Wake Up America! A Culture Crisis Approaches!

The Many Costs of Obama's Amnesty

3/24/2015 - Phyllis Schlafly Townhall.com

Seeing as the costs will come due only after Barack Obama has left the White House, I guess he doesn't care how high those costs are. But the costs are horrendous, as just added up by our country's foremost authority on such things, Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation.

Rector told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week that the lifetime costs of Social Security and Medicare benefits paid to the millions of immigrants to whom Obama is granting legal status will be about $1.3 trillion. Rector's calculation is based on his assumption that at least 3.97 million immigrants will receive legal status under Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, and the average DAPA beneficiary has only a 10th-grade education.

DAPA recipients, according to Rector's calculations, will receive $7.8 billion every year once they get access to the refundable earned income tax credit and the refundable additional child tax credit. Those EITC and ACTC recipients will also be allowed to claim credit for three years of illegal work, which will sock U.S. taxpayers for another $23.5 billion.

This was confirmed by IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who told Congress on Feb. 11 that immigrants who didn't pay any taxes or who used fake Social Security numbers will nevertheless be able to claim back refunds under EITC once they get new Social Security numbers under Obama's amnesty. Koskinen said that he doesn't know how much these tax refunds will cost and that the White House never checked with him before announcing the amnesty.

The average DAPA-eligible family already receives about $6,600 a year in means-tested welfare benefits. That includes food stamps, school lunch (and breakfast), Medicaid, the State Children's Health Insurance Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.

Many Americans labor under the false assumption that because most immigrants are hardworking, they do not depend on welfare assistance. In fact, as Rector patiently explains, most welfare benefits go to households with children headed by a low-income employed adult.

Rector estimates that the combined cost of means-tested welfare benefits the immigrants who came here illegally now receive, plus other goodies such as EITC and ACTC cash, will encourage increased illegal immigration in the future. The average American, whose children and grandchildren will end up burdened with this enormous debt, must ask whether someone is trying to destroy America.

The Government Accountability Office has already reported that even the debate over legalizing the presence of certain immigrants was "a primary cause" of last summer's surge of Central Americans crashing our southern border. Even if those teenagers were not eligible for asylum or legal status when they arrived, they knew that deportations could take years, giving them the chance to disappear into the shadows.

Look at California for a preview of our future under Obama's immigration plan. The Hispanic population is now almost equal to the white population, and almost 50 percent of babies born in California are Hispanic.

Nearly a third of "English learners" in U.S. public schools are third-generation Americans who still are not speaking English at home, and the Hispanic illegitimacy rate is 53 percent. The cheap labor welcomed by employers is not only a huge impediment for American job seekers but also a big expense to taxpayers, who are hit with new costs of schools, hospitals and prisons.

The agency charged with approving the applications for Obama's amnesty is getting ready for more than 800,000 applications in the first couple of months. This agency is facing the prospect of trying to process at least 4 million pieces of mail connected with the new amnesty, and all applications are supposed to be opened in the presence of two workers, one with a "secret" security clearance.

Obviously, we need a new bureaucracy for this awesome task, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has already started to hire several hundred new employees and train them. Luke Bellocchi, a former deputy ombudsman for USCIS, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in February, "It's going to be hard to tell how much fraud there is."

Kenneth Palinkas, president of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, said: "How you could have proper adjudications this way is beyond my scope of reason. They want to cleric-alize the job, and they're really not concerned about whether the documents entered are fraudulent or not. They just want to push the papers along."

The two factors that Americans are most concerned about are jobs and voter fraud. The United States has accepted two new immigrants for each additional job created since 2000, according to federal data, and expert witnesses have testified that once the amnestied immigrants are given Social Security numbers and driver's licenses, there will be no way to stop them from registering to vote.

Way to Go Doug! Right On!

America is Screwed Unless ‘We The People’ Get Baptized Afresh In Our Founders' Rebel Spirit

3/22/2015 - Doug Giles Townhall.com

For those who didn’t know this, our nation was founded by brilliant, freedom-loving heavy weights.

It’s hard to imagine that nowadays because our country is currently being deconstructed by moronic, liberty-choking, light weights also known as “politicians”. In particular…Liberal politicians. Liberals, you see, don’t mind what you do as long as they approve. They’re kind of like King George III and his inbred dipsticks in that regard. Or, for a more current example, they’re somewhat like Islam with their fascism, sans the billygoat beards and the suicide vests.

That said, our current crop of freedom-stranglers aren’t entirely made up of Leftists as there are many who claim to represent the Right who also believe it’s their duty in life to make our lives beholden to big government, power-hungry dillweeds.

If our founders were around right now they would stomp on this current crop of managers like a narc at a biker party. Literally.

Yep, from a freedom standpoint, our founders were a horse of a different stripe. They hated control freaks. They loathed tyrants. They trusted government about as far as I could toss Rosie O’Donnell following her 5pm feeding after I just finished the Hotter ‘N Hell 100.

Indeed, once our original framers got this incredible country up and officially cranking they began to cobble together a seal, a picture, a motto, and an emblem, which would encapsulate what they had concocted on fresh American soil.

Benjamin Franklin, being the rebel he was, wanted it to be a picture of Moses confronting Obama…I mean, Pharaoh, when Moses demanded Pharaoh cease his enslavement of Israel and let God’s people go. This image was to be encircled with the phrase, “Rebellion To Tyrants Is Obedience To God”. Thomas Jefferson liked the motto "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God" so much, he used it on his personal seal.

Today, especially during BHO’s be-damned days, the symbol the Left would concoct to represent their “American Dream” would be a pic of a dependent, 45yr.-old, multi-pierced lesbian breast-feeding off a big, old, saggy, milk-dried, government dog tit: a veritable dependent, indebted and enslaved minion from the cradle to the grave. If you don’t believe me click here.

So, what’s my point? Well, it’s this: we’re wussies. All of us. We have not the singular mettle that made this grand experiment in self-governance tick. I’m guilty and you’re guilty and we can blame corrupt politicians, puff our chest, and scream at MSNBC all day long, but the truth is … we let ‘em do it to us. We traded our freedoms, prosperity and our original roots and moorings for mediocre comfort over duty and we were daft enough to believe them time and time again.

I believe until “We The People” resurrect the aforementioned motto and mantra by which the likes of Franklin and Jefferson clipped along, namely, pardon my redundancy, “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God”, then we will continue to see this land morph into a cartoon of what it was intended to be.

Yep, until we internally get to where our founders were, in particular, believing like they did, that it was their divine duty to vehemently oppose oppressors and not kiss their enslaving backside, we will continue to eat crap and content ourselves with ever decreasing freedom and the land of the free and the home of the brave will irreversibly morph into the land of the bound and home of the slaves.

Answer to Lawless Immigration - Follow Rule of Law

Illiberal Approach to Immigration Only Invites More Acrimony

2/26/2015 - Victor Davis Hanson Townhall.com

A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Obama's executive order that overrode existing immigration law. The result is more acrimony and chaos.

It is a good time to remember that there are more than just two types of immigration -- legal and illegal. There also exist liberal and illiberal approaches to immigration.

Take liberal immigration. It is governed by laws passed by Congress and signed and executed by the president. Nearly all Americans accept that no individual can pick and choose which federal statute he chooses to obey, depending on his own perceived self-interest.

Liberal immigration would be entirely legal, meritocratic and ethnically blind. Skills and education would matter more than proximity to the border or political clout.

The numbers of immigrants would be balanced by liberal considerations: the need for skilled newcomers to avoid dependency on American society, and concern that their arrival not harm the economic aspirations of poor working citizens.

Liberal immigration would aim at rapidly integrating and assimilating immigrants in accordance with further classical liberal principles. America is not a multicultural society where appearance is essential to our characters, but a uniquely multiracial nation bound by common values where race becomes secondary.

In contrast, illiberal immigration would be the opposite of the above.

A president by fiat would nullify existing laws and order federal agencies to ignore them. Or he would issue executive orders contrary to both his prior promises and to the Constitution.

President Obama did not, as he alleges, override Congress because it failed to act on immigration. Instead he ignored it because Congress would not act in a particular fashion that he found ideologically akin to his own beliefs.

Illiberal immigration would also mean that new arrivals could ignore the cost, time and inconvenience of applying for visas. Instead, they would simply enter the U.S. illegally and not be transparent about their illegal status.

Illiberal immigration would turn policy away from ethnically blind considerations to focus on ethnic criteria.

It would assume that the enforcement of federal immigration law and the making of immigration policy should react to particular ethnic and political lobbying groups.

Illiberal immigration would not concern itself with the impact of arrivals on the host country, especially the costs incurred by the public or the effect on the wages and services of the poor and working classes.

Also, illiberal immigration would seek -- both explicitly by political intent and implicitly by sheer numbers -- to undermine easy assimilation, in hopes of creating bloc constituencies with group concerns rather than individual concerns.

Illiberal immigration would encourage romance for, not disappointment with, the country left behind. And it would result in demands on, rather than gratitude to, the newly adopted country.

The reason why immigration is now a mess is not because there are no liberal solutions, but because there are so many illiberal stumbling blocks.

Many Americans are willing to allow some sort of exemption to the immigrants residing here illegally. Such an exemption would offer a pathway to permanent legal residency to the majority of immigrants here illegally if some liberal criteria were first applied.

First, close the border to illegal immigration to prevent recurrence of these problems. Texas authorities report that 20,000 foreign nationals have crossed the state's southern border with Mexico in just the last two months.

Ensure that those who have committed crimes in the United States, or who have no history of work but instead only a record of dependency on entitlements, return to their nations of origin.

Those who have just illegally arrived in cynical anticipation of amnesty should likewise return home to go through the process legally.

Make immigration a meritocratic system that does not take into consideration the particular country of origin or ethnic background of the would-be immigrant.

What is holding up legislative compromise and what drove President Obama's executive order is illiberal opposition to what most Americans see as a liberal compromise. The advocates of open borders apparently do not wish an end to easy entry without regard to the law.

They do not wish to deport foreign nationals who have broken U.S. laws, or who have no history of productive employment, or who have just arrived in anticipation of amnesty. They do not wish to reform legal immigration to a completely meritocratic system that might not necessarily favor the current preponderance of arrivals from Latin America and Mexico -- and thus might not enhance the political clout of ethnic operatives.

And they most certainly do not wish to end admission to the U.S on the basis of cheap labor. To do that would increase the wages and bargaining power of working Americans.

The solution to the immigration mess is not to threaten militancy if a particular political agenda is jeopardized. It is not to slam a federal judge who demands adherence to the law. And it is certainly not to scapegoat a generous host for not agreeing to political demands of guests.

The answer instead is simply to act legally -- and liberally.

The Problem of Interest Group Society

The GOP and Immigration: Part of a Much Bigger Problem

2/23/2015 - Jay Cost Townhall.com

Why is the Republican Party so unreliable on the immigration issue?

There is little doubt that they are unreliable. Conservatives want iron-clad border-security measures firmly in place before any legalization process begins. Yet GOP members of Congress are eager to switch it around, and then accept milquetoast security.

It is strange. After all, congressional Republicans are not bad on taxes; they’re not secretly looking to hike the rate you’ll pay the IRS in April. They’re not bad on regulation; they are serious when they say they want less, not more red tape.

Why immigration? This is, after all, a party-based democracy, and the GOP is the party that represents the conservative grassroots. Yet the two diverge on this issue -- pretty substantially. What is going on?

The answer usually comes back: business interests. They want the cheap labor from legalization, and all sorts of other groups -- agricultural or fishing concerns, for instance -- want new carveouts for their own industries. They ply members of Congress with money, lobby them aggressively, provide them with cushy jobs after they leave office, and presto: the base asks for one thing, the party offers another.

This is all true, but it misses a larger story, one that highlights just how difficult it will be for conservatives to really change the way government works.

If you ever visit Washington, D.C. you might discover it is a study in contrast. Go down to the National Mall, tour the Congress, walk past the White House, and the buildings all reflect a kind of simple, almost austere republican virtue. Nothing too fancy -- nothing like Buckingham Palace or Versailles. Just sturdy yet impressive structures that reflect our belief that the people temporarily occupying those buildings are no better than anybody else.

Yet go a few blocks to the northwest and you will see row after row of drab, indistinct office buildings, all of which are pretty new. Who’s in there? Interest groups, for one. Consultants, too. And lobbyists -- scores and scores of lobbyists.

A century ago, they weren’t really there at all. Washington developed virtually overnight -- and not because an important industry settled there -- like New York and the financial district. There is no economically important seaport -- as with Los Angeles or New Orleans. It is not a transportation hub like Chicago. They don’t make steel in D.C., as they did in Pittsburgh or Birmingham. No -- Washington grew from a sleepy farm town to a sprawling metropolis because the government grew -- and those interest groups descended upon the nation’s capital to get a piece of the government’s action.

Immigration reform is just another piece; it really gets down to distributing federal largesse. Immigrant groups get new legal status. Businesses get cheap labor. Fishermen and orange growers get special exemptions. This is the kind of thing Washington, D.C. is very, very good at. It’s the local industry, if you will: deciding who wins, and who loses. In my new book, A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption, I call this the “interest group society.” It defines our politics today.

This is why congressional Republicans are so lousy on the immigration issue. It is not that they are RINOs, it is that they are members of Congress. Implicitly, that is how members of Congress, in both parties, view their job these days -- dispensing benefits to those who ask for them (while writing big campaign checks).

This points to the big challenge that conservatives face, and why we so regularly but heads with the GOP leadership. Conservatives want to roll back the capacity of Washington to pick winners and losers. We’re not interested in politics because to grab our slice of the pie. We want a limited government that is committed to the public interest -- something much closer to what the Founding Fathers invented. We detest this massive, corrupt behemoth that sits upon the Potomac. That puts us basically in opposition to most members of Congress, Republican or Democrat, who view their job as growing government to satisfy the clamor for more special favors.

And immigration is a classic example of the problem. Immigration reform, at least as it was designed a few years ago in the Senate, is bad for the country at large. It would raise the unemployment rate and lower wages; worse, because its border security provisions are lousy, it would not even solve the problem. Nevertheless, it is good for certain interests -- immigrant activist groups and business lobbies. And members of Congress -- including Republicans -- are inevitably inclined to follow those groups at the expense of the public good.

And immigration is not the only issue like this. How about farm subsidies? They get less play than immigration, but the GOP signed off on a terrible farm bill last year that funnels billions to giant agribusinesses. How about corporate welfare, like the Export-Import Bank? Republicans have talked a good game about that of late, but what have they really done? How about payouts in the corporate tax code? Again, lots of chatter but few results. All three of these issues are like immigration -- interest groups want one thing while the public good requires something else. And just watch the Republicans in Congress flock to side of the interest groups.

Meanwhile, the issues where the GOP is reliable -- like taxes and regulation -- are usually those where the party’s interest-group patrons happen to agree with the conservative grassroots.

All of this suggests a huge problem with getting rid of Obamacare. Conservatives worry about average voters being transformed into federal clients through the subsidies -- but what about the industry groups that Obamacare paid off? The insurers, the doctors, the hospitals, the AARP, the pharmaceutical industry, and more? They all donate, quite lavishly in fact, to congressional Republicans. They do not give so many millions out of the kindness of their own hearts. They expect a return on their investment. So don’t be surprised if the GOP win the presidency in 2016, and the party’s proposal to repeal Obamacare turns out to be strong on rhetoric but weak on the specifics. Just like immigration.

In other words, the party’s bad approach to immigration is part of a much larger malady. Our government has grown too big for its britches. The Framers never designed our institutions to exercise so much power, and we should not be surprised that they exercise it irresponsibly. Congress is particularly out of its depth. Members use the vast authority they’ve been given not for the public good, but to reward the interests that lobby them so thoroughly. If conservatives really want to roll back the size and scope of big government, it is this culture -- this interest group society -- that we have to dismantle.

A Disgraceful Nightmare Indeed!

Obama's Immigration Nightmare: Exponential Executive Lawlessness

3/17/2015 - David Limbaugh Townhall.com

I wonder whether most people truly understand the scope and import of Obama's lawless order to halt deportations and allow work permits for up to 5 million immigrants living illegally in the United States.

Do they understand that he doesn't have the constitutional authority to do this? Do they understand that he admitted not having the constitutional authority to do this? Do they understand that Congress considered and rejected such action when it declined to pass the DREAM Act? Do they understand that under Obama's rule, these immigrants will be eligible for Social Security payments and even receive credit, in some instances, for sums they paid into the Social Security system while using fraudulent Social Security numbers?

How much contempt for the law can a chief executive officer of the United States government demonstrate?

The Daily Caller is reporting that a Congressional Research Service memo provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee states that "under the November 20, 2014, policy memorandum, foreign nationals who receive deferred action status may be eligible for work authorization. As a result, a foreign national who receives deferred action status may be able to have all of his or her Social Security-covered earnings count toward qualifying for a Social Security benefit (all earnings from authorized and unauthorized work)."

This means that these immigrants will profit from their double wrongdoing -- being here illegally and using a fraudulent Social Security number -- at the hands of the very government that instituted those laws and whose duty it is to enforce them. These earnings could count toward their retirement, disability and survivor benefits.

I guess it will be as if it never happened. Under Obama's executive fiats, these immigrants will receive new Social Security numbers. New number, clean slate; stroke of the pen, law of the land. As your friendly therapist might ask you, "how does that make you feel?"

Adding insult to injury -- and aggravation to anarchy -- Obama's White House is playing fast and loose with the truth on this matter. Shocker.

In November, an administration official told reporters that these immigrants would not be eligible for Social Security benefits. But as The Daily Caller notes, the White House changed its tune in December, saying the official had misspoken in November and that immigrants protected under Obama's action will be eligible for those benefits.

Who really believes that the administration official misspoke in November, as opposed to misrepresenting the facts to soften the blow of this already-outrageous executive action? Sen. Jeff Sessions wasn't buying it, and one of his spokesmen pointed out that this new eligibility "is an attack on working families (because) the amnestied illegal immigrants are largely older, lower-wage and lower-skilled and will draw billions more in benefits than they will pay in."

Seriously, how much more bad news could there be with this executive action?

It's funny you should ask. In fact, there is more to consider. Indeed, I must add more questions to my list at the beginning of this column. Do people truly realize that our entitlement programs, including Social Security, are in dire straits? Do they understand that at some point in the near future, entitlement benefits will consume 100 percent of federal tax revenues, such that there will be no money left over for discretionary spending? Do they realize that the president who is unduly burdening our fiscal condition is the same man who just exacerbated the pressures on that system by making these immigrants eligible for benefits?

More importantly, do they realize he's the primary person standing in the way of structural entitlement reform, which is necessary to avert the inevitable federal fiscal calamity? This is the same man who wants us to alter our entire way of life, block the Keystone XL pipeline and further burden us with quixotic spending on fantastic "green" projects because he sees global warming as the greatest threat to this nation and the world. So we have a tangible, undeniable fiscal crisis looming over our heads -- it will most likely materialize within 20 years -- and he chooses to ignore it while demanding radical action on global warming, which wouldn't make an appreciable difference in global temperature in a century, even if you believe the alarmism underlying this hysteria. But I digress.

Just in case you thought there are no further outrages to report here, I must inform you that the Justice Department filed an emergency motion last week asking a federal appeals court to suspend the injunction issued by a U.S. District Court in Texas against Obama's lawless amnesty order. In its motion, the highhanded DOJ characterized the District Court's injunction as "interfering with immigration enforcement." That would make George Orwell proud, for in fact, the District Court is doing just the opposite; it is trying to make the administration enforce the existing law, not the illegal one that Obama whisked into existence with his pen and phone.

The DOJ motion also argued, speciously, that the District Court injunction "offends basic separation-of-powers and federalism principles and impinges on core Executive functions." You've got to admit that these people have chutzpah. Again, their words are wholly at odds with the facts. Obama is the one who has grossly offended separation of powers and federalism principles and has exceeded his executive authority.

What a colossal, disgraceful nightmare we're experiencing.

Will Demographic Transformation Destroy the USA?

Is the European Union Dying?

3/13/2015 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com

As the European Coal and Steel Community of Jean Monnet evolved into the EU, we were told a "United States of Europe" was at hand, modeled on the USA. And other countries and continents will inevitably follow Europe's example.

There will be a North American Union of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and a Latin America Union of the Mercosur trade partnership.

In an essay, "The E.U. Experiment Has Failed," Bruce Thornton of Hoover Institution makes the case that the verdict is in, the dream is dead, the EU is unraveling, One Europe is finished.

Consider, first, economics. In 2013, Europe grew by 1 percent compared to the U.S.'s 2.2 percent. In December, unemployment in Europe was 11.4 percent. In the U.S., 5.6 percent. Americans are alarmed by the lowest labor force participation rate since Reagan, 62.7 percent. In Europe, in 2013, it was 57.5 percent.

Europeans may wail over German-imposed "austerity," but the government share of Europe's GDP has gone from 45 percent in 2008 to 49 percent today. In Greece, it is 59 percent.

Most critical is the demographic crisis. For a nation to survive, its women must produce on average 2.1 children. Europe has not seen that high a fertility rate in 40 years. Today, it is down to 1.6 children.

Europeans are an aging, shrinking, disappearing, dying race.

And the places of Europe's unborn are being filled by growing "concentrations of unassimilated and disaffected Muslim immigrants, segregated in neighborhoods like the banlieues of Paris or the satellite 'dish cities' of Amsterdam.

"Shut out from labor markets, plied with generous social welfare payments and allowed to cultivate beliefs and cultural practices inimical to democracy, many of these immigrants despise their new homes, and find the religious commitment and certainty of radical Islam an attractive alternative."

"Some turn to terrorism," like the French-Algerian brothers who carried out the slaughter at the magazine Charlie Hebdo.

"Such violence," writes Thornton, "along with cultural practices like honor killings, forced marriages and polygamy ... are stoking a political backlash against Muslims."

Populist parties are surging -- the U.K. Independence Party in Britain, the National Front in France, and now the "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident," PEGIDA, in Germany, These parties will soon be strong enough to enter governments, impose restrictions on immigration and demand assimilation.

Then the cultural conflicts may turn violent.

A fundamental question has troubled European unification since the Treaty of Rome in 1957, writes Thornton: "What comprises the collective beliefs of and values that can form the foundations of a genuine European-wide community? What is it that all Europeans believe?

"Europe and its nations were forged in the matrix of ideas, ideals, and beliefs of Christianity, which gives divine sanction to notions like human rights, the sanctity of the individual, political freedom and equality. Today across Europe Christian belief is a shadow of its former self.

"Fewer and fewer Europeans regularly go to Church. ... It is common for many European cathedrals to have more tourists during a service than parishioners. ... This process of secularization -- already well advanced in 1887 when Nietzsche famously said, 'God is no more than a faded word today, not even a concept' -- is nearly complete today, leaving Europe without its historical principle of unity."

Political religions -- communism, fascism, Nazism -- are substitute gods that failed. "Nor has secular social democracy ... provided people with a transcendent principle that justifies sacrifice for the greater good, or even gives people a reason to reproduce.

"A shared commitment to leisure, a short workweek, and a generous social safety net is nothing worth killing or dying for."

And who will die for Donetsk, Luhansk or Crimea?

Pacifism beckons. Every major European nation in NATO -- Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland -- will see defense spending in 2015 below 2 percent of GDP.

The idea of One Europe has depended on "the denigration of patriotism and national pride," writes Thornton, "Yet all peoples are the products of a particular culture, language, mores, traditions, histories, landscapes. ... That sense of belonging to a community defined by a shared identity cannot be created by a single currency."

Christianity gave Europe its faith, identity, purpose and will to conquer and convert the world. Christianity created Europe. And the death of Christianity leaves the continent with no unifying principle save a watery commitment to democracy and La Dolce Vita.

From Marine Le Pen's France to Putin's Russia, nationalism and patriotism are surging across Europe because peoples, deprived of or disbelieving in the old faith, want a new faith to give meaning, purpose, vitality to their lives, something to live for, fight for, die for.

Countless millions of Muslims have found in their old faith their new faith. And the descendants of fallen-away European Christians of the 19th and 20th centuries are finding their new faith in old tribal and national identities.

Less and less does multiculturalism look like the wave of the future.

Lawlessness Rules With Impunity

Obama's Ongoing Assault on the Constitution

3/6/2015 - David Limbaugh Townhall.com

One of the many reasons constitutional conservatives consider President Obama a threat to the Constitution is his disdain for the separation of powers, illustrated most recently in his plan to bypass the Senate in making an arms deal with Iran.

The Framers understood that throughout history, the real threat to God-given liberty had been centralized, unchecked governmental power. As such, they crafted our system in a way to limit the consolidation of that power, especially in the federal government.

They did this in a number of ways, including establishing a system of federalism, which divided powers between the federal and state governments. They also specifically enumerated powers granted to the federal Congress and added the Bill of Rights, which expressly restricted Congress' encroachment on a panoply of individual liberties and also included the ninth and 10th amendments, which reserve powers to the states and the people.

As to the power granted to the federal government, the Framers took further steps to deter its centralization by distributing the functions of government into three coequal branches, the legislative, executive and judicial -- known as the separation of powers. They also provided for an intricate scheme of checks and balances among the three branches to guard against expansions of their power.

Throughout his tenure in office, Obama has been exercising powers outside the scope of his constitutionally prescribed executive authority. Democrats have cynically denied his usurpations, saying that he's just doing what other presidents have done, but his abuses have been different in kind.

He has abused his power with premeditation, announcing early on, through his former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, that he would govern through "executive orders and directives to get the job done across a front of issues." More recently, he has boasted that he has a pen and a phone -- tools that will enable him to circumvent legislative authority.

He not only granted virtual amnesty to millions in contravention of Congress' authority but also created new, substantive rights for the immigrants, from Social Security numbers to driver's licenses. These rights could have far-reaching and material consequences, such as giving tax credits to millions who have lived here illegally. If that doesn't outrage you, you don't have a pulse, or you think the Constitution should have no greater weight than the sheets of paper it can be printed on.

In implementing Obamacare, he granted exemptions and suspended deadlines at his sole whim and even granted federal subsidies to people in states that had not set up an exchange, in direct violation of the law, as his advisers have admitted.

People have probably forgotten by now Obama's radical czars, whom he appointed to serve with all the power of Cabinet officers but without being confirmed by the Senate. Then there was Obama's planned defiance of the Senate in moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to U.S. soil -- in Illinois -- despite the Senate's having voted 90-6 against such a move. Also, don't forget his unilateral reversal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gay service members, his Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory end run around Congress to regulate carbon because Congress had refused to pass a cap-and-trade bill, his lawless subordination of secured creditors in favor of his union allies in the Chrysler restructuring scandal, and his defiance of a federal judge's order invalidating his imperious ban on deep-water drilling. There are many more examples.

Most recently, and quite disturbingly, Obama has signaled his intention to consummate a nuclear arms deal with Iran without so much as conferring with the Senate -- much less getting its approval, as required by the Constitution's treaty clause in Article 2, Section 2.

When asked about this, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said, "Ultimately, we can't put in place an additional hurdle for that agreement to overcome here at the eleventh hour."

So now the Constitution is merely "an additional hurdle" to these dangerous people? This should alarm everyone in this nation -- not just Republicans, not just conservatives.

Obama will argue that he is allowed to do this because presidents have traditionally entered into agreements with other countries without the advice and consent of the Senate, known as "executive agreements." But he knows -- there is zero chance he doesn't know -- that executive agreements have never been used for something so monumentally important as establishing an (as opposed to terminating an existing) arms treaty with another nation -- nuclear arms, no less.

Obama full well understands -- constitutional scholar that he claims to be -- that executive agreements are used to cover matters solely within his executive power or those made pursuant to a treaty or an act of Congress. The Framers were so adamant about presidents obtaining approval in important matters that they imposed a requirement of a supermajority of the Senate for ratification of treaties.

An arms deal with Iran could result in this militant theocracy's acquisition of nuclear weapons, which would be a dire threat to our national security and that of our allies, especially Israel. No one could pass a polygraph claiming that a matter of such grave importance should simply be written off as minor enough to be handled by executive agreement.

If Obama successfully formalizes such a deal, will there by anything left of this Constitution we all claim to so revere?

If your answer is that "it prevents him from raising taxes," you may want to think again. Word is that his IRS is preparing to raise taxes on corporations; they call it "closing loopholes." Please be bold, Congress.

Republican Excuses Again & Again

Boehner Surrenders to Obama’s Amnesty!

Conservative Daily March 3, 2015 Fellow Conservative,

Boehner did it. He just completely caved to Obama’s amnesty executive actions. 

He promised us that he would stand his ground. When we were telling him to defund the amnesty last year, he said that the only way it would work would be to take the fight to the battle over Department of Homeland Security’s funding.

Early this morning, Speaker Boehner told his party during a meeting that he would allow a “clean” bill to come to a vote in the House as early as TODAY!

That means that after all this, after everything we’ve fought for… Boehner is just going to do what he always does: surrender! He is going to completely fund Obama's unconstitutional amnesty program.

This is UNACCEPTABLE!

It’s time to do what we should have done months ago. Remove Boehner from power!

Boehner did everything he had to do to quell the calls for mutiny last week. He even went so far as to blow kisses at reporters during a press conference.

But it just goes to show that a RINO can’t change his stripes.

Boehner says that he simply can’t risk an attack against this country. Really? Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson even admitted that essential employees would stay on the job.

No, what John Boehner is doing is treason. Not only is he giving his stamp of approval to the President’s illegal and unconstitutional amnesty bureaucracy, but he is spitting in the face of every Conservative in this country.

While we were at CPAC this past week, we had the privilege of listening to Mark Levin speak. And this is what he said: “In order to defeat Democrats, we have to defeat Republicans.”

Those words were never truer than now.

This is your absolute LAST chance! The White House has already started referring to illegals as 'Americans-in-waiting.' If we don’t take a stand right now, illegal aliens could start getting social security cards as early as next week!

The Republicans have abandoned every single principle and promise they made during the election. These spineless cowards have once again shown that they are unwilling to stand on principle and do what is necessary to defend this Republic.

Removing John Boehner from power won’t solve all of the issues we face. But it would be an excellent start. Removing him from power would ensure that we never have to deal with something like this again.

All week, people have been telling me to expect Boehner to surrender. And all week, I didn’t want to believe them. Well, I was proven wrong.

Boehner is a coward. All he had to do was put on his best poker face and wait for the Democrats to cave. Instead, he is waving a white flag of surrender and promising to give Obama every penny he asked for to implement his amnesty.

By the end of the day, we could see a vote on a bill to fund Obama’s amnesty. You can’t let that happen!