Category Archives: Rule of Law

Monday’s Talking Points

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Headlines on various news outlets this morning: 

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Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel

Hagel Fired for Contradicting Obama over ISIS threat!

From FOX News…

OBAMA FINDS MIDTERM SCAPEGOAT IN HAGEL
In another strong sign of President Obama’s hard tack left in the wake of a midterm drubbing, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is heading for the exits. First reported by the NYT, the cashiering of the Pentagon boss comes after “the two men mutually agreed” that it was time for the only Republican in Obama’s cabinet to go. But given the fact that the White House was the one pushing out the story, it seems more likely that the president had grown tired of the ongoing pressure from Hagel and members of the top brass to take a more aggressive stance on national security threats abroad. The conflict went public back in August when Hagel openly contradicted White House talking points on the threat posed by Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria. While Obama succumbed to the pressure, Hagel’s ouster shows the president seeking to reassert control over his foundering foreign policy. — FOX Newsletter, November 24, 2014

Never let it be said that Obama lets anyone on his staff disagree with him. I wonder which hand-puppet will be chosen next for Sec’y of Defense?

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Rand Paul has been the fair-haired boy of Libertarians and the Paulbot wing of the GOP. He has been viewed as an opponent of the GOP Washington establishment. When Ted Cruz and Mike Lee stood up in opposition to Harry Reid, and occasionally Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul stood in the background giving the impression of supporting Cruz and Lee but seldom actually doing so on the floor of the Senate.

I’ve never trusted Rand Paul. In my view, he is too much like his Dad—inconsistent, a bit unstable with a tin-foil hat firmly in place. My view, again, has been vindicated. The reports today have Rand Paul cozing up to Mitch McConnell, worming his way into the establishment and the Ruling Class.

Paul strengthens McConnell ties with fundraiser hire – National Review: “[Sen.] Rand Paul [R-Ky.] is bringing on [Sen.] Mitch McConnell’s [R-Ky.] national finance director, Laura Sequeira, to play a key fundraising role at his political-action committee ahead of an expected 2016 presidential campaign.”

[Flashback: “We’ve developed a very tight relationship, and I’m for him…I don’t think he’s made a final decision on that. But he’ll be able to count on me.” – Senate Majority Leader-elect Mitch McConnell in a post-election interview.] — FOX Newsletter, November 24, 2014.

McConnell, immediately following the election, betrayed the GOP by publicly stating the Senate would not use the only real weapons of Congress against a rogue President—impeachment and removal from office, and the power of the purse—defunding Obama’s acts of defiance to Congress and strictures of the Constitution. When asked what McConnell would do to oppose Obama, McConnell, in essence, said he’d rollover and do nothing. That allows Obama to continue his lawless edicts without opposition…and now Rand Paul will help McConnell to do…nothing.

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I have been called, on occasion, a Grammar-Nazi. I accept that label. Why is grammar necessary, and spelling, too? Because correct grammar and spelling enhances communication and decreases confusion and misunderstanding.

It is a failing of education when schools no longer teach grammar, sentence structure and construction, spelling and writing. Not cursive hand-writing, although that should be taught, too, but writing as in Writing an Essay. Clear, concise writing, with proper sentence and paragraph structure, is fading. Others agree with me.

Descriptive versus Prescriptive: Another Left-Wing Scam

By Bruce Deitrick Price, November 24, 2014

Everywhere we look, we’ve got pompous professors telling us they don’t dare prescribe what’s right in language.  No, no, no, no.  It’s not their role.  Nor yours either, that’s for sure.  People can express themselves as they wish.  It’s America, the 21st century.  God forbid we should tell anybody how to do anything.“Weird Al” Yankovic put out a popular video called “Word Crimes.”  It’s gotten almost 20,000,000 views.  In effect, he says: “Hey, moron, do it the right way.”  He got everybody talking about correct grammar.  Boy, we needed that.  Thanks, Weird Al.

Naturally, all the primly pontificating nuisances crawled out of the woodwork to tell us: hey, stop all that prescribing!  You can only describe. 

And why?  Because when anthropologists go in the jungle to study a primitive culture, they must remember that the natives are the experts on their own language.  Great.  That’s fine and dandy.  But that has nothing to do with how we should deal with our own language. In our case, you ask the relevant experts (teachers, novelists, journalists), average the answers, and that’s probably a good guide.  But you certainly don’t listen to left-wing scam artists telling you that our experts are not allowed to speak, because anything they say would be prescriptive, and we don’t allow that when we go into the jungle on anthropological expeditions.  Doesn’t this sophistry almost make your head spin?

But look again, and it turns out there is a second sophistry on top of the first one.  These discussions about natives, experts, and ourselves casually presuppose that we are talking about adults.  But many times, without ever acknowledging it, the discussion shifts over to school and the teaching of children.  Isn’t it obvious that the freedom you might give to adults is not appropriately given to children?

In other words, when liberal sophisticates start discussing this issue, they always pose it in terms of freedom, creativity, self-expression, laissez-faire, do your own thing, and gather ye rosebuds while ye may.  Sure, if you insist, adults can wear clothes inside-out and stay drunk.  Let’s not waste time discussing it.  If you want to arrange your sentences backward and break every grammatical rule, go for it.

What we’re discussing now is what’s appropriate in the early grades at school.  Teaching is typically prescriptive, and that’s how it should be.  Schools should teach the right ways to do things.  (This approach has got to be far more efficient than what many public schools are now doing: teach no ways at all, or teach all the ways as if none is preferable.) 

Bottom line, what newspapers call Standard English should be taught first.  That seems to be what our left-wing professors are eager to stop.

So what are the pros and cons?  Do you let a child do anything the child wants?  Are you doing children a favor if you allow them to go out with dirty faces or raggedy clothes?  Isn’t it foolish to pretend that children live and learn in a vacuum?

It seems to be common sense and common decency to tell children what is typically done.  With regard to language, this might require explaining regional variations, work-related slang, and even class differences.  Most children can understand these ideas at a fairly young age.  They probably already speak a different way with their friends from how they do with their parents.

To pretend that all these nuances don’t exist is the opposite of teaching.  To pretend that everything is equally acceptable is a nasty sort of nihilism.

Question is, why are liberals so eager to drown children in permissiveness and relativism?  Who is being served?  Just recently reports came out about a Chicago school that was teaching anal sex to fifth-graders.  And this would be for whose benefit?  The children’s?  No, this is surely liberals trying to break down the last barriers.

Presumably we’re seeing that same worldview when schools refuse to teach grammar.  The point, always, is power – in this case, the power to make the rules.  That’s why the left always maneuvers to control language, semantics, and education.

The sophistry prohibiting prescriptive grammar is not about grammar at all.  It’s about the left being able to tell everybody else how to talk, and how to think.  (Note that the anti-prescriptive diktat is itself prescriptive.)

Liberals always want to play their ideological games, using kids as guinea pigs.  If you don’t tell the kids what the prevailing rules are, the kids will be left in an intellectual wasteland.  To excuse this, you have a whole Education Establishment boldly proclaiming that whatever little children say is just fine, whatever it is.  No rules, guessing, and invented spelling – that’s what elementary education is for many.

But how can they justify all this logically?  Well, some genius thought, why don’t we just bring back anthropological field work to our own society?  We’ll announce (and argue with great indignation) that professional authors, English professors, and smart citizens who have used the language expertly for a lifetime have absolutely no special standing.  They should shut up, lest they be guilty of the crime of prescription.  The left has gotten away with this fluff for 75 years.

Aren’t you tired of left-wing professors using lame sophistries to dumb down the schools and the society?  Here’s a plan: don’t accept lame sophistries.

Sophistry. That’s a word I’ve not seen for a long, long time. Truthfully, now, how many of you know what it means? Don’t know? Here’s the definition. If you and your children don’t know, it’s a good topic for teaching both of you.

soph·ist·ry
ˈsäfəstrē/
noun
noun: sophistry
  1. the use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving.
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Scooped’em!

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OK, OK, I’m gloating a bit. I scooped the big boys with my post yesterday. I received notices my post yesterday was retweeted and has been shared, linked and reprinted by a number of conservative websites.

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The dems, in particular Harry Reid, see their power waning in Washington. They’ve looked into their crystal balls and foresee a drubbing next year in the mid-term elections. The failure of Obamacare, not just the rollout, but the massive loss of insurance coverage by millions of working Americans will have an impact in the elections next year.

That means it is possible for the dems to lose the Senate. The ‘Pubs can’t pickup enough seat of have a veto-proof majority, there aren’t that many senate seats up for re-election, but Reid may not be Majority Leader much longer. That possibility has created in Reid a sense of desperation, leading him to threaten to invoke the ‘nuclear’ option to block ‘Pub filibusters and pack the federal court bench with liberal sycophants.

Why the threats at is time? Perhaps it is to distract the public’s—and the media’s, attention from the disaster of Obamacare to them and their party. That seems, to me, to be a more likely motive than the dems continuing attempt to pack the federal courts.

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Who is the greatest lawbreaker in the country today? On this question, nearly everyone has an opinion. A growing number of those opinions say: Barack Obama.

Reining in America’s Greatest Lawbreaker, President Obama

By Mark J. Fitzgibbons, November 21, 2013

The Hill reports that Republican members of Congress are contemplating actions to combat President Obama’s lawbreaking methods of ruling from the Oval Office.

“GOP officials have long claimed that the president has violated the law and the Constitution through administrative actions on issues ranging from immigration to nominations to the U.S. military involvement in Libya,” writes The Hill.  Conservative Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah is quoted, “There are a lot of examples of this.”

A lot, indeed, and not just recently.  As reported at American Thinker last year in March, nine GOP state attorneys general issued a report on Obama’s unprecedented officious lawbreaking.

Obama has now reached the tipping point, however, with his illegal “fix” of Obamacare designed to overcome his lie that Americans can keep their health insurance.  The president’s open lawbreaking following his notorious lying puts Democrats’ electoral prospects at risk.  It frustrates the unquestioning goodwill and endless love of some members of the political establishment.

Obama has lied to the American people many times, which is unbecoming of his office.   But his unilateral actions in violation of the Constitution and even statutory law are so brazen that they seem calculated to undermine our very system of government, even to the point that they can be called “un-American” from the perspective of our heritage.

British Member of Parliament Daniel Hannan has a marvelous essay at The Wall Street Journal adapted from his new book, “Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World.”   The topic of his essay helps us understand why Barack Obama is actually the greatest lawbreaker in American history.

If you consider that claim hyperbole, factor this:  No person, corporation, union boss or corporate CEO — no criminal — who has violated the law could count every American as their victims.  President Obama can.

Hannan’s essay describes how Americans and the British share an exceptionalism that has its origins in the law — the common law, to be precise.

We share a view of law that protects individual liberty and property rights through ideals and notions guaranteeing due process of law, jury trials, freedoms of speech and of publication, and so on.  The law punishes and remedies the wrong, of course, but this view of the law is that its purpose is also to protect our liberty and property rights.

That view of the law is contrary to the one held by progressives, which is that the law is to be used to coerce behavior of the people even at the expense of individual liberty and property rights.

As Hannan writes:

Above all, liberty was tied up with something that foreign observers could only marvel at: the miracle of the common law. Laws weren’t written down in the abstract and then applied to particular disputes; they built up, like a coral reef, case by case. They came not from the state but from the people. The common law wasn’t a tool of government but an ally of liberty: It placed itself across the path of the Stuarts and George III; it ruled that the bonds of slavery disappeared the moment a man set foot on English soil.

There was a fashion for florid prose in the 18th century, but the second American president, John Adams, wasn’t exaggerating when he identified the Anglosphere’s beautiful, anomalous legal system . . . as the ultimate guarantor of freedom: “The liberty, the unalienable, indefeasible rights of men, the honor and dignity of human nature . . . and the universal happiness of individuals, were never so skillfully and successfully consulted as in that most excellent monument of human art, the common law of England.”

 These ideals are of law emanating from the people to govern government itself — a republican form of government with controls on those who govern.  When the law governs government — when our government is bound down by the law — our liberty is best protected.

No list of the greatest documents of liberty is complete without the Magna Carta, wherein the King was told by the people that he would be ruled by law while he simultaneously ruled his people.  The Magna Carta established these principles, and the common law further evolved. 

The United States Constitution incorporates these common law principles and ideals, and affirms and institutionalizes even more such as checks and balances, and the separation of powers.  It is through these structures, institutions and ideals of law governing government that liberty is best protected.

And that is the purpose of the Constitution.  It is a law that doesn’t merely constitute or form our government; it governs government.  Violators of the Constitution are violators of law.

It is by the law that governs and controls government that we have the greatest liberty and equality under the law.  That is why America is exceptional.  Freedom breeds the most opportunity for the most people.  Opportunity allows for the greatest level of achievement. 

We are exceptional not by national origin, but because our national origin guarantees that we have law that rules the government that rules us. 

That is our English heritage.  President Obama is hostile to this view of the law, believing he can fundamentally transform America by undermining this law. 

Under Obama, we have ‘trickle-down lawbreaking,’ as with former IRS official Lois Lerner who read signals from the White House to violate the very laws she was supposed to enforce.  The signals for government bureaucrats to violate the law are everywhere in the Obama administration.

How, then, will congressional Republicans rein in Obama’s lawbreaking?

For all the criticisms directed at Senator Ted Cruz and other constitutional conservatives purportedly over tactics, establishment GOP leaders have demonstrated that they are not up to the mission.  Real leaders will stand up and call out President Obama as America’s greatest lawbreaker.

In six years, the democrats have changed this country from one of laws, to a country of lawlessness. The White House itself—Obama, his staff and all the agencies that report directly to the White House, engage daily in lawlessness. That was advantageous for them as long as they maintained power. Now, with the Obamacare fiasco affecting nearly everyone in the country, they foresee the possibility of them to losing power, leaving reams of regulations and liberal court decisions that could be used against them if/when the ‘Pubs, or anyone not a liberal, gains the White House and controls Congress.

That is what the dems and liberals fear: What goes around, comes around.

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Trends and Portents

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Mark Levin’s book, The Liberty Amendments, has triggered a lot of discussion on the state of the nation, the Constitution and the constant violation of the Constitution by the federal government. Just scanning national opinion pieces this morning led to these headlines. One is a piece on the state of the government, another is on national trends and polls, still another proposes the country is in a pre-revolutionary state.

What Has Mark Levin Wrought?

By James V Capua, August 18, 2013

In The Liberty Amendments Mark Levin has delivered more than advertised. He promises a credible agenda for reinvigorating constitutional government based on an approach to the amendment process which avoids the liabilities of better known options.

Continued here…

Obama Flouts the Law

By Clarice Feldman, August 18, 2013

From his first presidential campaign to the present, the president, his party and his administration have openly flouted existing laws, and it doesn’t seem there is any legal means of stopping him short of impeachment.

Continued here…

America’s Tyranny Threshold

By Eileen F. Toplansky, August 19, 2013

As he finishes up his Martha’s Vineyard vacation, Barack Obama would be well-served to recall the fiery words of Jonathan Mayhew, who is famous for his sermons “espousing American rights — the cause of liberty, and the right and duty to resist tyranny.”

Continued here…

And finally, this one. Its subject is one few want to discuss all the while its one that is being discussed more every day.  Is a second American Revolution on the horizon?

Time for a New American Revolution?

By Richard Winchester, August 19, 2013

The United States of America was born in revolution. The Declaration of Independence asserted that people have a right of revolution. According to The Declaration, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [such as “life,” “liberty,” “the pursuit of happiness,” and “the consent of the governed”], it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The Declaration acknowledged that people should not, and will not, seek to overturn “long-established” governments “for light and transient reasons.” After “a long train of abuses and usurpations,” however, which are clearly aimed at establishing “absolute Despotism,” people have not only the “right,” but the “duty,” to “throw off such Government, and provide new guards for their future security.”

The U.S. has not experienced a successful revolution since the one between 1775 and 1783, despite Thomas Jefferson’s hope that “[t]he tree of liberty should be refreshed from time to time by the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Some think it’s time for a new American revolution. Moreover, many of the preconditions for a revolt exist.

Continued here…

One of Levin’s common quotes is that we are living in a post-Constitutional era. In other words, government, at least at the federal level, Congressmen and the Supreme Court no longer follow the constraints of the Constitution. The Obamacare decision forced by Chief Justice Roberts is a prime example of that latter segment of government. There was NO Constitutional basis for his decision. But, with his vote, he joined the liberal Justices and overrode the strenuous objections of the remaining Justices. Roberts followed the liberal diktat that the Constitution is whatever the Court says it is.

That is a lie. Few, however, were reluctant to stand up and say so.

Perhaps one of the best statements of the condition of our government and the accelerating discussion of revolution, is this article by In her article she cites the acts of Obama and the democrats in government that supports Levin’s premise that we no longer have a governing Constitution.

Today’s post as turned into a long one. I’ll close with this from Betsy McCaughey.

King Obama vs. Rule of Law

By on 8.14.13 @ 6:08AM

Have we ever seen such presidential contempt for constitutional principles and our nation’s history?

At an August 9 press conference, President Barack Obama said that when Congress won’t agree to what he wants, he will act alone. That statement, which he has made before, should send shivers through freedom-loving Americans.

The President was asked where he gets the authority to delay the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, even though the law states that the mandate “shall” go into effect January 1, 2014. The Obama administration had announced the delay on July 3, without seeking Congress’s help in changing the law.

In response, Obama said that “in a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the Speaker and say, you know what, this is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law… so let’s make a technical change to the law. That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do.” 

But Obama explained that he took a different route because Republicans control the House of Representatives and ardently oppose Obamacare.

Obama’s statement reveals how disconnected this president is from this nation’s history and constitutional principles. Divided government is the norm in the United States. Most modern presidents have had to govern with an uncooperative Congress or at least one house of Congress controlled by the other major party. With the exception of Richard Nixon, these presidents — from Eisenhower, to Reagan, to Clinton, and both Bushes — have not tried to exempt themselves from the Constitution.

Article II, Sec. 3 of the Constitution commands the president to faithfully execute the law.

Courts have consistently ruled that presidents have little discretion about it. President Obama can’t pick and choose what parts of the Affordable Care Act he enforces and when. 
 

The framers duplicated the safeguards their English ancestors had fought hard to win against tyrannical monarchs. Most important, the English Bill of Rights of 1689 barred an executive from suspending the law. 

The tug and pull between the president and an uncooperative Congress is what the framers intended. It’s checks and balances in action. Obama has no patience for this constitutional system. In June 2012, the President announced that he would stop enforcing parts of the nation’s immigration laws, because “We can’t wait” for Congress to offer relief to young illegal immigrants brought into the country by their parents.

Now the President is rewriting the Affordable Care Act. Delaying the employer mandate is not a mere “tweak.” Because individuals will be required to have insurance as of January 1, 2014 or pay a penalty, some ten million currently uninsured or underinsured workers who would have gotten coverage at work under the employer mandate will now have to pay the penalty or go to the exchanges. That means more people enrolling on the exchanges, more dependence on government and a bigger bill for taxpayers. It’s not the law that Congress enacted.

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) has urged Congress to vote against any continuing resolution to fund the federal government after September 30, as long as it funds this distorted version of Obamacare.

“Laws are supposed to be made by Congress, not… (by) the president,” Lee explained. If the administration is not prepared to fully enforce Obamacare as enacted, including the employer mandate, it should agree to delay the entire law and remove its funding from the budget.

Sadly most members of Congress are too busy looking out for themselves to stop the president from chipping away at the Constitution. Last week Republicans and Democrats conspired with the president to weasel out of Sect. 1312 of Obamacare, which requires members of Congress to get health coverage on the newly created exchanges. Congress was happy to let the President unconstitutionally give them a special taxpayer funded subsidy that no one else in America earning $174,000 would get.

Such self-dealing brings to mind what Benjamin Franklin warned about, as he and his fellow framers finished writing the Constitution. It’s a republic, said Franklin, “if you can keep it.”

If Congress refuses to use its power to restrain the Executive branch, we then reside in a dictatorship. No one with the ability to enforce constraints is willing to do so and thus participate in the dictatorship.

 

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Random Shots for Wednesday

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I’m surprised how many readers liked my post for Monday, August 12, 2013, titled, Planes. Many were pilots…or inactive pilots like me. There are no ‘former’ pilots, only those who are current and those who aren’t.

I was rushed for time Monday morning. I could have written it better. I wish I had, especially that sequence of landing a small plane. It’s difficult to describe for those who’ve never done it…the feel and feedback from the rudder pedals, slipping to compensate for a crosswind, the flare…those last few floating feet before touchdown that seems to last forever.

I thank all you pilots, active and inactive, who liked the post.

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I  am a Mark Levin fan. I usually listen to the first hour or so of his dailyl broadcast on KCMO-710, 5PM. He has been hitting the ‘Pub establishment hard this last week…harder than usual.

Part of it is PR for his new book, The Liberty Amendments. His book outlines a plan to restore the Constitution to that originally envisioned by the Founders.

But the book isn’t what has Levin in the news. No, it’s his prognosis for the ‘Pub party and that prognosis is poor…very poor.

Mark Levin: ‘Entrenched’ Republican ‘losers’ may cost GOP the House in 2014

Jeff Poor, Media Reporter, 12:17 AM 08/14/2013

Conservative talker Mark Levin blasted Republican House leaders on his Tuesday radio show, warning that by attacking more conservative members of the GOP, Speaker John Boehner and prominent Reps. Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor are throwing away the 2014 midterm elections.

Levin, author of “The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic,” said the GOP establishment’s disparagement of conservative colleagues, could be a disaster in a midterm “turn out the base” election.

“This is my great fear,” Levin said. “My great fear is that guys like Boehner, and quite frankly Paul Ryan, and Eric Cantor and his goofball [Kevin] McCarthy — they don’t get it at all. Midterm elections in particular are base elections, they are turnout elections. And they’re doing everything they can to turn us off, to turn us off. Where are they standing ground and keeping ground and fighting? Instead it’s, ‘No, no we’re not going to shut down the government.’ Even if that’s your ultimate view, why do you reveal that to the leftists and the media? It’s like playing poker and the idiot shows his cards — and that’s what he does. ‘Hey, look at this.’”

“And also, amnesty?” he continued. “Pathway to citizenship? This is their number one issue. No. And then we have Obamacare. The president of the United States, rubbing the Republican’s nose in it,acting like he’s king, and as I’ve been saying and now others, an imperial president. ‘No. we’ll follow this part of the law. No, I’m suspending this part of the law. No, I’m deferring this part of the law.’ What the hell is that? And what are the Republicans doing about it? Now the typical Republican response would be ‘well what do you want us to do about it?’”

The conservative talker encouraged Republicans in the House and Senate to use any means necessary to draw attention to President Barack Obama’s attempts to thwart the law and/or the Constitution, including obstruction tactics.

“Here’s what I want you to do,” Levin said. “You fools should have been, time and time again, every time he has violated the Constitution, you should have made an issue about it,” Levin said. “You should have punished him in some way — denied him some appointee, obstructed some piece of legislation. Draw attention to this lawlessness so the American people after a year, or two, or three of you consistently explaining it and hammering away at it would in fact be aware of what you’re trying to do and say! But instead, what do we get? What do we get? We get John McCain attacking Ted Cruz. What do we get? Chris Christie attacking Rand Paul. What do we get? Karl Rove attacking Mike Lee. The same dug-in entrenched losers who may well cost us the House of Representatives in the next election.”

Levin speculated as to what would happen if the Democrats regained control of the House and who the so-called Republican establishment may blame for it.

“And do you know what Obama will do again if he controls the whole damn thing?” Levin added.  “And he’s banking on it. That’s why he’s putting all these things off. He’s sucking people in to vote for him and then he’s going to drop the hammer. Then what do we do? ‘We don’t control any — one half of one third or anything else.’ And what are the Republicans going to do then? Blame the conservatives? Blame the tea party? What are they going to do then? ‘We can’t control anything. We don’t even have one half of one third — of course you don’t. Look what you’ve squandered, the opportunity. This president is pathetic. His policies are a disaster. We have sustained high unemployment, sustained housing problems. The economy is still on its back. He won’t secure the damn border. He’s hollowing out the military. He’s hollowing out NASA. What the hell? He’s handing you the issues to run on. And what do you do? You attack conservatives. Brilliant.”

If you’ve ever listened to Levin on the radio, or via his pod and internet ‘casts, you’ve heard this theme before. The Republican Party is dying, poisoned from within. It is a Truth and many in the party, in and out of Washington, refuse to listen.

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A Colorado District Judge ruined that state’s liberal scheme to derail the recall elections of three democrat legislators. In his decision, the mail-in ballot scheme and no-show voting was rendered ineffective. How? The Judge ruled in accordance to the Colorado state constitution.

Judge rules to uphold the Colorado Constitution

Tuesday, August 13, 2013 – Red Pill, Blue Pill by Al Maurer

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., August 13, 2013—Monday evening Denver District Judge Robert McGahey ruled in favor of the Libertarian Party’s lawsuit to allow candidates up until 15 days prior to the September 10 recall election to qualify for the ballot. This ruling upholds the state constitution, which mandates it.

Under the recently-enacted House Bill 1303, state election law was changed to allow all mail-in ballot recall elections. To meet the deadlines imposed by such an election, candidates were given only until July 29 to collect 1000 signatures—10 days from when Gov. Hickenlooper belatedly set the election date.

Potential candidates now have until August 26 to gather enough signatures to get on the ballot, making it impossible for county clerks to then print and mail ballots to voters. The election, therefore, will now be an in-person one.

In choosing between the state constitution and the recent statute calling for mail ballots and early voting schedules, Judge McGahey said it would be an “absurd result” to ignore the constitution’s direct wording on recall candidates.

In addition, Judge McGahey ripped the legislature for “Writing an election law so clearly non-compliant with the state Constitution….With all due respect to the legislature, it did not consider or ignored the clear language of Article XXI – I find that both sad and, frankly, shocking.”

The major parties did not agree.

The dems protest because their vote fraud scheme was foiled. The ‘Pubs don’t like it either because it ruins their plan to be the only opposition to the dems. That ‘Pub view may have some merit if the votes to oppose the dems are diluted among several candidates.

There is a companion article here. I suppose it’d be too much to hope for that the ‘Pubs and Libertarians jointly submit a candidate against the dems. Yes, I suppose it would, and, that’s too bad, because now the opposing votes against the dems will be diluted among two or more candidates.

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I’d like to make a followup to a post I made some months ago. That post was about the Cass County Lincoln Day dinner and guest speaker Tom Schweich, Missouri’s Auditor. In the last two paragraphs of that post, I wrote:

I applaud Schweich’s attempt for unity. He has a steep road to walk. I like Schweich. I voted for him in his last election and will probably vote for him in the next one. However, his attempts to heal the party will fail as long as the state’s party hierarchy maintains their paternalistic attitude and their continued efforts to control the central committee.

Unless there is significant change, they will fail. Ed Martin unseated David Cole as Chairman of the MO Central Committee. Martin ran for Attorney General as a Tea Partier. I’ve met him and I was impressed with him. He now has a formidable task, the reunification of the Missouri Republican party. I await him to begin that reconciliation—before it is too late.

Since April, when I wrote the post above, I’ve met a number of times with Ed Martin‘s Political Director Steve Michael. At one meeting, he was joined by Bob Evans, the Heritage Action Regional Coordinator for Missouri who was formerly a member of the St. Louis Tea Party.

In a different meeting, he met with some grassroots folks to expand and reinforce Ed Martin’s links with the conservative base—a base that is losing its ties with the Republican Party. Another brief meeting was when Steve Michael spoke at a Cass County ‘Pub gathering last week.

In April, I asked if Ed Martin was willing to reach out—and listen to, the conservatives, Libertarian Republicans and those whose loyalty isn’t necessarily with the Republican Party. I can now say, “Yes, he is.”

There’s hope yet for the survival of the ‘Pub party in Missouri…but only if Ed Martin and the ‘Pub state central committee really listens and heeds those who are feeling disenfranchised with the ‘Pubs.

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Does the Rule of Law still exist?

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I was listening to the news this morning and heard that a group of illegal “immigrants” were protesting outside the office of the Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach.  Their complaint? Kobach insists on upholding the law and helps other states, like Arizona, formulate legislation to curb illegal entry into this country.

This particular group, some from within Kansas and others imported from out of state, want Kobach to resign because he enforces existing law. While they were protesting, ICE did not appear.

“We the People…”

This post, however, is not about illegal immigration, per se. It is about the failure of government to uphold and enforce existing law. The example above and the refusal to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, are just two of many failures by the federal government. If such actions, the refusal to enforce selected law and legislation, becomes institutionalized by the FedGov and the states, what are the consequences?

Let’s take an example from the international stage. Last February, Obama was in a lather accusing Communist China of not following international trade law. Obama called, “the soon to be president of the a country that is the world’s second most powerful and that highly values “face” (pride,dignity) a cheater.” In light of Obama’s actions these last four years, that statement was the height of hypocrisy.

Clyde Prestositz, the author of the sentence quoted above defines the failure to enforce the rule of law as playing with the rules.

The phrase “all must play by the same rules” implies that all are playing the same game, but in actuality they are not. In many instances there are no rules or the rules are vague, untested, and unclear. Even where there are rules, many countries have been ignoring them for a long time and there is thus strong precedent for not playing by the rules or even for interpreting the rules such that they are actually said to bless the apparent violations.

The rule of law operates under the assumption that all parties have the same understanding of the law. If that is not so, how can any commonality of thought exist?

A long time ago, there was a science fiction short story about a murder case…the willful killing of a peaceful extraterrestrial alien. The killer proudly admitted killing the alien because it wasn’t human and was therefore a “varmint”. Killing a “varmint” was not illegal (in that story.)  The story ends with the Sheriff approaching the killer, pistol in hand, and tells the killer, “We’ve just redefined the description of ‘varmint’.”

Several of the protesters outside Kris Kobach’s state offices admitted to being in the United States illegally. They protested publicly confident the FedGov, in the form of ICE, would not intervene. They were correct. The federal government is actively redefining immigration law. When there is no commonality of thought—definition of law in this case, there is no law and the rule of law cannot exist.

When the federal government creates new law, whether through the normal passage through both Houses of Congress, or by edict in the form of federal regulations, how can the government reasonably expect the public to adhere to those laws when the federal government itself does not? It cannot.

Anarchy is the result.

I, personally, do not wish to live in a state of anarchy. If this trend of government, the failure to adhere to the rule of law, continues, we will have anarchy and that leads to civil war.

As an engineer, it was part of my job to perform risk assessments. To look, not at the best case, but at all cases including the worse case. Truly, civil war, is the worse case but I see it approaching if we continue on our current path. Along with risk assessments, I also looked at means for mitigation of those risks.

One mitigation is to establish, or perhaps re-establish the rule of law. If we cannot coerce the federal government to do so, then we must do so within ourselves, within our communities and states. Next, would be to extend the commonality of thought, the same rule of law to other communities and states and establish alliances to enforce commonality of law within our communities and states. Call it the Red States Alliance.

Numbers count. When we have sufficient numbers, individuals, communities, states, with the same commonality of thought, the same rules of law, we can then pressure the federal government to conform to our definitions, our rules, our commonality of thought, our rule of law.

Failure to ally ourselves with others of common thought and purpose means we must conform to the rules, the redefinition of the FedGov’s rules of law. That path leads to an authoritarian United States and the Constitution ceases to exist as our standard. It has already been grievously damaged but it is not yet irreparable.

To answer the question in my post title, does the rule of law still exist? Unfortunately, as much as I wish it weren’t so, it does not. When the federal government fails to enforce law, redefines law to make that law conform to an agenda contrary to its intent, the rule of law no longer exists. It’s not too late to reinstate the rule of law but the time is approaching when that option, too, ceases to be possible. Then our choice can only be to create new rules and impose them on the federal government.

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