Portrait of a Failed "Messiah"

By Alan Caruba

“His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

If you think this is a psychological profile of Barack Obama, you would be wrong. It is a quote from a profile of Adolph Hitler, prepared for the Office of Strategic Services—the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency—by Walter C. Langer and three others during World War II.

The fact that it rather closely resembles aspects of Obama’s personality we have come to know would be cause for alarm if we were living in the 1930s at the time of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, but this is a very different time and the U.S. Constitution is still a powerful instrument.

Unlike the 1930s, the Internet has provided everyone with the ability to access information that, as often as not, conflicts with that the mainstream media would have us believe.

Still there are similarities. As to Hitler’s success, Langer wrote that the “Realization of a fundamental loneliness and feeling of isolation in people living under modern conditions and a craving to ‘belong’ to an active group which carries a certain status, provides cohesiveness, and gives the individual a feeling of personal worth and belongingness” is as true today as it was in former times.

This may explain the sudden appearance of the Occupy Wall Street movement, but OWS quickly wore out its welcome due to its complete lack of organization or mission.

Perhaps its only mission was to implant the thought that the “1%”—the rich—were unfairly wealthy at a time of widespread economic difficulties experienced by the unemployed, those who had lost their homes, and the middle class.

The problem OWS encountered is the general American view that this is a land of opportunity in which anyone can become rich along with the regard people have for those they deem to have become successful because they were innovators and risk-takers or, to put it another way, because they worked for it!

A large body of the American public today has rejected Barack Obama as they have come to know him. While frequently spoken of as having a charming personality and other positive traits, these attributes have been undermined by Obama.

His constant use, indeed, dependence on Tele-Prompters quickly became a running joke. On an organization level, his import of the so-called “czars” to backstop and even replace the traditional role and powers of Cabinet Secretaries created an immediate disquiet as the public learned more about them. They and Cabinet picks tended to share a well-recorded contempt for human beings.

In retrospect, the 2008 election was a masterpiece of the theatrical manipulation of the public’s perception of Obama. He was frequently presented in the context of huge crowds and in ways that portrayed him as “the Messiah” for those seeking an all-wise, all-knowing masterful personality.

Obama’s megalomania was perhaps best revealed when, on June 3, 2008, he said, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Was he taking responsibility or promising to alter the forces of Nature?

It is thus no accident that William Shirer, an American reporter who covered Hitler’s rise, described his public appearances, wrote "A searchlight plays upon his lone figure as he slowly walks through the hall, never looking to right or left, his right hard raised in salute, his left hand as the buckle of his belt. He never smiles—it is a religious rite, this procession of the modern Messiah incarnate. Behind him are his adjutants and secret service men. But his figure alone is flooded with light.”

“We are the generation we have been waiting for,” said Obama. This had a singular appeal to the young and to his generation that found themselves mired in debt. Soon Obama would increase that debt to such an extent that the children and grandchildren of his generation would be paying it off through their lifetimes. They, however, did not know that in 2008.

There were many unknowns during the years of Hitler’s rise to power, but there were many clues, indicators, and demonstrations of where he was taking Germany. Democratically elected, the Nazi Party was quick to impose control over all aspects of life in Germany and especially its media, its newspapers, films and other aspects of its culture. Parenthetically, many Americans are well aware that the mainstream media played a significant role in Obama’s election and routinely engages in furthering liberal fantasies such as global warming and renewable energy which turned out to be an orgy of crony capitalism.

Obama’s over-reach, a reflection of his distaste for the U.S. Constitution and his belief in his own superiority, has recently been seen in his attack on the Supreme Court. It is conjectured that he has been informed through back channels that Obamacare will be declared unconstitutional. If so, the centerpiece of his plan to engineer a government takeover the nation’s healthcare system will be in ruins.

His policy failures are well known to the public and, in particular, to the voters.

What we have come to learn is that he is a liar. He lies even when he does not have to and he lies all the time.

Unlike Hitler in the 1930s when the Nazi party was able to overturn all the normal conventions of the Weimar Republic, Barack Obama has run into the wall of the U.S. Constitution.

Obamacare was already opposed by most Americans and voters were offended when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi said “We have to pass the bill in order to find out what’s in it.” That’s not how a democracy works.

In 2010 the voters returned power in the House of Representatives to the Republicans. In 2012, Obama will be turned out of office and there is even the likelihood that a Republican President will have both houses of Congress controlled by his party.

Then the business of restoring the economy, rebuilding the military, and reducing the debt left in Obama’s wake will begin.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Obamacare Versus the U.S. Constitution

By Alan Caruba

In a nation where Congress has already determined how much water your toilet tank can hold and whether you can purchase a 100-watt incandescent light bulb, the assertion of federal power is now so great and so unbounded that a case concerning the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), brought by 26 states will decide whether, in fact, there are any rights or powers left to the states.

What many Americans do not know is that the United States of America is composed of separate and sovereign republics, each with its own constitution. What has occurred, however, has been the erosion of states’ rights and with that, the gradual distortion of the nation’s central instrument of governance, the Constitution, to mean anything Congress wants it to say.

At the very heart of the Obamacare case the Supreme Court will hear Monday through Wednesday, March 26 through March 28, is the question of whether the federal government can coerce the states under the threat of withholding funds—in this case for Medicaid.

Obamacare vastly expands Medicaid, but it should also be noted that Medicaid has been expanded over the years without evoking this kind of organized resistance. Over a million Americans descended on Washington, D.C. on March 20, 2010 to demand that it not be passed. They were dismissed by the White House that bribed and pressured members of Congress who, it turns out, never even read the law before voting on it.

Created in 1965, Medicaid was intended to ensure that low-income individuals and families secure medical care. Obamacare represents that largest expansion in its history. As the largest federal-state funding program, in 2010 it represented some $401.4 billion. Predictions of what Obamacare will cost are over the moon.

At present, some 60 million Medicaid beneficiaries include one in four children, severely disabled people, many nursing home residents, and low-income pregnant women. Children’s and trauma hospitals heavily rely on Medicaid funding. Under Obamacare, if ruled constitutional, more than 30 million more people are expected to gain health coverage through Medicaid.

The likelihood is that a federally administered health care system will destroy what is widely regarded as the best private sector health system in the world. It will put the government squarely between the physician and his patient, determining who receives treatment and the amount and cost of that treatment.

The issue of contention for many Constitutional scholars and others is Obamacare’s demand that everyone either purchase a health insurance program or pay a fine for not doing so. Congress asserts this under the Commerce Clause, Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, that says it shall have the power “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with Indian Tribes.”

The early Supreme Court led by the fourth Chief Justice John Marshall (serving from 1801 to 1835) broadly interpreted these powers, extending federal jurisdiction over a number of aspects of intrastate and interstate commerce. In more recent times, under Justice William Rehnquist, (serving 1986 to 2005) the Court restricted interpretation of the Clause to allow states more control over business conducted within its borders.

The tensions between the states and the central government have always been part of the life of the nation and the Civil War was the ultimate test of whether states can secede from the Union if they feel their rights are being trampled upon. Under the many progressive social justice programs instituted since the 1930s, federal programs have acquired the power to coerce states to do its bidding simply by threatening to withhold billions in funding.

One need hardly be a constitutional scholar to understand that a federal government that can require you to purchase something you do not want or do not need can require you to do anything it wants. A government that powerful is a government to be feared.

The Tenth Amendment Center is rather sanguine about the Supreme Court’s likely decision. It notes that “In fact, from 1937-1995, the Supreme Court didn’t rule one single congressional act to be outside their constitution limits.” Thus, for sixty years, “they ruled absolutely nothing unconstitutional, and that included much of the new deal and all of the Great Society. Since that time, overruling Congress has been a rare occurrence at best.”

The Center is the leading advocate of the concept of “nullification” by which the states refuse to obey or enforce a federal law they deem a threat to the rights granted by the Constitution “For over 100 years,” says the Center, “federal power has been on one path and one path alone. It doesn’t matter which political party has been in charge. This case is the last exit ramp on the road to unlimited government.”

The Supreme Court is not famous for overturning its own decisions, precedents, and that is why many observers conclude they will rule in favor of Obamacare.

Add to that, the new Associate Justice, Elana Kagan, should have recused herself from hearing the case, having served as a Solicitor General in the Obama administration. The Court, however, defended her participation. As President Obama’s top advocate, Kagan headed the office responsible for formulating the administration’s defense of Obamacare—and oversaw the arguments both on appeal and in the lower courts because of its national importance. If that is not a conflict of interest, nothing is.

That leaves only one option left and that is a Congress elected in 2012 for the purpose of repealing Obamacare and a President other than Obama to sign it into law. The House has already passed legislation to repeal Obamacare.

Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican candidate for President, is on record he would repeal Obamacare. Now he needs a Republican Senate and a Republican House in order to stop the federal government from becoming so powerful that a new revolution would have to be fought to overthrow it.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The Federal Reserve Rip-Off

By Alan Caruba

I have not been kind to Ron Paul and his participation in the Republican primary campaigns and it has taken me a while to understand why he is doing this. It is clear that he wants to be around to influence the Republican platform and the issue about which he is abundantly correct is the Federal Reserve.

Anyone taking notice of Obama’s latest budget has to conclude that his mission is to crash the nation’s economy and turn America into a Socialist worker’s paradise. The only problem is that Socialism has been a dismal failure everywhere it has been tried.

One only has to look at the collapse of the Soviet Union for confirmation of that, the Chinese abandonment of Communist economic theory, and Obama’s odd notion that a nation can spend itself out of ever-increasing debt.

I am not a fan of Paul’s isolationism, but he is absolutely right about getting rid of the Federal Reserve.

Established in 1913, the same year income taxes were instituted, the Reserve is not part of the federal government. It is, in fact, privately owned by a consortium of banks and that might include foreign banks as well.

In a remarkable essay, “10 Things That Every American Should Know About The Federal Reserve” by Michael T. Snyder, it is clear that the Constitution intended to have the U.S. Treasury to be soley responsible to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.”

Snyder points out that the Federal Reserve System (the Fed) is a privately owned banking cartel and one granted the right to create money out of thin air.

It is, says Synder “a perpetual debt machine because “whenever more money is created, more debt is created as well.” On top of its ability to create money, the government then borrows it, increasing the cost to taxpayers by way of the interest that must be paid to the Fed.

The government issues U.S. Treasury bonds with which to secure a loan from the Fed and it, in turn, sells them to others. Money from nothing; interest on that money, and earnings from the U.S. Treasury bonds it then sells!

Synder noted that in fiscal 2011 the U.S. government paid out $454 billion just in interest on the national debt. “The truth is that our current debt-based monetary system was designed by greedy bankers that wanted to make enormous profits by using the Federal Reserve as a tool to create money out of thin air and lend it to the U.S. government at interest.”

“On July 1, 1914 (a few months after the Fed was created) the U.S. national debt was $2.9 billion dollars. Today it is more than 5,000 times larger.”

If Rep. Paul can convince enough people to end the Federal Reserve Americans might actually learn how many trillions it loans to “too big to fail” Wall Street banking institutions as well as to foreign banks, generally without oversight by the Congress.

The previous Chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan, confessed to be totally astonished by the housing bubble that led to the 2008 financial crisis, His successor, Ben Bernanke, the current Chairman of the Fed, has been consistently wrong about the economy since taking office. In 2005 Bernanke said that housing prices had never declined on a nationwide basis and predicted full employment as far as the eye could see.

Those mysterious financial instruments, derivatives, were perfectly safe said Bernanke.

In 2008, he was still predicting housing prices would probably keep rising. In 2007 he saw no problem with the subprime mortgages that two “government sponsored entities”, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, kept pressuring banks to make. “A few months before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed, Bernanke said ‘The GSEs are adequately capitalized. They are in no danger of failing.’”

Any CEO or CFO with a record like that would be out on the street looking for a job. And this man is still in charge of the Federal Reserve.

The latest budget put forth by the Obama administration demonstrates the same level of incompetence and wishful thinking. “All the voters need to do is suspend belief for another nine months. And ignore the first four years,” opined The Wall Street Journal.

The budget essentially says that what a government that is deeply in debt---with the size of it growing daily---has to do is to borrow and spend more! And, oh yes, Obama wants to raise taxes on everyone and everything.

While I would not vote for Rep. Paul to be President, I applaud his lonely campaign to get Americans to think about ridding the nation of the Federal Reserve and to begin exercising fiscal restraint before we become the next Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy or France.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

America's Dark Mood

By Alan Caruba

It is possible for an entire nation to suffer depression? Not the financial, but the emotional kind.

I have not spoken to anyone, however, that has expressed any optimism about the state of the nation and the air is full of conspiracy theories regarding what new action Barack Obama might take. The most popular of these is that he will declare “a national emergency” in order to assert powers that would put him in control of the nation without reference or consultation with Congress.

I would have dismissed such a notion in the past, but Obama genuinely scares me and a lot of other people as well. An example of this was the great surge in gun sales that led up to Christmas. Guns are not generally regarded as the kind of gift you find under the Christmas tree unless you’re a hunter or shooting sportsman.

I cannot shake off the memory of the march on Washington in 2009 when an estimated million Americans gathered there to peacefully protest the pending passage of Obamacare. The President’s chief political advisor, David Axelrod, dismissed the gathering saying, “They’re wrong.” That’s beyond arrogance. It signals contempt for the way a democracy works.

They were not wrong and the Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing in March in response to 26 U.S. State Attorney Generals who filed suit to have Obamacare declared unconstitutional. The manner in which the then-Democrat controlled Congress forced the bill through to passage was scary, along with then-Speaker Pelosi’s statement that we just would have to read the bill “to find out what’s in it.” It was apparent that none of members of Congress who voted for it had bothered to do that.

What’s scary, too, is that Congress has provided the presidency with all manner of virtually dictatorial powers that were intended to be evoked only in the event of a major, national crisis. Even following 9/11 these powers were not used to hamper news coverage, freedom of travel, and other aspects of our lives. 9/11, however, was followed by the Patriot Act and many of us continue to have grave misgivings about some of its provision.

A more recent piece of legislation that permits the President to authorize the seizure, arrest and imprisonment of anyone deemed an enemy of the state is scarier still. Obama says he would not use such powers but modern history is filled with examples of dictators that did.

So, yes, America is in a very dark mood these days. New Hampshire’s citizens are poised to vote for a Republican to be that party’s candidate for the presidency. Adopted in 1945, at the end of World War Two, New Hampshire’s state motto is “Live free or die.” It is my hope that other Americans feel the same way.

Suffice to say that Barack Hussein Obama is not like any other President in the history of the nation. It is more than a little frightening that this unknown quantity was so carefully “packaged” that, along with a mainstream media that were literally enthralled with him, enough voters were found to elect him.

A lot of those voters were young and likely unaware of U.S. history, the Constitution, and the principles by which the nation is intended to be governed. A lot of those young voters, now a bit older, looking for jobs that don’t exist, living at home still, and perhaps also saddled with huge college loan debt may not vote at all or vote for anyone but Obama.

The other group that was instrumental in his victory was African-Americans and one wonders if a majority among them have had a change of heart. I doubt it. A third group was union members and the civil service unions and others have benefited greatly from his Administration despite growing opposition at the state level.

It is worth keeping in mind that there is a hard core of 25% to 30% of voters who are blindly liberal and utterly immune to facts or reality. The “Occupy” movement drew from this group and they quickly wore out their welcome wherever they gathered. If enough liberals are disheartened by their personal situation, they too may not turn out in large numbers to vote.

As for the GOP, it has become fractionalized by its libertarian segment, its evangelical Christian segment, and by what was a cohesive Tea Party conservative segment. They need to set aside their differences to elect a candidate who can defeat Obama and I am inclined to believe that the closer we get to Election Day, they will.

As with any depression, one has to shake it off and find ways to turn dark moods in to bright tomorrows. That’s America’s job. We have done it in the past and we can do it again.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

System Failure on a Global Scale

By Alan Caruba

We are living in times when the structures involving the global financial system, national security, and self-governance are under attack, decaying, or just self-destructing due to all the ills to which humanity is prone.

Wars in the twentieth century were always an example of either the failure of nations to resolve their differences or of the ancient human inclination to steal whatever they can from their neighbor. Wars organize this into armies for that purpose. The other cause for war is the necessity to rid the neighborhood of the crazy guy who’s hoarding weapons and building bombs.

What is occurring of late, however, goes beyond the usual casus belli to something far greater, a loss of faith in national and international banking systems, aggravated by the failure of nations to act in a prudent fashion to protect the wealth of their citizens and their national sovereignty.

The cause of this is socialism, the polite name for communism. Like Islam, it exists for world domination, the control of the population for the enrichment of those holding the reins of power. It is no accident that the U.S. Congress is filled with millionaires or those who soon will be.

Communism, the creation of a man who never held a job in his life, Karl Marx, and its theoretically gentler version, Socialism, has proved to be a failure wherever it was implemented. It is always introduced as the antechamber to utopia, a better life for everyone and it has always led to the slaughter of millions in the name of achieving it. It is just another form of slavery.

Socialism, as practiced throughout the United States and Europe, dependent as it is on the “redistribution of wealth” in the form of “entitlement” programs is now crashing down around the heads of various elected leaders.

As the former British Prime Minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher, once famously said, “Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.”

When you pile on debt beyond the mind’s capacity to imagine and you empower “super committees” or hold desperate meetings as are occurring in Europe, public faith in national currencies begins to disappear and with it a rational world in which goods and services generate income.

We are now 66 years since the end of World War Two, the war that followed “the war to end all wars”, World War One. Peace—the absence of war—lasted a scant twenty-one years in Europe before the latter cataclysm began in 1939.

Times of turmoil are the perfect opportunity for tyrants of every description to emerge, organize the collective anger, and launch new wars. In the past 66 years of “peace” there has been a succession of wars, usually between Communist and Capitalist nations such as the Korean and Vietnam Wars or civil wars. The recent wars and revolutions in the Middle East have been about oil and who gets to pump it out of the ground.

Threatening the entire world is the rise of the Islamic Revolution. Islam is less a religion than a battle plan for global conquest that has the added fillip of enslaving its adherents in a faith system that demands total obedience on pain of death. Unbelievers in general face this threat. Israel in particular always has.

Capitalism isn’t a perfect system, subject to periodic cycles of recession and depression, but it does require a greater measure of individual freedom than any other in order to encourage the kind of innovation and risk-taking that creates vast wealth-producing economies.

The problem the West is facing has been brought on by the profligate and often corrupt waste of the people’s wealth. This has been the result of metastasizing laws whose ultimate purpose is to keep populations from demanding more freedom from rapacious taxing, borrowing, and spending. Even central banks are powerless against this. Ours, the Federal Reserve, has responded by printing dollars out of thin air.

On November 18th a proposed constitutional amendment that would require Congress to balance the budget failed in the House. The U.S. is currently $15 trillion in debt. The worst fears of our Founding Fathers are coming true. Presiding over the nation is a Marxist ideologue and his henchmen.

When the Congress of the United States of America refuses to obey the limits of the Constitution, you have failure.

When that same Congress refuses to reform “entitlement” programs and reduce massive spending, you have failure.

When the Federal Reserve—a central bank that is not a part of the federal government— owns most of the nation’s debt, you have failure.

In my lifetime, the United States of America went from a largely Capitalist system and society to one of near total government control. It is Socialism supported by an insane system of taxation lacking even the appearance of fairness.

The United States has moved too far away from the purpose of the Constitution, established to “form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…”

We are that posterity,

In the decades since the last Great Depression a succession of Congresses has bankrupted the nation once again. It is happening as well in Europe because nations like Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and France thought they too could defy common sense and fiscal prudence.

It is system failure on a global scale.

Americans and the citizens of Europe are the unwilling victims of too much government, too much regulation, too much corruption, too much taxation, and the general inclination of those in charge to acquire as much wealth for themselves while keeping the rest of the population complacent with “redistribution of wealth” schemes that always fail.

The Tea Party movement is calling for a restoration of America. We have precious little time to do that and it is the Democratic Party in league with unions who oppose that goal.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Super Committee Suicide

By Alan Caruba

By the weekend, news reports indicated that the congressional Super Committee was closing in on an agreement. The deficit-cutting panel is mandated to trim at least $1.2 trillion in federal spending over the next ten years and, failing an agreement, automatic cuts would begin in 2013, after the national elections.

In days, however, it was clear that there was no agreement and the Super Committee, as Congress has always done, was looking at a variety of gimmicks and magical thinking to avoid having to address what is now a $15 trillion national debt, more than an entire year’s Gross Domestic Product.

The Super Committee was and is a bad idea on many levels if for no other reason than the Constitution requires that all bills involving expenditures must originate in the House of Representatives (Article 1, Section 7), but “the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.” The Constitution, however, has mattered less and less to U.S. Congresses for a very long time.

On November 8, ABC News reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “suggested that the White House is pulling for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction…to fail because success would step on their storyline of Republican obstructionism.” Because Washington is a house of mirrors, the news of the past week has been of Democratic obstructionism.

By the end of the week, the President said that he would not sign any bill that repeals the automatic spending reductions that would occur if the Committee does not come to an agreement. “That veto threat,” said a Wall Street Journal article “was a response to GOP lawmakers’ proposals to shield the Pentagon from such cuts.”

On Veteran’s Day, November 11th, a Wall Street Journal editorial, “If Iran Gets the Bomb", took note of the International Atomic Energy Agency report that Iran was closing in on having its own nuclear weapons, saying that “The serious choice now before the Administration is between military strikes and more of the same. As the IAEA report makes painfully clear, more of the same means a nuclear Iran, possibly within a year.”

So, while Iran closes in on becoming a nuclear power, national election campaigns will be raging in 2012 with Obama’s only hope of reelection being to claim that the Republican Party is blocking his efforts to tame unemployment, revive the economy, and keep America safe. Meanwhile, Democrat members of the committee keep pushing for new taxes in the midst of a “recession” that rivals the Great Depression.

If it wasn’t so absurd, it would be laughable, but it is also the worst possible time to have automatic budget cuts that would take as much as $500 billion out of the Pentagon’s budget over the next decade if the Super Committee cannot find agreement. Reportedly, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was looking for potential savings in the budget by cutting the Pentagon’s nuclear arsenal!

The state of our military equipment is geriatric and it is dwindling. The F-15 fighter jets that make up half the fleet, have an average age of 25 years! Air force strategic bombers average 34 years of age and refueling aircraft are 47 years old. The Navy has fewer ships today than on 9/11; 284 now compared to 316 in 2001.

Equipment and vehicles in use since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq are in need of replacement. If the automatic cuts kick in, the Pentagon budget will be cut by $500 billion over the next ten years, precisely at the time the military will need the means to fight a war that would presumably start in the Middle East if Iran’s threats mean anything.

Cutting the Pentagon budget at this time and into the near future is the worst idea to come out of Congress when a kindergartner could find ways to cut $1.5 trillion from the U.S. budget.

Iran’s leaders, from the day in 1979 they seized American diplomats and held them hostage for 444 days, have been in a state of war against America. An Iranian truck bomb was used against the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon and against Marine barracks in 1983. Iranian-made IEDs killed many U.S. military personnel in Iraq. Within recent weeks we learned of a thwarted Iranian plan to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in a Washington, D.C. restaurant.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei has called for the destruction of Israel, the “little Satan” and America, the “big Satan.”

Ignoring such threats is suicidal.

Israel destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor with a preemptive strike in 1981 and did the same to Syria’s secret nuclear program in 2007. It is unimaginable how events would have played out if Iraq had acquired nuclear weapons. The notion that the United States of America must depend on Israel to end the Iranian threat is cowardly and shameful.

Cutting the Pentagon’s budget now or over the next decade would be suicidal.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Mormon Thing

By Alan Caruba

Article VI, U.S. Constitution: “…No religious test shall ever been required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

First things first—I know very little about the Mormon faith system and, frankly, I don’t care. I may or may not have friends who are Mormon, but since I don’t ask and don’t select my friends on the basis of their religion, I don’t know if they are or not.

The simple fact is that virtually any religion you can name has aspects that seem odd to those not born into it, cause others to drop out of it, and provide rich material for those who mock of all religion. I personally feel more secure around people who have a religion—any religion—than around those who have none, but that’s just me.

So when the media, as usual, seized upon some obscure Texas pastor’s comments about the Mormon Church as a “cult” after he introduced the hapless Gov. Rick Perry at some event, the whole Mormon thing raised its ugly head again as various members of the chatteratti and various ink-stained wretches tried to raise the issue of Mitt Romney’s religion. It is also Jon Huntsman’s religion.

The question, generally stated, is whether Romney could be a good President as a Mormon? It is an idiotic question, the kind that was raised back in the 1960s when John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, ran for office. For my part, I would take Romney any day over the present occupant of the Oval Office who claims to have been a parishioner and close friend of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a racist and America-basher of the first order.

For deep dish conservatives concerned about Mormons serving in the White House, Stephen M. Studdert, a former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, recalled that he “truly admired the Latter-day Saints. His administration included more members of the Church than any other American president ever.”

Among those close to Reagan during his eight years as the greatest president of the modern era was Richard Wirthlin, his chief strategist. Terrel Bell served as Reagan’s Secretary of Education, Angela Buchanan was Secretary of the Treasury, and Rex Lee was Solicitor General.

Reagan’s White House included Jon Huntsman, Jr., currently a former governor of Utah and a candidate for the GOP nomination. The national security advisor to Presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft, is now an elder statesman. Suffice to say there were many others. No one recalls that any those Mormons served with anything other than dedication and patriotism.

Still scared of Mormons? Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah was first elected to the Senate in 1992. John Doolittle formerly represented California’s 4th Congressional District. Jeff Flake represents Arizona’s 6th District. Mike Crapo is a Senator from Idaho. A former Senator from Utah, Jake Garn, has previously been an astronaut. Anyone caring enough to check will find many other Mormons who have honorably served in Congress.

One of the most respected members of the Senate is Orrin Hatch of Utah, a Republican. Indeed, all the Congress critters named to this point have been Republicans, but the Senate Majority Leader, Sen. Harry Reid, a Democrat, is also a Mormon.

You can even go back to Eisenhower’s administration and find that Ezra Taft Bensen served as Ike’s Secretary of Agriculture for both terms.

History buffs will tell you that Leroy Eldridge Cleaver who, after a past that included thirteen years as a guest of the California penitentiary system for narcotics possession and assault, became the face in the 1960s of the Black Power movement. After renouncing the movement, Cleaver joined the Church of the Latter-day saints in the 1970s. And, yes, God does work in marvelous ways.

All of this is to say that, despite the misgivings of some Texas pastor and others, Mormons have an admirable record of serving their nation and doubtless, if elected, former Gov. Mitt Romney will do so as well.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

President Bobblehead

By Alan Caruba

As President Obama’s head moved robotically from left to right and back again while his eyes followed the scroll of text on the teleprompters, I began to think about this ever-present factor for all his speeches and why this man is president at all.

It’s not that he isn’t in a world of trouble two-and-a-half years into his first and mercifully last term in office. All presidents “inherit” a variety of problems from their predecessor, but not all presidents—none in fact—spend all their time blaming their predecessor. If there are problems, the presumption is that they were elected on their promises to solve them.

Ronald Reagan asked “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” The voters said no and he served two memorable terms. The nation is now immeasurably worse off than just two-and-a-half years after Obama’s election.

Obama has exacerbated the problems he encountered that first day in the Oval Office and added several horrors, not the least of which is called Obamacare.

Behind the avalanche of words regarding Barack Obama is the central issue of whether he should be president. Anyone else would have been impeached by now. The news media of the 1970s that revealed the corruption of the Watergate scandal, with notable exceptions, now remain silent on this issue.

On July 22, Jeffrey T. Kuhner, writing in The Washington Times, bluntly said “President Obama has engaged in numerous high crimes and misdemeanors…Mr. Obama should be impeached” and was met by wall-to-wall indifference. It wasn’t even a topic for the cable news 24/7 chattering class.

Earlier this year, after reading Dr. Jerome R. Corsi’s book, “Where’s the Birth Certificate?”, I opined that Obama would likely be forced to resign based on the weight of evidence that he was not only ineligible to hold the office under the terms set forth in the U.S. Constitution, but that there was ample evidence that even the Social Security number he was using was fraudulent.

That’s how naïve I am, but I should have realized that the U.S. court system has systematically dismissed cases brought to expose his ineligibility, mostly on the basis that the complainant had no “standing” to do so. If a citizen, operating under the same Constitution as the President has no standing, who does?

Most certainly the Obama administration’s Department of Justice would not take any action. If it prefers to sue the State of Arizona for trying to defend its own border with Mexico, and wouldn’t prosecute members of the New Black Panther Party who were videotaped trying to intimidate white voters, the likelihood of the DOJ doing anything involving a constitutionally ineligible President is slim to none.

Corsi’s book, 392 pages of fact-piled-on-fact, begins by asserting that “no legal authority has ever verified Barack Obama’s legal eligibility to be president, that glaring inconsistencies and blackouts in his life narrative has caused widespread doubts among the American populace, and that, in fact, a compelling body of evidence exists that Obama is not a natural-born citizen as is required of all presidents by Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution.”

“No usurper of the office of the president of the United States can be tolerated if the Constitution is to have enduring authority,” said Corsi.

“The test in the upcoming presidential election of 2012,” said Corsi, “is whether or not President Obama will get a second pass on having to present his eligibility credentials to the American public.” Most certainly the birth certificates he has offered thus far either do not meet that test or are complete forgeries.

There is no greater peril to the nation than to have its guiding legal instrument casually ignored. This is written prior to the Republic candidate’s Iowa debate on Fox News Channel, but I would bet the subject of Obama’s ineligibility and usurpation of the office of the presidency will not be mentioned.

© Alan Caruba 2011

Flash Mobs: Being Young, Black, and Male in America Today

By Alan Caruba

Those who follow my commentaries know that I rarely discuss race in America. I find it an unhappy topic at best and, from my readings in U.S. history, I feel safe in saying there was never a good time to be Black in America.

Slavery before, during and after the American Revolution was a stain on the nation and, though some were slave owners, the Founding Fathers knew it. To get the new Constitution ratified among the thirteen States, they had to trim their sails to the point where Article One, Section Two refers to “those bound to service” and, for the purpose of taxation of “free persons”, the slaves were counted as “three fifths of all other Persons.” Ugh.

It would, of course, take a Civil War to end slavery, though Lincoln’s preferred solution was to put the slaves on a ship back to Africa. That was not likely because by 1861 when the war began, there were 3,954,000 slaves, the majority of whom lived on plantations where, from Virginia to Texas, they often outnumbered whites by 13 to 1.

My awareness of Blacks was limited in my youth, growing up in an upscale New Jersey suburban community where they were quite scarce. You could count the number of Black students in my high school on one hand. When I was drafted in the Army most of my service in the early 1960s was on a base in the Deep South. It gave me a close up view of segregation. When I was discharged, I became a journalist on a weekly serving a small New Jersey city neighboring Newark. I was there when the city’s first Black mayor was elected.

It was the time of the Civil Rights movement, filled with marches and tumult. I met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1967 Newark erupted in rioting, the result of poverty, and of sense of being powerless and disenfranchised. The Italians who had run the city gave way to Black politicians and, five decades later, they still are in charge, but the social problems remain.

If anyone would have told me that America would elect a Black President, I would have said that was impossible. I was wrong and so were the many Blacks who rejoiced in the election of Barack Obama, confident that he would take the lead, representing them, paying particular attention to their issues. Obama proved to be more concerned with Islam.

I got to thinking about that when several commentators, referring to how he would be remembered, said that Obama would no longer be remembered as the first Black President, but rather as the first Downgrade President. When he addressed the nation on August 8, his cool detachment seemed alarmingly at odds with the tumult on Wall Street and around the world that had been triggered by Standard & Poor’s decision.

How do Blacks perceive Obama, I wondered.

A friend, Milton, a retired Black corporate executive, attorney, business owner who edits and writes for BlackQuillandInk.com, a website for Black conservatives, responded to my question noting that Black support for Obama’s candidacy was about 98%, but has slipped since to around 86%.

It was his view that the Blacks “have been poisoned to dislike non-Blacks” and to see themselves “as victims.” I understand the victim part, but was surprised by his observation regarding the animosity, if only because White America has gone to fairly extraordinary lengths to redress the ills of the past.

As America’s most famous minority, Blacks are now outnumbered by Hispanics and are being by-passed by virtually all other minority in America in terms of achievement and upward mobility. The chains may have been removed, but, as the syndicated columnist. Walter E. Williams, noted in July 2010, “The pathology seen among a large segment of the Black population is not likely to change because it is not seen for what it is. It has little to do with slavery, poverty and racial discrimination.”

“Today’s black illegitimacy rate is about 70%,” said Williams. “When I was a youngster, during the 1940s, illegitimacy was around 15%...Today, only 35% of black children are raised in two-parent households.”

And it gets worse. In an August 2010 Washington Post article by columnist George Will, he wrote that “By the early 2000s, more than a third of all young black non-college men were under the supervision of the corrections system. More than 60% of black high school dropouts born since the mid-1960s go to prison. Mass incarceration blights the prospects of black women.”

In recent weeks, from the Wisconsin State Fair to Philadelphia, from Milwaukee to Los Angeles, reports of flash mobs of young Blacks attacking whites are stirring racial fears. The most dangerous factor in Black cities and neighborhoods are the hordes of young males, raised by one parent, dropouts from school, no skills, no jobs, no prospects, and lots of angry energy that is too often diverted into crime and violence.

Barack Obama’s economic policies have failed the nation, but they have been especially adverse on Blacks. Black unemployment and foreclosures, for example, have skyrocketed under Obama and remain disproportionately high as compared to other communities. In short, Obama has done nothing for Blacks in America either on the macro and micro level to improve their opportunities or attitudes.

He has nothing in common with them; a half-white Columbia University graduate and Harvard educated lawyer, former instructor at the University of Chicago, married to a Princeton and Harvard graduate, herself an attorney. They have two girls that go to private school and their inner circle of friends, Black and white, are dedicated Marxists.

The editor of BlackQuillandInk.com says. “The Black community refuses to admit how wrong they were in voting for Obama.”

© Alan Caruba, 2011

A Balanced Budget Amendment is No Panacea

By Alan Caruba

As this is being written, early Sunday evening, the House has passed Speaker Boehner’s legislation, rejected on arrival in the Senate, and the Senate has rejected Majority Leader Harry Reid’s!

While the details of how much spending is to be cut are being negotiated, the sticking point is the insistence by some on a “balanced budget” amendment to the Constitution and that is likely the cause of this pathetic spectacle.

J. R. Kearl is a professor of economics in Provo, Utah. He has good academic credentials and, more importantly, he possesses a fair amount of common sense. In a July 19 opinion that appeared in the Deseret News, Prof. Kearl warned that “the balanced budget amendment now being touted by proponents is silent on distinctions between operating and capital expenditures, silent on distinctions between on-budget and off-budget expenditures, and silent on mandated expenditures.”

Those of us who lack degrees in economics may not be familiar with these terms, but they are crucial to how states—even those with balanced budget requirements—conduct the business of governance.

“Many states and local government have balanced budget laws, but they apply only to ‘operating expenditures’ and not ‘capital expenditures’ used to fund, for example, infrastructure and buildings,” wrote Prof. Kearl. “A balanced budget amendment that does not make this distinction rules out this option at the federal level.”

To write such an amendment would require language nearly as long as whole sections of the Constitution. It is impractical and unwise, particularly in the event of a war. It is not needed.

What the U.S. needs is a realistic budget that constrains the way its seemingly endless departments and agencies throw public funds at politically-driven pet projects, the “earmarks” we have heard so much about, and the conduct of functions that would work better if privatized.

As the Constitution defines this, it is “to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States…” Towards this end, the Constitution empowers the Congress to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with Indian tribes” among a number of enumerated duties of the federal government; read Article I, Section 8.

The United States does not need a balanced budget amendment. It needs to stop borrowing and spending money in stupid, wasteful ways. An amendment would only encourage a future Congress to create all manner of agencies and means to get around it and you can be very sure it would.

“In short,” says Prof. Kearl, “it is at best poorly written and incomplete, and at worst naïve and ill conceived.”

If a balanced budget amendment is the issue that is keeping the two houses of Congress from coming to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling, it is a very bad idea that ignores the nation’s obligation to pay its bills.

Cutting spending is the real issue facing a Congress so divided in ideology that even getting an agreement on that will be a major achievement. It is unrealistic to suddenly decide the nation should not borrow what it needs to meet its obligations. All nations borrow all the time.

There would have been no America if the Continental Congress had not borrowed from France to conduct the Revolution.

And this is hardly the first financial crisis in the history of the United States. We have been through a lot of them and, to our credit, have striven mightily to regulate our banks and other financial institutions that have too often failed us.

The present crisis reflects the way that, from 2000 on, we have been poorly served by those regulatory agencies and even by the ratings organizations, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, who sanctioned all manner of hocus-pocus financial instruments.

We are in this mess because both the federal government and individual Americans went on a borrowing and spending binge over the past ten years or so believing that the value of housing in America would always increase.

As they say in New Orleans, laissez le bon temps roulez, let the good times roll. Well, the good times are over until we get our house in order. To do that, the federal government will need to borrow enough to pay its bills.

After that, we need to elect legislators like Paul Ryan and others who will take a chain saw to the present federal government to reduce its size and its role in the economic life of the nation.

Too many feckless decisions have been made for too long by people who frequently came from or benefited from the very source of the problems we have. There are many entities to blame, but let’s get beyond the blame game long enough to pay our bills.

Capitalism is messy and risky, but it is still the best economic system ever devised. Diluting it with a lot of “social justice” programs as the U.S. has been doing since the Great Depression of the 1930s, has brought us to this point.

The least we can expect from Congress is to act swiftly and pragmatically at this point. Those calling each other schoolyard names should not be invited back to govern.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

There is No First Amendment Without a Second Amendment

By Alan Caruba

When we celebrate the Fourth of July, let’s keep in mind that the first Americans won their independence from England with the force of arms. It was, in fact, a British effort in 1775 to confiscate military arms they believed were stored in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts that sparked the war.

The Founding Fathers were so aware of the need for an armed citizenry that, after ensuring freedom of religion, speech, press and the right to peacefully assemble in the First Amendment, the Second guaranteed their right to bear arms.

Wherever authoritarian regimes were established in the last century, they took away this right and then proceeded to kill those deemed enemies of the state.

At this point in American history, the Obama administration constitutes a threat to the Constitution in general and the Second Amendment in particular.

More than 80,000,000 Americans are gun owners.

Two of the organizations that have been fighting to protect these rights are the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), both led by Alan M. Gottlieb. Three quarters of the SAF budget is devoted to defending rights pertaining to the ownership of guns and to carry them for self-defense.

In March, the Huffington Post had an article titled “Obama Looking for Ways Around Congress on Gun Policy” by Sam Stein. “Faced with a Congress hostile to even slight restrictions of Second Amendment rights, the Obama administration is exploring potential changes to gun laws that can be secured strictly through executive action, administration officials, say.”

Since then we have learned of a U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms program, Fast and Furious, that actually facilitated the sale and transfer of guns to Mexico. How demented is that?

In May in my home state of New Jersey the SAF won a decision against officials for the deprivation of civil rights under the color of law when they had ruled that an applicant for a concealed carry permit had not demonstrated a “justifiable need” for it. In point of fact, the applicant, Philip Muller, had been kidnapped by members of a motorcycle gang who threatened to kill him. They had, however, grabbed the wrong man.

Despite support by local and state police, action on his application was delayed for six months. Morris County Superior Court Judge David Ironson issued a directive that a permit should be granted. The case is still on-going with other plaintiffs that include a part-time sheriff’s deputy, an applicant who carries large amounts of cash in his private business, and a civilian employee of the FBI with legitimate concerns of an attack from a radical Islamic group.

Currently nearly thirty such cases have either been brought or joined by SAF to stop abuses of this most fundamental right of American citizens ranging from bans on interstate handgun sales, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s imposition of a $340 fee for a permit to keep a handgun in one’s home, and a Chicago ban on gun ranges open to the public. These cases cost between $60,000 and $80,000 each!

The greatest single threat to gun ownership right now is a United Nations “Small Arms Treaty” falsely identified as an “international arms control treaty” allegedly to fight terrorism.”

“In reality,” says Gottlieb, it is “a massive, global gun control scheme. It’s a sham. It’s a fraud.” If the U.S., under the Obama administration and with the consent of the Senate, were to sign on to this treaty, it would nullify the Second Amendment.

Suffice to say that the Obama administration wants to have the power to increase federal fees on guns and ammunition, to ban guns that are imported, to extend the waiting periods for permits, to ban the use of guns on all government property, and even to make it illegal if you own a gun and smoke!

Americans do not have to “justify” gun ownership. It is guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The reality is that enemies of this fundamental rights continue to wage an assault on it.

For information about SAF visit http://www.saf.org/ and CCRKBA at http://www.ccrkba.org/.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Obama will Resign and for Good Reason

By Alan Caruba

I always thought it was creepy the way Barack Hussein Obama has repeatedly referred to the likelihood of his being a one-term President. It is as if he knew, even as he campaigned in 2008, that all the loose ends and unanswered questions about his life would eventually disqualify him.

It is now widely acknowledged that the mainstream media ran interference for him, ignoring or disparaging those who questioned his eligibility. After two and a half years in office, however, his arrogance and incompetence is so manifest that even they can no longer cover for him.

Obama has single handedly generated a mass political movement called the Tea Party and election results for governors and members of Congress have put opposition candidates into office.

On March 31, 1968, then-President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not run for reelection, responding to the massive opposition to the war in Vietnam. On August 9, 1974, Richard M. Nixon announced his resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal to avoid impeachment.

I predict that Barack Hussein Obama will resign before the end of his first term. He may well do so prior to the September 2012 Democratic Party convention.

Obama was never eligible to run for the office. In his book, “Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama is Not Eligible to be President”, Dr. Jerome R. Corsi, Phd, devotes 387 pages, complete with appendices and endnotes, to irrefutably make that case.

Anyone who reads Article 2, Section 1, of the Constitution, however, can make that case in less than a minute. Only a “natural born” individual whose both parents were American citizens can be President. Obama’s father was a citizen of Kenya. There is no dispute regarding what the Founders meant when they said “natural born.” Further clouding Obama’s eligibility is the time he spent in his youth in Indonesia as the adopted son of that nation’s nationality.

Corsi’s book explores all the other mysteries including a highly suspicious Social Security number, passports, and other documentation that any candidate for office would normally submit to public disclosure. A massive cover up that includes the national press corps, the Democratic Party, Congress and even the U.S. courts, permitted Obama to gain and hold the office.

Indeed, Corsi’s book is not the first to reveal the deceptions. At least three other books have meticulously examined the issue. They include “The Manchurian President” by Aaron Klein with Brenda J. Elliot, “The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency” by Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski, and “The Post-American Presidency” by Pamela Geller with Robert Spencer.

Corsi, however, has the benefit of timing. As the nation enters the period following Obama’s announcement he is running for reelection and during the process of selecting a Republican opponent, the issue of his eligibility is gathering momentum.

The polling data is all against him. The failure of his policies, combined with the massive increase in the national debt, rising unemployment, the implosion of the housing market, and a growing perception of incompetence, are coalescing to give weight to the demand that he end his candidacy or resign.

“History has not been kind to U.S. Presidents that have attempted to hide behind a lie,” says Corsi.

When republics begin to ignore their founding documents, they are literally committing suicide and, in Obama’s case, it is an assisted suicide.

The recognized definition of a “natural born citizen”, a requirement to be President, does not require much more than common sense. In a May article published by Canada Free Press, Lawrence B. Solum, the John E. Cribbett Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, is quoted as having written in September 2008, “Anyone born on American soil whose parents are citizens of the United States is a natural born citizen.”

Ironically, in 2008, his political opponent, Sen. John McCain, whose both parents were Americans when he was born in the Panama Canal Zone, was the subject of a Senate Resolution confirming his eligibility to run. The then-Democrat controlled Senate took up no such action regarding Obama. If they had, they would have had to hold a convention to pick a new candidate!

Lawrence Sellin, the author of the Canada Free Press article cited above, warned “Whether through cowardice or arrogance, both Republican and Democrats fail to appreciate the fact that ordinary Americans are reaching a tipping point. Imagine a Tea Party on steroids.”

“If the Constitutional crisis is not soon addressed, the present political polarization will inevitably lead to political fragmentation. Erosion of the Constitution will inevitably lead to the collapse of the rule of law.”

There is no documentation to support the myths about his life that Obama has carefully devised. Indeed, the President has reportedly spent millions to deny public access to his birth certificate and all other records.

If he resigns, he may be able to assert the legitimacy of every piece of legislation, every executive order, signed into law, but if he is found to have been ineligible, every one of them would become null and void.

The nation can be put right again as a Constitutional Republic. Obama has led an unlawful regime. America has been drunk on socialism since the 1930s. It’s time to sober up.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

A Whiff of Secession and Nullification

By Alan Caruba

In May Rasmussen Reports took a survey of a thousand adults asking if they believed that States have the right to secede. “One-in-five Americans believe individual States have the right to break away from the country, although a majority doesn’t believe it will actually happen.”

That a Tea Party movement sprang to life in the midst of the protests against Obamacare and then was instrumental in transferring political power in the House of Representatives in the 2010 election cannot be dismissed. People—lots of them—are increasingly wary of the central government, particularly one that has burdened them with more debt in the last three years than in the entire prior history of the nation.

In October, Pelican Publishing Company will publish “Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century” in which a number of scholars edited by Donald Livingston, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, examine the implications of secession, possibly by regional groupings of States, from the present federal government.

Prof. Livingston is a political philosopher and scholar, the author of two books on the British philosopher David Hume and may well be one of a handful of people who have given serious thought to the question of whether the present Union has either outlived its usefulness or, worse, become a sinkhole of power aggregating to itself total control over the States.

The Tenth Amendment clearly states that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

That is true, but I doubt there is a single Governor of any of the fifty States who cannot enumerate the ways the federal government has wrested power from them while imposing costs. When Arizona finds itself the object of a federal legal suit to prevent it from trying to control its border with Mexico, you know there’s a problem.

In an article, “Decentralization for Freedom”, by Prof. Livingston, he raises some issues that are increasingly troubling to a growing number of Americans. He addresses the measures States can take “to protect their citizens from usurpations by the central government.” Among these are the passing of resolutions. “A continuous flood of resolutions from the States about the constitutionality of this or that issue (and widely publicized) would serve to educate the public.”

Thereafter, Prof. Livingston recommends a resort to the Tenth Amendment by State legislators and governors in order to recover usurped authority. We are beginning to see another measure, the refusal to accept federal funding as regards its centralized control of education.

Resistance to Obamacare is based on the question whether the federal government can require individual citizens to purchase something they do not want. The House has passed a measure to repeal it, but it is stalled in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Reverse the situation and you have a federal government telling Americans what they cannot buy, as in the case of the 100 watt incandescent light bulb in use since the days of Thomas Edison.

“Genuine federalism in America can be recovered only by political action in the name of the State’s own authority and not by Supreme Court legalism,” says Prof. Livingston.

“To all of this it is often said that State interposition, nullification, and succession were eliminated as policy options by the Civil War. Brute force, however, cannot settle moral and constitutional question.” While Lincoln did “save the Union”, he did so at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and the destruction of the South.

Clearly the central government has grown so large, so unwieldy, so wasteful, and so unresponsive to the problems and costs it has imposed that people are beginning to wonder why 435 Representatives in the House and 100 in the Senate should control the lives, the economy, and the education of more than 300 million people in fifty sovereign States.

The President virtually makes law with “executive orders” and the nine members of the Supreme Court exercises final authority of the constitutionality of laws. Congress is so divided by raw partisanship it is barely functioning.

“The only remedy,” says Prof. Livingston “is territorial division of the Union through secession into a number of different and independent political units.”

“The current central government of the United States hates inequality, but it also fears the people,” says Prof. Livingston, noting that “There is no law an American State can pass that cannot be overturned by the arrogant social engineers of the Supreme Court who in the last fifty years have played with the inherited moral traditions and federative policy of the American people like a quack with a hapless patient.”

“Constitutionally, this means that the States must reassert their sovereignty under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments and recall those powers they have allowed to slip out of their hands to the central government.”

This is not a call for anarchy. It is the realization that the modern presidency has aggregated to itself powers it does not have or, in the case of Libya, is ignoring the War Powers Act that limits its ability to engage the nation in conflicts Congress does not ultimately authorize.

It is the realization that every United Nations treaty the United States signs deprives it of its sovereign rights.

It is a call for consideration that regional groups of States with common interests might provide better government within such groups, leaving to the central government the responsibility to protect the nation via a common military, conduct foreign affairs, and return to the gold standard that would protect the value of a common currency.

When one-in-five Americans give credence to the right of secession, it is clear that the problems being experienced in all fifty States, the massive regulation of all activities within those States, the imposition of a centralized “core” curriculum to be taught in all schools, is arousing a rediscovered sense of liberty among Americans.

What steps must be taken to retain that liberty and even to restructure the Union are as yet undetermined, but they are increasingly entering the public debate.

There is no debate that something is terribly wrong when a president is elected whose eligibility and legitimacy is in serious question while the courts do nothing to address this critical constitutional issue and the Congress does nothing while sending bills for his signature.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Civil War Began 150 Years Ago - April 12, 1861

By Alan Caruba

The American Civil War began one hundred and fifty years ago on April 12, 1861.

Historians will tell you that the South never had a chance of winning it. Theirs was an agrarian society, heavily dependent on millions of slaves. How many millions? An 1860 census found that slaves constituted 13% of the population, numbering 3,950,528, most of whom were in the South.

Even the Founding Fathers knew that slavery was an issue that would one day create a terrible problem, but their priority was to come up with a Constitution that would rectify the problems that the Articles of Confederation posed.

Perhaps at no other time in the nation’s history did it have such an astonishing collection of brilliance gathered in one place. They needed the Southern States to secure ratification so the problem of slavery was pushed off to the future.

Depending on which side of the Mason-Dixon Line you’re on, you will still get a dispute over why the Civil War was fought. The South says it was about state’s rights and, indeed, had expectations that they could secede lawfully. The North said it was about the issue of slavery and most agree it was.

Lincoln’s first inaugural speech on March 4, 1861 began with an assertion rarely noted.

“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

Lincoln ended, saying, “I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

On April 12, 1861, Confederate Brig. General, P.G.T. Beauregard, an expert artilleryman, graduate of West Point, laid siege to Fort Sumpter in the harbor of Charleston, S.C., where federal troops had been withdrawn in anticipation of war.

The War of Independence that had concluded after eight years in 1783 had cost about 25,000 lives. The Revolution was still relatively fresh in the minds of Americans in that era. Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had both died on July 4, 1826,

The Constitution went into force in 1788. The Civil War began 73 years later. It is regarded as the first “modern” war for its use of locomotives, the telegraph, and the development of new weapons.

It was surely the first modern war in terms of its casualties. Between 1861 and 1865, they totaled 618,222. The slaughter in some battles was so vast one could walk across a field of battle on the bodies of the dead. The Civil War battle in The Wilderness killed 17,666, Spotsylvania killed 10,920, and Petersburg cost 16,569. Total battle deaths for the Union, including disease, numbered 360,222. For the South, it was 258,000.

By contrast, U.S. casualties in World War Two, 1941 to1945, numbered 407,316. The toll of the Iraq conflict, 2003-2011, was 4,430. Afghanistan has cost 4,430 lives.

It is not until one grapples with such numbers can one understand the price paid to keep the Union intact. Three Presidents played key roles. James Buchanan did little to avert the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln pursued it for the entirety of his two terms, the latter cut short by assassination. Andrew Johnson allowed Reconstruction to fall into corruption and resentment. It matters who is President.

It took another century into the 1960s for blacks in America to finally secure their civil rights. In that decade, Americans endured riots in their cities and the loss of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. along with a number of generally forgotten martyrs.

Perhaps the greatest irony of the Civil War was the belief on both sides that it would be over quickly. All people in all times want wars to be short, but they rarely are. Their aftermath can last a very long time. A Cold War followed the end of World War Two and lasted for nearly a half century.

Within and beyond nation’s borders, wars have raged somewhere since what we call civilization began around 5,000 years ago. They have various causes for good or ill. They are, however, the way nations have settled their differences.

Anti-war protesters and those who disrespect our Armed Forces will never understand this, but they owe a debt called liberty to those who do.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Nullification in 2011!

By Alan Caruba

The great issue of our times is the same great issue of the 1830s. The question is whether Congress can pass legislation or the President issue executive orders that are not authorized by or consistent with the Constitution?

The federal government is a republic composed of separate and sovereign republics.

What recourse do the States have individually and in combination when the central government acts in a fashion that is contrary to the limits and enumerated powers of the Constitution?

The answer, other than an appeal to the courts, is nullification. This term is defined as the assertion that States can and should refuse to enforce unconstitutional federal laws.

This is no trifling matter.

In the past two years since the advent of the Obama administration, the federal government has seized control of one sixth of the nation’s economy, asserting control over the provision of healthcare.

It seized control of General Motors and Chrysler auto manufacturers, arbitrarily casting aside the rightful expectations of their bondholders and other creditors.

It has imposed absurd and invasive demands on air travelers.

It is considering a United Nations treaty that would render the Second Amendment null and void.

It has sued Arizona for enacting an immigration law that mirrors its own.

It is attempting through the FCC to assert control over the Internet.

In the 1860s the issue of state’s rights led to the Civil War.

One hundred and fifty years ago, on December 22, 1860, the State of South Carolina declared its independence and seceded from the Union. It did not arrive at this decision overnight. In fact, on December 10, 1832, President Andrew Jackson issued a proclamation to South Carolina disputing its right to nullify a federal law.

A South Carolina convention had declared that the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 “are unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States and violate the true meaning and intent thereof and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State.”

Subsequent to Jackson’s proclamation, Congress passed the Force Act that authorized the use of military force against any State that resisted the tariff acts. A compromise engineered by Henry Clay resulted in the tariff of 1833, designed to reduce southern objections. South Carolina ended its nullification effort, but by 1861 it would no longer bend to the mandates of the federal government.

Contrary to some historical reinterpretation, the Civil War was all about State’s rights. Though President Lincoln opposed slavery, he did not introduce the issue into the conflict until after the awful slaughter on the battlefields that led to the Emancipation Proclamation. It came three years after the war had begun and was intended to introduce a moral dimension to the conflict. Slaves, however, were only freed in the Confederate southern States.

There are many issues worthy of nullification these days.

At the top of the current list is Obamacare and the fact that some twenty States have filed suit against its enforcement clearly demonstrates (1) an intense rejection of it and (2) the willingness of States to use the judicial system to seek relief.

Beyond that, we have entire federal agencies that have no legitimate basis in the Constitution.

The Department of Education should be abolished. The Constitution makes no mention of education as a federal concern. It was and should be up to the States and local communities to oversee general education. Part of the controversy raging these days concerns teacher’s union contracts that are contributing to the bankruptcy of many States.

The Department of Energy, created by executive order, should be abolished. States should have the right to determine how their natural resources should be either protected or utilized. Requiring states to use so-called alternative (wind and solar) energy is seriously wrong.

Likewise, the Environmental Protection Agency, also created by executive order, has so exceeded its original mandate that it has become a lethal threat to the economy and the welfare of all Americans.

Nullification should be utilized to rid us of these and other federal entities that overstep their mission, threatening the Bill of Rights and other constitutional limitations and freedoms.

To learn more about the nullification movement, visit the Nullify Now website and the website of the Tenth Amendment Foundation.

This nation has been heading toward nullification since the 1930s when many of the Constitution’s restrictions of federal power were cast aside. This has brought the nation to the brink of financial collapse. To save it, nullification may be required.

Editor’s note: To learn more about this topic, Tom Woods has written “Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 2lst Century.”

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Any Fool Can Understand the Commerce Clause

By Alan Caruba

I am not a lawyer. I never wanted to be a lawyer. I have some friends who are lawyers and I forgive them and occasionally have to employ them. America, at the federal, state, and local level generates so many laws that the system requires a legion of lawyers to deal with them. The result is a general lack of respect for all laws short of the Ten Commandments.

The U.S. Constitution, in effect since June 21, 1788 when New Hampshire became the ninth State to ratify it, is a remarkable document, not the least for being the oldest functioning constitution of any nation at this point in time. What I like best about it is that anyone can read and understand it.

Until the progressive era in the U.S. that began in the 1900s and went bonkers in the 1930s, the Constitution underwent a number of judicial interpretations that largely affirmed the intentions of the Founding Fathers who wrote it. This was made easier by the existence of the Federalist Papers, letters and writings by the Framers, who clarified its various elements.

The Constitution was not foisted on Americans. It was, after the collapse of the Articles of Confederation, widely discussed and debated. With the addition of the Bill of Rights, all the original States signed onto it. There have been only 27 Amendments because, wisely the Framers contrived to make the process as difficult as possible. They also fashioned an instrument of governance intended to slow down the entire legislative process.

Americans understand that passing 2,000-plus page bills that have not been read or attempting to pass such bills hurriedly during the “lame duck” session of Congress, many of whose members have been voted out of office, is an obscenity, an offense to the intent of the Constitution.

Anyone reading Article One, Section 8, understands it enumerates a number of powers allocated solely to the Federal government such as the coining of money, declaring war, and such. It was always understood that the federal government is limited to the exercise of the Constitution's enumerated powers.

One of those powers is “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes…” That is the commerce clause.

The meaning of commerce was limited to “trade and exchange” of goods and transportation for this purpose. The purpose was to make “regular” such activity; to provide laws to ensure that business would be conducted properly between the States or with foreign nations to everyone’s mutual benefit.

What the commerce clause does not authorize is the right of the federal government to compel a citizen to involuntarily purchase anything.

The “linchpin” of Obamacare is the requirement that everyone must purchase health insurance or to suffer a financial penalty for failing to do so, but the federal government has restricted the free purchase of health insurance across State lines, thus inhibiting competition that would allow for lower rates. There is a touch of schizophrenia in this.

As Judge Henry Hudson recently ruled in the case of Virginia v. Sebelius, on December 13, “Neither the Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has extended Commerce Clause powers to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market. In doing so, enactment of the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision (the individual mandate) exceeds the Commerce Clause powers vested in Congress under Article 1.”

“The Minimum Essential Coverage Provision is neither within the letter, nor the spirit of the Constitution.”

That should be the end of the issue and the end of Obamacare, but as the late Justice Rehnquist noted in one decision, “it is illuminating for purposes of reflections, if not for argument, to note that one of the greatest fictions of our federal system is that the Congress exercises only those powers delegated to it, while the remainder are reserved to the States or to the people.”

The growth of the powers Congress has arrogated to itself is the singular greatest threat to freedom and liberty in America. This is why so many individual States have joined in the several cases brought against Obamacare.

Failing a common sense ruling on this case by the Supreme Court, the States have but one option left and that is nullification. They can, individually and together, pass laws to restrict the implementation of Obamacare.

Meanwhile, the incoming 2011 Congress can and should do everything in its power to defund and otherwise thwart this assault on liberty.

In 2012, Americans can rid themselves of the current usurper of the office of the presidency, a man whose first executive order, #13489, issued on January 21, 2009, was directed at hiding all essential documentation of his legitimacy.

© Alan Caruba, 2010