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A Call for Healing

A Call for Healing
Democrats Call for Healing the Country
Showing posts with label Rule of Law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rule of Law. Show all posts

Oct 8, 2020

Consent of the Governed and Original Intent

 

 The original intent of a law, and the original intent of the Constitution or an Amendment, is what the people consented to through their representatives in the legislature when the law was passed or the Constitution and Amendments were ratified.  Subsequently changing the meaning of what was agreed to by a court decision is, in reality, governing without the consent of the governed.  In commerce, it's called bait and switch.  The "Living Constitution," basically says the Constitution says whatever 5 Supreme Court Justices say it says on any given day.

If the interpretation of laws that is no longer predictable, it means that there really is no rule of law.  We instead have a rule of unchecked judges with lifetime tenure.  This is a serious problem that has become obvious in the last 20 years.  Before we pass lots of interesting new laws, we need to acknowledge that we have no idea how any of them will be interpreted.  Judges will make the interpretation up as they go along.

Aug 27, 2018

Weiner Laptop, Obstruction Of Justice in the DOJ

The DOJ is participating in a massive cover up for Hillary Clinton. The Weiner laptop is the smoking gun. Contrary to what Comey said, it was never fully investigated. The rule of law means that everybody is subject to the same laws. It doesn't mean one law for Republicans and a free pass for Democrats. Under Obama, the Justice Department became a partisan tool for protecting Democrats and prosecuting Republicans.  The Justice Department participated in a massive obstruction of justice to clear Hillary Clinton of crimes that include 100 felony counts of mishandling classified information and also lying to the FBI.  Anthony Weiner did not have a security clearance, but the FBI found classified material on his laptop. Why wasn't he indicted? Because he is a Democrat and Huma Abadin's husband. Huma is a close friend and aide of Hillary.  Here's a link on the Weiner laptop.
 
As Attorney General, Sessions has the standing to bring obstruction of justice charges against Clinton and all of her aides. Sessions could start with the people inside the Justice Department and the FBI who clearly didn't want to find anything when it came to Clinton's crimes, so they didn't seriously investigate any of them. These people are guilty of obstruction of justice, starting with Strzok, Ohr and McCabe and moving on up to Lynch and Comey. This probably requires a special prosecutor because it's clear the Justice Department itself is severely tainted.
 
There is no equality before the law.  If you are a politically connected Democrat, you can violate the law with impunity.  If you are connected to Trump, you get extra scrutiny.  If you are an ordinary person, one count of mishandling classified information sends you to jail.  I'm not saying that Manafort and Cohen are innocent, because they aren't.  I'm saying that Lois Lerner, John Koskinen, Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Samantha Power and Susan Rice are guilty, and they have been given a free pass, at least so far.
 
Tony Podesta was in the same business of lobbying for the same Ukrainian oligarch as Paul Manafort, but Podesta is a Democrat. The FBI raided Manafort's house with drawn guns in the middle of the night, like it was a meth lab. Podesta hasn't even been investigated.
 
If this lack of equality before the law continues, the rule of law in the US is over. The Justice Department becomes a bureaucratic struggle for power, not an agency for enforcement of the law. The US becomes a banana republic, not because of Trump, but because of Obama and the bureaucratic mess he left in the Justice Department.

Aug 14, 2018

Samantha Bee and the Goal of the Resistance

This was my reaction to a WSJ article on Samantha Bee calling Ivanka Trump a "feckless c*nt."   It got 102 likes, more than any other comment I've made on WSJ.

Samantha Bee's insulting obscenity was in service of a slow-motion coup d'etat under the color of authority, intended to reverse the outcome of the 2016 election.  President Trump was duly elected according to the Constitution.  The #Resistance wants to use any and all means possible to either remove President Trump or paralyze him with pseudo legal lawfare.  For serving the cause of undermining the Constitution, Samantha Bee was applauded by people who not only have no decency.  They have no respect for Constitutional government.  To a Vietnam Era Veteran like me, Samantha Bee and the people in the #Resistance are getting very close to becoming domestic enemies of the Constitution.  This isn't a mere squabble about the niceties of discourse.  The election outcome was incorrect, according to the left, so they need to fix it.    The left's temper tantrum over Hillary's loss is assumed to be more important than the rule of law, checks and balances or preserving the Constitution itself.

Jul 22, 2017

Counter Fake Russian Contact Crimes With Prosecution of Real Crimes

I don't understand why the DOJ is not prosecuting Obama Administration minions for their crimes. We used to have the rule of law in the US. If you broke the law you faced prosecution.

If I were Trump or Sessions, I would have grand juries investigating Huma Abedin, Samantha Powers and Susan Rice for mishandling classified materials. Hillary's email server had essentially no cyber security and over 100 pieces of classified information on it. That's 100 felony counts on the public record. I also would have grand juries investigating John Koskinen and Lois Lerner for obstruction of justice at the IRS. The leading cause of PC hard drive crashes is not subpoenas anywhere besides the IRS. There are obviously other people, like the guy who deleted 30,000 pieces of email while they were under Congressional subpoena, that need to be investigated. All of these prosecutions can be handled by main Justice career prosecutors. I don't understand why this isn't happening. These folks actually WERE criminals.

Face the fact that progressives are like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, sentence first, trial afterwards. There's nothing to be gained by going easy on the previous administration. We lose every news cycle that fake crimes of meeting Russians are on the air instead of the real crimes of abuse of power in the Obama Administration.

I know Obama and the Clintons are untouchable Liberal Saints. There will be a lot of flack if we start prosecuting their minions. To solve that problem, give Barry the Brilliant and Michelle the Magnificent blanket pardons for all offenses during Obama's 2 terms. Offer Hill and Bill immunity from prosecution in return for testimony against their lackeys. We don't need to convict any of them. If we have a high enough number of minion indictments and convictions, their legacies and political influence will be reduced to ashes.

If Sessions is indicting Democrats, it's bound to improve Trump's mood. Right now he's getting pummelled and not hitting back at all. Trump is media savvy enough to know he' losing. His people who quantitatively analyse social media are probably telling him he's losing, which is why he's so angry. Indicting Democrats will change the subject.

In military strategy, you concentrate your strength against your opponent's weakness. Our strength is the rule of law. Democrats' weakness is lots of minions guilty of real crimes. Let's convict those minions for their real crimes . It's time to remove leftist impunity before the next Democrat Administration starts to take advantage of it.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449743/donald-trump-jeff-sessions-president-blame-mueller-affair
http://www.redstate.com/jaycaruso/2017/07/20/republicans-need-go-record-trumps-comments-mueller/

Jul 20, 2017

Living with Trump: Watch His Hands, Use the Mute Button

The choice is between a Constitution that means what it says, and a dictatorship of regulatory agencies and rogue courts staffed with progressive "experts." If you favor a Constitution that means what it says, then you have to try to keep Trump from running off the rails, because he's the only chance we have. I'm not saying you have to like him. I am saying you have to avoid taking cheap shots, like a lot of this article. There is no possible decent alternative to Trump. The only real alternative is a resurgent Democrat controlled process moving towards a total Deep State takeover that completely ignores the Constitution.

The reason that progressives reacted so violently to Trump's election is that they were so close to putting the Constitution into the trash can of history. The Constitution currently means whatever the Supreme Court says it means 5 to 4. Supreme Court cases are like NFL games. On any given day, any interpretation is possible. We have almost totally lost the rule of law. That's how close we came.

The key to living with Trump is watching his hands and using the mute button. Trump has immediately approved every application for a natural gas export terminal. Trump has opened almost all federal land, including the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, to drilling. Trump withdrew from the Paris Global Warming Pact. Trump stopped the war on coal. Thanks to fracking, the US is now the number 2 oil producer in the world, second to Saudi Arabia. The flood of exported oil and natural gas from the US threatens to bankrupt Russia and Iran. Trump's energy policy is the number one reason that Putin rationally should have preferred Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.

Trump has eliminated all the stupid rules of engagement that allowed ISIS to exist. Trump allowed the Air Force to drop the Mother of All Bombs in Afghanistan, killing 92 ISIS in Afghanistan fighters in a tunnel complex, showing we will use any weapon and drop it on any military target without worrying about whether two civilians and a goat might get killed in the process. Trump is letting the military set strategy. Trump's cabinet appointments are marvelous. Trump has ordered reinforcements to the Baltic Countries and Poland. ISIS got wiped out in Mosul and Raqaa is surrounded.

Trump and Congress eliminated a lot of nasty regulations that Obama pushed through at the last minute. Trump is appointing judges that believe the Constitution means what it says. Trump is actually trying to deliver on his campaign promises. Trump is a lot better than a crippled President Pence.

Republican alternatives to Trump are a fantasy. If Democrats succeed in getting rid of him, they see a big comeback in their future, just like after Watergate. That's what I see too. Why would any Republican or Conservative want that?

Feb 15, 2016

Scalia's Original Intent is Vital to Preserving the Constitution

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had been dead about 36 hours when liberals started to explain that Senate Republicans had a duty to confirm whomever President Obama nominated as Scalia’s replacement.  Liberals are really big on explaining etiquette to conservatives, etiquette they would never follow themselves if anything important was at stake.  In all situations, but especially in this situation, Republicans should play by the rules that the Democrats apply to themselves.  

Antonin Scalia was the voice of reason on the Supreme Court.  He believed the Constitution had to be interpreted according to how it was understood by the people who wrote it.  He also believed that a judge had a duty to rule on what the law was, not on what the judge wanted the law to be. 

In contrast, “living Constitution” liberals believe the Constitution changes based on what people believe is a reasonable interpretation today, without regard to what the people who wrote it understood it to mean.   “Living Constitution” is how the 14th Amendment, passed in 1868 when homosexual acts were illegal in every state, is interpreted to require gay marriage in every state under the Equal Protection clause.  Whether you like the outcome or not, how “living Constitution” Justices got there is ridiculous.

Scalia was the best jurist on the court for upholding the rule of law and making the law understandable and predictable.  Replacing Scalia with a “living Constitution” liberal will allow the Supreme Court to destroy what little remains of structure of checks and balances during the appointee’s time as a justice.  Republicans can’t allow that and preserve the United States as a Constitutional Republic.

From the chatter on liberal media on the morning of the 15th, it's obvious that Obama is considering a recess appointment. The Senate is in recess now until February 22.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should call an emergency session of the Senate immediately to remove the any plausible argument that a recess appointment of a Supreme Court Justice would be valid now. Any and all complaints about short notice should be met with the explanation that 5 Justices can change the Constitution anytime, even if one of the 5 is a recess appointment temporary hire.

All whining about how the Senate needs to confirm Obama's pick for the court should be met with a quote. I agree with President Obama when he said, "Elections have consequences." We won the 2014 elections. Under the Constitution, the Senate's consent is required to confirm a Supreme Court Justice. We do not consent. That's the end of it.

The article starts to surrender already by saying Republicans could allow a recess appointment to escape pressure from the press. It's time to stop escaping. Hit the Pravda Press right in the teeth.  If Trump can do it for his ego, we can do it for our principles.  It’s easy to state why we will not confirm Obama’s nominee, and we should do so until everyone in the country can recite it like an advertising slogan.  We believe, as Justice Scalia believed, that the Constitution should be interpreted based on what the people who wrote it understood it to mean. We also believe, as Justice Scalia did, that a Justice should decide what the law is, not what the Justice would like the law to be. These principles are more important to us than skin color, gender or ethnic background. We should make this perfectly clear to the Pravda Press. We should refuse to engage on any smoke screen questions. We should respond to red herrings by repeating our reasons for refusing to consent.


Jan 24, 2016

Obama's Legacy of Ruin

Adam Smith famously said, "There is a lot of ruin in a nation." Barack Obama seems hell bent on seeing how much ruin he can inflict on this country as part of his "legacy."
The Iran nuclear arms deal is a dire threat to America. We could easily lose a major city to a terrorist nuclear weapon hidden in a hijacked ocean freighter. We also run the risk that other countries who once depended on the US to defend them from nuclear threats will feel compelled to make their own arrangements. This could easily lead to a general, perhaps nuclear war in the Middle East.
Putin is taking crazy chances because he knows his grip on power is threatened by the rock bottom price of oil. Energy is Russia's main world class export. The last time oil prices crashed, Russian inflation hit 80% a year, Russia defaulted on its bonds and Boris Yeltsin was forced from power. That's how Putin came to power. Putin believes, probably correctly, that losing power will be the death of him. He has resorted to risky military adventures to bolster his popularity. Putin has found no US resistance to his attacks on the Ukraine and Syria. In the Ukraine, Obama has not supplied any weapons at all. Putin's next trick could be attacking Lithuania, a former Soviet Republic and now NATO ally. At the moment, Putin has just finished quietly negotiating basing rights in Belarus, next door to Lithuania, while everybody is watching the Russian Air Force bomb civilians in Syria.
I am also concerned that Obama's disdain for the Constitution and rule of law has created dangerous precedents that his successors will emulate. I don't want a dictator even if he's on my side. I think it will probably take a Constitutional Convention called by the states to fix the mess, because the courts have not acted to restrain the administration's extralegal moves. In many cases they have piled on themselves, for example in the Obamacare cases where they rewrote the law twice without benefit of Congress.
As to the amount of ruin in the US, I am fearfully asking myself, "Are we there yet?" 

2015 Was The End of the Rule of Law for Feds


2015 was the end even a polite fiction of the rule of law in the US.
The way the Supreme Court decided the Obamacare case and the Gay Marriage case both came from the Humpty Dumpty school of law. The law means whatever 5 Supreme Court Justices decide it means, and neither more nor less. According to the Supreme Court, Congress no longer has the power to require statutes, like Obamacare, be implemented as passed. According to the Supreme Court, the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 when homosexual acts were illegal in all states, requires gay marriage.
Regulatory overreach became the rule in 2015. It was the year when the administration asserted it could regulate the internet using a law passed in 1934 to regulate defunct land line telephone monopolies, a law which was modeled on an earlier law passed in 1887 to regulate railroads. Statutes that seemed to forbid internet regulation did not make any difference. It was the year when the EPA outlawed coal without benefit of Congress, and the courts refused to restrain the EPA before this obviously illegal system of regulations was put into effect. It was the year which made clear that regulatory agencies had executive, legislative and judicial functions all in one package which were obviously at the president's command. These regulatory agencies have no separation of powers and no checks or balances. The Congress can't restrain them without a veto proof majority and the courts won't restrain them because the agencies are supposed to possess subject matter expertise to which courts are supposed to defer.

I think it's obvious that Barrack Obama has brought us to a turning point. If we don't reverse the trend toward arbitrary executive edicts and runaway justices, we are on the road to a banana republic dictatorship. If we are to reverse the trend, Barack Obama has pointed out all of the flaws in our current system that we need to fix by exploiting them. The flaws are so dangerous, numerous and ingrown that it will take a Constitutional Convention to fix them

Sep 13, 2015

Obama's Legacy May Be A Constitutional Convention

The US is gradually losing the rule of law, from the top to the bottom. In the courts, the Constitution expected judges to rule on what the law is, whether they liked it or not. We have come to the point where judges in important cases rule according to what they would like the law to be. This is the Humpty Dumpty school of law, where the Constitution means whatever 5 Supreme Court Justices say it means, and neither more nor less. The gay marriage ruling is a classic example of this attitude. I think the justices should have ruled that a marriage legally performed in one state had to be recognized in all states. It would have been a ruling consistent with previous rulings. Like the ruling overturning DOMA, it would have been a ruling that left the power to the states. Ruling that way would have settled the matter without leaving any loose ends for future advocates to use to expand future "rights." Instead the court stretched the 14th Amendment to cover gay marriage. This stretch was ridiculous. In 1868 when the 14th Amendment was ratified, homosexual acts were illegal in every state. But the effect of stretching this far is pervasive fear about how far any wacky group of 5 Supreme Court might go in some future case.

If you are comfortable with the Supreme Court acting in arbitrary fashion, think about how you would feel about a 5 to 4 vote that went the wrong way from your point of view. Given the way Roe v Wade was decided, nothing prevents a future Supreme Court from reversing the ruling totally. There's no Constitutional Amendment and no legislative process in place to backstop the ruling. Another group of justices can rule 5 to 4 that life begins at conception and all abortions are henceforth illegal, and all state laws to the contrary are overturned. I would not want this outcome. But the way Roe v Wade was decided, there is nothing to stop it from happening. I think this hypothetical is definitely possible. So do the supporters of the Roe v Wade outcome, who panic every time there's another vacancy on the Supreme Court for exactly that reason.

In the regulatory agencies, we have gradually moved to a concentration of power that was not supposed to happen under the Constitution. Regulatory agencies combine executive, legislative and judicial function all in a one stop shop. They make the rules, a legislative function. They decide where to send investigators, an executive function. And finally they hear the cases with their own administrative judges, a judicial function. They get away with all of this because the courts defer to regulatory agencies' expertise. If you sue a regulatory agency, the deck is heavily stacked against you.  Under Obama, they no longer bother to follow the law authorizing their existence and purpose.  They do whatever the president wants.

At the presidential level, the Smartest President Ever is ruling by decree using his pen and phone. He unilaterally decided not to collect taxes on employers mandated by Obamacare, which in most contexts is "settled law." He has granted visas to illegal aliens, contrary to law. If I listed all of the ways Barry the Brilliant has flouted the law, it would take me until tomorrow at 6 AM to get through all of them.

If we do elect a Republican president in 2016, it will be interesting to see the left's reaction to a Republican Executive Branch using a pen and phone approach to canceling Obama's pen and phone decrees.  I imagine pen and phone activity on the right will become a gross abuse of Constitutional process.  The rules change depending on who's in office.  Under the rule of law, everybody has to obey the same law, no matter who they are or what political alignment they have.  It’s just another indication that the rule of law is disappearing.

The Supreme Court needs a check on it. I think that if the legislatures of a majority of states vote to "ratify" a minority opinion that disagreed with the majority opinion in a Supreme Court case within 2 years of the decision, then the minority opinion should come into force as if it were the majority opinion. This has several benefits. For one thing, the Justices would be encouraged to moderate reasoning to justify decisions and prevent dissents which would attract support in the states. For another, unlike term limits or other removal from office mechanisms, this goes to the heart of the problem. It changes the offending decision itself. There are plenty of judges who would be glad to be removed from office if their decision would stay in force.

The regulatory agencies need to be reined in. The best way to do that would be to force Congress to vote to ratify all regulations before they go into effect. Since the agencies are executive branch, the President's position would be that he was proposing the regulations for Congress to ratify. Congress could refuse to ratify any part of the proposed regulations as well as rejecting the whole package. Just to put some extra teeth into it, all regulations and laws should have an expiration date of 50 years or less. This is another Constitutional Amendment with no chance in Congress or on almost any conceivable President's desk.

All regulatory administrative proceedings need to be subject to strict judicial review.  Deference to regulatory findings should be ended by statute.  Special knowledge lower courts should be established by Congress as the initial courts of appeal for each regulatory agency.  The judges in these courts would not necessarily have to be lawyers, but they would have to be knowledgeable on the area of regulation they were hearing appeals for.  Rulings in regulatory agency enforcement hearings should not take effect if appealed by the regulated party until a court ruling sustains them.  All of these changes could be enacted by Congress without any Constitutional change.

Given recent Democrats’ willingness to vote whichever way President Obama or Harry Reid tells them to, I don’t expect any amendment that changed the Washington power structure would have a chance of getting passed in Congress.  I think we are going to have to go with a Constitutional Convention called by the states.

Many, even most of you, are concerned about the risks of a Constitutional Convention.  You have to remember that the Constitution we have now means whatever 5 Supreme Justices say it means. Anything a Constitutional Convention drafts would have to be ratified by 38 states. While Congress has shown a number of times that it will vote for 1,000 pages of mumbo jumbo, I think the legislatures of 38 states are likely to have better sense.

The loss of the rule of law is, to reuse Biden's phrase, a BFD. I think we need a Constitutional Convention called by the states to fix it.  I think enough folks in Flyover country are tired of the generally lawless behavior at the federal level that we are reaching a tipping point. If no reasonable amendments can get through Congress, the states will call a Constitutional Convention under Article V. Harry Reid ain't the only politician with a nuclear option. If the Supreme Court tries to stop a Constitutional Convention, liberals will finally find out the real reason the Second Amendment is in the Bill of Rights.


Jun 28, 2015

Amendment Needed to Check Supreme Court

I think it’s become perfectly clear in the last week that the Supreme Court is abusing its power.  It seems to me that recent decisions of the court are based on what the majority of the justices want the law to be rather than what the law is.  I think that the unchecked power of the Supreme Court has proven to be a design flaw in the Constitution. To return our government to the rule of law instead of the rule of nine appointed judges, I think we need to consider changing the Constitution to check the power of the Supreme Court.  First let me explain why we need to check the Supreme Court.  Then I’ll take a shot at proposing an amendment which I think will help.

I am in favor of gay marriage. If the court had ruled that a legal marriage performed in one state must be recognized in all states, I would have been very happy with the decision. The means Justice Kennedy used instead have badly damaged the outcome. The Supreme Court made it up in both the Obamacare case and the gay marriage case. The whole point of having written laws is that they are predictable. Everyone is supposed to be able to understand what the law is and live by it. Under current circumstances, Supreme Court rulings are more like professional football games. On any given case, the Supreme Court can change the plain meaning of the words in a statute, or the clear understanding of a Constitutional Amendment when it was ratified.

In the Obamacare case, the statute language said subsidies would only go to purchasers who used an "Exchange established by the State.” The Supreme Court added the words "or the federal government" because too many states did not set up exchanges. It's clear that the bill was very poorly drafted. In the bad old days, when Congress was the only legislature, this would have been a problem only Congress could fix. Instead, the executive and judicial branches conspired to cut Congress out of the process. This disenfranchises all of the voters who elected Senators and Representatives in 2010, 2012 and 2014. If the court had ruled that the statute meant what it said and the stayed its order until 12/31/15 to give Congress and the President time to fix the mess, that would have been a ruling on what the law is rather than what 6 justices thought Congress intended the law to be.

In the gay marriage case, the Supreme Court used the 14th Amendment to rule that gay marriage was mandated by the Constitution. In 1868, when the 14th Amendment was passed, homosexual acts were illegal in every state. The state legislators who voted to ratify the 14th Amendment thought they were ratifying equal rights regardless of race. When the 14th Amendment was used to invalidate laws against mixed race marriage, this was exactly what the ratifiers would have expected. None of them would have expected that gay marriage was what they had ratified.

One way to fix this might be a Constitutional Amendment permitting a Supreme Court minority opinion to be ratified by the legislatures of a majority of states within two years of any decision. If this happens, the minority takes effect instead of the majority ruling. This would put the brakes on crazy Supreme Court rulings that ignore the plain language of the Constitution or statutes. It would also give states back some of the power they have lost to the federal government.


I think that this is reasonable. The minority opinions are learned legal opinions, so this is not a blank check for the state legislatures. The mere possibility of opinions being overturned in this fashion might promote moderation and compromise in Supreme Court Decisions.  If the threat wasn't enough, the remedy would not be easy, but it would be easier than a specific Constitutional Amendment to overturn a bad Supreme Court reading of the Constitution. It also would be easier than impeachment to correct a bad appointment.