Constitutional republics are, like, hard (cont.)

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After previously claiming that he could not just wave some sort of magic wand to get his manner of immigration reform put into place, the President is proving that he is to the rule of law what the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers were to NFL success.

Here he is all the way back in 2011 at a National Council of La Raza meeting:

"I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. And believe me, right now, dealing with Congress right now -- the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. Not just on immigration reform. But that's not how our system works."

Until he says it doesn't.





Here's B-Daddy over at The Liberator Today with some points to ponder regarding the President's back door Dreamin' that apparently became the law of the land this past Friday:

•It violates the statute for granting work permits to aliens, undermining the rule of law.

•It can be rescinded by the next President.

•It could be a trap that would allow the identification of these aliens for deportation in the future.

•It could be a trap that would allow the identification of the aliens' parents for deportation in the future.

•It will increase the reported unemployment rate to the extent that the nonresident undocumented aliens seek work. (Yes, illegal immigrants, but I'm keeping to the legal language.)

•It will put more pressure on legal residents looking for work, because of added competition from this group.

•Did I mention that it undermines the rule of law?

•It encourages more illegal immigration, because parents want good for their children most of all. Getting their children eligible for work in the U.S. is a powerful incentive for further law breaking, given the miserable conditions in most of Latin America and especially Mexico; where the majority of illegal immigrants hail from.

We have to hand it to the guy: as far as shameless pandering to distract from an abjectly horrible economics and jobs scene, this one takes first prize.


However, be that as it may, being roughly the same age as this constitutional scholar, we'd be surprised if he was not exposed to some Saturday morning education, the likes of which far exceeds any that he is currently practicing.

So easy, a fourth-grader could understand it...

"It's not easy to become a law, is it?"

45 years later, global alarmist still alarming

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If you've been following this blog for a while, you know there is a special place in our heart for one Paul Ehrlich (pictured). Ehrlich has been making fantastically wrong predictions regarding what will befall the human race since his book The Population Bomb arrived on the scene back in the late 60s.

Seriously, what other emotions but warmth and affection can you have towards someone who was freaking you out as a 2nd-grader reading his predictions of Book of Revelations-sized calamities in our Weekly Reader.

Well, neither time nor a crappy track record has dissuaded Ehrlich from his thinly-disguised call for population reduction and wealth redistribution. Wait, what? Did we say thinly-veiled? There's nothing veiled about his calls for population reduction and wealth distribution.

From The Guardian:

Cut world population and redistribute resources, expert urges

Nuclear disaster or plague likely unless population shrinks and natural resources are reassigned to poor, says Prof Paul Ehrlich .

The world's most renowned population analyst has called for a massive reduction in the number of humans and for natural resources to be redistributed from the rich to the poor.

Paul Ehrlich, Bing professor of population studies at Stanford University in California and author of the best-selling Population Bomb book in 1968, goes much further than the Royal Society in London which this morning said that physical numbers were as important as the amount of natural resources consumed.

"The question is: can you go over the top without a disaster, like a worldwide plague or a nuclear war between India and Pakistan? If we go on at the pace we are there's going to be various forms of disaster. Some maybe slow motion disasters like people getting more and more hungry, or catastrophic disasters because the more people you have the greater the chance of some weird virus transferring from animal to human populations, there could be a vast die-off."

"Most of the predictions [in Population Bomb] have proved correct. At that time I wrote about climate change. We did not know then if it was warming or cooling. We thought it was going to be a problem for the end of this century. Now we know it's warming and a problem for the beginning of the century; we didn't know about the loss of biodiversity. Things have been coming up worse than was predicted. We have the threats now of vast epidemics".

(italics, ours)

What Ehrlich predicted is that we would all pretty much be dead by now.



The warmists' world is in shambles. In the midst of discredting themselves through burying data and outright misleading the public on the issue, the climate change conference at Copenhagen back in 2010 was an epic failure to where now no one pays any effective attention to these global climate conferences.

What this has resulted in, fortunately, is for the warmists to speak freely and admit that needed change for the planet's citizens really isn't about global climate change but power... power over the productive societies of this planet.

Rather than wealth redistribution or population reduction (the actual mechanics of which, Ehrlich never gets into), the planet and specifically the "huddled masses" of this planet would be better served were they not enslaved by the various forms of corrupt and amoral governance be they autocracies, warlord-ships, dictatorships or kleptocracies.

Wealth redistribution will merely consolidate more power into the hands of those already in power in the aforementioned governing styles and unless pro-free market, constitutional forms of government are embraced where the rule of law rather than the rule of power is embraced, Ehrlich's predictions may very well be self-fulfilling prophecies.

Sustainability is not about wealth redistribution rather rule of law, freedom of speech and property rights. Any other approach is doomed to failure.

The Friday evening dump

One in a series that takes a look at some unsavory news being jettisoned from D.C. right before the weekend in the hopes that no one will notice.




Do you remember when they told us that if we voted for McCain it would mean 4 more years of signing statements that violated the will of Congress and the law? Well, they were right.



No Czar left behind!

In a statement issued Friday night, President Obama took issue with some provisions in the budget bill – and in one case simply says he will not abide by it.

Last week the White House and congressional Democrats and Republicans were involved in intense negotiations over not only the size of the budget for the remainder of the FY2011 budget, and spending cuts within that budget, but also several GOP “riders,” or policy provisions attached to the bill.

One rider – Section 2262 -- de-funds certain White House adviser positions – or “czars.” The president in his signing statement declares that he will not abide by it.

“The President has well-established authority to supervise and oversee the executive branch, and to obtain advice in furtherance of this supervisory authority,” he wrote. “The President also has the prerogative to obtain advice that will assist him in carrying out his constitutional responsibilities, and do so not only from executive branch officials and employees outside the White House, but also from advisers within it. Legislative efforts that significantly impede the President's ability to exercise his supervisory and coordinating authorities or to obtain the views of the appropriate senior advisers violate the separation of powers by undermining the President's ability to exercise his constitutional responsibilities and take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Or as Jack Tapper helpfully summarizes: We know what you want that provision in the law to do but we don't think it's constitutional and more importantly we really don't feel like abiding by it. Czars are, like, constitutional.



It's been quite a run for the Prez these past 2-3 weeks: keeping Gitmo open for business, formalizing open-ended detentions of suspected terrorists, removing us from that quagmire in Libya and now continuing a policy of his predecessor of which Obama the candidate had this to say:

the “problem” with the Bush administration “is that it has attached signing statements to legislation in an effort to change the meaning of the legislation, to avoid enforcing certain provisions of the legislation that the President does not like, and to raise implausible or dubious constitutional objections to the legislation.”

The back bencher said at the time, as President, he would not use signing statements.

We should be hearing the howls of outrage and betrayal from his base any minute now.

Any minute....

this is according to our religion. You are my wife, I c[an] do anything to you. The woman, she should submit and do anything I ask her to do.

Now, here's a real heart-warming story that was alerted to us at The Corner with a post titled, "Sharia Creeps". Without context, be it known that creeps is in the intransitive verb form though the noun form would certainly qualify in this case, as well.

A woman brought suit against her Muslim husband for non-consensual sex and other abuses. The judge presiding in the case refused to find that there had been sexual assault or any other criminal misconduct because under Sharia law a wife cannot refuse her husband's request for sex. Here's the judge's reasoning:

This court does not feel that, under the circumstances, that this defendant had a criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault or to sexually contact the plaintiff when he did. The court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited.

Charmed, we're sure.

So, where did this all go down? Saudi Arabia? Iran? Perhaps England which is slowly losing its way in the West vs. East war with respect to assimilation and sharia law? No, no and no. This little marital dust-up and resulting sharia-friendly ruling by the judge went down in New Jersey.

The defendant employed the ol' I-didn't-know-I-could-knock-my-wife-around-and-force-myself-on-her-because-I'm-Muslim defense. And we'll be damned if it didn't work.

Thankfully, an appellate court reversed this ruling, stating that for the time being at least, the law of the land here in the states super cedes any sort of violent and misogynistic features of a cave-dwelling body of law that might by practiced abroad:

Defendant’s conduct in engaging in non consensual sexual intercourse was unquestionably knowing, regardless of his view that his religion permitted him to act as he did.

As the judge recognized, the case thus presents a conflict between the criminal law and religious precepts. In resolving this conflict, the judge determined to except defendant from the operation of the State’s statutes as the result of his religious beliefs. In doing so, the judge was mistaken.

We dodged that bullet. Shame that it actually had to be reversed on appeal. What does that tell us about how things are trending in this country?

And when internationalists inform us that we must look overseas to see how law is interpreted there, do you think this is what they had in mind?

Your daily World Cup update (Not a sports take*)

We liberated an article that was linked in a comment from B-Daddy from our previous WC update post.


It seems that some people in Germany are none too pleased that certain citizens there are displaying a high degree of patriotic temerity.

In the Berlin district of Neukoelln, a district dominated by Turkish and Arab immigrant families, Badr Muhammed and his cousin Yusuf Basal have hung a giant German flag - measuring 20 meters (22 yards) by five meters - outside their building.

"My family and I are excited about the German team's World Cup performance," said Muhammed. The cousins are originally from Lebanon and run a small grocery store on the ground floor of the building. Muhammed said his whole family is football crazy, and they're all die-hard supporters of the German team.


But displaying national pride in such an extrovert manner has drawn criticism in a country where rallying behind national colors is viewed with contempt by some who associate it with the Third Reich.

Muhammed said he has received threats from German far-left activists, who have tried to tear down the flag.

"They said we shouldn't show the flag in such a conspicuous way because it recalled the Nazi era," he said. "I reject such thinking because the flag for us means that we stand by this country as we were born and raised here. We've become German citizens and we just want to support our national team."

The flag proved popular with passers-by who were asked for their opinion by Deustche Welle. One woman said she saw it as something "quite different" for the neighborhood. A young Turkish man said the flag represented values such as unity, freedom and the rule of law in a country that is truly multicultural.

(italics, ours)

We pray that holds true here as well.



A couple of observations:

First, we're not surprised that the Lebanese family expressing those sentiments runs a small business. They're vested in their country. As such, there is compelling interest for them to see their country do well economically, socially and politically and this compelling interest naturally spills over into wanting to see their country's soccer team do well, also.

Instead of sitting around on the dole, blaming others for their failure and/or letting the seeds of hatred grow in their hearts after being planted there by a radical cleric, these people are instead, producers, wealth-creators and positively-contributing members of their neighborhood and Germany at-large.







Second observation: Completely anecdotal but in our neighborhood, at least, the houses that do fly Old Glory are usually the best-kept as well.




Imagine a world united around the rule of law, freedom of speech/religion and property rights. Imagine all the people uniting around these principles.

You may say that we're dreamers but we're not the only ones.

We hope someday you'll join us, so we can rid the world of crappy songs as well.


* We felt compelled to add this as we were informed our "sports-related" posts were summarily discarded. The pain.

Tales from Bailout Nation Pt. IXX

Above almost anything else, capitalism relies on the rule of law. When the laws are broken, bent or ignored by the very people commissioned to regulate free enterprise activity, you have the potential for the crony capitalism that existed between the housing industry and Congress and for which was largely responsible for the giant meltdown that resulted.

B-Daddy is wondering why a hugely important judgement that was handed down yesterday and which seeks, in part, to restore accountability and the rule of law has not received more media coverage. The details here.

Of course, your opinion may differ

We had jury duty today and though we were de-selected once we made it to the box, we always find the instructions offered by the presiding judge and the line of questioning employed by both the prosecution and defense in order to select the jury to be informative.

Without getting into too much of the details, the case that was to be tried was the allegation that a woman with a history of mental problems (assumed) had committed fraud in illegally obtaining Social Security money.

We have appeared for jury duty probably half a dozen times and though we haven’t yet served in the jury box, the judges opening instructions, though pro forma, are entirely necessary. And this time the judge was no different as he asked us to be impartial jurors and to not let the gender, race, religion or sexual orientation of the defendant, the witnesses or that of the prosecution or defense bias our thinking either in favor or against.

“Is there anyone here, that will not be able to do this? I see no hands raised.”

The attorneys also asked individual jurors (those who had previous experiences with trying to obtain disability or social security, for example) if they could indeed remain impartial throughout the trial if they themselves had a negative experience in attempting to obtain the same.

The judge then introduced a term we had not heard before. It was jury nullification. It goes hand in hand with the requested impartiality but we suppose because of this case where (again, we are assuming) the defendant suffers from some mental health issues, the judge wanted to make sure that our emotions did not get the better of us. The judge illustrated the concept of jury nullification as being where a juror or jurors, regardless of the facts presented before them would move to acquit a defendant in protest of the applicable law(s) or the set of circumstances inherent to the case.

We’re proud we have the justice system as we do. We’re glad the judge takes what seems like an eternity to lay out the simple ground rules for executing a fair trial and that any biases and prejudices are weeded out as best as possible for as fair a trial as possible. And we are glad the lawyers for both the prosecution and defense assist in this effort.

It appears to by a system that is steeped in trying to obtain the highest of standards by demanding the best in mankind’s nature. These high standards which are un-swayed by emotion or prejudice but rather informed by the rule of law. And we think we can all agree that this is the best way to do this.
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“You do what you think is right and let the law catch up”.
- Thurgood Marshall

What's in a Phrase?

He’s not revealing too many details but McCain is back in the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” rodeo again. And because he’s not in a revealing mood, we are left only to divine his intent when he says this must be a priority of the next President. He mentions his previous efforts with Ted Kennedy (bad) but follows up with “I got the message” on border enforcement (good). So at this point, consider us taking up residence in Missouri: Show Us!

We would suggest scrapping this term altogether as many of us see only “amnesty” as it related to last summer’s Rube Goldberg Amnesty Bill goat-rope. Of course, the simple-minded nativist in us would suggest wordy, though focus group-tested phrases like, “Enforcing the laws that are on the books” or “Its called the ‘Temporary Worker Visa Program’: Use It”.

That does not have, however, the sex-appeal of using the words “reform” and “comprehensive” which connotes not screwing up merely one or two things but rather a willingness to cluster-bomb a variety of concepts like “sovereignty”, “rule of law”, “justice”, “right and wrong”, etc… minor affairs all, we can be assured.

Senator McCain needs to strive for a bit more clarity in this matter. Stay tuned.

Smackdown... Again

B-Daddy here. In an opinion that received only moderate coverage, the Supreme Court has delivered another well deserved smackdown to the Bush administration, this time on an issue of international law. The case itself is fairly straightforward, Jose Ernesto Medellín was sentenced to death in October 1994 after providing a written confession to the rape and murder of two teenage girls in June 1993 as part of a gang initiation. After exhausting most of his appeals, his lawyers brought up the fact that since he was a Mexican national, the Mexican consulate should have been notified, as provided for by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled against the United States in its Avena decision, stating in part:

“(a) The United States of America shall take all measures necessary to ensure that Mr. César Roberto Fierro Reyna, Mr. Roberto Moreno Ramos and Mr. Osvaldo Torres Aguilera are not executed pending final judgment in these proceedings;
(b) The Government of the United States of America shall inform the Court of all measures taken in implementation of this Order.'

Subsequently, the administration withdrew from that particular protocol of the treaty. But that didn't stop the administration from directing the state of Texas to retry the Medellín case. The Supremes said not so fast, under what legal basis do you the executive branch presume to direct the operations of the state criminal justice system. Further, what constitutional right or federal statutory right was Medellín denied that he should even appear as a petitioner before the Supreme Court? The key issue is that even though the United States may sign a treaty, if specific provisions for its enforcement are not codified into law, then courts are enjoined from inventing judicial remedy. We should be very happy about that outcome, because many international treaties tend to infringe on state sovereignty and individual rights. Preventing the courts from inventing remedies prevents future mischief. What if the Senate ratifies the Cybercrime Treaty and it is interpreted by the ICJ that rules that pointing out the Koran directs its followers to make war on infidels is a hate crime. If U.S. courts could then invent remedies, we might as well take a magic marker to the first amendment of the constitution.

BTW, I oppose the death penalty, but am unwilling to subvert our constitutional form of government just to reduce the number of executions.

This legal matter also exposes the President's flagrant disregard for the rule of law, again, by directing state courts to give regard to a treaty from which the administration itself had withdrawn. I happen to agree with DailyKos that this kind of behavior is the most troubling aspect of the Bush presidency. Think about the precedents Bush has tried to set in the hands of Hillary Clinton. Some more bullet points:

• Bush is no conservative, not respecting the rule of law.
• Bush is no federalist, not respecting state judicial processes.

However, of all the candidates currently still in the race, I think that Clinton has shown herself to be the most capable of continuing these shenanigans.

H/T: National Review