Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Intelligence, Journalism, Liberty, Media
Mock-interviewing the peerless Thomas Woods is Zombie, who looks remarkably like our good friend economist Bob Murphy. Your generic Journo’s journalistic stock-in-trade: “NEO-CONFEDERATE. SLAVERY. RACISM. HITLER.” And when these “substitutes for an argument” run into the brick wall of argument, we start again.
Constitution, Federalism, GUNS, Individual Rights, Natural Law, States' Rights
As someone who doesn’t believe the Constitution gave the government the right to enforce the Bill of Rights in the states, the Supreme Court’s latest gun-rights decision presents with the usual dilemma. The SCOTUS has decided that “the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms applies to every jurisdiction in the country – throwing doubt on a Chicago law that bans handguns in the home.”
Still, and overall, the ruling will revive the eroded, immutable right to defend life, liberty and property. (The title of John Lott’s op-ed encapsulates exactly that: “Court’s Gun Decision An Important Win for Americans Who Want to Defend Themselves.”) This is a war. Progressives have left little of the original Constitutional scheme. A victory for natural rights in the rights-violating society we inhabit is a good thing. The good guys won. A toast to the patriots who fought the good fight: a besieged black man from Chicago and his lawyer.
Coverage has been hard to come by today on the passing of the DISCLOSE Act, with the exception of WND.COM and Fox News. Older reports were carried on Hot Air, and Politico. Where the Act was briefly mentioned, it was only to gloat that its passing dealt a defeat to Republicans. Credit goes to the HuffPo for this report.
The official, twisted title: “H.R.5175 – DISCLOSE Act: Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections.”
[Amends] the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to prohibit foreign influence in Federal elections, to prohibit government contractors from making expenditures with respect to such elections, and to establish additional disclosure requirements with respect to spending in such elections, and for other purposes.
As our reader rightly points out, Mark Levin ATTEMPTS to explains how the Disclose Act threatens the First Amendment, but he and his guest fumble hopelessly.
UPDATE (June 26): Contra Levin, the Campaign for Liberty gets it. This from their newsletter:
“Earlier today, the House of Representatives shredded the First Amendment by voting 219-206 to pass H.R. 5175, the DISCLOSE Act.
As hard as it is to believe, they made the bill (which should really be called the Establishment Protection Act) even worse in the hours leading up to the vote by including more provisions to benefit their Big Labor pals and to obtain further details on those opposed to their powergrabs.
Thanks to the actions of Campaign for Liberty members and other freedom-minded activists across the country, the vote on H.R. 5175 came down to the wire and was much closer than expected. Your pressure reminded them that we are serious about holding our elected officials accountable for their actions.
Matter of fact, your calls made such an impact that Campaign for Liberty was even mentioned on the House floor during the debate!
This vote is by no means the end of the fight, and the battle to protect Americans’ right to free speech and to keep the federal government from gathering even more information about us now moves on to the Senate, where the bill faces many challenges.
There are several steps you can take to ensure the Establishment Protection Act is decisively defeated in the Senate.
First, contact your senators right away and make sure they know we have not given up on this critical issue. Click here to find their contact information and urge them to oppose H.R. 5175 and all other attempts to curb free speech.
Next, call the NRA headquarters at 1-800-672-3888 and their Legislative Action group at 1-800-392-8683 and tell them to drop their compromise and actively oppose H.R. 5175.
Without their special deal with House leaders, DISCLOSE may have been stopped in its tracks before ever reaching the House floor in the first place.
Finally, please forward this email to your family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers so we can spread the message about the threat posed by the Establishment Protection Act.
Campaign for Liberty has enjoyed more success than the statists ever imagined possible, and they would love nothing more than to shut us down by going after our donors.
Let’s show them that the Freedom movement will never back down.”
Barack Obama, Bush, Constitution, Private Property, Socialism
That “Barack Obama is exceeding his legitimate constitutional authority” is not news. CNSNews.com: “The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified specifically to prevent the government from taking or redistributing private property without due process of law. The amendment says: ‘No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.'”
Michele Bachmann reminds us that BHO’s strong-arming British Petroleum to “set up an independent fund, not controlled by the company, for compensating victims of the Gulf oil spill”—this is in violation of the constitution’s “jurisdictional limits … on what the extent of executive power” should be. (I hope the congresswoman is not implying that if Congress, and not the president, decided to seize BP assets—why, that would be an entirely different matter.)
The conservative from Minnesota said she was particularly bothered by the call President Obama made Monday–later reiterated in his Oval Office address Tuesday night–for BP to set aside money for reimbursements to victims of the Gulf oil spill that would be administered independently, taking control of the money away from the company.
“Bachmann acknowledged the problem began under President George W. Bush with the creation of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).”
Socialism is not necessarily the ownership of the means of production. As usual, Bachmann is a beacon of light in pointing out that, “just because we don’t own an industry doesn’t mean that we don’t effectively control it, because we are in a lot of ways.”
Not that anyone is listening. CNN Republican analyst Bill Bennett seemed satisfied with the arrangement whereby BHO compelled BP to surrender “$20 billion into escrow to compensate victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.”