The “Restoring Honor” event at the Lincoln Memorial was inspiring. That should be just the beginning of a “Restoration Movement.” We don’t really need a revolution in America; all we need to do is restore what once was. I have a suggestion for another aspect of our Founding that needs to be restored—a suggestion that some will call unrealistic, yet one that the Founders considered essential.
Let’s restore the provision in the original wording of the Constitution that allows state legislatures to choose a state’s senators who serve in Congress.
Article I, Section 3 says, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof.”
The reasoning was lucid: the people of each state already had direct representation into the national government via the House of Representatives; it was necessary as well to provide representation for the state governments in the national Congress. The goal was to make sure that laws passed by each state were not going to be overturned by the national government without good reason.
It was one of those key checks on power; it was to provide balance in the federal system.
Why did this change?
The Obama Administration has some explaining to do. Politico reports in a Friday story that 2011 could be a tough year for an Administration facing numerous oversight hearings on issues ranging from the controversy over the Justice Department’s handling of the New Black Panther Party investigation to the numerous bailouts administered by Obama Administration officials. Specific allegations from Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) regarding the use of government sponsored propaganda should raise ethical flags, if not legal ones, for Americans who don’t want tax dollars used to promote the big government ideas of President Barack Obama.
From Politico:
If President Barack Obama needed any more incentive to go all out for Democrats this fall, here it is: Republicans are planning a wave of committee investigations targeting the White House and Democratic allies if they win back the majority.
An investigation of the Obama Administrations use of government sponsored propaganda to promote the left wing agenda of the President is one of the areas planned for investigation. A report from the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released August 16, 2010 indicates that members of the Obama Administration may have broken the law implementing the President’s pubic relations and propaganda efforts. Congressman Darrell Issa, Ranking Member of the Committee, has been a critic of the Obama Administrations misuse of federal monies and he has put out this staff report, “Analysis of the First Year of the Obama Administration: Pubic Relations and Propaganda Initiatives.”
The Report summarizes:
Since the beginning of the Obama Administration on January 20, 2009, ordinary Americans have financed and been exposed to an unprecedented number of public relations and propaganda efforts. Federal spending for public relations contracts rose to historically-high levels during the Bush Administration. Under one-party rule in 2009, the White House used the machinery of the Obama campaign to tout the President’s agenda through inappropriate and sometimes unlawful public relations and propaganda initiatives. Congress buoyed the Administration’s propaganda efforts by increasing federal spending on public relations for the first time since 2005.
The first decision likely to spring to mind when thinking of Arizona and the U.S. Supreme Court is the 1966 landmark Miranda v. Arizona. While that case probably won’t be surpassed in terms of impact any time soon, the Grand Canyon state is the source of three major high court cases this term that are capturing national attention.
The three cases include challenges to Arizona’s immigration requirements for employers, a state school choice program and the state’s clean elections law. Also looming on the horizon is the Obama administration’s challenge to the state’s controversial law that gives police broad powers to stop those they suspect are in the country illegally.
So what the heck is going on in Arizona? “Arizona is indeed trying to fill the Supreme Court’s docket,” chuckled Clint Bolick, director of the Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation at the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix. The institute is a self-described independent government watchdog committed to expanding free enterprise and liberty.
Bolick is co-counsel with the center’s Nick Dranias on the election petition — McComish v. Bennett. A companion case, Arizona Freedom PAC v. Bennett, is being handled by the public interest law firm that Bolick co-founded in 1991 — the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Va.
“I think there are two explanations, and one is dominant,” Bolick suggested for the influx of Arizona cases. “Arizona is taking the concept of states being the laboratories of democracy very seriously on multiple fronts.
“We have a legislature that is risk-taking and innovative. For conservatives in particular, the realm of the possible is greater in Arizona today than any other place.” And, he added, when the Obama Administration is taking legal positions counter to conservative-libertarian beliefs, someone has to step forward to articulate those beliefs. “I think we’re doing that in all sorts of ways.”
Read the rest.
A new Tea Party coalition is in the works, The Daily Caller has learned, to begin an organized push for an amendment to the constitution requiring that the federal budget be balanced every year.
One activist describes the effort as the logical next step for the movement that burst onto the scene early last year in response to government bailouts and stimulus packages.
The coalition, named BBA Now, as in Balance Budget Amendment Now, plans to officially unveil its three-year plan in September, director of coalitions Kellen Giuda said in an interview. Part of the campaign includes petitioning 2010 congressional candidates, as well as presidential candidates in 2012, to sign a pledge in support of the effort.
A balanced budget amendment restricts the government from spending more than its projected revenue every year, except for in times of war or a national emergency.
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.
One of the tragedies of the current misled, uninformed, and otherwise preoccupied American citizenry is the seeming apathy regarding the importance and necessity of electing constitutionalist sheriffs. In many ways, State governors and county sheriffs just might be the most important elected offices in America. It is no hyperbole to say that State governors and county sheriffs form the last line of defense against tyranny and oppression. If our governors and sheriffs do not understand the principles of freedom and federalism, there is virtually zero protection against the abuses of liberty–save the right of the people to personally and individually defend liberty via the principles of God-given Natural Law.
Hence, a freedom-minded sheriff is invaluable to liberty’s defense. And perhaps at no time in America’s history has it been more necessary that we elect freedom-loving sheriffs than it is today, what with the ever-growing propensity of the federal government to trample and usurp State and constitutional protections of freedom.
For example, in an almost totally non-reported incident, an armed conflict between federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) agents and a Nevada Sheriff’s SWAT team was averted only by virtue of the fact that, at the last minute, BLM backed down from the impending confrontation.
House Minority Leader John Boehner on Sunday said he’s open to talks on changing the U.S. Constitution — or at least the way it’s interpreted — so that U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants are not automatically U.S. citizens.
“I think it’s worth considering,” Boehner said.
The top House Republican joined Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in calling for further study of the idea — something that has been endorsed by prominent Republicans over the past few weeks. Though the call is already running into stiff opposition and faces extremely long odds of ever succeeding, some lawmakers say it would be a way to minimize the incentive for illegal immigration.
“There is a problem. To provide an incentive for illegal immigrants to come here so that their children can be U.S. citizens does, in fact, draw more people to our country,” Boehner said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I do think that it’s time for us to secure our borders and enforce the law and allow this conversation about the 14th Amendment to continue.”
In the words of our President: “Let me be clear,” Missouri’s Prop C represents a victory for individual freedom, not “states’ rights.”
I am not sure why I have to keep repeating this, but there is NO SUCH THING AS STATES’ RIGHTS! And people that use that term, or the term “nullification,” do not help our cause.
States have powers, and while those powers diminish in the face of the progressive-statist attack upon our Constitution, powers run contrary to individual rights. So let me break it down:
1) Prop C places a duty on the state of Missouri to defend its citizens from the IRS enforced individual mandate.
2) Prop C denies the federal government state resources to enforce the individual mandate.
Anyone with an ounce of constitutional knowledge knows that neither of those aspects of Prop C conflict directly with the Supremacy Clause.
Individual Freedom
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