Conservative Happenings

Sunday, July 5, 2015

CALL FOR AN ‘ASSEMBLY OF THE STATES’ IN MAY 2016

It is time for states to undertake specific steps to re-assert their 10th amendment rights against the usurpations of the federal government.

We are, after all, the United States of America, not the United Federal Government of America.

Here’s my proposal for a starting point:

One state legislature can pass an act for it to host an “Assembly of the States” whose purpose will be to identify and share best practices for the assertion by the states of their 10th amendment rights among the several states.

Topics to be addressed would be practical and timely:

(1) Which federal grants (presumably almost all) make the most sense for a state to reject and what are the best ways to deal with the real world consequences of those rejections?

(2) What specific actions shall be taken to resist unconstitutional Supreme Court decisions?

(3) What specific actions should be taken to resist egregious and unlawful federal regulations and which regulations are most deserving of resistance?

(4) What practical free-market health care policies can be introduced at the state level that will improve the availability and delivery of health care services to residents of each state, given the federal government’s ever increasing tentacles of control in that sector of the economy?

The recommendations of the Assembly of the States are not designed to be binding on any individual state; rather they are a set of suggestions for effective actions each state can undertake to restore its constitutionally granted sovereignty based on thoughtful consideration and actual experience.

The proposed Assembly of the States is not an Article V Convention of the States as recommended by conservative author Mark Levin, but there would be no restriction upon the Assembly discussing proposed constitutional amendments for the consideration of any future Convention of the States.

The concept of an Assembly of the States is not entirely original. Several representatives to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the 40-year-old “nonpartisan membership association for state lawmakers who shared a common belief in limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty,” floated the concept in 2014.

Unlike my proposal, however, the ALEC proposal focused more on setting the stage for an Article V Convention of the States as opposed to a “best practices” 10th amendment gathering.

Like the Article V Convention of the States, however, state legislatures under my proposal do not need any authorization from their state’s governor to either host the Assembly of the States, or send a delegation to the Assembly of the States.

The hosting state legislature would invite state legislatures of the other 49 states to authorize and send a five-member delegation to the Assembly of the States, which I propose be held in May 2016 in the capital city of the host state.

The Assembly of the States would convene irrespective of the number of state legislatures that choose to send a delegation. Should all 50 states choose to send a delegation, a total of 250 delegates would be present. Should just the host state’s delegates attend, a total of only 5 delegates will be present.

There is little concern in my mind, however, that only the host state will send delegates to the proposed Assembly of the States.

Several states may be in the competition to serve as host of the proposed initial Assembly of the States in 2016, including my own state of Tennessee. Texas, Montana, Oklahoma, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, and Idaho all have state legislatures with the independence of spirit necessary to consider hosting the gathering of state delegations.

I doubt any of the state legislatures from the “dirty dozen” blue states in which President Obama received more than 56.2 percent of the vote in 2012 will send delegations, but I leave open the possibility one of them might surprise me. After all, one of the most popular conservative radio talk show hosts in the country, Howie Carr, is based in Boston, Massachusetts and is heard daily in at least half of those “dirty dozen” states.

Whether the proposed Assembly of the States attracts delegations from a mere handful of solid limited government states, all of the “Great 38 States” in which President Obama received less than 56.2 percent of the vote in 2012, or an even greater number, the mere fact that such a gathering convenes at all will send a shot across the bow of the ever growing usurpations of the new federal royalty.

Even more importantly, it will help the states develop a concrete set of action steps that can be undertaken to re-assert their 10th amendment rights and begin to reverse the course of the Big Government juggernaut.

As to the matter of approval of the recommendations made by the Assembly of the States, I propose that each state’s delegation have one vote.

Each state legislature may determine how it wishes to select its 5 delegates. They may select from among their member legislators, appoint any citizens of their state they determine have the appropriate qualities of character and judgment, or hold a statewide election to choose all or some of the 5 delegates in a manner akin to the selection of the delegates to the statewide Constitution ratification conventions of 1787 to 1791.

Those states that choose to elect delegates can do so in the most economical way by “piggy-backing” those elections to the Presidential primary contests already budgeted for and planned in their states for 2016.

My personal preference for my home state of Tennessee would be to select one member of the delegation from the state’s lower legislature, one from the state’s upper legislature, and elect three members of the delegation statewide, either at-large or by geographic area.

The Assembly of the States is intentionally scheduled for May 2016, immediately prior to the 2016 Republican and Democratic conventions so as to allow the Assembly to invite Presidential candidates of both parties to address it.

By watching which candidates accept an invitation to address the Assembly of the States and paying close attention to what those who show up say in their addresses, we should have a good indication which Presidential contenders are serious about restoring constitutionally limited government to the country, and which are mere pretenders.

Via: Breitbart

Subpoena Hillary's Email Server

Thanks to Tuesday’s State Department document dump, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email server is back in the news. The roughly 3,000 emails that State plopped on the media were among those that Clinton supposedly surrendered before she wiped that server as clean as a chalkboard at the start of class.

But what if that server still brims with Clinton’s emails and other documents?

I strongly suspect that Clinton has erased nothing. Her server is pristine. Hillary and company only say that it has been deleted.

“I have confirmed with the secretary’s IT support that no emails . . . for the time period January 21, 2009 through February 1, 2013 reside on the server or on any back-up systems associated with the server,” Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, wrote the House Select Committee on Benghazi. “Thus, there are no hdr22@clintonemail.com e-mails from Secretary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State on the server for any review, even if such review were appropriate or legally authorized.”

By asserting that contents of the server have been obliterated, Clinton enjoys the political advantage of pretending to delete it: Republicans largely have stopped asking for the device.

Hillary’s server is empty, GOPers think. So, why bother with it?

Instead, Republicans probing Clinton’s role in the Benghazi massacre trust bureaucrats at State to share emails from among those that Clinton hand-picked in the first place. At best, Benghazi Committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R–S.C., and others are seeing a subset of a subset of Clinton’s emails.

Meanwhile, my hunch is that Clinton has touched nothing. This leaves her totally immune to federal charges of destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice because she craftily has done no such thing.

“It’s entirely possible that Hillary is lying when she claims to have wiped her server,” former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell tells me. “Her bald claims to have done so seem to have deflected attention from the server and bought her a pass — at a minimum stalling and diverting the substantive investigation.”

The author of "Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice" adds, “If Hillary actually did not erase her own server, and is lying about having done so, she hasn’t actually destroyed evidence. And if her lies were not under oath, she’s not subject to a perjury prosecution. It’s the Clinton version of ‘bait and switch.’”

Via: Newsmax

Massachusetts: Democrats now cast wary eye on Baker

JOHN TLUMACKI/GLOBE STAFF/FILE

The governor’s announcement in February of a panel to overhaul the MBTA has led to disagreements with unions.

Union workers are frustrated by Charlie Baker’s bid to privatize services at the MBTA.

Environmentalists worry that he plans to gut the state’s clean air and water regulations.

Advocates for criminal sentencing reform say he appears to have cooled to their agenda, despite campaign promises.

Baker, a Republican who was elected governor by appealing to Democrats as well as his more natural constituencies, has, in the course of governing, demonstrated how difficult it is to please everyone on every issue.

Consider his fumble last week over the question of removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House, after the massacre at an African-American church in Charleston. His initial answer: Leave it to the state to decide. But an immediate backlash forced him to back down and call for the flag’s removal. Friends, Baker said, had asked him, “What were you thinking?”

“Charlie Baker is a conservative, it will continue to emerge, and there will be some people who will be surprised by it,’’ said Peter Ubertaccio, an associate political science professor at Stonehill College.

In his first few months in office, Baker was mostly managing broken agencies, trying to make the MBTA’s trains run on time, getting the highways plowed, and closing a budget deficit, applying the managerial skills that were his strong suit in his race for governor.

But analysts say Baker is now crafting policies and spending decisions that sometimes go against the liberal grain of Massachusetts politics.

To be sure, the governor enjoys sky-high popularity ratings from the public. And he has made several decisions — raising pay for home health care workers, funding urban programs, increasing budgets for environmental programs — that are likely to be popular among liberals and moderates.

For its part, the Baker administration points with pride to his progress on attacking the state budget deficit, while spending on public education and other critical areas without raising taxes.

“Additionally, the administration, one of the most bipartisan in recent history, has won praise from leading Democrats for the governor’s crossing the aisle on issues such as battling the opioid epidemic, aiding low-income families, and offering state government opportunities to minorities,” said Tim Buckley, a Baker spokesman.

At this point, none of the criticisms of Baker has jelled into full-throated opposition from Democratic leaders. In fact, the first-year governor appears to have good relations with the Democrats who run the House and Senate.

Still, Baker’s unusually warm honeymoon is showing its first signs of fraying. It’s not a political crisis, but small cracks in the eclectic coalition that put him in the governor’s office are appearing.

It is particularly evident among some of the Democrats — liberals and moderates — who comfortably crossed party lines and chose Baker over Democrat Martha Coakley in last November’s election. Despite his conservative leanings, they found him to be sensible, approachable, and compassionate.

“Constituencies and interest groups can read into a candidate anything they want,’’ Ubertaccio said “With Baker, you could watch the campaign last fall and say, ‘He’s not a threat to my interests.’ But in the end he is a conservative.’’

The most high-profile example of such tension involves Baker’s push to privatize some services at the beleaguered MBTA, against the wishes not only of the T’s unionized workers (whose radio advertisements warn of “shark privatizers”), but also Democrats in the state Senate.

But there are less heralded skirmishes as well.

Via: Boston Globe

[VIDEO] Greta: Let's Put a Woman on a $25 Bill share this email

Should America put a woman on a $10 or $20 bill?

Greta Van Susteren tonight had a suggestion amid the growing debate over whether the U.S. should bump Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Jackson from the $10 and $20 bills, respectively.

“I’m a feminist, I like to see women get treated fairly, but ... what about history or tradition?” Van Susteren asked.

Van Susteren said that Hamilton and Jackson should stay right where they are, instead suggesting the creation of a $25 bill that features a woman.

What do you think of Van Susteren’s idea? Which woman would you like to see on the $25 bill?

Via: Fox News Insider

[OPINION] Keep Andrew Jackson on our $20 bills: Ryan Vallo

The front of the U.S. $20 bill, featuring a likeness of Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States, in Boston. (AP Photo/Bill Sikes)

Andrew Jackson was the first American icon. So famous, so powerful was he that Jackson is the only person from our nation with an era named in his honor — the Age of Jackson. In 1833, New York's mayor, Philip Hone, explained, Jackson "is the most popular man we have ever known. ...Washington was only the first Jackson."

President Harry Truman admired Jackson because he was the first president to fight for average Americans, not the wealthy 1 percent. Truman wrote, Jackson "is destined to remain a commanding figure in our national life."

Now, 70 years later, Jackson's story is obscure despite his depiction on our world's most recognized currency.

Critics want Jackson removed from the $20 bill primarily because of Indian removal, but Indian removal's complicated story is not fully understood. There was greed, betrayal and bloodshed among whites and Indians.

Jackson adopted an Indian boy, so why did he condemn entire Indian nations to move to the west of the Mississippi River?

To understand, we must see things from the 19th-century perspective.

The 1830 Indian Removal Act made it legal for the federal government to negotiate treaties for the removal of the southeastern tribes (Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole). The British and the Spaniards would give Indians weapons to attack American settlers in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and other states. For the U.S. government, Indian attacks became a matter of national security.

The law bears Jackson's name, but Indian removal was not his idea. For that we can thank our revered Founding Father Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson believed the United States was destined to stretch across the continent, but Indians inhabited that land. Jefferson "encouraged" Indians to "abandon hunting."

"If they become farmers, they will settle, stop hunting and ... become civilized," he wrote. "This will be "better than ... their former way of living. I trust and believe we are acting for their greatest good."

In 1803, after the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson actually wrote Andrew Jackson about Indian removal, saying, "Louisiana ... will open an asylum for these unhappy people [the Indians], in a country which may suit their habits of life better than what they now occupy, which perhaps they will be willing to exchange with us." So wrote the man who penned, "all men are created equal."

Some tribes assimilated; others resisted. Jefferson came to believe assimilation futile. He believed relocating the Indians to a new territory, where their culture could be preserved, was the only realistic solution for Indians and whites to live peacefully. It was segregation, not genocide, as some have alleged.

Indians were faced with a dilemma: remain on their "fathers' lands" but become as the "white man," or move west and retain their culture. Indians could not agree, and rather than uniting against the white man, they fought among themselves.

Factions of radical Indians were furious — and justly — about treaty promises broken by the United States. "Hostile Indians" turned to violence, killing anyone who was an American. In May 1814, a Washington, D.C., newspaper, The National Intelligencer, wrote that hostile Indians were driven by "blind fanaticism" to attack innocent Americans.

Whites murdered Indians; Indians murdered whites. Revenge. Anger. The cycle continued, blood for blood.

White settlers moving into Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia squatted illegally on Indians' lands, but Jackson could not have sent U.S. troops to protect the Indians. White soldiers would have fought the Indians alongside white settlers.

The Cherokees' removal was managed dreadfully. Congress passed the bill, but failed to allocate appropriate funds. Worse, white U.S. troops' harsh treatment of the Cherokees caused horrific death. A soldier recalled: "I fought through the Civil War and have seen men shot to pieces, slaughtered ... but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever done."

Weeks before Jackson died in 1845, he asked the Rev. John Edgar, "What do you think posterity will blame me for most?" Indian removal did not surface in their conversation.

The sad truth was that the majority of Americans wanted the Indians gone. In fact, Jackson was re-elected in 1832 — after the Indian Removal Act became law — by a larger percentage of the population than re-elected President Barack Obama after passage of the Affordable Care Act.

While grappling with our social issues today, we should not distance ourselves from our forefathers' errors, but rather learn from them. Had tolerance prevailed, whites and Indians would have shared traditions, learned from one another and grown together.

Jackson was hailed for defending the marginalized in 1830s America. Today, Native Americans are justly viewed as the marginalized.

As the first president to champion average Americans, Jackson paved the way for every civil-rights group to petition, protest and participate in our government.

Jackson should remain on our $20 bill — a reminder of the human potential for both strength and weakness.

In this country, we have risen to the occasion with honor as many times as we have fallen short with shame. Jackson's story is our story.

Ryan Vallo of Dayton is a music theatre graduate of Baldwin Wallace University and writer of a new TV drama series about President Andrew Jackson.

Via: Cleveland.com

[COMMENTARY] What the Role of ‘We the People’ Is

“We the People.” We’ve heard that phrase so often it’s easy to overlook its significance. But as we mark our nation’s birthday, we should take a moment to ask ourselves: What is the role of the people?

Our nation is unique because of its universal founding principles. At the heart of these principles is the belief that people are free by nature and possess inherent rights. The use each one of us makes of these rights will naturally be different, and the outcomes of those choices will naturally differ, too. But the choice remains ours.

Freedom is thus inextricably bound up with living our lives as we see fit. This is self-government in the truest sense of the term. We the people need not slavishly defer to experts. We can be trusted to govern ourselves.

That is why government must remain limited: The people have given it only limited powers, as described in the Constitution. When we allow government to take more than we have given it, our choices become meaningless. At worst, unlimited government is tyrannical; at best, it imposes a dull uniformity that crushes true diversity and saps the independent spirit of the people.

The founders strove to create a government that couldn’t be dominated by a single faction. That faction might be a minority or a majority. But no matter its size, it would inevitably seek to promote its own narrow interests at the expense of the liberties of the people.

One purpose of the Constitution’s checks and balances—one reason it divides and limits power—is to restrain the ambition of the powerful and promote “the general welfare.”

Yet as the federal government has grown over the past century, its business has increasingly become taking from Paul to benefit Peter, then borrowing from Peter to pay off Paul. What supporters of big government call the general welfare is merely the artful distribution of favors to particular factions.

The federal government is not supposed to be the most important institution in America. In securing the general welfare, it’s supposed to do only those things that are provided for in the Constitution.

It must, for example, provide for the common defense and regulate our relations with foreign nations. It must respect our right to enjoy the fruits of our labor by taxing lightly, and defend the freedom of the marketplace by ensuring the rule of law. And it must remember that the family and religion are where we learn virtue, and that without virtue, government cannot be both limited and free.

As John Adams stated: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In the United States, government requires not merely the consent of the governed. It rests ultimately on the ability of the people to govern themselves. Thus, the first role—the first duty—of the people is to ensure that they remain virtuous and free.

Via: Daily Signal

Saudi prince giving away his money buying immortality for the Democrats?

There should be no big mystery as to why Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi prince Bill Gates talked into giving away all his money to charity, is dumping his riches.

No one’s given away all of his money since the last saint more than 2000 years ago.

Charity is no longer as conventional as it once was. In the case of the notorious Clinton Foundation, charity eloped with power and has never been the same.

Is Prince bin Talal, whose $32 billion fortune makes it possible, about to buy immortality for the Democrats?

Now that Barack Obama’s made good on his promise to fundamentally transform America, progressives the world over are looking to the Democrat’s Act II. Gung-ho to cling onto DC power forever, the Democrats may now have $32 billion to control the 2016 election and any that come thereafter.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s money is going to charity, and there’s no doubt that the “Send $5” Democrats have spent their last seven years being a charity,

Hillary will no longer have to have her goons corral and rope-lasso reporters when conducting her meet-the-taxpayer walk-a- bouts like she did yesterday in New Hampshire. (See surrealistic photo proof, shared on Twitter and Snapchat from which there was no reporter but only public outrage. Pictures of uncomplaining roped-in reporters and the potential for roping in elections with billions of dollars should serve as proof positive that the next president being Democrat is all but inevitable.

Before nominating Bill Gates for the Noble Peace Prize, Prince bin Talal was trying to throw his money around as far back as 2001 when Mayor Rudy Giuliani turned down his $10-million check in the aftermath of 9/11.

That didn’t stop the Arab prince, who likes watching CNBC, from giving his money to a plethora of American and UK universities – including Harvard, Cambridge and Edinburgh.

Via: Canada Free Press

ObamaCare and America's Death Spiral

In his new book The Great Divide, William D. Gairdner posits that the left/right ideological fissure parts upstream of politics and even culture. Rather, our irreconcilable differences originate in the acceptance of philosophical truths whereby for one to be “true” the other must be “false”. One of these mutually exclusive axioms is whether human nature is fixed or whether it is malleable. Original Sin versus Tabula Rasa (blank slate).

Utopian regimes have been propelled by the popular belief that maladies are caused by an imperfect externality and therefore with the correct reconfiguration of the world (i.e. theirs), that theoretically “the human condition can be perfected”. At its core, tabula rasa is incompatible with the traditional Western view of fixed Human Nature. Simply put, The Fall means whether our technology looks like The Flintstones or The Jetsons or our perverts look like Tiberius or Gacy… Human Nature is fixed.

Jacobins, Stalinists, Nazi Socialists, Maoists, etc. were all conscious transformers of society with the purported benevolent intentions… marches toward perfection. It is this dream that is rekindled with each wide-eyed generation. Indeed, what is Obamacare other than American’s having been coerced into participating in and subsidizing someone’s utopian scheme? …so good, it’s mandatory. Indeed, ObamaCare may one day become the impetus to bring every facet of life into line… what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung. Utopianism is compatible and inevitably employs any level of depravity because it is insatiable. After so much misery, surely only a supreme narcissist still believes that he could condition perfection? In a rare candid moment, while accepting his farcical “Peace Prize”, a freshman president Obama provided a fleeting glimpse into his heart:

“But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.”

Via: American Thinker

The Americans are coming! Some in a Texas county fear an Obama-led U.S. military invasion.

By Kevin Sullivan July 4 at 8:32 PM

BASTROP, Texas — The office of the Bastrop County Republican Party is in an old lumber mill on Main Street, with peeling brown paint and a sign out front that captures the party’s feelings about the Obama administration: “WISE UP AMERICA!”

Inside, county Chairman Albert Ellison pulled out a yellow legal pad on which he had handwritten page after page of reasons why many Texans distrust President Obama, including the fact that, “in the minds of some, he was raised by communists and mentored by terrorists.”

So it should come as no surprise, Ellison said, that as the U.S. military prepares to launch one of the largest training exercises in history later this month, many Bastrop residents might suspect a secret Obama plot to spy on them, confiscate their guns and ultimately establish martial law in one of America’s proudly free conservative states.

They are not “nuts and wackos. They are concerned citizens, and they are patriots,” Ellison said of his suspicious neighbors. “Obama has really painted a portrait in the minds of many conservatives that he is capable of this sort of thing.”

Across town at the Bastrop County Courthouse, such talk elicits a weary sigh from County Judge Paul Pape, the chief official in this county of 78,000 people. Pape said he has tried to explain to folks that the exercise, known as Jade Helm 15, is a routine training mission that poses no threat to anyone.

Pape chaired a public meeting this spring and invited a U.S. Army Special Operations Command spokesman to answer questions about Jade Helm. The meeting drew more than 150 people carrying signs that read “No Gestapo in Bastropo,” “Keep America Free” and “Dissent is Not a Conspiracy Theory.” Some asked whether the Army was bringing in Islamic State fighters, if the United Nations would be involved, and whether the military was planning to relieve local gun owners of their firearms.

Via: Washington Post

White House-Linked Dark Money Group Threatens Democrats on Eve of Nuke Deal

A prominent progressive organization linked to the White House and claiming to work for dozens of like-minded groups is threatening to attack any congressional Democrat who objects to a final nuclear deal with Iran, even before the terms of any such agreement have been finalized, according to an email obtained by the Free Beacon.

CREDO Action, the political arm of CREDO Mobile, declared this week in an secret email to journalists that it will punish congressional Democrats who fail to line up behind any deal sealed between the West and Iran.

“Democrats in Congress are the only remaining obstacle to finalizing today’s historic deal,” Zack Malitz, campaign manager for CREDO, said in a statement emailed to reporters on July 2, along with a note that details of the email were not to be published until a deal was actually announced. “Every Democrat should go on the record right now in support of the deal, and pledge to defend it from attacks in Congress.”

“Republicans will try to sabotage the deal and take us to war, but they can’t do it without Democratic votes,” Matlz wrote. “Progressives will hold accountable those Democrats who vote to help Republicans sabotage the deal and start a war.”

Via: WFB

Democrats Pursue a No-Veto Strategy on Spending Bills

President Barack Obama has issued just four vetoes so far in his presidency, and it appears he won't be taking out the veto pen for a host of contentious fiscal 2016 spending bills, either — despite threats he's already lodged on seven of them.

Democrats instead are stonewalling the appropriations measures by keeping them from coming up for debate in the Senate, even though they could instead allow Obama to take the heat by issuing vetoes. That would let Democrats escape tough-to-defend votes on defense spending, veterans' benefits and more. But Democrats are having none of it, saying that the "regular order" process that would lead to a veto is a time-waster and they want negotiations on a budget deal launched now — a strategy that may or may not work.

“I have heard senators on the other side urge us to follow the process, which means spending weeks on the floor and more weeks in conference, only to send the president a bill he would veto,” says Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the full Appropriations Committee.

In her view, it’s up to Congress, not the president, to change the law and lift the spending caps that Democrats say are too constraining. “We need a new budget deal that ends sequester for defense and non-defense," says Mikulski. "On our side, we are saying let’s not waste the rest of June, July and August, only to come to a crisis point in September. Instead, let’s come to the table now and not when we are threatened with shutdowns and showdowns.”

'Draw the Line'

Allowing Obama to issue vetoes would seem to make sense. The president is a lame duck with an approval rating that hit 50 percent in a CNN poll for the first time in more than two years as he enjoys one of the best periods of his presidency, so he's got some political capital to spend. At just four vetoes, his record doesn't come close to that of other recent presidents, though of course there's many months left in his tenure.

But, most importantly, a veto from Obama would blunt Republicans' exploitation of defense votes.

Witness the Senate's $576 billion Defense appropriations bill (HR 2685), which Democrats blocked from consideration in June. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear just how the GOP will characterize Democrats’ action on it: “Our Democratic friends have curiously just last week voted for the troops by approving the defense authorization bill,” the Kentucky Republican said, “and then turned around and voted against the troops on the bill that would actually fund their pay raises and the other things that these volunteers depend on.”

And yet, Democrats seem unconcerned with this line of attack. Particularly instructive is the case of Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., a moderate in a purple state with a re-election in 2018.

Via: Roll Call

Now fix congressional redistricting

On this July Fourth, it is worth celebrating a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, lifting the smoke screen laid by John Boehner to stall action on plans to draw fair, competitive U.S. House districts in Ohio. The court upheld the right of Arizona voters to create an independent commission to draw U.S. House districts. It turned back a challenge from the Republican-dominated Arizona legislature, which wanted to regain control.

As House speaker, Boehner used his influence to cloud discussion in the Ohio legislature, also dominated by Republicans. The expressed concern was that the state should not move forward until the Arizona case was resolved. Actually, what is under discussion here would leave the legislature with a dominant role in the redistricting process, the parallel to Arizona a stretch, at best.

When the Arizona legislature sued, it took a narrow reading of the U.S. Constitution, which states that the “times, places and manner” of holding congressional elections “shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.”

What the lawsuit failed to consider was that Arizona voters, in initiating a constitutional amendment, were acting in place of the legislature. In a 5-4 decision, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg found the U.S. Constitution’s reference to the “legislature” included ballot measures such as the one Arizona voters passed in 2000 to create an independent commission.

It now is time for the Ohio legislature to repair how U.S. House districts are drawn here, using as its model a proposed constitutional amendment on state legislative districts that it has placed on the November ballot. Instead of state lawmakers drawing new U.S. House districts after each census, the job would go to the same commission that would be created for state legislative districts.

The seven-member body would be composed of the governor, auditor and secretary of state, plus four legislators, two from the minority party. With incentives to encourage bipartisan action and rules to minimize the splitting of communities, the state’s U.S. House districts would come into better balance.

As matters stand, districts created by the Republican-led legislature do not reflect the real balance of power between Republicans and Democrats. In a state where Barack Obama won twice, and which elected Sherrod Brown to the U.S. Senate, Republicans control 12 of 16 U.S. House seats. Without sufficient competition, extreme views easily can take hold.

In the state Senate, Frank LaRose, a Copley Township Republican, and Tom Sawyer, an Akron Democrat, have long worked on redistricting reform and are ready to introduce an amendment for U.S. House districts that would mirror the bipartisan plan for legislative districts. In the House, a similar idea has been introduced by two Democrats, Mike Curtin of Marble Cliff and Kathleen Clyde of Kent.

With lawmakers on summer break, action by the August deadline for placing another constitutional amendment on the fall ballot is unlikely. But once back in session, the legislature should make sure an amendment on U.S. House districts gets on the ballot next year. If lawmakers fail to act promptly, voter advocates should take charge with a petition drive.

Via: Ohio.com

Not Everyone Likes the Fourth of July-Themed Al Jazeera Video that Mocks Americans as Fat, Gun-Toting Racists

Al Jazeera’s digital media platform AJ+ posted a Fourth of July-themed video mocking Americans as fat, cheese-eating, gun-toting, pill-popping, racist porn watchers.

While some on social media applauded the creation, others slammed the Qatar-owned network for using the holiday “to dump” on America.

Social media users got particularly riled up by the criticism coming from the channel owned by Qatar — a country where stoning is a legal punishment under Shariah law, women have second class legal status, writers can be imprisoned for criticizing the emir and abuse of foreign laborers has been repeatedly criticized by human rights groups.

The video is sarcastically titled “Americans Show Why USA Is The #1 Country In The World.”

After lauding the U.S. as world leader in Olympic medals, Nobel laureates and billionaires, young actors then go on to mock the U.S. for “the most incarcerated people in the world. God-bless the prison industrial complex.”

“When it comes to obesity … a third of us can’t even see our own toes,” said a man waving an American flag.

Another assertion left the impression that nine out of 10 Americans have guns.

“Pew Pew, we’ve got 90 guns per 100 persons. Sorry, Yemen, we beat you in drones and guns!” said one of the actors.

“Americans consume 80 percent of the world’s painkillers. Makes sense though, right? I mean racism in this country is a big pain in the ass,” said a female actor.

Al Jazeera also credited the U.S. with having the “most number of teen pregnancies per capita,” leading the world in credit card debt and “the most deaths by lawnmower.”

“This sort of seems mean spirited to be honest,” Benjamin Buzbee wrote on YouTube. “It’s important to keep perspective and some of these are important issues, but the spirit of this video is to dump on the US the day before independence day – seems more sensationalistic than journalistic. Can’t say I approve.”

Via: The Blaze

Sunday, July 5, 2015

It is time for states to undertake specific steps to re-assert their 10th amendment rights against the usurpations of the federal government.

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