Illegal aliens have deposited eight to sixteen million tons of trash in the last three years in Arizona’s once pristine wild-life reserves. These are the kind of individuals I want in my still blissful neighborhood. How about you?
Here’s the second heart-breaking episode. And these wonderful animals? What will become of them, if the tsunami of trash continues? Drug-courier vermin pass peacefully into this joke of a country, along with an armed escort. A Pinal Country deputy sheriff is shot in hot pursuit of trespassers. Poor sod; he imagines he still has country to defend.
Rep. Joe Barton is being raked him over the coals by the Media-Congressional complex, his Republican colleagues included, for telling the truth: Big “O” muscled PB into handing over private property without due process—in contravention of “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and all that stuff.
Not only is this unconstitutional; it is also immoral. It further entrenches the shakedown ethos, and the perception that private property works and breathes at the pleasure of the politicos. This is a slush fund, a piece of which everyone along the Gulf will be clamoring for, presumably without the hassles of proving they have been harmed by the spill.
None of what I’ve said will strike those of you who respect private property and due process, including the neglected, necessary, legal imperative of mens rea, as particularly original.
The real newsworthy point to take away from this is how uncommitted Republicans are to these bedrock principles.
UPDATE II: O’REILLY & O’BAMA SITTING IN A TREE… Bill O’Reilly is consistent here. Never before has he deferred to the limits the constitutional scheme imposes on central power, and he does not now break with that commitment to an overweening central government. (Obama should cut O’Reilly some slack and give him that prestigious interview he craves. O’Reilly is his friend.)
But Bachmann backpedals and disappoints. O’Reilly declares he is okay with Obama bringing down on BP the full force of the federal government; MB, who rightly objected, now meekly agrees. Sort of. She ought to have stuck to her guns in noting the usurpation of power and the violation of due process of which she previously warned.
“Prosecutorial power to bring charges against a person is an awesome power, stress Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton in The Tyranny of Good Intentions. Backing him, the prosecutor has the might of the state, and must never ‘override the rights of the defendant in order to gain a conviction.’
Prosecutorial duties are dual. While acting as the plaintiff, the prosecutor must also take pains to protect the defendant’s rights.”
O’Reilly is like a Benthamite bureaucrat; he’s no truth seeker.
Since the GOP went out of business, Mark Levin has begun to speak truth to power (and phony populism). VIA The Right Scoop:
UPDATE III (June 20): So you still think the “GOP, RIP” can be reformed?
Rep. Jo Bonner called on fellow Republican Rep. Joe Barton to step down as ranking member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Friday following the Texas Republican’s controversial statements to BP chairman Tony Hayward on Thursday.
“Earlier this morning, Rep. Barton called me to offer his personal apologies for any harm that his comments might have caused,” said Bonner, whose district covers much of Alabama’s coastline.
“It takes a big person to admit they were wrong and I appreciated Joe’s call,” Bonner continued. “However, as I told him, I believe the damage of his comments are beyond repair and, as such, I am today calling on Joe to do the right thing for our conference and immediately step aside as Ranking Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.”
“Joe’s comments were stupid and extremely insensitive to the hundreds of thousands of people who live along the Gulf Coast,” Bonner added.
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.”
“Republican reaction to the president’s reaction to the crude gushing in the Gulf of Mexico is a measure of how serious the GOP is about checking the spread of big government.
Every time I turn around, there’s a Republican insisting that Big “O” take over where Big Oil has (allegedly) left off. This, Sarah Palin has been demanding as loudly as James Carville; Congresswoman Michele Bachmann as urgently as clown Keith Olbermann. The consensus on both sides of the political aisle seems to be that where British Petroleum has failed to stop the spread of the oil slick, the president will prevail.
If I didn’t know Republicans better, I’d think they were making political hay out of the Deepwater Horizon leak, now in its fifty second day. …
So what does the idolatrous Idiocracy want from its Golden Calf?
The Oprah faction confuses righteous indignation with righteousness; it wants Obama to come unhinged. The Disneyland division is hoping that off-shore oil explorer, acclaimed scientist and inventor James Cameron, who “has worked extensively with robot submarines,” will help the film directors of BP to plug the oil plume. Cameron’s plan includes that liquid metal robot from “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” Obama must realize that there is no way such a plan could fail.”…
What do I recommend? For the root of the environmental despoliation of the ocean and other state-controlled expanses of water—and the ultimate solution to it—read on. The column is “When Palin Agrees With Olbermann.”
