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A Truth About Tyranny

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A disturbing report is coming out of Jerusalem today.  Certainly Israel has every right to pay close attention to the goings-on in Iran and in this particular story one sees why.

A deliberately anonymous member of Iran’s paramilitary Basiji militia has spoken out about his role in the recent election protests.  But even more disturbing than his perspective of the abuses is his sharing earlier experiences with the group.  Experiences which, from his account, appear to have been commonplace.

In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a “wedding” ceremony is conducted the night before the execution:  The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard – essentially raped by her “husband.”

When questioned about expressing regret for his participation in this heinous abuse, he said “I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their ‘wedding’ night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.

“I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over,” the Basiji member said. “I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her.”

As the golden sun melts in the cool, clear blue summer evening sky and the hush of evening at last begins to override today’s activities, it is easy to imagine that such things cannot happen here.  But there is a fine line between deliberately blind obsession and zealotry, and when that line is crossed by enough people it doesn’t take much for one of the few evils in this world – egotistical power mongers – to sweep away individual rights in favor of their tyrannistic agenda.

We in America think ourselves too “civilized”, perhaps, to find ourselves enslaved as are the Iranian people.  We are far too clever and far too sure of our Constitutional right to freedom to fall victim through such primitive means as force and bloodshed.  It is this smugness, this surety, however, that is our greatest danger for it stands to be our collective undoing.  It explains why someone with absolutely no legitimate experience, a background that is questionable at best, and decidedly immoral if not outright criminals for friends now sits in the Oval Office.  Deliberate blindness combined with ears eager to listen to soaring cadences but unwilling or unable to hear the words, the lies, became an obsession that has created real and imminent threats to our very – and very wonderful – way of life.  In the same way that the Basiji twist the laws of the Islamic Republic to suit the government’s needs, so, too, do we see such twists of American law as the Obama administration takes over car companies, funnels money to organizations like Goldman Sachs and ACORN, appoints a science “czar” who supports what basically amounts to eugenics, and pushes economically unsustainable ideas like cap & trade and health care (-less) reform.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Often such reactions are unforeseen consequences.  As the government expands exponentially under the spurs and whips of the Obama administration, so constrict our individual freedoms, much as a noose tightens around the neck of the prisoner only moments from execution.  Once our most basic freedoms have been stripped from us by virtue of a majority zealotness,  the day when the government feels empowered and emboldened enough to use force against American citizens won’t be far behind.  And it will bring with it such horrors as are being documented today in Iran.

I find no coincidence in Barack Obama’s support of Ahmadinejad.  Nor anything the least acceptable in his cozying up to Chavez or in his continuing dismissal of the people of Honduras and their constitution.  As the truth of the literal and figurative cost of Obama’s big plans for “reform” become more and more clear and his popularity plummets inversely, his words become more and more mean and so we begin to see the cracks in the mask.  Behind it is a man who would be king but one who lacks even the most rudimentary understanding or legitimate sense of noblesse oblige.  Sacrifice is not a part of his nature, only the overwhelming need for control.

And all I can think is, “I hope he fails”.

Obama Now Wants To Run Medicare

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It’s time for yet another Obama power grab.  The AP reported on Saturday that President Obama wants Congress to give him the power to “limit” the rising costs of Medicare.  A White House letter to top lawmakers on Friday proposed an “independent advisory board” who would look at Medicare reimbursement rates and make recommendations and said the move would be “a critical step forward” in controlling health care costs and providing better care.

Obama would have the power to approve the board’s recommendations, and Congress could “still vote to reject them altogether”.  But this would be an all-or-nothing vote; meaning that if there’s one bad apple, they would have to accept or reject the whole bushel.

State’s rights, varying costs of living across the country and all that good stuff currently set rates regionally.  Obama, the man who has no business experience, the man who has no financial experience except spending other people’s money, the man who thinks spending money on old people who are going to die anyway isn’t necessary, wants that to stop.

Perhaps he fears that his health care “reform” isn’t going to fly and this is a way to insinuate himself into our lives in a different way?  Regardless the reasons, it’s a wicked bad idea and should be promptly tossed into the circular file.

We don’t need no stinkin’ Medicare czar.  Especially when that czar is Barck Hussein Obama.

Quote Of The Day

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From the Congressional Record, House of Representatives – June 02, 2009

(Mr. SMITH of Texas asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

“Mr. Speaker, at the recent White House Correspondents’ Dinner, President Obama joked to the reporters in attendance: “Most of you covered me. All of you voted for me.”

“Some jokes are true; and, unfortunately, this joke is on the American people.

“According to Investor’s Business Daily, journalists who gave campaign money to then-Senator Obama outnumbered those who contributed to Senator McCain by a 20-1 margin. The media gave money to him. They voted for him. Now they’re giving him a free pass.

“According to one analysis, network newscasts have portrayed the President as a deficit fighter five times more often than they have portrayed him as a big spender even though his budget will double the national debt in 5 years and will triple it in 10.

“Yes, the media voted for President Obama, but they should not allow their voting to influence their reporting.”

Remind Me, Please, Who’s Running The Car Companies?

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The Obama administration broke laws when it interferred with Chrysler’s bankruptcy, and Obama’s “car czar” helped put together operational plans that promptly slammed the doors shut on 789 Chrysler dealerships.  You know, those places that are in (private) business to help the car companies sell their products?  The (private) businesses that make the car companies money?

Now the House has approved an amendment to the House Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill that blocks federal money for both Chrysler’s and GM’s reorganizations if they shut down dealerships.  There is similar, standalone legislation pending in the House as well (H.R.2796) that has pulled in 242 House sponsors in just a matter of weeks (including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), who argued during Thursday’s floor debate that this was a way for dealers who had been left out of bankruptcy decisions to be heard.)

The Senate is taking a similar tack, with a bill proposed by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) coming out of the gate with significant support from 25 co-sponsors (S.1304), including 11 Republicans and 14 Democrats.  It has been sent to the Judiciary Committee, but Committee chairman, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), has yet to schedule a hearing and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said this week he isn’t inclined to allow a vote on any measure forcing the dealerships to stay open.

“We will not give billions of dollars to GM and Chrysler until they come to terms with the hundreds of thousands of people out of work,” Representative Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) said during [House] floor debate on the bill.

“The decision to invest taxpayer dollars into these companies required all stakeholders to make difficult sacrifices, and it would set a dangerous precedent, potentially raising legal concerns, to intervene into a closed judicial bankruptcy proceeding on behalf of one particular group at this point,” the White House Office of Management and Budget said Wednesday.Perhaps the White House should have thought of these things before they made their decision to interfere with the private sector and “not run” the car companies (into the ground) in the first place?

Mr. Walpin Goes To Washington

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To the United States Court for the District of Columbia, to be exact.  It’s not making the mainstream media news, but Gerald Walpin, the U.S. Inspector General who was illegally strong-armed to resign by -ironically in any other world – the President’s Special Council for Ethics and Government Reform and when he refused found himself quickly fired from his position last month for insisting rules be followed during an AmeriCorps audit that found gross misuse of funds by Kevin Johnson, former NBA player and, wouldn’t you know it, one of President Obama’s close friends, has filed a lawsuit against the Corporation for National and Community Service (it oversees AmeriCorps).  The suit alleges the firing was “unlawful,” “politically driven,” “procedurally defective” and “a transparent and clumsily-conducted effort to circumvent the protections” given to inspectors general under the Inspectors General Reform Act of 2008.  The lawsuit also rightfully raises questions about age discrimination based on the flimsy “excuses” that finally dribbled out from the Orchid Office, as well as questions about whistleblower retaliation.

As has been documented, no one except Mr. Walpin followed the law where AmeriCorps or the Corporation for National and Community Service are concerned, so our hats are off to him for standing up for what’s right.  Tellingly, he isn’t seeking punative damages, only that the Court declare his firing was unlawful, reinstatement of his position, and that his attorney fees be paid.

Now unless there are critical facts of which we are yet unaware (the “personality conflicts” being bandied about by some in an attempt to discredit Mr. Walpin do not count when documenting how taxpayer monies are used), this case stands to bring transparency to the workings of the Obama administration.  The  kind of transparency that can finally begin to bring about the change America needs, not the change Obama and merry band of thieves want.

The Obama Science Czar: Global Warming Justifies Eugenics

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The Christian Science Monitor opined in late November 2008 that “Obama has pledged to ‘restore integrity’ to US science policy by making decisions informed by the best available evidence.”  They concluded that, “With Obama receiving so much input from so many sources, the next White House science adviser will best serve as his ‘options czar.’ He or she should sift through the blizzard of data and ensure that the president has before him viable choices based on sound science.”

This “integrity” is why the myth of global warming now threatens America’s economic stability with the potential tax burdens of cap & trade legislation.  And this is apparently why, at least in part, President Obama recently appointed John Holdren to be his “science czar”, formally known as Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

That’s a huge title for someone who has built his career on the idea that “less is more”.  The choice of John Holdren also explains, in part, the President’s recent “health care reform townhall” remarks about the needless expense of end-of-life care, as well as his stance on things like abortion and stem cell research.  But let Professor Holdren tell us, in his own words, one answer he proposed back in 1977 to the “dangerous human disruption of the global climate” – population control.  Among the techniques suggested were:

  • All illegitimate babies [must] be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors
  • Single mother … obliged to go through adoption proceedings
  • Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples
  • Require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions
  • Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods
  • Sterilizing women after their second or third child
  • Long-term sterilizing capsule … implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission

The discourse used to justify actually attempting to implement all this is what I can only call self-servingly twisted:

“To date, there has been no serious attempt in Western countries to use laws to control excessive population growth, although there exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated. For example, under the United States Constitution, effective population-control programs could be enacted under the clauses that empower Congress to appropriate funds to provide for the general welfare and to regulate commerce, or under the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Such laws constitutionally could be very broad. Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.

“It is accepted that the law has as its proper function the protection of each person and each group of people. A legal restriction on the right to have more than a given number of children could easily be based on the needs of the first children. Studies have indicated that the larger the family, the less healthy the children are likely to be and the less likely they are to realize their potential levels of achievement. Certainly there is no question that children of a small family can be cared for better and can be educated better than children of a large family, income and other things being equal. The law could properly say to a mother that, in order to protect the children she already has, she could have no more. (Presumably, regulations on the sizes of adopted families would have to be the same.)

“A legal restriction on the right to have children could also be based on the right not to be disadvantaged by excessive numbers of children produced by others. Differing rates of reproduction among groups can give rise to serious social problems. For example, differential rates of reproduction between ethnic, racial, religious, or economic groups might result in increased competition for resources and political power and thereby undermine social order. If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.

“Individual rights must be balanced against the power of the government to control human reproduction. Some people—respected legislators, judges, and lawyers included—have viewed the right to have children as a fundamental and inalienable right. Yet neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mentions a right to reproduce. Nor does the UN Charter describe such a right, although a resolution of the United Nations affirms the “right responsibly to choose” the number and spacing of children (our emphasis). In the United States, individuals have a constitutional right to privacy and it has been held that the right to privacy includes the right to choose whether or not to have children, at least to the extent that a woman has a right to choose not to have children. But the right is not unlimited. Where the society has a “compelling, subordinating interest” in regulating population size, the right of the individual may be curtailed. If society’s survival depended on having more children, women could he required to bear children, just as men can constitutionally be required to serve in the armed forces. Similarly, given a crisis caused by overpopulation, reasonably necessary laws to control excessive reproduction could be enacted.

“It is often argued that the right to have children is so personal that the government should not regulate it. In an ideal society, no doubt the state should leave family size and composition solely to the desires of the parents. In today’s world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?

“Toward a Planetary Regime

“Should a Law of the Sea be successfully established, it could serve as a model for a future Law of the Atmosphere to regulate the use of airspace, to monitor climate change, and to control atmospheric pollution. Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus, the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and the oceans but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market.

“The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime should have some power to enforce the agreed limits. As with the Law of the Sea an other international agreements, all agreements for regulating population sizes, resource development, and pollution should be subject to revision and modification in accordance with changing conditions.

“The Planetary Regime might have the advantage over earlier proposed world government schemes in not being primarily political in its emphasis—even though politics would inevitably be a part of all discussions, implicitly or explicitly. Since most of the areas the Regime would control are not now being regulated or controlled by nations or anyone else, establishment of the Regime would involve far less surrendering of national power. Nevertheless it might function powerfully to suppress international conflict simply because the interrelated global resource-environment structure would not permit such an outdated luxury.

“If this could be accomplished, security might be provided by an armed international organization, a global analogue of a police force. Many people have recognized this as a goal, but the way to reach it remains obscure in a world where factionalism seems, if anything, to be increasing. The first step necessarily involves partial surrender of sovereignty to an international organization.”

This reads like a bad B movie, but is directly from the book, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, co-authored by Holdren with Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich (source:  zombietime).  It seems to tie together current events:  the stampede for governmental control of the free market, cap & trade, socialized medicine, support of dictatorships and wannabe-dictators.  It brings to mind the U.N.’s “Millenium Goals” and the ideology of transnationalism that now resides in American government in the form of Harold Koh, legal advisor to the State Department.

It is said that a man is judged by the company he keeps.  I simply can’t imagine that the majority of Americans would make the same choices as Barack Obama.  Terrorists like William Ayers, flaming racists like the Reverend Wright; and now appointments to his “inner circle” of advisors that include those who would support the elimination of U.S. sovereignty and would support the use of eugenics.

Donkeys, Dictators, and Democracy

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It’s a given that the vast majority of Democrats, particularly those in government, can be counted on to be little more than your basic hairball.  Traditionally unable to keep their hands where they belong – reaching into someone else’s pockets to take their money or reaching into someone else’s pants to have a little illicit fun – no one pays them very much attention because as a group they are as interchangeable as dandelion puffs waving in the prevailing wind of wants.  The word Democrat brings to mind at best the picture of a spoiled teenager; at worst stereotypical trailer trash living off of someone else’s hard-earned money in their double-wide, a beer belly sticking out from below a grubby tank top, guffawing between belches or through smeared lipstick while the neighbor’s kid ties firecrackers to the dog’s tail.

Republicans, on the other hand, have balanced the sociopolitical scales by assuming the role of “responsible adult”.  Steady, conservative, practical.  The businessman whose word is his bond and to whom you can turn for a job or a loan; the father who teaches you how to fix your car or the family doctor who knows you inside and out – literally – but keeps your deepest secrets a secret.

Truth is that the hands of Republicans today are just as dirty and they stink just as bad as their trashy Democratic counterparts.  (Witness the outing of the infamous 8 GOP “cap & traitors”.)  With few exceptions, politicians have become quite a useless lot, spouting whatever they think someone wants to hear just to keep their cushy job and perceptions of power and control.  As long as they bring home the pork they continue to be reelected, but this has become a dangerous game. 

President Obama campaigned on and took office determined to force an ambitious and incredibly naive agenda on Americans.  In direct contrast to the vow taken to uphold and protect the U.S. Constitution, he and his administration are setting forth the systematic destruction of our most fundamental rights, twisting the ideas of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as he pushes America towards what is essentially a state of dictatorial tyranny.  And you can’t even give him credit for these ambitions, he is merely carrying forward the progressive ideology that took hold in America early in the last century.

You’d think Americans would be smarter now and would be resisting with all their might.  Everyone knows you don’t get something for nothing and that you get what you pay for, yet every day we watch bloated and ineffective government programs continue to expand in number and size.  Well, at least some of us watch.  And there remains a small chorus of voices in Washington who seem to be attempting to pull back on the reigns, but reading through the daily Congressional session records one sees each attempt is met with a wall of resistence and summarily executed.  (Amusing when you remember the MSM has labelled the GOP as the “party of no”.)  We’ve got little more than giddy kiddie Democrats running what they see as the candy store; the current gang mentality has criminals coming out of the woodwork like ants attracted to the sweet fruits of hard-working American taxpayers and, as is so often seen with any group of lawless like-minds, one can only hope their infighting over turf and spoils will be their downfall.  But without taking down the entire country with them.

Some people are still saying we should give the President a chance, even as our economy continues to tank (responsibility for which, by the way, now belongs solely to Barack Obama and his administration).  But it seems to me that the elected leader of a free nation would not be ignoring the calls of the people for democracy elsewhere in the world, and they would certainly not stand up and give their visible support to someone like legally-ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya.  That particular stance should give anyone with a modicum of common sense pause for it explains, in large part, why we are seeing proven ineffective policy after proven ineffective policy being forced down American’s throats.  The case of events in Honduras is particularly telling, for it is a beautiful example of a people’s willingness to cling to democratic ideals and uphold their constitution.  Yet Obama unequivocably tells the world he believes – as do dictators like Venezuela’s Chavez – that someone who would wish to subvert them deserves America’s backing.  

If Obama’s silence on the Iranian election fallout didn’t make it clear, this should be the transparency he so lovingly promised.  We have a president who has now stated for the record that he prefers government by dictatorship to government by the principles of democracy.

No Support For U.S. Constitution So Why Respect Honduras’?

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During my perusing of what our unrepresenting representatives were up to today in Washington, I happened to read the following statement by Jim DeMint (R-SC) in the Senate records.  For those who have perhaps paid little attention to or have perhaps even been a bit confused about the events in Honduras, since the news as we know it has disgustingly been overshadowed by the media’s piranhic feeding frenzy over the death of Michael Jackson, Senator DeMint elegantly laid out the facts and makes it quite clear this is another example that the administration’s idea of foreign policy leaves much to be desired.

In his own words (emphasis mine):

The facts on the ground in Honduras are neither disputed nor confusing, but they have been largely ignored by an international media distracted by the death of a celebrity.

   Let me read these facts into the record.

   Honduras is a constitutional republic and a longtime ally of the United States. It is one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere, especially since it was ravaged by the direct hit of Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

   In 2005, Hondurans elected as their President Manuel Zelaya, a left of center but seemingly moderate candidate from the Liberal Party. Given Latin America’s troubling history of military coups and self-appointed Presidents for life, the Honduran Constitution strictly limits Presidents to one term.

   So seriously do Hondurans take their Presidential term limits that in Latin America, the phrase–and I will butcher this Spanish, but I want to give it a try–“continuar en el poder.”  It means to continue in power.  It carries with it a dark connotation to the region for everyone living there.

   For a President to overthrow the Constitution and violate term limits is violating the constitutional form of government. So seriously that article 238 of the Honduran Constitution says any President who even proposes an extension of his tenure in office “shall immediately cease performing the functions of his post.’‘  So it is a de facto resignation of office in Honduras for a President to attempt to do what their President did.

   Zelaya’s 2005 campaign was supported by Hugo Chavez, the Marxist Venezuelan dictator bent on amassing power in the Western Hemisphere at the expense of what he calls “the North American empire.”  That is us.

   Zelaya quickly aligned his government with Chavez’s and joined anti-American socialists, such as the Castro brothers in Cuba and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, in Chavez’s economic cartel.

   With Zelaya’s term coming to an end early next year, Chavez convinced him to do as he has done in Venezuela:  to force a constitutional amendment extending his Presidential term.  This would be in direct violation of what their Constitution says.

   Earlier this year, Zelaya called for a referendum to initiate a constitutional convention. In the ensuing litigation, the Honduran courts ruled the referendum was unconstitutional and illegal, as the Honduran Constitution explicitly gives only its Congress the power to call such a vote.

   Zelaya forged ahead, calling his referendum a “nonbinding survey.”  This, too, the supreme court found unconstitutional.

   Zelaya then ordered the head of the Honduran military, General Vasquez, to conduct the election anyway. Vasquez expressed concerns about the vote’s legality, so Zelaya fired him.

   The supreme court ordered Zelaya to reinstate Vasquez, and Zelaya refused. The supreme court ordered the military to seize the referendum ballots to prevent Zelaya from going ahead with the illegal vote.  Zelaya then personally led an armed mob to steal back the ballots, which, it should be noted, were suspiciously printed in Venezuela.  Zelaya ordered his government to set up 15,000 polling places to conduct the referendum for June 28.

   On Friday, June 26, the Attorney General of Honduras, Luis Rubi, filed a complaint before the Honduran Supreme Court petitioning for an arrest warrant for President Zelaya. The court issued the warrant unanimously and, according to the Constitution, ordered the Honduran military to execute it.

   Early in the morning of Sunday, June 28, the day of the vote, the military arrested President Zelaya at his home. They put him on a plane to Costa Rica, as Honduras has no prison capable of withstanding a mob riot of the sort they feared Chavez and Ortega might whip up.  So they did it for his safety.

   That same day, the Honduran Congress, controlled by his Liberal Party–his own party–voted 125 to 3 to replace Zelayawith their speaker, Roberto Micheletti, as a member of the Liberal Party. This transfer of power was strictly in keeping with Honduras’s constitutional line of succession as the Vice President had recently resigned.

   The regularly scheduled general elections remain set for this November, and interim President Micheletti is not a candidate.  The previously nominated candidates from the two major parties remain on the campaign trail, and both candidates and parties overwhelmingly approved the ouster of Zelaya.

   At every step in the process, the legitimate democratic government strictly adhered to the Honduran Constitution and civilian leadership of the military remained intact.  The military did not execute a coup.  It thwarted the coup plotted by Hugo Chavez and implemented by Manuel Zelaya.

   Honduras’s democratic institutions are operating today, and its government functions are secure. The only aggrieved party in this process is Mr. Chavez, whose brazen attempts to corrupt Honduran democracy was thwarted by what has now been nicknamed “the little country that could.”

   The people of Honduras stood up to Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, the Castro brothers, and they stood up for freedom and the rule of law. For their courage, President Obama has condemned them. He has called the constitutional ouster of President Zelaya not legal, claiming an expertise in Honduran law over and above that of a unanimous Honduran Supreme Court and a nearly unanimous Honduran Congress.

   Secretary of State Clinton lazily joined the international media in calling the removal of President Zelaya “a coup,” a term fraught with dark memories of military juntas and banana republic.  Of course, this is the same administration that insists on calling the recent fraud in Iran an election.

   The Obama administration joined Chavez’s preposterous Soviet-style propaganda resolution in the Organization of American States condemning Honduran democracy. Hondurans I have spoken with–I have spoken with a number of folks who have missionary groups there, medical groups.  I have talked to Miguel Estrada who was born and raised in Honduras and is now a constitutional expert in this country. This morning I talked to former Honduran President Ricardo Maduro. They are all totally befuddled at the strange response they are getting from the supposedly free world, including our own administration. Why are we siding with Hugo Chavez?

   This morning in Russia, President Obama reiterated his support for Zelaya, the would-be dictator, as the rightful President of Honduras. According to ABC News, he said:  “America supports now the restoration of the democratically elected President of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies.” 

   Continuing with the quote from President Obama:  “We do so not because we agree with him. We do so because we respect the universal principle that people should choose their own leaders, whether they are leaders we agree with or not.”

    The President appears to think his support for Zelaya is based on some principles of self-determination. He speaks as if opposition to Zelaya is based on partisan political differences. Zelaya was not ousted by political enemies; he was ousted by a government controlled by his own party. He was ousted by a unanimous supreme court operating in accordance with the Honduran Constitution and in conjunction with the nation’s attorney general and Supreme Electoral Tribunal. These folks followed the rule of law.

   The Honduran people have chosen their own leaders. Those leaders–in a constitutional, bipartisan, and nearly unanimous process–removed Manuel Zelaya from office. The Honduran people have upheld our President’s so-called universal principle. The people seeking to undermine that principle are Hugo Chavez, the Castro brothers, Daniel Ortega, Mel Zelaya, and–unbelievably–the Obama administration.

   This is not about politics. This is about the rule of law, freedom, and democracy, all of which are being defended by the Hondurans right now against their enemies–of which we appear to be one. Why are we not standing with them?Blood was shed in Iran while we stood idly by.  Zelaya’s return to Honduras on a Venezuelan jet and with the moral authority of the United States will almost certainly lead to more bloodshed. What are we doing on the side of tyrants and sworn enemies of freedom; going as far, on their behalf, to threaten economic sanctions against one of our poorest and bravest allies?

   Secretary of State Clinton is reportedly planning a meeting with Mr. Zelaya in Washington this week. I implore her to reconsider that meeting. Elevating an impeached and disgraced autocrat is more than an insult to Honduran democracy, it is a green light to other would-be Chavezes around Latin America. It is a signal to the enemies of democracy and freedom that the United States no longer stands as a beacon of liberty. It is a signal that the rule of law is now passe in Latin America and that Hugo Chavez and his corrupt and brutal idealogy has free rein to meddle wherever he pleases in the Western Hemisphere.

   What do we stand for, if not for freedom, democracy, and the rule of law? Where is the spine of the administration to stand up to anti-American and antidemocratic thugs in our own back yard? Where is the intellectual clarity to see the facts on the ground as they are? Manuel Zelaya is a criminal, a constitutionally removed former President of a proud and noble country. To my knowledge, no administration official has refuted or even grappled with the facts regarding Zelaya’s attempted coup.

   Given those still undisputed and documented facts, on what basis does the administration demand Zelaya’s reinstatement? His removal from office was no more a coup than was Gerald Ford’s ascendance to the Oval Office or the election to the Senate of our newest colleague, Al Franken. It is bad enough that the President’s ad hoc and highly personalized foreign policy seems to be less about supporting the rule of law than it is about supporting particular rulers. But the last 4 weeks suggest that the President cannot even be counted upon to support our legitimate allies.

   What happened in Honduras last week was not a tragedy, it was a triumph of democratic courage and the unyielding determination of a free people to stand up to despotism. The tragedy has been the failure of the West and of our own government in Washington to stand up for justice and freedom in Latin America.

   It is not too late. I have written to Secretary Clinton, and there is growing congressional support for the legitimate government in Honduras. Everywhere I go someone comes up to me and tells me to stand up for freedom in Honduras. There is still time to look at the facts, even to visit Honduras itself. Call down there, talk to the people, even Americans in the Peace Corps or on missionary work, and ask them if they are living under an oppressive military junta. They will laugh and tell you they are living under an independent and vibrant democracy, with a representative government led by people they elected. They will tell you about the free and open debate in the ongoing Presidential campaign and whom they are supporting in the November elections.

   There is still time to correct our position and support our true allies. And because we can, we should. We must. Because today–and I will try my Spanish again–“un amigo de libertad es un amigo de Honduras”–a friend of freedom is a friend of Honduras.

If your head now hurts, imagine how the people of Honduras must feel.  Betrayed is one word that comes to mind.  I’d say I just don’t get it, but unfortunately this support of dictator-style government is exactly what President Obama promised on the campaign trail.

I wonder just how many allies we’re going to lose over the next 3 1/2 years?  According to even the Wall Street Journal, certainly not Obama’s buddy in Venezuela.

Another Poor-Planning “Emergency” Creates Possibility Of Obama Power Grab

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Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2 of the United States Constitution states:

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

But it’s another typical day in the Obama administration so the Constitution be damned.  The United States and the Soviet Union need to finish the new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5th and Gary Samore, White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Security and Arms Control today said that “…that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive level and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.”

Mind you, the two countries have had 18 years to think about and prepare for this.  President Obama has had over 5 months to prepare for this.

But it’s easier and oh-so-convenient to call the poor planning of prioritizing distracting directives to Congress to force cap and trade and health care “reform” onto Americans an emergency so as to feebly justify using executive privilege; though I fear that his idea of complying will be by the “2/3 of the Senators present” at some 3 a.m. session after Obama and his buddies wrap up a cozy little White House dinner party.

This administration is no longer an embarrassment.  It is a travesty.

Everything Else Is Negotiable (Including Your Health Care)

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Having otherwise-intelligent liberal friends still hawking past-expiration-date Obama campaign Kool-Aid makes it easy to find the spin being put out by the administration and the media.  So-called “health care reform” is the next big attack looming over American freedoms and it was with interest I read a article sent to impress me and my friend’s other correspondents with the “efforts” of the current Chicago politicians holding Americans hostage from Washington.

These are some excerpts from the rather long article that ought to make everyone with common sense shudder: 

Rather than laying out an intricate plan and then trying to sell it on the Hill, as Clinton did, Obama’s strategy seems to be exactly the opposite — to sell himself to Congress first and worry about the details later.  As Emanuel likes to tell his West Wing staff: “The only nonnegotiable principle here is success. Everything else is negotiable.”

Obama’s aggressive courtship of Congress is plotted and directed by Emanuel…[and he] has taken an unusually personal role in handling Congress. One of the first things he did as chief of staff was to give out his cellphone number to every Democratic senator (and some Republicans too)…his social calendar is taken up by dinners with former House colleagues on both sides of the aisle, often at one of the trendy downtown restaurants he favors.

The second tenet of Emanuel’s theory is that the White House itself comes with strategic assets you can put to good use, if you allocate them properly. There’s the White House theater, where guests can watch movies and sporting events; formal state dinners; smaller gatherings in the first family’s residence, which spouses can join; tickets to the Easter-egg roll for kids; tickets to the White House tours that members like to give out to their constituents. …in Obama’s nascent administration, they are considered carefully and accounted for obsessively. Emanuel holds a daily legislative meeting at which aides discuss the status of pending legislation, and often they go over the distribution of White House assets during those sessions. “We have a tracking system,” Emanuel told me. “Who came to watch the football game? Who came to watch the basketball game?”

…friction between House and Senate Democrats now seems to have reached a point where they might want to build their own virtual fence down the middle of the rotunda.  [Obama] simply encourages the House to go wild, and then he relies on centrists in the Senate to do the unpleasant work of scaling back the legislation, which yields a more politically palatable bill…. And while House and Senate leaders may end up wanting to throttle one another, Obama gets to play the reluctant arbiter between the two, rather than actually having to challenge his base.

 It’s an impressive balancing act, but it may not be sustainable as the emotional debate over health care unfolds. Some House Democrats I talked to have already begun to wonder audibly why they’re the ones who always have to surrender in Emanuel’s middle-of-the-night negotiating sessions. They accuse Reid and his lieutenants of repeatedly placating Republicans to avoid a filibuster, rather than taking a stand on principle now and then. Why not force centrist Democrats to vote against their party and let Republicans filibuster the agenda on national television? What would the voters think then? Centrists in the Senate, meanwhile, have grown furious at some of Pelosi’s backroom maneuvering — most notably, the final negotiations over the stimulus bill, when she brazenly reinserted $50 million in arts funding that had been struck as part of an earlier compromise.

During his campaign last year, Obama took at least two positions on health care that he may soon find hard to maintain. First, in the primaries, he differentiated his plan from Hillary Clinton’s by refusing to back an “individual mandate” — that is, the provision that would require every American to obtain insurance. Then, during the fall campaign, Obama criticized John McCain for proposing to tax employer-based health benefits. If he were to offer a detailed proposal of his own right now, Obama might have to…reverse himself on one or both positions. But with Baucus urging him to leave the details to his committee, Obama can instead wait for a plan to emerge from the Senate and then, if need be, reluctantly change his mind in the interest of compromise. Thus he preserves the option of backing away from his previous anti-big-government stances, and he gets to appear statesmanlike and pragmatic in the process. 

[Senator] Baucus remarked … offhandedly that Obama “didn’t really serve in the Senate,” which seems to be the prevailing sentiment among senators who saw him for only a brief time before he took off to run for president.

Obama seems to have decided early on that his model for pursuing legislation would be something closer to Ronald Reagan, a president whose political savvy he has often expressed admiration for.

Though such machinations have been the unfortunate part and parcel of politics since the first caveman bartered a piece of meat for a lump of burning coal, I can only imagine that Ronnie is rolling over in his grave.  As a small but critical prelude to our upcoming focus on the dangers inherent in and lies surrounding the next Obama agenda item for his destruction of America, I think it fitting to let Ronald Reagan himself speak to us one more time about the topic of “socialized medicine”.  Words spoken while he was “just” another American citizen, like you and me:

“Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program.

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it.

Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We had an example of this. Under the Truman administration it was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States, and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this.

Let’s take a look at social security itself. Again, very few of us disagree with the original premise that there should be some form of savings that would keep destitution from following unemployment by reason of death, disability or old age. And to this end, social security was adopted, but it was never intended to supplant private savings, private insurance, pension programs of unions and industries.

Now in our country under our free enterprise system we have seen medicine reach the greatest heights that it has in any country in the world. Today, the relationship between patient and doctor in this country is something to be envied any place. The privacy, the care that is given to a person, the right to chose a doctor, the right to go from one doctor to the other.

But let’s also look from the other side, at the freedom the doctor loses. A doctor would be reluctant to say this. Well, like you, I am only a patient, so I can say it in his behalf. The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it’s like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren’t equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go some place else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.

This is a freedom that I wonder whether any of us have the right to take from any human being.  All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man’s working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it is a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay and pretty soon your children won’t decide when they’re in school where they will go or what they will do for a living. They will wait for the government to tell them where they will go to work and what they will do.

What can we do about this? Well, you and I can do a great deal. We can write to our congressmen and our senators. We can say right now that we want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms. And at the moment, the key issue is, we do not want socialized medicine.

Former Representative Halleck of Indiana has said, “When the American people want something from Congress, regardless of its political complexion, if they make their wants known, Congress does what the people want.”

So write, and if your representative writes back to you and tells you that he or she, too, is for free enterprise, that we have these great services and so forth, that must be performed by government, don’t let them get away with it. Show that you have not been convinced. Write a letter right back and tell them that you believe in government economy and fiscal responsibility; that you know governments don’t tax to get the money the need; governments will always find a need for the money they get and that you demand the continuation of our free enterprise system. You and I can do this. The only way we can do it is by writing to our congressmen even we believe that he is on our side to begin with. Write to strengthen his hand. Give him the ability to stand before his colleagues in Congress and say “I have heard from my constituents and this is what they want.”

Write those letters now; call your friends and them to write them. If you don’t, this program I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow, and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country. Until, one day, as Normal Thomas said we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don’t do this and if I don’t do it, one of these days we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.“