Category Archives: States’ Rights

UPDATED (7/31/020): Beck Bad-mouths Byrd, RIP

Democrats, Glenn Beck, Race, Racism, Republicans, States' Rights, The South, War

It looks like Glenn Beck is positioning himself as a right-wing racial policeman to rival the Sharpton and Jackson reign of terror. Today, Beck badmouthed the late Robert Byrd, one of the last principled, old-style Democrats, making sure that his listeners were aware of the old Byrd’s clan membership way back in the 1940s or 1950s.

Byrd was an old Southern gentleman after whom Republicans have always chased for his past peccadilloes. Intellectually honest souls that they are, Republicans would attack Byrd’s present policy positions by citing his distant-past indiscretions. Pretty much how Beck played it today.

Most recently, Byrd (D-W.Va.), “a stern constitutional scholar who has always stood up for the legislative branch in its role in checking the power of the White House,” warned about Obama’s executive-branch power grab.

According to Politico, “Byrd complained about Obama’s decision to create White House offices on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change. Byrd said such positions ‘can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.'”

Last year, Sen. Byrd issued this warning regarding the procedural shenanigans the Democrats tried to deploy to pass the healthscare bill:

“I oppose using the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform and climate change legislation…. As one of the authors of the reconciliation process, I can tell you that the ironclad parliamentary procedures it authorizes were never intended for this purpose.”

The frail senator had taken to the floor of the United States Senate on October 14, 2009, “to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and voice his concerns over the possibility of a major increase in U.S. forces into Afghanistan”:

“General McChrystal, our current military commander in Afghanistan, has requested 30,000-40,000 additional American troops to bolster the more than 65,000 American troops already there. I am not clear as to his reasons and I have many, many questions. What does General McChrystal actually aim to achieve?” “So I am compelled to ask: does it really, really take 100,000 U.S. troops to find Osama bin Laden?”

Perhaps if Republicans adopted Byrd’s skepticism of war for the sake of war, and rediscovered authentic Taft Republicanism—they might even deserve to win the next election.

Here Sen. Byrd is at his finest:

RIP Robert Byrd, you were sui generis.

As for Beck: as if the nation does not already feed on fiction, Beck, aided by one David Barton, has been busily breathing life into—and developing—a fanciful idea: America had black Founding Fathers. A racist society and its schooling have stopped this truth from percolating down to your kids. Glenn to the rescue.

UPDATE: The footage is not yet online (or I haven’t been able to find it), but Beck also singled out Byrd for opposing the Civil Rights Act, the same tack Democrats took with Rand Paul recently.

I would not have expected anything less from Byrd. As I wrote when Rand was being lynched, “It has never occurred to me that for the reasoning advanced in these posts, I could be construed as a racist. Respectable scholars advance the same arguments: Richard A. Epstein, Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws (Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England, 1995), and Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom: The Story of How Through The Centuries Private Ownership has Promoted Liberty and the Rule of Law (New York, 2000).

Beck’s litmus test for racism is as rigorous as Shaka Zulu’s sniff test for witches.

UPDATED (7/31/020): Anti-war all the way.

Life, Liberty and Property Stronger (State Rights, Not So Much)

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.

UPDATED: Suing Arizona

Barack Obama, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, States' Rights

Taking cover, the American Treason Class, with Hillary Clinton at the helm, made the announcement from Ecuador: “The Justice Department, under [Obama’s] direction, will be bringing a lawsuit against the act” [Arizona immigration-enforcement law, SB 1070].

VIA The Right Scoop, here’s the Hildebeest herself:

UPDATE (June 20): “Our federal government should be using its legal resources to fight illegal immigration, not the law-abiding citizens of Arizona,” said Gov. Jan Brewer.

Brewer “refused to flinch after Obama administration officials confirmed Friday that they plan to file a lawsuit challenging the state’s anti-illegal immigration law.
In a statement issued late Friday, Brewer called Obama’s decision ‘outrageous’ but ‘not surprising.'”

Updated: Feds To Sabotage Arizona

Ann Coulter, Federalism, Founding Fathers, IMMIGRATION, Law, Rights, States' Rights, The Courts

ICE is supposed to deport, or at least process, illegals aliens apprehended by Arizona law enforcement—OR, MAYBE NOT.

A top Obama official, John Morton, assistant secretary of homeland security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement government, told the Chicago Tribune that the Arizona immigration-enforcement law, SB 1070, is not “good government.”

The best way to reduce illegal immigration is through a comprehensive federal approach, he said, and not a patchwork of state laws.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano backed the bastard up: “ICE,” she said, “is not obligated to process illegal immigrants referred to them by Arizona authorities.

ICE has the legal discretion to accept or not to accept persons delivered to it by non-federal personnel … It also has the discretion to deport or not to deport persons delivered to it by any government agents, even its own.”

FoxNews’ Megyn Kelly called this government by fiat.

This is how it rolls in the US. I’ve long contended that commentators who constantly hail America’s unique freedoms are willfully misleading their followers. States’ rights? Those died a long time ago.

The federal government no longer fulfills its most basic negative duty, and that is to protect its citizens. But this is not new.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

Hot Air tracks the issue too.

Update (May 23): Ann Coulter is at her best when she gets legal. She dredges up the “UNITED STATES v. BRIGNONI-PONCE” (1975), in which the SCOTUS unanimously, including every liberal on the Court, decided that “border police could take into account the Mexican appearance of a car’s occupants. They could not do random stops based on nothing but that ‘appearance.'” The Arizona law does not go as far as the SCOTUS’ ruling.

Another interesting point made by AC: “Iconic labor leader, and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, along with Ralph Abernathy, successor to Martin Luther King, marched against illegal immigration.”