If at any time since Robert Bork the democrat party had really cared about a true hearing and not an attempted character assassination, I’d have thought the hearings were worthwhile. Given the last 30-35 years hearings of a republican nominated candidate are pretty much useless, they should cut them out and just vote. The republicans (for better or worse) don’t treat democrat nominees like this.
Don’t give the the democrats a platform for demagoguing.
If it wasn’t obvious from Biden and Harris’ statements, Biden and Harris plan to pack the US Supreme Court.
“the president would use an autopen machine that holds a pen and signs his actual signature [on the renewed Patriot Act]. ” the White House said.
Article 1, Section 7 of the United States says: “If he approve he shall sign it…” regarding the “Legislative Process”. Clearly the Constitution intends the President to sign a bill, not have a machine sign Bills. Anything else is unconstitutional.
Yet another example where expediency has trumped the Constitution. Opinions to the contrary are useful to mask the issue and create confusion. The Constitution is clear here and treating it otherwise is disingenuous at best, and treasonous at worst.
This discussion is ignoring the problems with the Patriot Act itself.
Update 5/28: The rational that the President “authorized” it means that ANYONE could sign bills for the President if he “authorized” it. A dog’s muddy footprint would work if it was authorized presumably. What exactly is required to “authorize”? A verbal statement – what about someone faking his voice? A wink – or was that a twitch? Something signed – oh wait, that is what we’re talking about?
The signature of the President IS the authorization for a Bill and it makes no sense to authorize the authorization. Just stating that makes it obvious how crazy the entire idea is.
As an attorney, all the legal memorandums that have been rolled out trying to justify the action are nothing more than ex post facto attempts to justify the autopen.
When President Obama comes home, he should sign the Bill in person and never use the autopen again. The use of the autopen is a farce.
Remember:
“Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn’t even get out of committee.” ~ F. Lee Bailey
True and sad. For the last 90 years those in charge have betrayed the founding principals of the United States.
Socialism, fascism, communism, the herpes of political systems. You may unknowingly get it and once you’ve got it, you’ve got it forever. They are probably more of an ebola or other fatal virus since eventually they – and any other authoritarian, collectivist system – will kill the host country.
How quickly liberty and then a country dies is proportional to the degree they implement any anti-freedom system.
On the 235th anniversary of one of the greatest calls for liberty – “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” – the President of the United States signed one of the biggest curtailments of human freedom in United States history. The irony may have been lost on Washington leadership today, and perhaps the quotation from Washington, DC, today would have been “Liberty or death? Why so extreme? Screw the liberty, just give me health insurance!”
Remember this quotation, it is all the more relevant today:
“It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775
A benevolent dictator is still a dictator, no matter the motives. Whether or not he arises “for a good cause” or not, does not make the result any better. A slave with a benevolent master is still a slave. A slave for a “good cause” is still a slave.
No one would argue that the slaves were “extreme” demanding freedom, but even if they were, as Goldwater said, extremism in the defense of liberty is … Continue reading A benevolent dictator is still a dictator.
The “one drop rule” was one of the most odious and infamous rules of the Jim Crow era. Now it being given new life by the Democrat Party in order to silence criticism of President Obama. The Democrat machine uses it to impugn the “race” of President Obama. Instead of accepting the fact that critics of the President are attacking his policies, the Democrat establishment attacks those who disagree with the President as “racists.”
Ignoring for now the stupidity of believing skin color or eye color or hair color is an indication of “race” – we’re all part of the human race – what the Democrat defenders are saying is that “since the President is ‘black’ anyone who attacks him is a racist.”
Now why is that relevant? Simple. President Obama’s father was “black” from Kenya. President Obama’s mother was “white” from Kansas. Now to be labeled a “racist” for attacking the President’s policies, one has to accept that President Obama is “black.” Given that one parent was “white” and the other “black,” one must accept the most repulsive, vile, and repugnant “one drop rule” from the Jim Crow era – which meant that “one drop of ‘black blood'” essentially made one “non-white.” In fact, it was much worse than that. In 1911, Arkansas pass Act 320, a.k.a. the “one-drop rule,” making “interracial cohabitation” a felony and defining as “Negro” anyone “who has…any negro blood whatever.” The Supreme Court remedied this stupidity in 1967 when it over-turned the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, but now the racists in the Democrat Party want to bring it back. (For an authoritative discussion, see the book “Who is Black” by F. James Davis, excerpts of which are available on the internet).
Are the people who say that attacks on the President’s policies are racist really advocating adoption of the “one drop rule”? Are the racist Democrats really espousing the “one drop rule” for the President? They are making the argument that the most infamous racists in history were making: that one drop of “black” blood makes you black. The “one drop” rule, infamous in the Jim Crow era. Talk about the critics embracing the worst of the racist past and using it to call others racist!
Skin color is irrelevant, freedom and policies are the only concerns. The true racists are those who think that one’s skin color is relevant and that the “one drop” rule should apply to the President. The President would get the same criticism whomever his parents were, just as President Bush did for some of his idiotic policies. Under the Jim Crow system employed regarding criticism of President Obama, a black mother can never have a white baby, while a white mother can have a black baby. Is that rational? Is it even relevant? No, dividing people by skin color is a technique used to gather power by the divide and conquer mentality. People have the right to be free no matter their eye color, hair color or skin color. This policy means so much for Thurgood Marshall’s insistence that “classifications and distinctions based upon race or color have no moral or legal validity in our society” and Martin Luther King’s wish that his children would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Family history and genealogy is a wonderful treasure, but it has no place in government policy. “Race” is a bad concept who’s time has long gone. Everyone in the United States is “American” without any hyphens. It is time that people started to behave that way.
How times have changed. Senator Byrd (D), 4/5/2001 (video), transcript:
The Democratic Leadership pleaded with me at length to agree to support the idea that the Clinton Health Care Bill should be included in that year’s reconciliation package.
They came to my office on the floor below. President Clinton got on the phone and called me also and pressed me to allow his massive health care bill to be insulated by reconciliations protection. He called me on the telephone.
I felt that changes as dramatic as the Clinton health care package which would affect every man, woman, and child in the United States should be subject to scrutiny. I said Mr. President I can not in good conscience turn my face the other way. That’s why we have a Senate, to amend and debate freely. That health bill, as important as it is, is so complex, so far reaching that the people of the country need to know what’s in it. And moreover Mr. President, we Senator’s need to know what’s in it before we vote.
And he accepted that. He accepted that and thanked me and we said goodbye.
I could not, I would not, and I did not allow that package to be handled in such a cavalier manner. It was the threat of the use of the Byrd rule. Reconciliation was never, never, never intended to be shield, to be used as a shield, for controversial legislation.
Even ignoring the un-Constitutionality of the bill – which the Continue reading SEN. BYRD SINGLE-HANDEDLY STOPPED PRESIDENT CLINTON FROM USING RECONCILIATION