David Boaz - The Politics of Freedom

More videos from FreedomFest 2009 coming out. Here's David Boaz (part 1 of 4):



Collect all four!

The Federal Tax Escrow Account

I'll let Dr. Donald Boyd explain it:



Hat tip: Tenth Amendment Center

Kennedy Buried at Arlington

Kennedy laid to rest at Arlington, beside brothers; AP

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was laid to rest Saturday night alongside slain brothers John and Robert on hallowed ground at Arlington National Cemetery, celebrated for "the dream he kept alive" across the decades since their deaths.

Comment: This is a travesty. He was a drunk, derelict, coward, and far from being a hero or patriot.

The Government Can

Okay, I just had to post this one:



Hat tip: SnappedShot

The Trouble with Lawyers

“The reason tort reform is not in the [health care] bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on. And that’s the plain and simple truth.”

Charles Krauthammer says that "the trial lawyers on the Democrat party." Aren't lawyers supposed to fight for the little guy? Well, John Stossel did an investigation into this not too long ago, and here's what he reported:

How to Defend Capitalism

By Aaron Clarey (Part 1 of 14):



For all those interested in learning how to talk to others about capitalism, I highly recommend this series.

Jon Voight Stands Up

Not the normal savoir faire for this blog, but when you hear what he has to say, you'll understand:



Hat tip: Big Hollywood

Semper Fi, A--Hole!

Marine Corps veteran David Hedrick posed a tough question to Rep. Brian Baird. Our Senators and Congresscritters don't know how to uphold their oaths. The 17th Amendment removed the structural protections of the Constitution, and unleashed an ever-growing federal government. The first step in rediscovering our limited government is to repeal the 17th Amendment. (We should also remove the Executive veto and make judges more accountable, but let's take one step at a time.)

Hat tip: Hot Air

Thomas Jefferson Calls Obama a Sinful Tyrant

The White House hired a private communications company based in Minnesota to distribute mass e-mails, helping to shed light on how some recipients received e-mails in support of President Obama's health care plan without signing up for them, FOX News has learned.

...

It is still unknown how much taxpayer money the White House provides to Govdelivery for its services.

Thomas Jefferson said, "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." (Yes, it's verified.)

Hat tip: DrewM at Ace of Spades

Sen. Feingold on the Constitution (Video)

Does the Tenth Amendment mean anything? Did the 17th Amendment remove the structural protections that reinforced the Tenth Amendment? How can Senators and Congresscritters take an oath to uphold something they don't even understand? Without these Constitutional protections, are we heading to Obamageddon?

Hat tip: Tenth Amendment Center

Is the Economy Recovering?

Don't believe it.

In recent months the US government's budget deficit has widened thanks in part to the Obama administration's costly stimulus plan.

Our correspondent in Shanghai says that China is worried about this, and fears the stimulus efforts will fuel inflation in the US, reducing the value of the dollar.

This would then erode the value of the debt China holds in the US currency.

In June, China cut its holdings of US securities by about $25bn, a fall of 3.1%.

Things are about to get a whole lot worse.

Advancing in Another Direction

Only after years of witnessing the ineffectiveness of drug policies -- and the disproportionate impact the drug war has on young black men -- have we and other police officers begun to question the system.

Cities and states license beer and tobacco sellers to control where, when and to whom drugs are sold. Ending Prohibition saved lives because it took gangsters out of the game. Regulated alcohol doesn't work perfectly, but it works well enough. Prescription drugs are regulated, and while there is a huge problem with abuse, at least a system of distribution involving doctors and pharmacists works without violence and high-volume incarceration. Regulating drugs would work similarly: not a cure-all, but a vast improvement on the status quo.

Legalization would not create a drug free-for-all. In fact, regulation reins in the mess we already have. If prohibition decreased drug use and drug arrests acted as a deterrent, America would not lead the world in illegal drug use and incarceration for drug crimes.

Drug manufacturing and distribution is too dangerous to remain in the hands of unregulated criminals. Drug distribution needs to be the combined responsibility of doctors, the government, and a legal and regulated free market. This simple step would quickly eliminate the greatest threat of violence: street-corner drug dealing.

We simply urge the federal government to retreat. Let cities and states (and, while we're at it, other countries) decide their own drug policies. Many would continue prohibition, but some would try something new. California and its medical marijuana dispensaries provide a good working example, warts and all, that legalized drug distribution does not cause the sky to fall.

It's not even a retreat. In the words of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, it's advancing in another direction. It's not just semantics, either. In this case, it's taking a positive step to reduce crime and addiction, and it should be properly labeled as a positive step. That's the way to advocate for it.

The Ultimate Insider Trading

Obama rewards his biggest financial backer:

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

Billionaire George Soros cut his stake in his biggest holding, Petroleo Brasileiro SA, in the second quarter while buying more shares of other energy producers.

His New York-based hedge-fund firm, Soros Fund Management LLC, sold 22 million U.S.-listed common shares of Petrobras, as the Brazilian oil company is known, according to a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Soros bought 5.8 million of the company’s U.S.-traded preferred shares.

Soros is taking advantage of the spread between the two types of U.S.-listed Petrobras shares, said Luis Maizel, president of LM Capital Group LLC, which manages about $4 billion. The common shares were 21 percent more expensive than preferred today, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Corruption at the highest levels of government. Washington's corruption is a result of so much power being centralized there. A return to limited government would reduce this kind of blatant corruption.

Hat tip: Hot Air

Another Democrat Admits Support for Socialized Health Care

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY):

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Scarborough: I’m sitting here stunned, saying Oh My God, you’re making the point of the health care protesters.

Weiner: If Barack Obama doesn’t want to do it, I want to do it.

Weiner is a dick.

Hat tip: Hot Air

Senator Durbin Is Afraid

He won't be appearing at any town halls to meet with his constituents.

Durbin [(D-IL)], back in his hometown of Springfield for the unveiling of the newest penny honoring Abraham Lincoln, said the yelling, pushing and shoving that has erupted in other parts of the nation are part of a strategy by those opposed to reforms.

“I don’t think that really serves the purpose of informing the public and answering their questions honestly,” Durbin said. “It doesn’t help.”

Rather than participate in a town hall-style public session to discuss President Barack Obama’s push for an overhaul of health care, Durbin has held six meetings with health care officials.

He said those meetings, including one in Decatur on Wednesday, have led to meaningful and cordial debate.

Democrats hold supermajorities in both houses of Congress. They can pass whatever they want to pass. Republicans can engage in no political maneuvering to block any legislative proposals the Democrats have, and yet they are still more concerned with appearances than in progress.

That's why their plan involves obfuscation and silencing dissent.

Dick Durbin: one of a hundred reasons to repeal the 17th Amendment.

Hat tip: Hot Air

Senate Moves for Loan Disclosure

Against the backdrop of Sens. Dodd's and Conrad's sweetheart mortgage deals, the Senate Ethics Committee moves to adopt full disclosure rules:

But even as the ethics panel dropped the complaints, it recognized the public need for protection against such conflicts. The panel's co-chairmen, Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., introduced S. 1632 last week to require members of Congress to disclose their mortgage lenders, amounts and terms. Congress should pass the bill before the next financial statements are due in May.

Mortgage disclosure would help reveal and deter potential conflicts of interest. The public never would have known of Dodd and Conrad's loans, save for media scrutiny of the company during last year's subprime mortgage meltdown. And the legislators might have passed up the sweetheart deals if they knew they would have to tell their constituents about the loans.

In order to delay a marriage she did not want, the wife of Odysseus would sew on her wedding dress during the day and undo her work each night. This, of course, is just another example of the government pretending to open in one area while spreading its cloak over an ever-widening zone. The fact of the matter is that the people simply are not capable of overseeing two houses of congress plus an executive branch, plus various and sundry state, county, city, and other elected officials.

There's simply no need for a bicameral legislature where both houses are elected by the people. Either repeal the 17th Amendment so that state legislatures can oversee Senators or get rid of one of the houses of congress.

New Health Care Plan: Give Millions to Someone

Yes, Obama's new health care plan is to give someone a health insurance company (after taking it away from someone else, of course.)

The White House indicated it could jettison the contentious public option and settle on insurance cooperatives as an acceptable alternative, a move embraced by some Republicans lawmakers who have strongly opposed the administration's approach so far.

...

As proposed by [Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D.], the co-ops would receive federal startup money, but then would operate independently of the government. They would have to maintain the same financial reserves that private companies are required to keep to handle unexpectedly high claims.

Yes, the government plan is to pick someone to whom to give millions of dollars that they've taken away from other people. The theory behind this move is that the government can pick someone who can run an insurance company better than the people currently running insurance companies.

In actuality, the venture will fail, because the person will be chosen especially to make it fail. It will fail spectacularly, though, after spending all of its (taxpayer) money offering services no sane company would offer. It's specifically designed to do so. That way Democrats can claim short-term success ("Look at all the people we're treating!") and still blame the free market for when it fails ("We were doing so well before we ran out of money!"). This will give the Democrat very visible supporters, because the people that are treated by the co-op are, essentially, getting stuff for free, and everyone loves getting stuff for free. At the same time, people don't see that which is hidden. They see the benefits of spending the money in pursuit of impossibly unsustainable benefits, but they don't see the damage that taking those millions away from hard-working taxpayers does.

Any system that takes from Peter to give to Paul can always count on the support of Paul. Obama's protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, it's all about politics.

Too Big to Save

If you live in the Chicago area, be aware that the city is trying to save money by scheduling "reduced services days", with the first one on this Monday. While emergency services will be available, most other services, such as library, garbage, and city-run clinics will not.

Sometimes, when you really love someone, you have to let them hit rock bottom before you can help. And so it is with cities and states. If the federal government steps in to bail out state and municipal governments, they will never learn the benefits of self-reliance. Instead, they will become dependent on federal assistance, just as a drug addict would take all the money you offer, dragging you down with him.

Believe it or not, people can survive just fine without all these extra services by the government. Here's a great segment John Stossel did on the NYC blackout of 2003:

A 'Public Option' I Can Support

In the spirit of compromise, I offer my version of the 'public option' demanded by liberals:

1. Any person in the United States, whether a citizen or not, is free to put forward his or her own money, in conjunction with any other individual or group of individuals, to finance a health care plan for any other person in the United States to purchase so long as both parties freely choose to do so.

2. In accordance with the 13th Amendment, no individual in the United States, whether a citizen or not, will be forced to contribute of their labor involuntarily except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.

Since most Americans would now prefer no bill to the options currently on the table, I think this is a very magnanimous approach.

Bloggers' Conference on CSPAN

Americans for Prosperity is sponsoring a bloggers' conference called "Right Online" which is being broadcast live on CSPAN this morning.

Hat tip: Hot Air

Liberty and Faction

Peter Wehner echoes my words on liberty and factionalism.

A free nation, then, will have factions—and factions, by their very nature, clash. Those clashes are not only very nearly inevitable, they are often useful. They allow passionate debate to occur while the public judges the merits of the arguments put forth.

It doesn’t mean that common ground is impossible to achieve; we saw widespread bipartisan support for No Child Left Behind and the Patriot Act, for example, during the Bush years, and for welfare reform during the Clinton years. Nor does it mean that factional disputes should be uncivil; civility is, as Stephen Carter has written, a precondition of democratic dialogue. There ought to be rules of etiquette, even (and perhaps especially) in political discourse.

But insisting on civility is different from insisting on agreement.

He even quotes Federalist 10. But it'd be nice to refer to this part:

The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.

State sovereignty, which was protected by the Senate before the 17th Amendment, would ensure that factious leaders could not compel every state to adopt fiat money, socialism, or any other "wicked project". But states have to be free to try bad ideas because that's the best deterrent. When people aren't reminded from time to time that bad ideas have consequences, they tend to forget how bad a bad idea can be.

Allowing people who support bad ideas to put them into practice without forcing everyone to support them also helps to eliminate the fear that we will all have to suffer from someone's bad idea. That tends to result in debates that are passionate without becoming violent.

While there are other issues to be addressed, repealing the 17th Amendment would be the first step toward reestablishing a focus on individual liberty.

Healing America's Health Care System (Video)

Senator Spector doesn't know that the current bill contains individual mandates. How can we expect Senators to fix our problems when they don't know what the problem is and they don't even know what's in the medicine they're trying to give us?

Senators aren't doing their job because the people aren't holding them accountable. The original bicameral legislature allowed state legislatures to hold Senators accountable and the people to hold their representatives accountable. Subjecting members of both houses to elections is a redistribution of responsibility which causes the people to not know whom to hold accountable. When people have one representative, they know whom to blame. When the people have lots of representatives, they don't know.

Repealing the 17th Amendment would allow people to focus on holding their elected representative accountable. That's the first step toward fixing our broken electoral system.

Hell's Restaurants

The Senate can't even run a restaurant chain:

Year after year, decade upon decade, the U.S. Senate's network of restaurants has lost staggering amounts of money -- more than $18 million since 1993, according to one report, and an estimated $2 million this year alone, according to another.

The financial condition of the world's most exclusive dining hall and its affiliated Capitol Hill restaurants, cafeterias and coffee shops has become so dire that, without a $250,000 subsidy from taxpayers, the Senate won't make payroll next month.

It's utterly ridiculous that the Senate would be in the restaurant business in the first place. But doesn't anyone consider that one source of the government's incompetence is that we ask it do be all things to all people? Of course it's going to fail.

Senate-run restaurants are just another reason to repeal the 17th Amendment and restore some sanity to the federal government.

Hat tip: Stop the ACLU

Republican Hypocrisy on Judges

Kevin Gutzman:

In 2006, the editors of National Review endorsed the notion of an amendment to the Constitution defining marriage. Why should the Federal Government impose a single definition on all the states, who have always had complete control over such questions? Because federal judges cannot be restrained, those editors reasoned, from legislating their own definition. In other words, if you don’t trust one fox, put the whole fox family in charge of the chicken coop.

Alas, to argue for augmenting federal authority seems to be what the editors of National Review reflexively do. Who cares about the Tenth Amendment’s reservation of all undelegated powers to the states?

No wonder Democrats and pro-choicers generally say that the Republicans are hypocritical in invoking the principle of federalism against Roe v. Wade. What is a “principle,” they rightly wonder, that is only invoked when it cuts in the desired direction?

That is a good point.

It gains additional force from the fact that Republicans do not even invoke it consistently across all abortion disputes. In Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), the Supreme Court upheld a congressional ban on partial-birth abortion. In a concurring opinion in that case, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas noted that the Commerce Clause, as properly understood, did not give Congress power to enact such a ban.

However, they said, so long as the Court’s unfounded Commerce Clause precedents stood, Scalia and Thomas would join in extending them to this new area.

Principled originalism in action!

Any time two sides disagree, the flaws of one side do not generally excuse or equal the flaws of the other side. But it's important to recognize imperfections for what they are, so that that which is better can continue to be supported. Making good ideas more popular would both sides more likely to adopt them.

Alabama Considers Sovereignty Resolution

Michael Boldin:

On August 10, 2009, Alabama State Representative Mac Gipson along with 22 other co-sponsors, introduced House Joint Resolution 10 (HJR10). The purpose of the resolution is to “affirm the rights of all states including Alabama, based on the provisions of the ninth and tenth amendments to the United States Constitution.”

HJR10 was introduced on the first day of the Alabama Legislature’s 2009 First Special Session. An Extraordinary (Special) Session can consist of no more than 12 Legislative (meeting) days, within a 30-day calendar period.

The resolution was read and referred to the House of Representatives committee on Rules. Two similar resolutions were previously introduced in the Alabama 2009 session, but neither were brought to a floor vote.

If HJR10 passes both houses of the legislature, Alabama would be the eighth state to pass a resolution affirming sovereignty under the 10th Amendment, joining Alaska, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Tennessee. Similar resolutions have been introduced in thirty-seven states in the past year.

Video Break: Don't Tread on Me

Hat tip: Political Abacus

Support for Obamacare is reaching new lows. President Obama is actually trying to sell government health care as being like the Post Office. Perhaps this monster can be killed.

Freedom Is Choice

Arnold Kling defines real freedom as "the absence of monopoly".

The absence of monopoly means that you can exercise exit, even if you cannot exercise voice. The presence of monopoly means that, at most, you can exercise voice.

Neither my local supermarket nor any of its suppliers has a way for me to exercise voice. They don't hold elections. They don't have town-hall meetings where they explain their plans for what will be in the store. By democratic standards, I am powerless in the supermarket.

...

The exercise of voice, including the right to vote, is not the ultimate expression of freedom. Rather, it is the last refuge of those who suffer under a monopoly. If we take it as given that the political jurisdiction where I reside is a monopoly, then perhaps I will have more influence over that monopoly if I have a right to vote and a right to organize opposition than if I do not. However, as my forthcoming Unchecked and Unbalanced argues, the reality is that the amount of influence I have is shrinking while the scope of the monopolist is growing.

Federalism is the attempt to have the best of both worlds, and the original Constitutional design of the bicameral legislature was the attempt to implement it. Ronald Reagan endorsed the idea of people "voting with their feet".

The continued push toward a one-world government is the greatest threat to individual liberty.

Hat tip: Let a Thousand Nations Bloom

Who Watches the Watchmen?

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. - James Madison

Thomas Woods on states' rights:

In 1798, the legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky approved resolutions that affirmed the states’ right to resist federal encroachments on their powers. If the federal government has the exclusive right to judge the extent of its own powers, warned the resolutions’ authors (James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, respectively), it will continue to grow – regardless of elections, the separation of powers, and other much-touted limits on government power. The Virginia Resolutions spoke of the states’ right to “interpose” between the federal government and the people of the state; the Kentucky Resolutions (in a 1799 follow-up to the original resolutions) used the term “nullification” – the states, they said, could nullify unconstitutional federal laws.

These ideas became known as the “Principles of ’98.” Their subsequent impact on American history, according to the standard narrative, was pretty much confined to South Carolina’s nullification of the tariffs of 1828 and 1832. That is demonstrably false, as I shall show below. But it isn’t just that these ideas are neglected in the usual telling; as I discovered not long ago, these principles are positively despised by neoconservatives like Max Boot and the leftists at the New York Times (or do I repeat myself?). Neither one, in their reviews of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, so much as mentioned Jefferson’s name in connection with the Principles of ’98. It is hard to view such an omission as anything but deliberate. To mention Jefferson’s name is to lend legitimacy to ideas that nationalists of left and right alike detest, so they simply leave him out of the picture.

Jefferson once wrote, “When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” To resist this centralizing trend, the sage of Monticello was convinced, the states needed some kind of corporate defense mechanism.

Ralph Rossum, in Federalism, the Supreme Court, and the Seventeenth Amendment, wrote, regarding the Supreme Court's decision in US v Lopez,

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion with decidedly more activist overtones; he emphasized the need for the Court to "ensure that the federal-state balance is not destroyed." He found it strange that, "of the various structural elements in the Constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, judicial review, and federalism, only concerning the last does there seem to be much uncertainty respecting the existence, and the content, of standards that allow the Judiciary to play a significant role in maintaining the design contemplated by the Framers." However, has he understood that the framers depended not on the Court but on constitutional structure, i.e., the mode of electing the Senate, to protect federalism, he would have found it less strange. And, further, had he understood that the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment removed the structural protection of federalism and therefore fundamentally shifted the federal-state balance, he would have appreciated both the futility and inappropriateness of his efforts to protect the framers' design, now amended out of the Constitution. Kennedy rightly sensed that "the absence of structural mechanisms" renders it difficult to maintain the federal balance, but he showed absolutely no awareness that the framers originally provided for such a mechanism--namely, the election of the Senate by state legislatures--or that, by their ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, the people removed it. Rather, he simply concluded that the Court should be free "to intervene when one or the other level of Government has tipped the scales too far."

The Senate was originally the "corporate defense mechanism" of the states against the centralized government. It is the 17th Amendment which has allowed the federal government to grow into the Leviathan. Repealing the 17th Amendment is the only way to yoke the beast and take the whip from its hand.

Fear and Loathing in Washington

When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. - Thomas Jefferson

Liberals live in perpetual fear that they will be subject to the same threats, hostility, and scorn to which they subject others. Debate is a sign of a healthy political system. But for liberals, the time for talk is over once they're in power.

People generally want two things: they want people to care as much as they do, and they want people to have the same opinions they do. This is where hypocrisy generally comes into play. People should be subject to the same rules to which they want to subject others.

It's a funny thing about law: it really only applies to those who want to be different. As far as health care goes, Democrats need laws to force people into their system because they know it can't be supported by those who would freely choose it. This is why government cannot morally be a service provider or distributor.

Federalism was designed in order to discourage violence associated with public debate, because the federal government was restrained from forcing all Americans to support one idea. As James Madison said,

There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.

Federalist number 10 is my favorite, because Madison lays out how the Senate as originally designed would work to contain the uncivil discourse that threatened to tear democracies apart. It is federalism that was America's safeguard against the danger of mob rule that threatens democracies, and it is the 17th Amendment which made America into the democracy that the Constitution restrained us from being. As things continue to heat up, we should take this opportunity to remind people of the remedy for the movement toward an uncivil war.

Senate Makes Historic Confirmation of First Openly-Biased Justice

68-31

Yet another reason why it's so important to restore the Senate to its original Constitutional role. Identity politics is touching every aspect of our government, with the debate being over superficial characteristics such as race or gender instead of more important intellectual arguments. American's don't even care about whether our judges, Presidents, or Congressmen will uphold the Constitution, because their race and gender trumps all.

I'm convinced that America cannot survive what is being done, and I'm further convinced that it's not the politicians' fault. The politicians would be powerless if the people did not keep giving them this power. And Americans have absolutely no interest in fixing the system.

America: it was nice while it lasted.

Voinovich Breaks From Party Over Sotomayor

Senate poised to make history with Sotomayor vote; AP

Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio said he'd break with his party to support Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayor Thursday, as the Senate pressed toward a history-making vote to confirm her as the first Hispanic justice over the grave objections of most GOP senators.

The Democratic-led Senate is set to vote later Thursday on President Barack Obama's high court nominee, a 55-year-old appeals court judge of Puerto Rican descent who was raised in a New York City housing project, educated in the Ivy League and served 17 years on the federal bench.

Sotomayor picked up more GOP support even as more than three-quarters of the Senate's 40 Republicans said they would vote "no" and contended she would bring liberal bias and personal sympathies to her decisions. With all Democrats expected to back her, she has more than enough votes to be confirmed, in one of the Senate's last acts before it breaks for the summer.

"Judge Sotomayor's decisions, while not always the decision I would render, are not outside the legal mainstream and do not indicate an obvious desire to legislate from the bench," Voinovich said on the Senate floor. He was the ninth Republican to announce he'd vote "yes."

"I have confidence that the parties who appear before her will encounter a judge who is committed to recognizing and suppressing any personal bias she may have to reach a decision that is dictated by the rule of law," he said.

The Broken Window Fallacy

Destruction is creation!



If the people arm themselves with facts, they can demand that their representatives be held accountable, not just at election time, but also by taking advantage of any "listening sessions".

Arlen Specter: We Have to Make Judgments Very Fast

Listen to the crowd react:



Arlen Specter: One of a hundred reasons to repeal the 17th Amendment. The Senate was originally intended to slow things down, to temper the hot passions of the House. When that safeguard was removed, the federal government exploded in size and scope. If we want Senators to read the bills, repealing the 17th Amendment would do it.