I’m not trying to be cute, here. I really don’t understand why Republicans keep allowing Obama to usurp congressional and constitutional authority.
In his Washington Post oped, “ObamaCare vs. the Constitution”, Charles Krauthammer chastised Republicans for their ineffectual response to Obama’s abuse of power. They can’t even seem to communicate to the American people that this administration is guilty of gross overreach, trampling on the Constitution.
In 2010, when all this lay hazily in the future, the sheer arrogance of Obamacare energized a popular resistance powerful enough to deliver an electoral shellacking to Obama. Yet two years later, as the consequences of that overreach materialize before our eyes, the issue is fading. This constitutes a huge failing of the opposition party whose responsibility it is to make the opposition argument.
It’s not just their failure to make the opposition argument to Obamacare that rankles. It’s their failure to respond adequately to all of the totalitarian policies that have been thrust down the American peoples’ throats since he entered office. The Republicans can hold all of the press conferences in the world showing their opposition to Obama’s policies. You expect an opposition party to oppose. When are they going to do something about Obama’s serial abuses of power?
This wouldn’t be so galling if some of the abuse wasn’t done with Republican consent. After putting up a valiant fight to stop the stimulus, they were AWOL in March of 2009 when Obama expanded Americorps:
With almost no public attention, both chambers of Congress in the past week advanced an alarming expansion of the Americorps national service plan, with the number of federally funded community service job increasing from 75,000 to 250,000 at a cost of $5.7 billion. Lurking behind the feel-good rhetoric spouted by the measure’s advocates is a bill that on closer inspection reveals multiple provisions that together create a strong odor of creepy authoritarianism. The House passed the measure overwhelmingly, while only 14 senators had the sense and courage to vote against it on a key procedural motion. Every legislator who either voted for this bill or didn’t vote at all has some serious explaining to do.
It wasn’t long before Obama was flexing his muscles by firing Americorps IG, Gerald Walpin, for identifying millions of misspent funds in Sacramento. That story was allowed to fade away, as the Obama Chicago thug machine continued its steamroll over the Constitution. Here’s an incomplete list of his abuses, as compiled by Doug Ross:
• First President to Violate the War Powers Act
• First President to Orchestrate the Sale of Murder Weapons to Mexican Drug Cartels
• First President to issue an unlawful “recess-appointment” while the U.S. Senate remained in session (against the advice of his own Justice Department).
• First President to be Held in Contempt of Court for Illegally Obstructing Oil Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico
• First President to Defy a Federal Judge’s Court Order to Cease Implementing the ‘Health Care Reform’ Law
• First President to halt deportations of illegal aliens and grant them work permits, a form of stealth amnesty roughly equivalent to “The DREAM Act”, which could not pass Congress
• First President to Require All Americans to Purchase a Product From a Third Party
• First President to Spend a Trillion Dollars on ‘Shovel-Ready’ Jobs — and Later Admit There Was No Such Thing as Shovel-Ready Jobs
• First President to sue states for requiring valid IDs to vote, even though the same administration requires valid IDs to travel by air
• First President to Abrogate Bankruptcy Law to Turn Over Control of Companies to His Union Supporters
• First President to sign into law a bill that permits the government to “hold anyone suspected of being associated with terrorism indefinitely, without any form of due process. No indictment. No judge or jury. No evidence. No trial. Just an indefinite jail sentence.”
• First President to Bypass Congress and Implement the DREAM Act Through Executive Fiat
• First President to Threaten Insurance Companies After They Publicly Spoke out on How Obamacare Helped Cause their Rate Increases
• First President to Threaten an Auto Company (Ford) After It Publicly Mocked Bailouts of GM and Chrysler
• First President to “Order a Secret Amnesty Program that Stopped the Deportations of Illegal Immigrants Across the U.S., Including Those With Criminal Convictions”
• First President to Demand a Company Hand Over $20 Billion to One of His Political Appointees
• First President to Encourage Racial Discrimination and Intimidation at Polling Places
• First President to Have a Law Signed By an ‘Auto-pen’ Without Being “Present”
• First President to Arbitrarily Declare an Existing Law Unconstitutional and Refuse to Enforce It
• First President to Tell a Major Manufacturing Company In Which State They Are Allowed to Locate a Factory
• First President to refuse to comply with a House Oversight Committee subpoena.
• First President to File Lawsuits Against the States He Swore an Oath to Protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN, etc.)
• First President to Withdraw an Existing Coal Permit That Had Been Properly Issued Years Ago
• First President to Propose an Executive Order Demanding Companies Disclose Their Political Contributions to Bid on Government Contracts
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Now, we have the Obama administration’s outrageous contraception mandate, in which, to use Charles Krauthammer’s words, “the president of the United States has just ordered private companies to give away for free a service that his own health and human services secretary has repeatedly called a major financial burden.”
On what authority? Where does it say that the president can unilaterally order a private company to provide an allegedly free-standing service at no cost to certain select beneficiaries?
This is government by presidential fiat. In Venezuela, that’s done all the time. Perhaps we should call Obama’s “accommodation” Presidential Decree No. 1.
Rep. Paul Ryan called the Obama administration’s contraception mandate “paternalistic” and “arrogant.”
“What we’re getting from the White House on this conscience issue, it’s not an issue about contraception, it’s an issue that reveals a political philosophy the president is showing that basically treats our constitutional rights as if they were revocable privileges from our government, not inalienable rights from our creator.” said Ryan on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“We’re seeing this new government activism, paternalistic, arrogant, political philosophy that puts new government-granted rights in the way of our constitutional rights.”
“That’s really not about contraception,” said Ryan of the mandate. “It’s about violating our first amendment rights to religious freedom and conscience.”
Last week, six pro-lifers, including a Catholic priest, were arrested for praying in front of the White House:
They were released shortly thereafter, after paying a $100 fine.
Fr. Denis Wilde, the Associate Director of Priests for Life, told LifeSiteNews that by their arrests the protesters hoped to send a “wake-up call” to President Obama that opposition to his mandate is not going away.
The six were arrested on a charge of “disobeying a lawful order.” The priest explained that while it is legal to hold protests in front of the White House, protesters are not allowed to remain stationary, including if they kneel down and pray.
“Occupy Wall Street protesters have been occupying federal property for months, but when we kneel in prayer, the police are called in and we are arrested,” Father Wilde said. “We knew that was the risk when we gathered today, and we will do it again regardless of the risk. What people of faith – of every faith – need to do now is stand with us.”
In other words, this is only the beginning of the push-back. Republicans are working on legislation to reverse the statute, but they need to do a better job explaining to the American people why ObamaCare as a whole can not be allowed to stand.
2,500 religious leaders recently signed a letter protesting the mandate. Whether Obama wants to admit it or not, his administration is at war with religion.
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With the help of 17 House Republicans, Obamacrats passed Michelle Obama’s nutrition bill in December 2010:
For Democrats, it is always better to control and regulate then to be free. Below is what this bill is really about.
But Representative Paul Broun, Republican of Georgia and a physician, said: “This bill is not about child nutrition. It’s not about healthy kids. It’s about an expansion of the federal government, more and more control from Washington, borrowing more money and putting our children in greater debt. The federal government has no business setting nutritional standards and telling families what they should and should not eat.”
The bill gives the secretary of agriculture authority to establish nutrition standards for foods sold in schools during the school day, including items in vending machines.
Oh, but it’s much worse than that …(why are vending machines allowed in schools, anyway?) Now, we literally have “food police” inspecting the lunch-boxes of pre-schoolers, replacing turkey sandwiches with chicken nuggets – at the parents’ expense.
A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.
The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day.
The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.
When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.
The girl’s mother — who said she wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter from retaliation — said she received a note from the school stating that students who did not bring a “healthy lunch” would be offered the missing portions, which could result in a fee from the cafeteria, in her case $1.25.
“I don’t feel that I should pay for a cafeteria lunch when I provide lunch for her from home,” the mother wrote in a complaint to her state representative, Republican G.L. Pridgen of Robeson County.
Welcome to Ameritopia. Why are we losing to these freaks?
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Now, Seton Motley at Big Government reports, Obama’s forcing private companies to have board votes on Net Neutrality:
Another day, another Barack Obama Administration totalitarian diktat.
In other words, whatever Obama wants – by any means necessary.
Behold Obama’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Which last week handed down from on-high a mandate that telecommunications companies AT&T, Verizon and Sprint MUST have Board votes on Network Neutrality.
SEC to Telcos: Yes, Net Neutrality is a Significant Policy Issue
The problem for Obama’s SEC is – Net Neutrality isn’t even a LEGAL policy issue. Because Congress has never passed a law making Net Neutrality actual policy.
The federal government – via the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – first tried to unilaterally impose Net Neutrality in 2008. And the D.C. Circuit Court in April 2010 unanimously threw the government out on its ear.
Because the FCC “has failed to tie its assertion” of regulatory authority to an actual law enacted by Congress, the agency does not have the power to regulate an Internet provider’s network management practices, wrote Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Tuesday’s decision could doom one of the signature initiatives of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat. Last October, Genachowski announced plans to begin drafting a formal set of Net neutrality rules–even though Congress has not given the agency permission to do so.
But it didn’t doom Genachowski and Obama’s illegal Net Neutrality intentions. It didn’t even daunt them. Just eight months after this stinging rebuke, Obama’s FCC went ahead and illegally jammed through Net Neutrality anyway.
They did so despite the D.C. Circuit Court’s unanimous ruling. And they did so despite the fact that more than 300 members of the then still-Democrat-Majority Congress – the body charged with giving the FCC Net Neutrality authority – were for months in advance telling them not to.
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It’s become a familiar pattern – the Obama administration threatens to steamroll over the Constitution, Congress says “You shouldn’t do that!” They do it, anyway. Then the Republicans say, “Oh well”, and “gosh”.
They can’t even seem to rustle up a contempt charge against Eric Holder, the bare minimum of what should be coming to him in a just world, and long overdue:
These fights don’t go quickly, so Issa and the House GOP leadership must up the ante now. Holder’s plainly not going to voluntarily comply with Issa’s subpoenas; presumably, the evidence would just be too explosive.
One approach may be to start pushing other federal agencies; in more news, a federal agent is now saying that the Homeland Security Department knew more about Fast and Furious than has been disclosed — to the extent of even blocking some gun transfers from ATF to the bad guys.
The shell game has gone on long enough. The country deserves answers — not gotcha games.
For months now, Holder has been dodging, obfuscating, withholding evidence and outright lying in his attempt to evade responsibility for the deadly program that has cost the lives of two federal agents and countless Mexican nationals.
Contempt of Congress? Contempt for the American people is more like it.
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Memo to Republicans: The Obama Presidency isn’t “politics as usual”, or merely a “failure”.
It is an Obamination, a horror, an offense against the Constitution, an affront to everything decent and holy, and it must be stopped.
Make the frickin’ case.
SEE ALSO:
Ideologues define all problems, no matter how minute, in relation to a failure to comply with their ideal way of life. They will exploit a crisis to achieve power and implement that way of life and that way of life alone. Nothing else interests them and they will not solve any problems except through the implementation of their program.That is what we are up against. That is their weakness, if we can exploit it, but it is also the thrust of their assault on us. On all of us. We are dealing with people who are limited to thinking in very narrow and specific ways. Who are fanatically obsessed with transforming our society, but who are unable to question their own assumptions. That makes them dangerously single-minded, but it also makes them prone to failure.The Obama Administration has been relentlessly single-minded about its domestic program and as a result it has lost public support. What people perceive as economic failure, it views as successful social reforms. If it can reclaim power, it will proceed with an even more ruthless version of the same program. It is not interested in guns or butter. Only in social change.
That’s why the idea of this raging Marxist getting reelected scares the sh*t out of me.
Tulsa, Okla. – Blasting President Obama the “most dangerous president in modern American history,” Newt Gingrich accused the White House of having an attitude towards violent Islamic extremism that puts political correctness above national security.
“Someone was arrested over the weekend for trying to blow up the US Capitol, they happened to be from Morocco,” Gingrich said, referring to the FBI arrest of Amine El Khalifi Friday while he was allegedly en route to commit a suicide bombing. “Under the Obama administration’s willful dishonesty, it would be highly inappropriate to describe what motivated him, because that would somehow be politically incorrect.”
He referred to the Defense Department’s summary report of the Fort Hood shootings, which characterized Major Hasan’s killing of 13 Americans as workplace violence rather than an attack by radical Islam. “Across the planet today, the forces of religious repression are on the march and this administration has intellectually disarmed, it has morally disarmed, it is incapable of describing what threatens us.”
Nice Deb 