Category Archives: Federalism

Lovely Lack of Legislative Accomplishment

Elections, Federalism, Law, Regulation, Republicans, Ron Paul

Lack of legislative accomplishment, according to former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, makes his fellow GOP 2012 candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann “unfit to be President.”

On NBC’s Meet the Press today, Pawlenty went after Bachmann, who holds significant leads in the polls, saying “Her record of accomplishment in Congress is nonexistent — it’s nonexistent.”

Pawlenty should look for another angle to bolster his lackluster presidential campaign. Unless they are passing legislation to repeal other legislation, the less legislating the clowns in Congress do, the better—for every one of us. An example of a good legislative record is that of “Dr. No,” aka Ron Paul.

Naturally, it’s hard to find information about how voluminous the United States Code is, but it’s safe to presume that it has its own dedicated building.

Where Was Coulter On … Economic Freedoms, Asks Vox Day

Ann Coulter, Bush, Debt, Economy, Federalism, John McCain, libertarianism, Republicans

My WND colleague Vox Day wants to know “where was Miss Coulter when the McCain-Palin ticket suspended its Republican presidential campaign to help the Bush administration collude with the Democratic Senate to ram TARP down the throats of a protesting American public?”

“Cowering frauds,” writes Vox—with reference to Ann Coulter’s term for libertarians who do not want a department of marriage affairs to be added to the Federal Frankenstein in enforcing morality—“is a term that is best reserved for Republicans, who preach fiscal responsibility while repeatedly raising the debt ceiling, who talk about the importance of respecting the law while permitting Wall Street to openly violate it at will, and who claim to advocate personal freedom while staunchly supporting a futile Prohibition that saw three times more Americans arrested for drugs last year than were arrested in 1980.”

Check the WND archives for the two months leading up to the 2008 presidential election. Miss Coulter was too busy cheering on the Red Faction of the bifactional ruling party in a futile attempt to elect John McCain to bother speaking out against the Republican elite’s rejection of economic reality, small government principles, the U.S. Constitution and the American people. On the other hand, WorldNetDaily’s two libertarians, Ilana Mercer and myself, wrote no less than 10 columns attacking TARP and the treacherous Bush bailouts during those two months. When viewed from this perspective, Ann Coulter calling libertarians ‘”cowardly frauds” looks rather like Anthony Weiner calling Pope Benedict XVI a perverted exhibitionist.

His Holiness Eric Holder

Constitution, Crime, Federalism, Homeland Security, Law, Terrorism

Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., was unequivocal today in asserting Executive branch supremacy and his own omniscience in the matter of the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four, 9/11 co-conspirators. (Transcript.) Recall, Holder’s preference was for the federal courts to try the case. “[O]ur justice system,” he stated today, “would have performed with the same distinction that has been its hallmark for over two hundred years.” (Here’s one example of that justice.) Alas, Holder’s all-knowing self—he informed FoxNews’ reporter, and I paraphrase, “Yes, I do know best”—was frustrated:

Unfortunately, since I made that decision, Members of Congress have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to trial in the United States, regardless of the venue. As the President has said, those unwise and unwarranted restrictions undermine our counterterrorism efforts and could harm our national security. Decisions about who, where and how to prosecute have always been – and must remain – the responsibility of the executive branch. Members of Congress simply do not have access to the evidence and other information necessary to make prosecution judgments. Yet they have taken one of the nation’s most tested counterterrorism tools off the table and tied our hands in a way that could have serious ramifications. We will continue to seek to repeal those restrictions.

Lincoln Lied, People Died

Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, History, Republicans, States' Rights, War

The following is excerpted from my latest WND.COM column, “Lincoln Lied, People Died”:

“Tomorrow is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Familiar Lincoln idolaters will gather to celebrate the birth, on Feb. 12, 1809, of the 16th president of the United States and finesse his role in “the butchering business” – to use professor J. R. Pole’s turn-of-phrase. Court historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is sure to make a media appearance to extol the virtues of the president who shed the blood of brothers in great quantities and urged into existence the “American System” of taxpayer-sponsored grants of government privilege to politically connected corporations.

On publication, in 2002, of the book “The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War,” the “Church of Lincoln” gave battle. The enemy was the author, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, who had exposed Lincoln lore for the lie it was – still is. DiLorenzo had dared to examine the Great Centralizer’s role in sundering the soul of the American federal system: the sovereignty of the states and the citizenry.

Steeped as they were in the Lockean tradition of natural rights and individual liberty, the constitutional framers held that the unalienable rights to life, liberty and property were best preserved within a federal system of divided sovereignty, in which the central government was weak and most powers devolved to the states, or to the people, respectively, as stated in the 10th Amendment. If a state grew tyrannical, competition from other states – and the individual’s ability to switch allegiances by exiting the political arrangement – would create something of an agora in government. This was the framers’ genius.

The concentrated powers Lincoln sought were inimical to the founders’ loose constitutional dispensation.” …

The complete column is “Lincoln Lied, People Died,” now on WND.COM.