Archive for the ‘Current Events’ Category

Van Jones said that he and environmentalists stayed quiet during the BP oil disaster in 2010 because Barack Obama was president — and admitted he would have “been out there with a sign protesting” had George W. Bush or John McCain been occupying the White House.

Jones, Obama’s former green energy adviser, made the comments during a recent interview on C-SPAN’s Book TV:

“I’m critical of myself, first, and the environmentalists. When the oil spill that happened in the spring of 2010, there was another moment to say, ‘Hold on a second, let’s re-look at energy policy in America. Should we be subsidizing companies that are risking our health immediately and in the long-term?‘ We didn’t do it. You’ve never seen the environmental movement more quiet during an oil spill. I guarantee you, if John McCain had been president, with that oil spill, or George Bush had been president with that oil spill, I’d have been out there with a sign protesting. I didn’t, because of who the president was. Well, that’s a bad, uh, uh…that’s not good for the earth, it’s not good for the cause, it’s probably not good for the president. It’s certainly not the way we should conduct ourselves. And so, I’m very tough on progressive movements and leaders, including myself, who did not stand on principle, based on who we looked across and saw as president.” Source

OCCUPIER SAYS BREAKING WINDOWS AND BURNING COP CARS ISN’T VIOLENCE

Yesterday we learned that the SEIU, a union with heavy ties to President Obama, is paying $4,000 per month for office space in downtown Washington D.C. What is the office space for? Occupiers to organize and meet. President Obama supports Occupy Wall Street. So yesterday, I decided to take a trip down to the Occupy offices and check it out for myself. The office is located on 16th and L and is on the 6th floor.

I walked up to the door, took a picture of it and asked if there was someone in there I could talk to. I was then brought into the front room of the office where I was greeted with a “Jesus Christ!” when I told them I was a reporter. I received the same reaction when they found out I was a conservative. Regardless, they seemed willing to talk. I was taken into another smaller room, where the conversation began. I noticed an Apple corporation computer on the desk to the left and a Dell corporation computer to my right. “Ironic” I thought, considering Occupy claims to hate corporations, but whatever. In case you’re wondering, people in the office looked clean, a step up from their hygiene level back at the park.

The Occupiers were upset and felt “betrayed” by a Washington Examiner article about their new space, calling it unprofessional and inaccurate. They said SEIU is paying for their office space, but that they are in no way working for President Obama or the unions and that they absolutely refuse to be co-opted. Karina Stenquist, editor of the newspaper D.C. Mic Check, said it was unethical for Examiner reporter Aubrey Whelan to bring the SEIU’s connection to President Obama into a story about their new office space, making the argument that the SEIU’s connection to Obama in an election year is irrelevant. Occupiers also argued that the space lease ending on just after election day 2012 is irrelevant when I asked if they felt they would be used as political pawns.

Anyway, moving on. I talked the most with Johnny Mandracchia, who describes himself as an anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist (don’t ask me what that means, just Google it.) He agreed to say on an audio recording, that violence is not smashing Starbucks’ windows, “because Starbucks isn’t a private business it’s a corporation” or burning cop cars, but is instead simply vandalism.

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When taxes become destructive they’ve surpassed the consent of the governed bending to the will of tyranny.  When regulations strangle competition instead of securing it from evil combinations they’ve become counterproductive and defeat the very purpose for which they were proposed.  When foreign entanglements bleed the nation but do not secure the peace or defeat the enemy they’ve become interventionist vehicles for vested interests.  When spending becomes a hemorrhaging of assists leading to national bankruptcy those who continue to pile debt upon debt seek not the good of the nation but instead its destruction.  When leaders selected to unite instead do all they can to divide they no longer advance the interest of the whole and are instead partisan leaders in a factional fight.

A social contract is one made between a people and their government.  It is an agreement whereby the people surrender certain aspects of their independence for the guarantee of corporate security and the enjoyment of a general welfare.  In the case of most countries this is an unwritten and unconscious arrangement built upon tradition and precedent as in the case of England.  However in the United States we have an actual contract, the Constitution.  This was ratified by the original states and the subsequent states were formed under it and admitted as full partners to it.

All contracts may be legitimately changed over time as long as there are mechanisms either within the document or established by the document to do so.  Within our Constitution there is an amendment process and it has been amended 27 times so far.  Whether we agree with those amendments or not they have been legally ratified and accepted becoming part of the document.  However, over the years our government structure has been changed and our manner of life transformed more by the informal changes than by the formal.  Nowhere in the Constitution is the central government given the power to wage unending undeclared war.  Nowhere is the central government given the right to ignore the requirement to protect the states from invasion.  Nowhere is there found any basis for executive orders, signing statements or bureaucratic regulations to have the force of law without legislative action by Congress.

Well-connected rabble rousers now say equality will not be achieved until everything is equal in everybody’s house.  Leveling the playing field has finally thrown off its cloak of deceit and exposed itself as, “From each according to their ability to each according to their need.”  The professional civil rights entrepreneurs who’ve extorted vast amounts of personal wealth with threats of boycotts and demonstrations have been unmasked as the true purveyors of prejudice seeking to keep race and gender differences alive for their own benefit.  Union bosses build political empires using the legally forced dues of members with more money spent on political activity than on member service.  The union bosses ride in limousine comfort from board meetings to political rallies while their members lose jobs.  The pensions of the bosses are golden parachutes while the pensions of the members are underfunded.

The Land of the Free is held captive, locked in a two party system where both parties are merely two heads on the same bird of prey.  Both parties are dedicated to more spending and bigger government.  Both parties exploit gerrymandering of districts and overwhelming corporate donations to ensure a hierarchy of the perpetually re-elected using a system of seniority to enhance their power.  Legal barriers exist at every turn to stop any new parties from gaining the access that might deflect the central government from its ever increasing growth towards totalitarianism.

When will enough be enough?  When will citizens rise in their righteous anger and demand not a New Deal, not a Great Society, a New Frontier or a Fundamentally Transformed America but instead their original deal.  The one we wrested from the hands of the tyrant King George.  The one we’ve fought to establish and defend from Yorktown to Kandahar and the right of a people to be free to live as they desire, to work for their own benefit and choose their own destiny.  Free from the smothering governmental control which has been the lot of most people in most places since the beginning of time.  When will the yoke of tyranny become too heavy to be borne?  What will be the spark that lights the torches and brings the incensed villagers to the gate of the castle demanding, “Bring the monster out!” so that a stake can be driven through the heart of tyranny and freedom can return to the land?

When that day comes what will we the people do?  Will we try to resurrect the government of old that ultimately brought us full circle or will we be bold enough to forge a new the social contract and design better ways to ensure that the beast of tyranny doesn’t once again break the chains of restraint.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future and the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

by Jerry McConnell

The Washington Times published an Editorial on April 20, 2012 titled, “Where’s the recovery?” It mirrored all the bad news on our supposed “getting healthy” economy along with the discouraging views of the economic fundamentals and new jobless claims creating long faces and nervous hair pulling, while smiles abound in our anti-American White House and among its inhabitants.

Believe it or not, all this bad news about the country that less than four years ago was considered the greatest nation in the world, is pleasing to our White House staff and all of its minions, czars and secretaries. Obama’s mission is to totally destroy America as the world has known it for the past two hundred and thirty plus years and see poverty and hardships abound where once the fruits of our forebears’ diligence and INTELLIGENCE (a commodity that is sorely lacking today) created prosperity and leadership for the entire world to follow.

People SHOULD be asking, where the recovery is; it is certainly costing the taxpayers huge sums of money to keep this charlatan in the Oval Office in spending money for his communist, socialist and Islamist buddies in the depths and pestholes of the world. He is determined to put all of us along side those sand-flea-bitten cretins he calls peaceful and enlightened.
The Times editorial announces that new jobless claims are the highest they’ve been since late January, the four-week average stubbornly hovering around the 375,000 mark. They also say that “Though we’re technically in a recovery, nobody believes it. A Rasmussen Reports survey earlier this week shows a majority is under the impression America is still in recession.” And why not? Recoveries see indicators of increased employment, more consumer goods being manufactured and purchased and costs of consumables dropping instead of rising as they are today.

One can imagine the smiles on Obama’s and his staff’s faces when they hear about another huge increase in the cost of a gallon of gas at the pumps. Just like the mythical Midas whose magic touch turned the item touched into gold, probably smiling until he died of hunger these greedy thieves will get their just dues one of these days.

As the editorial states, the country needs an explosion of industry but all Obama is producing is a fizzle. The Philadelphia Reserve Bank found manufacturing output growth slowed slightly in the mid-Atlantic region, with its index of general business activity for the factory sector falling from 12.5 in March to 8.5 in April. Numbers such as those do nothing to restore the confidence in America’s economic indicators. They tend to keep people wondering when the great “messiah” they foolishly elected in November 2008 will begin delivering on his failed promises of “change for a better
America.”

When the people don’t feel good about their future they don’t invest in homes and as stated in the editorial, with a significant chunk of the market still in the process of foreclosure, housing won’t recover anytime soon.

The economy is having a difficult time as consumer prices continue to spiral upwards; all of which Obama and his people continue to do absolutely nothing to remedy. As I stated above, this all fits in nicely with Obama’s desires, particularly when oil and gas prices escalate with no efforts from the White House to suppress or turn around the rises.

Not too long ago Obama had an opportunity to make the price of oil take a nose dive when the Keystone XL pipeline was presented for his approval and he rejected it with some spurious reasoning. We all remember a few years back when the last petroleum price explosion was about to hit and all it took to get the OPEC producers to drop the price was the renewal of talk amongst Republican politicos to open new area for domestic drilling for oil. The prices tumbled to nearly half of what they reached.

This Administration, under the usurper Obama, makes no attempt to even talk about oil production increases for America; he instead denigrates the idea until his serfs in the Democrat Party back off in fear of losing favor with him. These wimps have all joined Obama’s socialist-communist planning for the U. S. and oppose any efforts that would be beneficial for the country.

First, I would ask myself how did our ancestors build America from an agricultural colony on the edge of civilization into the number one manufacturing and commercial nation the world had ever known.

Why reinvent the wheel if round ones still roll?

The early American colonies of the British were founded based upon the economic ideas of Mercantilism.  Governmental regulation of industries, trade, and commerce characterized Mercantilism as every aspect of the economy was utilized for national policy. This was especially true with foreign trade, which was determined more by national aims rather than individual or local interests.

The definition of wealth began to change in the sixteenth century.  During the Middle Ages, wealth was defined by the amount of productive land a nation possessed.  As transportation, especially by sea, improved so did the ability to conduct foreign trade bringing with it an increase in the amount of cash generated by that trade.  The definition of wealth came to be the amount of cash a nation possessed.  Therefore every nation sought to have a favorable balance of trade.  They also sought to develop monopolistic type environments wherein they provided their own raw materials thus avoiding imports which meant money flowing out and fostering the export of finished goods raising the level of money flowing in.  Defining wealth as the accumulation of cash, the nations ofEurope desired to conduct foreign trade on a larger scale, and they began looking for foreign sources of gold, silver, and raw materials.

This brings us to the British effort to developNorth Americaas a source of wealth.

The Chesapeake colonies ofVirginia andMaryland were the first successful British colonies in what was to become theUnited States of America.  Though the initial colonists came looking for gold they soon learned that prosperity came not from a shovel but instead from a plow.  It was tobacco that primed the pump and lifted the colonies from a burden to a benefit for the mother country.  After years of mounting expenses for the British and years of starvation for the colonists the cultivation of tobacco brought prosperity. Virginia’s production of tobacco grew from 200,000 pounds in 1624 to 3,000,000 pounds in 1638 overtaking the West Indies as the number one supplier of tobacco for all of Europe thus boostingBritain’s balance of trade.

The cultivation of tobacco fostered a plantation system based upon indentured and slave labor.  A gentrified class of great planters sought to replicate the social structure of Britain with a small number of very rich ruling a large number of small land holders who prospered to a certain extent but never enough to challenge the status quo.  The wretched poor ofBritainwho had come to theChesapeakecolonies to find a better life did find more opportunity and the ability to advance from the landless poor to the ranks of yeoman farmer.  However, there was little opportunity to enter the ranks for the gentry which became a type of American nobility.

New England, because of the soil, the climate, and the fact that there was no major cash crop that grew well in the area, did not lend itself to large plantations.  Most farmers were operating at a subsistence level.  If they did generate a surplus it was in crops that were not easily transported across the ocean, and they were also crops that could be grown inEnglandand were not needed as imports.

This climatic and environmental adversity did not condemn New England to being a poor relation to the Chesapeakenobility.  Instead the New English diversified, innovated, and used individual enterprise to not only match but to surpass Chesapeake and every other colony in the British Empire.  Those who settled New England were Puritans who sought to purify the Anglican religion of ceremony and return it to what they saw as the simplicity of early Christianity.  They did not believe that good works brought salvation but they did believe that salvation brought good works.  Therefore they sought to occupy their time with productive activity to glorify God through their labors.  This was a manifestation of what the sociologist Max Weber later called , “The Protestant work ethic.”  Whatever you choose to call it, it was this drive to succeed no matter what the adversity that led the New English to look beyond the soil, beyond the climate and to the opportunity.

First they exploited the fisheries of the Northeast.  In 1641 the New English caught 600,000 pounds of fish much of which was exported toBritain.  By 1645 they were catching more than 6,000,000 pounds per year employing more than a thousand men on 440 ships.  They came to dominate the fish trade shipping not only toBritainand its empire but also toSpain,Portugal, the Azores, Madeira, and theCanary Islands.

By the end of the 1600s the merchants of the New English coast began to circle the globe trading the fish, surplus crops, and lumber of their area to all parts of theBritish Empire.  They became such shrewd traders that soon American ships were carrying trade from one colony to another even when the cargo didn’t originate inNew England.  This secondary carrying trade generated a growing profit that in turn rebounded in a number of ways.  The increased profits brought home financed increased industry and growth at home, and it also spawned a shipbuilding industry which exploited the vast resources of the northern forests.

Between 1674 and 1714 the New English built more than 1200 ships, totaling more than 75,000 tons.  By 1700 there were fifteen shipyards inBostonwhich produced more ships than all the rest of the British colonies combined.  OnlyLondonhad more shipyards.  This was a significant engine of economic growth.  To build one 150 ton merchant ship required as many as 200 workers, mostly skilled craftsmen.  The shipyards also supported the growth of numerous enterprises to supply their needs such as saw mills, smithies, barrel makers, sail makers, iron foundries, and rope makers. In addition, the farmers of New England benefited by feeding the craftsmen, supplying the ships, and providing the timber.

By 1700Bostonwas the third city of the Empire behind onlyLondonandBristoland the New English shippers were earning freight charges for carrying produce and material that was neither produced, shipped to, or shipped from their home colony.  The enrichment of the area spread prosperity far beyond the sphere of shippers, sailors, and their sundry suppliers.  According toBoston’s shipping register for 1697-1714 over 25% of the adult males inBostonowned shares in at least one ship.

All of these linkages produced an economy filled with diversification and development as opposed to the stratified monoculture of theChesapeakecolonies.

These trends continued as time went on leading to the industrial North eventually overwhelming the agricultural South.  The expansion and growth ofAmericawas based upon a foundation of hard work and innovation born of adversity.  Finding themselves in a hard place Americans found a way to prosper and grow like a young plant reaching for the sun.  Freed from the rigid restraints of the home country and then guaranteed freedom by the constitution and the limited government it providedAmericasurged to the front ranks of nations.

Today, America labors under self-imposed adversity.  We are in the grip of an oppressive Progressive Movement that after 100 years of incremental advance is poised to transform America from what she has always been into what they want her to be.  America has traditionally been a constitutionally limited Republic operating on democratic principles providing individual liberty and economic opportunity.  The Progressives envision America as a centrally-planned highly regimented social democracy where the wealth is spread around from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs .

If I wanted to makeAmericaprosperous again I would take off the self-imposed shackles of a central government on steroids, stop imposing new regulations, and reduce taxes everywhere on everyone.  Then I would stand back and watch our economy takes off like a rocket and we take our place beside our ancestors as free people with economic liberty and a will to succeed.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future and the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

Defying a White House veto threat, the House on Wednesday passed legislation that extends transportation program funding through September and mandates construction of a controversial oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

All but 14 Republicans, with support from 69 Democrats, voted 293-127 for legislation that falls far short of Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) earlier plan to move a sweeping five-year, $260 billion package.

But Boehner’s retreat serves two crucial tactical and political purposes for the Speaker. It sets up talks with the Senate on the highway bill and keeps the Keystone pipeline — a centerpiece of GOP attacks on White House energy policy — front and center ahead of the November election.

By David Nakamura, Del Quentin Wilber and Carol D. Leonnig, Published: April 18

The Secret Service on Wednesday announced the departure of three employees connected to a prostitution scandal last week involving members of President Obama’s security detail who were in Cartagena, Colombia.

As the agency tried to manage the fallout from the embarrassing episode, it said in a statement that one agent is expected to resign and another, a supervisor, intends to retire. A third, also a supervisor, has been recommended for firing but will have an opportunity to appeal, officials said.

The agency and the Defense Department are each investigating the alleged misconduct. The remaining eight Secret Service personnel are on administrative leave, and their top-secret security clearances have been suspended. The military has returned its service members to their home bases.

“We demand that all of our employees adhere to the highest professional and ethical standards and are committed to a full review of this matter,” the Secret Service said in a statement.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, called the men’s alleged misbehavior a “gross violation of public trust.”

The allegations — and accompanying negative publicity — have deeply angered rank-and-file members of the Secret Service, severely lowering morale at the agency.

In interviews, current and former agents said they are particularly outraged by the alleged involvement of the two senior supervisors, both of whom have two decades of experience and were sent on the trip to oversee the less-experienced members of the team. Both of those supervisors have spent significant time on presidential protective details, dating to the Clinton administration, according to current and former agents. The two are based in Washington.

“I was really disappointed. I’ve learned a lot from both of these guys,” said one agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. “I was surprised they were involved. Especially because they are senior people.”

Those familiar with details of the investigation said the two supervisors were sent to Cartagena as leaders of Secret Service “jump teams,” squads made up of several dozen special agents and uniformed officers that are deployed to a site in the days before the president arrives.

It is customary for the jump teams to fly aboard giant Lockheed military transport aircraft, nicknamed “car planes,” which also carry the presidential limousine, Chevy Suburbans and other vehicles that make up the president’s motorcade.

Several of the agents reportedly were part of the elite counter-assault team, which reports to the special operations division, not the presidential protective detail. The rest were uniformed officers who work with bomb-sniffing dogs or magnetometers.

When members of the group arrived in Cartagena, they joined an advance team of White House staff, military and Secret Service members and U.S. Embassy officials that had been on the ground for two weeks, holding nightly “countdown meetings” to mark their planning progress.

But for the Secret Service agents and officers on the car planes, who were among the last to arrive, there wasn’t a lot to do before Obama showed up, according to people familiar with the trip.

Americawas founded as a FederalRepublic.  This means our nation was designed to have two levels of sovereignty.  The States which pre-date the central government and which created the central government is to be one level and the central government they created was to be the second.   The separate States first combined to found a central government when they drafted and ratified the Articles of Confederation in 1781.  This combination was strengthened and expanded in the writing and ratification of the Constitution in 1789.  However, in both of these new beginnings it was always stated and assumed that the States were the building blocks out of which the whole was built.

The Anti-Federalists sought to safe guard the inherent rights of the Sovereign States in the face of a proposed national government which concentrated power and superseded the primacy of the States.  The Anti-Federalists are often dismissed by those of succeeding generations who have been educated by the victorious philosophical descendants of the Federalists, as mere obstructionists and people of no-account.  However, their ranks were filled by some of the greatest names of the Revolutionary times such as Samuel Adams, George Mason, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson.

Another well-known leader of the Antifederalists, Patrick Henry, questioned the very legitimacy of what are possibly the most famous words in the document: “We the People” when he said, “I have the highest veneration for those gentlemen; but, sir, give me leave to demand, What right had they to say, We, the people? My political curiosity, exclusive of my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to ask, Who authorized them to speak the language of, We, the people, instead of, We, the states? States are the characteristics and the soul of a confederation. If the states be not the agents of this compact, it must be one great, consolidated, national government, of the people of all the states.”

Once the Constitution was maneuvered through the ratification process most of the Anti-Federalists faded into the background.  Forgotten were their war time services and forgotten were their warnings that a central government once established would inevitably grow in power to eclipse the States.

In the early days of the Republic the former Anti-Federalists attempted to keep alive the idea that it was the States which had created the central government and that the States therefore had the authority to determine if the central government had overstepped the authority which had been delegated to them by the States.  They proposed to do this through a process known as Nullification.

Nullification is the process through which they believed a State could suspend a federal law within its borders. In opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts of the Adams Administration Thomas Jefferson and James Madison first enunciated this concept in1798. The tactic was accepted as a legitimate tool of the States by the Hartford Convention in 1814.  It was seen as a logical and legal protection against the encroachment of the central government upon the sovereign rights of the States.

The idea that a state or a combination of States could nullify what they perceived as unconstitutional laws passed by the central government which exceeded the delegated powers granted to it remained a point of contention until it reached a crisis in 1832.

The enactment of tariffs which were believed to be advantageous to the rapidly industrializing North and injurious to the agrarian South brought the question to a head.  South Carolinaled the way by adopting an Ordinance of Nullification which stated that the tariffs, “are unauthorized by the constitution of theUnited States, and violate the true meaning and intent thereof and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State.”  

This was countered by President Jackson’s Proclamation Regarding Nullification, December 10, 1832.  In this proclamation President Jackson stated, “I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which It was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.”  

Immediately after the President issued his proclamation Congress passed the Force Act.  This law authorized the use of military force against any state resisting the tariff acts. The President being the man of action immediately sent warships to Charleston harbor and ordered the strengthening federal fortifications there. The situation staggered towards war as both the central government and the government ofSouth Carolina prepared to dispute the Doctrine of Nullification on the field of battle. 

It was at this critical juncture that Henry Clay who had not been able to find any other State willing to join South Carolina earned his reputation as the Great Compromiser. On the same day the Force Bill passed, Clay negotiated the passage of the Tariff of 1833. This law provided for the gradual reduction of the tariff over ten years until it reached the levels which existed in 1816.  Jackson signed both measures thus priming and holstering the Federal power at one time.  In response South Carolina repealed its Ordinance Nullification while at the same time reaffirming its belief in the legality of Nullification by nullifying the Force Bill. President Jackson knew he had won a victory and sought to move on by ignoring this face saving action.

After this crisis the issue of nullification died down.  However, the belief that this was a viable and legal recourse for the States did not disappear, it instead evolved into the belief that the States which had created theUnioncould or should be able to nullify the union itself.  This in turn led to the secession of Southern States beginning withSouth Carolina.

This next crisis precipitated the Civil War.  This most deadly of all American wars destroyed the balance.  The power of the States was crushed by the overwhelming power of the central government.  Since that time the central government has grown, and grown, and grown until today it has become Leviathan.  Not the sea monster referred to in the Bible but the soul crushing all controlling political and social government described by Thomas Hobbs.

Today this debate over the relationship between the central government and the States has resurfaced.  As an administration moves aggressively to transform America beyond any semblance of a federal structure into a centrally-planned and totally controlled socially engineered society citizens from sea to shining sea are searching for ways to return to the limited government won by the Revolution and supposedly safe-guarded by the Constitution.

One of the most revolutionary proposals is a direct descendant of the Doctrine of Nullification.  The Repeal Amendment is supported by citizens and their representatives in every State and in the Federal Congress.  This proposed amendment states, “Any provision of law or regulation of the United States may be repealed by the several states, and such repeal shall be effective when the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states approve resolutions for this purpose that particularly describe the same provision or provisions of law or regulation to be repealed.”  As of today, no State has passed the Amendment, and it has not gained enough support in Congress to advance past the proposal stage.

This proposed amendment is designed to restore the validity of the 9^th and 10^th amendments which have been fundamentally supplanted and submerged by the ever growing power of the central government.

The 9^th Amendment states, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”  The 10^th Amendment states, “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.”

Unless we rebuild the reality of a balanced federal system we will soon find ourselves locked in the embrace of an all-powerful central government.  This Leviathan will seek to regulate the smallest details of our lives and the spirit of totalitarianism we spent the last half of the twentieth century fighting will win by default as the change our fellow citizens voted for brings the death of hope.

Keep the faith.  Keep the peace.  We shall overcome.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future and the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

Now, what does that tell you? They have to take one of the most popular presidents in history, a Republican, a person with whom they have absolutely nothing in common and without any agreement whatsoever and try to convince the American people Barack Obama is Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan did what Obama’s doing. It is shameless. It is offensive, and, like everything else Obama is doing, it’s a lie. But here’s the problem with this. The Republican establishment — and we discussed this during the elongated primary process — the Republican establishment is scared to death of conservatives, scared to death of a conservative nominee, because their formative lesson is the Goldwater landslide defeat. That’s what they think will happen, or would have happened had the nominee been an unabashed conservative. So they’re happy.

The Republican establishment is happy ’cause now there won’t be this massive landslide defeat because we don’t have a conservative. They do not look to 1980 and 1984 and see two massive landslide victories. But it gets tiresome, and it’s frustrating at the same time. We’ve talked about this countless times before. Obama, last night, right here. I mean he was within a nine iron, effectively, at least as Hank Haney hits ‘em, from where we are right now in Palm Beach Gardens, and he said, “This election will probably have the biggest contrast that we have seen maybe since Johnson-Goldwater of ’64, maybe before that.” But for God’s sake, folks, look around. The US today is not anything like it was in 1964 when Goldwater lost in a landslide. The country does look almost exactly like it did in 1980 when Reagan trounced Carter. That’s the lesson. The lesson here is that Obama is the second term of Jimmy Carter. But here they trot out Reagan and any other conservative that they think will help them remain in office.

Democrat National Committee Hitwoman Candid About Influence Peddling

by Aaron Klein

Hilary Rosen, a former lobbyist under fire for her remarks about Ann Romney, once spoke candidly about her influence-peddling lobby efforts, saying when she raised money for politicians, “You bet I expected their vote.”

Rosen worked with the lobby Recording Industry Association of America from 1987 to 2003, serving in different positions including as president and then chairman and chief executive.

In an interview for the May 2010 issue of Freeman magazine, a publication of the Foundation for Economic Education, Rosen told writer Jim Powell that as an entertainment lobbyist she expected favors for her fundraising.

WND SPECIAL OFFER: “Capitol Punishment” exposes the hard truth about Washington corruption from America’s most notorious lobbyist

Stated Rosen: “When I gave $1,000 or $2,000 to a lawmaker, I wanted him to listen to my business proposition. And when I helped organize an event that raised $50,000 or $100,000, you bet I expected their vote.”

She continued: “Why else do it? Members of Congress are consumed with raising money for their re-elections (or if they have a safe seat, they raise money to give to colleagues to increase their internal power). Anyone, including lobbyists, who lessens that anxiety, is considered a better friend than those who don’t. No lobbying reforms will change that fact.”

Rosen is now under fire from Republicans after she insulted Ann Romney, the wife of GOP candidate Mitt Romney.

“Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life,” Rosen said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper about women’s issues.

Ann Romney took to Twitter to respond: “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.”

Rosen is a partner at SKD Knickerbocker, the public relations and strategy firm of former White House communications director Anita Dunn. SKD handled Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Among those distancing themselves from Rosen is David Axelrod, who tweeted his disapproval: “Also Disappointed in Hilary Rosen’s comments about Ann Romney. They were inappropriate and offensive.”

WND has found that since 2009, Rosen has held more than 30 White House meetings, including a March 11, 2009, meeting with adviser Valerie Jarrett and a March 12, 2009, meeting with Axelrod described as a “communications message meeting.”

Rosen’s meeting with Axelrod was reported by the Associated Press and CBS News.com in November 2009.

CBS News noted Axelrod’s White House meeting with Rosen and 18 other strategists demonstrated “the political element of the health care debate.”

Rosen, meanwhile, serves as political director and Washington editor-at-large for the Huffington Post as well as a regular commentator for CNN.

She’s on the board of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The center is deeply involved in helping to influence White House policy under Obama. Its founder, John Podesta, directed Obama’s 2009 transition into the White House.

Time magazine called CAP Obama’s “idea factory,” noting that “not since the Heritage Foundation helped guide Ronald Reagan’s transition in 1981 has a single outside group held so much sway.”

Time reported it is “difficult to overstate the influence in Obamaland of CAP.”

Rosen serves on the board of the George Soros funded Human Rights Campaign Foundation and the Creative Coalition.

Already, the DNC has commented on Rosen’s remarks, with a DNC official telling Politico, “Hilary Rosen is not an adviser to the DNC. Our contract for media services is exclusively with Anita Dunn.”

Rosen used Twitter to further her remarks, writing, “When I said on [CNN] Ann Romney never worked I meant she never had to care for her kids AND earn a paycheck like MOST American women!”

Rosen later tweeted that Mitt Romney “now makes up false concern for women’s economic struggle” and “he should stop saying that she is his guide to women’s economic problems. She doesn’t have any.”

Rosen seemed to backtrack a bit when she posted an explanation at the Huffington Post.

“I have nothing against Ann Romney,” Rosen wrote. “She seems like a nice lady who has raised nice boys and struggled with illness and handles their long term effects with grace and dignity. … What is more important to me and 57% of current women voters is her husband saying he supports women’s economic issue because they are the only issues that matter to us and then he fails on even those.”

With research by Brenda J. Elliott

If I Had a Daughter, She’d Look Like Ann Romney
Posted on April 13, 2012 by Conservative Byte

You have to hear Wolf Blitzer last night on CNN, Situation Room, audio sound bite number five. He had Hilary Rosen on, who is a Democrat National Committee strategist. She works in the White House. She works for the reelection of Barack Obama, and this is a montage of Wolf Blitzer talking to and interviewing Hilary Rosen.

Look into the camera, Ann Romney’s on the other side, what do you have to say to her? Tell her. The only thing he didn’t say is, could you cry a little? That’s the only thing Wolf didn’t say. They are shocked. Folks, they know this is a big hit. Grab audio sound bite number 11. This is Karl Rove. He was on with Greta last night, and she said, “She certainly is an experienced mother. She knows the challenges of raising a family and household. She’s had health challenges. I didn’t see this as an attack personally on Ann Romney, Karl.”

Ten Candidates, Including Front-Runners, Barred From Egyptian Presidential Race

Egypt’s election commission on Saturday disqualified 10 presidential hopefuls, including the three front-runners, from running in a surprise decision that threatened to upend the already tumultuous race.

Farouk Sultan, the head of the Supreme Presidential Election Commission, told The Associated Press that those barred from the race included Hosni Mubarak’s former spy chief Omar Suleiman; the chief strategist for the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat el-Shater; and hard-line lawyer-turned-preacher Hazem Salah Abu Ismail. He did not give a reason.

The announcement came as a shock to many Egyptians as three of the 10 excluded were considered among the front-runners. They now have 48 hours to appeal the decision, according to election rules. The final list of candidates will be announced on April 26

For all the gains radical Muslims appear to have been making in Egypt, many believe the military ultimately will not allow them to take over the government, according to a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

Some Egyptians in Washington sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood tell G2Bulletin that they fear this development in spite of the recent parliamentary gains by the Brotherhood and the more fundamentalist Salafist al-Nour party.

Now that the Brotherhood has nominated Khairat al-Shater to be its presidential candidate, the military has put up its own candidate, Omar Suleiman, the former spy chief to ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Given the public and often violent protests for a free and democratic government to replace the military-backed Mubarak government last year, Suleiman’s candidacy came as a major surprise.

According to al-Shater, the candidacy of Suleiman, 75, is “reinventing a new Mubarak regime with a new look.”

Suleiman initially said that he would not be a candidate but then raised more than 100,000 signatures, about four times the required names needed to run for the May 23-24 presidential election.

This development has been unsettling to Egyptians who thought that the military would accede to popular elections. Instead, G2Bulletin sources say that that the military is reluctant to give up power after 60 years and could stage a coup to preserve its position if Suleiman doesn’t win.

“If that happens,” one Egyptian told G2Bulletin, “there will be a civil war, and this time it will be quite bloody.”

Already, there are increasing indications that the Egyptian military may be manipulating events behind the scenes to retain its hold on power.

Following the overthrow of Mubarak in February 2011, there appeared to be a good working relationship between the Brotherhood and the council of military generals that now form the interim government.

The tide turned last November, however, after the near-majority of the Brotherhood in the parliament sought to have the army-appointed cabinet dismissed.

Benjamin Franklin told us, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

Socialism is a debilitating confidence game dressed up as an ideology used by demagogues and want-to-be dictators to fool its victims into believing it is possible to have your cake and eat it too.  Those who fall under the spell of the charlatans singing this siren song actually come to believe it is fair and just to force some people to labor for the good of others.  This is the same type of sophistry and rationalization that was used by the clergy and philosophers of the Antebellum South to justify unending human bondage for an entire race of people because it was for their own good.

This twisted tool of central planners and bureaucratic tyrants teaches those who have not that it is fair and just to take from those who have and re-distribute the plunder as the government decrees.  This is not fair!  This is not just!  To teach that it is raises up generations of people who believe they have a birth-right to that which is not their own forfeiting their true birth-right: the opportunity to succeed through their own efforts.  The products of such an educational system are citizens without virtue voting pawns without honor.  Not because they have made a personal decision to live without these two attributes but because they have been programmed to believe taking the fruit of someone else’s labor is permissible as long as it will be given to someone else.  Theodore Roosevelt said, “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”

Those who drank the Kool-Aid dispensed by the government schools learned that this type of theft is not only permissible it is laudable.  They were told and they believe that this is what Robin Hood did: steal from the rich to give to the poor.  However, in reality the legend of Robin Hood tells of a fighter for liberty and the sanctity of personal property who robbed the stolen wealth of corrupt government officials so that he could return it to its rightful owners: those who produced the wealth in the first place.  However, the leaders of America today have turned the world upside down demanding that people objectified by the name “Millionaires and Billionaires” need to pay their fair share.  Yet they never say what that fair share is or when enough will ever be enough. According to Noah Webster, “…if the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded.”

We look around us and we watch as our beloved United States of America crumbles.  Our elected leaders act as if it is their goal to spend us into oblivion.  The only way to understand the pronouncements and actions of this administration is if we consider ourselves a conquered people and the Washington-centered oligarchy as an occupying power.  We, the silent majority who labor, innovate, and produce are treated as subservient beasts of burden needed and appreciated more for what can be extorted from us than for who we are.  Samuel Adams once said, “No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.” 

It is no wonder that we see such a sorry collection of second-rate scoundrels prancing about on the stage of power.  They sell their snake oil of class warfare indoctrinating their victims to be needy and then promising to fill their gnawing need with loot legally taken from others.  This immoral process breeds a population without the virtue of self-reliance or the honor of being independent.  The soul sapping addiction to eternal government support leads to a nation neither adapted to nor deserving of liberty.  When a birthright has been sold for a bowl of stew it cannot be regained by demanding more. Thomas Jefferson said, “Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”

We the present day guardians of America must stand before the tsunami of anti-education that leads our nation away from virtue and into unrighteousness.  We must serve as examples working to earn what we receive and refusing to either play the victim or accept the self-imposed victim-hood of those who seek to expropriate the fruit of someone else’s labor.  We must stand for righteousness or we will fall before the juggernaut of socialism’s final assault upon the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

In the coming election we must choose wisely.  We must find someone who is virtuous and who adheres to the principles of constitutionally limited government which alone can protect personal liberty, individual freedom, and economic opportunity.  Samuel Adams instructed us in this basic truth, “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen onto any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.”

Douglas MacArthur warned us, “History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.”

Finally, looking to the ultimate source of wisdom Proverbs 14:34 tells us, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future and the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

Recently President Obama made this remarkable statement, “Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”  For someone reputed to be a former professor of Constitutional Law at theUniversity ofChicago this statement is hard to explain.  Any high school student in a sophomore American History class knows there are many precedents for the Supreme Court making laws passed by Congress null and void.  As a matter of fact, in the system of government tradition has delivered to us overturning laws as unconstitutional has been an important power of the Supreme Court for more than two hundred years. 

And if the primary content of the President’s statement isn’t strange enough the supporting information is wrong.  Obamacare wasn’t passed by a strong majority in Congress. In reality the final vote in the House vote was 220 to 215.  Every Republican and thirty four Democrats voted against the law.  In the Senate the vote was sixty Democrats and Independents voting for and thirty nine Republicans voting against.  The Democrats, even though they controlled both houses of Congress knew they would lose enough of their own members that it was going to be a close vote so they moved the bill outside the regular order of business and used a legislative maneuver known as reconciliation to avoid giving the Republicans the opportunity to filibuster the law.

What is the context of these current pressure tactics being used by the executive branch on the judicial branch?

Soon after taking office in 1829, President Andrew Jackson a long time Indian fighter spearheaded one of his signature pieces of legislation through Congress: the Indian Removal Act.  This act gave the president the power to negotiate treaties with the various tribes which still existed in America East of theMississippi.  These treaties, often accepted either under duress or under questionable circumstances seized the lands of the tribes and forced them to move West to the Indian Territory in what is today Oklahoma.  The time for fighting had passed and most of the tribes quietly left their ancestral lands. 

One tribe decided to try another route.  The Cherokee Nation had adopted the ways of the Europeans.  They devised their own written language and wrote their own Constitution.  They had their own plantations, printing presses, and businesses.  They also had their own lawyers and instead of going on the warpath as their ancestors had done they went to court to fight the orders from the State ofGeorgiawhich dispossessed them of their land.

In two cases; Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the United States Supreme Court considered whether or not it had the power to enforce the rights of Native American nations in disputes between them and the states. In Cherokee Nation v.Georgia, the Court ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to review the claims of any Indian nation within theUnited States. InWorcester v.Georgia, the Court ruled that only the Federal Government not the states, had the power to regulate the Indian nations.

What the ruling in Worcesterv. Georgiameant was that Georgiacould not legally seize the Cherokee lands.  It was at this junction when referring to the majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Marshall that President Andrew Jackson made one his most famous statements, “Mr. Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it!”  Instead of enforcing the ruling the Federal government joined in and the result was the Trail of Tears as the Cherokee lost their lands and moved west.

Franklin D. Roosevelt legislating Keynesian economic philosophy in the New Deal sought to end the Depression through government spending and central control.  With massive majorities in both houses of Congress the president’s agenda was enacted as quickly as possible.  Then less than three years after the New Deal began to transformAmericathe Supreme Court began overturning some of the central portions ofRoosevelt’s program 

In response to this resistance to his vision for what should be done FDR decided to pack the court with Justices who would support his laws.  What he proposed was that for any justice over the age of seventy who refused to retire, the president could appoint a new justice to sit beside the current justice and do his work.   If his plan had been adopted and none of the then current Justices retired he would have been able to appoint six new Justices.  Since he couldn’t force the conservative justices to retire he sought in this way to outnumber them and thus change the ideological complexion of the court.  As the president moved ahead in his attempt to pack the court the Supremes started ruling in his favor which eventually stopped the need for his effort to influence the court through overwhelming appointments.  Then time and attrition did what he had tried to do with legislation.  By 1941, four justices had retired and two had died consequently by the end of his presidency seven of the nine justices were Roosevelt appointees.

Now we come full circle to President Obama and his obvious attempt to belittle and intimidate the court.  Should anyone be surprised?  This is nothing more than standard operating procedure for a Chicagopolitician.  It is also a normal technique for a community organizer who has been trained in the tactics of Saul Alinsky.  No, we shouldn’t be surprised but we could have expected more of anyone who has been entrusted with the highest office in the land.  It is just such crude strong-arm tactics such as this which open Mr. Obama up to charges of being a typicalSouth Chicago thug.  If he wishes to avoid such charges he needs to avoid such actions. 

The above brief review clearly shows that this was not the first attempt of a president to influence the court.  However coming from one who is constantly extolled as a constitutional scholar it is certainly disquieting.  As a constitutional scholar the president would obviously know what he said was incorrect leaving no other interpretation to his words than a conscious effort to alter the traditional system of checks and balances and the power relationship between the separate branches of the federal government.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the Historian of the Future and the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

Obama increasingly comes across as devious and dishonest.

By Peggy Noonan

Something’s happening to President Obama’s relationship with those who are inclined not to like his policies. They are now inclined not to like him. His supporters would say, “Nothing new there,” but actually I think there is. I’m referring to the broad, stable, nonradical, non-birther right. Among them the level of dislike for the president has ratcheted up sharply the past few monthIt’s not due to the election, and it’s not because the Republican candidates are so compelling and making such brilliant cases against him. That, actually, isn’t happening.

What is happening is that the president is coming across more and more as a trimmer, as an operator who’s not operating in good faith. This is hardening positions and leading to increased political bitterness. And it’s his fault, too. As an increase in polarization is a bad thing, it’s a big fault.

Getty Images

The shift started on Jan. 20, with the mandate that agencies of the Catholic Church would have to provide birth-control services the church finds morally repugnant. The public reaction? “You’re kidding me. That’s not just bad judgment and a lack of civic tact, it’s not even constitutional!” Faced with the blowback, the president offered a so-called accommodation that even its supporters recognized as devious. Not ill-advised, devious. Then his operatives flooded the airwaves with dishonest—not wrongheaded, dishonest—charges that those who defend the church’s religious liberties are trying to take away your contraceptives.

What a sour taste this all left. How shocking it was, including for those in the church who’d been in touch with the administration and were murmuring about having been misled.

Events of just the past 10 days have contributed to the shift. There was the open-mic conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in which Mr. Obama pleaded for “space” and said he will have “more flexibility” in his negotiations once the election is over and those pesky voters have done their thing. On tape it looked so bush-league, so faux-sophisticated. When he knew he’d been caught, the president tried to laugh it off by comically covering a mic in a following meeting. It was all so . . . creepy.

 Best of the Web columnist James Taranto on whether voters who favored Obama in 2008 think the President is naïve.

I am not saying that the president has a terrible relationship with the American people. I’m only saying he’s made his relationship with those who oppose him worse.

In terms of the broad electorate, I’m not sure he really has a relationship. A president only gets a year or two to forge real bonds with the American people. In that time a crucial thing he must establish is that what is on his mind is what is on their mind. This is especially true during a crisis.

From the day Mr. Obama was sworn in, what was on the mind of the American people was financial calamity—unemployment, declining home values, foreclosures. These issues came within a context of some overarching questions: Can America survive its spending, its taxing, its regulating, is America over, can we turn it around?

That’s what the American people were thinking about.

But the new president wasn’t thinking about that. All the books written about the creation of economic policy within his administration make clear the president and his aides didn’t know it was so bad, didn’t understand the depth of the crisis, didn’t have a sense of how long it would last. They didn’t have their mind on what the American people had their mind on.

The president had his mind on health care. And, to be fair-minded, health care was part of the economic story. But only a part! And not the most urgent part. Not the most frightening, distressing, immediate part. Not the “Is America over?” part.

And so the relationship the president wanted never really knitted together. Health care was like the birth-control mandate: It came from his hermetically sealed inner circle, which operates with what seems an almost entirely abstract sense of America. They know Chicago, the machine, the ethnic realities. They know Democratic Party politics. They know the books they’ve read, largely written by people like them—bright, credentialed, intellectually cloistered. But there always seems a lack of lived experience among them, which is why they were so surprised by the town hall uprisings of August 2009 and the 2010 midterm elections.

If you jumped into a time machine to the day after the election, in November, 2012, and saw a headline saying “Obama Loses,” do you imagine that would be followed by widespread sadness, pain and a rending of garments? You do not. Even his own supporters will not be that sad. It’s hard to imagine people running around in 2014 saying, “If only Obama were president!” Including Mr. Obama, who is said by all who know him to be deeply competitive, but who doesn’t seem to like his job that much. As a former president he’d be quiet, detached, aloof. He’d make speeches and write a memoir laced with a certain high-toned bitterness. It was the Republicans’ fault. They didn’t want to work with him.

He will likely not see even then that an American president has to make the other side work with him. You think Tip O’Neill liked Ronald Reagan? You think he wanted to give him the gift of compromise? He was a mean, tough partisan who went to work every day to defeat Ronald Reagan. But forced by facts and numbers to deal, he dealt. So did Reagan.

An American president has to make cooperation happen.

But we’ve strayed from the point. Mr. Obama has a largely nonexistent relationship with many, and a worsening relationship with some.

Really, he cannot win the coming election. But the Republicans, still, can lose it. At this point in the column we usually sigh.

WSJ – April 3, 2012
The President needs a remedial course in judicial review.

President Obama is a former president of the Harvard Law Review and famously taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. But did he somehow not teach the historic case of Marbury v. Madison?

That’s a fair question after Mr. Obama’s astonishing remarks on Monday at the White House when he ruminated for the first time in public on the Supreme Court’s recent ObamaCare deliberations. “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” he declared.

Presidents are paid to be confident about their own laws, but what’s up with that “unprecedented”? In Marbury in 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall laid down the doctrine of judicial review. In the 209 years since, the Supreme Court has invalidated part or all of countless laws on grounds that they violated the Constitution. All of those laws were passed by a “democratically elected” legislature of some kind, either Congress or in one of the states. And no doubt many of them were passed by “strong” majorities.

As it happens, probably stronger majorities than passed the Affordable Care Act. Readers may recall that the law was dragooned through a reluctant Senate without a single GOP vote and barely the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. Despite a huge Democratic majority in the House, it passed by only 219-212.

One reason the law may be overturned is because it was rushed through Congress without a standard “severability” clause that says that the rest of the law stands if one part is judged unconstitutional. Congress jammed it into law because it became ever more unpopular the more the public looked at it. The law is even less popular today than it was on the day it passed in 2010.

Mr. Obama’s remarks suggest he is joining others on the left in warning the Justices that they will pay a political price if they dare to overturn even part of the law. As he runs for re-election, Mr. Obama’s inner community organizer seems to be winning out over the law professor.

A version of this article appeared April 3, 2012, on page A14 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Obama vs. Marbury v. Madison.