…What have we here?

On November 8, 2006, Nancy Pelosi, on the precipice of becoming the third most important public official in our government, uttered the now infamous words that will prove to define her tenure as Speaker of the House:

“The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history…”

When you read that today knowing what’s happened in the last three years, you might not know whether to laugh or feel appalled. You have your garden variety scandals at the hands of Eric Massa, Charlie Rangel & Maxine Waters, but what’s more, the complete disregard for the voters’ voices by the very people who promised to lead an honest and transparent Congress: Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Congressional Democrats’ actions have been devastating to our economy, healthcare, and most important, the civil discourse in the United States. You thought you couldn’t take anymore head-scratching, face-palming comments from the very people whose salaries you pay? You are sadly mistaken.

Read on.

Meanwhile, Rep. John Shadegg is once again trying to persuade his fellow representatives to do the right thing.

A Republican congressman says all bills introduced in Congress should include a statement setting forth the specific constitutional authority under which a law is being enacted.

Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) says his Enumerated Powers Act will force Congress to re-examine the role of the national government and curb its “ever-expanding reach.”

“For too long, the federal government has operated without Constitutional restraint, creating ineffective and costly programs and massive deficits year after year,” Shadegg writes on AmericaSpeakingOut, a Republican Web site that seeks ideas from the American people.

Shadegg says the trend of Congress overstepping its role has gotten “alarmingly worse” in the past 18 months.

As CNSNews.com has reported, some lawmakers apparently do not consider the Constitution in writing legislation.

In the debate over health care, for example, CNSNews.com asked various members of Congress — including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — “Where does the Constitution authorize Congress to force individuals buy health insurance?”

Pelosi’s response — “Are you serious? Are you serious?” — was one of many nonplussed answers CNSNews.com received.

Indeed, who would expect today’s Democrats, especially under the perverse, corrupt and treasonous leadership of Komrade Pelosi, to even consider applying the appropriate Constitutional authority to any bill? If the party presently holding the majority in Congress were held to Constitutional requirements, all we’d hear from that side of the aisle would be crickets chirping.

The question is, when the GOP regains its majority or at least wins enough seats for more even voting power this November, will they be willing to adopt Shadegg’s proposal as a requisite to voting on all bills in Congress?

It was their lackluster performance that lost them the majority in the 2006 elections, so…

Time, as they say, will tell. Time, however, is something our beloved republic, as we know it, seems to have developed a paucity of.

Liberals always accuse conservatives of “playing politics” when we point out the unconstitutionality of so much of their legislation.

Does this mean that if John Q. Citizen breaks the law and a cop arrests him for it, he can accuse the cop of “playing politics”?

Same difference.

…a theocrapost, in that there are connotations to that effect in both links herein.

First, A Victory For People Who Have Souls.

The Supreme Court has said a federal court went too far in ordering the removal of a congressionally endorsed war memorial cross from its longtime home in California.

In ruling the cross could stay, the justices said federal judges in California did not take sufficient notice of the government’s decision to transfer the land in a remote area of California to private ownership. The move was designed to eliminate any constitutional concern about a religious symbol on public land. The ruling was 5-4, with the court’s conservatives in the majority.

Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute is delighted with the decision, saying it addresses a crucial issue “on whether or not the government is going to allow individuals and others [to use religious symbols] to recognize those who’ve died in the service of our country….”

Dacus points out that the use of religious symbols has been a part of the nation’s history and a practice that has been long accepted in the past — and he is pleased that the high court has not deviated from precedent.

With the permission of Congress, the federal land the cross sits on was turned over to private parties. That fact, says Dacus, was a critical factor in the court’s decision.

“The fact that that [land transfer] did occur is such that this court was correct in that you can’t have a federal endorsement if the land is not federal property any longer — and that’s what this case hinged on,” says the attorney.

Because lower courts held the cross to be unconstitutional, it had been encased in a wooden box — pending a final ruling — so people could not see it.

The heroes of the day were Kennedy, Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas, while the losers in the atheists’ box were Stevens, Ginsburg and Sotomayer, who were unable to muster enough firepower to support their G-d hating leftist political agenda.

Second, it’s good to see that somebody gets it!

The Institute on Religion & Democracy is concerned that Christian groups are not fully realizing the threat posed by an expansion of sharia (Islamic law) in the West, and so it is calling upon churches to stand against global attempts to enshrine it.

Faith McDonnell, director of the religious liberty program at the IRD, highlights what she describes as a “trend” found in several countries “to capitulate to Islamist factions within the Muslim population” by enshrining sharia into the legal code, effectively creating a different set of rules for Muslims.

Imagine that!

“Islam’s goal is to Islamize the entire country — to take the territory and to claim it for Islam,” she explains. “So any of these things that we see happening where Islamists are complaining about offense, like with Franklin Graham coming to the Day of Prayer — it’s just a little bit more territory that they’re taking.”

Put a bucket underneath a leaky sink and leave it there, untouched. It will fill up, little by little, and begin to overflow overflow.

Put a slowly growing Islamic population in your Judeo-Christian country, leave it to its own devices, and watxch it overrun your own rights and religious freedom.

… I thought I’d share a Wesley Pruden column that came out today, called Won’t Anybody Here Read The Constitution?

The House of Representatives takes up the legislation this week to grant voting rights to the residents of the District of Columbia, and among all the contentious voices there’s none to speak up for the Constitution.

That’s because the contending parties have devised a squalid little game of “you scratch my itch and I’ll scratch where you itch.” But granting the right to congressional representation for the District is a granting authority the Congress does not have, if words have meanings. The Constitution was deliberately written so that the common man could understand it without the mumbo-jumbo that lawyers invented to manipulate the law.

Article 1, Section 2: “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.” Congress, this makes plain and clear, is a legislative body made up of representatives of States, not of States and Districts (or townships and precincts). The capitalization of certain words, which seems so quaint to students of our present day, was hardly coincidental.

The 23d Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1961, grants the vote to qualified District residents in presidential elections, but there’s nothing in XXIII about congressional elections. The right to representation in Congress is reserved for “States,” and the District of Columbia is not a “State.” What could be plainer than that?

The entire column is here.

Now, having posted the above, I will say this: Over the last few years, I have ceased to consider myself a Republican.

Sure, I’ll vote Republican, but only because the GOP offers up a product closer to my personal political beliefs than the Democrats (Durn Tootin’!!!!). On the same token, however, the Republicans have become no better than their opposition where complacency, career-above-country and hell-bent-for-leather spending are concerned.

I simply don’t trust them.

Yes, they’re fighting tooth and nail on our behalf now, but are they doing it for the single-minded Democrat objective of being voted back into power by their skeptical conservative base, or have they truly learned the lesson dished out, with disasterous results, by the 2006 midterm elections?

No, my political beliefs at this point can be narrowed down to a single item, called The U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. wasn’t anywhere near the precipice at which she now leans before our elected representatives on Capital Hill decided to start either ignoring it or “creatively interpreting” it.

Today, under B. Hussein Obama and the far left run Democrat majority in Congress, the Constitution has been tossed onto the dung heap altogether, and as we can see, things are getting worse, prospects, as they (whoever “they” are) say, looking bleaker as the days pass.

There was a reason the Constitution was written just as it was, and it worked while we were following it.

I was chatting with an immigrant acquaintance about that earlier, and as he didn’t understand, I laid it out thus:

We have all seen mom & pop businesses flourish in the hands of their founders, seen them grow large and prosperous, then watched as the children of the founders inherited them.

The children, believing they knew better than Mom and Dad and that their methods of operation were “outdated, meant for a different time”, decided to change the the way they ran the business, and in short order they were out of business.

This is what’s happening here to America today. It would seem that it has become unfashionable to teach the Constitution and any but revisionist history in the school system, for that matter to even impart how the government works, so millions of young people come out of school with the same attitude toward the Constitution they have toward, say, the Treaty of Versailles — “so what? how does that treaty affect me?” — it doesn’t, but the Constitution sure does! Or should, at any rate.

So like the inheritors of the ill fated business, we are tossing out the rules that made the business successful, only in this case, we are rejecting the Constitution, stupid kids that we are, pissing away the greatest inheritance in the history of the planet by adopting a set of rules that have already, in other countries, manifested themselves as a formula for failure..

Dumb!

…there are so many things to criticize, at least unless one is a mega-leftist wingnut, that is, where the tragedy/travesty that is today’s presidential administration and congressional majority are concerned, that there’s a veritable smorgasbord of subject material to choose from.

For example, a great post at Red State.

Yesterday the White House went bonkers when several large corporations announced via their SEC filings that they were taking about $1.5 Billion in losses this quarter because of one provision in the health care takeover bill Obama signed into law last week. The Wall Street Journal estimates Obamacare will cost the Fortune 500 some $14 Billion in this single provision.

They trotted out the hapless Commerce Secretary, Gary Locke, to deny basic laws of economics and according to some reports White House aides were directly calling and berating company executives who were complying with federal law.

Henry Waxman took a brief hiatus from braiding his nose hair to announce that he would hold hearings to determine why these imbeciles had fraudulently declared Obamacare would cost them money when everyone knows it is the key to balancing the budget and retiring the national debt. According to him:

The new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs, so your assertions are a matter of concern. They also appear to conflict with independent analyses.

In fact, Waxman asserts that the losses run counter to a report prepared by the Business Roundtable predicting the health care takeover would reduce health insurance costs to businesses by $3,000 per person…

Read the entire post here.

The lies, misrepresentations, fabricated math and general duplicity employed by Obama and the Pelosified marxist Congress followed by a flabbergasted, “I don’t believe it! We’ll convene an investigation at once!” reaction when the bullshirt gives way to reality is almost laughable until one remembers that at the bottom line lies the future, or lack thereof, of our beloved republic.

Moving right along, as they (whoever they are) say, I just thought I’d paste in a copy of Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution. Give it a read, then match it up against anything Barack Hussein Obama and/or the House and Senate have thusfar passed or are preparing to legislate, remembering that the following is what you might call the Employee Handbook of U.S. Governance. If something is not included in the list below, Congress can’t (without committong a felony, as far as I’m concerned) do it:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Depends upon what you mean by “care”, here.

Wolf here.

I ran across an interesting article by retired constitutional attorney Michael Connelly, who writes:

Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.

To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.

The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled.

However, as scary as all of that it, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.

The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is that the Congress doesn’t have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.

I hope all the mulletheads who voted in both the lefty congressional majority and Obama, the traitor and enemy of the state in POTUS’ clothing, read and enjoy reading herein what they are responsible for.

The entire article is here.

…but first:

Who dat, who dat, who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?

I was reading this morning’s Santa Monica Daily Press, and came across an OpEd by John W. Whitehead, a Constitutional lawyer, and found myself in total agreement with a commentary he titled Are You Brainwashed?

Precisely because Americans are easily distracted — because, as study after study shows, they are clueless about their rights — and because the nation’s schools have ceased teaching the fundamentals of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights — the American governmental scheme is sliding ever closer toward authoritarianism. This is taking place with little more than a whimper from an increasingly compliant populace that, intentionally or not, has allowed itself to be brainwashed into trusting their politicians.

If the people have little or no knowledge of the basics of government and their rights, those who wield governmental power inevitably wield it excessively. After all, a citizenry can only hold its government accountable if it knows when the government oversteps its bounds.

{The emphasis in the first paragraph is mine.}

I would recommend reading the entire piece, it’s right on the money.

…given the obvious intentions of the Obama/Pelosi/Reid dynasty to ignore the will of the American people in order to bring their own vision of a socialist country to fruition, whether or not the Tea Party’s culminating march on Washington, D.C. will ultimately effect anything.

I say this as someone who, in the past, has done at least some of my share of conservative activism, because in the past, we’ve had a government led by people who, at least minimally, remembered that their employers were the citizens of these here United States.

Now, however, we have the Obama Administration combined with a liberal-run, Democrat majority in the House and Senate who couldn’t give a rat’s ass what the people want.

After all, they reason, they know better than we do what’s good for us, and obviously that means that a socialist country is far better, in their estimation, than the free country to which we have been accustomed since our forefathers bled and died to earn us that freedom.

So a humongous number of Americans from all over gathered in D.C. on Saturday to convey to the Obama machine what it is that Americans want from their (our) leaders.

Sarah Bond’s outrage over massive deficit spending and debt is not a partisan matter for her. And it was enough to motivate her to travel from San Diego to Washington to let politicians know what she thinks.

“I’m here out of sheer frustration of spending from both parties, and this started with TARP,” Bond said, referring to the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, pushed by President George W. Bush and supported mostly by congressional Democrats.

Bond was part of a large crowd marching on Washington on Saturday. Adam Brandon, spokesman for Freedom Works Foundation, one of the main sponsors of the event, estimated the crowd at 150,000. But on Sunday, the group’s Web site estimated that hundreds of thousands of people turned out.

What do the politicians think of that?

Regardless of precise number, Bond told CNSNews.com that members of Congress “are just confused and panicking because they never had to deal with this many fiscal conservatives before.”

Well, shouldn’t that tell them something?

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) also thought the gathering represented a fundamental realignment of politics in America.

“Anybody that doesn’t recognize this is mainstream America is going to miss the boat. I hope my party, the Republicans, realize that this is not a right-wing group,” DeMint told CNSNews.com. “This is moms and dads and grandpas and grandmas. This is Democrats and independents. They just are alarmed at growth of government and debt and takeovers and the health care was just a tipping point.”

The problem, Mr. DeMint, is that while the Republicans have long been a problem where our fiscal spending is concerned, they are not in the majority on the Hill, and since the Democrats took over that majority, even moreso since Obama lied, hand on Bible, when he vowed to “protect and defend the Constitution” and assumed the Presidency, the Republicans have been continually beaten down by the folks on the left side of the aisle.

The real problem, here, is the Democrats, who are the ass boys & ass gals for the far left. Most of the Democrats on the Hill belong to those lefties, they are no longer their own people. They are the shit the far left scrapes off the bottoms of their shoes when they don’t need them for anything. Once honorable Democrat politicians now follow the corrupt, anti-America beat of the liberal drum, with only a handful of blue-dog exceptions.

Barack Hussein, Pelosi and Reid call the shots, their only ambition being to drag this country so far to port as quickly as they can that there’ll be no turning back. No matter what lies they tell us about their respect for the Constitution, the truth is that they hold that great document in profound contempt and want to grind it underneath the heel of socialism.

Which comes back to why I am not entirely convinced that the whole Tea Party thing is really going to do any good. If no one in the position to do anything about anything gives a damn what the people want, well…

George Skypeck, a Vietnam Army veteran from Accokeek, Md., said Americans are rising up as they did in the 1960s, only this time it is not the radicals who are speaking up. “The 60s radicals are now in office,” he said. “I didn’t like them then, and I don’t like them now.”

Good observation, George.

Some of the signs read, “Prosecute ACORN, Not the CIA,” “Stop Spending and Start Cutting,” “Obomunism,” “Not with My Money,” and “Adams-Madison-Jefferson: The Original Right Wing Extremists.”

Tom Hill of West Haven, Conn., held a sign reading, “Today’s State Controlled Media,” calling ABC News the “All Barack Channel,” CNN the “Counterfeit News Network,” NBC News “Nothing But Crap” and CBS News “Controlled By State.”

BRAVO!!!!

Now let’s hope I’m wrong, or just one of those yees of little faith, and the sheer numbers of conservatives who participated have made some kind of difference.

Wolf here.

First off, I just want to say that Seth is doing fine, he’s up in what he likes to call “them thar hills” for the moment, and has told me to pass on that when he comes back into town, he will resume posting, which he has missed doing terribly, as time permits.

The “publish” capability of Hard Astarboard was impaired for a long time, but Word Press herein has now been upgraded.

I just finished reading an interesting dramatized biography he gave me not long ago;

Citizen Tom Paine, by Howard Fast
1943 First Edition, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York

Pretty good, interesting take on the life of one of the folks who helped get the colonists fired up enough to kick the Brits to hell out of here and let us get on with building the greatest country in the history of the planet — one that, I’m sorry to say, seems to be backsliding something fierce in that regard.

Oh, the title of this post?

It’s about The Honorable Barack Hussein’s pick to replace the retiring Justice Souter in the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, and her stance on the Second Amendment.

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ruled in January 2009 that states do not have to obey the Second Amendment’s commandment that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

In Maloney v. Cuomo, Sotomayor signed an opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that said the Second Amendment does not protect individuals from having their right to keep and bear arms restricted by state governments.

The opinion said that the Second Amendment only restricted the federal government from infringing on an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. As justification for this position, the opinion cited the 1886 Supreme Court case of Presser v. Illinois.

“It is settled law, however, that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right,” said the opinion. Quoting Presser, the court said, “it is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the national government, and not upon that of the state.”

Settled law?

Presser vs Illinois.

The excerpt from which Sotomayor milks her “precedent” reads,

The provision in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” is a limitation only on the power of Congress and the national government, and not of the States. But in view of the fact that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force of the national government as well as in view of its general powers, the States cannot prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security.

However,

The provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution that “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,” does not prevent a State from passing such laws to regulate the privileges and immunities of its own citizens as do not abridge their privileges and immunities as citizens of the United States.

Unless restrained by their own Constitutions, State legislatures may enact statutes to control and regulate all organizations, drilling, and parading of military bodies and associations, except those which are authorized by the militia laws of the United States.

This is a turnaround:

Usually, the Democrats make federal cases out of issues that should be up to states to decide. This time, they’re trying to make a state issue out of a federal case, unusual in that they could save time and hassle by simply letting the usual liberal judges legislate from the bench.

This could lead to some serious complications for all of us law abiding firearms owners. Imagine being in a state in which there was a liberal, anti-Second Amendment legislature and/or governor, and having a Supreme Court decision toss the fate of your right to keep and bear arms into the hands of that cabal of anti-Constitution, anti-freedom lefties!

All of us Americans who cherish our right to keep and bear arms need to be in contact with our representatives and our senators on Capital Hill to make damn sure that they know what to do when the confirmation vote for Sotomayor comes up.

On another Sonia Sotomayor note, regarding her now infamous verbal “gaff”, James Taranto at Best Of The Web Today had some fun yesterday.

…what about the substance of their criticism? Was the comment in question racist in character? That depends. Here is the quote in dispute:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

We’ll discount the “I would hope” and assume what follows is a statement of belief, not just aspiration. Here is Merriam-Webster’s definition of racism:

1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race

2 : racial prejudice or discrimination

By the first definition, Sotomayor’s statement is not racist, even assuming that “Latina” is a racial category. She is quite clear that her belief in the superior decision-making skills of “a wise Latina woman” as compared with “a white male” is contingent on culture and experience, not rooted in some essential racial difference.

Sotomayor’s statement is, however, an expression of prejudice, an exercise in stereotyping.

It reminds us of an exchange on an early episode of “All in the Family,” which we caught as part of a retrospective aired earlier this week on the TV Land cable network. Archie Bunker and the Meathead are arguing over a brochure advertising a slate of candidates for local office:

Archie: What’s the matter with this? I call this representative government. You’ve got Salvatori, Feldman, O’Reilly, Nelson–that’s an Italian, a Jew, an Irishman and a regular American there. That’s what I call a balanced ticket.

Meathead: Why do you always have to label people by nationality?

Archie: ‘Cause, how else are you going to get the right man for the right job? For instance, take Feldman there. He’s up for treasurer. Well, that’s perfect. All them people know how to handle money. Know what I mean?

Meathead: No, I don’t.

Archie: Well, then you got Salvatori running for D.A. He can keep an eye on Feldman. You know, I want to tell you something about the Italians. When you do get an honest one, you really got something there.

Meathead: Aw, c’mon, Arch.

Archie: Well, then here you got O’Reilly, the mick. He can see that the graft is equally spread around, you know. You got Nelson, the American guy. He’s good for TV appearances, to make the rest of them look respectable.

Like Sotomayor, Archie is not propounding a theory of racial or ethnic supremacy but describing the world in terms of culturally contingent stereotypes. He is engaging in identity politics.

What’s fascinating about this is that the Meathead (played by Rob Reiner) is a peer of La Jueza Empática: She was born in 1954; Reiner, in 1947. But the liberalism of “All in the Family” is not the liberalism of the baby boomers. It is that of an earlier generation–Archie Bunker’s generation. Series creator Norman Lear and Carroll O’Connor, who played Archie, were born in 1922 and 1924, respectively.
Today, you can easily imagine a conservative uttering the Meathead’s earnest query: “Why do you always have to label people by nationality?” But somewhere along the line, liberalism lost its ideals and adopted Archie Bunker’s theory of representative government.

Heh.

Wolf Out.

Democrat Presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama calls for “change”.

Republican Presidential candidate John McCain calls for “right change”.

A need for change is not actually an issue, it is merely the espousement of political rhetoric that is the specialty of the politician seeking election or reelection, and in the present case, election to the highest office in the land; given the military might/economic power pecking order among countries, in this instance the world.

The “change” has already occurred: Our elected leaders, from the Executive Branch to the Legislative to the Judicial, even to extent the Supreme Court and most definitely the lower courts, have completely turned their backs on the very document that defines the United States: The U.S. Constitution. That has been the “change”.

Under the auspices of the Constitution, a young country grew, in less than two centuries, to the pinnacle of historic success as a nation, far outstripping so-called great countries that had been around for many more centuries. People flocked here from all over the world for the opportunity to become Americans, many risking their lives in escaping more oppressive countries of origin to get here.

And then, somewhere in the last three decades or so, our politicians realized that more votes could be bought, more campaign money brought in from special interest groups and more problems solved cosmetically, via temporary fix, by the simple expedient of “thinking outside the box”, the “box” in this instance being the Constitution.

Today, that awesome document is not only ignored, it is viewed almost with disgust or as a mere sound byte by all too many Americans.

Mention the Constitution in a debate with a liberal today, you’ll get a shrug in reply. The Constitution, how passé! Mention the Constitution to most Republican politicians these days, you’ll get a lot of long-winded, sanctimonious ho-humming on its importance that doesn’t correspond with the bills they themselves propose or the way they vote on those proposed by colleagues.

We threw out the British a little over two hundred thirty years ago in a bloody revolution whose purpose was to shrug off the chains of their heavy taxation without representation and their encroachment on our liberties.

Now, our government has become exactly what the British government was before we fought our way out from under the auspices of that repressive former global empire. We’ve become that from which we once broke away, and worse. It is reflected every day in the micromanaging laws that are passed, the pork barrel spending of our taxes on projects and programs that represent the interests of grossly limited numbers of taxpayers, most of which are nothing more than vote-buying measures by politicians within their own districts, using our hard-earned money for their own local campaign financing.

It is, indeed, the responsibility of the American voter to stay on top of our politicians, to keep an eye on what they are doing with the money they take from our pay checks and the power we invest in them to govern our country, and on rare occasions such as that of the amnesty bill a couple of years ago, Americans do indeed rise up and browbeat those politicians back into the realm of the will of The People.

But that was a high-profile situation that even the powerful liberal mainstream media couldn’t obscure.

What about all the day-to-day, rank and file legislation that passes right under our noses that we are simply too busy to keep track of? Yes, too busy: So many bills run through Congress every day they are in session that it would take someone with his eyes and ears glued to both C-Span channels all day long, free of all other concerns including going to the bathroom and answering the telephone, to keep up with it all.

Rest assured, however, that “it all” would prove to be a good 95% outside the authority granted Congress by the Constitution.

So let’s quit all this ridiculous talk of “change”.

The change has already occurred, it needs only to be undone via the simple expedient of restoring the Constitution to its former status as the guiding light of our national prosperity, our laws, our liberty and our collective pride in our identity as citizens of the United States of America.

…days ago, but one thing and another kind of set me back.

I wanted to link this Walter Williams column that says so much about the screwing we’re getting, tax-money and Constitution-wise, from the government, and this is completely non-partisan where either side of the aisle is concerned. And we’re talking Presidents, here!

Most of what Congress is constitutionally authorized to spend for is listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and includes: coining money, establish post offices, to support Armies and a few other activities. Today’s federal budget is over $3 trillion dollars. I challenge anyone to find specific constitutional authority for at least $2 trillion of it. That includes Social Security, Medicare, farm and business handouts, education, prescription drugs and a host of other federal expenditures. Americans who have become accustomed to living at the expense of another American would not want Congress to obey the Constitution, especially if it left out their favorite handout.

Okay, so…

At one time there were presidents who respected the Constitution. Grover Cleveland vetoed hundreds of spending measures during his two-term presidency, often saying, “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.” Then there was Franklin Pierce who said, after vetoing an appropriation to assist the mentally ill, “I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity,” adding, “To approve such spending would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.”

Instead of a Presidential inauguration including “protect and defend the Constitution…”

We should consider ending the charade and get rid of our 200-year-plus presidential oath of office and replace it with: “I accept the office of president.”

Basically, I rest my case, and Walter Williams’ as well.