Category Archives: Constitution

‘Barack Obama Is The President That Nixon Always Wanted To Be’

Barack Obama, Bush, Conservatism, Constitution, Individual Rights, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism

As was observed in this week’s column, “Obama’s The Sinner; Holder His ‘Sin Eater,’” Professor Jonathan Turley has been doing the job most liberals and conservatives refuse to do: Argue that, as I put it, “Barack Hussein Obama’s philosophical fingerprints are all over his administration” and its scandals.

Turley has been magnificent, and must be losing many of his liberal pals for refusing to worship at the alter of Obama.

In March this year, Turley made the case, in a USA Today column, that “Barack Obama is the president that Nixon always wanted to be,” and that, “In 2013, Obama wields those very same powers openly and without serious opposition. The success of Obama in acquiring the long-denied powers of Nixon is one of his most remarkable, if ignoble, accomplishments.”

Turley traverses the ugly terrains of Obama’s expansion of the “warrantless surveillance” over his subjects. There is little you can do to oppose such surveillance, thanks to BHO.

As has Obama asserted “his sole authority” “to decide what is a ‘war,’” so that even the cockroaches in congress can no longer control the imperial presidency in the matter of war powers.

Then there are the “attacks on whistle-blowers and Journalists.” This is quite remarkable, but under the Espionage Act of 1917, “Obama has brought twice as many such prosecutions as all prior presidents combined.

Obama has not only openly asserted powers that were the grounds for Nixon’s impeachment, but he has made many love him for it. More than any figure in history, Obama has been a disaster for the U.S. civil liberties movement. By coming out of the Democratic Party and assuming an iconic position, Obama has ripped the movement in half.

This Turley interview with film maker John Cusack is particularly good because so specific.

TURLEY: “That’s exactly right. In fact, President Obama has not only maintained the position of George W. Bush in the area of national securities and in civil liberties, he’s actually expanded on those positions. He is actually worse than George Bush in some areas. …”

MORE.

What a shame that in the universe of a civil libertarian like Turley, individual rights do not extend to the sphere of economics and property rights. That would mean becoming a libertarian. How about that? (See also “Obama And Bush: Partners In Government Giganticism.)

Reflections On The Boston Bombers & Boyhood In America

Barack Obama, Constitution, Feminism, Founding Fathers, Gender, GUNS, History, Homosexuality, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Sex, Terrorism

“Reflections On The Boston Bombers & Boyhood In America” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Whereas American media has shed mostly darkness on the “apparently” mysterious motivation behind the ruthless, savage, April 15 attack on the Boston Marathon—a Chechen leader offered some valuable insights about these homegrown terrorists:

[The] Tsarnaevs … were raised in the United States, and their attitudes and beliefs were formed there. It is necessary to seek the roots of this evil in America.

The man makes a profound point. Here, and not in Chechnya, did the Tsarnaevs receive a liberal, lax, progressive education, emphasizing the wicked ways of the West and the righteousness of its “victims.” It is here in America that these invertebrates matured into aggrieved ignoramuses.

“If we Americans cannot even agree on what is right and wrong and moral and immoral, how do we stay together in one national family?,” prodded Patrick J. Buchanan, in a recent column.

“A common faith and moral code once held this country together. But if we no longer stand on the same moral ground, after we have made a conscious decision to become the most racially, ethnically, culturally diverse people on earth, what in the world holds us together?

The Constitution, the Bill of Rights? How can they, when we bitterly disagree on what they say?”

As Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam discovered, reluctantly, diversity in fact immiserates. The greater the diversity in a county or country, the more distrustful and depressed are its inhabitants.

America’s practically pornographic rituals of public grief—what are they if not a neurotic symptom of this disconnect? A diverse and distrusting people, lacking in a shared national DNA, are thrust together by the crisis of the day. In the absence of any core value over which to unite, we Americans meet on the only common ground we share: the graveyard. We come together to bury or remember our dead. We unite to grieve over tragedy and misfortune that have befallen us for no other reason than that we exist in the same space in time. ….”

Read the complete column. “Reflections On The Boston Bombers & Boyhood In America” is now on WND.

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UPDATED: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Recognize No Evil (But Rationalize It)

America, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Homeland Security, Private Property, Reason, Terrorism, The State

The specter of residents of the suburb of Watertown, in the Greater Boston area, being forcibly turned out of their homes and stared down by SWAT teams is not likely to disturb your average American. Said the great Roman statesman Cicero: “Not to know what happened before one was born is to be always a child.”

Perpetual children, Americas don’t know squat about their constitution, its philosophical origins, and why the framers, who were sophisticated thinkers, put certain provisions in place.

Of those Americans who vaguely compute something about a Fourth Amendment—“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects”—most still believe that blatant violations of these sacred protections are probably justified, and visited only on “terrorists.”

In other words, if an authority figure violates the Fourth Amendment—you average, pliant American will simply surmise that it’s likely OK.

In addition, liberty as it was codified by the founding generation demands a rational mind. Being both childish and sentimental in the extreme, Americans shun rational thought. It thus becomes impossible to think clearly about liberty.

This isn’t it:

MORE.

UPDATE (4/26): Locked-down Bostonians rationalize tyranny:

Where is the outrage that the Powers That Are in Boston essentially made prisoners of an entire city? On what grounds and by what authority does any municipal government presume to place every citizen of a major United States city on house arrest? In the afterglow of the successful capture of the remaining Boston Marathon bombing suspect, alleged Islamist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the people celebrating in the streets that Tsarnaev was taken alive (ironically, only because the “lockdown” was lifted and the property owner in whose boat Tsarnaev was hiding could finally go outside and check his yard) ought to be asking themselves what they have to be happy about. They are beta testers of the New Freedom, which looks a lot like the Old Oppression. At whim, your government may order you to remain in your home, and if you dare disobey, they will point guns at you, essentially threatening to murder you.

UPDATE II: Living in Police State USA And … Loving It (Economic Inefficiencies)

Constitution, Crime, Fascism, Homeland Security, Law, Military, Private Property

“Not only did the militarized domestic law enforcement complex put the City of Boston under martial law, but nobody seems to have found it out of the ordinary, much less outrageous,” writes fellow libertarian Thomas Mullen.

“Yes, a few journalists … raised a finger. But, for the most part, nobody seemed to mind that the entire city was under military siege, complete with paramilitary units in full battle gear, battlefield ordinance and tanks. Tanks!”

“How did we get here? 238 years ago to the day, the inhabitants of the very same city started a war and seceded from their union over a mere infantry brigade attempting to disarm them. Now they cheer those who violate their rights much worse than the British ever did.”

“When Lee Harvey Oswald was similarly suspected of killing a police officer after assassinating the President of the United States, Dallas was not put under martial law. No tanks rolled through the streets. Oswald was armed at the time of his arrest and attempted to shoot the arresting officer, whose thumb stopped the hammer of Oswald’s pistol from discharging the weapon at point blank range.”

“It is noteworthy that the military siege was called off several hours before Tsarnaev was captured. In the end, he was found and taken into custody by the same methods that any other criminal has been for most of U.S. history.”

“So, there was no cause and effect relationship between the state show of power and the apprehension of the suspect. …”

MORE FROM MULLEN @ The Washington Times Community Pages.

UPDATE I: ECONOMIC INEFFICIENCIES. And what about the economic inefficiencies of the public production of law, so to speak? The costs of this operation in proportion to the dangers posed?!!!! Imagine what a dozen or so private hires (SEALS in the employ of the private sector) would have accomplished by stealth, and while being held to the standards of a private company: “You do damage to innocents and property, you get sued.”

UPDATE II: Updated: As to efficiencies, in case you forgot, it took “100,000 U.S. Troops To Find Osama bin Laden.”