing and was resting comfortable that you had finally established a government that was going to protect and safeguard your liberties, protect the value of your earnings through hard money, gold and silver coins. Happiness was being able to go to your town hall, your church, and debate amongst your friends and your peers and determine the answers to the great questions of that day. Not have them settled for you by nine bandits in black robes. That’s what they thought happiness was. None of this crap that we think it is.
So we’ve tried everything, Brad points out, except what the Founders left us. “Your probably asking why should we do what the fuddy-duddy idiot slave owners in the 17th, 18th centuries did, you idiot?” Well, dropping the slave-owning part, I would say that they were far more successful than Obama has been. I would say they are far more successful than any president in the modern era has been. Yes, that includes Ronald Reagan. I would say that a return to at least those ideals and at least those principles has to yield better results than Obama’s council of economic advisors, which is now poised to leave all of us high and frickin’ dry.
Why, there was going to be a new era, a new green energy economy we’re all going to prosper under so mightily. And the men and the women that designed this nightmare and engaged in it and forced us through the compulsion of government to participate in it, now that it hasn’t worked, now that it’s an unmitigated, inarguable disaster visited upon the good people of these states, now, what are they doing? They’re running for cover back in their universities. They’re running for cover. They get to go back and cash in. Do you get to cash in? What are we left with?
Thanks, Austan Goolsbee. Thanks, Christina Romer. Thanks, Lars Summers. Thanks, Peter Orszborg, Orszag. They’re all gone. They’re all making millions and millions of dollars – gee, I wonder how that happened – back in the “private sector.” But it’s really not the private sector any longer. They did just fine. What they did to us didn’t hurt them one iota. As a matter of fact, they benefited it from it mightily. Boy, talk about serving your country. Hah. How about serving yourself?
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Just What You Needed: Higher Taxes
So, do you people out there really believe that its the republicans and the conservatives that want to kill grandma and take her medicare away and make her eat cat food???
Then read this, and keep in mind that barack obama is president and that his mandates are dictating financial policies...
While you hear a lot about the federal income tax, you don't hear much about the Social Security tax. That's odd because for many folks especially the self-employed Social Security tax can be the bigger hit. Here are some little-known truths about how the Social Security tax works and how much it can amount to.
As an employee, your wages are hit with the 12.4% Social Security tax up to the annual wage ceiling. Half the Social Security tax bill (equal to 6.2%) is withheld from your paychecks. The other half is paid by your employer. Unless you understand how the tax works and closely examine your pay stubs, you may be blissfully unaware of how much the Social Security tax actually costs.
The Social Security tax wage ceiling for both 2010 and 2011 is $106,800. If you made that much or more last year, the Social Security tax hit on your 2010 wages was a whopping $13,243 (12.4% x $106,800). Half came out of your paycheck. Your employer paid the other half.
For 2011, the tax hit is less, thanks to a one-year 2 percentage-point reduction in the Social Security tax withholding rate on wages -- from the normal 6.2% to 4.2% (your employer's 6.2% rate is unchanged). For 2012 and beyond, however, Social Security tax withholding on your wages will jump back to the standard 6.2% rate.
While many employees may not realize the magnitude of the Social Security tax, self-employed folks know it all too well. That's because the self-employed must pay the entire 12.4% tax rate out of their own pockets, based on the amount of their net self-employment income. This is one big reason why companies often prefer to treat workers as self-employed independent contractors rather than employees. Companies don't owe any Social Security tax on amounts paid to independent contractors.
For both 2010 and 2011, the Social Security tax self-employment income ceiling is $106,800 (same as the wage ceiling for employees). So if your 2010 self-employment income was $106,800 or more, you paid the Social Security tax maximum of $13,243 last year (12.4% x $106,800 = $13,243).
In 2011, the hit will be less thanks to a one-year 2 percentage-point reduction in the Social Security tax rate on self-employment income -- from the normal 12.4% to 10.4%. For 2012 and beyond, however, the Social Security tax on self-employment income is scheduled to return to the standard 12.4% rate.
To give you an idea of how the Social Security tax can add up over your working life, consider my personal situation. In 35 years behind the grindstone (about half as an employee and the other half self-employed), I've paid $219,000 in Social Security tax. My employers paid another $41,000. That amounts to $260,000 in total. During my time as a self-employed guy, I've had some years where my Social Tax bill exceeded my combined federal and state income tax bills.
Believe me, if I could get the $260,000 back, stop paying the tax, and forego receiving any benefits, I would do it in a heartbeat. In fact, if I could just stop paying the tax in exchange for walking away from any future benefits, I would do that too. Why? Because I have big doubts I will actually receive the promised level of benefits when the time comes.
And thanks to the government's official contention that there has been little to no inflation over the past few years, the Social Security tax ceiling has been stuck at $106,800 since 2009. However, the latest Social Security Administration projection says it will start rising again in 2012 and beyond. The projected ceilings for the next nine years are as follows.
If these numbers pan out, the maximum Social Security tax hit in 2020 would be $19,009 (12.4% x $153,300). That's assuming Congress doesn't increase the tax rate, which could easily happen. There's also a chance the ceiling will be increased beyond what you see here or even entirely removed in an attempt to put the system on a sounder financial footing. If there's no ceiling, you would owe Social Security tax on wages and self-employment income on every dollar you earn.
Another misunderstanding about Social Security: Some people think the government has set up an account with their name on it to hold the money to pay for their future Social Security benefits. After all, that must be where all the Social Security taxes on people's wages and self-employment income go, right? Wrong. There are no individual accounts. In fact, when the Social Security system runs a surplus (which it has in most years until now), the federal government sucks out the excess cash and issues the system an IOU. But the only way those IOUs will ever be paid is through future taxes. Meanwhile, the system is now projected to run out of money (including those nebulous IOUs) in 2036 unless taxes are raised or benefits are cut.
Notice that no one is even speaking about this in the main stream media...lets worry about giving billions to the rest of the world, or lets give billions in subsidies to illegals then to do whats right and take care of our own...
by Bill Bischoff
Friday, May 27, 2011
Then read this, and keep in mind that barack obama is president and that his mandates are dictating financial policies...
While you hear a lot about the federal income tax, you don't hear much about the Social Security tax. That's odd because for many folks especially the self-employed Social Security tax can be the bigger hit. Here are some little-known truths about how the Social Security tax works and how much it can amount to.
As an employee, your wages are hit with the 12.4% Social Security tax up to the annual wage ceiling. Half the Social Security tax bill (equal to 6.2%) is withheld from your paychecks. The other half is paid by your employer. Unless you understand how the tax works and closely examine your pay stubs, you may be blissfully unaware of how much the Social Security tax actually costs.
The Social Security tax wage ceiling for both 2010 and 2011 is $106,800. If you made that much or more last year, the Social Security tax hit on your 2010 wages was a whopping $13,243 (12.4% x $106,800). Half came out of your paycheck. Your employer paid the other half.
For 2011, the tax hit is less, thanks to a one-year 2 percentage-point reduction in the Social Security tax withholding rate on wages -- from the normal 6.2% to 4.2% (your employer's 6.2% rate is unchanged). For 2012 and beyond, however, Social Security tax withholding on your wages will jump back to the standard 6.2% rate.
While many employees may not realize the magnitude of the Social Security tax, self-employed folks know it all too well. That's because the self-employed must pay the entire 12.4% tax rate out of their own pockets, based on the amount of their net self-employment income. This is one big reason why companies often prefer to treat workers as self-employed independent contractors rather than employees. Companies don't owe any Social Security tax on amounts paid to independent contractors.
For both 2010 and 2011, the Social Security tax self-employment income ceiling is $106,800 (same as the wage ceiling for employees). So if your 2010 self-employment income was $106,800 or more, you paid the Social Security tax maximum of $13,243 last year (12.4% x $106,800 = $13,243).
In 2011, the hit will be less thanks to a one-year 2 percentage-point reduction in the Social Security tax rate on self-employment income -- from the normal 12.4% to 10.4%. For 2012 and beyond, however, the Social Security tax on self-employment income is scheduled to return to the standard 12.4% rate.
To give you an idea of how the Social Security tax can add up over your working life, consider my personal situation. In 35 years behind the grindstone (about half as an employee and the other half self-employed), I've paid $219,000 in Social Security tax. My employers paid another $41,000. That amounts to $260,000 in total. During my time as a self-employed guy, I've had some years where my Social Tax bill exceeded my combined federal and state income tax bills.
Believe me, if I could get the $260,000 back, stop paying the tax, and forego receiving any benefits, I would do it in a heartbeat. In fact, if I could just stop paying the tax in exchange for walking away from any future benefits, I would do that too. Why? Because I have big doubts I will actually receive the promised level of benefits when the time comes.
And thanks to the government's official contention that there has been little to no inflation over the past few years, the Social Security tax ceiling has been stuck at $106,800 since 2009. However, the latest Social Security Administration projection says it will start rising again in 2012 and beyond. The projected ceilings for the next nine years are as follows.
If these numbers pan out, the maximum Social Security tax hit in 2020 would be $19,009 (12.4% x $153,300). That's assuming Congress doesn't increase the tax rate, which could easily happen. There's also a chance the ceiling will be increased beyond what you see here or even entirely removed in an attempt to put the system on a sounder financial footing. If there's no ceiling, you would owe Social Security tax on wages and self-employment income on every dollar you earn.
Another misunderstanding about Social Security: Some people think the government has set up an account with their name on it to hold the money to pay for their future Social Security benefits. After all, that must be where all the Social Security taxes on people's wages and self-employment income go, right? Wrong. There are no individual accounts. In fact, when the Social Security system runs a surplus (which it has in most years until now), the federal government sucks out the excess cash and issues the system an IOU. But the only way those IOUs will ever be paid is through future taxes. Meanwhile, the system is now projected to run out of money (including those nebulous IOUs) in 2036 unless taxes are raised or benefits are cut.
Notice that no one is even speaking about this in the main stream media...lets worry about giving billions to the rest of the world, or lets give billions in subsidies to illegals then to do whats right and take care of our own...
by Bill Bischoff
Friday, May 27, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Is the Sun Setting on America?
Everything is not about economics. I know we’re taught to believe that everything has something to do with economics. Things don’t matter unless they have something to do with economics. Everything must pass through the economic lens. We view everything through the economic lens. We’re taught to view everything through the economic lens. We’re reared, we’re bred to view things through the economic lens. But not all things are economic. And Russell Kirk, one of the few conservatives in the last century that understood this – I think Ronald Reagan at some level understood this, too. And Kirk wrote this:
“Men read and write only because they are convinced that certain great subjects are worth reading and writing about. Four great themes, it seems to me, have been the inspiration of most important imaginative literature from the dawn of Greek civilization down to our age. The first of these is religion: the description of the relation between divine nature and human nature, as in Hesiod and Dante and Milton. The second is heroism: the nobility of strong and earnest men, as in Homer or Virgil or Mallory. The third is love: the devotion beyond mere appetite, as in classical legend or medieval romance. The fourth is the intricacy of character and class, ranging all the way from Chaucer to Conrad.
“Now, a society which has lost its religious convictions and its society denies itself the first theme. A society which denies the right to greatness and to distinctions among men deprives itself of the second theme.” We’re two for two so far, folks. “A society which takes love for no more than the carnal appetite cannot attach real significance even to the novel of adultery.” Three for three now. And finally, “A society which looks upon men as mere production and consumption units of interchangeable value cannot understand the subtle shadings of personality and rank of a different sort of age.” That’s four for four. “The springs of the imagination thus are dried up. For a time, satire can exist by pointing out the decay of faith and heroism and love and variety; but when even the memory of these themes fade, then satire, too, comes to an end. Then boredom triumphs in life and art.”
Spot on. That is just spot on. Could not be more spot on. And the interesting thing here is, what do you do about it? I mean, the interesting question is what do you do about it? How are you going to fix that? You have teachers that don’t even know who Dante is. Who in the hell reads Dante? Here, here’s a good question for the average reader out there. And I don’t mean to vilify; I don’t mean to impugn. Simply demonstrating – and maybe I’m selling you guys short because you guys are smart......
Finish the title of the work: “Dante’s blank.” And how many stages were there? Can you answer that question, well can you???
We got “Inferno.” But I’m not sure of the stages.....Right???
Hmm. Hmm. I’m not even sure that I’ve read some of it. The point is we don’t read these classics anymore. We’re immune. Why, we read John Grisham and Stephen King now. They're our heroes. And they all deal in adulterated rubbish. It’s all rubbish. We’re obsessed with the decay of great men, like Johnny Cash. We don’t want to hear about how good Johnny Cash was. We want to hear about him popping pills. We don’t want to hear about how great any artist was or any man was. We want to know the dirty underbelly. We want to know who he was screwing on the side. We want to know about his adulterous, illicit affairs. We’re not allowed to have heroes anymore, is the point. A hero is an adulterer who admits it. That’s a hero.
Maybe this is why many people turn and see men like Navy Seals as modern-day heroes.
Like Ilana Mercer was saying the other day, if you’re a big, manly kind of man, and you have all those virtues that once made men great, but there’s no market for those things anymore, you know, we ostracize manly men in society.
There’s not a man on television that knows how to screw in a light bulb these days. We have to have women do it. You watch a television show, the biggest, most badass cops on that Chicago police show, what is the name of that, the one with...
Yeah, yeah, “Chicago Code.” Yeah, Jennifer Beals is the hero.
Do you guys love that show??? Of course you guys do...
Well, sure, you got a chick hero. Watch “CSI,” the women are heroes. They're running the damn show. We’re not allowed to have male heroes. We’ve so feminized our society, Gal Qaeda has brainwashed everyone. Everyone’s equal. We don’t need women in the – women have expanded beyond doing this and that and the other. And women don’t – man, you’ve just taken one of the most beautiful things in human existence, which is the female form, and the feminine spirit, the mothering, maternal instinct, you’ve just taken it, you’ve just pooped on it. You want women to go out there and kill people? Really? Oh, God. Seriously? Where’s the goodness? Where’s the goodness. Where is the good nurturing, the motherly part? Where does that come in? “We don’t need that. We have government programs, you idiot.”
Do you not see the point? In this incessant suicidal drive to make everyone numerically equal, everyone equal in all things, you destroy the beauty that made them different. People don’t – you know what, there are not enough men and women on TV and radio and in print that say things like I just said and I was inspired to say by reading Birzer’s essay, posted at the Imaginative Conservative website. Not enough. Doesn’t happen enough.
You know one of the things that really pisses me off, ladies and gentlemen? And ladies, don’t take this wrong. It pisses me off, it angers me for what I think are all the right reasons. When I hear politicians and talking heads, dunderheads, droning on about our brave men and women in uniform. Pardon me, call me old-fashioned, I don’t care, I don’t want brave women in uniform. I don’t think that there are – I happen to believe that there are certain things I don’t want for my daughters, and picking up a rifle and having them go fight a war is one of them. Being enlisted and wearing a uniform is one other. Now, some of you are, “Chris, Chris, they have every....” Well, look, there is a role. But it’s not being the brave man or woman. It’s being the brave woman because men don`t count anymore.....
“Men read and write only because they are convinced that certain great subjects are worth reading and writing about. Four great themes, it seems to me, have been the inspiration of most important imaginative literature from the dawn of Greek civilization down to our age. The first of these is religion: the description of the relation between divine nature and human nature, as in Hesiod and Dante and Milton. The second is heroism: the nobility of strong and earnest men, as in Homer or Virgil or Mallory. The third is love: the devotion beyond mere appetite, as in classical legend or medieval romance. The fourth is the intricacy of character and class, ranging all the way from Chaucer to Conrad.
“Now, a society which has lost its religious convictions and its society denies itself the first theme. A society which denies the right to greatness and to distinctions among men deprives itself of the second theme.” We’re two for two so far, folks. “A society which takes love for no more than the carnal appetite cannot attach real significance even to the novel of adultery.” Three for three now. And finally, “A society which looks upon men as mere production and consumption units of interchangeable value cannot understand the subtle shadings of personality and rank of a different sort of age.” That’s four for four. “The springs of the imagination thus are dried up. For a time, satire can exist by pointing out the decay of faith and heroism and love and variety; but when even the memory of these themes fade, then satire, too, comes to an end. Then boredom triumphs in life and art.”
Spot on. That is just spot on. Could not be more spot on. And the interesting thing here is, what do you do about it? I mean, the interesting question is what do you do about it? How are you going to fix that? You have teachers that don’t even know who Dante is. Who in the hell reads Dante? Here, here’s a good question for the average reader out there. And I don’t mean to vilify; I don’t mean to impugn. Simply demonstrating – and maybe I’m selling you guys short because you guys are smart......
Finish the title of the work: “Dante’s blank.” And how many stages were there? Can you answer that question, well can you???
We got “Inferno.” But I’m not sure of the stages.....Right???
Hmm. Hmm. I’m not even sure that I’ve read some of it. The point is we don’t read these classics anymore. We’re immune. Why, we read John Grisham and Stephen King now. They're our heroes. And they all deal in adulterated rubbish. It’s all rubbish. We’re obsessed with the decay of great men, like Johnny Cash. We don’t want to hear about how good Johnny Cash was. We want to hear about him popping pills. We don’t want to hear about how great any artist was or any man was. We want to know the dirty underbelly. We want to know who he was screwing on the side. We want to know about his adulterous, illicit affairs. We’re not allowed to have heroes anymore, is the point. A hero is an adulterer who admits it. That’s a hero.
Maybe this is why many people turn and see men like Navy Seals as modern-day heroes.
Like Ilana Mercer was saying the other day, if you’re a big, manly kind of man, and you have all those virtues that once made men great, but there’s no market for those things anymore, you know, we ostracize manly men in society.
There’s not a man on television that knows how to screw in a light bulb these days. We have to have women do it. You watch a television show, the biggest, most badass cops on that Chicago police show, what is the name of that, the one with...
Yeah, yeah, “Chicago Code.” Yeah, Jennifer Beals is the hero.
Do you guys love that show??? Of course you guys do...
Well, sure, you got a chick hero. Watch “CSI,” the women are heroes. They're running the damn show. We’re not allowed to have male heroes. We’ve so feminized our society, Gal Qaeda has brainwashed everyone. Everyone’s equal. We don’t need women in the – women have expanded beyond doing this and that and the other. And women don’t – man, you’ve just taken one of the most beautiful things in human existence, which is the female form, and the feminine spirit, the mothering, maternal instinct, you’ve just taken it, you’ve just pooped on it. You want women to go out there and kill people? Really? Oh, God. Seriously? Where’s the goodness? Where’s the goodness. Where is the good nurturing, the motherly part? Where does that come in? “We don’t need that. We have government programs, you idiot.”
Do you not see the point? In this incessant suicidal drive to make everyone numerically equal, everyone equal in all things, you destroy the beauty that made them different. People don’t – you know what, there are not enough men and women on TV and radio and in print that say things like I just said and I was inspired to say by reading Birzer’s essay, posted at the Imaginative Conservative website. Not enough. Doesn’t happen enough.
You know one of the things that really pisses me off, ladies and gentlemen? And ladies, don’t take this wrong. It pisses me off, it angers me for what I think are all the right reasons. When I hear politicians and talking heads, dunderheads, droning on about our brave men and women in uniform. Pardon me, call me old-fashioned, I don’t care, I don’t want brave women in uniform. I don’t think that there are – I happen to believe that there are certain things I don’t want for my daughters, and picking up a rifle and having them go fight a war is one of them. Being enlisted and wearing a uniform is one other. Now, some of you are, “Chris, Chris, they have every....” Well, look, there is a role. But it’s not being the brave man or woman. It’s being the brave woman because men don`t count anymore.....
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Obama Finally Visits U.S.-Mexico Border
The president is leading the progressive charge in forcing environmental conscientiousness upon the masses. He has made it his presidential mission to implement "green energy" and "clean jobs" into the American economy, market signals be damned. Obama believes that the accomplishment of such a wildly noble, unquestioningly beneficial goal must be solely the duty of the federal government, but if he were to examine past governmental efforts to intervene in environmental affairs, he might notice that those experiments did far more harm than good. President Obama laid out his plan for (amnesty) comprehensive immigration reform today in El Paso, Texas, saying (illegal immigrants make good democrat voters) immigrants are the way to expand the middle class, make America more competitive on a global level and said immigration reform is an economic imperative, which it is considering illegal immigration costs Arizona and California over $12 billion per year.
The President did what was expected by lumping all immigrants together and failed to distinguish the difference between the two, in fact, Obama went out of his way to make sure Americans believed their was no difference as he referenced immigrants from different countries coming to America and seeing Lady Liberty.
It was a reminder of a simple idea, as old as America itself.
E pluribus, unum. Out of many, one.
We define ourselves as a nation of immigrants - a nation that welcomes those willing to embrace America's precepts. That's why millions of people, ancestors to most of us, braved hardship and great risk to come here - so they could be free to work and worship and live their lives in peace. The Asian immigrants who made their way to California's Angel Island. The Germans and Scandinavians who settled across the Midwest. The waves of the Irish, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Jewish immigrants who leaned against the railing to catch that first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.
President Obama said the fence was now "basically complete." This declaration is completely false. The fence along the southern border in total equals 670 miles. The entire southern border is 2000 miles long, which is nowhere near, "basically complete." On top of a meager border fence, the February 2011, Government Accountability Office report shows "1120 southwest border miles have not yet achieved operational control." Also, according to Sheriffs working and living on the U.S.-Mexico border, Obama's assertion that his administration has done it's part to enforce the border is laughable.
Well, over the past two years we have answered those concerns. Under Secretary Napolitano's leadership, we have strengthened border security beyond what many believed was possible. They wanted more agents on the border. Well, we now have more boots on the ground on the southwest border than at any time in our history. The Border Patrol has 20,000 agents more than twice as many as there were in 2004, a build up that began under President Bush and that we have continued.
They wanted a fence. Well, that fence is now basically complete.
So, we have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement.
Obama took credit for confiscating 64 percent more weapons than ever before. Well, that's what happens when the federal government sends thousands of guns into Mexico in the first place through Operation Fast and Furious under the Obama Justice Department and ATF, of course it becomes easier to confiscate more guns when you put more into an area to begin with.
Obama also called again for the passing of the DREAM Act which failed in the Senate during the previous lame duck session. As a refresher, the DREAM Act if passed would allow children of illegal immigrants to gain citizenship if they go to college or join the military. Or as Obama put it, "Stop punishing children for their parents' mistakes."
Obama asked both sides to avoid playing politics with the issue in order to get to the next election, which was ironic considering the odds of completing immigration reform in the short time remaining during his first term are slim, making his speech today look solely like a political move.
That's one reason it's been so difficult to reform our broken immigration system. When an issue is this complex and raises such strong feelings, it's easier for politicians to defer the problem until after the next election. And there's always a next election. So we've seen a lot blame and politics and ugly rhetoric. We've seen good faith efforts - from leaders of both parties - fall prey to the usual Washington games.
On another note, Obama asked the audience if he needed to build a moat on the border to make republicans happy. There is already a moat on the border Mr. President, it's called the Rio Grande. This was the first visit by Obama to the U.S.-Mexico border despite being invited numerous times by local officials in border states to do so.
The President did what was expected by lumping all immigrants together and failed to distinguish the difference between the two, in fact, Obama went out of his way to make sure Americans believed their was no difference as he referenced immigrants from different countries coming to America and seeing Lady Liberty.
It was a reminder of a simple idea, as old as America itself.
E pluribus, unum. Out of many, one.
We define ourselves as a nation of immigrants - a nation that welcomes those willing to embrace America's precepts. That's why millions of people, ancestors to most of us, braved hardship and great risk to come here - so they could be free to work and worship and live their lives in peace. The Asian immigrants who made their way to California's Angel Island. The Germans and Scandinavians who settled across the Midwest. The waves of the Irish, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Jewish immigrants who leaned against the railing to catch that first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.
President Obama said the fence was now "basically complete." This declaration is completely false. The fence along the southern border in total equals 670 miles. The entire southern border is 2000 miles long, which is nowhere near, "basically complete." On top of a meager border fence, the February 2011, Government Accountability Office report shows "1120 southwest border miles have not yet achieved operational control." Also, according to Sheriffs working and living on the U.S.-Mexico border, Obama's assertion that his administration has done it's part to enforce the border is laughable.
Well, over the past two years we have answered those concerns. Under Secretary Napolitano's leadership, we have strengthened border security beyond what many believed was possible. They wanted more agents on the border. Well, we now have more boots on the ground on the southwest border than at any time in our history. The Border Patrol has 20,000 agents more than twice as many as there were in 2004, a build up that began under President Bush and that we have continued.
They wanted a fence. Well, that fence is now basically complete.
So, we have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement.
Obama took credit for confiscating 64 percent more weapons than ever before. Well, that's what happens when the federal government sends thousands of guns into Mexico in the first place through Operation Fast and Furious under the Obama Justice Department and ATF, of course it becomes easier to confiscate more guns when you put more into an area to begin with.
Obama also called again for the passing of the DREAM Act which failed in the Senate during the previous lame duck session. As a refresher, the DREAM Act if passed would allow children of illegal immigrants to gain citizenship if they go to college or join the military. Or as Obama put it, "Stop punishing children for their parents' mistakes."
Obama asked both sides to avoid playing politics with the issue in order to get to the next election, which was ironic considering the odds of completing immigration reform in the short time remaining during his first term are slim, making his speech today look solely like a political move.
That's one reason it's been so difficult to reform our broken immigration system. When an issue is this complex and raises such strong feelings, it's easier for politicians to defer the problem until after the next election. And there's always a next election. So we've seen a lot blame and politics and ugly rhetoric. We've seen good faith efforts - from leaders of both parties - fall prey to the usual Washington games.
On another note, Obama asked the audience if he needed to build a moat on the border to make republicans happy. There is already a moat on the border Mr. President, it's called the Rio Grande. This was the first visit by Obama to the U.S.-Mexico border despite being invited numerous times by local officials in border states to do so.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Unemployment is Up. Worse News: Economists Unaffected
There is an old saying that even a broken clock is right twice a day, well that phrase does NOT seem to apply to our mighty, central, economic planner overlords in Washington DC. We know this because they are always, shocked or surprised by the “unexpected rise” in first time unemployment benefit claims like they are today; as 474,000 souls trudged off to the unemployment line last week in defiance of Obama and company’s best laid plans.
So, I keep wondering when the economic and social engineers in Mordor on the Potomac are going to create a better economist? With all of their magical powers it would seem to me that Congress, the Commerce Department and the White House should be able to conjure up stable, predictable, job growth every week, alas, our Wizards of Work seem to be able to do only one thing consistently: spend Other People’s Money.
I am also kept wondering when will the beauty of simple economics as a fix dawn on the American shoeple? Here is a simple, 4 step plan to grow the economy:
1.Stop printing more money and start recalling what you have printed
2.Stop hiring federal workers and start firing most of those you have hired
3.Stop running health care systems and start repealing health care acts (all of them)
4.End all our wars, invasions and occupations and bring the army home to honorable discharges.
The only problem with my plan is it WILL create massive unemployment…. for economists.
A special shout out to my friend Mike Church...
So, I keep wondering when the economic and social engineers in Mordor on the Potomac are going to create a better economist? With all of their magical powers it would seem to me that Congress, the Commerce Department and the White House should be able to conjure up stable, predictable, job growth every week, alas, our Wizards of Work seem to be able to do only one thing consistently: spend Other People’s Money.
I am also kept wondering when will the beauty of simple economics as a fix dawn on the American shoeple? Here is a simple, 4 step plan to grow the economy:
1.Stop printing more money and start recalling what you have printed
2.Stop hiring federal workers and start firing most of those you have hired
3.Stop running health care systems and start repealing health care acts (all of them)
4.End all our wars, invasions and occupations and bring the army home to honorable discharges.
The only problem with my plan is it WILL create massive unemployment…. for economists.
A special shout out to my friend Mike Church...
Saturday, April 16, 2011
No More Statism
Not surprisingly, liberals are calling for tax hikes on the rich as their way to pay for the ever-burgeoning costs of the welfare-warfare state.
Conservatives pretend to oppose tax hikes. Their preferred method of funding the welfare-warfare state is through the Federal Reserve, whose job is to provide the money and credit needed to fund excess federal spending without the need to raise income taxes.
That's what passes for philosophical debate between liberals and conservatives. The fight isn't over the legitimacy of the welfare-warfare state way of life. They both agree on that. The fight is over how to fund it (and, of course, which side gets to run it).
The controversy perfectly reflects how different we libertarians are from statists. We libertarians don't argue over whether the welfare-warfare state should be funded by income taxation or inflation. Our position is: Immediately repeal all welfare-state programs (beginning with the crown jewels of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid), repeal all interventionist and regulatory programs (beginning with the drug war), and dismantle the U.S. government's military empire, close the bases, and discharge the troops into the private sector.
Oh, and abolish the IRS and the income tax, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid taxes, and the Federal Reserve.
In other words, leave people free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth, leave people free to do whatever they want with their own money, leave people free to make whatever choices they want in life so long as their conduct is peaceful, and depend on a well-armed, self-trained citizen soldiery that would be ready to voluntarily come to the defense of our country in the extremely unlikely event of an invasion.
With major exceptions like slavery and tariffs and many minor exceptions, the libertarian position was the position of America’s Founding Fathers. They abhorred the statist philosophy that has now held our nation in its grip for many decades.
With the exception of President Lincoln’s unconstitutional imposition of an income tax to fund his war against the seceding states, the United States had no income taxation or IRS from the nation’s founding in 1787 to the early part of the 20th century. Americans were free to keep everything they earned.
When the federal government didn’t tax income, lots of poor people became wealthy. Even more entered the ranks of the middle class.
For most of that entire time, there was no central bank, paper money, or legal-tender laws. (Again, Lincoln’s tenure was a big exception.) Americans used gold and silver coins as their official money, which is what the Constitution required. When government was unable to debase the currency, the result was the greatest buildup of productive capital that people had ever seen.
The massive buildup of capital, in turn, made workers more productive. More productivity meant higher revenues. Higher revenues brought higher wages for the workers.
For the first time in history, masses of poor people were breaking free of the chains of poverty, which is precisely why thousands of penniless immigrants were fleeing the European and Asian lands of statism to come to a land of no welfare-warfare state. (Did I mention that America had no immigration controls during most of that period as well?)
Our American ancestors also detested militarism, standing armies, conscription, and empires. After all, they had rebelled against an empire, together with the ever-burgeoning taxes, debt, and inflation needed to fund it. Many of them had immigrated to America to escape conscription and perpetual war.
Charity was entirely voluntary for more than 100 years. By and large, Americans were a religious people. The thought of using the power of Caesar to interfere with the exercise of God’s great gift of free will was anathema to our ancestors. People had the moral right to decide what to do with their own money, they firmly believed. That’s what freedom of choice is all about. They would never have tolerated mandatory government-enforced “charity” in the form of such things as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, grants, and subsidies.
Today, the federal government is mired in ever-increasing spending, debt, taxes, and inflation. How can that surprise anyone? Americans have abandoned the founding principles of their nation in favor of the statism from which our American ancestors rebelled or fled.
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, subsidies, grants, income taxation, IRS, the drug war, the DEA, the Federal Reserve, a thousand foreign military bases, the CIA, the NSA, the TSA, occupations of foreign countries, undeclared wars of aggression, standby conscription, kidnapping, torture, Gitmo, secret prison camps, invasions of privacy, unreasonable searches and seizures, torture, and assassination.
It’s all part and parcel of the statism that now afflicts our land. That’s the root of America’s economic and social woes. There is only one way to restore freedom, peace, prosperity, and harmony to our land, and it lies not in figuring out how to fund the welfare-warfare state way of life. It lies in rejecting the welfare-warfare state way of life in favor of the libertarian principles that guided the founding of our nation — no income tax, no IRS, no Federal Reserve, no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or other welfare, no drug war, no militarism, no empire.
In other words, the key to our nation’s future well-being lies with no more statism.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Conservatives pretend to oppose tax hikes. Their preferred method of funding the welfare-warfare state is through the Federal Reserve, whose job is to provide the money and credit needed to fund excess federal spending without the need to raise income taxes.
That's what passes for philosophical debate between liberals and conservatives. The fight isn't over the legitimacy of the welfare-warfare state way of life. They both agree on that. The fight is over how to fund it (and, of course, which side gets to run it).
The controversy perfectly reflects how different we libertarians are from statists. We libertarians don't argue over whether the welfare-warfare state should be funded by income taxation or inflation. Our position is: Immediately repeal all welfare-state programs (beginning with the crown jewels of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid), repeal all interventionist and regulatory programs (beginning with the drug war), and dismantle the U.S. government's military empire, close the bases, and discharge the troops into the private sector.
Oh, and abolish the IRS and the income tax, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid taxes, and the Federal Reserve.
In other words, leave people free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth, leave people free to do whatever they want with their own money, leave people free to make whatever choices they want in life so long as their conduct is peaceful, and depend on a well-armed, self-trained citizen soldiery that would be ready to voluntarily come to the defense of our country in the extremely unlikely event of an invasion.
With major exceptions like slavery and tariffs and many minor exceptions, the libertarian position was the position of America’s Founding Fathers. They abhorred the statist philosophy that has now held our nation in its grip for many decades.
With the exception of President Lincoln’s unconstitutional imposition of an income tax to fund his war against the seceding states, the United States had no income taxation or IRS from the nation’s founding in 1787 to the early part of the 20th century. Americans were free to keep everything they earned.
When the federal government didn’t tax income, lots of poor people became wealthy. Even more entered the ranks of the middle class.
For most of that entire time, there was no central bank, paper money, or legal-tender laws. (Again, Lincoln’s tenure was a big exception.) Americans used gold and silver coins as their official money, which is what the Constitution required. When government was unable to debase the currency, the result was the greatest buildup of productive capital that people had ever seen.
The massive buildup of capital, in turn, made workers more productive. More productivity meant higher revenues. Higher revenues brought higher wages for the workers.
For the first time in history, masses of poor people were breaking free of the chains of poverty, which is precisely why thousands of penniless immigrants were fleeing the European and Asian lands of statism to come to a land of no welfare-warfare state. (Did I mention that America had no immigration controls during most of that period as well?)
Our American ancestors also detested militarism, standing armies, conscription, and empires. After all, they had rebelled against an empire, together with the ever-burgeoning taxes, debt, and inflation needed to fund it. Many of them had immigrated to America to escape conscription and perpetual war.
Charity was entirely voluntary for more than 100 years. By and large, Americans were a religious people. The thought of using the power of Caesar to interfere with the exercise of God’s great gift of free will was anathema to our ancestors. People had the moral right to decide what to do with their own money, they firmly believed. That’s what freedom of choice is all about. They would never have tolerated mandatory government-enforced “charity” in the form of such things as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, grants, and subsidies.
Today, the federal government is mired in ever-increasing spending, debt, taxes, and inflation. How can that surprise anyone? Americans have abandoned the founding principles of their nation in favor of the statism from which our American ancestors rebelled or fled.
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, subsidies, grants, income taxation, IRS, the drug war, the DEA, the Federal Reserve, a thousand foreign military bases, the CIA, the NSA, the TSA, occupations of foreign countries, undeclared wars of aggression, standby conscription, kidnapping, torture, Gitmo, secret prison camps, invasions of privacy, unreasonable searches and seizures, torture, and assassination.
It’s all part and parcel of the statism that now afflicts our land. That’s the root of America’s economic and social woes. There is only one way to restore freedom, peace, prosperity, and harmony to our land, and it lies not in figuring out how to fund the welfare-warfare state way of life. It lies in rejecting the welfare-warfare state way of life in favor of the libertarian principles that guided the founding of our nation — no income tax, no IRS, no Federal Reserve, no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or other welfare, no drug war, no militarism, no empire.
In other words, the key to our nation’s future well-being lies with no more statism.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Friday, March 25, 2011
Tom Woods: The Phony Arguments for Presidential War Powers
By: Thomas E. Woods Jr.
(WIRE REPORT) - A U.S. president has attacked another country, so it’s time for the scam artists to pull out their fake constitutional arguments in support of our dear leader. Not all of them are doing so, to be sure – in fact, it’s been rather a hoot to hear supporters of the Iraq war suddenly caterwauling about the Constitution’s restraints on the power of the president to initiate hostilities abroad. But I’m told that radio host Mark Levin criticized Ron Paul on his program the other day on the precise grounds that the congressman didn’t know what he was talking about when it came to war powers and the Constitution.
That means it’s time to lay out all the common claims, both constitutional and historical, advanced on behalf of presidential war powers, and refute them one by one.
“The president has the power to initiate hostilities without consulting Congress.”
Ever since the Korean War, Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution – which refers to the president as the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States” – has been interpreted this way.
But what the framers actually meant by that clause was that once war has been declared, it was the President’s responsibility as commander-in-chief to direct the war. Alexander Hamilton spoke in such terms when he said that the president, although lacking the power to declare war, would have “the direction of war when authorized or begun.” The president acting alone was authorized only to repel sudden attacks (hence the decision to withhold from him only the power to “declare” war, not to “make” war, which was thought to be a necessary emergency power in case of foreign attack).
The Framers assigned to Congress what David Gray Adler has called “senior status in a partnership with the president for the purpose of conducting foreign policy.” Congress possesses the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,” “to raise and support Armies,” to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal,” to “provide for the common Defense,” and even “to declare War.” Congress shares with the president the power to make treaties and to appoint ambassadors. As for the president himself, he is assigned only two powers relating to foreign affairs: he is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and he has the power to receive ambassadors.
At the Constitutional Convention, the delegates expressly disclaimed any intention to model the American executive exactly after the British monarchy. James Wilson, for example, remarked that the powers of the British king did not constitute “a proper guide in defining the executive powers. Some of these prerogatives were of a Legislative nature. Among others that of war & peace.” Edmund Randolph likewise contended that the delegates had “no motive to be governed by the British Government as our prototype.”
To repose such foreign-policy authority in the legislative rather than the executive branch of government was a deliberate and dramatic break with the British model of government with which they were most familiar, as well as with that of other nations, where the executive branch (in effect, the monarch) possessed all such rights, including the exclusive right to declare war. The Framers of the Constitution believed that history testified to the executive’s penchant for war. As James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson, “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.” Madison even proposed excluding the president from the negotiation of peace treaties, on the grounds that he might obstruct a settlement out of a desire to derive “power and importance from a state of war.”
At the Constitutional Convention, Pierce Butler “was for vesting the power in the President, who will have all the requisite qualities, and will not make war but when the nation will support it.” Butler’s motion did not receive so much as a second.
James Wilson assured the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, “This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large: this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives: from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion that nothing but our interest can draw us into war.”
In Federalist #69, Alexander Hamilton explained that the president’s authority “would be nominally the same with that of the King of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first general and admiral of the confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war, and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies; all which by the constitution under consideration would appertain to the Legislature.”
According to John Bassett Moore, the great authority on international law who (among other credentials) occupied the first professorship of international law at Columbia University, “There can hardly be room for doubt that the framers of the constitution, when they vested in Congress the power to declare war, never imagined that they were leaving it to the executive to use the military and naval forces of the United States all over the world for the purpose of actually coercing other nations, occupying their territory, and killing their soldiers and citizens, all according to his own notions of the fitness of things, as long as he refrained from calling his action war or persisted in calling it peace.”
In conformity with this understanding, George Washington’s operations on his own authority against the Indians were confined to defensive measures, conscious as he was that the approval of Congress would be necessary for anything further. “The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress,” he said, “therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure.”
“John Adams made war on France without consulting Congress.”
Supporters of a broad executive war power have sometimes appealed to the Quasi War with France, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, as an example of unilateral warmaking on the part of the president. Francis Wormuth, an authority on war powers and the Constitution, describes that contention as “altogether false.” John Adams “took absolutely no independent action. Congress passed a series of acts that amounted, so the Supreme Court said, to a declaration of imperfect war; and Adams complied with these statutes.” (Wormuth’s reference to the Supreme Court recalls a decision rendered in the wake of the Quasi War, in which the Court ruled that Congress could either declare war or approve hostilities by means of statutes that authorized an undeclared war. The Quasi War was an example of the latter case.)
An incident that occurred during the Quasi War throws further light on the true extent of presidential war powers. Congress authorized the president to seize vessels sailing to French ports. But President Adams, acting on his own authority and without the sanction of Congress, instructed American ships to capture vessels sailing either to or from French ports. Captain George Little, acting under the authority of Adams’ order, seized a Danish ship sailing from a French port. When Little was sued for damages, the case made its way to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Captain Little could indeed be sued for damages in the case. “In short,” writes war powers expert Louis Fisher in summary, “congressional policy announced in a statute necessarily prevails over inconsistent presidential orders and military actions. Presidential orders, even those issued as Commander in Chief, are subject to restrictions imposed by Congress.”
“Jefferson acted unilaterally against the Barbary pirates.”
Another incident frequently cited on behalf of a general presidential power to deploy American forces and commence hostilities involves Jefferson’s policy toward the Barbary states, which demanded protection money from governments whose ships sailed the Mediterranean. Immediately prior to Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801, Congress passed naval legislation that, among other things, provided for six frigates that “shall be officered and manned as the President of the United States may direct.” It was to this instruction and authority that Jefferson appealed when he ordered American ships to the Mediterranean. In the event of a declaration of war on the United States by the Barbary powers, these ships were to “protect our commerce & chastise their insolence – by sinking, burning or destroying their ships & Vessels wherever you shall find them.”
In late 1801, the pasha of Tripoli did declare war on the U.S. Jefferson sent a small force to the area to protect American ships and citizens against potential aggression, but insisted that he was “unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense”; Congress alone could authorize “measures of offense also.” Thus Jefferson told Congress: “I communicate [to you] all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight.”
Jefferson consistently deferred to Congress in his dealings with the Barbary pirates. “Recent studies by the Justice Department and statements made during congressional debate,” Louis Fisher writes, “imply that Jefferson took military measures against the Barbary powers without seeking the approval or authority of Congress. In fact, in at least ten statutes, Congress explicitly authorized military action by Presidents Jefferson and Madison. Congress passed legislation in 1802 to authorize the President to equip armed vessels to protect commerce and seamen in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and adjoining seas. The statute authorized American ships to seize vessels belonging to the Bey of Tripoli, with the captured property distributed to those who brought the vessels into port. Additional legislation in 1804 gave explicit support for ‘warlike operations against the regency of Tripoli, or any other of the Barbary powers.’”
Consider also Jefferson’s statement to Congress in late 1805 regarding a boundary dispute with Spain over Louisiana and Florida. According to Jefferson, Spain appeared to have an “intention to advance on our possessions until they shall be repressed by an opposing force. Considering that Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war, I have thought it my duty to await their authority for using force…. But the course to be pursued will require the command of means which it belongs to Congress exclusively to yield or to deny. To them I communicate every fact material for their information and the documents necessary to enable them to judge for themselves. To their wisdom, then, I look for the course I am to pursue, and will pursue with sincere zeal that which they shall approve.”
“Presidents have sent men into battle hundreds of times without getting congressional authorization.”
This argument, like so much propaganda, originated with the U.S. government itself. At the time of the Korean War, a number of congressmen contended that “history will show that on more than 100 occasions in the life of this Republic the President as Commander in Chief has ordered the fleet or the troops to do certain things which involved the risk of war” without the consent of Congress. In 1966, in defense of the Vietnam War, the State Department adopted a similar line: “Since the Constitution was adopted there have been at least 125 instances in which the President has ordered the armed forces to take action or maintain positions abroad without obtaining prior congressional authorization, starting with the ‘undeclared war’ with France (1798-1800).”
We have already seen that the war with France in no way lends support to those who favor broad presidential war powers. As for the rest, the great presidential scholar Edward S. Corwin pointed out that this lengthy list of alleged precedents consisted mainly of “fights with pirates, landings of small naval contingents on barbarous or semi-barbarous coasts, the dispatch of small bodies of troops to chase bandits or cattle rustlers across the Mexican border, and the like.”
To support their position, therefore, the neoconservatives and their left-liberal clones are counting chases of cattle rustlers as examples of presidential warmaking, and as precedents for sending millions of Americans into war with foreign governments on the other side of the globe.
“The War Powers Resolution of 1973 gives the president the power to commit troops anywhere he likes for 90 days.”
Which is why it’s manifestly unconstitutional. I’ve written on this elsewhere.
“If the United Nations authorizes military action, the president does not need to consult Congress.”
The UN Charter itself notes that the Security Council’s commitment of member nations’ troops must be authorized by these nations’ “respective constitutional processes.” The Congressional Research Service’s Louis Fisher explains further: “Assured by Truman that he understood and respected the war prerogatives of Congress, the Senate ratified the UN Charter. Article 43 provided that all UN members shall make available to the Security Council, in accordance with special agreements, armed forces and other assistance. Each nation would ratify those agreements ‘in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.’ It then became the obligation of Congress to pass legislation to define the constitutional processes of the United States. Section 6 of the UN Participation Act of 1945 states with singular clarity that the special agreements ‘shall be subject to the approval of the Congress by appropriate Act or joint resolution.’ The procedure was specific and clear. Both branches knew what the Constitution required. The President would first have to obtain the approval of Congress.”
The UN Participation Act’s provisions regarding military action and the president have often been misread, thanks to a qualification in Article 6. But that qualification simply means that once the president has obtained congressional approval for a special agreement with the UN Security Council to make American forces available to the UN, he does not need congressional approval a second time to implement that agreement.
Fisher elaborates on the UN Participation Act of 1945 here. (See especially pp. 1249-1250.)
The remaining claims, somewhat more technical in nature, have been put forth most memorably by John Yoo, former deputy assistant attorney general under George W. Bush. These are paraphrases of Yoo’s positions. They are replied to in much more detail in Who Killed the Constitution? by the present author and Kevin Gutzman.
“In the eighteenth century, a ‘declaration of war’ was a merely rhetorical and communicative act – a ‘courtesy to the enemy’ – and did not involve the initiation or authorization of hostilities. Thus in granting Congress the power to declare war, the Constitution had merely given it the power to communicate to an enemy people (as well as to neutrals and to the country’s own citizens that a state of war existed; the president, on the other hand, retained the power actually to bring the United States into war by commencing military action.”
This is partly correct. In the eighteenth century a “declaration of war” could indeed have this lesser meaning. But a review of eighteenth-century usage reveals that to “declare war” could also mean actually to begin a war.
Consider also that as the Constitution was being debated, Federalists sought to reassure skeptical anti-Federalists that the president’s powers were not so expansive after all. For one thing, the Federalists said, the president lacked the power to declare war. In order for their argument to carry any weight, “declare war” must have been taken to mean the power to initiate hostilities – for no anti-Federalist would have been appeased by “Sure, the president can take the country to war on his own initiative, but the power to draft declaratory statements will rest with Congress!”
If Yoo’s argument were correct, we should expect to see presidents in the years immediately following ratification of the Constitution taking bold military action without concerning themselves much about the will of Congress, which according to Yoo had only the power to issue declaratory statements. But as we have seen in the examples of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, the opposite was in fact the case; these early presidents were careful to defer to Congress.
“Congress may have some power over major wars, but lesser uses of force are reserved to the president alone.”
The evidence from the early republic contradicts this claim. Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase summed up the reigning doctrine in 1800: “Congress is empowered to declare a general war, or congress may wage a limited war; limited in place, in objects and in time.” The 1804 case of Little v. Barreme involved a ship commander who, during the Quasi War with France in the late 1790s, had seized a ship that he thought was illegally trading with France. The commander was following a directive from President John Adams in seizing this ship, which had been coming from France. But Congress had authorized President Adams only to seize ships going to France; in short, the president’s directive ventured beyond what congress had called for in this limited war. In a unanimous decision, the Court declared that the commander was liable for damages even though he had acted in accordance with a presidential directive. No such presidential directive could override the authority of congress, said the Court.
“The Vesting Clause grants the president a wide array of unspecified powers pertaining to foreign affairs.”
You won’t hear this argument in many casual discussions of presidential war powers, but since Yoo cited it in a draft memorandum he wrote for the Department of Defense in early 2002, it’s worth a brief reply. (Again, a lengthier reply can be found in Who Killed the Constitution?)
The Vesting Clause can be found in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution; “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” According to this view, the Vesting Clause bestows on the president a host of unspecified powers in addition to the specific ones listed in the rest of Article II. The Framers of the Constitution, they say, thereby showed that they wanted the president to exercise all powers that would have been recognized in the eighteenth century as being fundamentally executive in nature, even if those powers are not actually mentioned in the Constitution. Congress, on the other hand, is assigned no such open-ended authority but is instead limited by the Constitution to all “legislative Powers herein granted,” a reference to the specific list of powers that then follows. The conclusion: the president may rightly exercise all powers relating to foreign affairs (since such powers are by their nature executive) except those specifically assigned to Congress.
Unfortunately for Yoo, he will not find any support for his views on executive power and the Vesting Clause in the state constitutions drawn up after 1776, in the Federalist, or in the state ratification debates. Nowhere in the state constitutions do we see any indication of an intent to vest the executive with an array of unspecified powers beyond those that were expressly mentioned. In Federalist #69, Alexander Hamilton argued that the American president would be much weaker than the British king, and cited the specific list of powers the Constitution grants the president. That argument would have been absurd and dishonest if the Vesting Clause had given the president an additional reservoir of powers beyond those Hamilton catalogued. Curtis Bradley and Martin Flaherty, writing in the Michigan Law Review, conclude that “in the thousands of pages recording these debates the argument that the Vesting Clause grants the president a general foreign affairs power simply does not appear.”
In short, there is no constitutional support for the presidential war powers claimed by mainstream left and right. That’s why they usually wind up claiming that the congressional power to declare war is “obsolete.” They can’t deny its existence, so they deny the document in which it is contained. And that means they lose the argument.
Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is the New York Times bestselling author of 11 books. A senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Woods holds a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard and his master's, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University.
(WIRE REPORT) - A U.S. president has attacked another country, so it’s time for the scam artists to pull out their fake constitutional arguments in support of our dear leader. Not all of them are doing so, to be sure – in fact, it’s been rather a hoot to hear supporters of the Iraq war suddenly caterwauling about the Constitution’s restraints on the power of the president to initiate hostilities abroad. But I’m told that radio host Mark Levin criticized Ron Paul on his program the other day on the precise grounds that the congressman didn’t know what he was talking about when it came to war powers and the Constitution.
That means it’s time to lay out all the common claims, both constitutional and historical, advanced on behalf of presidential war powers, and refute them one by one.
“The president has the power to initiate hostilities without consulting Congress.”
Ever since the Korean War, Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution – which refers to the president as the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States” – has been interpreted this way.
But what the framers actually meant by that clause was that once war has been declared, it was the President’s responsibility as commander-in-chief to direct the war. Alexander Hamilton spoke in such terms when he said that the president, although lacking the power to declare war, would have “the direction of war when authorized or begun.” The president acting alone was authorized only to repel sudden attacks (hence the decision to withhold from him only the power to “declare” war, not to “make” war, which was thought to be a necessary emergency power in case of foreign attack).
The Framers assigned to Congress what David Gray Adler has called “senior status in a partnership with the president for the purpose of conducting foreign policy.” Congress possesses the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,” “to raise and support Armies,” to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal,” to “provide for the common Defense,” and even “to declare War.” Congress shares with the president the power to make treaties and to appoint ambassadors. As for the president himself, he is assigned only two powers relating to foreign affairs: he is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and he has the power to receive ambassadors.
At the Constitutional Convention, the delegates expressly disclaimed any intention to model the American executive exactly after the British monarchy. James Wilson, for example, remarked that the powers of the British king did not constitute “a proper guide in defining the executive powers. Some of these prerogatives were of a Legislative nature. Among others that of war & peace.” Edmund Randolph likewise contended that the delegates had “no motive to be governed by the British Government as our prototype.”
To repose such foreign-policy authority in the legislative rather than the executive branch of government was a deliberate and dramatic break with the British model of government with which they were most familiar, as well as with that of other nations, where the executive branch (in effect, the monarch) possessed all such rights, including the exclusive right to declare war. The Framers of the Constitution believed that history testified to the executive’s penchant for war. As James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson, “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.” Madison even proposed excluding the president from the negotiation of peace treaties, on the grounds that he might obstruct a settlement out of a desire to derive “power and importance from a state of war.”
At the Constitutional Convention, Pierce Butler “was for vesting the power in the President, who will have all the requisite qualities, and will not make war but when the nation will support it.” Butler’s motion did not receive so much as a second.
James Wilson assured the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, “This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large: this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives: from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion that nothing but our interest can draw us into war.”
In Federalist #69, Alexander Hamilton explained that the president’s authority “would be nominally the same with that of the King of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first general and admiral of the confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war, and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies; all which by the constitution under consideration would appertain to the Legislature.”
According to John Bassett Moore, the great authority on international law who (among other credentials) occupied the first professorship of international law at Columbia University, “There can hardly be room for doubt that the framers of the constitution, when they vested in Congress the power to declare war, never imagined that they were leaving it to the executive to use the military and naval forces of the United States all over the world for the purpose of actually coercing other nations, occupying their territory, and killing their soldiers and citizens, all according to his own notions of the fitness of things, as long as he refrained from calling his action war or persisted in calling it peace.”
In conformity with this understanding, George Washington’s operations on his own authority against the Indians were confined to defensive measures, conscious as he was that the approval of Congress would be necessary for anything further. “The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress,” he said, “therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure.”
“John Adams made war on France without consulting Congress.”
Supporters of a broad executive war power have sometimes appealed to the Quasi War with France, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, as an example of unilateral warmaking on the part of the president. Francis Wormuth, an authority on war powers and the Constitution, describes that contention as “altogether false.” John Adams “took absolutely no independent action. Congress passed a series of acts that amounted, so the Supreme Court said, to a declaration of imperfect war; and Adams complied with these statutes.” (Wormuth’s reference to the Supreme Court recalls a decision rendered in the wake of the Quasi War, in which the Court ruled that Congress could either declare war or approve hostilities by means of statutes that authorized an undeclared war. The Quasi War was an example of the latter case.)
An incident that occurred during the Quasi War throws further light on the true extent of presidential war powers. Congress authorized the president to seize vessels sailing to French ports. But President Adams, acting on his own authority and without the sanction of Congress, instructed American ships to capture vessels sailing either to or from French ports. Captain George Little, acting under the authority of Adams’ order, seized a Danish ship sailing from a French port. When Little was sued for damages, the case made its way to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Captain Little could indeed be sued for damages in the case. “In short,” writes war powers expert Louis Fisher in summary, “congressional policy announced in a statute necessarily prevails over inconsistent presidential orders and military actions. Presidential orders, even those issued as Commander in Chief, are subject to restrictions imposed by Congress.”
“Jefferson acted unilaterally against the Barbary pirates.”
Another incident frequently cited on behalf of a general presidential power to deploy American forces and commence hostilities involves Jefferson’s policy toward the Barbary states, which demanded protection money from governments whose ships sailed the Mediterranean. Immediately prior to Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801, Congress passed naval legislation that, among other things, provided for six frigates that “shall be officered and manned as the President of the United States may direct.” It was to this instruction and authority that Jefferson appealed when he ordered American ships to the Mediterranean. In the event of a declaration of war on the United States by the Barbary powers, these ships were to “protect our commerce & chastise their insolence – by sinking, burning or destroying their ships & Vessels wherever you shall find them.”
In late 1801, the pasha of Tripoli did declare war on the U.S. Jefferson sent a small force to the area to protect American ships and citizens against potential aggression, but insisted that he was “unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense”; Congress alone could authorize “measures of offense also.” Thus Jefferson told Congress: “I communicate [to you] all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight.”
Jefferson consistently deferred to Congress in his dealings with the Barbary pirates. “Recent studies by the Justice Department and statements made during congressional debate,” Louis Fisher writes, “imply that Jefferson took military measures against the Barbary powers without seeking the approval or authority of Congress. In fact, in at least ten statutes, Congress explicitly authorized military action by Presidents Jefferson and Madison. Congress passed legislation in 1802 to authorize the President to equip armed vessels to protect commerce and seamen in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and adjoining seas. The statute authorized American ships to seize vessels belonging to the Bey of Tripoli, with the captured property distributed to those who brought the vessels into port. Additional legislation in 1804 gave explicit support for ‘warlike operations against the regency of Tripoli, or any other of the Barbary powers.’”
Consider also Jefferson’s statement to Congress in late 1805 regarding a boundary dispute with Spain over Louisiana and Florida. According to Jefferson, Spain appeared to have an “intention to advance on our possessions until they shall be repressed by an opposing force. Considering that Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war, I have thought it my duty to await their authority for using force…. But the course to be pursued will require the command of means which it belongs to Congress exclusively to yield or to deny. To them I communicate every fact material for their information and the documents necessary to enable them to judge for themselves. To their wisdom, then, I look for the course I am to pursue, and will pursue with sincere zeal that which they shall approve.”
“Presidents have sent men into battle hundreds of times without getting congressional authorization.”
This argument, like so much propaganda, originated with the U.S. government itself. At the time of the Korean War, a number of congressmen contended that “history will show that on more than 100 occasions in the life of this Republic the President as Commander in Chief has ordered the fleet or the troops to do certain things which involved the risk of war” without the consent of Congress. In 1966, in defense of the Vietnam War, the State Department adopted a similar line: “Since the Constitution was adopted there have been at least 125 instances in which the President has ordered the armed forces to take action or maintain positions abroad without obtaining prior congressional authorization, starting with the ‘undeclared war’ with France (1798-1800).”
We have already seen that the war with France in no way lends support to those who favor broad presidential war powers. As for the rest, the great presidential scholar Edward S. Corwin pointed out that this lengthy list of alleged precedents consisted mainly of “fights with pirates, landings of small naval contingents on barbarous or semi-barbarous coasts, the dispatch of small bodies of troops to chase bandits or cattle rustlers across the Mexican border, and the like.”
To support their position, therefore, the neoconservatives and their left-liberal clones are counting chases of cattle rustlers as examples of presidential warmaking, and as precedents for sending millions of Americans into war with foreign governments on the other side of the globe.
“The War Powers Resolution of 1973 gives the president the power to commit troops anywhere he likes for 90 days.”
Which is why it’s manifestly unconstitutional. I’ve written on this elsewhere.
“If the United Nations authorizes military action, the president does not need to consult Congress.”
The UN Charter itself notes that the Security Council’s commitment of member nations’ troops must be authorized by these nations’ “respective constitutional processes.” The Congressional Research Service’s Louis Fisher explains further: “Assured by Truman that he understood and respected the war prerogatives of Congress, the Senate ratified the UN Charter. Article 43 provided that all UN members shall make available to the Security Council, in accordance with special agreements, armed forces and other assistance. Each nation would ratify those agreements ‘in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.’ It then became the obligation of Congress to pass legislation to define the constitutional processes of the United States. Section 6 of the UN Participation Act of 1945 states with singular clarity that the special agreements ‘shall be subject to the approval of the Congress by appropriate Act or joint resolution.’ The procedure was specific and clear. Both branches knew what the Constitution required. The President would first have to obtain the approval of Congress.”
The UN Participation Act’s provisions regarding military action and the president have often been misread, thanks to a qualification in Article 6. But that qualification simply means that once the president has obtained congressional approval for a special agreement with the UN Security Council to make American forces available to the UN, he does not need congressional approval a second time to implement that agreement.
Fisher elaborates on the UN Participation Act of 1945 here. (See especially pp. 1249-1250.)
The remaining claims, somewhat more technical in nature, have been put forth most memorably by John Yoo, former deputy assistant attorney general under George W. Bush. These are paraphrases of Yoo’s positions. They are replied to in much more detail in Who Killed the Constitution? by the present author and Kevin Gutzman.
“In the eighteenth century, a ‘declaration of war’ was a merely rhetorical and communicative act – a ‘courtesy to the enemy’ – and did not involve the initiation or authorization of hostilities. Thus in granting Congress the power to declare war, the Constitution had merely given it the power to communicate to an enemy people (as well as to neutrals and to the country’s own citizens that a state of war existed; the president, on the other hand, retained the power actually to bring the United States into war by commencing military action.”
This is partly correct. In the eighteenth century a “declaration of war” could indeed have this lesser meaning. But a review of eighteenth-century usage reveals that to “declare war” could also mean actually to begin a war.
Consider also that as the Constitution was being debated, Federalists sought to reassure skeptical anti-Federalists that the president’s powers were not so expansive after all. For one thing, the Federalists said, the president lacked the power to declare war. In order for their argument to carry any weight, “declare war” must have been taken to mean the power to initiate hostilities – for no anti-Federalist would have been appeased by “Sure, the president can take the country to war on his own initiative, but the power to draft declaratory statements will rest with Congress!”
If Yoo’s argument were correct, we should expect to see presidents in the years immediately following ratification of the Constitution taking bold military action without concerning themselves much about the will of Congress, which according to Yoo had only the power to issue declaratory statements. But as we have seen in the examples of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, the opposite was in fact the case; these early presidents were careful to defer to Congress.
“Congress may have some power over major wars, but lesser uses of force are reserved to the president alone.”
The evidence from the early republic contradicts this claim. Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase summed up the reigning doctrine in 1800: “Congress is empowered to declare a general war, or congress may wage a limited war; limited in place, in objects and in time.” The 1804 case of Little v. Barreme involved a ship commander who, during the Quasi War with France in the late 1790s, had seized a ship that he thought was illegally trading with France. The commander was following a directive from President John Adams in seizing this ship, which had been coming from France. But Congress had authorized President Adams only to seize ships going to France; in short, the president’s directive ventured beyond what congress had called for in this limited war. In a unanimous decision, the Court declared that the commander was liable for damages even though he had acted in accordance with a presidential directive. No such presidential directive could override the authority of congress, said the Court.
“The Vesting Clause grants the president a wide array of unspecified powers pertaining to foreign affairs.”
You won’t hear this argument in many casual discussions of presidential war powers, but since Yoo cited it in a draft memorandum he wrote for the Department of Defense in early 2002, it’s worth a brief reply. (Again, a lengthier reply can be found in Who Killed the Constitution?)
The Vesting Clause can be found in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution; “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” According to this view, the Vesting Clause bestows on the president a host of unspecified powers in addition to the specific ones listed in the rest of Article II. The Framers of the Constitution, they say, thereby showed that they wanted the president to exercise all powers that would have been recognized in the eighteenth century as being fundamentally executive in nature, even if those powers are not actually mentioned in the Constitution. Congress, on the other hand, is assigned no such open-ended authority but is instead limited by the Constitution to all “legislative Powers herein granted,” a reference to the specific list of powers that then follows. The conclusion: the president may rightly exercise all powers relating to foreign affairs (since such powers are by their nature executive) except those specifically assigned to Congress.
Unfortunately for Yoo, he will not find any support for his views on executive power and the Vesting Clause in the state constitutions drawn up after 1776, in the Federalist, or in the state ratification debates. Nowhere in the state constitutions do we see any indication of an intent to vest the executive with an array of unspecified powers beyond those that were expressly mentioned. In Federalist #69, Alexander Hamilton argued that the American president would be much weaker than the British king, and cited the specific list of powers the Constitution grants the president. That argument would have been absurd and dishonest if the Vesting Clause had given the president an additional reservoir of powers beyond those Hamilton catalogued. Curtis Bradley and Martin Flaherty, writing in the Michigan Law Review, conclude that “in the thousands of pages recording these debates the argument that the Vesting Clause grants the president a general foreign affairs power simply does not appear.”
In short, there is no constitutional support for the presidential war powers claimed by mainstream left and right. That’s why they usually wind up claiming that the congressional power to declare war is “obsolete.” They can’t deny its existence, so they deny the document in which it is contained. And that means they lose the argument.
Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is the New York Times bestselling author of 11 books. A senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Woods holds a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard and his master's, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University.
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