Category Archives: Founding Fathers

Perks Are For Perps With The Right Pigmentation

Crime, Family, Founding Fathers, IMMIGRATION

“Perks Are For Perps With The Right Pigmentation” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

If you’re a criminal alien with “family relationships” in the U.S., are studying on the American taxpayer’s dime, are the recipient of the “attention of [pro-amnesty] advocacy groups,” and have “been here a long time”; if you are the focus of “political considerations,” were in the midst of applying for legal status when, oops, you stumbled into crime, have made a career of traffic offenses or have violated state law the Obama administration does not want enforced (identity theft and fraud are examples); if charges are pending against you, but you have yet to be convicted—KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. You’re more than qualified for leniency, or for what the Obama administration has termed “prosecutorial discretion.” Deportation is no threat to you.

Congratulations! You’re on schedule for joining what the American Founding Fathers had hoped would be a commonwealth of virtue.

As for the youthful criminal alien who still has that certain, impish je ne sais quoi—why, he’ll qualify right away for this administration’s “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” program. DACA is not quite the proposed DREAM Act, but it’ll get the offender all the benefits he can dream of—education, food stamps, health care, a shot at a job—and a reprieve from deportation.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the Obama administration’s “prosecutorial discretion criteria are allowing factors such as family relationships, political considerations, or attention from advocacy groups to trump criminal convictions as factors leading to deportation.”

In 2013, ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) released 68,000 criminal aliens back into the community. Much of their offenses were of the drunken-driving variety—among them were no homeschoolers on the lam from Germany, thank God! But, as FoxNews.com reported, the skill-sets in this sample of criminal aliens did include murder and rape.

For a second, I thought of encouraging my only sister, stuck in South Africa as she is, to live on the edge and consider becoming an illegal alien in the USA. It’s the easiest path to de facto permanent residency. No need for an education. No need for proficiency in the English language. “Press two for Spanish” is all the conversational eloquence required. Public charges are preferred. Ditto a vice or two. …

… Read the complete column. “Perks Are For Perps With The Right Pigmentation” is now on WND.

Surveillance For Thee But Not For Me

Constitution, Founding Fathers, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Politics, The State

Remember when the The Transportation Security Administrator dared to manhandle Sen. Rand Paul in the same way these goons grab our privates daily? Rand responded by telling CNN’s Erin Burnett, essentially, that the TSA folks were good people bogged down by inflexible rules. He followed up with special pleading, suggesting a system of sectional privileges and rights, based on professional need and proximity to power.

But that’s the way the system was destined to work. I know: This nerd’s lasting infatuation is with the unsung heroes of the American founding: the Anti-Federalists. And one of the Anti-Federalist essayists said that the Constitution creates a city or district in which power is concentrated. Once the elected representative (too few to represent anyone meaningfully) reached Rome on The Potomac—they would act as a cloistered, privileged ruling class, impervious to the people’s pleas.

And this has come to pass.

That phony, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), is furious that the CIA “has secretly removed documents from computers used by her panel to investigate a controversial interrogation program.” Lo and behold this bitch has “discovered” the Fourth Amendment and is bemoaning its violation. “The Fourth … bars unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as various federal laws and a presidential executive order that prevents the agency from conducting domestic searches and surveillance,” Feinstein preached.

Man of the people whistleblower Edward Snowden said all there is to say. He “accused the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee of double standards on Tuesday, pointing out that her outrage at evidence her staff were spied on by the CIA was not matched by concern about widespread surveillance of ordinary citizens.”

Snowden said almost all there is to say about the premise of surveillance for thee but not for me under which Americans labor.

It is eminently reasonable to surveil politicians. Because of the special privileges and powers they are able to arrogate to themselves, they ought to be exempt from many of the so-called protections afforded to ordinary citizens.

And of course, they should be denied the vote.

Bad Dreams From Dinesh D’Souza*

Federalism, Founding Fathers, Neoconservatism, States' Rights

What if Lincoln had not won the War of Northern Aggression?

According to the quintessential neoconservative, filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, had Lincoln lost, America would not be America. By which D’Souza means that the “union would not have existed. And America would be completely different.”

The Anti-Federalists warned that the creation of a national government would sunder the autonomous states and usher in an empire.

Indeed, if not for Lincoln, the US might have reverted back to a decentralized confederation of sovereign states (and slavery would have ended without bloodshed, as it did almost everywhere else).

“While a national government will add to the dignity and splendor of the United States,” wrote “A Farmer” (an anonymous anti-Federalist), in March of 1788, “true happiness lies in a simple quiet government.”

Before consolidation under the Constitution, Americans hardly had a government.

If only…

* Dreams from My Father is a book by Barack Obama.

The Con-stitution And The Power To Confiscate

Constitution, Founding Fathers, History, Private Property

“The Con-stitution And The Power To Confiscate” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Bolstered by the U S. Forest Service, Summit County authorities, in Colo., are scheming on seizing 10 acres of verdant land that belongs to Andy and Ceil Barrie.

The parcel of land is situated within the White River National Forest. The authorities claim the couple’s use of a motorized vehicle on the preserved land risks “damaging the alpine tundra and streams and the habitat of the endangered lynx.”

Since it is the nature of government to “turn a wormhole into a loophole,” the solution sought by the county’s commissioners and attorney general is to confiscate private property under the guise of “open-space” conservation.

On their side—and against the right of private property—the knaves of this Colorado county have a thing even more formidable than the U S. Forest Service: the U. S. Constitution.

Or, dare I say the Con-stitution?

Any discussion about the plight of the Barrie couple must be prefaced by noting the following:

There is no dispute as to the right of government grandees to grab private property.

What remains of some dispute is whether the county has exceeded its authority to steal. For the Constitution gives authorities the right to seize private property for the “common good—that catch-all constitutional concept. Has not the General Welfare Clause, in Article I, authorized all three branches of colluding quislings to do just about anything which in their judgment will tend to provide for the general welfare?

The term for state-sanctioned theft of private property is “eminent domain.” A section of The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution reads as follows: “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Understand: Compensating the individual if and when government confiscates his land for the ostensible greater good: that is not what’s so wicked here. Rather, it is that implicit in the Bill-of-Rights clause mandating “just compensation” is the acknowledgement that government has the right to confiscate private property, in the first place. …

Read on. The complete column is “The Con-stitution And The Power To Confiscate,” now on WND.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION:

• At the WND Comments Section. Scroll down and “Say it.”

• On my Facebook page.

• By clicking to “Like,” “Tweet” and “Share” this week’s “Return To Reason” column.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.