Tag Archives: United States Supreme Court

Breaking Rules Is Not A Problem If No-one Holds You Accountable

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On Thursday, Townhall posted an article about the Democrats in the U.S. Senate ignoring the rules of the Senate. I suspect there will be no consequences for their actions because the Republicans have become experts at rolling over and playing dead.

The article reports:

Senate Democrats threw out the rules of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday in order to launch an unprecedented attack on the United States Supreme Court. More specifically, on conservative justices and their friends. 

For months Chairman Dick Durbin and Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse have been trying to issue subpoenas to longtime conservative activists Leonard Leo and billionaire Harlon Crow. Leo and Crow, both private individuals, are also friends to Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. 

Earlier this month, Durbin briefly backed off his conquest to subpoena Leo and Crow. Today, he blatantly disregarded Senate process and voted to do just that. 

“Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats have been destroying the Supreme Court; now they are destroying the Senate. I will not cooperate with this unlawful campaign of political retribution,” Leo released in response to the move. 

The article concludes:

Republicans on the Committee argue that because the vote was taken before noon, any subpoenas issued to Leo or Crow are invalid. 

While Democrats voted to subpoena friends of conservative justices, Durbin blocked efforts to do the same for staff of liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor. 

Until the current Republicans in the Senate develop a spine or new group of Republicans is elected, we can expect more of the same.

About That Oft Repeated Concern For The Constitution…

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Yesterday PJMedia posted an article about constitutional violations under President Obama. Somehow I don’t remember the Democrats being very upset about those violations.

The article lists the violations:

5. Illegally firing an inspector general

In 2009, Barack Obama illegally fired Gerald Walpin, the inspector general for the Corporation for National and Community Service,  without notice or providing the legally mandated explanation for the firing to Congress. Obama did this to protect Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, an ally of his, whom Walpin had been investigating for misusing federal funds Walpin had discovered a cover-up of sexual assault allegations by minors against Johnson.

4. Giving “green energy” loans to donor companies

If you want to talk about an abuse of power, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were both personally involved in the decision-making process to determine who got $80 billion for clean energy loans, grants, and tax credits for green energy companies, in a highly politicized process that favored companies that supported the Obama-Biden campaign over those that didn’t. It was no coincidence that the companies that got all the cash were donors to their campaign. In fact, DOE officials expressed concerned that Obama and Biden’s involvement was putting taxpayer dollars at risk. Not only did they give all this money to green energy companies that donated to their campaign, but the Obama administration also stole proprietary technology from companies that didn’t get the loans to the Obama cronies who got them. This scandal was much bigger than Solyndra, but the calls for Obama’s impeachment weren’t there.

3. Unconstitutional recess appointments

When Obama made a number of controversial picks for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), he was unable to get them through the Senate. So, in January 2012, he declared his nominees appointed to the Senate via recess appointments. Except the Senate wasn’t even in recess at the time. Obama’s actions were such a blatant abuse of power that experts on both sides of the aisle blasted Obama for what he did and a federal appeals court overturned the appointments a few days after his second inauguration, declaring, “Allowing the president to define the scope of his own appointments power would eviscerate the Constitution’s separation of powers.” The United States Supreme Court ultimately took up the case, and unanimously agreed Obama abused his power.

2. Illegally reinterpreting Title IX

When Title IX was written, the goal was to protect people from discrimination based on sex in education. The notion of “gender identity” or “gender expression” wasn’t even a thing back in 1972 when it was passed. Nevertheless, Obama unilaterally decided that “sex” meant “gender identity” and threatened to enforce this bizarre idea. This was a huge violation of the rights and privacy of women and girls nationwide without so much as a national debate in Congress, where this issue needed to be worked out. Instead of going to Congress, Obama simply threatened educational institutions at all levels with the loss of Title IX funding if they didn’t comply and allow boys to share bathrooms, locker rooms, and dorm rooms with girls, as well as allow boys to play on girls sports teams. Obama’s going around Congress on this issue was a huge violation of power.

1. Changing immigration law via executive order

The truth is, Obama spent most of his presidency with a divided Congress or a GOP-controlled Congress. His radical left-wing agenda was mostly DOA because rather than work toward compromise legislation, his default position was to act on his own, assuming the executive authority to change laws via executive fiat. Anyone who’s familiar with the Constitution knows he had no such authority.

Still, when the DREAM Act failed to pass, Obama issued an executive order creating DACA, an executive-branch version of the DREAM Act. Obama literally bypassed Congress, changing U.S. immigration law via executive pen to appease his pro-open-borders base.

There seems to be something of a double standard here. The Democrats are not able to name one instance where President Trump abused his power or violated the Constitution, yet there was not a peep out of them when President Obama openly violated the Constitution.

If You Are A Parent, This Is Frightening

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Life Site News posted an article on Wednesday about what I would consider a serious violation of parental rights by the government.

The article reports:

The Minnesota mother whose son was maneuvered through a “sex change” by county officials has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review her case. She is charging the government with usurping her parental rights when its agents provided her son with transgender services and narcotic drugs against her wishes.

The Thomas More Society petitioned the High Court Wednesday on behalf of Anmarie Calgaro, arguing that Calgaro’s due process rights were “trampled on” when St. Louis County and its referred health providers “ended her parental control over her minor son without a court order of emancipation.”

“It’s a parent’s worst nightmare,” Thomas More Society special counsel Erick Kaardal said. “Anmarie Calgaro’s child, while a minor, was steered through a life-changing, permanent body altering process, becoming a pawn in someone else’s sociopolitical agenda and being influenced by those who have no legal or moral right to usurp the role of a parent.”

Calgaro sued state agencies and health providers in federal court in 2016 for terminating her parental rights without due process after her minor son was given elective medical services for a so-called “sex change” without her consent or a legal order of emancipation.

Her suit said the state’s entities decided on their own that the then-17-year-old boy was emancipated.

The defendants handled Calgaro’s son as an emancipated minor even though there had been no court action to that effect, the Thomas More statement says. Neither the school district, the county, nor any of the medical agencies named in the lawsuit gave Calgaro any notice or hearing before ending her parental rights over her minor child.

A district judge dismissed Calgaro’s lawsuit in May 2017, admitting that the boy was not legally emancipated by a court order but ruling that Calgaro’s parental rights “remained intact.” The Thomas More Society says the judge decreed that the de facto emancipation of Calgaro’s minor son by the county, school, and medical care providers did not constitute an infringement of constitutionally protected parental rights.

The case was appealed in July 2017 and the district court ruling upheld by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in March of this year.

St. Louis County decided without any basis that Calgaro’s son was emancipated and could receive government benefits, even though Calgaro was a “fit parent” who objected to their actions, the legal non-profit’s statement on the Supreme Court filing said.

The article concludes:

“And the St. Louis County School District in Minnesota has a custom and practice of barring a parent from involvement in the child’s education for more than two years after a child is deemed by the school principal, not by a court order, to be emancipated,” he said. “This is an unacceptable situation for any parent and a serious violation of parental and due process rights.”

Minnesota’s language regarding emancipation is vague, and state law presents no procedural due process rights for “fit parents,” according to Kaardal, even though it does so for those deemed unfit.

“Why wouldn’t we make this same effort for fit parents?” he asked.

Kaardal said he was concerned in particular about the conflict in Minnesota’s legal statutes.

“The U.S. Court of Appeals ignored the major disconnect in the District Court decision where the mother’s parental rights are admitted but not honored, and the ridiculous claims that the agencies which have violated Calgaro’s rights did nothing wrong,” he stated. “The United States Supreme Court now has the opportunity to untangle this incompatible and untenable scenario; so, nationwide fit parents can keep parenting without governmental interference.”

“Under federal law, the right to parent is considered an unenumerated right, protected from governmental interference by the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments,” said Kaardal. “The “liberty” of the Due Process Clauses safeguards those substantive rights “so rooted in the traditions and conscience as to be ranked as fundamental.”

The U.S. Supreme Court reconvenes in October.

 

Putting The Rights Of Non-Citizens Before The Rights Of Citizens

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America is a representative republic. We elect people to represent us. The number of Americans in a given state determines the number of representatives from that state and also impacts the electoral college. Therefore if the population of a state is overstated, it will have more representatives than it is entitled to. If California’s population of American citizens decreases, but its population of non-citizens increases, according to the Constitution, it should lose representatives. If the non-citizens are counted, it might gain representatives, thus acquiring representation that should rightly go to states that increased their number of citizens. That is the reason the citizen question on the census matters. Unfortunately, some of the justices of the Supreme Court do not understand that concept.

The Supreme Court ruled today that the citizenship question should not be included in the census.

The Gateway Pundit reported today:

“Seems totally ridiculous that our government, and indeed Country, cannot ask a basic question of Citizenship in a very expensive, detailed and important Census, in this case for 2020,” Trump said.

“I have asked the lawyers if they can delay the Census, no matter how long, until the United States Supreme Court is given additional information from which it can make a final and decisive decision on this very critical matter. Can anyone really believe that as a great Country, we are not able the ask whether or not someone is a Citizen. Only in America!” he said.

…Of course the Democrats and open borders zealots don’t want the citizenship question on the census because it gives illegal aliens representation in Congress — illegal aliens don’t even have to be given voting rights, as long as they are counted as citizens, they are given a US Representative who fights for their interests over the interests of taxpaying Americans — this is precisely why the Democrats are fighting like hell to stop the Trump admin from adding this question to the census.

The census is taken every 10 years and is used to allot seats to the US House of Representatives in addition to distributing almost $1 trillion in federal funds.

The Supreme Court’s decision is a sad one for our country. American citizens will no longer be correctly represented in Congress.

The Supreme Court Has Reached A Decision On Hobby Lobby

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Fox News is reporting today that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby in its suit against the ObamaCare requirement that it provide contraceptives for female employees.

The article reports:

The justices’ 5-4 decision is the first time that the high court has ruled that profit-seeking businesses can hold religious views under federal law. And it means the Obama administration must search for a different way of providing free contraception to women who are covered under objecting companies’ health insurance plans.

…The court stressed that its ruling applies only to corporations that are under the control of just a few people in which there is no essential difference between the business and its owners.

Alito also said the decision is limited to contraceptives under the health care law. “Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer’s religious beliefs,” Alito said.

The really good news here is that Hobby Lobby will remain in business. There was some question as to whether the company would have stayed in business had the family that owns the company  been forced to do things that were in conflict with their religious beliefs.

Prayer Before Meetings Backed By The Supreme Court

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Yesterday Reuters posted an article on the Supreme Court’s decision to allow prayer before public meetings. Please note that it was a five to four decision. Our right to prayer at public meetings was upheld by one vote.

The details of the decision can be found at the Supreme Court’s website. The decision included the following:

An insistence on nonsectarian or ecumenical prayer as a single, fixed standard is not consistent with the traditionof legislative prayer outlined in the Court’s cases. The Court found the prayers in Marsh consistent with the First Amendment not because they espoused only a ge- neric theism but because our history and tradition have shown that prayer in this limited context could “coexis[t]with the principles of disestablishment and religious freedom.” 463 U. S., at 786. The Congress that drafted the First Amendment would have been accustomed to invocations containing explicitly religious themes of the sort respondents find objectionable. One of the Senate’s first chaplains, the Rev. William White, gave prayers in a series that included the Lord’s Prayer, the Collect for Ash Wednesday, prayers for peace and grace, a general thanksgiving, St. Chrysostom’s Prayer, and a prayer seeking “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, &c.” Letter from W. White to H. Jones (Dec. 29, 1830), in B. Wilson,Memoir of the Life of the Right Reverend William White, D.D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of Pennsylvania 322 (1839); see also New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette, Dec. 15, 1823, p. 1 (describing a Senate prayer addressing the “Throne of Grace”); Cong.Globe, 37th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (1861) (reciting the Lord’s Prayer). The decidedly Christian nature of these prayers must not be dismissed as the relic of a time when our Nation was less pluralistic than it is today. Congress continues to permit its appointed and visiting chaplains to express themselves in a religious idiom. It acknowledges our growing diversity not by proscribing sectarian content  but by welcoming ministers of many creeds. See, e.g., 160

America is a Christian country. There is room for everyone here, but at its root, America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Congress has chaplains and opens with prayer. This ruling gives local government bodies the right to open in prayer also.

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Hobby Lobby At The Supreme Court

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Yesterday the Supreme Court heard arguments in the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties case about the companies’ right to manage their businesses according to the religious beliefs of their owners. Breitbart.com has a summary of some of the dialogue that went on in the Court.

Some of the highlights:

Former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, arguing for the plaintiffs, began, “When a federal government agency compelled employers to provide something as religiously sensitive as contraception, it knew that free exercise and RFRA claims would soon follow.”

He went on to quote RFRA’s language applying its protections to all federal statutes and regulations unless Congress specifically provides otherwise, both those already on the books and those to be enacted in the future. Congress later broadened RFRA to protect “any exercise” of religion, unless the government can show the burden on faith is the least restrictive means to accomplish a truly compelling public interest. This test is called “strict scrutiny” in constitutional law, an extremely demanding standard that few government actions survive.

…Sotomayor also pointed out that organizations have the option of dropping all insurance coverage and paying $2,000 per employee, per year, for violating what is called the ACA’s employer mandate. Clement objected that the Green family—owners of Hobby Lobby—consider it a form of Christian ministry to provide healthcare for their employees. He also said this was a choice for Hobby Lobby of between paying a $475 million penalty for violating the abortion mandate or a $26 million penalty for violating the employer mandate.

…Although it’s certainly not definite who won the case, at least four justices seemed to side with religious objectors over the Obama administration’s mandate, and very likely a fifth with Kennedy. (Even Justice Stephen Breyer said several supportive comments during argument, but it’s probably too much for the plaintiffs to hope they picked up a sixth vote.)

There are other issues regarding which millions of Americans are currently asserting religious objections. Hobby Lobby could include pronouncements on several principles which could tip those issues one way or the other in court.

The decision on the case will not be released until June.

The thing to remember in watching this case is that the case is not about birth control–it is about abortion. Healthcare plans at Hobby Lobby already provide for birth control–at issue is ‘after the fact’ birth control, which simply causes an abortion. The mandate in ObamaCare is the government’s first step toward federally-funded abortion, which is now illegal under the Hyde Amendment. If Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties can be forced to include abortion pills in their healthcare plans, despite the religious beliefs of their owners, the government will be able to limit the religious freedom of all Americans.

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Are They Being Denied Asylum Because They Might Vote Republican?

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PLEASE SEE THE UPDATE AT THE END OF THIS STORY!!!!!

America has allowed millions of illegal immigrants to stay in this country. The Obama Administration has made it easy for children who were brought here to get tuition breaks, temporary visas, and many things to allow them to remain in America. However, one family seeking asylum because they fear having their children taken away from them has been denied asylum by the Obama Administration. The family was originally granted asylum, but the Obama Administration then denied that asylum, and the family began a court battle to remain in America. The odd thing here is that the Obama Administration has spent a lot of resources fighting the original asylum decision, while at the same time loosening immigration laws for thousands of other people. It makes no sense. However, here is the story.

The Washington Post reported the story yesterday:

The Supreme Court on Monday (March 3) declined to hear an appeal from a family seeking asylum in the United States because home schooling is not allowed in their native Germany.

…HSLDA helped the Romeikes leave Germany in 2008 after they were threatened with jail time and losing custody of their children. The Romeikes are evangelical Christians, and say they should be allowed to keep their children home to teach them Christian values.

An immigration judge in Tennessee granted the Romeikes’ bid in 2010, but the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned the ruling in 2012, arguing that religious home-schoolers don’t face any special threats.

The family lost their appeal in federal court in May 2013. The U.S. grants safe haven to people who have a well-founded fear of persecution, but not necessarily to those under governments with laws that differ from those in the U.S., Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote in the court’s decision.

“The German authorities have not singled out the Romeikes in particular or homeschoolers in general for persecution,” Sutton wrote.

We need to remember that parents should have the last word in the education of their children.

From the Home School Legal Defense Association Facebook (HSLDA)  page:

Today, a Supervisor with the Department of Homeland Security called a member of our legal team to inform us that the Romeike family has been granted “indefinite deferred status”. This means that the Romeikes can stay in the United States permanently (unless they are convicted of a crime, etc.)

This is an incredible victory that can only be credited to our Almighty God.

We also want to thank those of who spoke up on this issue–including that long ago White House petition. We believe that the public outcry made this possible while God delivered the victory.

This is an amazing turnaround in 24 hours. Praise the Lord.

Proverbs 21: 1 “The king’s heart is like a stream of water directed by the Lord, He guides it wherever He pleases.”
~~Michael Farris

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Rewriting History As You Go Along

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It has been thirteen years since the disputed 2000 election. Younger voters who voted in the 2008 and 2012 elections probably do not have a clear picture of exactly what happened in that election. Chris Matthews isn’t helping.

The Daily Caller posted a transcript of a Chris Matthews discussion with Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe on MSNBC.

Christ Matthews stated:

Obama “has had a very difficult opposition out there … who from the very beginning wanted to destroy this presidency,” he said. “And some of it is ethnic, and some is good old ideology. But they way they treated this guy is unusual in our history.”

“Al Gore accepted the fact, even though he won by 600,000 votes, that W. was president. And the Democrats accepted the legitimacy of George W. Bush 100 percent,” he added, when host Joe Scarborough tried to push back a bit.

On November 12, 2001, The New York Times stated:

A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year’s presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.

Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court’s order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.

Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff — filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties — Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations.

The New York Times is certainly not a conservative newspaper. They were generally not kind to George W. Bush, but they got the facts about the recount right. Either Chris Matthews is badly misinformed or he is lying. Either way, I suspect many young voters or voters who have forgotten or were not paying attention believed him. Rewriting history is a true danger to our representative republic. It is the media’s job to tell the truth. It is a shame that they have forsaken their responsibility.

Just for the record, President Obama has not been treated badly by the opposition. There have been people questioning the amount of secrecy surrounding his past–his education, some of his activities in Chicago, some of his campaign tactics, etc. Those are legitimate questions that should be asked of any candidate. Unfortunately, an element of practicing personal destruction instead of debating political issues has crept into our politics in recent times. We saw that element in the 2012 presidential election. Policies took a back seat to scare tactics and claims that Mitt Romney was a rich man who had no compassion for the poor. As someone who lived in Massachusetts during the time Mitt Romney was governor, I can tell you that there is no truth in that statement. However, the press worked hard to present that image. Until the media ignores those people practicing the politics of personal destruction, all Presidents will be treated badly by some element of the opposition. The mainstream media however, will continue to be cheerleaders for the Democrats and complain when anyone says anything negative about their candidates or the policies of their candidates. Unfortunately, that is where we are.

Meanwhile, we need to guard against the rewriting of history and challenge it whenever possible.

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Around The Edges Of The Supreme Court Case Regarding The Contraception Mandate

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Commentary Magazine posted an article today about the latest challenge to ObamaCare that is headed to the Supreme Court. The article examines the approach that the political left and those that support ObamaCare will probably take in arguing the case.

The article states:

Indeed, while liberal activists will repeatedly try to cast this in the mold of the fictional “war on women,” their own arguments reveal just how far-reaching a definitive ruling on this would be for American religious and political practice.

…So this is much more than a fight over birth control, or even health insurance. It’s about two fundamentally different views on American constitutional freedoms. Conservatives want those freedoms to be expansive and protected, as the Founders did. Liberals want those freedoms to be curtailed lest the citizenry get greedy or the democratic process imperil the state’s coercive powers.

The Founders saw religious freedom as elemental to personal liberty in America. But they were not alone in thinking that unimpeded religious worship was a guard against an overly ambitious or arrogant national government.

If we lose our spiritual foundation as a country, we will also be in danger of losing our freedom.

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Private Property Rights Are Important In America

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One of the foundations of the American republic is the concept of private property rights. Occasionally those rights have been under attack and the battle has been lost–for example the Supreme Court decision regarding Kelo and the State of Connecticut. (n June of 2005, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the City of New London, Connecticut, could, under the rule of eminent domain, seize the homes of several homeowners in order to use the land for a purpose that would generate more tax revenue for the City.)  Due to tough economic times (and basic karma), the plant that was built on that site closed and moved to Groton.

At any rate, property rights of Americans have been threatened on numerous occasions. The latest threat comes from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) following the plan already outlined in Agenda 21.

Today’s Washington Examiner is reporting on a new EPA rule:

...the “Water Body Connectivity Report” – that would remove the limiting word “navigable” from “navigable waters of the United States” and replace it with “connectivity of streams and wetlands to downstream waters” as the test for Clean Water Act regulatory authority.

…If approved, the new rule would give EPA unprecedented power over private property across the nation, gobbling up everything near seasonal streams, isolated wetlands, prairie potholes, and almost anything that occasionally gets wet.

Smith and Stewart (House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas and Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, chairman of its environment subcommittee)accuse EPA of “pushing through a rule with vast economic and regulatory implications before the agency’s Science Advisory Board has had an opportunity to review the underlying science.”

If this sounds familiar, it is. This is the language used by the United Nation‘s Agenda 21 program:

As I reported in December 2011 (rightwinggranny.com):

One of the aspects of Agenda 21 is the location of vernal pools and the ‘corridors’ that connect them. Those pools and corridors are then used as excuses to severely limit the use of property. Property owners can be asked to make alterations to their property that are extremely expensive and that might cause them to abandon the property. Property owners can also be severely limited as to what they can do on their own property.

A land grab is a land grab. It doesn’t matter whether it comes from the UN or from our own government–it is still a land grab. Pay attention–this could be coming to your town soon.

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What The Supreme Court Said Yesterday

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Investors.com posted an article yesterday explaining the Supreme Court decision regarding the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). I will admit that when I first heard the ruling I did not understand exactly what was involved. I am grateful to Investors.com for their clear concise explanation.

The article explains:

In ruling that workers who choose not to be union members must be able to object immediately to unexpected fee increases or similar levies required of all employees in closed shops, the high court touched a nerve in the conflict between Big Labor and the right-to-work movement.

…The union’s gall in this specific case in underlined by the fact that it was taking money from nonmembers to defeat, in 2005, California’s Proposition 75, which would have prohibited the SEIU from using dues or fees for political contributions without employees’ written consent.

“Thus, the effect of the SEIU’s procedure was to force many nonmembers to subsidize a political effort designed to restrict their own rights,” Justice Samuel Alito noted.

There has been a lot of complaining from the left side of the political spectrum about the Citizen’s United ruling of the Supreme Court. That ruling prohibited the government from restricting spending either by corporations or unions. The left objected to the fact that corporations were now able to get into the election funding game. At least corporations are spending their own profits and are answerable to their stockholders. The use of union dues to fund political campaigns without the consent of those paying the dues is questionable at best. At least now non-union members have some control over the money they are asked to pay the unions.

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Protecting The Property Rights Of Americans

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The Blaze is reporting today that Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have introduced legislation to limit the government’s power of eminent domain, the seizure of private property without the owner’s consent. This is the link to the actual legislation introduced.

The law, The Protection of Homes, Small Businesses and Private Property Act of 2012, coincides with the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Kelo v. the City of New London, which allowed the City of New London to arbitrarily take private property from one person and give it to another with the intent of increasing the city’s tax base.

On December 1, 2009, I reported on the outcome of that property seizure (rightwinggranny.com):

So let’s look at where we are now.  The taking of the property was used to lure Pfizer Pharmaceutical Company to New London to build a research center.  Pfizer Pharmaceutical Company arrived, built its New London research center on the seized property, and this week announced that it was closing the plant.  Most of the plants 1,400 employees will be relocated to nearby Groton. 

Now the City of New London won’t even have the tax revenue from the people who once lived in that area of New London.  They will simply have a vacant research center.  Poetic justice at its best.

The Supreme Court made the wrong decision in Kelo–they seriously undermined the property rights of Americans. Please follow the link above to the article at The Blaze to read about recent misuses of eminent domain. Thank goodness for Senators like John Cornyn and Rand Paul who are willing to stand up for individual property rights.

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As We Await The Supreme Court’s Decision On Obamacare…

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CNS News posted a story on Friday about the impact of Obamacare on the cost of health insurance.

Edward Fensholt, senior vice president of Lockton Companies, LLC, an insurance brokerage and consulting firm that provides employee-benefits expertise to 2,500 mostly middle-market employers, told the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions:

“These mandates have increased our clients’ health plan costs 2 to 3 percent on average to this point,” he said. And he said the costs will escalate further when new rules — such as reductions in waiting periods and the automatic enrollment requirement — take effect in 2014.

Note that the new rules take effect long after the coming election.

The article reports:

Bill Streitberger, vice president of human resources for the Red Robin restaurant chain, told the panel that when health care costs increase, his company has less money to invest in opening new restaurants.

For the last three years, he noted, Red Robin’s health care costs per employee have increased more than six percent every year — a much greater pace than the growth of Red Robin’s sales or net income, he said.

There are some basic changes needed in America’s health insurance system–portability, tax breaks for buying health insurance, tort reform, etc. Obamacare never addresses tort reform. Obamacare takes away the free market and places the entire healthcare system under government control. That is a really bad idea, and hopefully the Supreme Court will strike down the entire bill so that the current Congress can try again.

 

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A Preemptive Strike On The Supreme Court

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The Hill is reporting today that the Obama Administration has diverted roughly $500 million to the IRS to help implement the president’s healthcare law.

The article reports:

The money is only part of the IRS’s total implementation spending, and it is being provided outside the normal appropriations process. The tax agency is responsible for several key provisions of the new law, including the unpopular individual mandate.

It is very interesting to me that the money is being provided ‘outside the normal appropriations process.’

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Obamacare is under discussion at the Supreme Court. It is interesting to me that this donation to the IRS could not wait under the Supreme Court handed down its decision. Maybe I am becoming overly cynical in my old age, but I have the feeling that Obamacare is going to be implemented regardless of how the Supreme Court rules.

The article further reports:

The law contains dozens of targeted appropriations to implement specific provisions. It also gave the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) a $1 billion implementation fund, to use as it sees fit. Republicans have called it a “slush fund.”

HHS plans to drain the entire fund by September — before the presidential election, and more than a year before most of the healthcare law takes effect. Roughly half of that money will ultimately go to the IRS.

HHS has transferred almost $200 million to the IRS over the past two years and plans to transfer more than $300 million this year, according to figures provided by a congressional aide.

We are in serious danger of having our Constitution become a worthless piece of paper.

Meanwhile, this is a YouTube audio I have added for your consideration. It is a portion of the Michael Savage radio program. I would like to dismiss it as over the top, but there is enough plausible information in it to prevent me from doing that. Please listen and draw your own conclusions.

 

I am sincerely worried about the future of America.

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I Had To Go To Pravda To Get This Story

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I am not kidding. I found the link to this information at Pravda (Russian for ‘truth”). I wonder why they are posting the story, considering that President Obama is their friend, but on the other hand, the current Russian government is not known for its pro-American feelings. How would the Russians feel about President Joe Biden? That is just a scary thought.

Anyway, the Tea Party Tribune (who knew they had a publication?) posted a memo by nine state Attorneys General listing the ways the Obama Administration has aggressively used administrative agencies to implement policy objectives that cannot gain congressional approval and are outside of the law.

This is the list of violations:

  • FCC: Regulation of the Internet in the face of a court order from Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington D.C. stating that the FCC does not have the power to regulate the Internet
  • PPACA: Individual Mandate; To be heard by Supreme Court of the United States in March
  • EPA 1: GHG lawsuit; EPA’s own Inspector General reported last September that EPA failed to comply with its own data standards; Heard in Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington D.C. in February
  • OSM: Attempting to impose regulatory requirements on the 19 states with authority for exclusive regulation of their coalmines for the first time in more than 30 years
  • NLRB: Boeing; Engaged in unprecedented behavior as described by former Chairmen under both Presidents Bush (43) and Clinton; behavior is best exemplified in South Carolina where the Board tried to muzzle over 80 percent of state voters who supported a secret ballot amendment to the South Carolina Constitution and attempted unsuccessfully to tell an employer in the state where they can and cannot base manufacturing facilities
  • EPA: Florida Water; EPA’s numeric nutrient criteria pre-empted Florida standards; U.S. District Judge upheld the state’s site-specific alternative criteria for streams and rivers
  • EPA: Texas Air; TX filed lawsuit challenging Cross-State Air Pollution Rules; application rule to TX was particularly dubious because state was included in the regulation at the last minute and without an opportunity to respond to the proposed regulation; regulation was based on a dubious claim that air pollution from TX affected a single air-quality monitor in Granite City, Illinois more than 500 miles and three states away from Texas
  • EPA: Oklahoma Air; EPA illegally usurped Oklahoma’s authority in the Clean Air Act to determine the state’s own plan for addressing sources of emissions that affect visibility, by imposing a federal implementation plan; Federal plan goes beyond the authority granted to the EPA in the Clean Air Act and will result in $2 billion in cost to install technology needed to complete the EPA plan, and a permanent increase of 15-20 percent in the cost of electricity; Obama Administration is fighting Oklahoma’s appeal, which was filed in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
  • HHS: Religious Liberty; HHS mandated religious entities such as Catholic, Baptist and Jewish schools and churches be required to provided medical services they find unconscionable to their employees; President attempted to compromise with an “accommodation” in name only that required insurance companies to provide the services for free to the religious organization employees; Accommodation made matters worse as many religious-base hospitals and schools are self-insurers; Seven Attorneys General filed suit to protect religious liberty and oppose the HHS mandate
  • DOJ: South Carolina & Voting Rights Act: Rejecting voter ID statutes that are similar to those already approved by the Supreme Court of the United States; DOJ ignored section 8 of the Voting Rights Act which calls for protections against voter fraud, and used section 5 to administratively block measures to protect the integrity of elections passed by state legislatures in preclearance states including South Carolina; South Carolina voter ID law merely requires a voter to show photo identification in order to vote or to complete an affidavit at the pain of perjury if the voter does not have a photo ID
  • DOJ: Arizona & Voting Rights Act: Rejecting voter ID statutes that are similar to those already approved by the Supreme Court of the United States
  • DOJ: Arizona Immigration; In violation of 10th Amendment, federal government to sue to prevent AZ from using reasonable measures to discourage illegal immigration within Arizona’s borders; Affects Arizona because state has a large percentage, compared to other states, of illegal immigrants and need to be able to act to reduce the number
  • DOJ: Alabama Immigration; The DOJ challenged Alabama’s immigration reform laws after parts were “green lighted” by a federal judge; DOJ appealed the ruling; parts of the AL case have been struck down in various federal courts; specific provisions of the law include collection of the immigration status of public school students, businesses must use E-Verify, prohibition of illegal immigrants receiving public benefits; the provision requiring immigrants to always carry alien registration cards; allowance of lawsuits by state citizens who do not believe public officials are enforcing the law
  • DOJ: South Carolina Immigration; DOJ challenged South Carolina’s immigration reform laws that are very similar to the AZ which is scheduled to appear before the United States Supreme Court; SC case will be heard by the 4th Circuit soon there after as the 4th Circuit granted SC motion to extend the filing time until after the US Supreme Court issues an Opinion in AZ
  • Congressional: “Recess” appointments to NLRB (three) and CFPB (one)
  • EEOC: Hosanna Tabor (MI); Sought to reinstate a minister who was discharged for her disagreement with the religious doctrine of the church
  • DOE: Yucca Mountain; In 2009, Administration arbitrarily broke federal law and derailed the most studied energy project in American history when DOE announced intent to withdraw 8,000 page Yucca Mountain licensing application with prejudice; SC and Washington State filed suit, as a result, contesting the unconstitutional action; American people have paid more than $31 billion (including interest) through percentages of electric rate fees towards the project and taxpayers have footed an addition $200 million in legal feeds and over $2 billion in judgments against the DOE for breaking contracts associated with Yucca Mountain
    1. DOI: Glendale Casino (AZ); Glendale is a violation because the Federal Government is forcing a family-oriented town, Glendale, to become another Las Vegas against its will.  Essentially, the Federal Government has granted ‘reservation status’ to a 54-acre plot in the same town, where the Tohono O’odham Nation plans to build a resort and casino.

My question is simple, “Where is the media on this?” Why did I have to go to Pravda to find the link? The current administration needs to be reminded legally in a big way what the U.S. Constitution says about the government’s power in America. If the media won’t do that, the people need to do it in November.

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A President Who Chose To Ignore A Ruling By The Supreme Court

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The American Thinker reminds us today that there has been only one President in American history who ignored a ruling by the Supreme Court. What happened after that was not good.

In 1830, Andrew Jackson, the founder of the Democrat Party, signed the “Indian Removal Act of 1830.”  The Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee-Creek, and Seminole Indians (known as the “Five Civilized Tribes”) had prospered, and President Jackson had ordered the Army to relocate them. The Supreme Court intervened, and in 1831 SCOTUS ruled on behalf of the Cherokee Nation in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. President Jackson ignored the order.

The article reports what happened next:

…the deaths of thousands of Cherokees followed.  The ruination of their businesses, culture, and theft of their lands was the outcome.  Those lands were ostensibly given to whites, while the Cherokees and the four other tribes were forcibly marched west to uncharted territory and left to die. 

Mr. Jackson was succeeded by another Democrat, Martin VanBuren, who had been Jackson’s Secretary of State.  He followed in his predecessor’s footsteps and made sure that the slaughter and theft of land, businesses, and pride continued long after Mr. Jackson got the ball rolling.  

Part of the problem was that gold had been discovered on the Cherokee land in Georgia. Greed was the obvious motive. This was one of the darkest moments in American history. The Supreme Court was right ot oppose what was happening.

I believe that the Supreme Court will be correct in opposing Obamacare. They will prevent the death of many Americans by refusing to ruin one of the best healthcare systems in the world.

 

 

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The Next Battle In The Healthcare War

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On Thursday, Matt Sheffield posted an article at CNS News about the next step in the war over Obamacare. Although it is not at all a sure thing, there are many people who feel that the Supreme Court will strike down the law as unconstitutional because it requires all Americans to purchase a product whether they want to or not. Mr. Sheffield points out that the left is already preparing for the next battle. He cites some recent statements by left-leaning pundits:

If the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate in Obamacare, the result will be higher insurance premiums and, “we’ll just blame Republicans for it,” says Democratic strategist Bob Beckel, appearing on the Wednesday edition of Fox News’ The Five.

…Andrew Koppelman, writing in Salon today, asserted that the arguments against the individual mandate amount to nothing more than “silliness,” and said the “silly” arguments “nonetheless seemed to sometimes move Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito.”
 
…Steven Rosenfeld, writing at AlterNet, says Republicans “don’t want to fix our broken healthcare system.” He writes: “The Republican Party again showed its petulant, “party-of-no” face on Tuesday as lawyers representing 26 red states and conservative think-tanks told the U.S. Supreme Court that nobody should be forced have health insurance—even if people carrying insurance end up subsidizing the defiantly uninsured who get ill.
 
The Supreme Court is expected to release its decision sometime in June or July. Prepare for healthcare to be a major issue during the 2012 election. Be ready to listen carefully as very little of what you hear may actually be true.
 
 
 
 
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Some Things To Consider In The Budget Debate And The Obamacare Debate

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This video at YouTube shows exactly what Obamacare will do to Senior Citizens:

 

Remember, Obamacare will take $500 billion out of Medicare over the next ten years and put it in Medicaid. That is being done as the baby boomers reach the age where they will join Medicare. Medicare as it is will not exist in five years–it is going bankrupt. Don’t fall for the scare tactics being used against Republican budget plans that they will kill Medicare–they are not the ones who already took $500 billion away from it!

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Some Thoughts On The Supreme Court Debate On The Affordable Care Act This Week

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Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post posted an article yesterday summing up her feelings about the Supreme Court debate this week.

Ms. Rubin wrote that Obamcare suffered a severability trainwreck at the Supreme Court. The argument for striking down the entire law if the individual mandate is found unconstitutional is that without the individual mandate to herd customers to insurance companies and provide financial support for the other provisions of the law, the goal of universal access would be thwarted. The individual mandate is the only way that Obamacare can provide insurance coverage for everyone. Because Obamacare goes against basic business principles (as well as the U. S. Constitution), it will not work.

The article reports:

It was that kind of day for the government. The argument today was another instance in which the challengers rolled up their sleeves, got into the text of the statute and made a convincing case. The government never sufficiently spelled out how the mandate could be severed from the rest of the bill without upsetting the intricate system of subsidies and the goal of expanded access. In hiding the ball from the public by virtue of an overly intricate fog of misdirection, and in disguising the essence of the scheme — healthy, young people who might not otherwise want insurance are compelled to buy it to ameliorate the costs of others — Congress sent the Supreme Court a legal knot that will be hard to undo.

Part of the arguments for Obamacare come from people who do not understand how insurance works. There does need to be some protection for people who develop serious medical problems so that their insurance companies cannot abandon them–however, we can use a fly swatter instead of a nuclear weapon to deal with this issue and still get the job done.

If the free market were allowed to operate in health insurance, we would be able to find our way out of any current insurance problems without doing things that will not work and are unconstitutional. A few basic suggestions–tort reform, portability of health insurance from one job to another, tax breaks to help people afford health insurance, selling health insurance across state lines. These ideas are all constitutional and might actually help solve the problem of the high cost of health insurance.

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Yesterday At The Supreme Court

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Paul Clement was the lawyer arguing at the Supreme Court on behalf of Florida and the other states who are challenging Obamacare.

I have listened to a large part of his argument against the idea that the Commerce Clause allows the government to force people into commerce in order the regulate them rather than to regulate the people who are already engaging in commerce. I believe that Obamacare as it is written is not constitutional, but we shall see what the court decides.

The discussion I have heard is that if Obamacare is found constitutional, the idea that our government is a government of enumerated limited powers is over. If the individual mandate part of Obamacare is found constitutional, be ready to have the government require you to join a gym, eat certain foods, purchase a car, etc.

We will have to wait until June to know what the outcome of this case will be, but hopefully Obamacare will die with the individual mandate.

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The Supreme Court Rules On Lutheran School Teacher Firing

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On Wednesday, Christianity Today posted an article about the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the firing of a school teacher in a Lutheran School. The court ruled that the teacher was a ‘minister’ and could not sue the church after she was fired in 2005.

The article reports:

“The First Amendment provides, in part, that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,'” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the unanimous opinion. “We have said that these two Clauses ‘often exert conflicting pressures,’ and that there can be ‘internal tension … between the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause.’ Not so here. Both Religion Clauses bar the government from interfering with the decision of a religious group to fire one of its ministers.”

This is an important ruling. The article points out how this ruling may impact some recent decisions regarding religious groups on college campuses:

If the government can’t tell a church or religious group to accept or reject a minister, he asks, “How then it can be constitutional for a public university to tell religious student groups what criteria they can and cannot use in selecting their leaders? Does this decision have a penumbra that strengthens the freedom of religious organizations more broadly? That remains to be seen–yet the language and the unanimity of the decision are encouraging.”

Kim Colby, senior counsel for the Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom, was similarly encouraged. “This decision should help religious groups that are being charged with ‘religious discrimination’ when they require their leaders to agree with their statement of faith,” she said. “In a conflict between nondiscrimination laws and religious liberty, religious liberty prevailed. Nondiscrimination laws serve vital and good purposes in our society. But they have been increasingly misused to harm religious liberty in a number of contexts over the past decade.”

The CLS lost a Supreme Court battle last year when the justices ruled 5-4 that a California law school can bar groups that require leaders to sign a statement of faith.

The battle for freedom to allow religious groups to be religious is just beginning. If I started a bridge club, I would want the people joining to be interested in playing or learning to play bridge. It makes no sense to allow someone to join a bridge club if they are only interested in playing hearts or poker (or even volleyball). That is not discrimination–it is common sense. Sometimes you have to discriminate–not because you are being unfair, but because you are protecting a common interest. A bridge club that plays hearts or poker (or volleyball) really does not make a lot of sense. 

 

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The Behind The Scenes Battle To End Obamacare

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days Elena Kagan since 2010

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Rick Moran at the American Thinker posted an article today about the Department of Justice’s refusal to release documents requested by forty-nine members of Congress regarding Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s involvement with ObamaCare during her term as Solicitor General in the Obama Administration.

The article reports:

…Four months later the Justice Department wrote back declining to produce the documents. In that letter, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich explained that the department has “grave concerns about the prospect of a congressional investigation into the pre-confirmation activities of a sitting Supreme Court Justice.” Justice Kagan, he added, had addressed the issue of her ObamaCare involvement during her confirmation hearings.
Since I suspect that one of the reasons Justice Kagan was nominated to the Supreme Court was her involvement in Obamacare (and I suspect the Obama administration knew ObamaCare would eventually wind up at the Supreme Court), there is no way the administration is going to do anything that might possibly cause Justice Kagan to have to recuse herself.
The article concludes:
This is crucial. If Kagan doesn’t vote, and 4 to 4 tie resulted, the vote would uphold the decision of a lower court judge that Obamacare’s individual mandate is unconstitutional. Obviously, Kagan can count noses on the court too which is why she will refuse to recuse herself.
This could be an interesting battle.

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Behind The Scenes On Obamacare

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The Associated Press posted an article today on the behind the scenes activity that is taking place on Obamacare.

The article reports:

The federal government is taking on a crucial new role in the nation’s health care, designing a basic benefits package for millions of privately insured Americans. A framework for the Obama administration was released Friday.

Obamacare will be decided at the Supreme Court this session, but the government is already putting together a package of government-run healthcare.

The article reports how the government is changing the healthcare insurance industry:

Until now, designing benefits has been the job of insurers, employers and states. But the new health care law requires insurance companies to provide at least the federally approved package if they want to sell to small businesses, families and individuals through new state markets set to open in 2014.

I suppose it is nice that the government is planning ahead, but I sincerely hope that Obamacare is repealed as soon as possible. The good news is that the healthcare plans are set to start in 2014. We need to elect every Republican we can in 2012 in order to get Obamacare repealed–whether it be by Congress or the Supreme Court.

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Moving The Goalposts In The Middle Of The Game

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The United States Supreme Court.

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Something important happened in the United States Senate last night. It may not be earth-shaking right now, but it could be extremely important in the coming year. Heritage.org posted the story late last night. The bottom line is that Harry Reid blocked a vote on President Obama’s jobs bill. That is not really news–the news is the way he went about blocking the bill.

The article reports the events that actually began the change in the Senate rules:

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had pledged to offer an unchanged version of the President’s American Jobs Act as an amendment to the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Bill (S. 1619). Reid stopped a vote on the President’s so called jobs bill by filling the amendment tree.  Last year I wrote about Reid’s obstructionism and argued that Reid’s strong arm tactics by constantly filling the amendment tree as a means to block out all amendments were against the spirit and letter of the Senate’s rules.

The article further reports:

The maneuver is arcane but momentous. If a simple majority of the Senate votes with Reid and strikes down the ruling, the chamber’s precedent will be changed through the unilateral action of one party. Republicans had considered using this maneuver, dubbed the “nuclear option,” in 2005 to change Senate rules to prohibit the filibuster of judicial nominees. Democrats decried the plan and the crisis was resolved by a bipartisan agreement forged by 14 rank-and-file senators known as the Gang of 14.

This maneuver severely limits any input the minority party will have on bills brought before the Senate. I am sure there will be a lot of discussion about this move on talk radio today. In view of current events, this is a major step, but there is another aspect of this I would like to look at.

Sometime during this session of the United States Supreme Court, Obamacare will be discussed. As the Court stands right now, the decision could go either way–the deciding vote will be Justice Kennedy. If he votes to uphold Obamacare, he will have to explain why it is constitutional for the government to require every citizen to purchase health insurance. Let’s just suppose for a minute that filibusters of judicial nominees are no longer allowed in the Senate and Justice Kennedy steps down. The Obama Administration will nominate a judge who will support Obamacare and we will be stuck with national health care.

I understand that this scenario seems farfetched, but the left side of the political spectrum is rather desperate right now, and unfortunately, the left plans ahead better than the right does.