Quote Of The Day - Constitution Version

I'm totally ripping this off from Robb Allen of Sharp As A Marble.

Senator John McCain, not exactly my favorite Senator*, recently rebuffed Senator Rand Paul by stating:

"American citizens have nothing to fear from their government."

Which leads us to the Quote of the Day:

Wasn't (isn't) the entire point of the Constitution is that we do? 

I would include the Declaration of Independence as well.....



*Mr. McCain of the famed Keating Five.  Also, I once heard him refer to U.S. servicemembers who supported a literal reading of the Constitution as limiting federal power as being in need of "indoctrination".

Nothing like having a sitting U.S. Senator advocate for re-education camps to make your skin crawl.

Reading The Rule Book

One reason why I lean towards the GOP is that they attempt to maintain the pretense of have read and understood our Constitution at some point in the recent past.

Each member of the House has had to attach a Constitutional Authority Statement (CAS) to every proposed bill since Jan. 5, 2011.

However, one group of Republicans is unimpressed by the offered justifications for constitutionality.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC) analyzes each statement—3,865 in the first year alone—and in response to some of the more questionable justifications began emailing every congressional office a “Questionable Constitutional Authority Statement of the Week.”

“We started highlighting horrible Constitutional Authority Statements because there were so many of them,” said Brian Straessle, RSC spokesman. “Think of it as a shaming mechanism to get people to think seriously and carefully about the intended limits of the federal government’s power.”

Newt Gingrich, for all of his flaws, had at least one redeeming quality.  He thought that members of Congress should read the Constitution as well as the works of the founders so that they would have some sort of familiarity with what the words in the Constitution mean.

The Democratic leadership abandoned that idea a long, long time ago.

Do You Know Why I Pulled You Over, Son?

I love our Constitution.  I love our Constitutionally limited republic.  It is right and just that the government should be limited to a few defined roles and that government authority should not impinge on individual liberty.

Mickey Kaus has an entry about the legally specious arguments being made in favor of the so-called "individual mandate" portion of Obamacare.

Can the government compel you to buy broccoli?  Can it ban all means of disposal other than consumption in order to force you to consume broccoli?

Well, OK then! As long as we can just leave it rotting in the fridge.** … But it’s a little suspicious–and surely not a selling point–that under Elhauge’s argument the only limits on government would be the rights — like “bodily integrity” and privacy — that liberal  lawyers have dreamed up but not the limit — i.e. whether or not something is “interstate commerce” – the Founders dreamed up.

Just what are the Constitutional limits that modern leftists would obey?

One suspects that the answer is "none", as long as they agree with the law in the first place.  Such is the seed from which the vine which will choke liberty is grown.

Liberty Expands Again

There once was a time when blacks were considered less than whites.  All sorts of rules and laws were passed to make sure that they never forgot "their place".

Our definition of liberty expanded.

There once was a time when women were little more than a man's property; to be treated as men saw fit and allowed to occupy roles in society as men saw fit to allow.

Our definition of liberty expanded.

Our definition of liberty has expanded yet again.  Freedom works each and every time it is tried.

The fate of gay and lesbian couples who want to wed in California is now in the hands of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has less than a week to decide whether to block the enforcement of a federal judge's historic toppling of Proposition 8.


The matter was kicked upstairs to the Ninth Circuit court by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who last week said the state's ban on same-sex marriage was discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Today, Walker lifted a temporary stay he had placed on those nuptials, but simultaneously ruled that his order not take effect until 5 p.m. Wednesday.

 Let freedom ring!  The Constitution has won again.

Clueless...Quality Cluelessness....But Clueless Just The Same

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs decided to take on Rush Limbaugh over the latter's criticism regarding the government bailouts for GM and Chrysler.  But something seems amiss:

“I’ll let those that sat in the cheap seats a year-and-a-half ago and wanted to walk away” from a milion workers, he continued, “explain to every one of those workers why they made that decision.”


Finally, he wrapped it up: “And then you should ask Mr. Limbaugh — I don’t know what kind of car he drives, but I bet it’s not an F-150.”


The F-150 truck, we should note, is made by Ford, which didn’t get federal rescue funds.

I suppose that you can't expect to have a rational discussion of the issues at hand with a person who doesn't understand the difference between profits generated by a company that wasn't bailed out with [much smaller] profits generated by a company that was bailed out.

From the 'cheap seats', I'll offer a question for Mr. Gibbs;  Where does the U.S. Constitution grant the federal government the authority to "bail out" any private company?

The country is in the very best of hands.....

A Fact Free Debate

Sadly, that seems to be what some folks want to have these days. The most recent evidence of that is this recent story in the Washington Post that suggests that the Texas state school board's curriculum changes are harbingers of the end of our Republic.

The WaPo editors and writers are apparently unconcerned about the lack of facts and outright errors in that article. Error number one occurs in paragraph number one:

The Texas state school board gave final approval Friday to controversial social studies standards that minimize the separation of church and state and say that America is not a democracy but a "constitutional republic."

We are a "constitutional republic". That is a very specific form of democracy that is designed to limit the size and scope of government. We are not a democracy and we would rue the day should we ever become one. The tyranny of the majority occurs in the 51st voting percentile.

Ann Althouse has a great run down on the other errors in the WaPo's hit piece.

I'm not wildly in favor of all of the changes to the Texas curriculum. But most of them do seem to be aimed at restoring some historical accuracy that has been lost over the years.

This hit piece of the Texas curriculum reforms is ridiculous:

"In this kind of world where knowledge is growing, we should be paying more attention to how to help students deal with knowledge, helping them understand it," he said. "There's nothing in the standards that would help someone Google search George Washington... how do I know which is the good one? That's the kind of skill I think we have the opportunity to teach and we're missing the opportunity."

Well, perhaps if schools taught enough factual information about George Washington, then students would be able to recognize a good search result as opposed to a bad one. But no, instead of History Class focusing on actual historical figures, lets have History Class be about the proper uses of Google.

Is it too much to ask that this sort of media criticism actually cite the offending passages? Is it too much to ask that they link to the entire document?

Or.....not unlike the recent imperfect immigration legislation passed in Arizona or the Citizens United Supreme Court decision....is it enough to simply "feel" that a decision is bad without actually bothering to read it? At what point did it become acceptable to launch into criticizing public policies without first reading, comprehending, and analyzing them?

The Biggest Hurdle

I got into an online discussion the other day.....yeah, I know....with yet another individual that demonstrates a complete lack of understanding regarding our Constitutionally limited form of government. He thinks the phrase "General Welfare" is not simply a loop hole, but instead is a sixteen lane wide legislative highway for Congress to use to pass just about any old law.

That discussion motivated me to look up the following, for the next time I need it.

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one ...With respect to the two words 'general welfare', I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." -James Madison