Category Archives: Political Power Plays

Blargh!

Posted on by

Yes, it’s one of those days. According to the calendar it’s Presidents Day. You know, that artificial holiday created by merging Washington’s and Lincolns birthdays to give public employees a 3-day weekend in the middle of February.

Overnight we received 3-4″ of snow. So far this winter, the snow has passed either to the north of us or to the south of us. Last night’s big dump passed south again but we were within the outskirts. So instead of getting 6-8″ as did some parts of Missouri, we only got 3-4″ according to my Mk I eyeball measurement of the snow sitting on the railing of my backyard deck. With a temp of 13°F this morning, I think I will stay inside today.

My lack of motivation seems to be mirrored by the news, too. I usually receive eight to a dozen newsletters/updates/breaking news announcements. This morning, it was only two newsletters and they were short to boot. I wonder if the whole world has decided to take the day off and join the local kids and my g’kids for a snow-day.

As for news. It seems to be a habit for the feds to release their edicts over the weekend for the MSM to ignore. Apparently they hope that if something is dumped on Saturday, by Monday morning, with the MSM ignoring it, the news will just slip away.

Case in point. The BATFE announced that it is planning on banning a particular kind of ammunition popular with AR-15 owners, the M855 5.56mm cartridge. It is a military round, slightly heavier than the Vietnam era cartridge that used a 55gr bullet. The M855 is 62grs and is more stable when fired through brush or in strong winds. This makes the bullet slightly more accurate in adverse conditions than the older cartridge.

The M855 is the US equivalent of the NATO cartridge known as SS109. The bullet had a steel core. When the M855 appeared on the market, the BATFE rightly determined it was not armor-piercing because it did not meet the BATFE definition of ‘armor piercing.’ Some gun-grabbers claimed that the steel core automatically meant the round was designed for armor piercing. The BATFE said it was not.

Over the weekend, the BATFE announced it will reverse itself next month. The instant result will be a feeding frenzy of sellers and buyers for the existing stocks of M855 before the ban is enacted.

It’s just another step of federal tyranny. If they can’t ban firearms, they ban the ammunition for those firearms, one small piece at a time.

Facebook

Wow! What a weekend.

Posted on by

I had a real busy weekend. I had a real busy week. My shootin’ buddy and I spent Thursday at the range practicing for a pistol match coming up next month. Saturday night was a Friends of the NRA dinner and auction in H’ville. Then Sunday afternoon was the Western Missouri Shooters Alliance 25th Anniversary picnic.

I’m pretty much whooped.  Still…I’d do it again in a second.

***

The Kansas Senatorial race continues to be in the front of the news. I’ve had some friends ask me what the controversy is all about. It’s this, as briefly as I can explain.

There are (were) three candidates running for US Senator; Pat Roberts, the incumbent on the Republican Ticket, Chad Taylor on the democrat ticket, and Greg Orman, a democrat who the democrats wouldn’t let run against Taylor in the primary. Orman decided to run as an ‘independent.’ In reality, it’s two democrats running against one ‘Pub. Ordinarily, this would be a shoo-in for Roberts because Orman would split the democrat votes with Taylor.

Suddenly, the environment changed. Polls indicated that Orman was running better against Roberts than Taylor. To the democrats, this meant one of their candidates was a possible winner, especially since Roberts pissed off much of the grass-roots conservatives who had backed Milton Wolf. A significant percentage of those Wolf supporters declared they would either vote for Orman or stay home.

The democrats were now in a dilemma. Orman, a democrat in an independent’s costume, was ahead of Taylor. They decided to have Taylor quit. That would allow the democrats to vote for Orman instead of splitting their votes between the two democrat candidates.

The Kansas democrat leaders forced Chad Taylor to quit.

After a series of legal shenanigans, with the aid of their left-leaning KS Supreme Court, they got Taylor off the ticket. Bad news for Roberts. But Orman isn’t the clean-cut, scandal-free candidate the democrats and he projects. He is being sued for failure to pay royalties to another company for the use of their patented technology.

The establishment ‘Pubs are rallying around Roberts and Orman is facing more scrutiny from the national press. Surprise, surprise! Orman is keeping closed-mouth about what his political views?

Greg Orman, a political enigma, faces growing scrutiny in Kansas Senate race

By Philip Rucker September 28 at 8:53 PM

WICHITA — Greg Orman, the upstart Senate candidate threatening to unseat longtime Republican incumbent Pat Roberts in Kansas, says it’s liberating to run as an independent: “I can go to Washington as a problem solver, not a partisan.”

But not having a party also liberates Orman from taking positions — especially on controversial issues that might alienate partisans.

Greenlight the Keystone XL pipeline? Orman said he doesn’t have enough information to say yes or no.

What about gun control? He said gun restrictions should be “strengthened” but would not specify whether he backs an assault-weapons ban.

And on the biggest question of all — Would he caucus with Democrats or Republicans? — Orman insists he’s not sure.

Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, left, and independent candidate Greg Orman talk after a debate at the Kansas State Fair Saturday, Sept. 6, 2014, in Hutchinson, Kansas. (Charlie Riedel/AP)

“It’s not in the best interests for us to say that,” Orman said in an interview here last week.

Orman has said he would caucus with whichever party has the majority after November’s midterm elections. But what if the Senate is evenly divided and Orman’s decision swings the balance? He said that would be “a wonderful opportunity for Kansas.”

Orman’s rise has transformed deep-red Kansas into the year’s unlikeliest political battleground. Many voters say Roberts has lost touch with the state he’s represented in Congress since 1981.

Since Democratic nominee Chad Taylor withdrew his name from the ballot this month, Roberts has been in a two-man race with Orman, who has previous ties to the Democratic Party but preaches independence. Public polling has been unreliable, but both sides believe the race is very tight.

Orman, who entered the race in June, has surged on the strength of his pitch to fix a broken Washington without any allegiance to a political party. But now the enigma is under increasing pressure from voters to provide a clearer sense of his ideology and politics, while facing attacks from the Roberts camp over his business ties and Democratic past.

“I’ve been impressed with Greg so far, but we’re still in the ‘I’m an independent’ stage,” said Lynda Neff, 68, a retired teacher. “I’m ready to move past that and hear about some issues. . . . I will support him if he gives me a little more information.”

Perhaps the biggest test for Orman, a multi­millionaire investor who is partially funding his campaign, is surviving the intensifying public scrutiny of his business and personal relationships with Rajat Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs board member who was convicted in 2012 of insider trading and is serving a federal prison sentence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dre/politics/election-lab-2014

Election Lab: See our current forecast for every congressional race in 2014.

View Graphic

Roberts and his Republican allies have launched a barrage of attacks designed to make Orman appear untrustworthy. On the campaign trail in Kansas last week, a parade of top Republicans alleged that Orman is a liberal Democrat in disguise.

“Anybody with a liberal record like Greg’s . . . that’s not independence. That’s someone who’s trying to snooker you, Kansas,” Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee, said Thursday in Independence.

Palin’s 2008 running mate, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), told voters a day earlier in suburban Overland Park: “Let’s be honest — he’s a Democrat. He walks like a duck and he quacks like a duck and he is a duck.”

Robert J. Dole, a former Senate Republican leader and 91-year-old Kansas legend, said Monday night in Dodge City, “There’s a multimillionaire who claims he’s an independent, but really [he’s] in the other party.”

In Kinsley on Tuesday, after reporters asked whether he trusted Orman to govern as an independent, Roberts said, “All of a sudden, if there’s a metamorphosis and the caterpillar changed — why, I just don’t think that’s in the cards.”

Orman argues that the Republicans are reading him wrong. He said he voted for Obama in 2008, and public records show that in the middle of that decade he made donations mostly to Democrats, including Obama and Sen. Al ­Franken (Minn.). In 2008, he briefly ran for Senate against Roberts as a Democrat before dropping out.

The column by the Washington Post is long. You can read it completely on their website.

I was surprised that the Washington Post says the new Senate will be ‘Pub controlled, 62 to 48 given their history of biased reporting. Joni Ernst now leads Braley, 44 percent to 38 percent. Most of the polling over the last month or more has Ernst in the lead but the MSM claimed otherwise and called Iowa a ‘leaning blue’ state.

Des Moines Register: “The ground under Bruce Braley has shifted. The Democratic U.S. Senate candidate is 6 points behind his GOP rival, Joni Ernst, according to The Des Moines Register’s new Iowa Poll of likely voters. Ernst leads 44 percent to 38 percent in a race that has for months been considered deadlocked…. One potential reason: Two-thirds of likely voters who live in the country are bothered by a remark he made about Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley that’s been perceived as besmirching farmers.”

Braley should have known that dissing farmers in Iowa is not a career-enhancing tactic.

Facebook

On the Missouri side…

Posted on by

I wrote about Jay Nixon’s fiasco last week. His handling of the Ferguson shooting was incredibly inept. I’m being kind with that description. Some of his fellow democrats were not pleased either.

FERGUSON — ‘Black legislators air frustrations in meeting with Gov. Nixon in St. Louis County,’ St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Members of the Missouri Legislative Black Caucus used a meeting Sunday with Gov. Jay Nixon to vent over the investigation into the Aug. 9 shooting death of an unarmed Ferguson teenager. The meeting Sunday afternoon at the University of Missouri-St. Louis was closed to the public and reporters, but some legislators said they repeated calls for an indictment of Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson and for Nixon to remove St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch from the case. “He’s pretending he cares,” said Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, who walked out of the meeting after about 10 minutes. “It’s a waste of time. He’s doing this to look good.” — PolitocMO Newssletter, August 26, 2014.

Nixon told the St. Louis Post Dispatch that he would be attending Michael Brown’s funeral. A space was reserved for him. But, come the funeral, Jay Nixon was missing.

Nixon told the Post Dispatch on Sunday that he would be attending Michael Brown’s funeral yesterday. He had a place marked for him at the church where the funeral took place, but was not in attendance. Per spokesman Scott Holste: “The Governor has communicated to attorneys representing the family of Michael Brown that he will not be attending today’s funeral out of respect for the family, who deserve time to focus on remembering Michael and grieving their loss.” — St. Louis Today.

Every one seems to be jumping on Jay Nixon. I can’t think of a better person to be receiving all this negative attention.

***

Last week, by state law, democrats and republicans met to ‘reorganize.’ By reorganize, I mean all the Precinct Committeemen and Committeewomen elected in the primary on August 5th, met to choose committee officers for the next two years.

Each county has a party central committee. What I didn’t know until last week is that each House and Senate districts also have committee each with a set of officers. The county central committees choose a Chairman, Vice-chairman, Treasurer and Secretary for the House District committee. The House District Chair and Vice-Chair are automatically members of the Senatorial District Committee.

What is the purpose of these committees? Basically, to choose candidates for office in case of a vacancy. For example, a couple of years ago, the Cass County Presiding Commissioner was deemed ineligible for office. The county central committee chose a candidate to run for office and that candidate won a special election a couple of months later. The committees also sent recommendations to the Governor when an appointment to fill a vacant term is needed.

The House district committee serves the same function if the state Representative position falls vacant for whatever reason. In such an occurance, the district committee would choose a candidate for the position.

The Senate district is slightly different. Its members are the two Chairmen and Vice-Chairmen of all the House districts that fall within the Senatorial district. They choose a candidate for the state Senate seat if case of a vacancy. Plus—they also choose members of the state central committee. The House and Senatorial committees may have more functions than I have described, but those are the ones pertinent to today’s discussion.

Why am I going into all this detail? Because of what is happening in one House and Senatorial district.

TROUBLE BREWING IN STATE GOP? — ‘Local leader in GOP faces issue for post,’ Joplin Globe: “A longtime Southwest Missouri conservative activist has hit a bump in the road after his three decades of involvement within the inner workings of the Missouri Republican Party. The eligibility of ballots submitted by Carthage-area resident John Putnam, former chairman of the Jasper County Republican Central Committee, in his two-way race to become chairman of the 127th House District Republican Committee has been questioned. The issue arose after Putnam narrowly defeated Dade County resident Bob Jackson in a 15-14 vote last week. … 
“Putnam, a tea party activist who is well-known throughout the state, has not been shy about his concerns with the so-called party establishment. He backed Republican U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin until the end of the tumultuous 2012 campaign, and he has taken criticism directly to Republicans who he thinks are too flimsy on their beliefs. The night before the 127th District Republican Committee chairman election, during remarks to the Jasper County Republican Central Committee, Putnam criticized U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., for what he said was Blunt’s support of Mississippi Republican U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in his heated primary against tea party favorite Chris McDaniel. … 
“‘’Roy Blunt has divided the Republican Party before, and I can’t support him in the Senate race next time, and I do think that has some bearing on what’s happening now,’ Putnam said in an interview. Missouri Republican Party Chairman Ed Martin has called for the Republican National Committee to investigate the Mississippi Senate race. He has said the runoff election there included “racially charged” television ads opposing McDaniel that should not be tolerated by the Republican Party. That episode solidified the distrust between Martin — and Martin’s supporters, like Putnam — and the so-called Republican establishment. Putnam said, ‘They can read the tea leaves: If I’m the chairman of the district, I’m going to vote for a state committeeman and woman that will support Ed Martin in his re-election.’” — PoliticMO Newsletter, August 26, 2014 and The Joplin Globe.

If Putnam’s election to the House District is upheld, he will automatically be a member of his Senatorial committee…and possibly be selected as a member for the state central committee.

Roy Blunt is well known in ‘Pub politics as being an establishment butt-boy. His endorsement and contribution to Thad Cochran’s campaign, in opposition to Missouri’s GOP State Chairman Ed Martin, broadened the schism between party conservatives and the Washington (and state) establishment. Ed Martin was elected State GOP Chairman with the backing of the Tea Party and other grassroots activists as an anti-establishment candidate. The question upcoming is whether he will retain his position after the new crop of state GOP committeemen are chosen.

Facebook

The next battlefield—Kansas

Posted on by

The Battle of Mississippi in the GOP civil war is drawing to a close. The result is still in doubt. For the establishment GOP its Pyrrhic victory may evolve to defeat in November.

Chris McDaniel is investigating what appears to be massive vote fraud—democrats crossing over to vote in the run-off. That’s illegal in Mississippi. More than 1,000 fraudulent votes have been found already. Haley Barbour is being investigated about robo-calls to black claiming a McDaniel win will mean an end to welfare and other false claims. Reports of vote buying by the GOP establishment are also under investigation, one that may cause Cochran being removed from the ballot in November. The Washington GOP, through the NRSC, had dumped a ton of money into Mississippi to support Thad Cochran.

Why would a Cochran victory be Pyrrhic? Because the GOP has tainted the well. If Cochran versus the democrat is the choice in November, why would the GOP expect all those alienated conservatives to vote for Cochran? If that is the choice, I would expect conservatives to just not vote for Cochran and the democrat may win. When people see no clear choice, they may choose to not choose at all.

The NRSC is doing the same in another state—Kansas. Pat Roberts, a 47-year Washington veteran who hasn’t lived in Kansas for decades, is being challenged by Dr. Milton Wolf. The NRSC is dumping more and more money into Kansas against Wolf—another Tea Partier challenging a GOP establishment stalwart and political rubber-stamp.

Remember Mississippi, and FIGHT. LIKE. HELL. in Kansas

This Independence Day, the American Revolution endures

By: Diary)  |  July 3rd, 2014 at 02:05 PM

Conservatives, this is your call to arms, and Kansas is the battlefield.

The truth of the Mississippi Betrayal hurts. GOP party bosses have declared an all-out war on conservatives and betrayed our Republican Party itself in the process. The GOP establishment in general and the National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC) in particular have some serious explaining to do.

America is descending into a struggle, less about Republicans versus Democrats and more about the permanent ruling class versus the American citizens. The NRSC betrayed the wishes of its Republican donors by diverting their hard-earned money from their stated goal of defeating Democrats and instead used the funds in Mississippi where they defeated a conservative Republican. The betrayal included outrageous and false charges of racism against a fellow Republican where they actually joined league with liberal Democrats including explosive evidence that Sen. Thad Cochran’s campaign possibly funded an illegal vote-buying scheme.

The party boss behind the NRSC’s bone-headed betrayal is Kansas’ own Sen. Jerry Moran. The NRSC spent over $200 thousand and deployed an army of staffers and volunteers to knock tens of thousands of doors and ring tens of thousands of phones in Mississippi to join league with liberal Democrats and defeat Chris McDaniel for the sin of being a constitutional conservative.

This was never about defeating Democrats or winning a Republican majority in the Senate. RNC chairman Reince Priebus admitted that Mississippi was not in play for Democrats. Faced with the ugly truth on the KCMO Morning Show with Greg Knapp, NRSC Chairman Sen. Jerry Moran confessed, “First of all, the NRSC is not the Republican Party.” He excused the betrayal with an  unusually candid confession that the NRSC “supports Republican incumbent senators to help them get reelected. That’s an important aspect of its mission.”

Kansas is the new Ground Zero.

And now the NRSC is circling the wagons around another insider favorite, my GOP primary opponent, Sen. Pat Roberts who has been in Washington for 47 years. Like Thad Cochran, Roberts’ record is lackluster at best. Roberts is posing as a conservative during an election year. Before I challenged him, however, Pat Roberts’ 2012 scorecard at Club For Growth was 55 and at FreedomWorks was 54. He voted for Barack Obama’s $600 billion fiscal cliff tax hike and to raise the debt ceiling 11 different times. Pat Roberts even voted to put Kathleen Sebelius in charge of ObamaCare.

Perhaps most offensive, Pat Roberts doesn’t even have a home in Kansas. He first ran for Congress using a vacant lot in Dodge City (where he has never lived) as his official address. He scrambled to rent a bedroom from a donor where he brags that he has “full access to the recliner.” (I’m going to give him permanent access to that recliner.) The Kansas GOP circled the wagons around Pat Roberts by empaneling a board of his public endorsers to declare he can remain on the ballot despite having declared that his Virginia home is his primary residence.

Playing the insider game, Sen. Pat Roberts contributed $5,000 from his PAC to Thad Cochran’s campaign which is now accused of the illegal Democrat vote-buying scandal.

…

We must start acting like the Americans we were meant to be: sovereign citizens of the republic, not subjects of a permanent ruling class. Our Founders conquered a continent and fought a revolution to escape a permanent ruling class. We must not be the generation that surrenders it. We must not squander the blessings of liberty they provided.

This Independence Day the American Revolution endures and the battlefield is Kansas. Step up. Join the revolution. Contribute. Volunteer. Say a prayer for our nation. Get involved.

Remember Mississippi, and FIGHT. LIKE. HELL. in Kansas.

Kansas Senator and NRSC Chairman Jerry Moran was on Greg Knapp’s local radio talk show. Knapp asked Moran directly about the NRSC’s role in the Mississippi primary and about the robo-calls and other reports of political abuse and illegalities. Moran, at first, didn’t answer the question, skirting the issue. Under pressure, he distanced himself claiming the NRSC had no control over expenditures after donating the money. Moran didn’t answer the followup question, “Who received the NRSC’s money?”

That same station is running back-to-back ads by the Robert’s campaign claiming Wolf ridiculed patient x-rays on Facebook. When pressed for proof, Robert’s people never responded but they continue to make the same unsupported claims. The say Wolf violated ethics conventions. They ignore Robert’s own ethics issues. A typical tactic of the GOP establishment.

The Missouri primary is less than a month away, August 5th. Missourians, like Kansans must make choices. Fortunately, the MO GOP is responding better than the leadership in Kansas and Mississippi. If they want to gain control of the Governor’s mansion and retain control of the statehouse, they had better support the grassroots conservatives across the state…or, else! Remember what happened to the Whigs.

Facebook

It’s a new month!

Posted on by

Today, if you haven’t yet noticed, is the first of July. Across the state line in Kansas, newly passed legislation comes into force. One of those is open carry. It is now legal to carry a weapon openly in Kansas. Are there restrictions? I don’t know. That is one reason why I won’t be open carrying when I cross the state line.

But the local news media has noticed. One TV station is already in the process of whipping up mass hysteria, just watch the biased video. So far, no one is biting.

Open carry law now in effect in Kansas

Posted 11:30 pm, June 30, 2014, by , Updated at 05:56am, July 1, 2014

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A new gun law in Kansas will go into effect Tuesday that will let owners openly carry guns in public.

It will be legal to openly carry a gun in a holster, in your hand or a rifle on a sling.

Captain Rance Quinn with the Kansas City Kansas Police Department says the sight of a gun is scary for a lot of people. Police said they will still respond to calls about people with guns, but the way they handle it will be much different.

“They may make a consensual interaction with the person, ‘Like hey, how are you doing today. I see that you are exercising your right to bear firearms. Is there anything I can do for you today?’ Or something along those lines,” said Capt. Quinn.

The state already has roughly 90,000 gun owners with permits to carry concealed firearms.

The new law also gives private businesses the right to prohibit guns in their buildings.

Of course, private businesses has always had the right to prohibit guns on their premises. Whoever wrote this piece certainly was not familiar with eprior Kansas law nor with this new one when it took effect. Still, the comments, for the most part, are positive.

One commenter tried to used the hackneyed argument the cops will spend all their time checking the legal carrying of weapons instead of chasing criminals. I wonder if the commenter stopped to think that those calls would most likely be placed by people like himself who panics every time a weapon is glimpsed.

***

The fiasco known as the Mississippi primary continues with more and more allegations of vote fraud and vote buying emerging against Thad Cochran. An initial investigation in one county after the election found at least 1,000 fraudulent votes for Cochran. That discovery is just the beginning. McDaniel supporters are calling for him to run as an independent in the general election.

BREAKING: New Allegations Point to Cochran Campaign in Mississippi Senate Vote Buying Scandal

By: Aaron Gardner (Diary)  |  June 30th, 2014 at 09:15 PM

An audio interview has surfaced in which the interviewee claims that he was to be paid by the Cochran camp to grease voters in the Mississippi GOP Senate runoff election. The audio interview, which coincides with a separate audio recording and batch of evidence produced by the newly launched GotNews.com, a project by Charles C. Johnson, alleges that the Cochran campaign conspired with a Mississippi Reverend to buy the votes of African American voters, who happen to be democrats.

…

Reverend Fielder has claimed to have evidence that would prove illegal activity took place in the Mississippi GOP Senate run off election. Furthermore, the evidence he claims he has would implicate the Barbour machine and a staffer to Cochran’s Senate campaign. The motivations of the Reverend are not those of a saint. As is made clear throughout the interview and in the transcript, this Reverend is looking to get paid to provide information, just as he sought to get paid to deliver votes by illegal means. Reverend Fielder claims that Cochran’s people were supposed to pay him approximately $15,000 for his efforts, but failed to do so after the incumbent Senator had achieved victory in the run off.

With all of that said, if the evidence is produced and validated, I don’t know how much longer Thad Cochran will be a Senator.

Even if Cochran isn’t deposed because of these illegal tactics, that does not mean the McDaniel supporters will automatically vote for the GOP candidate. More likely what will happen, if Cochran’s name still appears on the general ballot, they will just skip over the field and either place no vote for Senator, or choose someone else.

The tactics the RNC used in the primary, with the able assistance of Karl Rove and Haley Barbour, has tainted not only Thad Cochran, but the entire Republican party within the state. Mississippi was once a GOP stronghold. No longer, and any assumptions of automatic wins for any GOP candidate have just evaporated.

Facebook

Scooped’em!

Posted on by

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.

***

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.

***

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.

Facebook