By Alan Caruba
“The Senate failed to obtain cloture on the DREAM Act amnesty (S. 2205) on October 24 by a 52-44 vote, for which 60 YES votes were needed to prevent a filibuster. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) and Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Ill) were attempting to bring this nightmarish amnesty bill to the floor under Senate Rule XIV without it ever having been debated in committee.” (Oct 24, 2008)
This was the notice that arrived from an organization devoted to getting a handle on the immigration mess that is one part Bush administration indifference and one part the effort of Mexico to alter the population of the United States. Mexico has encouraged one tenth of its population (much of it illegal) to move to the U.S.A. instead of finding the means to build an economy whereby they might actually want to stay in Mexico.
As bad as the failure to get control over the nation’s southern border is, the notice to me bespoke Sen. Reid’s complete contempt for the U.S. Constitution. The notion that the Democrat Majority Leader would try to slip a bill through the Senate without that body having an opportunity to even debate it is obscene.
Americans of a generation or two born since the years just preceding and following World War II received an education that placed a fair amount of emphasis on American history and about the Constitution that binds us together and has afforded us becoming the most powerful financial and military nation on earth. There was a time when that honor belonged to the British Empire, but they let it slip away.
We are in very real danger of letting the requirements of the Constitution slip away as more and more power is ceded to the Executive branch, the Presidency, and while the Legislative branch, Congress, fails to engage in the primary job of democracy, compromise. The whole purpose of the Constitution was to slow down and require debate among opposing factions for the purpose of requiring them to compromise. Failing that, we end up with more bad laws than good.
We now live in a vile era of politics in which a “winner take all” philosophy exists and the warfare between Democrats and Republicans does injury to the purpose of government. The Republican majority that began when voters turned Congress over to Republicans in 1994 and then the first Bush presidency with its hair-thin victory. The lesson of that was lost on Bush and Cheney.
“The Chief Executive will on occasion feel duty bound to assert monarchical notions of prerogative that will permit him to exceed the laws,” said an obscure Representative from Wyoming back in the days when Congress was investigating an illegal operation to supply Nicaraguan anti-communists under cover of Reagan’s National Security Council. That’s what Dick Cheney thought then and he has pursued that philosophy and policy in spades since becoming the Vice President.
In the same way that Congress has not acted upon its exclusive Constitutional mandate to declare war since WWII, it has been the presidents since Truman that have controlled that process. It’s why we drifted into Iraq without much serious debate in Congress. It’s why Americans wonder out loud if (or when) Bush will get us into a war with Iran without taking the decision to Congress.
Everybody senses that something is very wrong with Congress and out of control with the White House.
If more people actually knew something about American history in general and the U.S. Constitution in particular, they would be a lot more worried.
Showing posts with label Presidents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Presidents. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
The Worst Ex-President Ever
By Alan Caruba
Historians and others love to make lists of the best and the worst of personalities and events, so permit me to offer a candidate as the Worst Ex-President Ever. I give you Jimmy Carter, anti-Semite, intellectual and moral weakling, and all-around bad person.
I think Jimmy will edge out Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor who made a botch of the Reconstruction after the Civil War and cannot even begin to compare with the largely unknown Harry Truman who succeeded Franklin Delano Roosevelt to see through to a successful conclusion of World War II, the implementation of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, and after other wise decisions, retired to his home in Independence, Missouri. Neither Truman, nor other former Presidents, constantly sought the public spotlight to voice criticism of those who followed him into the Oval Office.
Jimmy Carter, who gained the highest office largely because of the voter’s revulsion against the Watergate scandals and the resignation of Richard M. Nixon, cannot shut up. During his time in office he blamed the American people for a “malaise” that affected the economy that was largely in the dumps. It never occurred to him that cutting taxes and taking other measures might have helped stabilize or jump-start the economy.
He was in office in 1979 when the Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took our diplomats hostage. Other than a poorly planned, failed military mission to extricate them, the voters would have to wait 444 days for Ronald Reagan to take office before their release.
Jimmy Carter presided over the giveaway of one of the most important U.S. assets on this and the southern continent, the Panama Canal. The result of that idiotic decision is that the People’s Republic of China now owns property at both ends of the Canal. He is best known for negotiating a 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in which Israel gave up the Sinai captured in the 1967 war, a conflict initiated by Egypt. Islamic militants rewarded the Egyptian president by assassinating him.
His response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was to cancel U.S. participation in the Moscow Olympic Games and imposing a grain embargo. The former short-circuited the benefits that would have accrued from any victories by U.S. athletes and the latter created a world of pain for U.S. farmers.
Jimmy Carter was and is a dunce, a dolt, a moron of spectacular proportions and since his defeat by Ronald Reagan, he has been a petulant, vile little man. Never mind that he won the Nobel peace Prize in 2002. Yassir Arafat, the father of all Arab terrorists, also won that prize and it has since been handed out to a succession of people like Mikhail S. Gorbechev and Kofi Annan with sometimes dubious credentials.
The complete destruction of that Prize’s diminished stature will occur if Al Gore receives it.
Of late, Carter has written a book comparing Israel’s sixty years of being under attack by its Arab “neighbors” to South Africa’s Apartheid policies. This totally ignores Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon and from the Gaza strip, the occupation of both were the result of wars waged against it.
He is in the news again for having publicly attacked Vice President Dick Cheney as a “disaster” and a “militant.” He accused Cheney of avoiding any service in the military, ignoring the obvious fact that Cheney served as Secretary of Defense at one point in his career of public service.
The former President (1977 to 1981) needs to take heed of the meritorious behavior of former Presidents who refused to criticize those who held the job after them, but he can’t because he knows what a failure he was and is oblivious to what a failure he is.
Historians and others love to make lists of the best and the worst of personalities and events, so permit me to offer a candidate as the Worst Ex-President Ever. I give you Jimmy Carter, anti-Semite, intellectual and moral weakling, and all-around bad person.
I think Jimmy will edge out Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor who made a botch of the Reconstruction after the Civil War and cannot even begin to compare with the largely unknown Harry Truman who succeeded Franklin Delano Roosevelt to see through to a successful conclusion of World War II, the implementation of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, and after other wise decisions, retired to his home in Independence, Missouri. Neither Truman, nor other former Presidents, constantly sought the public spotlight to voice criticism of those who followed him into the Oval Office.
Jimmy Carter, who gained the highest office largely because of the voter’s revulsion against the Watergate scandals and the resignation of Richard M. Nixon, cannot shut up. During his time in office he blamed the American people for a “malaise” that affected the economy that was largely in the dumps. It never occurred to him that cutting taxes and taking other measures might have helped stabilize or jump-start the economy.
He was in office in 1979 when the Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took our diplomats hostage. Other than a poorly planned, failed military mission to extricate them, the voters would have to wait 444 days for Ronald Reagan to take office before their release.
Jimmy Carter presided over the giveaway of one of the most important U.S. assets on this and the southern continent, the Panama Canal. The result of that idiotic decision is that the People’s Republic of China now owns property at both ends of the Canal. He is best known for negotiating a 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in which Israel gave up the Sinai captured in the 1967 war, a conflict initiated by Egypt. Islamic militants rewarded the Egyptian president by assassinating him.
His response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was to cancel U.S. participation in the Moscow Olympic Games and imposing a grain embargo. The former short-circuited the benefits that would have accrued from any victories by U.S. athletes and the latter created a world of pain for U.S. farmers.
Jimmy Carter was and is a dunce, a dolt, a moron of spectacular proportions and since his defeat by Ronald Reagan, he has been a petulant, vile little man. Never mind that he won the Nobel peace Prize in 2002. Yassir Arafat, the father of all Arab terrorists, also won that prize and it has since been handed out to a succession of people like Mikhail S. Gorbechev and Kofi Annan with sometimes dubious credentials.
The complete destruction of that Prize’s diminished stature will occur if Al Gore receives it.
Of late, Carter has written a book comparing Israel’s sixty years of being under attack by its Arab “neighbors” to South Africa’s Apartheid policies. This totally ignores Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon and from the Gaza strip, the occupation of both were the result of wars waged against it.
He is in the news again for having publicly attacked Vice President Dick Cheney as a “disaster” and a “militant.” He accused Cheney of avoiding any service in the military, ignoring the obvious fact that Cheney served as Secretary of Defense at one point in his career of public service.
The former President (1977 to 1981) needs to take heed of the meritorious behavior of former Presidents who refused to criticize those who held the job after them, but he can’t because he knows what a failure he was and is oblivious to what a failure he is.
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