We’re having tea with the Mad Hatter.

If you look a little closer at the debate over the Obama administration’s betrayal of the Catholic Church, you’ll see that we’ve already lost.  Obama and his media allies have effectively shifted the argument away from the grounds upon which it should take place and on to grounds we never thought possible. Rather than debating the outrageous overreach of the government demanding insurance companies pay for birth control, we’re instead debating whether the Catholic Church should be required to do so. 

It’s all smoke and mirrors, isn’t it? We’re so busy arguing over the outrage of the White House forcing Catholic-run schools and social service outlets to provide birth control and the morning-after pills to their employees, that the very idea of forcing  private insurance companies to do the same, sounds perfectly reasonable. It’s a genius sleight-of-hand meant to have us look over there instead of over here.

Moreover, if you’ve watched the MSM coverage, you can see that the Constitution and Bill of Rights means nothing to our media overlords. Here we have the federal government violating the fundamental right upon which this country was founded — Freedom of Religion — and yet the media is taking seriously that a valid counter-argument is a woman’s non-existent right to free birth control.

Do you see the words “birth” or “control” anywhere in here:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

And yet, all day I’ve had to read and listen to the media take seriously access to free birth control as some sort of competing right.  

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Echoing the spin of Red Star recipient Scot Horsley of NPR, ABC’s Diane Sawyer today celebrated Richard Cordray, President Barack Obama’s new appointee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as a “consumer champion.”

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To give a quick review, on June 23, Richard Stengel wrote a cover story* for Time Magazine rife with factual errors.  On June 29, I published a piece here recording fourteen clear factual errors in that story.  I said at the time that I considered it a journalistic scandal that such an error-ridden piece appeared at Time Magazine as its cover story, and ever since I have been crusading to embarrass them into a correction.

But what is also embarrassing is that other media outlets have treated Mr. Stengel as though he was an expert on the Constitution.  Consider, for example, this blurp for a show on NPR entitled “Talk of the Nation” that aired on July 4:

In the fierce debates over health care, Libya, debt, gay marriage and other issues, Americans have been getting a lecture on the meaning of the Constitution and the intentions of its authors. Andrea Seabrook speaks with Richard Stengel of Time magazine and Yale law professor Akhil Amar about the political divide over the Constitution and how an 18th-century document applies in a 21st-century world. [emphasis added]

Now, I may not like Professor Amar personally, and I may vehemently disagree with him on many points, but I think it is fair to consider him an expert on the Constitution.

But as the other “expert,” we have Richard Stengel. Really, Andrea Seabrook?  You actually read that article, and thought he was an expert?  Because it is important to stress is that many of these errors are obvious to any lay person.  You don’t need three years of law school to know it is simply incorrect to say “[i]f the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn’t say so.”  You only have to know that there is such a thing as the First Amendment or the Second.  Nor do you need complicated legal instruction to know that it is incorrect to say that the Constitution is not law—most people learn in elementary school that the Constitution is the supreme law of this land.  And one doesn’t need a particularly deep understanding of the Constitution to become concerned when they see Stengel declare that “[i]n drafting the 14th Amendment, Congress … wanted to emancipate blacks and allow them to vote.”  I consider it fairly common knowledge that it was actually the Thirteenth Amendment that ended slavery, and the Fifteenth that outlawed racial discrimination in the franchise.  These errors should have been obvious to anyone reading Stengel’s piece, and utterly undermined any claim he could make to be an expert.

A reasonable radio host, doing due diligence, would have realized that they only had two options with Mr. Stengel.  She could either grill him about the serial inaccuracies in his article.  Or, she could drop him as a guest entirely and find a true expert on the Constitution to replace him.

And while they were at it, they could have added a conservative expert on the Constitution to balance the debate.

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About a week ago I published a post at Big Journalism outlining fourteen clear factual errors in Richard Stengel’s essay on the Constitution.

I said at the time that I considered it a journalistic scandal that such an error-ridden piece appeared in Time magazine, a once-respected publication.  For instance, in the article he stated remarkably that “[i]f the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn’t say so.”  I have dubbed this scandal “Stengel-gate.”

I also considered it scandalous because of who the author, Richard Stengel, is:

The author is not only the Managing Editor for Time, but he spent two years as President and CEO of the National Constitution Center.  And even today, he works with the National Constitution Center’s Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution, whose stated mission is “to help both professional journalists and students interested in journalism understand constitutional issues more deeply.”  That is right.  He is there to help journalists understand the Constitution better.

It has been about a week and the story has even appeared on Fox News.  And yet there is apparently no correction, no retraction of the story, or even a defense of it.

So frankly in an effort to keep the heat on, I decided to explore the other end of the scandal: what on earth was he doing working at something called the National Constitution Center? I plan to spend several days discussing that issue and to kick it off, I decided to write a letter to its current President and CEO, the man holding the position that Richard Stengel once occupied: David Eisner.

So on Tuesday night, I wrote to him directly.  You can see the letter I wrote below the fold.

I do not know if he will respond or how he will respond. But whatever his reaction is, even a non-response, will reflect on him and his organization.  And that in and of itself is noteworthy.

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On June 23, 2011, Time magazine published an essay entitled “One Document, Under Siege” (one page version, here) by Richard Stengel.  I consider the publication of this article to be nothing less than a scandal.  Besides the deep philosophical disagreements I have with Mr. Stengel, the piece simply fails as journalism.  As I will demonstrate in this post, there were fourteen objectively verifiable errors in Mr. Stengel’s piece, half of which could have been discovered simply by reading the Constitution itself.

I will lay out all of the false claims and evidence in a moment, but let me preview the most egregious error in the article, when Mr. Stengel wrote this:

If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn’t say so.

As one commenter wrote: “I had to read it twice to believe my eyes. Time really did say this.”  And while I will prove definitively in a moment that he is wrong, I suspect every single person reading this knows it already.

The fact that this and thirteen other egregious errors appeared in Time at all is bad enough.  But further, it was a cover story:

And look at the top left corner.  This is their history issue.

It is also scandalous because of who wrote the piece.  The author is not only the Managing Editor for Time, but he spent two years as President and CEO of the National Constitution Center.  And even today, he works with the National Constitution Center’s Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution, whose stated mission is “to help both professional journalists and students interested in journalism understand constitutional issues more deeply.”  That is right.  He is there to help journalists understand the Constitution better.

So I will present to you fourteen clear errors Mr. Stengel has made in his article, starting with the most egregious errors.  Here are the fourteen errors, in short:

The Constitution does not limit the Federal Government.

The Constitution is not law.

The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment emancipated the slaves.

The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment granted the right to vote to African Americans.

The original Constitution declared that black people were to be counted as three-fifths of a person.

The original, unamended Constitution prohibited women from voting.

The Commerce Clause grants Congress the power to tax individuals based on whether they buy a product or service.

Inter arma enim silent leges translates as “in time of war, the Constitution is silent.”

The War Powers Act allows the president to unilaterally wage war for sixty days.

We have only declared war five times.

Alexander Hamilton wanted a king for America.

Social Security is a debt within the meaning of Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Naturalization depends on your birth.

The Obamacare mandate is a tax.

When I am done with this post, I am going to make a bleg where I ask you to try to help get out the word about this egregiously incorrect cover story.  So stay tuned to the end (or jump ahead if you feel like it).

But first here, point-by-point, is proof that each one of those claims are incorrect.

False Claim #1: The Constitution does not limit the Federal Government.

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From Accuracy in Media’s Michael Watson and Val Jensen II:

Richard Stengel’s take on the U.S. Constitution tries to dispel the tea party movement’s claims that certain recent policies under the Obama administration are unconstitutional. The main argument is set out when Stengel, the managing editor of TIME, states:

“Originalists contend that the Constitution has a clear, fixed meaning. But the framers argued vehemently about its meaning. For them, it was a set of principles, not a code of laws. A code of laws says you have to stop at the red light; a constitution has broad principles that are unchanging but that must accommodate each new generation and circumstance.”

With this premise, Stengel tries to show that some of President Obama’s controversial initiatives are actually in line with the “spirit of liberty,” and since the Constitution should mainly be a “promissory note, one in which ‘We the People’ in each generation try to create that more perfect union,” then these initiatives align perfectly well with the Constitution. Do they, or is this just his spin?

Stengel first spins for President Obama’s “military action” against Libya. Claiming that “No President wants to have his powers as Commander in Chief curtailed,” Stengel dismisses then-Senator Obama’s argument that “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

Stengel also conflates general Congressional authorization for war-making with the technical declaration of war. Stengel is correct that Congress has not declared war since 1941 even as the United States has engaged in many military conflicts. However, as Charles Krauthammer notes, there is clearly intent in the Constitution for Congress to be consulted and the disappearance of the declaration of war from international law should not excuse the President from consulting Congress before making a war of choice.

Stengel asks, “Do Americans really want to let Congress have the sole power to commit U.S. forces to action?” This is the wrong question, and the Framers knew it. Congress is not the Commander-in-chief, but rather must be consulted to ensure that wars are nationally supported and in the national interest.

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CNN’s Fareed Zakaria was on Charlie Rose recently and made the claim that America has become “antiquated” and the system our founding documents created is “dysfunctional.”

Zakaria begins by adopting the epic straw man of an arrogant American who thinks America is 100% perfect. Using the pronoun “we think” repeatedly he asserts:

Whenever we have a problem, we tend to think that our Constitution is the best ever created in the history of the world. The people who wrote the Constitution were demi-gods, it never needs to be changed. Our political system is the best in the world. The truth is we have a pretty complicated, antiquated system that’s grown pretty dysfunctional.

Wow, when you put it like that Mr. Zakaria, it’s a wonder we even made it out of the 19th century. Let’s go point by point.

First, the reason Americans revere the Constitution was that it, along with the Declaration of Independence, represented the first time people threw off the chains of a tyrannical government and truly put power in the hands of ordinary people. It was an intellectual revolution more than a physical one. From 1776 and 1789 on, numerous countries have taken our system and used it as a template for change in their countries. We have good reason to be proud. (more…)

Newsweek has published another one of those aren’t-Americans-Stupid articles wherein we find that few Americans know anything about either our history or our political system. People have no idea who our current vice president is, they don’t know when the Declaration of Independence was adopted, and they haven’t a clue who takes the office of president if the prez and the VP are incapacitated. But what is more interesting in Newsweek’s article is the reason the news magazine thinks that we are so stupid. Absurdly Newsweek thinks it’s because government doesn’t spend enough money on education.

First of all, I have to agree that Americans are as ignorant as can be on our history and our system of government. You can see it just about everywhere. In fact, you can see it in voting patterns. Illinois is a perfect example. The corruption has been endemic in the Democrat Party in Illinois for decades, yet voters repeatedly pull that donkey lever. It is clear they are ignorant of why things are so bad in the Land of Lincoln and they send the same crooks back to the state house over and over again.

Certainly it is impossible to dispute Newsweek’s central claim that Americans display an appallingly high level of civic ignorance. But Newsweek doesn’t just report its findings, it goes on to opine on just why we as a nation are so ignorant of our civics and history.

Newsweek thinks it’s because we don’t spend enough money on education: (my bold)

It doesn’t help that the United States has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the developed world, with the top 400 households raking in more money than the bottom 60 percent combined. As Dalton Conley, an NYU sociologist, explains, “it’s like comparing apples and oranges. Unlike Denmark, we have a lot of very poor people without access to good education, and a huge immigrant population that doesn’t even speak English.” When surveys focus on well-off, native-born respondents, the U.S. actually holds its own against Europe.

Newsweek’s claim here is as appallingly ignorant of the facts as someone who doesn’t know that the law of the land is the Constitution of the United States!

Even the left-wing New York Times realizes that the U.S. spends more on education that almost every other nation on earth. For instance, recently the Times published a piece that contained the following:

In an interview, Mr. Schleicher said the point was not that the United States spends too little on public education — only Luxembourg among the O.E.C.D. countries spends more per elementary student — but rather that American schools spend disproportionately on other areas, like bus transportation and sports facilities.

Spending isn’t the problem. The problem is that Democrats and left-wingers have taken over our education and devastated its effectiveness. The left has dumbed down our education from the lowest grades to the halls of our institutes of higher learning until what passes for education is merely a joke.

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In yet one more pathetic, wrong-headed bit of sophistry from fat-headed know nothing, Jonathan Martin at Politico, we’re supposed to believe that his insipid blathering passed off as wisdom means the recent tragedy in Arizona is about former Governor Sarah Palin, not some delusional lunatic too confused to have any consistent political beliefs. If silly targets drawn on basically rhetorical maps for political purposes, or otherwise, had the capacity to remove contemptible bastards from our nation’s political discourse, a large X marks the spot over this moron Martin’s image would be a good place to start.

Tragedy marks turning point for Palin

Whether she defends, explains or even responds at all to the intense criticism of her brand of confrontational politics could well determine her trajectory on the national scene—and it’s likely to reveal the scope of her ambitions as well.

Unlike the media and now some Democrat politicians, I’ve no desire to try to speak for Representative Gabrielle Giffords. My only real thought and prayer in that regard is that she can once again speak for herself. Yet, as another fool, this Brady from Pennsylvania rushes in to silence political speech in Giffords’ name, it should be lost on no one that, when it was her turn to read from the Constitution on the House floor, it fell to her to read the First Amendment. And of course, another Democrat, Carolyn McCarthy, is already out of the gate readying an assault on the Second Amendment in Giffords’ name.

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Dahlia Lithwick’s recent piece in Slate had me cringing almost immediately when she mashed this out from her keyboard:

the Constitution is always going to raise more questions than it answers and confound more readers than it comforts.

Frankly, I’m more dumbfounded by this statement than anything I’ve read in the crystal clear U.S. Constitution. The only thing confounding about the Constitution is that contemporary readers cannot reconcile how our current public policy and federal power both represent a substantial shift away from the original intent of the document.

That a product of an American law school can even fathom this confused view of the Constitution is troubling. Perhaps law schools should insist that their students take some remedial classes in American legal and political history as part of their JDs. After all, this is a question of compact theory and the enumerated powers of the federal government. Then again, overly creative lawyers are generally the problem regarding our public policy gone wild and increasing destruction of federalism, so I’m obviously the idiot here for expecting a lawyer, or a law school, to denounce the legal cash cow publicly.

And then there’s this:

It’s because the Constitution wasn’t written to reflect the views of any one American.

I’m not sure what the relevance of this statement is. It makes no difference whatsoever if the constitution was written to reflect the views of one, two, 17, or 3,000,000 Americans; the document simply states the basic powers given to the newly formed federal government.  This isn’t complicated, unless you’re a lawyer for whom “complicated” = penumbras, emanations, & interpretations which, you guessed it… lead to favorable judgment$.

There’s more:

the folks who will be reading the Constitution aloud this week can’t read the parts permitting slavery or prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment using only their inside voices, while shouting their support for the 10th Amendment.

They can shout loudly all of the above because the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude (I honestly have no idea was the 8th Amendment reference is all about). The 10th Amendment is not automatically disqualified at a later time because the Articles did not expressly forbid slavery within the individual states.

The Constitution was written as a limited set of powers, both well defined and yes, ultimately malleable… via the amendment process, as illustrated by the example of the 13th Amendment. That these points, which are as obvious as a bowling ball dropped on one’s toe, are not acknowledged by Lithwick is quite perplexing. How the Constitution came to be is out there for all to be had; some just don’t bother because we are so far gone from the original intent that many people cannot fathom what really happened, nor does it serve them any purpose to acknowledge it.

The popular myth that the Constitution was left purposely vague is right up there with the existence of Santa Claus. True, the limited powers written into the document were almost immediately exceeded, hence the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, but the Constitution was promoted to the states for ratification in generally the same way the Tea Party promotes the document… that it was clear, limited, and would be strictly adhered to; this was the only way the thing could be agreed to by many states in the first place.  I teach this each semester and my freshmen juco students seem to grasp it quite handily. The framers dealt in what they considered to be “truths”, not fleeting improvisational platitudes which would make the drafting a constitution moot in the first place.

Which part of Jefferson’s response to the Alien & Sedition Acts is not clear?:

1. Resolved, That the several states composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that by compact, under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each state to itself the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: That to this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an integral party, its co-states forming as to itself, the other party: That the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode and measure of redress. ~Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolution, 1798

This was the original understanding of the Constitution. The bottom line is that the experiment in loose construction, which saw many great advances in civil rights, has gotten completely out of control and is running the risk of pile driving the United States straight into bankruptcy. Period. The Tea Party, while not only representing a peaceful, healthy expression of the 1st Amendment, is a necessary check on a federal behemoth that has gotten way out of control.  That the Tea Party is derided in the manner it is by some of the mainstream media is absolutely juvenile.

Both parties are to blame for our current bloated federal government, but my question is: which party will be part of the solution?  Which side of the political spectrum represents a way out of the mess, and which side wants to keep beer-bonging the “Ah screw it, just put it on the credit card” Kool-Aid? I wonder why both sides of the aisle cannot come to the conclusion that the federal government has bloated well beyond any reasonable level.

A general thought now seems to be that moving back toward stronger federalism would mean a reversion back to 100 years ago, when Jim Crow ruled the South, restrictive covenants in housing were okay, et cetera … What seems to be falling under the radar is that the amendments to the Constitution are as binding as the Articles themselves, as outlined specifically in Article V. Moreover, one may agree that much of the case law regarding constitutional issues is perfectly legitimate and still acknowledge that we’ve gotten away from the original intent of the Constitution itself. That’s what I’d like to see. Many of the gains in case law were obviously necessary, specifically regarding civil rights. However, when will these attacks on strict construction and the legitimate history of how the Constitution came to be cease?  A move away from the partisan dumbing down of the issue is in order. Just tell it like it is. That’s how you build a consensus.

Tea Party 101 should be mandatory for all 1st year law and J school students: big government is best held at the state level, where the damage is limited to 1/50th of the nation instead of allowing our centralized bloatocracy to foist its wasteful agenda on the entire nation as a whole. Basic rights guaranteed by the Amendments of the Constitution can still be enforced in the absence of the huge, largely unaccountable, unconstitutional 4th branch of government… an administrative branch that has led us by the nose down a path of national insolvency over the better part of a century.

Give Pamela Anderson a new hairdo in 1991 and it is an acceptable improvement. Give her 18 breast augmentations, collagen injections, and botox, and she turns into a grotesque, puffy monstrosity. That’s where we are; yes, we are the dirigible-breasted, cartoon Pam of today instead of the perfectly attractive and engaging Miss Pamela Anderson of “Home Improvement” fame.

Just wait until the Supreme Court gets five or more hardcore activist right wingers on it; I’d guess Ms. Lithwick will then be raising her Gadsden flag higher than anybody, right along with the Tea Party.

I’m not kidding.

As we reported this morning [yesterday], House Republicans will kick-start the 112th Congress tomorrow with a spirited recitation of the Constitution, a document whose recent relevance is due largely to the ideological and sartorial interests of the Tea Party.

[...]

According to Keating:

The amount I get is nearly $1.1 million. $1,071,872.87, to be exact, though of course this is more back-of-the-envelope than exact.When one chamber of Congress is in session but not working, we the people still have to pay for members’ salaries and expenses, and for their police protection, and for keeping their lights and phones and coffee machines on. Even Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Mike Pence (R-IN) combined don’t blow enough hot air to heat the Capitol in January.

Keating’s point is irrelevant because congress was going to be in session regardless as to what was said. I also think they exaggerated the precise cost to the limits of good taste and perhaps beyond.

How much did it cost congress for Charlie Rangel’s trial and spiel on his innocence? Considering that there exists more than one legal argument to render the health control law unConstitutional, you’d think that congress would want to perhaps learn about the document which they swore to uphold.

Of course, we know that many Democrats could care less about that “old” document:

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In a recent post in Slate magazine, Dahlia Lithwick takes aim right at the forehead of the Tea Party movement and its supposed prostration before the U.S. Constitution.  What prompted this latest wave anti-Tea Party tantrums by the left is the impertinence of an oral reading of the U.S. Constitution on the floor of the newly sworn in House of Representatives.  Apparently the left finds it a bit odd (“threatening” probably more accurate)  that engaged American citizens have the brazenness to believe that – even with its admitted imperfections – the document created by such brilliant minds as James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, et al.  and later modified with a list of protected liberties by the likes of Thomas Jefferson is a pretty good reference point to use as they embark on rectifying what they see is a nation gone astray … socially, politically, economically and spiritually.

With typical hyperbole of which liberals are so adept at accusing  conservatives, Ms. Lithwick goes on to label the interest in the document around which the framework of this entire nation was constructed as a “fetish.”  Setting aside this charged phraseology that doesn’t deserve comment, the crux of her argument is two-fold.  First, that to be a believer in the Constitution is to accept as gospel its scattered flaws as well as many virtues.  Second, that the desire to return to a less centralized apparatus whereby the Tenth Amendment (reserving non-listed federal powers for the states) is moved to the forefront of governance is one rooted in historical ignorance and even a notion that could do more harm than good where freedom is concerned.

She parades out a series of quotations from like-minded loose constructionist law professors and progressive journalists to back up her thesis too numerous to pick apart one by one in this limited format.  But I will say that for someone who chides the tea partiers for placing what she sees as an inordinate level of trust in the states vis-à-vis the federal government, her reliance on the courts to be the final arbiter of justice or even correct policy is just as much a leap of faith. She offers as an example of states abusing its citizenry outside the protective envelop of the almighty federal Oz this predictable liberal feminist talking point: “Try telling [the notion that states’ rights equates to more freedoms] to a woman seeking reproductive freedom in Virginia.”  (No mention of an innocent baby being denied its right to life, of course … but that’s another article).

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60 Minutes talking to a leftist Supreme Court Justice. Blind leading the blind and both fell into the ditch.

I went into the Scott Pelley interview with retired Justice John Paul Stevens with low expectations and I was not disappointed. It was correctly mentioned that Stevens had been nominated by Gerald Ford as a moderate Republican, but eventually became the leader of the Court’s liberal wing. Something happens to people who spend too much time in DC, but that’s another story for another day.

First, the issue of the 2000 Presidential election. Pelley asked Stevens whether the recount of the Bush victory over Al Gore should’ve continued.  Predictably, Stevens said it should’ve continued. What was missing from the interview were two critical points. Pelley never asked the follow-up question; “Okay, if it should’ve continued, which standard should’ve been used?” Remember, the main issue was over how to count votes and how the various standards used led to much of the confusion. Democrats love election recounts to go as long as possible until they have enough votes to win. Anybody wish to challege my contention using the last decade of election history?

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This morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, Lawrence O’Donnell proudly declared the obvious:  he’s a socialist.

After hearing the news today about the suspension of Keith Olbermann from the same network, I can’t say anyone’s all that surprised.

O’Donnell’s proclamation was made when “The Last Word” anchor got into a lively exchange with Salon.com contributor Glenn Greenwald.

“Unlike you, I am not a progressive.  I am not a liberal who’s so afraid of the word that I had to change my name to progressive.  Liberals amuse me.  I am a Socialist.  I live to the extreme left -  the extreme left – of you mere liberals.”

You have to give the guy credit for standing behind his views, and doing so openly.  You have to respect him for that, at least.

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The Constitution of the United States of America. Journalist Mary Dejevsky wrote about it, but she sure hasn’t the first clue about what it does, what it means, or why American politics seem to have gone awry. She did get some things correct in her article in Britain’s Independent newspaper but over all she proved that she neither understands, nor even has a general feel for the greatest governing document ever written by man.

Further, Dejevsky reveals herself to be a typical left-winger who not only doesn’t “get” the United States, but actively hates her and wants her destroyed and replaced with a pale copy of any particular European nation. In this she differs little from the goals of the current Democrat Party and she certainly represents a typical journalist.

One of the things the Independent’s Washington correspondent gets right, though, was contained in the subhead, a pull quote from further down in the article. “The ignorance, bickering and sheer incompetence the present system fosters in a new administration is not worthy of a world power in the modern age.” Couldn’t agree more. (more…)

Excerpts from Rep. Mike Pence’s (R, Ind.) speech to Hillsdale College on Monday. Wonder why the MSM doesn’t hang on his every word the way they did candidate Obama’s?

The presidency is the most visible thread that runs through the tapestry of the American government. More often than not, for good or for ill, it sets the tone for the other branches and spurs the expectations of the people. Its powers are vast and consequential, its requirements — from the outset and by definition — impossible for mortals to fulfill without humility and insistent attention to its purpose as set forth in the Constitution of the United States.

Isn’t it amazing, given the great and momentous nature of the office, that those who seek it seldom pause to consider what they are seeking? Rather, unconstrained by principle or reflection, there is a mad rush toward something that, once its powers are seized, the new president can wield as an instrument with which to transform the nation and the people according to his highest aspirations

But, other than in a crisis of the house divided, the presidency is neither fit nor intended to be such an instrument. When it is made that, the country sustains a wound, and cries out justly and indignantly. And what the nation says — the theme of this address… What it says, informed by its long history, impelled by the laws of nature and nature’s God… What it says quite naturally and rightly, if not always gracefully, is that we as a people are not to be ruled and not to be commanded. It says that the president should never forget this; that he has not risen above us, but is merely one of us, chosen by ballot, dismissed after his term, tasked not to transform and work his will upon us, but to bear the weight of decision and to carry out faithfully the design laid down in the Constitution and impassioned by the Declaration of Independence.

The presidency must adhere to its definition as expressed in the Constitution, and to conduct defined over time and by tradition. While the powers of the office have enlarged, along with those of the legislature and the judiciary, the framework of the government was intended to restrict abuses common to classical empires and to the regal states of the 18th century. (more…)

As a Harvard-trained lawyer, are we really to believe that BHO II forgot the most famous line in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence?

There are only three options that explain why Obama omitted the words “by the  Creator” in his speech to Hispanics over the weekend.

1. The teleprompter was loaded incorrectly–omitting the words “by the Creator.”
2. The teleprompter was loaded correctly—and Obama misread it, omitting the words “by the Creator” accidentally.
3. The teleprompter was loaded correctly—and Obama omitted the words “by the Creator” intentionally.

The first possibility illustrates cowardice by Obama– if “by the Creator” was omitted by a speechwriter (and not ordered so by POTUS) then why aren’t heads rolling?

The second option would illustrate ineptitude on the part of the Harvard-educated “constitutional lawyer.”  If “by the Creator” was in the teleprompter, and Obama “forgot,” then it is a gaffe to remember, such as his “57 states” remark during his campaign.  Where are the Dan Quayle genre jokes by late night television folks mocking his stupidity? Don’t suppose we’ll hear much from the LSM about that one! (more…)

Today is the 223rd birthday of the Constitution of the United States of America. And do we ever need her, now more than ever. The Bill of Rights came along two years later, but now’s a good a time as any to open a thread about the First Amendment and what it means to you:

As the left falls all over itself to claim that building the Ground Zero Mega-Mosque is the perfect chance to “showcase” our “Constitutional freedoms” and our religious tolerance, there is another state where religious tolerance is not as noticeably on display as it is for New York’s Muslims. Naturally, in Vermont, it is the religious freedom of Christians being denied. To be sure, the Old Media is not nearly as interested in this story.

Richard and Joan Downing own a hilltop property in Lyndonville, Vermont and on that property they’ve built a family chapel where they host weekly Catholic services for all. Next to the chapel they have also erected a 24-foot-tall cross called the Cross of Dozulé, a cross that the State of Vermont is insisting that they remove. (Visit The Chapel of the Holy Family website)

How does the State of Vermont justify its demands that the family pull down the cross? Vermont officials are citing environmental regulations that give it the power to determine what sort of construction violates the “aesthetics” of Vermont’s scenery.

Now in their seventies, the Downings built their Catholic chapel in 2005 to serve their large extended family. The Downings’ chapel is used by their seven children, three of them adopted, and the 35 foster children they helped raise over the years. The chapel is also open to the general public. (more…)