Tag Archives: Justice/Legal

By Tom Fitton

Documents released today by Judicial Watch reference serious allegations of corruption and voter registration fraud by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN), as well as the Obama administration’s decision to shut down a criminal investigation into these matters.

Two specific complaints were filed against ACORN for alleged voter fraud in October 2008 by Lucy Corelli and Joseph Borges, Republican Registrars of Voters in Stamford and Bridgeport, Connecticut, respectively. As part of its continuing investigation into alleged criminal activities of ACORN, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents concerning this matter with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

According to Corelli, on August 1, 2008, her office received 1,200 ACORN voter registration cards from the Secretary of State’s office. Over 300 of these cards were rejected because of “duplicates, underage, illegible and invalid addresses,” which “put a tremendous strain on our office staff and caused endless work hours at taxpayers’ expense.” Corelli claimed the total cost of the extra work caused by ACORN corruption was $20,000. Likewise, Borges contended that: “The organization ACORN during the summer of 2008 conducted a registration drive which has produced over 100 rejections due to incomplete forms and individuals who are not citizens…” Among the examples cited by Borges was a seven-year old child who was registered to vote by ACORN through the use of a forged signature and a fake birth certificate claiming she was 27-years old. By burdening these election officials with fraudulent registrations, ACORN put those who legally registered at risk of not being put on voting rolls at all.

The FBI and Department of Justice opened an investigation. However, the Obama Justice Department, while noting that ACORN had engaged in “questionable hiring and training practices,” closed down the investigation in March 2009, claiming ACORN broke no laws.

By contrast, the documents also include records related to a federal investigation of ACORN corruption in St. Louis, Missouri, involving 1,492 allegedly fraudulent voter registration cards submitted by Project Vote, a liberal non-profit organization affiliated with ACORN on voter registration drives, during the 2006 election season. Assistant United States Attorney Hal Goldsmith initiated the investigation with “concurrence” from the Department of Justice and the participation of the FBI. According to a Justice Department memo, Goldsmith “advised he would prosecute any individual responsible for submitting fraudulent voter registration cards.” Goldsmith identified the statute for prosecution: Title 42, USC 1973 (gg), which provides for criminal penalties for fraudulent voter registrations. In April 2008, eight former ACORN employees from the St. Louis office pled guilty to voter registration fraud. Oddly, the FBI document that details the shut down of the Connecticut investigation seems to ignore this legal issue.

Other documents show that the Bush Justice Department failed to prosecute ACORN voter registration fraud of non-citizens in Phoenix, Arizona in 2007 because the allegations that led to the opening of the investigation were “unverifiable.” Notably, the FBI document detailing this questionable decision reveals that a “draft Intelligence Bulletin…concludes that ACORN’s employment practices perpetuate fraudulent voter registration.”

The ACORN documents include internal FBI memoranda, signed affidavits, subpoenas, fraudulent voter registration cards, and publications describing ACORN’s policies and practices. The documents also include details regarding numerous allegations of corruption extending beyond voter registration fraud, to include attempts by ACORN employees to coerce workers to participate in campaign activities on behalf of Democratic candidates.

These documents reflect seemingly systematic voter registration fraud by ACORN. It is unconscionable that the Justice Department has not conducted a fully comprehensive criminal investigation into – and prosecution of – this matter. Given President Obama’s close connections to ACORN, including his campaign’s hiring of the ACORN’s Project Vote organization, it seems questionable at best that Attorney General Holder has failed to seriously investigate these and other alleged ACORN criminal activities.

You can download the documents here and here.

Tom Fitton is president of Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan, nonprofit educational foundation that fights government corruption.

Ben Sheffner, at Copyrights and Campaigns Blog, has the breaking story:

A state court in Baltimore has dismissed ACORN’s lawsuit against James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Breitbart.com LLC after the plaintiffs failed to serve the complaint on the defendants within Maryland’s 120-day limit.

28218713-ACORN-v-O-Keefe-Docket

It was with great fanfare that ACORN, along with two recently-fired employees of its Baltimore office, sued last September over thesurreptitious taping of the employees advising O’Keefe and Giles on running a prostitution business out of a house. ACORN’s general counsel, Arthur Schwartz, told the Washington Post at the time that the defendants, young filmmakers O’Keefe and Giles, plus Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart.com LLC, which disseminated the videos, had committed “clear violations of Maryland law” against audio recording without consent from all parties. But ACORN appears to have lost interest in the case since filing it, confirming my suspicion that it was little more than a press release on pleading paper.

Under Maryland Rule 2-507(b), “An action against any defendant who has not been served or over whom the court has not otherwise acquired jurisdiction is subject to dismissal as to that defendant at the expiration of 120 days from the issuance of original process directed to that defendant.” That’s exactly what the court did March 4, with no apparent notice from the media that covered the filing of the lawsuit. The court’s dismissal was without prejudice, meaning that the plaintiffs could theoretically re-file. But, as I argued shortly after it was filed, the lawsuit has substantive flaws that go well beyond the plaintiffs’ apparent lack of interest in pursuing it.

[Do not read this article without a copy of the Constitution, and if you do not have one handy, shame on you (link here).]

A line is being drawn in the sand between the statists and Americans, and I use the term American in the grandest sense.  The United States of America represents one of the last bastions of traditional liberalism, which is why the Left should no longer be identified as liberal, but rather we should continue to identify its members as progressive statists.  The Left believes the precepts of our Constitution have failed society, and thus, we must look towards the “enlightened democracies” of socialized Europe for guidance in the progression of American society.

We hear the mantra of rights professed daily by the progressives: education, work, social security, health care, etc.  And since we do not live in a state of nature, the guarantor of those rights must be the government.  This is the definition of a statist, and adherence to these beliefs is inherently in opposition to the Constitution.  The Founders recognized that government could NEVER be the guarantor of rights which is why so much of the Constitution is written in terms of limiting powers conferred upon the government.

Take for example Article I § 1:

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives (emphasis added).

Congress has no power outside the enumerated powers identified in the Constitution, and furthermore, Congress may not exercise any power that is not inherently legislative in nature.  Article I § 9 lists specific power limitations upon Congress, and Article I § 10 lists legislative power limitations upon the States.  Article III identifies the judicial power of the United States and limits it in much the same manner as in Article I.

Article II is a little different, but can only be understood in the context of the framing of the Constitution.  Article II § 1 begins:

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

On its face, Article II seems to grant rather broad powers to the President.  One of the main reasons the Constitution was created was because of the impotence of the Articles of Confederation without a federal executive.  But even the President is confined to the boundaries identified in the Constitution through his Constitutional Oath as written in Article II § 1 cl. 8:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States (emphasis added).

All other Constitutional officers are “bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution,” in Article VI cl. 3, but the President is beholden to specific duties.

The only time “right” is mentioned in the original articles of the Constitution is in Congress’s duty to promote the ownership of Authors and Inventors to their respective creations (Article I § 8 cl. 8), but even that was only to be secured for a limited time.  The Bill of Rights is written in negative terms to prevent the government from infringing upon certain recognized rights of the people.  The only positive rights are identified in the 6th Amendment, but should really be read in the negative since the government prosecutes for alleged crimes committed.  In fact, the entire Constitution, articles and amendments, is written in terms of limiting government infringement upon existing rights, not creating rights.  For a discussion of this you must check out Federalist No. 84. Furthermore, many of the amendments to the Constitution forbade government infringement upon the people’s rights (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th).

Some would argue that “privileges and immunities,” as discussed in Article IV § 2, indicates positive rights, but rights are not privileges because privileges may be revoked.  Article I § 9 cl. 2 recognizes the “privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus,” but also recognizes that it may be revoked under certain circumstances.  Privileges are allowances granted to specified individuals in areas where government power prevails, which is limited to the powers granted by the Constitution.

Let us turn our attention to the most under-utilized provision of the Constitution as it exists today; the 9th Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people (emphasis added).

Essentially, any right not identified by the Constitution is retained by the people, not the government (state or national).  This is where progressive statists run astray of the Constitution.  Government cannot grant us the “right” to work or receive health care because government does not have that power, nor the power to force us to exercise any right (imagine the outcry if the government forced every person to exercise their 2nd Amendment right).  And the government does not equal “the people” because our government is only representative of an illusory majority.

Herein lays the danger of the progressive statist utopia.  It envisions a permanent government entity, exemplified in the bureaucracy.  People may come and go, but the government will always remain.  And our rights are beholden to that permanent entity.

Americans recognize that government is only an extension of the individuals that comprise it, and thus ethereal.  Bureaucracies are invasive upon the rights of the people.  And unless the people are vigilant in protecting their rights, all governments will attempt to seize them.

The United States of America was the first country to create a government wholly in terms of limitation.  This is what makes it the first and last bastion of traditional liberalism.  We often identify ourselves as conservatives or libertarians, but we are only as much because we understand the context of the Constitution striving to create a liberal utopia within the boundaries of our nation.  We understand and have fought against the horrors of the statist utopia, so we must not allow the progressive statists to hide behind concepts like liberalism.

And for those who espouse certain liberal social rights, you will not find salvation within the progressive statist agenda.  You will only find regulation and marginalization; at least until the government deems you oppressive to the progress of the state.

The Constitution cannot be a living, breathing document.  If it is then government can arbitrarily grant and take-away the people’s rights.  If it is then the government can arbitrarily create and seize powers.

Read your Constitution.  Study your Constitution.  Defend your Constitution.

The Constitution is your only protection from the progressive statist utopia.

I have to say, I did not agree with Sen. McCain during the 2008 campaign when he took the Guantánamo issue off the table by endorsing candidate Obama’s call to close it. The U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is an ideal place to hold military tribunals for jihadists captured on the battlefield. And it would still be the ideal place to hold Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year old Nigerian jihadist, who tried to blow up his inbound jet in Detroit on Christmas Day.

Claims that detainees were being mistreated there were false. Capt. Pete Hegseth of Veterans for Freedom served at Guantánamo during the time that Newsweek and other liberal sources were spreading false claims that U.S. guards had “defiled” copies of the Koran. These false reports circulated throughout the world and sparked riots among Muslims.

Capt. Hegseth served a year at “Gitmo” with the New Jersey National Guard. He supervised guards at the detention facilities. He set the record straight. The only time their Korans were besmirched was when the detainees themselves threw human waste on their guards. Gitmo was never Abu Ghraib. No photos of abuse by guards ever came out of Gitmo, because there was none.

But if, after all is said and done, sensible voices in Congress do not prevail, then I have a recommendation for where the detainees should be held and tried. Adak was an important naval installation throughout the Cold War. It’s an island in the central Aleutians, that thousand-mile chain off Alaska.

Adak has many facilities that were in use by the Navy that could be retrofitted now for detainee trials and long-term detention. Adak’s climate is severe. It’s cold. It’s overcast much of the time. During some snowstorms, “whiteout” conditions prevail. Then, it’s dangerous for any personnel to venture outside of buildings unescorted.

A number of U.S. Senators are pressing the administration for the names of political appointees to the U.S. Justice Department who previously served as counsel to the Guantánamo detainees. We deserve to know who those public officials are. We deserve to be assured that none of these lawyers are involved in the decision to close Gitmo or to give civilian trials to jihadists.

This is not suggested in spite. As Lincoln said, “I shall do nothing in malice.” The business he was in was too weighty for that. That should be our watchword, too.

For our military guards and their families, there is this consolation. Many of the Navy families who spent two-year tours on Adak recall their time there with fondness. The severe weather conditions and the remoteness of the island station bred a real fellowship among the hardy folk who called Adak home. We owe these self-sacrificing Americans our respect and our gratitude. Adak would not be a punishment assignment for them.

Adak’s primary virtue is its remoteness. As with Gitmo, the American people would not have to worry about any escapes. It’s five hours behind Washington. One of the most pressing concerns is that jihadists whom we are holding should not be permitted to inflame other prisoners among our U.S. prisoner population.

Finally, we do not want any jihadists to attack U.S. prisons, even on a suicide mission, because this administration unwisely brought them to the mainland. Adak, like Gitmo, could be secured from such attacks.

Once again, we should not close Gitmo. But, if the Obama administration takes this unnecessary and expensive step, Adak, would be a good alternative.

As Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are working on a Senate version of comprehensive immigration reform and it includes a very controversial idea.  There is a provision in the draft bill to force all Americans to possess a biometric ID card.  Sources on Capitol Hill confirm to Big Government that the idea of a national ID card is part of the comprehensive immigration reform bill being negotiated between Graham and Schumer.

Laura Meckler of the Wall Street Journal reports:

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the pre-text of halting illegal immigration, Congress may consider forcing citizens to carry an ID card as a condition of citizenship.  For those who mistrust big government and treasure freedom, this idea should be revolting and a shocking example of a bad idea run wild.  American citizens’ freedoms have been eroding over the past few years, yet this idea is much more than an erosion of rights.  It is an all out assault on the idea that Americans have a natural right to be free of government monitoring.

The Wall Street Journal further reports:

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.  The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

Adding the national ID cared idea to the mix will cause both the right and the left to band together against this provision forcing all Americans to carry an identification card containing fingerprints and other biometric information.  To say this is an invasion of privacy is an understatement.  There is no provision in the Constitution that grants the federal government the power nor the right to force Americans to be fingerprinted and to carry an identification card against their will.  This is not a new idea

Senator Schumer stated at a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Immigration, on July 21, 2009 that any employer identification system needs to include a means to “authenticate the employee’s identity by using a specific and unique biometric identifier. This identifier could be a fingerprint, an enhanced biometric picture or other mechanism.”  Schumer went on to say that “any new biometric-based employment system must have extensive checks at the beginning of the system to prevent illegal aliens from creating a false identity to enter into the new database. And, as I mentioned before this, we need to do this with the entity administering the new employment-verification system — will have access to public records, government databases, to ensure that the person seeking to enter the new employment-verification system is, in fact, the person they claim to be, and the person has legal status.”  Schumer supports the creation of a new government bureaucracy to monitor your work status and to audit you if a government bureaucrat decides that your status is suspect.  In essence, you are guilty of being an illegal immigrant, until you can prove otherwise.

This is the same federal government that has a hard time maintaining an accurate No-Fly list. The No-Fly list has prevented members of Congress from flying and is known to be riddled with errors, yet we are readying a database containing all American citizens.  CBS News reports today

Current and former intelligence, counterterrorismand U.S. government officials provided The Associated Press a behind-the-scenes look at how the no-fly list is created. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues.  Despite changes over time, the list remains an imperfect tool, dependent on the work of hundreds of government terrorism analysts who sift through massive flows of information. The list ballooned after Sept. 11 and has fluctuated in size over the past decade. In 2004, it included about 20,000 people. The standards for getting on the list have been refined over the years, and technology has improved to make the matching process more reliable.

The immigration bill is proving to be a heavy lift for Schumer and Graham, why they would add a national ID card to the mix defies logic.  More from the WSJ:

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

Clearly the Obama Administration recognize that this is a controversial issue that is incidental to the debate on immigration reform.  Forcing all Americans to carry ID cards will cause may libertarian leaning liberals, who would usually support a reform effort, to have second thoughts about an immigration reform effort.  No matter what you think of comprehensive immigration reform, this issue may prove to be an issue that could take down the bill.

The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens.

I would contest that assertion in the WSJ report and say that the biggest objections come from average everyday citizens who don’t want any further freedoms taken away in the name of stopping illegal immigrants from working in the United States.  Both conservative and liberal groups will line up against this idea, because it is a frontal assault on basic freedom.

“It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people’s privacy,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “We’re not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We’re also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification.”  Mr. Graham says he respects those concerns but disagrees. “We’ve all got Social Security cards,” he said. “They’re just easily tampered with. Make them tamper-proof. That’s all I’m saying.”

The American Civil Liberties Union will line up with conservative groups against this idea.  Groups like Gun Owners of America will rightly see this as a first step toward national gun registration and privacy groups will see this as a first step toward the national ID card being used for more than merely proving to an employer that you are a citizen.  Right and left have been on record in the past as being against the idea that all Americans have to carry identification cards as a condition of citizenship.

U.S. employers now have the option of using an online system called E-Verify to check whether potential employees are in the U.S. legally. Many Republicans have pressed to make the system mandatory. But others, including Mr. Schumer, complain that the existing system is ineffective.

E-Verify seems like a reasonable alternative to forcing all Americans to carry an ID card, yet business groups and immigrant advocacy groups resist the system’s universal implementation.  E-Verify is a government run Internet based system where an employer to electronically verify the eligibility of an employee.  This seems like a much less invasive way to take care of the problem than a national ID card.

Most European countries require citizens and foreigners to carry ID cards. The U.K. had been a holdout, but in the early 2000s it considered national cards as a way to stop identify fraud, protect against terrorism and help stop illegal foreign workers. Amid worries about the cost and complaints that the cards infringe on personal privacy, the government said it would make them voluntary for British citizens. They are required for foreign workers and students, and so far about 130,000 cards have been issued.

The Brits seem to have it right.  If you are a foreign worker or student, a biometric card makes sense, but the federal government does not have the right to force citizens to carry ID cards.  The federal government derives power from the consent of the governed and any strong arm attempt by the federal government to impose a card on citizens ignores the nature of our constitutional democratic republic.

A person familiar with the legislative planning said the biometric data would likely be either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of the hand. It would be required of all workers, including teenagers, but would be phased in, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next changed jobs, the person said.

Does this sound like the way citizens should be treated in a free nation?  Mandatory fingerprinting or scanning the hands of all Americans is a scary idea.

Mr. Schumer said employers would be able to buy a scanner to check the IDs for as much as $800. Small employers, he said, could take their applicants to a government office to like the Department of Motor Vehicles and have their hands scanned there.

This idea by Senator Schumer would allow the federal government to have your biometric data.  Furthermore, if you have to go to a state Department of Motor Vehicles, then the state you work in will have your fingerprint and other mandatory biometric data.  This is a crazy idea and hopefully it does not get past the idea stage.  The fact that his is a bipartisan idea should strike fear in the hearts of all those who mistrust big government.  Our elected officials in Washington, D.C. seem to more and more out of touch with the average American citizen every day.

From Daniel Bice, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Milwaukee police officers sat on their hands for months last year instead of investigating possible voter fraud cases from the 2008 general election.

It’s an incredible claim, but it’s coming from a credible source:

Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, the Milwaukee County prosecutor responsible for overseeing campaign and election issues.

“Honestly, the Milwaukee Police Department largely ignored your double voter (and other) referrals received in January 2009 for the first six months of 2009,” Landgraf wrote in an e-mail to a city elections official on Jan. 26.

Speaking with unguarded candor, the veteran prosecutor said in his note that MPD’s tardy response had a major impact. The cases involve voters who may have cast more than one ballot, felons who may have voted illegally and other cases of possible election fraud.

“Sadly, several probable cases of genuine voter fraud were harmed by that delay,” Landgraf wrote in an e-mail obtained through an open records request.

The assistant district attorney was even more pessimistic about the investigation of more than 500 individuals who registered to vote on election day but whose addresses could not be confirmed later by postcard.

“I do not expect them to ever get to the Address Cards,” he said of the Milwaukee cops.

On Friday, Landgraf declined to provide specifics, referring questions to his boss, District Attorney John Chisholm.

Interestingly, Chisholm wouldn’t elaborate on his assistant’s concerns.

“I’ll let the e-mail speak for itself,” he said while praising Landgraf’s experience and knowledge.

Read the whole thing here. Keep in mind, the allegations in this case involve not just voter registration fraud, but actual voting fraud. Actual fraudulent ballots cast in the 2008 elections.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Five Wisconsin residents have been charged with criminal counts of voter fraud in the November 2008 general election, state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced Monday.

Two of those charged – Maria Miles, 36, of Milwaukee, and Kevin Clancy, 26, of Racine – worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the embattled community organizing group.

“The complaint alleges that Miles and Clancy submitted multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals, and also were part of a scheme in which they and other (special registration deputies) registered each other to vote multiple times in order to meet voter registration quotas imposed by ACORN,” the Van Hollen news release says.

Both were charged with one felony count.

ACORN could not be reached for comment Monday.

Also charged were a couple – Herbert Gunka, 60, and Suzanne Gunka, 54, both of Milwaukee – for supposedly double voting in November 2008, once absentee and once at the polls.

Michael Henderson, 40, was charged with two felony counts of being a felon who cast a ballot even though he was still on probation. The Milwaukee man was convicted in 2005 in Rock County with two felonies for bail jumping and one disorderly conduct misdemeanor.

He was sentenced to five years’ probation.

A felony for voter fraud carries a maximum penalty of up to 3 1/2 years behind bars and a $10,000 fine. All five individuals are scheduled to appear in court on April 20.

The charges were brought as part of the Milwaukee Election Fraud Task Force.

Van Hollen’s announcement comes the same day that the Journal Sentinel disclosed that a Milwaukee County prosecutor was accusing Milwaukee police of failing to investigate these cases for the first half of last year.

Read the whole article here.

Some Defense Department lawyers are worried. Actually, quite a few of them are. They see a train wreck coming with the Obama administration’s evolving Guantanamo Bay detainee policies. Since it is DOD lawyers tasked with much of the footwork for administration decisions, they see firsthand how disorganized, inept, and ideologically extreme the handling of the issue has been. The DOJ, now thoroughly politicized and partisan under Eric Holder, is lock step with Obama’s White House on the issue, and is thoroughly at odds with its legal counterparts in the DOD. At a time when former Guantanamo Bay detainees are battling US forces in Afghanistan, and Jihadists are resurgent worldwide, the country can ill afford the administration’s criminalizing of admitted terrorists or of enemy combatants captured in battle against US forces.

What DOD lawyers are worried about are second-order effects. Namely, the unanticipated consequences of decisions made without due consideration or examination of facts. They are deeply concerned that the administration’s political appointees making decisions on the issue are as likely to be chosen for ideological purity as they are for their acumen on applicable laws. The political appointees are perceived by many in the DOD as caring more for their political ideological creed than for the safety of US citizens, or for the responsible stewardship of tax dollars. It is Leftist canon that Guantanamo Bay be closed, the risks and consequences be damned. Every policy decision pursuing that goal equates to thousands of man hours for DOD lawyers and millions of dollars.

DOD attorneys, including prosecutors and defense attorneys of all political stripes, are of the opinion that closing Guantanamo Bay is an illogical and irresponsible political move made without the facts, and one that will cost billions. No stateside facility has the resources Guantanamo Bay does. As for which stateside facility should replace Guantanamo, the administration cannot make up its mind. As Obama’s minions position for optimum political influence, they have flitted from military sites in Leavenworth, Kansas and Charleston AFB, South Carolina, to civilian facilities in Standish, Michigan and Thomson, Illinois.

The MSM has been telling Americans less that the truth on the detainee issue. Americans have not been told how well thought out was the construction of Guantanamo Bay. Its courtroom was designed by the William and Mary Law School – it is state of the art, capable of handling testimony involving top secret evidence. It has a media center. As for the detainees, forget the horror stories that represent the disinformation tactics of terrorist sympathizers who aim to sway public opinion. Detainees receive the best in medical and dental care. They have daily access to soccer fields. They have exercise areas that overlook the Caribbean, books and movies, as well as a menu where they can choose from several entrée’s cooked to Islamic Halal standards.

They are not tortured and they never were.

Lawyers, sympathic to the detainees, want you to forget that the murderers, terrorists and assassins held in Guantanamo Bay are dedicated to destroying the US. They want you to forget that they have no moral compunction against slaughtering innocents. They want you to think they were all peaceful farmers caught up in an overzealous imperialist military action. Even the Uyghur’s, members of the oppressed Chinese ethnic minority, were training to be terrorists – albeit terrorists against the Chinese, not the US. Their lawyers want them released in the US. The US has so far advocated sending them to other countries willing to accept them. They may well end up here.

Obama and Eric Holder will make a final decision only when forced to, draining time and money when justice would be served at Guantanamo Bay without endangering US citizens or allowing terrorists to exploit the US justice system. And exploit it they are, and will. Lawyers for detainees have been busily petitioning the Supreme Court and searching for sympathetic federal judges. Should trials be held in the US it is a distinct possibility that procedural tactics will allow some of the terrorists held at Guantanamo to go free. And that is exactly what many of the leftist lawyers that flocked to Guantanamo from the very beginning hope for.

What DOD lawyers understand is that the defense of the nation must be decisive, just as must the justice meted out to its enemies. They take their oath to defend the nation seriously. Their very real fear is that justice will not be served by those whose sympathies lay in part with the terrorists, believing their own country responsible for all the miseries delivered on it on 9-11-2001, and after. They perceive that the proposal to transfer detainees to the US is not about justice, but about exploiting a crisis and engaging in political manipulation. All in the quest for the opiate of power.

One way that leftists have managed to keep alive their dead, defeated, bankrupting theories on issues like so-called health care is by perverting the definition of very basic terms.

The word “right” is one of the most glaring examples of a definition that’s been distorted by the intellectual house-of-horrors mirror that is leftist theory.

Image: CATO Institute

Every American has the “right” to health care they argue.

They’re right. Every American does have a right to health care. In fact, they have that “right” right now. They have the right to buy insurance. They have the right to not buy insurance. They have the right to pay out of pocket. They have the right get a second opinion. They have the right to rub a little dirt on it and suck it up. They have a right to help out  a friend in need.

What they don’t have is the “right” to health care in the perverted leftist sense of the word.

A “right,” in the traditional American lexicon laid out by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, is something that exists by virtue of our humanity. It is “inalienable” and we are endowed with these rights by our creator. No government or institution has the power to take away these rights. You exist, therefore these rights exist.

In the leftist sense of the word, though, a “right” is something very different. In fact, it’s not a “right” at all: it’s a handout provided to you by government, often at exorbitant costs to society.

“I have the ‘right’ to health care!” the leftists demand angrily. “Therefore, the government must provide it for me!”

Rights, in other words, are not innate to your humanity in leftist theory. Instead, rights are bequeathed to you like party favors by political Big Brothers: here’s a do-nothing job for Uncle Henry, here’s a tax exemption for a big donor and … oh, look, here’s some discounted healthcare for members of the big unions that support me.

The “right” to health care in leftist theory, then, is not something that you possess inalienably by virtue of your humanity. Instead, a “right” to them is a dehumanizing tragedy in the making.

The government that gives you your “right” to health care can just as easily deny you that so-called “right” to health care. They can take it away at anytime: if you end up in the wrong column of an actuarial chart, if you vote the wrong way, or, hell, in the very likely event that the system goes bankrupt, the government will be in a position to deny what once was your inalienable “right” to health care. Remember, the Soviet Union declared that its citizens had the right to everything from a home to a job. How’d that work out for them?

“B-b-b-b-b-but!,” scream the leftists. “Insurance companies can already deny you health care.”

No, they can’t. Insurance companies are certainly part of the problem. We’ve grown to depend on them too much and on ourselves too little. The system does need to be fixed.

But insurance companies cannot deny you the inalienable ”right” to health care. They do not have that power. They can only choose not to pay for certain procedures. You can still find another insurance company, seek help in a different state, find a charitable doctor to pay for it, benefit from a fundraiser or, worst-case scenario, benefit from the generosity of a well-funded, for-profit private health care institution.

After all, you still have the “right” to find that care. Even in a worst-case scenario in the current system, you only need the means.

But when government monopolizes the system, when government first decides what kind of care you’ll get, and when government next decides if they’ll even pay for it, your right to health care no longer exists.

At best, your rights will be forced underground into a health care black market: doctors illegally providing care in a cash-only medical economy – but probably one better than the legit “health care” system where patients have no rights but those regally gifted to them by the lords of big government (who, themselves, will never be denied care).

Look at Canada: it already has a vibrant cash-only medical economy. It’s called the U.S. health care system.

Your “right” to health care already exists. Don’t let the leftist and their perverted definition of the word take it away.

It looks like Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes is on track to win another endorsement from ACORN!

This week, Hynes announced that “no criminality has been found” after his investigation of the videotapes made by investigative journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, which show ACORN employees counseling the pair on getting a mortgage for a house of prostitution.

(They got a choice of government loans: Phat Fannie Mae, Prince Freddie Mac or Barney Fresh Daddy Frank … aka “Sir Fix-A-Lot.”)

I’m just glad to know that Hynes conducted a thorough “investigation” first. Who did he have screen the videotapes, Gov. Paterson?

If his investigators had actually watched the videotapes, they would have found ACORN employees apparently advising a pimp and prostitute on how to defraud mortgage lenders, deposit prostitution money in a bank, hide money from the government and avoid detection while running a whorehouse with teenage girls from El Salvador.

I’m not a lawyer — oh, wait, yes, I am — but I count approximately a half-dozen state law crimes being discussed on those tapes, from money laundering to advancing prostitution.

In a “Eureka” moment, ACORN Employee-of-the-Month Volda Albert identifies for O’Keefe and Giles the problem they had been having getting a mortgage:

Albert: Um, is it legalized? Is prostitution legalized in New York state?

O’Keefe: It’s not. It’s not, unfortunately.

Albert: Well see, that’s your problem.

As ACORN employee Milagros Rivera said, “You can’t say what you do for a living because of the law.” But displaying ACORN’s can-do attitude, she explained: “Honest is not going to get you a house.”

ACORN employees helped concoct a scheme to hide from the lender the source of O’Keefe and Giles’ down payment money. Albert suggested that O’Keefe “pay a down payment — or (Giles) can transfer to somebody else, who is not in that business … a close friend, then (Giles) can transfer that, and then he can give you, like, a gift to purchase.”

Under New York law, hiding the true source of down payment money from a lender constitutes mortgage fraud. Also, using the proceeds of criminal conduct in any banking transaction is money laundering.

Does anybody need a flow chart at this point, or should I continue?

To help Giles hide her income from turning tricks, ACORN employee Albert advised Giles to open two banking accounts, depositing no more than $500 per week in each one. (This would not only enable her to conceal her illegal earnings, it would also qualify her for free checking.)

But Albert’s most inspired idea was that Giles get a “house with a backyard. You get a tin can … and bury (your money) down in there, and you put the money right in, and you put grass over it, and you don’t tell a single soul but yourself where it is.”

Back when I was in Louisiana, we advised people to put their illegal money in the freezer, but that didn’t work out so well. And I guess putting your money in a mattress isn’t advisable if you live in a whorehouse.

Anyway, Albert was particularly detailed on the tin-can-in-the-backyard investment plan: “Keep thinking: ‘I have a yard. I have a house.’ You gotta start coming out with, like, plants and you start doing — so it won’t be suspicious. You start buying plants for the backyard in pots and what have you, and you mark a spot.”

She later told Giles: “You are not paying Social Security, so you’ll have society, all right? You are not getting a pension, so you need to save that money for in later years.” ACORN: Helping Plan Your Financial Future.

If only shady lawyers advised clients to bury money in cans in their backyards, instead of putting it in tax shelters, we wouldn’t have all those attorneys clogging up prison cells!

The ACORN employees also stressed that Giles should do nothing to attract attention to her prostitution money. Albert said: “You can buy a decent car for yourself, no big fancy thing to attract people, all right?”

In Albert’s defense, this could have been common etiquette advice. No one likes a showy hooker.

Even after Giles explained her plan to house a “slew” of 13-, 14- and 15-year-old girls from El Salvador for her prostitution business, Rivera simply responded: “So you guys ready to schedule that (mortgage application) for the summer?”

Rivera clearly missed her calling — she should be pushing vacation time shares in Boca Raton beach condos.

Under New York law, a person is guilty of advancing prostitution if he: “knowingly … aids a person to commit or engage in prostitution (or) … engages in any other conduct designed to institute, aid or facilitate an act or enterprise of prostitution.”

It is a class D felony (up to seven years in prison) if the prostitute is under 19 years old — as the ACORN employees knew Giles was — and a class C felony (up to 15 years in prison) if the prostitute is under 16 years old — as Giles stated the El Salvadoran girls were. (And if she’s under 15 years old, Eliot Spitzer may be involved.)

If none of the advice given by ACORN on those videotapes constitutes conspiracy or aiding or abetting a crime, see this column next week for my opus: “10 Detailed Plans to Kill George Soros and Why This Might Be Right for You.”

Those liberals, reformers, good-government types, New York Times editorial writers and Albany Times Union reporters who were toasting the conviction of long time New York Republican Senate Leader Joe Bruno, will soon have the smile wiped from their elitist faces. Joe Bruno has committed no crime and his exoneration will likely come from the U.S. Supreme Court.

I speak from the point of view of an attorney with a passion for the protections of the law.

In 1770, a rowdy mob of Massachusetts colonists accosted and provoked British soldiers until they responded with lethal force and committed the Boston Massacre.   The soldiers were arrested and placed on trial where their convictions seemed imminent out of sheer populace outrage.  One bold lawyer rose in their defense, John Adams, who in his closing argument reminded the jurors that “the law no passion can disturb.  Tis void of desire and fear, lust and anger . . . it is deaf, deaf as an adder to the clamours of the populace.”

Today the populace is clamoring at Joe Bruno.  They protested – protested! – His recent defense fund fundraisers, and blogs, abound with smug joy at the Senator’s conviction.  Meanwhile, the facts and flaws of the case have disappeared into the ruckus.   Nary a soul concerns itself with the serious constitutional misgivings of a law that has floundered through the federal circuit courts because no knows what it means.  Consider the helpless inquisition of Judge Jacobs in the Rybicki case, now Chief Judge of the Second Circuit – the same federal circuit hearing the Bruno case:

How can the public be expected to know what the statute means when the judges and prosecutors themselves do not know, or must make it up as they go along?

Or consider Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who says that “it is simply not fair to prosecute someone for a crime that has not been defined until the judicial decision that sends him to jail.”

Joe Bruno’s case abounds with the consequences of these concerns.  According to the prosecution, the crime revolves around the purity of one’s motive behind the act in question, and robbing the public of the ability to fully assess a legislator’s motives constitutes, on some imaginary planet, fraud.  Meanwhile, the jury decided that some of Senator Bruno’s consulting fees were unearned and therefore amounted to gifts, which we then are permitted to assume were given in return for legislative favors.  And then came the jury instructions.  The judge instructed that a conviction need not require the finding of an actual conflict of interest; a finding of its mere appearance would suffice.  In other words, if he looks guilty, he is guilty.  This is shocking.

And it is happening because the statute is constitutionally flawed.  It violates due process of law for failure to give adequate notice of that conduct the law is rendering criminal.  The absence of notice invites legal invention.  No one knows what the test for honesty is, and even worse fraudulent intent is not even required.  Even if the senator did not act out of self-interest, but only created its ethereal appearance, however happenstance, the rest of the crime can somehow just be presumed as a legal inference and the need for actual proof is dismissed.

It’s no wonder the law consumes almost one-fourth of the Supreme Court’s current docket.  The law clearly needs tinkering, if not a swift death.  If Antonin Scalia is telling us that the rights of a criminal defendant are being violated, which occurs only cosmically, it’s a clear sign that there is a constitutional flaw at work because Justice Scalia normally has little patience for due process to begin with.  If even he finds it unfair, we should all take note.

So protesting Senator Bruno’s well-attended fundraiser rises to the absurd in light of the valid legal ground upon which the Senator stands.  If Joe Bruno is being prosecuted under an unconstitutional law, no matter how guilty one might think he is, he must be exonerated.  Protesting his right to defend himself offends justice, especially when this case has only really just begun.

Contrary to public belief Bruno is not a wealthy man. He has resigned from his job to fight to clear his name. This prosecution will cost Bruno $3 million or more in legal fees, threatening to ruin him financially. The first trial was a foreordained exercise and why the Judge, who was clearly biased, did not dismiss or delay the case on any number of respectable legal grounds, is especially confounding given the high court’s assumption of the matter.

In all probability, the Court may require the finding of the commission of an underlying state crime upon which to base a federal honest services prosecution.  Attorney General Cuomo has found no such crime in Joe Bruno’s case.  Therefore, let the histrionic din die down and allow the Joe Bruno his full constitutional protections.

The Constitution and the Second Amendment are in the spotlight this week on two fronts.  First is that oral arguments are being held in the McDonald v Chicago case to possibly apply the holding in Heller to the states.

In addition, Senators are beginning their evaluation of the judicial nomination of Berkeley professor Goodwin Liu to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a vote that will tell a great deal about Senator Reid’s adherence to Constitutional principles such as those specified in the Second Amendment.

Senator Reid has a terrible record on judicial nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court.  In DC v Heller, there were four dissenters from the holding that the right to bear arms is an individual right.  Harry Reid had a chance to vote on three and he voted for each one – Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg.  Harry Reid has a chance to vote on four of the majority justices, and he voted against three of them – Thomas, Alito and Roberts.  If Harry Reid had been successful in defeating any of these three, Heller would have been in jeopardy.  That’s six out of seven bad votes on the Supreme Court.

Four of those bad votes were cast in his very first term, when my primary opponent Sue Lowden was his loyal contributor.

There will be hearings on professor Liu, but I am specifically interested in a particular book he co-authored on jurisprudence entitled “Keeping Faith with the Constitution.”

Ominously, early in its text, the book contains an statement that lacks credibility in our current context.  Liu writes:

“Throughout our history, political leaders have taken seriously their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution.”

Unfortunately, that is something that isn’t true today.  We are experiencing a historic time when entire industries are propped up by government seemingly arbitrarily and secretly picking winners and losers.  Some industries are in danger of socialization, such as health care.

In “Keeping Faith,” Liu attempts – unconvincingly in my opinion – to argue that there is some middle ground between judicial activism and a judicial philosophy of attempting to interpret the Constitution with deference to original intent..  Ironically, he calls the middle ground “constitutional fidelity.” As if the title makes it true.

Liu writes:

“We use the term constitutional fidelity to describe this approach. To be faithful to the Constitution is to interpret its words and to apply its principles in ways that sustain their vitality over time. Fidelity to the Constitution requires judges to ask not how its general principles would have been applied in 1789 or 1868, but rather how those principles should be applied today in order to preserve their power and meaning in light of the concerns, conditions, and evolving norms of our society.  In this book, we develop a different approach to interpretation that respects the endurance of our written Constitution and explains how its text and principles retain their authority and legitimacy over decades and centuries.”

Professor Liu’s constitutional fidelity philosophy seems to be rooted in the idea that proper interpretation of our constitution requires a continual updating of its meaning for the purpose of achieving ‘authority’ and ‘legitimacy.’  That’s sort of like changing your children’s bedtime so they don’t question your ‘authority’ and ‘legitimacy’ as a parent.  Establishing your legitimacy and authority is a function of sticking to your rules.  In government, it is moving those rules without legislative action that leads to illegitimacy and eventually, tyranny.

Professor Liu continues:

“Preserving the document’s meaning and its democratic legitimacy requires us to interpret it in light of the conditions and challenges faced by succeeding generations.”

Again, I could not disagree more.  If each generation gets to re-write our Constitution based on the challenges they face, then which generation is in charge in any given point in our society?  My generation, or my father’s generation?  Which generation’s interpretation is to determine how our society is to be governed?  That sounds like a political decision to be settled by elections and legislative debate – not the unelected judiciary.

The underlying current of Liu’s text is that there is very little enduring about the Constitution, rather a generational redefinition that continually changes.  I disagree – I believe that Justices must strive to identify the original intent in the United States’ founding document as specifically that part which is most enduring.

Why?  Because as Constitutional conservatives, we see America as a country of destiny, just as in our faiths we sense a destination for ourselves – we sense something fixed and tangible and which is good.  We don’t run from our destination, rather as people we seek to discern it and chase it down.  There are things that endure in this world.  There is right and there is wrong – and there is truth.

In the Bill of Rights, these enduring truths are made explicit.  There are certain God-given inalienable rights that are enumerated, such as the right to free speech and to assemble, and the right to bear arms in self-defense and against tyranny.

Having established his “generational test,” Liu goes on to explain the historic Second Amendment rights decision Heller as itself a product of judicial “interest-balancing.” This is his most troubling reasoning – one that sets up Heller for eventual reversal.

In his analysis, Liu first acknowledges the Constitutional debate in Heller:

“The majority read “the right of the people” to refer to a right possessed by individuals acting on their own, akin to the Fourth Amendment “right of the people to be secure . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures.” And it read the phrase “keep and bear Arms” to refer generally to the possession and use of weapons, including for hunting and individual self-defense.

“The dissenters, by contrast, read “the right of the people” to protect individuals engaged in collective action through participation in the militia, akin to the First Amendment “right of the people peaceably to assemble,” which also protects a collective activity. And it construed “keep and bear Arms” as a reference to military use of weapons.”

But after a discussion of the court’s supposed “receptiveness” to other gun laws – laws which were not squarely under review – Liu retreats to a new position.  He argues that the majority decision was really just a balancing of modern day societal interests.

Although the majority and the dissenters ultimately disagree on the validity of the District of Columbia handgun ban, the difference between the two sides is not that one engages in interest balancing while the other does not. It is that one side does so “explicitly”

Professor Liu essentially puts the essential holding in the case – that the right to bear arms is an individual right – on a moving ice floe and pushes it out to sea at the mercy of societal tides.  He knows exactly what he is doing as he does so.  He is setting it up for reversal.

This is just one example from his book.  If you read it all, you will see that Liu’s text repeatedly seeks to degrade judicial philosophies of restraint, in an attempt to give license to judicial activism, by saying essentially “everyone does it.”  Even the majority in Heller.

As a candidate for U.S. Senate, I would take this sort of writing into account in my questioning of any judicial nominee.  I look forward to hearing what professor Liu has to say at his confirmation hearings. Absent a confirmation hearing that essentially reverses the premise of this writing in defense of judicial activism, I would certainly expect Senator Reid to protect the Constitution and to vote no on this nomination.

Yesterday, The Weekly Standard reported that President Obama hosted 10 Democrat House members at the White House last night:

Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he’s obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson’s brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Apparently, Obama thinks that Matheson’s brother is qualified to become a federal judge:

“Scott Matheson is a distinguished candidate for the Tenth Circuit court,” President Obama said. “Both his legal and academic credentials are impressive and his commitment to judicial integrity is unwavering. I am honored to nominate this lifelong Utahn to the federal bench.”

Matheson’s background reads:

Scott M. Matheson currently holds the Hugh B. Brown Presidential Endowed Chair at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1985. He served as Dean of the Law School from 1998 to 2006. He also taught First Amendment Law at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government from 1989 to 1990.

While on public service leave from the University of Utah from 1993 to 1997, Matheson served as United States Attorney for the District of Utah. In 2007, he was appointed by Governor Jon Huntsman to chair the Utah Mine Safety Commission. He also worked as a Deputy County Attorney for Salt Lake County from 1988 to 1989. Prior to joining the University faculty, Matheson was an associate attorney from 1981 to 1985 at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C.

Matheson was born and raised in Utah and is a sixth generation Utahn. He received an A.B. from Stanford University in 1975, an M.A. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980.

Seems that Matheson is hurdling a few career steps to become a judge. Wonder how his brother will vote now. After all, he did vote “no” the first time around on health care and the House is just not that fond of the Senate bill.

We all know what the words “debt,” “taxpayer,” and “interest” mean, but how many people know what the words “jizya”, “dhimmi” and “Grameen” mean? In order to understand the precipice of disaster that the banking system is resting upon today, one must understand all these words, and then some. No solution can be found by only understanding the first three. Only an illusion of understanding exists until the latter, and more, like “jihad” and “Sharia Law”, are considered.

The jizya amounts to a tax paid by Non-Muslims to Muslims in order that they may live in peace. A fair comparison is money paid by business owners to neighborhood thugs in order to gain protection. Think Mob. Engaging in this endeavor creates the status of dhimmi – a willingly subservient protected group of third class subjects. Let’s just call this what it is – extortion based slavery. Let us also understand that this is an endgame of this thing called “jihad”.

From the Koran:

(9:29) – “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

(30:39)  And whatever you lay out as usury, so that it may increase in the property of men, it shall not increase with Allah; and whatever you give in charity, desiring Allah’s pleasure– it is these (persons) that shall get manifold.

(3:130) O you who believe! do not devour usury, making it double and redouble, and be careful of (your duty to) Allah, that you may be successful

(2:275) Those who swallow down usury cannot arise except as one whom  Shaitan has prostrated by (his) touch does rise. That is because they say, trading is only like usury; and Allah has allowed trading and forbidden usury. To whomsoever then the admonition has come from his Lord, then he desists, he shall have what has already passed, and his affair is in the hands of Allah; and whoever returns (to it)– these arc the inmates of the fire; they shall abide in it.

You get the idea.

Notice this is not an out-of-context rant demonstrating Islamophobia. This comes from the Koran itself. It is quotes like these that form the basis of Sharia Law.

Before we move forward, take a moment to watch this video outlining some important points about Sharia Law and its influence in the American banking system:

So now let’s take a look at the terms which were introduced above.  First is “Grameen“ – just what is it?

Well, it is a banking movement supposedly for the poorest among us. A proposed mix of capitalism and social responsibility, created by a man named Muhammad Yunus,  that accommodates the religion of Islam at the expense of everyone else.  It is banking based on making risky, Sharia-compliant loans to those least able to repay and financed by those with the most ability to do so.  (Notice the hint of Karl Marx there? – From those according to their ability to those according to their needs.)

Heralded by so many corners, like the United Nations, the Nobel Peace Prize committee and the progressive left in this country, Grameen banking is to be the solution to all the world’s ills. Sound familiar?  It should. Think about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, think ACORN, think home loans, think about Clinton’s almighty forecasted surplus. Think about Obama stimulus claims, cash for clunkers and economic justice. Think Van Jones.

In order to spin the situation and muddy the waters of understanding, a new word was manufactured. Microfinance.  Here is the ‘nuts and bolts’ of microfinance, microcredit, microdebt, or whatever one wishes to call it: One set of rules for you, who is not bound by the Koran and the Sharia Law it creates, and another set of rules for those who are. So much for equality, huh?

Imagine this situation. You have a bank savings account with a balance of a hundred thousand dollars. You also hold a home mortgage of about the same amount. Your bank leverages your money fractionally and then makes Sharia compliant loans abroad for nine hundred thousand dollars, set beside your mortgage. You pay all interest on that mortgage, while your savings earns next to nothing, but as it pertains to the rest of that cool million – not so much.  So what is the big deal?

Well, here is the big deal. That bank finds itself over-leveraged as a result of it’s attempted social engineering and unable to meet the demand for withdrawals. Remember that hundred grand you have saved? Well, you have decided to pay for your grandson’s college instead of seeing him saddled with student loans. In order for your bank to cover your withdrawal, it requires a taxpayer funded bailout so it doesn’t fail.  Do you see it yet?

You pay interest on the front side of loans that you take on, and now you pay taxes on the backside to fund a bailout because your bank used your money to make social engineering investments that do not provide enough returns to sustain it’s own chosen activity. This so that do-gooders can “spread the wealth around”. Many avenues to accomplish this spreading have been developed. Think “green”. Environmentalism is the ultimate social engineering tool useful in every branch of government to the ends of controlling private business.

To be sure, this issue has permeated the entire banking industry and by extension every other industry. Combining environmentalism and banking is a wicked marriage. Endless control is created and Liberty itself is on the chopping block.

From your fifty dollar bank account to the Bill Gates fortune, this parasitical idea of Sharia complaint banking financed on the backs of interest and tax paying Americans is eating prosperity alive. Where do we begin to even understand so we can rid ourselves of this epidemic? Sometimes, you just have to plop down somewhere in the middle of it all and start there.

ShoreBank is great place to start. Truly amazing is it’s history and undeniably profound are the generational ramifications of it’s activities.  The more you read about it, the more open your eyes become, the more moments of insight you will experience. Of this, there is no doubt. The web of ties that are exposed when reading about ShoreBank is shocking.

Why are community-based banks, like ShoreBank and its affiliates,  financing projects in Kenya?

Why does the United States send seemingly endless amounts of taxpayer dollars to Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and others in the form of “military and economic aid”?

Why does the United State’s government force the purchase of oil and natural gas from Muslim and socialist dominated-countries by legislatively or judicially disallowing access to resources found here in our own neck of the woods?

Why did Al Qaeda attack the World Trade center — twice?

Why did the United Nations refuse to relinquish control over Saddam’s Iraq and it’s oil revenues?

How is our own government managing to gain access to control over the smallest of life’s decisions like what vehicles we drive or where we set our home thermostats?

What is really wrong with the banking industry and what is it going to take to fix it?  What is the real cause of the so called “meltdown”?

Ponder these questions deeply and then seek out honest answers. Prepare yourselves for the facts you will be faced with and what those facts mean. Political correctness need not apply for this job because actual correctness, absent that qualifier, is required.

As Tim Geitner tries to offer every explanation besides the real one concerning AIG, maybe there exists at least one courageous elected official who will ask him directly to explain Grameen banking, microfinancing and how the progressives drove the American Economy into the ground by bowing the American’s economy to Islamic law via the guise of political correctness known in the form of “environmentalism” and “social justice.”

Are those Fightin’ words?  Yep,  that is one thing that happens when a nation is engaged in war and Patriots actually fight back with the most powerful weapon that ever existed.  Truth.

Yes, the Chavez-supporting Bill Delahunt I wrote about several weeks ago is the same Bill Delahunt who when he was district attorney let Amy Bishop, the neurobiologist who gunned down her colleagues, get away with murdering her brother in 1986. Delahunt and the ex-chief of police are pointing fingers about who screwed up what, while the State’s U.S. Attorney looks into Bishop’s possible involvement with an attempted bombing. Brought into the mix most recently, is Amy Bishop’s mother, the political big wig, Judith, who may have had a role to play in the younger Bishop’s release.

It remains to be seen who dropped the ball on Bishop, but what’s without question is that Delahunt has been a horrible public servant — and that’s not even counting his failure to prosecute career criminal-murderer, Myles J. Connor Jr., who Delahunt not only failed to prosecute, but even went so far as to testify on his behalf!

No, unfortunately, Delahunt has a long, long record of shaddy ties and incompetence, as he tries to keep the country safe.

According to the book, Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice, Delahunt was working on a bill with Rep Lungren to “require the FBI to report to state law enforcement serious violent felonies” committed by its informants and would impose criminal penalties on agents who failed to do so. In a radio interview, Delahunt said,

“What is totally unacceptable is having violent criminals out on the street, preying on American citizens everywhere, while there is information that isn’t being disclosed to local and state law enforcement authorities that have the primary responsibility in this country to protect us from violent crime.” (p. 145)

Well said, Congressman, so why did you fail to protect the people from Amy Bishop? (The truth of the legislation is that it would have imposed insurmountable costs to FBI agents trying to protect the nation. While far from perfect, the informant system saves lives as FBI agents go after the big fish.)

Bill Delahunt is a far leftist on issues of crime. In 2007, a bill he co-sponsored was aimed at reducing recidivism by giving offenders a Second Chance through a failed rehab program. Unfortunately, it became law.

He has also called for a moratorium on the death penalty at the federal level. Delahunt helped a Marine in his district avoid the death penalty after he murdered an Iraqi civilian in cold blood. The Marine, Lawrence G. Hutchins III of Plymouth, tried to cover up the killing.

Had Ms. Bishop received the death penalty for murdering her brother, it is likely that this sad day in Alabama would never have happened. Unfortunately, an activist Massachusetts Supreme Court invalidated Massachusetts death penalty law in 1984 and recent efforts to re-establish it have not been successful. Fortunately, the people of Alabama know how to treat murderers.

It remains up to the people of Massachusetts 10th congressional district as to how they are going to treat Bill Delahunt, assuming he doesn’t step down, as rumors suggest he might. (A possible Democratic replacement announced that she wasn’t running for his seat earlier last month and another Kennedy turned down running for the seat, meaning that the Democrats don’t really have any plausible candidate other than Delahunt in Massachusetts. Yes, gentle reader, the end days are upon us.)

Delahunt wouldn’t be hurting much if he lost that $165,000 federal paycheck. The Boston Herald reported that he receives a $57,623 annual pension from the Massachusetts treasury. (Dave Wedge, Boston Herald, July 20, 2008). He could always go back to Massachusetts and hang out with his pal, former Congressman Amory “Amo” Houghton (R-NY), for whom Delahunt snuck in a $1.1 million earmark to stop flooding on a pricey Cohasset street.

Or maybe he could advise other Massachusetts Democrats on how to fudge vote counts after he lost a 1996 primary bid to Phil Johnston by175 votes in the initial count, went on to win it by 108 votes after Judge Elizabeth Donovan of the Superior Court had mysteriously found that some 900 votes had not been properly read by an electronic scanner.

Or maybe Bill Delahunt could get a cushy job with the Local 25, after he interceded on behalf of George Cashman, a convicted union embezzler that shook down movie studios wanting to shoot films in the Bay State. Delahunt asked federal Judge Douglas Woodstock for leniency for him.

Most disturbing of all, though, was the glee that Delahunt expressed at a House Judiciary Subcomittee when David Addington, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, explained that he could not discuss certain interrogation techniques because Al-Qaeda may be watching C-Span, to which Delahunt responded:

Delahunt responded: “Right, well, I’m sure they are watching, and I’m glad they finally have a chance to see you Mr. Addington.”

In the 2008 election, Bill Delahunt explained that Obama was carrying on in the Kennedys footsteps after Ted Kennedy endorsed Obama. “The America of Jack and Bobby Kennedy touched all of us. Through all of these decades, the one who kept that flame alive was Ted Kennedy. So having him pass on the torch [to Obama] is of incredible significance…” (Leadership the Obama Way, p. 114)

Let’s hope that torch is finally going out and that Delahunt is yet another casualty of the nation’s souring on Obama. It’s time for Delahunt to go.

Freddy’s in Brooklyn is a happening place that has been named one of the city’s best bars by the Village Voice, Esquire, and The New York Times.

Unfortunately, Freddy’s—and the surrounding neighborhood—is smack-dab in the footprint of the Atlantic Yards project, a multi-million-dollar, 22-acre development that is intended to create “an urban utopia” in the language of developer Bruce Ratner, and a new, publicly subsidized home to Ratner’s Nets, who currently play NBA basketball (if you can call it that) in New Jersey.

But don’t mistake Atlantic Yards as one more instance of the market-driven transformations for which New York is rightly famous. It’s actually the latest case of eminent domain abuse, where private property is seized by the state on dubious grounds and then immediately handed over to private interests for private gain.

In this case, the Empire State Development Corporation has designated the thriving area as blighted to facilitate the taking of privately owned houses and businesses without having to pay full market value. Ratner, whose partners in the venture include rapper Jay Z and the Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, stands to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars on the deal, all thanks to the brute force of the state.

This week, a Brooklyn Supreme Court ruling tossed out the eminent domain objections of residents and property owners who had held out for six years and Ratner plans to break ground on the site on March 11, if not before.

The workers and patrons of Freddy’s, however, are not going gentle into that good night. They’ve pledged to engage in civil disobedience and chain themselves to the bar when the bulldozers and wrecking balls come for their favorite haunt. A state sentator has even declared that she’ll lay down in front of the demolition machinery. The awful 2005 Supreme Court decision in Kelo, which held that governments can seize property to increase potential tax revenues, may have paved the way for Atlantic Yards, but Freddy’s is the next last stand in an ongoing battle against eminent domain abuse.

Produced by Dan Hayes, who conceived, shot, and edited the video; Damon Root, who researched the legal issues and did logistics; and Nick Gillespie, who co-wrote the piece and hosts.

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Last week, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a crime syndicate dedicated to tightening the Democratic Party’s grip on America, dissolved its national structure.  Too much of ACORN’s corruption had been exposed to public scrutiny for it to run its vote fraud and extortion rackets effectively.  So, ACORN activists will have to soldier on in state-level organizations, such as New York Communities for Change and New England United for Justice in Massachusetts.

ACORN does indeed operate like the Mafia, but it more closely resembles another organization that began as an affiliate of the Democratic Party, the Ku Klux Klan.  Aside from intimidating some bank executives, ACORN does not engage in violence, but like the KKK it has vote fraud as a top priority.

There have been two distinct organizations known as the Ku Klux Klan.  The modern-day KKK, with whom most people are familiar, was spawned in 1915 by the Hollywood epic Birth of a Nation, premiered at the White House by a Democrat president, Woodrow Wilson.  Cross-burning and other rituals were actually inspired by the movie.  The Klan came to dominate the Democratic Party so thoroughly that the 1924 Democratic National Convention was known as the “Klanbake.”

It is not so much this Klan 2.0 that ACORN parallels as the original version.  Established in 1866, Klan 1.0 was an affiliate of the Democratic Party during the Reconstruction era.  Named for “kuklos,” the Greek word for “circle,” the Ku Klux Klan waged war against the Republican Party in the former Confederate states.  Goofy titles for its commanders such as Wizard and Cyclops were intended to disguise the fact that the KKK was a paramilitary organization.  In some areas, leadership of the Ku Klux Klan and the Democratic Party were indistinguishable.

Democrats used the Klan to suppress their political opposition, with vote fraud and intimidation and violence.  Klansmen aimed at African-Americans, nearly all Republicans in those days, and at white Republicans who tried to help them.  Once threatened by the KKK, Republicans could in many cases save their lives only by publicly swearing allegiance to the Democratic Party.  According to a southern governor, “Few Republicans dare sleep in their houses at night.”

“The suppression of enough GOP votes could ensure a Democratic victory,” wrote one historian.  “There’s no question that Klansmen closely watched the polls” – easy to do before the secret ballot was introduced in the United States in the 1880s.  All too often, Republican ballots were not even counted.

Like ACORN, the Ku Klux Klan operated with impunity until Republican politicians and journalists sounded an alarm.  In 1869, Nathan Bedford Forrest, the KKK’s Grand Dragon, ordered the Klan disbanded.  Why?  The national organization was getting too much attention, so Klansmen would have to soldier on in state-level organizations, such as the Red Shirts in South Carolina and the Men of Justice in Alabama.   Nonetheless, most members of these spin-off groups considered themselves to be Klansmen.

A congressional investigation reported that “the operations of the Klan are executed in the night and are invariably directed against members of the Republican Party.”

In 1871, the Republican-controlled 41st Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, and a Republican president, Ulysses Grant, signed it.  Until overturned by the Supreme Court twelve years later, the law effectively banned the KKK.  Federal troops crushed Klan uprisings in South Carolina and Louisiana, while hundreds of Klansmen were convicted in federal court.  Law enforcement played a role in eliminating the Ku Klux Klan, but primarily the Klan disappeared because after Democrat regimes replaced the Reconstruction state governments there was no need for Democrats to suppress Republican opposition by covert means when government authorities could do so openly.

Back then, Klansmen had to contend with a Republican administration, but now, with a Democrat in the White House, ACORNistas know that the federal government is on their side.  With Eric Holder’s Justice Department condoning polling place thuggery [pictured] and other illicit activity against the GOP, there is less incentive for Democrats to suppress Republican opposition by covert means when government authorities are doing so openly.

The Democrat-controlled 111th Congress has made ACORN spin-off groups eligible for billions of taxpayer dollars.  Once an insurgency, community organizers are now part of the establishment.  To the victors go the spoils.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear McDonald v. Chicago, in which the Court will decide whether the City of Chicago can disarm its citizens by forbidding them from owning handguns, or whether gun ownership is a “privilege” of citizenship protected by the U.S. Constitution.  In doing so, it will reconsider whether courts should play a more robust role in the protection of the basic liberties of the people.

Such a statement may seem counterintuitive.  Of course courts protect rights; it’s their job to interpret the Constitution to do just that.

But the practice of constitutional law has unfortunately long since been about more than the simple application of the plain text.  That’s because the Constitution—the point of which is to limit government power—is a rather inconvenient roadblock when government wants to do something without restraints.  Courts, in many cases, have abandoned their responsibility to apply the clear commands of the Constitution and have become extremely deferential to legislatures, especially with regard to progressive policy goals the judges themselves often share.  It seems crazy that we would let legislatures determine when laws they themselves create violate the Constitution.  But that is exactly what has happened.  We’ve let the fox guard the henhouse.

Some call this judicial “restraint,” but increasingly, a more accurate term would be judicial abdication.  And judicial abdication is every bit as dangerous as judicial activism, and arguably even more so because it allows politicians to disregard whatever constitutional limits they find inconvenient, which leads to unchecked expansion of government power.

A glaring example of judicial abdication is the 1873 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court known as the Slaughter-House Cases—a case that legal scholars from every political persuasion believe was wrongly decided.  Slaughter-House involved a government-created butcher monopoly in the City of New Orleans.  If butchers wanted to work, they had to pay to use a single government-sanctioned private slaughterhouse.  Naturally, those whose rights were being violated by this action sued, arguing the recently adopted Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment protected their right to pursue the occupation of their choice free from illegitimate government regulations.

The Supreme Court, however, disagreed.  In a 5-4 decision that remains controversial to this day, it concluded the Privileges or Immunities Clause—against all evidence—protected only a few basic rights inherent in national citizenship, such as the right to travel across state lines and the right to petition the government.  In doing so, it eviscerated a clause of the Constitution meant specifically to protect the liberties of the people—particularly newly freed black slaves and their white supporters—from state and local government infringement.

The 13th Amendment brought a legal end to slavery.  But the 14th Amendment was enacted to ensure that the freedom of the former slaves was meaningful.  Thus, no government could deny the multitude of “privileges or immunities” inherent in citizenship.

There was a general consensus that the term “privileges or immunities” protected important rights necessary to live a decent and productive life, such as own property, earn an honest living, participate in politics, and own a gun for self-protection.  But the term was left open-ended to protect against the many newfangled ways racist governments could deny opportunities to newly free black and their white supporters.

It’s not surprising that the chief legacy of Slaughter-House is Jim Crow, and the century of oppression suffered by blacks at the hands of unjust laws that denied them real opportunity.  But that legacy extends to all Americans, especially those who’ve suffered—like the butchers in New Orleans—from unreasonable regulations and licensing schemes that deny them the right to earn an honest living.  Ask nearly any small businessperson one of the most difficult challenges they face and you will get a common response:  big government regulations—like those that find their roots in Slaughter-House.

Thus, McDonald is more than a gun case.  McDonald represents an opportunity for the U.S. Supreme Court to resurrect the Privileges or Immunities Clause and abandon its tainted history of judicial abdication.  Once again, the Court could take seriously its vital role of enforcing the Constitution—all of it—against the continued onslaught of government power.

To ensure that we live in a nation characterized by islands of government in a sea of liberty—and not the other way around—it is imperative that the Court take advantage of this all-too-rare opportunity in McDonald to overturn Slaughter-House and restore itself as an engaged and co-equal branch of government when it comes to the protection of our rights.

The District of Columbia’s murder rate plummeted by an astounding 25 percent last year, much faster than for the US as a whole or for similarly sized cities. If you had asked Chicago’s Mayor Daley, that wasn’t supposed to happen. The Supreme Court’s 2008 decision to strike down DC’s handgun ban and gunlock requirements should have lead to a surge in murders, with Wild West shootouts. The Supreme Court might keep Daley’s predictions in mind today as they hear the oral arguments on Tuesday in the Chicago handgun ban case.

Everyone in DC now knows that murder rates rose after the handgun ban and fell after they were removed. Unfortunately, Chicago never learned that lesson. The forthcoming third edition of More Guns, Less Crime shows that in the 17 years after its ban on new handguns went into effect, there are only two years where Chicago’s murder rate was as low as it was in 1982. Chicago’s murder rate fell relative to other largest 50 largest cities prior to the ban and rose relative to them afterwards. For example, Chicago’s murder rate went from equalling the average for those other cities in 1982, to exceeding their average murder rate by 32 percent in 1992 and by 68 percent in 2002. There is no year after the ban that Chicago’s murder rate fared as well relative to other cities as it did in 1982.

Similar comparisons exist for the top ten largest cities, the US as a whole, or the counties that boarder Chicago. The accompanying figure shows how Chicago’s murder rates changed relative to the rates in the adjacent counties. In the five years before the ban, Chicago’s murder rate fell by 28 percent relative to those counties. (County level crime data only goes back to 1977.) in the five years after the ban, Chicago’s murder rate doubled relative to those other counties.

It shouldn’t be to surprising that Chicago’s murder rates rose after the ban. Every time gun bans have been tried murder rates have risen. In the United States, gun ban proponents have blamed this failure on easy access to guns in nearby states. But the experience in other countries, even island nations that have gone so far as banning handguns and where borders are easy to monitor, should give gun control supporters such as Mayor Daley and some of the members of the Supreme Court some pause. Whether one looks at Ireland, Jamaica or England and Wales the experience has been the same. Not only didn’t murder rates decline as promised, but the rates actually increased.

The results also confirmed recent research showing that gunlocks increase crime by making it more difficult for citizens to use guns to protect themselves from criminals. In DC’s case, the drop in violent crime is probably more attributable to eliminating the law that guns be locked and unloaded. Relatively few handguns were licensed to the rifles and shotguns that now could be stored loaded and unlocked.

There is a certain irony that so many Chicago politicians understand the protection that handguns provide. Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass wrote in 2008 that there are two types of people who are allowed to have handguns in Chicago: “The criminals. And the politicians.” Mayor Daley has round the clock armed bodyguards. Members of the city council get to become deputized police officers.

We all want to take guns away from criminals, but all too frequently gun control laws disarm law-abiding citizens not criminals. Police are extremely important in protecting citizens, indeed probably the single most important factor. But, as the police know all too well, they almost always arrive on the crime scene after the crime has been committed. If the government can’t protect its citizens, the last thing that it should do is make the crime situation even worse.

What would Saul Alinksy do?

In the wake of defeats for the Obama administration last month both with Scott Brown’s stunning Senate victory in the bluest of blue states and the Supreme Court Citizens United decision that will let thousands of groups speak more freely about candidates positions’ in the 2010 elections and beyond, that’s the question President Obama and his allies are probably asking. It’s also the question that proponents of limited, constitutional government and free enterprise must be asking in order to anticipate the organized Left’s next moves.

Alinksy was the father of left-wing community organizing. He wrote the book Rules for Radicals and other primers, which explained to would-be leftist organizers how to “search out controversy” and “fan the latent hostilities.” Seeing the world as a never-ending conflict between the “haves and have-nots,” Alinsky wrote In Rules for Radicals that “in war, the end justifies almost any means.”  One community organizer who took Alinsky’s words to heart was a young Barack Obama, who worked for an offshoot of Alinsky’s network of organizations in Chicago in the 1980s. Throughout his career, according to the Washington Post, Obama has “embraced many of Alinsky’s tactics.”

And one tactic in Alinsky’s arsenal dovetails almost perfectly with Obama’s new focus on so-called “financial reform” and his bashing of Wall Street to score political points. One of Alinsky’s most important rules for radicals was that “you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.” In this case, the “moral garment” is the supposed interest of shareholders.

Obama and Democrats are pushing legislation they claim would empower average investors against powerful corporate executives. They propose requiring a shareholder vote on everything from CEO pay to – in a move to limit the freedoms in the Citizens United decision — companies’ weighing in on political candidates.

But the crème de la crème in using the cover of shareholders to tilt the playing field to the Left’s advantage may be a scheme called “proxy access.” Provisions regarding proxy access are embedded in House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank’s “financial reform” bill that passed the House in December, as well as a “discussion draft” of a bill introduced by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.).

After Dodd’s failure to reach agreement on a compromise bill with Senate Banking Committee ranking Republican Richard Shelby, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) has stepped into the void and is now hashing out a bill with Dodd. It is vital that grass-roots conservatives and libertarians learn about proxy access and educate lawmakers of both parties about the threat this Alinksy-inspired policy poses both to a fragile economy and to the political playing field.

Proxy access would federalize and override decades of state law governing the structure of corporations and force publicly-traded companies to put shareholders’ nominees for a board of directors on a company’s proxy ballot along with the firm’s own nominees for those positions. Currently, in states such as Delaware, where many firms are incorporated, all shareholders can nominate their own candidates for the board of directors, but they have to finance these campaigns at their own expense. Under proxy access, companies and all their shareholders would effectively be forced to subsidize the director campaigns of certain shareholder nominees. The threshold for shareholders could be less than 1 percent, based proposals that have floated before the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Like net neutrality, another pet cause of the Left, proxy access sounds technical and somewhat boring on the surface. But also like net neutrality, and like the Fairness Doctrine, proxy access would fundamentally reshape an area of commerce to the Left’s advantage by granting a right of forced access to viewpoints that have been unable to prevail in the marketplace of ideas. And because proxy access would reach all types of businesses that are publicly traded, it could serve as a lever to force U.S. companies to bow to the Left’s wish list on every policy from “card check” that would end secret ballot for union elections to cap-and-trade rationing of electricity to a silencing of conservative voices by small group of ideological shareholders who would have veto power over the content of a media company.

Proxy access has its roots in a concept developed by Alinsky called the “proxy tactic” In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky devoted his second-to-last chapter – “The Genesis of Tactic Proxy” — to describing a new method to force corporations to bow to leftist demands.

In explaining the “proxy tactic,” Alinsky laid out a roadmap for progressive groups and individuals to pool shares of stock and “use [shareholder] proxies for political and social purposes.” Alinsky proclaimed proudly that “there was dynamite in the proxy scare” and described it as “the razor to cut through the golden curtain that protected the so-called private sector from facing its public responsibilities.” In a Playboy interview published in 1972 – a few months before he died – Alinsky would add that “the proxy tactic is also an invaluable means of gaining middle-class participation in radical causes.”

Fast forward almost 40 years to 2010. Since the 1980s, the Left had developed, in the words of George Washington University political scientist Jarol Manheim, a “network that is using shareholder resolutions and proxy voting to press American corporations to change their governance structures and social policies in ways aligned with the Progressive worldview.”

According to Manheim’s book Biz-War and the Out of Power Elite, “By one estimate in 1997 union pension funds controlled a total of $1.4 trillion [emphasis in original].” Also controlling billions of dollars of investment are left-wing foundations such as The Tides Foundation, which has funded radical environmentalism, efforts to ban guns, and the notorious Association for Community Reform Now or ACORN. Manheim writes that Tides, which had almost $150 million in net assets as of 2006, “has openly advocated policies that would advance the influence of Progressive shareholder activists.”

And hardly anything would advance that interest more than proxy access. The government employees union AFSCME has called proxy access rules “the holy grail of corporate governance.” But in reality, the shareholders these proposals would most help are leftist pressure groups – from union pension funds to George Soros-backed foundations with substantial shares of stock – at the expense of ordinary shareholders. Groups from unions to animal rights groups could run their own candidate for corporate directors and promote their special interest agendas at the company’s (and ultimately other shareholders) expense.

Even now—without “proxy access”—the public pension managers and union bosses haven’t been shy about asserting union and other social priorities that would reduce returns for their own pensioners as well as other shareholders. They’ve also used their control over worker funds in obvious efforts to aid the Democratic Party – and attempt to silence its opposition.

In 2004, when Sinclair Broadcasting was planning to air “Stolen Honor,” a documentary critical of presidential candidate John Kerry, New York’s Democrat Comptroller Alan Hevesi fired off a threatening letter to Sinclair saying that airing the program would hurt “shareholder value.” The claim was pretty dubious, as the controversy about the program would almost ensure high ratings. But Sinclair ended up airing only clips from the documentary in a news special. Ironically Hevesi, who posed as a guardian of state pension holders’ interests in Sinclair conflict, would later plead guilty to defrauding the state government and face – in the words of the New York Times — allegations that his “associates had sold access to the state’s $122 billion pension fund, using one of the world’s largest pools of assets to reward friends, pay back political favors and reap millions of dollars in cash rewards for themselves.”

Similarly, when President Bush was pushing private accounts for Social Security, the AFL-CIO threatened to pull its $400 billion fund away from any financial services company backing the accounts. “We have no intention of letting any of these companies get away with this while they manage our workers’ funds,” said top AFL-CIO lobbyist Gerald Shea, according to the Wall Street Journal. After this “pension fund blackmail,” as the Journal called it, several companies pulled out of coalitions supporting private accounts.

Other shareholder groups are pushing corporate policies that would endanger both health and American foreign policy. The radical animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has sponsored shareholder resolutions to stop companies from conducting animal research for potential life-saving drugs. The left-leaning Human Rights Watch pushed Caterpillar to stop sales to Israel of bulldozers, because the dozers could be used to destroy Palestinian homes. (Not mentioned in the resolution was that many of these homes belonged to terrorists or were used to cover the entrances of arms-smuggling tunnels.) The proposal was defeated by Caterpillar’s shareholders 97 percent to 3 percent.

But under “proxy access” rules, a militant minority of less than one percent, depending on where the threshold is set, could run candidates for director on the official company proxy ballot. And these groups could be “swing votes” in close director elections. This would give corporate boards and management a huge incentive to cave to various demands of interest groups on the Left.

And many squishy CEOs would give in, cutting deals with “progressive” groups at the expense of ordinary shareholders. As I note in a new report for the Capital Research Center, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt has rarely been a target of campaigns to rein in pay of poorly performing executives, despite the fact that GE has lost almost two-thirds of its value since Immelt has been at the helm. Why? Likely because Immelt has supported liberal priorities like the energy-rationing cap and trade, and lets Leftists dominate the airwaves of GE-owned MSNBC despite abysmal ratings.

In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky admitted that his proxy tactic “will result in diminished dividends” and lower returns for middle-class investors. He even called it “corporate jujitsu.” But the negative effects on nest eggs were okay with him, because he didn’t think much of middle-class folks anyway, referring to them contemptuously as the “have-a-little-want-mores”

Radicals “are right,” Alinksy wrote, that “the values and way of life of the middle class” are “materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized, and corrupt.” But he advised that radicals must disguise their true beliefs and appeal to the middle-class to take power for the Left. “We must begin from where we are if we are to build power for change, and the power and the people are in the big middle-class majority.”

Indeed the middle-class is where the power is. But members of this class are smarter, savvier, and more attuned to threats to the nation’s well-being than Alinsky, Obama, and other community organizers have ever given them credit for. If Democrats and/or compromising Republicans attempt to push through proxy access or any other form of Alinsky’s shareholder jujitsu, they may face an army of opposition from middle-class investors and entrepreneurs who know the principles of freedom that made this country great.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown seems to be getting a lot of reminders from his gubernatorial challengers Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman about his failed governorship of the state from 1975-1983 when Californian’s endured high unemployment, home foreclosures, large scale labor strikes and fuel shortages at the gas station. Recognizing the failed policies of then Governor Brown, California voters revolted and passed Proposition 13 which is a landmark initiative that limited politician’s ability to arbitrarily raise taxes on California residents.

Over a week ago, Attorney General Jerry Brown got yet another reminder, this time coming from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The report “Follow the Money: ACORN, SEIU and their Political Allies” focuses public attention on AG Brown’s failed investigation of ACORN. While some of Brown’s gubernatorial challengers talk of the need for a California Governor to have a spine of steel, AG Brown has instead crumpled like an aluminum can cowardly hiding behind state bureaucrats and a wall of state agencies.

On October 1, 2009, Jerry Brown publicly announced that an investigation had been opened concerning undercover videos that were obtained by citizen journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles who videotaped ACORN employees at two California offices. ACORN employees were filmed providing advice regarding tax evasion, prostitution and human smuggling of underage girls. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was informed by AG Brown in a letter that he had “opened an investigation of both ACORN and the circumstances under which ACORN employees were videotaped.” Since that announcement, AG Brown has found himself at the center of a controversy surrounding the mismanagement of the investigation as well as a potential scandal due to a double standard involving one of his own state employees secretly recording conversations with reporters.

Shortly after ACORN had been alerted to the immanent investigation as a result of AG Brown’s public announcement, ACORN employees at the San Diego, CA office were caught engaging in a massive document dump on October 9, 2009. Those records were retrieved from an unsecured shared public dumpster where they had been thrown revealing sensitive personal, financial and banking information for both clients and employees in addition to revelations about the political inner workings of ACORN’s relationship with major U.S. banks and labor unions.

Just a few days later, David Lagstein, ACORN’s head organizer in San Diego, was caught on an audio tape bragging how investigators from the Attorney General’s office had visited the local ACORN office that day and that communication from the Attorney General’s office indicates, “the fault WILL BE found with the people that did the video – not ACORN.” Mr. Lagstein appears to have been speaking with greater knowledge and authority than he has led people to believe since my investigation revealed that in addition to being ACORN’s head organizer, he is also married to Clare Crawford who is a National Political Director for ACORN and who has ties to ACORN’s head office in Chicago, IL.

First Clip: Attorney’s General Office Visits ACORN

Second Clip: Fault Will Be Found With Filmmakers

On November 22, 2009 while on KFI 640 radio with Andrew Breitbart, the story broke that I had over 20,000 documents ACORN unceremoniously threw into a dumpster in advance of Attorney General Jerry Brown’s visit to the local San Diego office. The following day, in a rambling statement on a Los Angeles radio show, AG Brown spoke about ACORN’s “right to privacy” of their trash. Californians quickly saw an Attorney General shift into political “duck and cover” mode rather than show the leadership that is expected from California’s top law enforcement official.

After being granted access to the documents, photographs and recordings that I obtained, investigators from the attorney general’s office stated in a written letter dated December 7, 2009, “California Teachers Association (CTA) paid California ACORN Special Projects nearly $140,000 in April-May, 2009 to conduct what CTA reported as “voter registration,” yet, according to documents found in the ACORN trash…it is apparent that ACORN workers solicited voter support for Proposition 1B.”

My investigation clearly showed that ACORN’s support of the ballot initiative was done with resources provided by the CTA and their explicit approval that specifically solicited partisan support from Democrat voters in California. Proposition 1B was a California ballot initiative during the May 19, 2009 special election that earmarked $9.3 billion for schools and was supported by CTA. The letter further states, “Because the issues raised by Mr. Roach’s claim seems most appropriately handled by the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), we are referring this matter to you.” The FPPC is a state agency consisting of two republicans and three democrats that investigate violations of California’s Political Reform Act. On December 30, 2009, Roman Porter Executive Director for the FPPC responded to the referral by the Attorney General’s office stating in a written letter, “There is no evidence of a Political Reform Act violation.”

ACORN – FPPC Ltr 12-30-09 –

In the wake of Jerry Brown alerting ACORN to an investigation that was to be conducted by his office, ACORN’s actions of dumping records into a dumpster in what appeared to be possible obstruction of justice, statements from ACORN officials that some interpret as possible collusion between ACORN and the Attorney General’s office and a referral of an investigation to another state agency in what appears to be an abdication of responsibility and the equivalent of a political passing-of-the-buck now comes new allegations that ACORN did in fact violate multiple California state and federal laws.

On February 19, 2010 Congressman Darrell Issa (CA-49) stated on nationally syndicated The Roger Hedgecock Show that documents from the San Diego office of ACORN were vital in showing a pattern of fraud, waste and abuse. The documents also showed that ACORN and the California Teachers Association were directly involved in California elections without the proper firewalls that are legally required to distinguish non-profit from political activities.

Congressman Issa also referred to the recent report “Follow the Money: ACORN, SEIU and their Political Allies” which was released by the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on February 18, 2009. The report finds, “There is no distinction between ACORN and any of its affiliates. Affiliates share staff, funds, office space, responsibilities, and common controls-there is no real separation between the parts, making it impossible to consider them as truly separate organizations.”

Documents obtained from the San Diego ACORN office included information about Citizens’ Consulting Inc which the report found is “an arm of ACORN that commingles funds from ACORN’s non-profit organizations and transfers this money to organizations to use for political purposes.” Documents that I provided to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee also showed a relationship, not only with the California Teachers Association but with the local chapter of Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The findings in the congressional report found that, “SEIU and ACORN are not only financially but also politically codependent” and that “ACORN directly runs two of the most prominent SEIU locals.” ACORN and SEIU were also found to share offices in nine cities across the United States utilizing staff and resources to advance both organizing and political goals.

Documents obtained from the San Diego ACORN office included financial records for Whitney Bank located in New Orleans, Louisiana. The congressional report that was released found that ACORN maintained nearly 700 bank accounts at Whitney Bank alone not to mention numerous bank accounts at other banks including Bank of America. It was revealed that ACORN had ownership interest in Whitney Bank. The report findings shockingly revealed that Whitney Bank inexplicably wired several million dollars to an ACORN Bank of America account in San Francisco and that money has not been accounted for.

It is astoundingly amazing that with video evidence obtained by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, documents that show an undisputed pattern of political activism by a “non-profit” organization, millions of dollars that have been unaccounted for and a congressional investigation that has documented a pattern of criminal activity that has deprived the State of California from desperately needed tax revenues; that California Attorney General Jerry Brown has yet to show any real sign of leadership or fortitude necessary to protect the citizens of California or seriously investigate ACORN.

Instead he is hiding behind a state bureaucracy hoping that nobody will notice his lack of leadership until after the next election. It is no wonder that Democrat elite are quietly whispering in their inner circles that Attorney General Jerry Brown failed California as Governor and is once again failing to show any signs other than that of a washed up politician who is once again trying to become Governor before heading of to retirement to enjoy his family’s trust fund. Perhaps it is time to investigate those in Sacramento for their ties to this corrupt organization.

Everyone has their favorite lawyer joke.  Most end up rather poorly for the lawyers.

I understand the public outcry against lawyers, recently stoked by the situation at the Department of Justice (DOJ).  For those not familiar with this news, Attorney General (AG) Eric Holder is in a pitched battle with members of the Senate over the backgrounds of nine attorneys working at DOJ.  Apparently, each of those attorneys have either represented or advocated for terrorist detainees.  Two have been identified: Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal was lead counsel for Guantanamo detainees in the Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld; Jennifer Daskal advocated for Guantanamo detainees with Human Rights Watch (HRW).

A little background on their background:

Hamdan focused on the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) established under Executive Order by former President George W. Bush in 2001.  CSRT determination was crucial to understanding detainee rights under the Geneva Conventions (adopted by the US), which grant specific rights to lawful enemy combatants (see Article 4) and are silent in regards to unlawful enemy combatants (see Article 5).  CSRTs were a form of military commission.  The main problem the Supreme Court had with CSRTs is that they were not “regularly constituted courts” under the Geneva Convention because our Constitution grants Congress the power of establishing courts.  So Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which was partially struck down by the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush (but that is a story for another day).

HRW is “dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world.”  It sounds nice, but the group admits to “targeted advocacy.”  Started in 1978, HRW focused on the atrocities committed by the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union. When the Evil Empire collapsed in 1991, HRW decided to shift its main attention to the “Evil Republic” of the US.  I suppose HRW decided it could not fire the vast amount of people needed to identify atrocities committed by the Evil Empire, and there was only one major power left.  I also gather that it is a little easier to address “atrocities” committed by the US, as opposed to atrocities committed by China or Russia.

AG Holder refuses to identify the remaining seven lawyers, and in fact, there may be more lawyers with similar backgrounds.

Now we get to the point where you may initially disagree.  While AG Holder should identify the remaining seven attorneys (promises of transparency notwithstanding) this should not turn into a witch-hunt.  Some attorneys have an agenda in targeting certain clients and cases, but most attorneys simply practice their profession.  Lawyers get a bad rap because you often hear about the bad ones.  I am guilty of this, and sparked some expected backlash against lawyers, in general. What you have to remember is that there is ALWAYS a lawyer on the other side, and it is a lawyer’s duty to represent his client to the fullest extent of the law.  And sometimes you have no control over who your client is.

John Yoo comes to mind.  Mr. Yoo was recently vindicated from allegations of professional misconduct for legal opinions pertaining to enhanced interrogation techniques, among others, during his tenure at DOJ under former President George W. Bush. In fact, the DOJ attorneys accusing Mr. Yoo are probably deserving of allegations of professional misconduct.  The controversy over his opinions centers on one addressing a principle of international law called jus cogens.  These are peremptory norms in international law from which states may not derogate.  Not necessarily contained in any treaties adopted by the US, it is a list of international no-no’s.  Piracy was one of the first, followed by slavery, genocide and torture.  The problem with these principles is that they are not clearly defined under international law, but are really only understood through practice and state (national) law.  Keeping this in mind, Mr. Yoo was asked to outline the limits of Executive authority to interrogate detainees within the confines of US law, including treaties adopted by the US.

The point is that Mr. Yoo had a client who wanted a result.  His job, as an attorney, was to satisfy his client to the extent the law would allow him, and our common law system allows for a lot of leeway when laws are not directly on point.  We do not have to agree with his opinion, but that should not necessarily extend to the man.  Understanding this, I can fathom why AG Holder is stone-walling.  Communications between DOJ attorneys should be as protected as communications between any other Executive branch officials, assuming nothing on par with Nixon is occurring.  However, AG Holder should not be allowed to withhold the identities of those attorneys.  The public should be able to weigh in on the decisions of any president’s administration, especially when the officials at issue are not subject to confirmation by the Senate.  This sort of conduct by the AG only heightens the public sense that something nefarious may be afoot.  Transparency would limit that affect.

So as I stated earlier, I understand the public outcry against lawyers, but lawyers are people, too.  They have families, work obscene hours, span the political spectrum, and a lot of them feel the pressures of the present state of the economy.  Perhaps these DOJ attorneys should be subjected to scrutiny by the Senate but let us not jump to conclusions.  At this point, the only bad actor is AG Holder, and he should not be representative of the entire legal profession.

The Hill reports a major win for Republicans and the CIA on a Democrat ambush on the agency and its agents. The Democrat sneak-attack unfolded as the healthcare summit took the national stage, but the GOP was watching.

Democrats inserted an 11-page addition into the bill late Wednesday night as the House Rules Committee considered the legislation.

The provision, previously not vetted in committee, applied to “any officer or employee of the intelligence community” who during interrogations engages in beatings, infliction of pain or forced sexual acts. The bill said the acts covered by the provision would include inducing hypothermia, conducting mock executions or “depriving the [detainee] of necessary food, water, sleep, or medical care.”

The language gave Congress the discretion to determine what the terms mean, and it would have imposed punishments of up to 15 years in prison, and in some cases, life sentences if a detainee died as a result of the interrogation.

Rep. Pete Hoesktra (R-MI) called out the Democrats:

“This will fundamentally change the nature of the intelligence community by creating a criminal statute governing interrogations,” said Rep. Pete Hoesktra (R-Mich.).  [This] had appeared “out of nowhere” in a manager’s amendment.

“Would someone on the other side please explain the rationale behind this and why the majority was unwilling to have hearings on this issue?” he said.

“Republicans brought this to the attention of the American people, who were rightly outraged that Democrats would try to target those we ask to serve in harm’s way and with a unified push we were successful in getting them to pull the bill,” Hoekstra said in a statement. “The annual intelligence bill should be about protecting and defending our nation, not targeting those we ask to do that deed and giving greater protections to terrorists.”

The language was pulled from the bill.  However, this latest development makes you want to ask, “Who’s side are the Democrats on?” And the next question is, “How can the CIA recruit exceptional talent and additional agents under these conditions and threats?”  Neither one, though, is rhetorical.

Its been another week that I’m certain the Democrats in DC are happy to put behind them. Happy too, probably, that another snowicane slammed the Northeast. Anything to distract any part of the populace from what can only be described as a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week.

A few weeks ago, the Democrats loudly proclaimed they would “pivot to jobs” and public concerns about spending. But, their addiction to ‘comprehensive health reform’ proved too powerful, culminating in one last, ‘we really mean it this time’ effort to pass a proposal opposed by a majority of the public. Yesterday’s surreal six-hour gab-fest/lecture on the topic was almost too bizarre to invite further comment. I mean, the spectacle speaks for itself. How did this ever seem like a good idea, even on paper. Giving the GOP a national platform to talk intelligently on health care is certainly an interesting strategy to pass ObamaCare. Clearly, too brilliant for me to understand.

As if the ’summit’ debacle weren’t enough for Democrats to welcome the weekend, we now get the revelation that, according to the House Ethics Committee, Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) did in fact violate House ethics rules. (Shock!) Of course, simple facts aren’t really a problem for House Speaker Pelosi. If they are inconvenient, she’ll just pick some new ones. From today’s The Hill:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she’s once again sticking by embattled Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) — at least for now.

Pelosi (D-Calif.) said during a Friday press conference that she had not yet read the full report from the ethics committee, which admonished Rangel, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, for improperly accepting reimbursement for two trips to the Caribbean.

“All I saw was the press release where they said he did not violate the rules of the House,” Pelosi said. “And I think that’s an important statement that they made.”

Fine except, you know, he did violate the rules of the House.

From the Ethics Committee’s official statement:

“The Report further finds that Representative Charles B. Rangel violated the House gift rule by accepting payment or reimbursement for travel to the 2007 and 2008 conferences.”

I’m not certain what press release exonerating Rangel Pelosi is referring to, but shouldn’t she be paying just a tad bit more attention to alleged ethical violations by one of the most powerful members of her caucus. We are talking about the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, perhaps the most powerful committee on the hill. I would hope Nancy “drain the swamp” Pelosi might do a bit more than just glance at a press release on the matter.

Then again, it has been a pretty bad week for her side. Perhaps she’ll just move to Australia.

Its been another week that I’m certain the Democrats in DC are happy to put behind them. Happy too, probably, that another snowicane slammed the Northeast. Anything to distract any part of the populace from what can only be described as a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week.

A few weeks ago, the Democrats loudly proclaimed they would “pivot to jobs” and public concerns about spending. But, their addiction to ‘comprehensive health reform’ proved too powerful, culminating in one last, ‘we really mean it this time’ effort to pass a proposal opposed by a majority of the public. Yesterday’s surreal six-hour gab-fest/lecture on the topic was almost too bizarre to invite further comment. I mean, the spectacle speaks for itself. How did this ever seem like a good idea, even on paper. Giving the GOP a national platform to talk intelligently on health care is certainly an interesting strategy to pass ObamaCare. Clearly, too brilliant for me to understand.

As if the ’summit’ debacle weren’t enough for Democrats to welcome the weekend, we now get the revelation that, according to the House Ethics Committee, Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) did in fact violate House ethics rules. (Shock!) Of course, simple facts aren’t really a problem for House Speaker Pelosi. If they are inconvenient, she’ll just pick some new ones. From today’s The Hill:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she’s once again sticking by embattled Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) — at least for now.

Pelosi (D-Calif.) said during a Friday press conference that she had not yet read the full report from the ethics committee, which admonished Rangel, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, for improperly accepting reimbursement for two trips to the Caribbean.

“All I saw was the press release where they said he did not violate the rules of the House,” Pelosi said. “And I think that’s an important statement that they made.”

Fine except, you know, he did violate the rules of the House.

From the Ethics Committee’s official statement:

“The Report further finds that Representative Charles B. Rangel violated the House gift rule by accepting payment or reimbursement for travel to the 2007 and 2008 conferences.”

I’m not certain what press release exonerating Rangel Pelosi is referring to, but shouldn’t she be paying just a tad bit more attention to alleged ethical violations by one of the most powerful members of her caucus. We are talking about the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, perhaps the most powerful committee on the hill. I would hope Nancy “drain the swamp” Pelosi might do a bit more than just glance at a press release on the matter.

Then again, it has been a pretty bad week for her side. Perhaps she’ll just move to Australia.

Over the past couple of years, the medical marijuana industry in Los Angeles has exploded. Estimates vary, but there may be as many as 800 dispensaries currently open for business in the city of angels. An ordinance recently passed by the LA city council, however, is about to change all that.

The new ordinance will force hundreds of dispensaries to close and all but a few to relocate. The goal was to bring clarity to the medical marijuana industry, but the only thing that’s clear is that the transition process will be difficult.

Especially now that the DEA has begun raiding dispensaries again, despite the promises made by the Obama administration to respect state laws legalizing medical marijuana.

While federal, state and local governments struggle to make sense of medical marijuana laws, an increasing number of Californians support a completely different approach: marijuana legalization. Nothing more than a pipe dream? Maybe. But consider this: 56 percent of Californians currently support pot legalization, the same proportion of Californians who voted for the Compassionate Use Act, which legalized medical marijuana, back in 1996.

Produced by Paul Feine. Shot and edited by Alex Manning. Graphics by Hawk Jensen.

Approximately 9 minutes. Go to Reason.tv for iPd, HD, and audio versions of all videos. Subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel and receive automatic notification when new materials go live.

The University of Basel’s Institute of Governance recently published a map showing the nations most linked to dirty money. What made the map interesting is that only one of the 28 nations listed was a so-called tax haven, thus exposing the left-wing lie that low-tax jurisdictions are somehow hotbeds of dirty money.

A more fundamental question is whether anti-money laundering laws are an effective way of fighting crime.  The evidence is not encouraging. The system costs billions of dollars each year. Banks are forced to set up expensive monitoring systems to snoop on their customers. They are then required to send reports to the government for all large or unusual transactions. Theoretically, these reports are supposed to alert law enforcement to patterns of criminal activity, but since banks are compelled to send millions of reports every year, it is impossible to sift through haystacks of data to find needles of criminal activity. This is why conservatives, such as a former Reagan Justice Department official John Yoder, think the laws do more harm than good. This six-minute video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity explains why the time has come for politicians to reconsider the current approach.

Libertarians (as well as some honest left wingers) also dislike anti-money laundering laws because they substantially undermine privacy. The Constitution guarantees a presumption of innocence and protection against unreasonable searches. Those freedoms are eroded, though, when banks are coerced into treating customers like criminal suspects and required to share millions of reports on the financial transactions of innocent Americans with the government.

It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. So perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that statist politicians such as John Kerry (D-MA) and Carl Levin (D-MA) want to make money laundering laws more onerous and intrusive. That won’t have much impact on the bad guys, but it will mean less freedom for everybody else.

In July 2005, the United States Justice Department began investigating Missouri for non-compliance under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).  Justice was not investigating for failure to register voters; rather the problem was too many voters.  About 1/3 of Missouri’s counties had registered voters that exceeded the number of eligible voters.  One county’s ratio was upwards of 150%.  Justice found that the Missouri Secretary of State (SoS) failed to conduct a general program that made reasonable efforts to clean the voter rolls, and filed a lawsuit.

We would presume that Project Vote conducted a study, found that a nefarious plan to dilute the vote of low-income voters was taking place, and filed an amicus brief in support of the government’s lawsuit.  We would be wrong.  Government suits do not generate attorney’s fees under NVRA, but more importantly, SoS Robin Carnahan (D) has close ties to the legions of progressive groups.  And the government did not stand a chance with Judge Nanette Laughrey (appointed during the governorship of Robin’s father, Mel Carnahan, and a former Carnahan aide-de-camp), who, despite her left-leaning tendencies, managed to deliver a summary judgment that would make any strict constructionist proud.  Judge Laughrey writes that Carnahan had no responsibility to actually do anything, other than “coordinate,” which is left up to Carnahan.

Despite the amusement of a liberal judge mimicking a Scalia or Thomas, the district court ruling went too far; even for a panel of judges on the 8th Circuit, composed entirely of W appointees.  There are definitely flaws in the NVRA.  Former Ohio SoS J. Kenneth Blackwell pointed them out rather deftly, and Project Vote has utilized these flaws to further a progressive agenda with ACORN.  The problem with district court ruling is that it clearly was meant to provide cover for Secretary Carnahan.  Even after the 8th Circuit found that SoS Carnahan was still responsible for conducting “reasonable efforts” to comply with the various NVRA provisions, Judge Laughrey white-washed the efforts of Carnahan, belittled the government’s minimal expectations regarding compliance under NVRA, and established a target for Project Vote and ACORN that would be easy prey in later suits.

In March 2007, Project Vote began communicating with SoS Carnahan about Missouri’s compliance under NVRA.  Project Vote was quickly informed that the SoS had very little responsibility regarding NVRA, according to the aforementioned case.  Of course, SoS Carnahan still had access to all of the relevant information regarding Missouri’s compliance.  And since excessive voter registration “clearly” was not a problem in Missouri, progressive focus centered on voter registration at public agencies.  The target was Local Election Authorities (LEA’s) and the Department of Social Services (DSS).  In Missouri, DSS has direct control over the conduct of local agencies.  What followed was standard Project Vote procedure for instigating litigation.

In May 2007, ACORN and Project Vote allegedly visited DSS offices to conduct “secret shopper” evaluations, posing as eligible recipients for DSS services (recall the heavy-handed response to James O’Keefe’s conduct in Louisiana).  I say allegedly because it appears that DSS and the other defendants objected to this testimony as hearsay during the hearing on the preliminary injunction.  Loose evidentiary rules during the hearing allowed for the testimony, but as the case progressed we only got this information from ACORN’s plaintiff, Dionne O’Neal.  What is notable is the lack of detail in all of this.  The only real details we get come from Dionne O’Neal.  Interestingly, though O’Neal is a member of ACORN, and ACORN spends millions registering low-income voters, O’Neal was not registered to vote at the time.  How convenient!

Now that ACORN had its plaintiff, Project Vote had to build the case for non-compliance under NVRA.  In September 2007, Project Vote issued a “scientific” study, written by Douglas Hess, alleging everything in the previous paragraph.  That same study alleges only 4 out of 53 visitors were offered voter registration services (with no details).  This study lays out the numbers regarding registered voters in Missouri, and notes that the number of people registered by DSS has dropped from 143,135 in 1996 to 15,568 in 2006.  Of course, nowhere does the study address the excess of voter registrations found by the government in 2005.  After proposing four weak hypothetical explanations for the decrease, Project Vote concludes that Missouri must be violating the NVRA.

But neither Missouri nor the SoS was the target.  The main targets were DSS and the LEA’s in St. Louis and Kansas City.  Project Vote relied on letters from SoS Carnahan to each of the defendants to establish notice of NVRA violations.  Which begs the question: if SoS Carnahan was doing such a good job conducting a general program that made reasonable efforts for Missouri’s NVRA compliance, why did she only realize that Project Vote’s targets may have been violating the NVRA after Project Vote suggested it to her?  That is a topic for another day, but what is clear is that the defendants were not going to get any help from a SoS working with Project Vote.

They were not going to get any help from the judicial system either.  ACORN filed its case in April 2008.  In another stroke of “good luck” for ACORN, the case conveniently landed in the lap of Judge Laughrey.  A concerted attempt was made to drop ACORN from the case for lack of standing, as argued by former Ohio SoS J. Kenneth Blackwell, but Judge Laughrey dismissed those efforts.  An attempt to join the SoS was also rebuffed by the court.  After months of draining litigation, suspecting that the SoS was working against them, and faced with a court unwilling to throw out bogus claims, DSS and the LEA’s settled in 2009.

As a result of that settlement, ACORN and its allies were granted attorney’s fees of $450,000.  In response to claims that ACORN stole $450,000 from the state of Missouri, ACORN and its defenders make the claim that the money only went to lawyers, not directly into the coffers of the organization.  This may be accurate (although money paid to Project Vote always seemed to find its way back into the hands of ACORN’s national headquarters), but it doesn’t make it any better.  These same lawyers now have direct resources to pursue other cases without relying on donations from the Democracy Alliance or the Tides foundation. They also have a track record for other lawyers to consider when joining suits in other states.  They attempt to deflect blame from ACORN, but the money will be used for the same purpose – furthering the progressive attack on our electoral process.

At a speech at Claremont McKenna to honor Martin Luther King Jr. in mid-January, the subject of Jesse Jackson Sr.’s new ire was the “banksters” — Wall Street fat cats, who are causing all of our problems.

Naturally, Jackson ignored his own role in housing crisis. That he made his argument against banks at one of the schools that produces the most investment bankers in the country did not go unnoticed – however. Those hoping to listen to watch his entire speech can watch it here.

Jackson decried the “biggest shift of wealth in American history in the last 9 months.” He assailed Obama’s so-called spending freeze. “We’ll freeze the rich in their wealth and the poor in their poverty. . . . Freeze? They have already frozen modifications of home foreclosures.” And he applauded Roosevelt’s “direct investment in the poor” and for “breaking up their ability to be indifferent to the poor.” “Banks serve at the privilege of the state and their mission is to lend and invest,” he said, not presumably to get paid back.

Of course much of the speech sounded like the usual socialist rhetoric, which he claimed Martin Luther King Jr. was trying to “take us there” – wherever there is.

Some of my favorites of these sorts were:

• “Today, too few got too much”;
• “The wealthy are wealthy not because they are working hard, not because they are smart, but because there is simply a shift of wealth from working class people to the rich.”
• The first step [to ending poverty] at home is to enforce the law. Some of the poverty is driven by unenforced civil rights law. If the banks were not allowed to circumvent fair lending laws and the community reinvestment act, to target communities on the basis of race. If they had had to honor Title 6 of the Equal Employment Act, contract compliance, affirmative action, we’d have a fairer distribution of resources.”

Much of it was boilerplate progressivism. For instance, he attacked conservatives who opposed the health care bill.

Here we got men who claim that they are moral, Bible-touting Christians celebrating killing a health care bill. [Mocking those congressmen] “I have my healthcare bill, I’ve got my millions if I’m in the Senate.” And yet there’s almost a celebration. Fifty million Americans left without health care. How despicable. How degenerate.

Later in the question and answer period, Jackson said he wanted students to get interest free loans — “the same deal that banks got.” He proceeded to go around the room asking students how much debt they had – all of which hovered around $6,000 or so, far lower than the average $23,200 per college graduate. The only person in the room who claimed to have very high debt was someone who wasn’t even a student, but a guest of a development officer who never attended Claremont McKenna.  (He was seated at my table.)

For causing the crisis, he blamed the “monopoly in media ownership” – Don’t tell that to Andrew Breitbart or the rest of the conservative blogosphere! – and “monopoly in banks.” He argued that the bankers owned the Senate and overturned Glass-Steagall Act. The truth about Glass-Steagall was laid out spectacularly by Reason Magazine:

Most European financial markets, not normally known as more “deregulated” than the U.S., never separated commercial and investment banks in the first place. And there is no correspondence between institutions that benefited from the repeal and those that recently collapsed. Institutions that didn’t take advantage of the Glass-Steagall repeal, such as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, were the ones that failed most spectacularly, in part because they lacked the stability provided by commercial banking deposits.

Something other than Glass-Steagall must be responsible then. What could it be?

Not Jackson’s hobbyhorse, the Community Reinvestment Act or Jackson, of course, which economist Thomas Sowell holds largely to blame for the financial crisis in his book, The Housing Boom and Bust.

Nope, it can’t be the Community Reinvestment Act, which required that banks not just look for qualified buyers, but make a required quota loans to low income and moderate income buyers. Banks that were given unfavorable ratings under the CRA were prohibited from enjoying the diversification privileges of the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

To solve the financial crisis, Jackson recommended that we have more of the same: “Just enforce the law. Enforce civil rights law and fund it.”

The Clinton Administration did fund so-called civil rights law, though, which was the basis of my question to Jesse Jackson when I asked him what role he played in the housing crisis. I mentioned my governor, Deval Patrick, who sued banks by looking solely at the disparity loan rates between whites and blacks, as if somehow evidence of racism. (Patrick and the Clinton White House ignored the inconvenient gap between Asians and whites – and made so-called statistical disparities the basis of their efforts to shakedown banks.)

Here’s how Jesse Jackson responded. I have bolded the relevant sections.

We did not leave out Asians, that’s misinformation. Our view was fair banking and fair banking for all. We never left out Asians or any ethnicity because that’s contrary to our fundamental beliefs. Banks were doing what they call redlining. Banks were giving loans to blacks, browns or Asians if they stayed in certain places. They would target you. They would profile you. They would steer and cluster you. That’s what banks were doing. So we fought for a law that would make it illegal to steer and cluster called the Community Reinvestment Act. Banks serve at the privilege of the state and their mission is to lend and invest. Once banks and securities get under the same roof, they have more interest in trading than they do in lending. They are trading more and lending less. . . . Their angst was we got to now invest in housing. Their scheme was, let’s lend them at below market interest rates and at a certain time jack it up, jack up the harm, adjusted rate mortgage. They went around the law with the subprime lending scheme. It wasn’t our fault the banks got tricky and the Congress did not do oversight. It’s not our fault that FDIC and SEC let Madoff through. Madoff didn’t steal money because of blacks you know. He stole money because he was allowed to do so. When Roosevelt’s program of restructuring the banks – strong SEC, strong FDIC, and oversight – when the law went down, what was a ball game became a brawl. There is always a suggestion that if the banks didn’t have to honor CRA they wouldn’t be in this trouble. They were able to do this because they got greedy and Congress did not protect the people. . . . So I’m glad we fought for CRA. It was fair banking for everybody and remains our point.

God help us. Left unanswered, of course, is whether or not redlining was a result of those kinds of “community shakedowns” that have long been Jackson’s way. Redlining, Thomas Sowell mentions in The Housing Boom and Bust, was not occurring in the numbers that its proponents claimed. On page 119, Sowell notes an empirical study by George J. Benston of Emory University, which found very little evidence of it – but that won’t stop Jackson from claiming it was all over the place and that he had no responsibility for getting banks to do it.

A partial transcript of the event regarding banks is found below:

Here we are forty years later. The biggest shift of wealth in America history in the last 9 months from the middle class to the wealthy. A 182 billion dollar bailout of AIG. We said banks were too big to fail, we made Goldman Sachs twice as big. . . . Does a rising tide rise all boats? Well, Harlem and Wall Street are on the same island – and it has not lifted that side of the same island. The wealthy are wealthy not because they are working hard, not because they are smart, but because there is simply a shift of wealth from working class people to the rich. Now we’re talking about freezing. We’ll freeze the rich in their wealth and the poor in their poverty. We must invest in the poor and allow them to grow and develop. That’s why Roosevelt’s idea of restructuring the banksters – not refortifying them. Somehow bank said and these financial securities schemers will always choose trades over investment. Freeze? There have already frozen modifications of home foreclosures. Major banks have been bailed out as predators. 3.1 million homes eligible for modification – they have modified 30,000. Bank of America has got 1.2 million eligible they might have had 98 because they make money in foreclosure, not in modification.

. . .

The president chose to refortify those banksters, to try to make them greedier – without stops,  checks and balances. Roosevelt said we have to break this up. Got to have direct investment in the poor with CC camps and WPA – a moratorium on foreclosures and a restructuring of the banks. Break up their ability to be so indifferent to the poor and to their primary role which is to serve and to land and to invest and to grow. Martin Luther King was taking us there, trying to modify our system to save it from itself. In a real sense, we find ourselves looking at where he was taking us. Today too few got too much. Monopoly in media ownership, monopoly in banks – why they are not reinvesting because their capital is not allowed to be so. Senator Durbin asked “Do the banks own the Senate for real?” Well when you look at, once they broke the Glass-Steagal Act, which was a way of separating securities and banking, they used their power to disallow bankruptcy laws to help the people. . . . They used their power to buy up the Congress, which was responsible for oversight. They’ll be a big football game, between the Colts and the Senate, Sunday week. Without referees, there wouldn’t be a game at all, they’d be knocking each other out. … When the congress stepped away from doing their job – looking for a job on Wall Street to get them a home from a Wall Street bank, they gave up their role as honest brokers and referee. So without fair lending laws, without fair housing act, without community reinvestment act, they can open up something scurrilous called “reverse redlining.” They can target blacks and browns. Many of them who were first generation home owners. Black or Brown making $100,000 a year, got a subprime high cost loan. A white make $50,000 a year got a prime low cost loan. Lest we forget, it didn’t help the black or the white buyer because if my house is lost to eviction, your house loses value, so I’m outdoors and you’re on the water. I can’t pay taxes because I’m evicted and you can’t pay taxes because I’m on the water and we can’t taxes we begin to lose police, teachers, firemen, librarians, social services. So we’re hemorrhaging jobs at the bottom, while the banksters up top are trying to figure out how to spend bonuses. . . . Banks get their money at zero percent interest and charge students 7 percent, making money off of free money. How vulgar is that? If banks can get interest free money, why can’t students get interest free money? A challenge of your time and today’s challenge. If you can’t afford to stay in school, teachers can’t teach, the school cannot remain open. If you can’t stay in school, where is our future?

It’s easy to honor Dr. King as a dead martyr than a living man because martyrs don’t fight back. … And so here we are tonight, fighting two wars on the one hand, and banksters being given a pay off beyond their capacity to calculate it, and poverty’s expanding. So tonight I hope the challenge was that banksters will have to invest in America, that they’d have to modify home insurance loans and reduce student loans and give the same loans that banks get. [MLK] was trying to democratize our character.

. . .

Here we got men who claim that they are moral, Bible-touting Christians celebrating killing a health care bill. [Mocking those congressmen] “I have my healthcare bill, I’ve got my millions if I’m in the Senate.” And yet there’s almost a celebration. Fifty million Americans left without health care. How despicable. How degenerate. … Bank stock rising, pharmaceutical stock rising and yet we’re hemorrhaging jobs. Today’s challenge.

Before we broke for Q & A, Jackson invited us to be a part of his group, the Rainbow/Push Coalition to help us to challenge the banks and “not hoard capital.”

To a question about how to end the poverty gap, Jackson replied,

“The first step at home is to enforce the law. Some of the poverty is driven by unenforced civil rights law. If the banks were not allowed to circumvent fair lending laws and the community reinvestment act, to target communities on the basis of race. If they had had to honor Title 6 of the Equal Employment Act, contract compliance, affirmative action, we’d have a fairer distribution of resources. Just enforce the law. Enforce civil rights law and fund it. And by the way, civil rights let me suggest to you that affirmative action is not a minority issue. It’s a majority issue. Affirmative action is majority white female, with people of color. So it’s a majority not a minority issue.”

[I asked him a question about his role in the housing crisis. I mentioned my governor, Deval Patrick, who sued banks by looking solely at the disparity loan rates between whites and blacks, as if somehow evidence of racism. (Patrick and the Clinton White House ignored the inconvenient gap between Asians and whites – and made so-called statistical disparities the basis of their efforts to shakedown banks.)]

We did not leave out Asians, that’s misinformation. Our view was fair banking and fair banking for all. We never left out Asians or any ethnicity because that’s contrary to our fundamental beliefs. Banks were doing what they call redlining. Banks were giving loans to blacks, browns or Asians if they stayed in certain places. They would target you. They would profile you. They would steer and cluster you. That’s what banks were doing. So we fought for a law that would make it illegal to steer and cluster called the Community Reinvestment Act. Banks serve at the privilege of the state and their mission is to lend and invest. Once banks and securities get under the same roof, they have more interest in trading than they do in lending. They are trading more and lending less. . . . Their angst was we got to now invest in housing. Their scheme was, let’s lend them at below market interest rates and at a certain time jack it up, jack up the harm, adjusted rate mortgage. They went around the law with the subprime lending scheme. It wasn’t our fault the banks got tricky and the Congress did not do oversight. It’s not our fault that FDIC and SEC let Madoff through. Madoff didn’t steal money because of blacks you know. He stole money because he was allowed to do so. When Roosevelt’s program of restructuring the banks – strong SEC, strong FDIC, and oversight – when the law went down, what was a ball game became a brawl. There is always a suggestion that if the banks didn’t have to honor CRA they wouldn’t be in this trouble. They were able to do this because they got greedy and Congress did not protect the people. . . . So I’m glad we fought for CRA. It was fair banking for everybody and remains our point.

It always happens. When the mainstream media thinks they are on the heavy side of popular opinion they take a poll and run with it. In a recent poll by ABC and the Washington Post, they determined that 80% of America was opposed to the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC.  I would have like to seen something much more relevant, like how many people know that the case before the Supreme Court was even called “Citizens United v. FEC?”

Because I’m fairly certain that that few people know anything about the decision. The 80% figure reflects more than public opinion, it reflects how well the mainstream media has been obfuscating the reality of the case.

Not that it’s relevant anyway. Despite popular opinion, America was never intended to be a Democracy. In the immortal words of James Madison: “…democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” (Federalist #10)

Polls like this are most often used to give the impression that America is broken, and we need a fix. What most people don’t understand, is that our government was designed to run contrary to popular opinion, since popular opinion can be as fickle as  Tiger Woods infatuations.

When Bill Clinton was being impeached it was very popular to take polls measuring how many Americans were opposed to the proceedings. Our Founders anticipated that majority sentiment might be in favor of holding onto a bad president, and shopped  that job out to the Senate. At the time, the Senate was an appointed body, and immune to the winds of populism.

Strangely, when the Democrats are on the losing side of the poll, they are drawn to Republicanism quicker than an accused felon finds religion. Polls that indicate Same-Sex Marriage and Late Term Abortions are opposed by the majority of  Americans, rarelyget  published. Nobody seemed to really care that the majority of Americans opposed Roe v. Wade back in 1973.

The question asked by ABC and the Washington Post was: “do you support or oppose the recent ruling by the Supreme Court that says corporations and unions can spend as much money as they want to help political candidates win elections?”

No bias there. It sounds suspiciously close to Constitutional Professor Obama’s summation of the case: “Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.”

I wonder how many realize that the first amendment protections on free speech were at stake in Citizens United?  And I’m not talking in a rhetorical sense either. The actual case was based on whether a corporation had the right to distribute a motion picture. The US district Court of DC had decided that “Hillary; the Movie” could not be distributed as a Pay-Per-View” movie, because it said unkind things about a US Senator and was produced by a Corporation.

All movies today are produced by corporations. Why even the Anti-Corporate propaganda film “The Corporation’ was produced by the Big Picture Media Corporation. (Who says “Irony is dead?’) Allowing the Federal Government the power to decide whether or not a movie can be viewed is something the entire nation should rally against. Arguments in front of the Court actually suggested that if this ruling were to stand, that corporations would not even be allowed to print newspapers or books if the FEC determined them to be “electioneering communication”

I think if someone over at ABC or the Washington Post had actually read the case, they might have come up with a little different question, like: ”Do you Support the recent Supreme Court decision that prevents the Federal Government from controlling which movies you can watch in your own home on Pay-Per-View?” You might have seen a little different result.

You would think Newspapers and  Broadcasting Corporations would be a little more sensitive about this stuff.

My suspicion earlier this week that White House attorney and Islam Envoy Rashad Hussain was involved in covering up controversial comments he made in 2004 turns out to have been well-founded. Josh Gerstein from Politico reports:

President Barack Obama’s new Islamic envoy, Rashad Hussain, changed course Friday – admitting he made sharply critical statements about a U.S. terror prosecution against a Muslim professor after initially saying he had no recollection of making such comments.

“I made statements on that panel that I now recognize were ill-conceived or not well-formulated,” Hussain said, referring to a 2004 conference where he discussed the case.

Hussain’s reversal came after POLITICO obtained a recording of his presentation to a Muslim students’ conference in Chicago, where he can be heard portraying the government’s cases towards professor Sami Al-Arian, as well as other Muslim terrorism suspects, as “politically motivated persecutions.” Al-Arian later pled guilty to aiding terrorists.

First of all, major kudos to Gerstein for following through on this story. I do not think there are very many people in the MSM who would have continued to pursue a story such as this that originated in “conservative” media (CNS and Fox). And while Gerstein goes to great lengths in his latest post to present a balanced perspective on Hussain’s views as expressed in 2004, it is his job to do so and he does it commendably as far as I am concerned. The one complaint I would make is that the timing of this release (Friday 10:00 pm EST) strikes me as a weekend news dump, but its quite possible that Gerstein had little if anything to do with this.

The main point to emphasize here is that the real story is the cover-up, not Hussain’s actual comments from 2004. Although I find it troubling that an Administration attorney viewed the prosecution of Islamic terrorists and their backers as “politically motived persecutions”, he was a private citizen at the time and still in law school no less. Frankly, I find much more troubling the news that at least 9 political appointees working in the Justice Department directly represented terrorist defendants.

But what is now no longer in doubt is that not only did Hussain in fact make these statements, but he also actively sought to cover them up soon after joining the White House last year. From Gerstein:

“When I saw the article that attributed comments to me without context, leaving a misimpression, I contacted the publication to raise concerns about it. Eventually, of their own accord, they modified the article,” Hussain said of the article in the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs.

“Of their own accord”…right. Five years after publication of the article and only after being contacted by an attorney from the White House Counsel’s Office.

Even worse, Hussain tacitly condoned, if not outright facilitated, the attempt to falsely attribute these quotes to someone else. By denying recollection of making the statements when this was first reported, and by remaining silent while the White House went along with the false story that another speaker at the event had actually made these comments instead of Hussain. In fact in doing so, they actually impugned the integrity of another current White House employee (Shereen Kandil), who as it turns out had written the article back in 2004 where these quotes were published. By claiming that she had mistakenly attributed these quotes to Hussain.

Suggesting that someone else is lying in order to cover up your own lie is reprehensible behavior, and all the more so because Hussain ultimately owned up to this only after Politico obtained the audio recording and it was clear that he was lying.

This would be considered unacceptable professional behavior in any organization, but for an attorney working in the White House to have engaged in this type of deception, this should probably be grounds for his termination.

Nick George, a senior at my sister college, Pomona College, was detained by TSA earlier this year. On February 10, he filed a federal lawsuit with the ACLU against TSA, the FBI, and the Philly police. (His father is an attorney and former public defender in the Philadelphia-area.) The lawsuit claims that he was detained for his Arabic flash cards. I think it’s because he was suspicious all throughout.

George is known as being very far to the left on the campuses, which is saying something for Pomona College. After a Pomona Student Union event discussing the state of the media, George tussled with Ross Douthat for over an hour, saying that the right — by which he meant Glenn Beck and Fox News — was effectively nuts and dishonest — much to the chagrin of those of us who wanted to talk to Douthat about something a bit more substantive.

And rather unsurprisingly, his political views on his Facebook profile are listed as “Communist Party of Bulgaria.” (He was asked by TSA agents whether or not he was a Communist; Facebookers of the world might think twice about what they put up in that section from now on.)

So George is not Mr. C.I.A. wannabe, as the mainstream media is trying to spin it. Take, for instance the opening lines of Daniel Rubin’s column for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

A federal agent sizing up Nick George might peg him as Most Likely to be Recruited by the CIA. He’s a physics major at a top college, is minoring in Middle Eastern studies, speaks Arabic, has lived in Jordan, and is adventurous enough to have backpacked through Sudan and Egypt.

Or rather, here’s what the federal agent could have thought instead.

• Physics major? Possibly knows how to make a bomb.

• Went to Sudan? One of the world’s most vibrant terrorist training camps are located there. (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once called Sudan called the second home of the “dear, pious and revolutionary brothers.”)
• Middle Eastern studies? Right, because Columbia’s Middle Eastern studies department isn’t a hotbed of radicalism. Oh wait? It is?

On these grounds alone, I’m glad that the TSA agent erred on the side of arresting George, which is pretty much what Deb Saunders wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle. (It has since come out that George also visited Malaysia, home of Muslim extremism, and Indonesia, home of the largest Muslim population on the planet. Neither of these things should disqualify him from flying, but he shouldn’t be surprised about being screened a bit more.)

George wasn’t planning on suing, but the ACLU persuaded him, according to Pomona College’s The Student Life. The ACLU also seems to have turned him into something of a constitutionalist. (The ACLU apparently learned of it from Philadelphia Daily News columnist Dave Davies’s 9-11 article. You can watch the video where George talks with the ACLU here.)

Looking at the suit now, “The point is to make it very clear that there are rules, that you have to follow the rules, and that when you don’t follow the rules there are repercussions,” said George. “The point is to make it clear the TSA cannot do whatever they want.”

The TSA didn’t do whatever it wanted. It followed protocol.

And maybe, just maybe you were more suspicious than you have been letting on.

Again from The Philadelphia Inquirer:

According to a federal suit filed yesterday on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union, a TSA supervisor asked him, “How do you feel about 9/11?”

George said he had hemmed and hawed a bit. “It’s a complicated question,” he told me by phone. “But I ended up saying, ‘It was bad. I am against it.’ “

Rubin should have done his homework. In Pomona’s newspaper, The Student Life, George was quoted as saying:

“She looked at the book I was reading and said, ‘You obviously read… how do you feel about 9/11?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know, I’m against it…’ And she said, ‘Yeah, well do you know who did 9/11?’… and I said, ‘Osama Bin Laden.’ And she said, ‘Do you know what language Osama Bin Laden spoke?’ and I think I just said, ‘Arabic.’”

“A complicated question”? “You don’t know”?  Are you kidding me?

Every time I fly from my hometown of Boston, MA I see two flags draped over the terminals of the two planes that slaughtered nearly 3000 people. Ninety-two of my fellow Bay Staters didn’t come home that day, the third highest casualty figure after New York and New Jersey. Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem such a complicated question to me, but hey, I’m not a Middle East studies major.

Oh, and that photo that The Philadelphia Inquirer used where he looks like Mr. American? (See the one right here, which was provided by Nick George to The Philadelphia Inquirer.)

Photo provided by Nick George to the Philadelphia Inquirer

Here’s another photo where he looks like he doesn’t ever shave. He came back from the Middle East shaved, with shorter hair. Where have I seen that before?

The reaction to George’s arrest and lawsuit have been predictable in its silliness. The most foolish response has been Matt Yglesias’s post titled, “A Missed Torture Opportunity.”

Of course in a world where the TSA didn’t have a “law-enforcement approach” to terrorism or a “pre-9/11 mindset” they could have easily resolved this problem. All they would have to do is strap the kid to a board, tilted so that his head is below his feet. The straps would be uncomfortable, though they wouldn’t have any particular skin-lacerating properties thus making the process totally humane. Then the face is covered with cloth, and water could have been poured over George’s face. This process institutes an apparently unbearable physical sensation of imminent drowning. Initially, George would simply loudly protest that he didn’t know anything, but soon enough sufficiently application of torture (or as Marc Thiessen and the Gestapo call it, “enhanced interrogation techniques”) would have the guy singing.

Seeing as the United States has waterboarded only three terorrists, I don’t think George would have made the cut, but thanks for spreading total lies about our interrogation practices, Matt! I’m sure that’ll go over well with the international community.

“Congress should address the need for both national standards and a more robust enforcing authority.  If not, more decision making will fall to the states,” said Miles Rapoport, President of Dēmos, an umbrella corporation for the myriad of progressive groups attacking our state electoral processes.  Progressives, realizing the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) left much of the implementation to states, began their National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) assault in 2006.

The first battle over compliance with the NVRA occurred in Ohio in 2006.  Coincidentally, the Secretary of State Project (SoSP) focused much of its efforts on seizing the open-seat for Ohio Secretary of State that same year.  Seeing an opportunity to de-legitimize Ohio’s electoral process and to create an atmosphere favorable to a progressive candidate, ACORN filed a suit a little over a month before the 2006 elections.  Sound familiar?  It was the strategy in Michigan in 2004.  But Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (R) was not going to leave office without a resolute fight in defense of Ohio.

At issue was NVRA § 7: Voter Registration Agencies.  Any state agency providing public assistance received designation as a voter registration agency.  Public assistance agencies were supposed to follow a set of procedures providing mail voter registration, assisting applicants in completion of those forms, and accepting completed voter registration forms.  Each state designates a “chief state election official” to coordinate state responsibilities for compliance with the NVRA.

The procedures for compliance are rather straight-forward, so Project Vote had an easier job alleging non-compliance.  Catch any agency on a day after it has run out of forms.  Seek assistance from any personnel unfamiliar with NVRA requirements.  Find any individual receiving public assistance that has moved, and was formerly registered to vote.  Compare the number of individuals registered in the first year under NVRA to the number of individuals registered now (because every year should see the same amount of people receiving public assistance, the same amount of people unregistered, and they will always be new or moved people, right?)  Send a letter to the chief state election official alleging non-compliance through “scientific” studies.  Demand a plan to remedy violations.  Offer “help” to the state.  Then sue to “protect” the voters (and more importantly, recoup expenses).  Brilliant!

Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell fought back.  A motion to dismiss was filed on three grounds: (1) standing (of ACORN), (2) notice, and (3) improper party defendants.

• (1) Standing:

This was the best argument, and one that should be utilized anywhere ACORN or other progressive groups file suit.  First-party standing requires (a) injury in fact, (b) the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant, and (c) likelihood the injury can be redressed.  Third-party standing requires (a) members would otherwise have standing, (b) the interests at stake are germane to the organization’s purpose, and (c) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires participation of individual members.  Additionally, mere interest is not sufficient to confer standing and the organization must establish that its ability to further its goals has been ‘perceptively impaired’ so as to constitute more than an abstract setback.In regards to first-party standing, the court points out that ACORN would have spent money on voter registration drives anyway.  As to third-party standing, ACORN failed to allege anything other than an abstract setback to its goals (whatever that might be).

• (2) Notice:

Notice was established fairly easily, as ACORN notified the “chief state elections official” of the alleged violation of NVRA involving the individual plaintiffs identified in the suit.

• (3) Improper Party Defendants

A proper defendant can be forced to redress the plaintiff’s injury.  Whether the SoS would be a proper defendant was in flux at the time of this ruling.  What is clear is that the progressives had not done their homework.  Contempt for state law led them to not read and argue the state statutes with precision.  Ignorance left them clueless as to the contemporary understanding of liability under the NVRA in the federal courts.  And because SoS Blackwell was not going to “help” ACORN, the lawsuit floundered in federal district court.

In the memorandum in opposition to the motion to dismiss, Project Vote’s attorneys point to the state statute that would later allow ACORN to sue Ohio successfully.  However, Project Vote explained the Ohio SoS’s duties in terms of the wrong federal court ruling.  In United States v. New York, the federal district court determined that under New York state law and jurisprudence state officials were responsible for local enforcement of the NVRA.  SoS Blackwell relied on United States v. Missouri, where the federal district court found that the SoS lacked enforcement responsibilities.  In reality, Ohio statutes put the SoS’s responsibilities somewhere in-between Missouri and New York.  In addition, Missouri, New York and Ohio are all in different federal circuits, so district court cases from each state are merely persuasive, not controlling.  Regardless, the progressives got nowhere with state officials defending their state.

The case was dismissed in December 2006.  Enter SoSP candidate Jennifer Brunner, who took office in January 2007.  During her term as SoS, she did much to advance the voting issues susceptible to vote fraud that Michigan fought against in 2004. She agreed to work closely with public assistance agencies and ACORN to ensure “compliance” with NVRA.  The District Judge, a Clinton appointee, even wrote a memorandum in opposition, citing Brunner’s willingness to do whatever she was asked to do.  Unfortunately for Ohio, that was not enough for the progressives.  ACORN, Dēmos, Project Vote and the associated attorneys wanted money. As you will see in Missouri, the need to generate legal fees was paramount over the desire to work with a state to register low-income voters.  Even though ACORN had a SoS willing to help them, they appealed to the 6th Circuit to re-open the original case.  Brunner used the same argument Blackwell had used.  The appellate court skewered her argument, referring to the United States v. Missouri case  and pointing out it had been overturned prior to her defense.  Either Brunner is the most incompetent election-law lawyer ever (which would be surprising given her background), or she only wanted to put up the appearance that she was defending the interests of Ohio taxpayers.  This second time around, the court interpreted the state statutes broadly to grant the SoS enforcement powers under NVRA.  It was Brunner’s responsibility.  And so Brunner’s office settled in November 2009.  As a result, the progressives and their lawyers were granted an as yet unreleased amount of money from Ohio taxpayers for the settlement.

Republicans ought politely to decline President Barack Obama’s invitation to a summit on health care reform. It’s not just a potential “trap,” as House Minority Leader John Boehner suspects, aimed at fast-forwarding a modified health care reform bill through Congress under a smokescreen of superficial “bipartisanship.” It’s also a violation of the spirit of our Constitution’s separation of powers.

The President has no legislative authority. He can propose laws—indeed, we expect him to do so—that are then introduced by legislators in Congress. He can sign a bill or veto it once it has been passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. He can mediate disputes among legislators to broker agreements. But the President cannot intervene directly in the legislative process until it is over.

The discussion that President Obama has proposed with Republicans for February 25th was, no doubt, inspired by his success at a question-and-answer session with the GOP last month. However, the new event is beginning to assume the trappings of a formal legislative session. Republicans will be asked to propose changes to the Senate version of the health care bill, and the President will offer compromises.

Congressional Democrats may be given equal time to present their own proposals, and the President will decide how to balance their demands with Republican requests. Presumably, the President will then incorporate the changes into a bill that will be presented to Congress for immediate approval. The President has made it clear that he wants to bypass any further negotiations in the House or Senate.

This summit is fundamentally different from previous meetings, such as the White House Forum on Health Reform last March. It is not aimed at jump-starting the legislative process, but at passing an existing bill–one that is awaiting final drafting in conference committee. The President’s explicit goal at the summit is to find a way to pass the legislation without, as he put it, “wrangling” and “posturing.”

In effect, President Obama’s summit will create a surrogate legislative process, without the procedural safeguards provided by the Constitution and the rules of each house. There will be no conference committee to iron out the difficult details of the bill. More importantly, there will be no filibuster to protect the objections of the minority. The President, not newly elected Senator Scott Brown, will cast the proverbial 41st vote to end debate.

The summit is a clever political ploy. By aiming his invitation at Republicans, the President hopes to deflect blame for the failure of health care reform, when it is his own party that has been unable to agree on a bill. And by convening a bipartisan summit outside the Senate, the President will evade the filibuster without having to propose radical rule changes or invoke the controversial “reconciliation” process.

Politically, Republicans have responded adeptly, indicating that they are open to talks while insisting that the existing health care bill must be scrapped. Karl Rove has suggested that Republicans might benefit from the spectacle even more than President Obama will: “This is the party’s best opportunity yet to contrast its good ideas with Democratic legislation,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal of Feb. 11.

Yet Americans cannot ignore the looming constitutional danger. The summit aims to re-constitute Congress inside the White House. It casts the President as both legislator and executor of the law—a Prime Minister and President rolled into one. That is a threat to the separation of powers, as the founding fathers understood it, and will set a precedent that will erode the independence of Congress.

If the President were truly interested in bipartisanship, the summit would not be necessary. The structure of our legislative system provides many opportunities for the parties to work together. Republican legislative proposals on health care reform have already been introduced in Congress. The end of the Democrats’ supermajority should be a new opportunity for cooperation—within Congress, not outside of it.

That is not what the President wants. In his State of the Union address, President Obama attacked the independence of the other two branches of government. He announced he would circumvent the Senate after it rejected his budget panel, and he rebuked the Supreme Court. The summit must be understood in the context of that assault on the separation of powers. Much more than the health care bill is at stake.

What if you were injured and developed severe pain that wouldn’t go away? Would your government let you take the kind of pain medication you need? If federal officials follow the recommendation of a Food and Drug Administration panel, many of the most effective prescription painkillers—including Vicodin, Percocet, and countless generics—would be banned.

Scott Gardner says that kind of a move would be “intensely cruel.”

“I took Vicodin for three years,” says Gardner. “I needed it. It got me through a very tough period of my life.” The tough period began after a cycling accident shattered the left side of his body. After eight surgeries and countless hours of physical therapy, Gardner’s once active life is now filled with limitations. He suffers from chronic pain that prevents him from sleeping more than a few hours at a time, and yet his pain today is nothing compared to the agonizing days and months following his accident.

“When there’s nothing but pain, there’s no reason to live,” says Gardner. “There were times where the only way I could stay sane and civil was because I could take painkillers.”

The fear of addiction and abuse already makes many suspicious of pain medication. Media reports about celebrities like Rush Limbaugh or Matthew Perry suggest that it’s common for people to become addicted to medications they once took for legitimate medical conditions. And countless public service announcements remind us of the dangers of prescription drug abuse.

Now the old fear of prescription drug abuse takes a new twist. The FDA panel is targeting drugs like Vicodin and Percocet because they contain acetaminophen, a popular painkiller also found in many over-the-counter drugs. Panel members warn that some Americans ingest too much acetaminophen, and overdoses can lead to liver damage, even death.

But maybe the FDA panel isn’t putting this threat into context. After all, mundane threats like falling down stairs claim more lives than acetaminophen overdoses. And it turns out the more common fear—that patients will become addicted to prescription drugs—is also overblown. In fact, the barrage of warnings we hear about prescription drugs obscures an important point—people saddled with severe chronic pain need these painkillers.

Says Gardner, “I  think people who haven’t dealt with pain don’t really know what it’s like.”

“Don’t Get Hurt” is written and produced by Ted Balaker, who also hosts. The director of photography is Alex Manning, the field producer is Paul Detrick and the animation in the piece is from Hawk Jensen.

Approximately five minutes.

For iPod, HD, and audio versions of this and other videos, go to Reason.tv.

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Related video: When Cops Play Doctor: How the Drug War Punishes Pain Patients.

For Reason.com’s coverage of “opiophobia,” or overblown fears by the government about prescription painkillers, go here.

Eighteen states provide for recall elections to remove state officials.  Nine of those provide for the same for their Congressional representatives.  But such a right of recall can and should be adopted in every state.

Ideally this would be done by amending the state constitution to provide for such recall elections.  But it can be done through statute as well, with the New Jersey Uniform Recall Election Law as a good model.

The greatest opportunity is in the states that already provide for citizen initiatives to put state constitutional amendments or proposed statutes on the state ballot for a vote of the people for adoption.  In these states, the citizens can act directly, without depending on the politicians to adopt a check on their own power.

The right of recall is desirable because it maintains democratic accountability to the people throughout the entire term of elected officials, rather than just at election time.  This is more relevant now because increasingly we see an attitude among elected officials that they know best and the people are ignorant yahoos who should be ignored until they need to be fooled again at election time.  The people need a right of recall to remove officials who display this anti-democratic attitude after they are elected.

We have seen this problem in particular in the health care battle, where Congressional representatives have displayed the attitude that the people are too gullible, confused and misled to understand the issue, and should be ignored by the wise elected officials who know better.  Elected officials have responded to citizens voicing their objections with name calling, labeling them Nazis, racists, and tea baggers.  These officials are still threatening to adopt a thorough government takeover of health care on the idea that the people will never be able to unscramble the mess.  The right of recall is needed to shortcircuit this tactic.

Another increasing problem is candidates who campaign as conservatives to get elected, and then once they get in office they join with the far left to pass their agenda instead.  With the right of recall, voters who feel they were snookered in this way can act to remove their representative once this pattern becomes apparent.  With this power in place, candidates would be less likely to try to get elected on false pretenses in the first place.

The right of recall would also counter the growing problem of voter fraud.  If voters feel there were too many shenanigans in a vote count, and don’t trust the result, they can act to provide for a new election.  A perfect example is the recent extended vote count for Sen. Al Franken in Minnesota, which was based on a developed art form of focusing the recount on districts that heavily favor one party, where votes can be manufactured.  With this success, rest assured that this will be tried again and again.

A recent example of recall in action was the 2003 removal of then recently reelected California Gov. Davis.  The people voted overwhelmingly to remove him from office in a recall election, and replaced him with current Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  This example shows that the recall process is practical and not counterproductively disruptive.

But anyone who wants to pursue such a recall, or the process of initiative to adopt recall for their state, should realize from the start that this is a time consuming process requiring the collection of likely millions of signatures on petitions, all in strict compliance with the letter of the law.  You can bet that opponents will be looking for any legal variance to deny the whole effort.  Therefore, the effort needs to be organized from the beginning with sufficient resources and experienced input to be successful.

The U.S. Chamber strongly supports efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, but we believe there’s a right way and a wrong way to achieve that goal.

The wrong way is through the EPA’s endangerment finding, which triggers Clean Air Act regulation. Because of the huge potential impact on jobs and local economies, this is an issue that requires careful analysis of all available data and options. Unfortunately, the agency failed to do that and instead overreached. The result is a flawed administrative finding that will lead to other poorly conceived regulations further downstream.

Today the Chamber is filing a formal petition indicating it will challenge EPA’s decision to trigger Clean Air Act regulation, based on lapses in EPA’s process in making that decision. The Chamber’s legal challenge will focus specifically on the inadequacies of the process that EPA followed in triggering Clean Air Act regulation, and not on scientific issues related to climate change or endangerment.

We continue to call for Congress to address climate change policy through the legislative process, rather than having EPA misapply environmental statutes like the Clean Air Act or Endangered Species Act that were not created to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Emphasis mine.

In addition to ignoring its own internal rules and working outside the legislative branch, the EPA is acting on a 2007 Supreme Court Ruling, which, based on new developments in the Climategate scandal, should be revisited. The ruling states the EPA was found to have the authority to regulate emissions that contribute to global warming and climate change. In addition, the Court stated:

Based on respected scientific opinion that a well-documented rise in global temperatures and attendant climatological and environmental changes have resulted from a significant increase in the atmospheric concentration of “greenhouse gases,” a group of private organizations petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to begin regulating the emissions of four such gases, including carbon dioxide, under §202(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act, which requires that the EPA “shall by regulation prescribe…

The EPA, in concert with with Obama administration, is attempting to force through a modified version of cap-and-trade through regulation, a signal that Obama realizes cap and trade is dead in the Senate–especially after this death blow to the global warming/climate change movement:

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon. And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

It will be interesting to watch the Obama administration attempt to circumvent and spin lead scientist Professor Jones’ statements. Will the EPA revise its final report based on this new information?

Global warming, climate change, and cap and trade will be that much harder for the Left to sell. Americans weren’t buying them in the first place. Cap and trade was recognized for what is was and is–the legislation that provided the trigger for the transfer of wealth to poor nations–wealth redistribution on a global scale.

What, now, is the fate of the “Copenhagen Accord” non-binding agreement where:

The Copenhagen Accord is a 12 paragraph document that sets a 2 degree Celsius limit on future warming. Its provisions address emissions cuts, verification and deforestation. It would also commit 100 billion dollars from wealthy countries and global institutions over the next 10 years to help poor countries adapt to climate change.

Based on all of the new information on climate change and the manipulation of the “science” for some 15 years, it will be revealing if the United States adheres to this agreement. If Obama continues with this nonsense of climate change and insists on transferring United States’ wealth to third world countries, my assertions have been correct all along–that the core intentions of the Obama agenda are to place severe hardship on the American people by destroying the nation’s wealth. After all, Obama is intentionally proposing, supporting, and forcing policies through–by any means–that bankrupt the United States and weaken our economy, discourage businesses from investing and hiring workers, deepening unemployment and stifling innovation, and squeezing the American people into desperation for federal aid (there is a record number of food stamp recipients now, for example) and health care benefits.

It seems the end goal of the Obama Administration is to make people dependent upon the federal government. How’s that for some hope and change.

Two of the most popular liberal news sites are calling for violence against Republicans for obstructing the radical agenda of President Barack Obama.

CNN and Huffington Post have each published op-eds this past week by regular contributors with headlines that explicitly call for Obama to use violent gangland tactics against his political opponents.

CNN published a column by Roland Martin on February 11 with the headline, Time for Obama to go ‘gangsta’ on GOP.

Martin concluded the article with a plea for Obama to emulate the violent tactics of the Prohibition-era Chicago mob boss Al Capone.

Obama’s critics keep blasting him for Chicago-style politics. So, fine. Channel your inner Al Capone and go gangsta against your foes. Let ‘em know that if they aren’t with you, they are against you, and will pay the price.

The Huffington Post followed-up with their own call for gangland violence against Republicans with the publication on February 14 of a column by David Bourgeois with the title, Obama Better Start Breaking Kneecaps.

Bourgeois concludes his article with this call for gangland violence.

You’ve given it your best shot, you’ve tried numerous times to talk with the Republicans, to negotiate, to meet them halfway on every single matter before the American people. But they hate you for many reasons. It’s time you break kneecaps (bold in original). It’s time to destroy the Republican Party. They don’t deserve a seat at the table when all they want to do is score political points by being the Party of No.

HUFFINGTON: Well, Roger, it’s not a question of picking a fight. And aren’t you concerned about the language that Glenn Beck is using, which is, after all, inciting the American people? There is a lot of suffering out there, as you know, and when he talks about people being slaughtered, about who is going to be the next in the killing spree…

…It’s not about the word police. It’s about something deeper. It’s about the fact that there is a tradition as the historian Richard Hofstetter said, in American politics, of the paranoid style. And the paranoid style is dangerous when there is real pain out there.

Ailes defended Beck, saying he was accurately talking about the governments of Hitler and Stalin.

Violent rhetoric such as that espoused by CNN and the Huffington Post is usually found in the bowels of Internet discussion forums, not as sanctioned op-ed headlines on news sites with White House press passes.

CNN and Huffington Post would be well-advised to retract the calls to violence and issue apologies to Republicans before Obama supporters are incited by their violent rhetoric and start going gangsta and break kneecaps of Republicans.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.  We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

Ronald Reagan spoke these words some forty-six years ago in his famous “A Time for Choosing” speech.  Tragically, today in America it appears the time for choosing is fast passing. As each day goes by our debt grows more untenable; our security more imperiled; our economy more shackled; our government more tyrannical.

These are symptoms of an America that has chosen the wrong path.  We lost our way on the road to civilization, veering onto the road to serfdom. Our plight is the result of a hundred-plus year campaign by the socialist sophists to slowly but surely undermine the bedrock principles on which we had built our strength.

While the ends of a nation are peace, prosperity and culture, from our founding there was a dichotomy of opinion as to how best to achieve these ends.  It was not merely a matter of state versus federal or small versus big government.  Rather, at its core the split rested and continues to rest upon embracing liberty or embracing tyranny.

As the underappreciated French Political Economist Frédéric Bastiat argued, “The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.” James Madison in an equally cynical but less damning statement asserted,

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Put another way, the great challenge of government is that while in forming it we grant man privileges to protect our natural rights, it proves difficult enough for man to govern himself let alone others. Thus, in devising a governmental system, our founders set up a Constitution of diffuse powers confined to explicit spheres.  This was to ensure that the majority of power rested with the states or the people.

As our country aged, the state increasingly stripped us of our rights instead of securing them. Government grew whilst the individual shrunk. Whereas the law was meant to protect against the diminution of man, instead it was used as an instrument to plunder him. As Bastiat shrewdly posited in The Law back in 1848,

..legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism.

If only this message had resonated.

We lovers of liberty allowed for the planting of these seeds of our destruction. We have always had the better ideas, but too often failed to adequately defend them. Our ideological counterparts, realizing that they could not win on substance propagandized through academia and the media, and co-opted the poorest and the richest in their lust to undermine our rights for their personal gain.

Anecdotally, we can see a clear difference in the logical ends of the policies the statists espouse.  It is instructive to look at the experience of those in East and West Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall (well-documented on pages 33-37 here).  Similarly, if we compare and contrast the liberal urban areas in America with the more conservative suburban ones, in many instances we see a clear difference in wealth, safety and overall quality of life, which is incidentally ironic given that it is often the suburban areas that subsidize their urban neighbors.  Yet even with this stark difference in results, somehow we have succumbed to the path to barbarism.

Perhaps one of the reasons for our loss in the war of ideas is that while the battle lines are clear, we have not sufficiently articulated the virtues of our side. The following questions are exemplary of our divide, and were Americans to consider their implications in context of our political system, I believe support for the left would wither. Do Americans believe in private self-reliance or public largess? Do we believe in meritocracy or thugocracy? Do we reward success or failure? Do we stand upright or bow to the world? Do we wish to return America to fiscal order, or condemn future generations to debt slavery? Do we believe that solutions come through the ingenuity and toil of the American people, or from faceless bureaucrats in Washington? Do we wish to be the shining beacon of civilization, or a mere footnote in a history book?  Do we believe in the individual, innovation, morality and the spontaneous and organic harmony of freedom or the collective, backward, perverted morality and destitution of centrally planned servitude?

The people of this nation know that the progress of man has always come from the individual, free to question, experiment and fail. In fact, it is often out of failure that opportunity arises. Our nation was built on principles the founders gleaned from their studies of the failures of their predecessors. They understood that powerful centralized government could never advance man, but only restrain him.  They understood that the sole purpose of government was to protect man from the tyranny of others and that of government itself.  This was to be achieved by building a foundation based on property rights and the rule of law, a foundation that would allow man to flourish.  Sadly, generation after generation, we have allowed our government to usurp more and more of our freedom — to steal from us the life, liberty and property that make us people.  In our quiescence, we have given politicians sanction to weaken our constitution and dehumanize us.

But just as failures created the conditions for the founders to build this nation, so too have failures created an opportunity for us to refound it.  Today we have a populace galvanized against our largely corrupt stewards. We must avail ourselves of this opportunity to educate a captive audience on history, on principles and on the ideals that we have allowed to grow decadent. In the meantime in trying to roll back years of ideological subversion that have numbed Americans to truth and morality, we must elect officials who will stop government from expanding.  Then, we must go to work in stripping it back to the bare bones ascribed to it in our Constitution.

In order to achieve this monumental task, we will need to seek out candidates who are unafraid of the censorship that is political correctness; who understand that the state is always to be subservient to the individual; who are willing to abide by principle even if it means political pain.  In other words, we will have to find patriots who stand to gain little from serving in government, the very people who have traditionally avoided serving in it.

This battle will take many, many years, and there is no guarantee of success.  But difficult as the struggle may be, appeasement and the middle path will surely lead to failure.  Reagan understood this when it came to the Cold War.  He argued,

every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand—the ultimatum.

Reagan further noted as to a policy of appeasement that, “You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery.”  One might add that chains and slavery will never lead to a dear life or sweet peace.

We must fight another war against our ostensibly well-meaning liberal friends, a war on ideological grounds in the political arena.  We must express to all those who cherish this country that nothing less than our existence rests upon our fight against the tyranny of our democracy.  Our state is a Leviathan, hurtling towards fiscal and moral bankruptcy and war.  History will either remember us as the generation that twiddled our fingers while Rome burned, or the underdogs who overcame great evil to return this nation to its rightful place as a shining city on a hill.

We may lie very close to the precipice today, but it is still our duty to make the proper choice.  We must choose to fight the fight for civilization or risk dishonoring our founders, enslaving our children and debauching our once great nation.  If we choose rightly, we will either save our country from impending collapse or build a contingent strong enough to rise from its ashes. In a world being terrorized by the twin tentacles of socialism and Islamism, we still remain the last best hope of man on Earth.

On Saturday, February 13,  the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia – about 20 minutes from the White House -  held a fundraiser dinner to raise money for Sabri Benkhala’s various legal appeals.  (They’re holding an even bigger fundraiser in April, which may be attended by some well-known elected officials – more on that later….)  Benkhala is serving a 10-year term in a federal prison for perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI.

According to a February 5, 2007 statement from the Department of Justice, “Benkahla was convicted of making materially false statements both in his grand jury appearances in 2004, as well as to the FBI in 2004. These false statements included his denial of his involvement with an overseas jihad training camp in 1999, as well as his asserted lack of knowledge about individuals with whom he was in contact.”

If you want to fundraise for a jailed jihadist, Dar Al-Hijrah is definitely the $40-donation-for-a-halal-chicken-dinner venue of choice.  Dar Al-Hijrah’s  jihadist credentials are impeccable:

Dar Al-Hijra is the mosque where Anwar al-Awlaki was Imam  between January 2001 and April 2002.  Al-Awlaki (bio here and here) was the senior al-Qaeda recruiter and motivator for various terrorists, including three 9/11 hijackers, the accused Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspect in the Christmas Day 2009 attempt to blow up  Northwest Airlines Flight 253.  Al-Awlaki may still be alive in Yemen, and after some concerns about his civil rights, reportedly the Obama administration now has him targeted as a terrorist.

And who can forget that earlier Dar Al-Hijra Imam from 1995-1999, Mohammed Al-Hanooti,  named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.  In 1999, when he was still Imam at Dar Al-Hijra, he testified in support of Ihab M. Ali, who had refused to testify before a grand jury investigating the 1998 United States embassy bombings.   Al-Hanooti told the federal judge that Islamic law “gives him [Ihab M. Ali] the right to abstain from giving testimony in case it hurts him or it hurts any other Muslim.”

Or the Dar Al-Hijra Islamic Studies teacher – and Dar Al Hijra Islamic Camp Counselor -  Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, convicted in 2005 of providing material support to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, and conspiracy to assassinate President Bush, now serving a life sentence.  Abu Ali was also valedictorian of his class at the Saudi Islamic Academy, the Saudi Embassy-backed 900-student school in the Washington, DC suburbs, that the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has repeatedly urged the US State Department to shut down on the grounds that it teaches religious intolerance.

Or the Dar Al-Hijra Imam between August 2003 and May 2005, the memorable Sheikh Mohammed Adam El-Sheikh, formerly a Muslim Brotherhood member and Shariah judge in the Sudan, and one of the founders of both the mosque and the Muslim American Society (MAS), who left the mosque to become the executive director of the Fiqh Council of North America.

That’s the same  Fiqh Council that on February 9, 2010 issued a legal opinion – a fatwa – against the use of full body scanners in airports for Muslims.  He’s also active in bringing Shariah law to America, as the head of the Islamic Judiciary Council of the Shari’ah Scholars’ Association of North America (SSANA).

And we cannot neglect to mention the member of Dar Al-Hijrah’s Executive Committee, Abelhaleem Hasan Abdelraziq Ashqar, convicted in November 2007 of contempt and obstruction of justice for refusal to testify before a grand jury with regard to Hamas, and sentenced to 135 months in prison.   A major Hamas operative since at least 1988,  Ashqar was accused of opening bank accounts and maintaining U.S. records for Hamas.

Nor is Dar Al-Hijrah  just your average, friendly neighborhood mosque.  In fact, their original Constitution required their Board of Directors to  include  leaders of  Muslim Brotherhood front groups who would later be identified as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial: “the Current Secretary General of Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Current President of Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA), the Current General Manager of North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), and the Current President of Muslim American Society (MAS).”  In 2005, when the current Imam Shaker Elsayed became Imam, he amended the mosque’s constitution to give precedence to the Muslim American Society, and now the mosque Board is run by the “Current President of the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Current MAS DC Area Chapter President, the Executive Director of MAS National Office.”  Elsayed had been Secretary General of the Muslim American Society before becoming Dar Al Hijrah’s imam.  The Muslim American Society was founded in 1993 as the American chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It was Imam Shaker Elsayed who sent the email invitation text for the February 13, 2010 fundraiser for Sabri Benkhala:

“Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:22:48 -0700
From: legaladmin@universal-justice.net
Subject: Mark Your Calendar (2/13/10): Dinner

Dear Friends of Justice,

Assalamu Alaikum. The Universal Justice Foundation is pleased to announce that it will be hosting a fundraising dinner to support Br. Sabri Benkahla by contributing to his legal fees. The event will feature Dr. Jamal Badawi from Canada, Imam Rodwaan Saleh from Texas, and Br. Sabri’s attorney John Sheldon, Esq. and will be held at Dar Al Hijrah IslamicCenter’s Main Courtyard. Tickets are only $40 and registration will be at 5:30. The program will begin promptly at 6:00 P.M., and dinner will be served early. Please arrange to purchase tickets as soon as possible because space is limited! You may buy tickets at our website www.universal-justice.net or from Sh. Shaker at Dar Al Hijrah. If neither option is convenient, please email us at legaladmin@universal-justice.net and we will arrange your ticket sale…

May Allah reward you greatly for your efforts in serving justice!

Sincerely,

Shaker Elsayed
Founder and Chairman, UJF

Shaker Elsayed, the current Imam, and founder and Chairman of that “United Justice Foundation” fundraising organization for convicted terrorists,  is a dual citizen of Egypt and the U.S.  He stated in  a sermon at the Dar Al Hijrah in 2005, shortly after becoming Imam there and stacking the Board of Directors with Muslim American Society leaders,  that “Islam forbids you to give allegiance to those who kick you off your homeland, and to those who support those who kick you off your homeland…We do have license to respond with all force necessary to answer our attackers.”  And in the same sermon he stated, “The call to reform Islam is an alien call.”  He is also an outspoken supporter of Hamas and their objectives, including the destruction of Israel.

The Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hassan, attended Dar Al-Hijrah periodically when he lived in the Washington, DC area, up to 2009 when he was transferred to Texas, and his now infamous powerpoint presentation, “The Koranic Worldview as it Related to Muslims in the Military” is closely in line with the 2005 preaching of the current Dar Al-Hijrah Imam, Shaker Elsayed.    See for example slide 11 in that series: “It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims”; the examples in slide 13; or the quote that appears to track exactly with Elsayed’s 2005 sermon, on slide 49:  “Fighting to establish an Islamic State, to please God even by force, is condoned by the Islam.”

Dar Al-Hijrah has been staffed by a series of Imams who  radicalize their members – the members don’t “self-radicalize,” as Major Hasan was said to do in the negligent report on the Fort Hood Shooting put out by the Pentagon.  The U.S. intelligence community missed the warning signals from Dar Al-Hijrah’s earlier Imam Anwar al-Awlaki; they should heed the warning signals from the current Imam, Shaker Elsayed.

More on this in days to come – including which invited elected officials could be coming to dinner at Dar Al-Hijrah in April, at their gala annual fundraiser…

It’s Not About the Recall, It’s About the First Amendment

Review of case briefs, case law research, and consultation with a number of attorneys, judges, and legal professionals contributed to the writing of this article.

Tea Party activists might be smarter than some would like to think.  And depending upon the outcome of a court case later this month, they might also play a role in setting legal precedent.

When New Jersey state election officials denied their submission to initiate a recall effort against U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, calling it unconstitutional, a grass-roots recall committee’s constitutional instincts kicked into full gear.  Attorneys for the committee, themselves Tea Party activists, filed to appeal the agency decision and began writing their supporting brief.

Meanwhile, seemingly everyone was now weighing in as a legal expert.  Some insist the decision is simple:  NJ has no constitutional authority to recall a US Senator; despite what its state constitution says, that authority is reserved for the federal government alone.  For weeks now, legal scholars, political pundits and the media have been chattering online about the case, now before the Appellate Division in the Superior Court of New Jersey, some treating it more like a sideshow and an outlet to take pot shots at Tea Partiers than a legitimate court proceeding with real constitutional significance.

But Dan Silberstein and Richard Luzzi, attorneys for the Committee to Recall Robert Menendez, a committee initiated by members of the Sussex County Tea Party, see this case in an entirely different light.  They insist this case is not about whether a recall order from the state is judicially enforceable against a United States Senator, rather, it’s all about protecting the first amendment right to free speech. And they are taking the matter very seriously.  Based upon recent developments in the case, apparently so are several others, including some high profile legal experts and the courts.

In a two-part order just issued Thursday, February 4^th, Judge Edwin Stern granted the committee’s motion to accelerate their appeal and scheduled oral argument for 10:00am on Friday, February 26^th in a Mercer County, NJ courtroom.  In addition, the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU), has taken interest in the case and had filed an emergent application requesting approval to participate in the appeal as amicus curiae (friend of the court), given the broader constitutional implications of the case. In the same order, Judge Stern also granted the ACRU’s emergent application and approved the organization’s participation in the appeal.

NOTE:  For a complete history of this case leading up to the appeal, including the constitutionality issue between the NJ state versus federal constitutions, please refer to my prior article on the topic, entitled “Is New Jersey’s State Constitution Unconstitutional? Campaign to Recall Senator Menendez Turns Into Battle of the Constitutions.”

The Constitutional Question

When the parties present their oral arguments on February 26^th, much of the case may come down to how it is framed.  Attorneys for both Senator Menendez and for NJ state election officials have focused their briefs solidly on one key constitutional point:

“As the US Constitution reserves to the United States Senate the power to expel and determine the qualifications of its own members, New Jersey has no authority to recall a US Senator.”

While this is a premise that has agreement among legal scholars, it is also largely debated – because it has never actually been definitively ruled in a court of law.  Many loosely related rulings or references to debate at the Constitutional Convention are often cited, though, as the NJ State Attorney General herself concedes, “there are no federal decisions squarely on point.”   Most importantly, NJ actually changed its state Constitution in to specifically permit the recall of a US Senator after a ballot vote in 1993. In the absence of any definitive ruling that renders the state’s recall law unconstitutional, other legal experts maintain that the Committee may very well have a legitimate case to plead.

The Committee’s attorneys argue that the constitutional issue raised by the state and Menendez attorneys is not ripe anyway.  Since the recall notice was denied before the petition could circulate, before it could be certified that the petition met the minimum number of signatures required, before a recall election could be conducted, and before an election result could even be certified, no one has even made any demand yet that a recall order be issued against Senator Menendez.

They contend that the State is focused on the wrong issue:

“The State, asserting only that it has no power to issue a judicially enforceable order to recall a U.S. Senator, argues the Committee has failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits. However, the State focuses on the wrong issue.

This issue before this Court concerns the State’s content-based restriction on the Committee’s right to freely exercise core political speech, not the dispute over whether a recall order issued by the Secretary of State is judicially enforceable as against Senator Menendez or the United States Senate.

The Committee has clearly shown a likelihood of its ultimate success on the sole ripe Constitutional issue before the Court, i.e., the right to freely engage in core political speech.”

So, while the attorneys for the state and for Senator Menendez are primarily focused on the Constitutional question of who has the right to recall a US Senator, attorneys for the committee are focused on the constitutional question of First Amendment rights.

Not only do they maintain that denying the committee the right to petition for signatures violates their first amendment rights, but that doing so based upon the premise that the end result of a recall effort might not be enforceable amounts to a content-based restriction on free speech. In other words, the fact that the recall target is a US Senator should be treated no differently than that against a state Senator – the state cannot deny the petition based upon who is targeted or what it thinks the outcome might be  . Whether it conflicts with the US Constitution or not, NJ’s state Constitution specifically permits the recall of a US Senator; that language was added to the state constitution and the NJ Uniform Recall Election Law enacted in 1995.  And no decisive court ruling has ever been made otherwise to definitively declare NJ’s recall provisions unconstitutional.  Unless and until that is challenged and decided, officials in NJ have a duty to abide by the state Constitution.

Attorneys for Menendez maintain that “While the citizens of New Jersey are unquestionably free to assemble, speak their minds, and petition their government, they are not entitled to state action certifying those activities in violation of the US Constitution.”

The Committee’s attorneys take issue with this.  At the heart of the recall committee’s appeal is this question:

“Can the State, after amending its Constitution and passing legislation to guarantee its citizens access to a formal, State-endorsed mechanism to foster collective “core political speech”, deny its citizens access to that mechanism because of the content of their political message?”

“The answer is no. Neither the State nor Federal Constitutions prohibit the citizens of New Jersey from adopting a formal, State-endorsed mechanism to foster collective “core political speech”. To the contrary, both Constitutions prohibit the State and Federal Governments from enforcing content-based restrictions on access to those mechanisms once put in place.

New Jersey citizens have the constitutionally guaranteed right to select the subject matter of an election. Just as they are free to speak on any political matter, and to assemble for any political matter, and petition on any political matter, the citizens of New Jersey have the right to roll out the voting apparatus of the State to vote upon any political matter they choose, irrespective of whether the vote results in a legally enforceable certification. The election apparatus is the property of the People of New Jersey, and nobody (including Senator Menendez, the United States Senate, or the State or Federal governments) may restrict access to that apparatus based upon the content of the message.

Regardless of whether it would be judicially enforceable against the United States Senate or Senator Menendez, certification of a successful recall election, and all efforts to obtain it, remain “core political speech” and are entitled to the Court’s most strident protection.”

Many, including Menendez attorneys, will argue that the courts have a duty to uphold the NJ Secretary of State’s decision to deny the recall notice of intention in its entirety.  They maintain that deferring the constitutional issues until a successful recall order is achieved and then challenged in court would “inflict uncertainty on the parties and the public”, suggesting a judge is compelled to ban the effort sooner rather than later.  Menendez attorneys rely pointedly on the following reasoning in their brief,

“The US Constitution reserves to the US Senate the exclusive power to expel, seat, and determine the qualifications of its own members. Accordingly, NJ has no authority to recall a US Senator despite the provisions of constitution and statutes.”

Attorneys for the Committee reiterate in their brief that the question before the court is not that of recall authority.  That issue is not ripe.  But if the issue must be argued, they would contend that a court has yet to rule on this issue in NJ.  Where the vehicle of federal recall is concerned, there is more than one school of thought in the legal community on this one.

Constitutional History of the Recall

Even at the federal level, the issue of recall is not necessarily as black and white as some would insist.  When citing the power to recall, legal professionals typically refer to Article 1, Section 5 of the US Constitution.  That exact wording is as follows:

“Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member.”

While it is generally agreed that recall authority is the jurisdiction of the Congress by way of the language “expel a member”, the reality is that the language regarding recall specifically is not actually mentioned anywhere in the US Constitution.  To this day, many believe it should have been.  Prior to the ratification of the US Constitution, federal officials were in fact subject to recall by their states under the Article V of the Articles of Confederation.

During the Ratifying Convention in New York, the power of the states to recall was a hotly debated issue over the course of several days.  Some wanted states to retain the power of recall in the new Constitution and expand it to Senators, others feared that such power would tie senators too strongly to their states’ interests and away from serving the interests of the union. In the end, it was left out of the Constitution altogether as a compromise to gaining consensus from all the states. This is perhaps why the power to recall is neither specifically granted nor prohibited in writing.  This became a driving issue for some founders, like Thomas Jefferson, who as an anti-federalist believed in states’ rights and wanted to see more of Congress’ own powers specifically limited in writing, such as the recall of US Senators.

(In 1913, the 17^th Amendment of course then transferred the power to elect US Senators from the state legislatures to the people of the states.  While this was intended to put Senators closer to their constituents, it probably only disconnected them even more.)

For decades, legal researchers engaged in the debate on who has the power to recall have relied on the interpretation of Article I, Sections 2 though 5 and on assumptions about the intent of the framers; some reliance is also placed on case law, which is sparse on this subject.  To that end, there is no definitive ruling on a case out there that directly addresses the question.  References are often made in part to cases like US Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, which might apply only indirectly; all are silent on the specific issue of the state’s power to recall a US Senator.

While the Committee to Recall Menendez and their attorneys recognized from the start that the Constitutional question of recall jurisdiction could be a potential hurdle, their argument today is resolutely focused on their First Amendment right to free speech.

It’s precisely the type of argument that caught the attention of the American Civil Rights Union, which recently joined the appeal as a friend of the court to represent the public’s interest. Peter Ferrara, General Counsel for the ACRU, recently sought approval to participate in the appeal as amicus curiae from Silberstein and Luzzi, who were happy to oblige.  Ferrara and his organization recently participated in the Citizens United v. FEC case that was favorably decided by the Supreme Court. The addition of the ACRU as a supporter to the appeal lends additional credibility to the cause of protecting first amendment rights.

The ACRU was founded in 1998 by Robert B. Carleson, long time policy advisor to President Reagan, as a non-partisan, non-profit 501(C)(3), legal/educational policy organization dedicated to defending constitutional rights. Its policy board includes former US Attorney General Edwin Meese III; Pepperdine Law School Dean, Kenneth Starr; former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, William Bradford Reynolds; and Judge Robert H. Bork, among many others.  Its experts are established professionals in their legal field.  In addition to the public interest in this matter regarding the functioning of our democracy and the constitutional rights of the citizens of NJ, the ACRU also maintains that the recall of US Senators is a matter of broad, national public interest across the entire country. It plans to file a brief addressing the right of recall in NJ under the law of the state of NJ, the Constitution of NJ, and the US Constitution.

Consider what the committee’s appeal is requesting.  It does not ask a court to enforce a recall order against a US Senator. It does not demand a recall election.  The Committee is merely seeking an order directing the Secretary to apply her stamp to its Notice of Intent to Recall, marking it “Approved” as per the NJ’s law.  The burden of gathering the signatures of 25% of the registered voters across the State rests solely upon the Committee.  If it’s unsuccessful in doing so, the issue ends there.

The petition is one preliminary step in the overall recall process. To deny the Committee its right to free speech, the powers that be should be unquestionably sure that precedent supports such an action.  The Constitution of NJ may very well be unconstitutional.  But no court has ever ruled that the recall provisions added to the NJ state Constitution are unconstitutional under the federal Constitution.  Nor has any court ever squarely ruled that it is unconstitutional for a state to recall a federal official.  Until these issues actually make their way to a competent court for a definitive ruling one way or the other, they will continue to be disputed, unsettled federal Constitutional issues that muddy up the democratic electoral process.

Ironically, it was the Progressives who artfully perfected the use of recall at the local and state levels in the early 1900’s, but never moved into federal recalls.  Who knows?  Perhaps it will be the Tea Party movement that will finally bring a restless constitutional issue to rest.

American Civil Rights Union’s “Recall Congress” project and the provisions for recall in NJ and eight other states, visit www.recallcongressnow.org.
Also read “The Right to Recall the Rascals“, John Armour; “We Really CAN Throw the Bums Out“, Peter Ferrara.

Organizations working with the recall committee in NJ, visit the Sussex County Tea Party, NJ Recall Now or New Jersey Tea Parties United.

View press release and download briefs for the case, Committee to Recall Robert Menendez v. Nina Wells, Secretary of State, et al., Docket A-2254-09T1

To the People of the State of New York:

HAVING examined the constitution of the House of Representatives, and answered such of the objections against it as seemed to merit notice, I enter next on the examination of the Senate.

The heads into which this member of the government may be considered are: I. The qualification of senators; II. The appointment of them by the State legislatures; III. The equality of representation in the Senate; IV. The number of senators, and the term for which they are to be elected; V. The powers vested in the Senate.

I. The qualifications proposed for senators, as distinguished from those of representatives, consist in a more advanced age and a longer period of citizenship. A senator must be thirty years of age at least; as a representative must be twenty-five. And the former must have been a citizen nine years; as seven years are required for the latter. The propriety of these distinctions is explained by the nature of the senatorial trust, which, requiring greater extent of information and ability of character, requires at the same time that the senator should have reached a period of life most likely to supply these advantages; and which, participating immediately in transactions with foreign nations, ought to be exercised by none who are not thoroughly weaned from the prepossessions and habits incident to foreign birth and education. The term of nine years appears to be a prudent mediocrity between a total exclusion of adopted citizens, whose merits and talents may claim a share in the public confidence, and an indiscriminate and hasty admission of them, which might create a channel for foreign influence on the national councils.

II. It is equally unnecessary to dilate on the appointment of senators by the State legislatures. Among the various modes which might have been devised for constituting this branch of the government, that which has been proposed by the convention is probably the most congenial with the public opinion. It is recommended by the double advantage of favoring a select appointment, and of giving to the State governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government as must secure the authority of the former, and may form a convenient link between the two systems.

III. The equality of representation in the Senate is another point, which, being evidently the result of compromise between the opposite pretensions of the large and the small States, does not call for much discussion. If indeed it be right, that among a people thoroughly incorporated into one nation, every district ought to have a PROPORTIONAL share in the government, and that among independent and sovereign States, bound together by a simple league, the parties, however unequal in size, ought to have an EQUAL share in the common councils, it does not appear to be without some reason that in a compound republic, partaking both of the national and federal character, the government ought to be founded on a mixture of the principles of proportional and equal representation. But it is superfluous to try, by the standard of theory, a part of the Constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result, not of theory, but “of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable.” A common government, with powers equal to its objects, is called for by the voice, and still more loudly by the political situation, of America. A government founded on principles more consonant to the wishes of the larger States, is not likely to be obtained from the smaller States. The only option, then, for the former, lies between the proposed government and a government still more objectionable. Under this alternative, the advice of prudence must be to embrace the lesser evil; and, instead of indulging a fruitless anticipation of the possible mischiefs which may ensue, to contemplate rather the advantageous consequences which may qualify the sacrifice.

In this spirit it may be remarked, that the equal vote allowed to each State is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty. So far the equality ought to be no less acceptable to the large than to the small States; since they are not less solicitous to guard, by every possible expedient, against an improper consolidation of the States into one simple republic.

Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of the Senate is, the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the States. It must be acknowledged that this complicated check on legislation may in some instances be injurious as well as beneficial; and that the peculiar defense which it involves in favor of the smaller States, would be more rational, if any interests common to them, and distinct from those of the other States, would otherwise be exposed to peculiar danger. But as the larger States will always be able, by their power over the supplies, to defeat unreasonable exertions of this prerogative of the lesser States, and as the faculty and excess of law-making seem to be the diseases to which our governments are most liable, it is not impossible that this part of the Constitution may be more convenient in practice than it appears to many in contemplation.

IV. The number of senators, and the duration of their appointment, come next to be considered. In order to form an accurate judgment on both of these points, it will be proper to inquire into the purposes which are to be answered by a senate; and in order to ascertain these, it will be necessary to review the inconveniences which a republic must suffer from the want of such an institution.

First. It is a misfortune incident to republican government, though in a less degree than to other governments, that those who administer it may forget their obligations to their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important trust. In this point of view, a senate, as a second branch of the legislative assembly, distinct from, and dividing the power with, a first, must be in all cases a salutary check on the government. It doubles the security to the people, by requiring the concurrence of two distinct bodies in schemes of usurpation or perfidy, where the ambition or corruption of one would otherwise be sufficient. This is a precaution founded on such clear principles, and now so well understood in the United States, that it would be more than superfluous to enlarge on it. I will barely remark, that as the improbability of sinister combinations will be in proportion to the dissimilarity in the genius of the two bodies, it must be politic to distinguish them from each other by every circumstance which will consist with a due harmony in all proper measures, and with the genuine principles of republican government.

Secondly. The necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions. Examples on this subject might be cited without number; and from proceedings within the United States, as well as from the history of other nations. But a position that will not be contradicted, need not be proved. All that need be remarked is, that a body which is to correct this infirmity ought itself to be free from it, and consequently ought to be less numerous. It ought, moreover, to possess great firmness, and consequently ought to hold its authority by a tenure of considerable duration.

Thirdly. Another defect to be supplied by a senate lies in a want of due acquaintance with the objects and principles of legislation. It is not possible that an assembly of men called for the most part from pursuits of a private nature, continued in appointment for a short time, and led by no permanent motive to devote the intervals of public occupation to a study of the laws, the affairs, and the comprehensive interests of their country, should, if left wholly to themselves, escape a variety of important errors in the exercise of their legislative trust. It may be affirmed, on the best grounds, that no small share of the present embarrassments of America is to be charged on the blunders of our governments; and that these have proceeded from the heads rather than the hearts of most of the authors of them. What indeed are all the repealing, explaining, and amending laws, which fill and disgrace our voluminous codes, but so many monuments of deficient wisdom; so many impeachments exhibited by each succeeding against each preceding session; so many admonitions to the people, of the value of those aids which may be expected from a well-constituted senate?

A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained. Some governments are deficient in both these qualities; most governments are deficient in the first. I scruple not to assert, that in American governments too little attention has been paid to the last. The federal Constitution avoids this error; and what merits particular notice, it provides for the last in a mode which increases the security for the first.

Fourthly. The mutability in the public councils arising from a rapid succession of new members, however qualified they may be, points out, in the strongest manner, the necessity of some stable institution in the government. Every new election in the States is found to change one half of the representatives. From this change of men must proceed a change of opinions; and from a change of opinions, a change of measures. But a continual change even of good measures is inconsistent with every rule of prudence and every prospect of success. The remark is verified in private life, and becomes more just, as well as more important, in national transactions.

To trace the mischievous effects of a mutable government would fill a volume. I will hint a few only, each of which will be perceived to be a source of innumerable others.

In the first place, it forfeits the respect and confidence of other nations, and all the advantages connected with national character. An individual who is observed to be inconstant to his plans, or perhaps to carry on his affairs without any plan at all, is marked at once, by all prudent people, as a speedy victim to his own unsteadiness and folly. His more friendly neighbors may pity him, but all will decline to connect their fortunes with his; and not a few will seize the opportunity of making their fortunes out of his. One nation is to another what one individual is to another; with this melancholy distinction perhaps, that the former, with fewer of the benevolent emotions than the latter, are under fewer restraints also from taking undue advantage from the indiscretions of each other. Every nation, consequently, whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability, may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of their wiser neighbors. But the best instruction on this subject is unhappily conveyed to America by the example of her own situation. She finds that she is held in no respect by her friends; that she is the derision of her enemies; and that she is a prey to every nation which has an interest in speculating on her fluctuating councils and embarrassed affairs.

The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the FEW, not for the MANY.

In another point of view, great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.

But the most deplorable effect of all is that diminution of attachment and reverence which steals into the hearts of the people, towards a political system which betrays so many marks of infirmity, and disappoints so many of their flattering hopes. No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.

Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

Have we no tendency to the latter condition?

Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination — piece of machinery, so to speak — compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also, let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of action, among its chief architects, from the beginning.

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the national territory by Congressional prohibition. Four days later, commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.

But, so far, Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point already gained, and give chance for more.

This necessity had not been overlooked; but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of “squatter sovereignty,” otherwise called “sacred right of self-government,” which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska bill itself, in the language which follows: “It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.” Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of “Squatter Sovereignty,” and “sacred right of self-government.” “But,” said opposition members, “let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery.” “Not we,” said the friends of the measure; and down they voted the amendment.

While the Nebraska bill was passing through Congress, a law case involving the question of a negro’s freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State and then into a Territory covered by the Congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing through the U. S. Circuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska bill and law suit were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro’s name was “Dred Scott,” which name now designates the decision finally made in the case. Before the then next Presidential election, the law case came to, and was argued in, the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska bill to state his opinion whether the people of a Territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter answers: “That is a question for the Supreme Court.”

The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the endorsement. The Supreme Court met again; did not announce their decision, but ordered a re-argument. The Presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but the incoming President in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the decision.

The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an early occasion to make a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained!

At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I do not understand his declaration that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind — the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle. If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision “squatter sovereignty” squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding — like the mould at the foundry served through one blast and fell back into loose sand — helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton Constitution, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point — the right of a people to make their own constitution — upon which he and the Republicans have never differed.

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection, with Senator Douglas’s “care not” policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working points of that machinery are:

First, That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution, which declares that “The citizens of each State, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.”

Secondly, That “subject to the Constitution of the United States,” neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can exclude slavery from any United States territory. This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future.

Thirdly, That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State, makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for awhile, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott’s master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free State.

Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially, also, whither we are tending.

It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back, and run the mind over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be left “perfectly free,” “subject only to the Constitution.” What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche, for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people, voted down? Plainly enough now: the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up? Why even a Senator’s individual opinion withheld, till after the Presidential election? Plainly enough now: the speaking out then would have damaged the perfectly free argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the outgoing President’s felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a reargument? Why the incoming President’s advance exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision by the President and others?

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen — Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance — and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few — not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such a piece in — in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.

It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the people of a State as well as Territory, were to be left “perfectly free,” “subject only to the Constitution.” Why mention a State? They were legislating for Territories, and not for or about States. Certainly the people of a State are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United States; but why is mention of this lugged into this merely Territorial law? Why are the people of a Territory and the people of a State therein lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein treated as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the concurring Judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery from any United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a State to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people of a Territory, into the Nebraska bill; — I ask, who can be quite sure that it would not have been voted down in the one case as it had been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring the power of a State over slavery, is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more than once, using the precise idea, and almost the language, too, of the Nebraska act. On one occasion, his exact language is, “except in cases where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the State is supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdiction.” In what cases the power of the States is so restrained by the United States Constitution, is left an open question, precisely as the same question, as to the restraint on the power of the Territories, was left open in the Nebraska act. Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits. And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of “care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up,” shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made.

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States. Welcome, or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty, is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. That is what we have to do. How can we best do it?

There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet whisper us softly, that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is with which to effect that object. They wish us to infer all, from the fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty; and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point, upon which he and we have never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But “a living dog is better than a dead lion.” Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion, for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don’t care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the “public heart” to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas democratic newspaper thinks Douglas’s superior talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property; and as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave trade — how can he refuse that trade in that “property” shall be “perfectly free” — unless he does it as a protection to the home production? And as the home producers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without a ground of opposition.

Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day than he was yesterday — that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas’s position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly, he is not now with us — he does not pretend to be — he does not promise ever to be.

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends — those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work — who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to falter now? –now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail — if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.

Project Vote has been causing mischief in the Midwest since before President Obama was their community organizer, but this last decade has seen an evolution in the number and sophistication of state cases.  We start in Michigan, where  The Secretary of State Project (SoSP) has endorsed progressive Jocelyn Benson for Michigan Secretary of State.  The following is how the endorsement should read:

“Progressive scholar and DNC organizer Jocelyn Benson is running for an open seat to replace Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, who prevented us from adding unsupervised provisional ballots to your elections.  In 2004, Benson ran a voter ‘protection’ campaign in 21 states for the DNC, deploying 17,000 starving lawyers at minimum wage to coerce low-income voters.  In Michigan in 2008, Benson helped lead the progressive fight to stop Secretary of State Land from cleaning the voter rolls.  We plan to sue the state of Michigan no matter who wins, but it will hurt less if she is elected.”

At least that is how I read their endorsement, but maybe I am getting ahead of myself.  Let us go back to June 16, 2004.

A directive issued by the Michigan Director of Elections established provisional ballots would not be counted for (1) first-time voters who register by mail and who cannot provide identification on election-day, and (2) voters who vote at the wrong polling place.  Provisional voting is required by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), and applies to an individual that does not appear on the official list of eligible voters for the precinct in which that individual wants to vote.  HAVA allows for “voter registration procedures established under applicable State law,” in regards to compliance.  In fact, much of HAVA allows for states to establish the procedures necessary to implement the policies.

Of course, we know that progressive contempt for state law and practice is only surpassed by progressive contempt for well-run elections.

That is why ACORN’s complaint was not filed with the federal district court until a little over a month before the 2004 elections, and then refiled ten days later.  The amended complaint reads like a law review article or an amicus brief filed before the Supreme Court.  Realizing that the violations alleged were not clear under the plain meaning of the law, ACORN’s attorneys quote the intent of the law from the likes of Senators Chuck Schumer (D) and Paul Wellstone (D), and the relevant statutory provisions are selectively quoted with ACORN’s interpretations.  The complaint utilizes the “shotgun approach” where every conceivable violation is alleged.  If we sift through all of the fluff, we can see that their claim, essentially, is that a provisional ballot should always count if the person allegedly voting is a real person.  The result is that ACORN can then transport as many people as it wants to any location, and as long as the individuals claim to be people actually registered to vote in Michigan, even without identification, their votes should count.

Read that again.  ACORN wanted provisional ballots to count prior to their certification as actual votes.  What this means in practice is that in close elections, a judge would have to explicitly go back through provisional ballots and toss them out.  That is significantly more difficult to agree to than allowing provisional ballots that have been verified to be added to vote totals.  Voter protection means you don’t get to cut votes – you only get to add to them.  And under ACORN’s reasoning, a provisional ballot should be a vote, nullifying the need to call it “provisional.”

On October 7, 2004, the Director of Elections agreed to revise the identification requirement so that individuals could present identification within a week after the election, though he did not budge over the polling place issue.  Despite ACORN’s attempt to catch Michigan officials off-guard, the state responded forcefully and thoroughly.  In one of the best defenses we’ve seen, Secretary of State Land even points out that her Director of Elections was involved with the drafting process of HAVA.  The relevant legal authorities, laws and cases on point, are identified immediately and concisely.  To counter the alleged intent of HAVA, according to ACORN, the state points out legislative history in opposition to the aforementioned senators.  The relevant statutory provisions are identified in full, rather than “cherry-picked” as in the complaint.  And to follow it up, Michigan cites the Tenth Amendment; HAVA only applies to federal election regulation, since the states still have the authority to regulate their own elections under the Constitution.  Basically, ACORN was claiming HAVA pre-empted state law, despite the fact that HAVA requires states to establish their own procedures for implementing parts of the act.

Judge David M. Lawson disagreed with Michigan.  He claims that sensible election laws “ought to focus on two goals: maximizing the participation of eligible voters and eliminating fraud.”  While we can certainly agree that the latter principle is compelling, the former is perplexing.  Why do we need laws encouraging those already registered to vote, to actually vote?  Should we go further and offer everyone a beer coupon if they vote?  That worked in the state of Missouri, until they got caught.  Lawson points to a Constitutional provision (Article I § 4) allowing states to establish time, place and manner of elections for federal office, while reserving Congressional authority to alter those procedures, but he does not address the issue of a state’s control over its own election procedures (10th Amendment & HAVA).  As far as background and facts, he relied on the loose assertions of the complaint, rather than the concise facts of the answer.

What this really boiled down to was the standard for granting a preliminary injunction, which would restrict the state’s ability to enforce its procedures.  ACORN must establish (1) the likelihood of success on the merits, (2) the preliminary injunction will prevent irreparable injury, (3) the lack of substantial harm to others, and (4) the public interest will be served.  How restricting a state’s ability to eliminate voter fraud protects the public interest and does not substantially harm lawful voters confounds me.  Perhaps I am not quite as learned as the honorable judge who granted the preliminary injunction.  Then again, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals must have been confounded as well, because they reversed his ruling without even writing an opinion.

In this case, ACORN failed at hijacking the electoral process.  This would not be its last stand, though.  Future cases focused on the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, instead of HAVA.  Project Vote began planning out its attack far in advance of elections.  And the Secretary of State Project formed to oust uncooperative secretaries of state.  In 2010, should Benson win, she will need to be carefully watched.

Project Vote has been causing mischief in the Midwest since before President Obama was their community organizer, but this last decade has seen an evolution in the number and sophistication of state cases.  We start in Michigan, where  The Secretary of State Project (SoSP) has endorsed progressive Jocelyn Benson for Michigan Secretary of State.  The following is how the endorsement should read:

“Progressive scholar and DNC organizer Jocelyn Benson is running for an open seat to replace Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, who prevented us from adding unsupervised provisional ballots to your elections.  In 2004, Benson ran a voter ‘protection’ campaign in 21 states for the DNC, deploying 17,000 starving lawyers at minimum wage to coerce low-income voters.  In Michigan in 2008, Benson helped lead the progressive fight to stop Secretary of State Land from cleaning the voter rolls.  We plan to sue the state of Michigan no matter who wins, but it will hurt less if she is elected.”

At least that is how I read their endorsement, but maybe I am getting ahead of myself.  Let us go back to June 16, 2004.

A directive issued by the Michigan Director of Elections established provisional ballots would not be counted for (1) first-time voters who register by mail and who cannot provide identification on election-day, and (2) voters who vote at the wrong polling place.  Provisional voting is required by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), and applies to an individual that does not appear on the official list of eligible voters for the precinct in which that individual wants to vote.  HAVA allows for “voter registration procedures established under applicable State law,” in regards to compliance.  In fact, much of HAVA allows for states to establish the procedures necessary to implement the policies.

Of course, we know that progressive contempt for state law and practice is only surpassed by progressive contempt for well-run elections.

That is why ACORN’s complaint was not filed with the federal district court until a little over a month before the 2004 elections, and then refiled ten days later.  The amended complaint reads like a law review article or an amicus brief filed before the Supreme Court.  Realizing that the violations alleged were not clear under the plain meaning of the law, ACORN’s attorneys quote the intent of the law from the likes of Senators Chuck Schumer (D) and Paul Wellstone (D), and the relevant statutory provisions are selectively quoted with ACORN’s interpretations.  The complaint utilizes the “shotgun approach” where every conceivable violation is alleged.  If we sift through all of the fluff, we can see that their claim, essentially, is that a provisional ballot should always count if the person allegedly voting is a real person.  The result is that ACORN can then transport as many people as it wants to any location, and as long as the individuals claim to be people actually registered to vote in Michigan, even without identification, their votes should count.

Read that again.  ACORN wanted provisional ballots to count prior to their certification as actual votes.  What this means in practice is that in close elections, a judge would have to explicitly go back through provisional ballots and toss them out.  That is significantly more difficult to agree to than allowing provisional ballots that have been verified to be added to vote totals.  Voter protection means you don’t get to cut votes – you only get to add to them.  And under ACORN’s reasoning, a provisional ballot should be a vote, nullifying the need to call it “provisional.”

On October 7, 2004, the Director of Elections agreed to revise the identification requirement so that individuals could present identification within a week after the election, though he did not budge over the polling place issue.  Despite ACORN’s attempt to catch Michigan officials off-guard, the state responded forcefully and thoroughly.  In one of the best defenses we’ve seen, Secretary of State Land even points out that her Director of Elections was involved with the drafting process of HAVA.  The relevant legal authorities, laws and cases on point, are identified immediately and concisely.  To counter the alleged intent of HAVA, according to ACORN, the state points out legislative history in opposition to the aforementioned senators.  The relevant statutory provisions are identified in full, rather than “cherry-picked” as in the complaint.  And to follow it up, Michigan cites the Tenth Amendment; HAVA only applies to federal election regulation, since the states still have the authority to regulate their own elections under the Constitution.  Basically, ACORN was claiming HAVA pre-empted state law, despite the fact that HAVA requires states to establish their own procedures for implementing parts of the act.

Judge David M. Lawson disagreed with Michigan.  He claims that sensible election laws “ought to focus on two goals: maximizing the participation of eligible voters and eliminating fraud.”  While we can certainly agree that the latter principle is compelling, the former is perplexing.  Why do we need laws encouraging those already registered to vote, to actually vote?  Should we go further and offer everyone a beer coupon if they vote?  That worked in the state of Missouri, until they got caught.  Lawson points to a Constitutional provision (Article I § 4) allowing states to establish time, place and manner of elections for federal office, while reserving Congressional authority to alter those procedures, but he does not address the issue of a state’s control over its own election procedures (10th Amendment & HAVA).  As far as background and facts, he relied on the loose assertions of the complaint, rather than the concise facts of the answer.

What this really boiled down to was the standard for granting a preliminary injunction, which would restrict the state’s ability to enforce its procedures.  ACORN must establish (1) the likelihood of success on the merits, (2) the preliminary injunction will prevent irreparable injury, (3) the lack of substantial harm to others, and (4) the public interest will be served.  How restricting a state’s ability to eliminate voter fraud protects the public interest and does not substantially harm lawful voters confounds me.  Perhaps I am not quite as learned as the honorable judge who granted the preliminary injunction.  Then again, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals must have been confounded as well, because they reversed his ruling without even writing an opinion.

In this case, ACORN failed at hijacking the electoral process.  This would not be its last stand, though.  Future cases focused on the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, instead of HAVA.  Project Vote began planning out its attack far in advance of elections.  And the Secretary of State Project formed to oust uncooperative secretaries of state.  In 2010, should Benson win, she will need to be carefully watched.

Chevron oil company is being sued in Ecuador for $27 billion. It’s a big number. The gross domestic product (GDP) of Ecuador in 2008 was $54 billion. So $27 billion is 50% of the GDP of the entire country. And the $27 billion claim is sheer fantasy. The damage claim against Chevron is based on a gigantic scam.

Donald Moncayo (yellow shirt) of the Amazon Defense Coalition (the named financial beneficiary in the case) assisting the court's “independent expert” Richard Cabrera (leaning on tree) during a site inspection.

It goes back a while. Between 1965 and 1990, the old Texaco company developed oil concessions in Ecuador. (Texaco merged with Chevron in 2001, hence Chevron is now in the dock.) Between 1977 and 1990, Ecuador progressively nationalized Texaco assets, and transferred them to the state oil firm, Petroecuador.

In the early 1990s, Texaco and Petroecuador agreed to clean up a number of oil sites. Texaco kept its side of the bargain, and in 1998 the government of Ecuador certified that Texaco successfully cleaned up its share of the operations.

Nonetheless, in 1994 a group of U.S. attorneys sued Texaco in the U.S. They made novel legal claims for “environmental justice.” Eventually, the case was dismissed in the United States and a new case was filed against Chevron in Ecuador.

The Ecuadorean court appointed an “expert witness” to make factual findings and to calculate damages. Turns out that the “expert” is a mining engineer named Richard Cabrera, who has direct financial ties to the plaintiffs and as we learned this week, hidden ties to Petroecuador.

Cabrera’s mandate from the Ecuadorean court was to assess environmental damages. To do this, Cabrera hired assistants recommended by the plaintiffs. He transcribed entire passages from plaintiffs’ pleadings into his “reports” And where evidence was lacking, Cabrera made up entire categories of damage out of thin air. Here’s a summary.

Cleaning Up Old Oil Pits

The Ecuadorean court asked Cabrera to calculate the cost to clean up old oilfield pits. Cabrera’s number was $2.7 billion, to be assessed against Chevron.

Problems abound. Cabrera ignored the fact that Texaco previously cleaned up dozens of pits under its agreement with Petroecuador. Cabrera ignored the release of liability from the government of Ecuador. Cabrera overlooked the fact that Petroecuador is under contract with Texaco to remediate the remainder of the pits.

Indeed, according to Cabrera, Chevron should pay to clean up problems that occurred after 1990, caused by Petroecuador’s post-nationalization operations.

Even if Texaco (now Chevron) ought to act as some sort of environmental sugar daddy and pay to clean up more pits, can it possibly cost $2.7 billion?

Cabrera’s damage estimate is over 150 times the amount Petroecuador estimated for cleanup work. Cabrera counts over 4 times as many pits needing cleanup as does Petroecuador. And his cost estimate per pit is over 30 times the Petroecuador number. In short, Cabrera’s $2.7 billion number for cleaning the pits is sheer fantasy.

Groundwater Cleanup

Cabrera’s report assesses $3.2 billion in damages against Chevron for groundwater remediation. Yet there’s no evidence for the claim. Cabrera’s report includes no samples from streams, wells or other water sources.

Cabrera’s only basis for the water claim is a small number of samples that come from oil pits currently operated by Petroecuador. The claim for groundwater remediation is entirely specious.

Surface Damages

Cabrera included a damage claim for $1.7 billion for “deforestation.” That is, Cabrera slams Chevron because Texaco built roads, drill pads, pipelines and other facilities within the Amazon jungle.

It’s Catch-22. In the 1960s and 1970s, Texaco wanted to develop the oil concession without building an extensive road network. Texaco wanted to use helicopters for logistics. However, from the outset, the Ecuadorean government insisted that Texaco build roads. Now Cabrera’s report recommends assessing damages for the roads.

The entire footprint of former Texaco operations in Ecuador totals under 44 square kilometers — including 37 square kilometers of government-mandated roads. The total disturbed area is about 1% of the total 4,400 square kilometer oil concession.

Cabrera’s damage calculation comes to over $38 million per square kilometer. It’s just astronomical. Cabrera has turned these roads and oil pits into some of the most valuable real estate in all of South America.

Cancer Deaths

Going far beyond his court-ordered mandate, Cabrera included a rogue claim in his report by assessing Chevron over $9.5 billion for something called “excess cancer deaths.” The idea is that somehow, Texaco’s operations in the 1970s and 1980s caused untold cancer deaths to local people.

However over 16 years of litigation, the plaintiffs have never provided the name of even one cancer “victim.” Nor are there medical records, death certificates, pathology reports, or any other evidence of cancer deaths caused by former Texaco operations.

According to Ecuadorean government mortality statistics, the cancer death rate in the area of former Texaco operations is lower than the national average. This statistic doesn’t even scratch the surface of why people get cancer, such as genetics, smoking, diet, and other factors. The point is that Cabrera’s report doesn’t demonstrate any “liability” by Chevron for illness to local Ecuadoreans, now or in decades past.

Unjust Enrichment

The Cabrera report makes a hyperbolic claim of over $8.4 billion against Chevron, for something called the “unjust enrichment” of Texaco in years past.

Unjust enrichment? Texaco operated in Ecuador for about 25 years (1965 to 1990), with the last 13 years under progressive nationalization. Texaco’s Ecuadorean profits, over the 25 years, totaled $490 million, according to government tax records. Meanwhile, the government of Ecuador received over $25 billion in oil income and royalties.

Yet somehow, according to Cabrera’s bizarre logic, Chevron is liable for an unjust enrichment claim in Ecuador. It’s perverse.

Other Damage Claims

Cabrera includes a slew of other assessments against Chevron, none of which have any legal basis.

There’s a “health” claim for $480 million against Chevron, because much of the drinking water in the area is contaminated by human waste. Then he adds a $430 million charge against Chevron to construct a “potable water system.” But these are current problems with no relation to past Texaco operations.

Then there’s a $430 million claim for something called “impacts on indigenous populations.” Cabrera wants to slam Chevron today because, in the past, the Ecuadorean government encouraged outsiders to move into the oil concession region — using roads that the government told Texaco to build.

Finally, Cabrera includes a $375 million claim against Chevron to rebuild oil infrastructure that Petroecuador uses today. This is despite the fact that Petroecuador started nationalizing Texaco operations in 1977, and completed the process in 1990. So Petroecuador has controlled all oil operations for the past 20 years, generating over $50 billion in oil sales. But Cabrera recommends that Chevron buy Petroecuador an entirely new set of infrastructure.

Bizarre, Groundless Claims

There’s an Alice in Wonderland nature to the Cabrera report. Yet most news accounts of the Chevron trial in Ecuador pay no attention to the fantastical, groundless basis for the $27 billion “damage” claim.

With just a quick review, the “expertise” of the Cabrera report simply disintegrates. The report has no basis in fact, except that Cabrera spells Chevron’s name correctly.

The Cabrera report is a travesty, displaying unvarnished bias against Chevron. It’s a model of outrageous prejudice, if not a template for legal incompetence. Clearly, Cabrera is deep in the tank with the plaintiffs.

Cabrera’s sordid report is playing out within a legal proceeding in a foreign jurisdiction. For as bad as the Cabrera report is, there’s something worse. It’s the blind acceptance, within many elements of the mainstream news media, of the farcical Witch Trial going on against Chevron in Ecuador.

To the people of Orlando: your long Florida nightmare may soon be over.  Congressman Alan Grayson is up for re-election this year.

But in the mean time, he’s continuing his gasbaggery.  He’s taking up President Obama’s mantle of intimidating the Supreme Court and has introduced several bills so political free speech can once again be squelched.

Grayson has introduced several pieces of legislation aimed at restricting political speech, according to the George Soros-funded Secretary of State Project.  But first, a bit about that group.

SOS was formed to elect Secretaries of State around the country that will be tolerant of ACORN-style voter registration and Election Day shenanigans.  The Minnesota recount debacle – and seating of Al Franken – came courtesy of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, an SOS Project recruit.

So now the Soros-funded SOS Project is pushing Grayson’s package of bills. The interpretations of them come courtesy of SOS, not me:

1. The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act (H.R. 4431): Implements a 500% excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees, and on corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns.

2. The Public Company Responsibility Act (H.R. 4435): Prevents companies making political contributions and expenditures from trading their stock on national exchanges.

3.The End Political Kickbacks Act (H.R. 4434): Prevents for-profit corporations that receive money from the government from making political contributions, and limits the amount that employees of those companies can contribute.

4. The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act (H.R. 4432): Requires publicly-traded companies to disclose in SEC filings money used for the purpose of influencing public opinion, rather than to promoting their products and services.

5. The Ending Corporate Collusion Act (H.R. 4433): Applies antitrust law to industry PACs.

6. The End the Hijacking of Shareholder Funds Act (H.R. 4487): This bill requires the approval of a majority of a public company’s shareholders for any expenditure by that company to influence public opinion on matters not related to the company’s products or services.

SOS signs off by saying, “Our elected officials should be chosen by voters on election day, not by corporations at the auction block.”

Just curious, do labor unions, like the Obama-campaign bankrolling SEIU count?  Will the “Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act” also apply to compulsory dues squeezed out of union members and prevent those from being spent on political activities?

No, Congressman Grayson?  Didn’t think so.  So it’s free speech for Andy Stern and SEIU but not those “evil corporations.”  Or maybe they negotiated a carve-out, like they did for the tax on “Cadillac health plans.”

To see how you can help rid the Congress of this guy, visit www.mycongressmanisnuts.com.

Here’s the latest in the question of the New York Fed, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the AIG bailout, as we’ve covered here at Big Government before (here and here). Last year, Iraq war vet Kevin Murray brought a lawsuit against the Treasury Department and Ben Bernanke (Murray vs. Geithner, et al) for its acquisition of AIG– a scheme that made the US taxpayer the world’s largest provider of Shariah-compliant insurance products. Lawyers David Yerushalmi and The Thomas More Law Center’s Robert Muise found, in the course of discovery, that that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Yerushalmi and Muise quickly realized that, in acquiring 77.9% of AIG, the New York Fed may have set up an illegal trust, with the knowledge that what they were to do was illegal. Tuesday, Murray’s attorneys issued a subpoena for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Here’s the latest update from David Yerushalmi:

Now that the court has allowed us to amend the complaint to add additional bad acts by the government (done and filed today) and at the same time rejected the government’s efforts to stay discovery and to end run to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and while we await the court’s ruling on our motion to force Secretary Geithner to sit for a 3-hr deposition, we have today sent out for service the following Subpoena for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

This deposition will effectively allow us to learn the government’s rationale (however lame) of the How and Why of the invalid and illegal trust used to gain control over AIG.

We are expecting a battle over this one because the real skeletons of this deal are here at the NY Fed where at the time (Sept-Dec 08) Secretary Geithner served as the president and de facto Treasury Secretary, having been tapped by Obama as the new administration awaited the inauguration in Jan 2010. To understand this, read through the attachments (Notice of Service of Subpoena Commanding Deposition Testimony and the Production of Documents, Electronically Stored Information, or Tangible Things) at the substantive information we are seeking. The rest, as they say, is just commentary.

In the meantime, America awaits a ruling on whether Treasury Secretary Geithner will have to tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” in a three-hour deposition.

Here are the questions from the subpoena:

1. The decision(s) to provide government financing to and otherwise bailout American International Group, Inc. (hereinafter “AIG”) and how the financing bailout was structured.

a. This matter specifically includes decisions regarding how and why the original financing provided by the government was funds provided by the FRBNY in the form of a credit facility;

b. This matter specifically includes the decision by the Fed to authorize the FRBNY to loan $85 billion to AIG pursuant to Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act (12 U.S.C. § 343);

c. This matter specifically includes decisions requiring AIG to grant the FRBNY a pledge on assets and to transfer to the AIG Credit Facility Trust (hereinafter “Trust”) Series C preferred shares, which provided the Trust, inter alia, 79.9% (later reduced to 77.9%) of any dividend payments by AIG and of any aggregate voting rights of AIG common stock;

d. This matter specifically includes the decision to establish the Trust on behalf of the U.S. Treasury and to include section 1.03 in the AIG Credit Facility Trust Agreement granting the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System authority to terminate the Trust or amend its terms;

e. This matter specifically includes all subsequent decisions regarding the structuring of the government financing and bailout of AIG, including the decisions about when, how, and why to use (1) funds authorized by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, 12 U.S.C. § 5201 et seq. (hereinafter “EESA”); (2) funds not authorized by EESA, but otherwise under the control or authority of the U.S. Treasury and/or Treasury Department; (3) funds under the control or authority of the Federal Reserve Board; (4) funds under the control or authority of the FRBNY; and/or (5) any other funds under the control or authority of any other entity or agency subject to the direction and/or control of the U.S. Treasury and/or Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Board, and/or the FRBNY.

f. This matter specifically includes the actual and permissible use(s) of funds from any government source (including the FRBNY) by AIG.

2. The information made available to the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (hereinafter “SIGTARP”) established by EESA, including information and communications to and from SIGTARP regarding the actual and permissible use(s) of funds from any government source (including the FRBNY) by AIG.

3. The facts, including communications, related to the FRBNY’s knowledge of and/or information about Islamic law (i.e., Shariah), Shariah-compliant financial products, the Shariah obligation of jihad (i.e., kinetic war and/or terrorism), the Shariah obligation of dawa (i.e., the effort to both convert non-Muslims to adherence to Shariah and/or the effort to convert all political systems or political orders to Shariah-adherent political systems), and the use of Muslim charitable donations by individuals and/or Islamic and/or Shariah-compliant financial institutions to support jihad and/or dawa, including the use of donations by certain Muslim charitable organizations to support terrorist activity.

Congress is out of control.  The public overwhelming opposes a government takedover of our health care. But Congressional leaders are telling us they don’t care – that they know best, and they’re going to pass it anyway.

We are getting the same attitude on other issues, from global warming regulation, to taxes, government spending, deficits, federal debt, energy policy, welfare, corporate bailouts, and beyond.  Too many of our elected Members of Congress are making behind-closed-door deals and ignoring their constituents, calling them “yahoos,” “Nazis”,“and “tea-baggers.”

This isn’t American democracy — this is a shop-worn, elitist, authoritarianism closer to abuses we see in countries like Venezuela.

So, what would happen if the people could change this rotten situation?

Actually, there may just well be a mechanism within our political system to do so — the Right of Recall.  Nine states already have laws on the books providing for Recall of members of Congress: Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin.  These 9 states suffer 12 incumbent Senators who are members of the runaway Congressional majority, who are not already standing for reelection in 2010, but potentially could be.

For example, the New Jersey state constitution provides, “The people reserve unto themselves the power to recall, after at least one year of service, any elected official in this State or representing this State in the United States Congress.”

Tea party activists in New Jersey have already filed to circulate recall petitions regarding Sen. Robert Menendez.  Their recent Secretary of State took the position that such recall of members of Congress is not authorized under the U.S. Constitution.

Grassroots activists in Louisiana have similarly already filed for recall of Senator Mary Landrieu, and the circulation of recall petitions there has been authorized.

Exercising this existing statutory right of recall in these 9 states could potentially reverse the control in the Senate this year by placing 12 Senators not currently up for re-eectionion this year on their state ballots.  (For more information on this Right of Recall, see www.RecallCongressNow.org).

We have seen the recall process work in California in 2003 when citizens in that state, disgusted with recently reelected Democrat Governor, Gray Davis, voted overwhelmingly to remove him from office in a recall election.

Another nine states provide language in their constitutions to recall only state officials. The other states without recall provisions for members of Congress can change their laws to adopt it.  In states with the right to initiative, this can be done by a vote of the people after circulating petitions to put the change on the ballot.

Too many in Congress today are showing us that our representatives can no longer be trusted with 2-6 years in office without ongoing popular accountability.  Today’s Congressional majority is threatening to dump a load of bad legislation on the country despite the public’s opposition, daring us to try to “clean it up” later.  Only a Right of Recall can prevent such abuses in the future.

The Right of Recall would also help counter the growing problem of voter fraud.  If voters felt that an election were subject to too many irregularities in its conduct or in how the votes were counted, they could circulate Recall petitions for a new election.

Every state should adopt the Right of Recall to protect its voters.  The constitutionality of recalling members of Congress adopted under state law would ultimately have to be decided in the courts.  Or the people could definitively decide the issue themselves through voting to adopt a constitutional amendment, or by electing a Congress that would adopt a federal statute authorizing each state to adopt such a Right of Recall.

The progressive movement is often difficult to pin down because allied groups use multiple names and organizations to spread confusion and give the appearance of both overwhelming numbers and independent expenditure.  We should not be fooled by this host of political malcontents attempting to co-opt state and local politics in the name of a national agenda. Examining the tactics of these groups gives us the key to understanding the purpose of organizations like the Secretary of State Project, ACORN, and Project Vote.  Our states are under concerted judicial assault from progressive lawyers, and they are many.

Let us first address the networks of influence.  Project Vote is the legal arm of ACORN, and in the cases we’ll study, conducted all of the informational build-up to bring suits against potential swing states.  It works like this: Project Vote files state versions of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, gathers relevant data, conducts studies, and contacts various state officials to coordinate these activities.  Once Project Vote gathers the minimal amount of information needed,  ACORN then files a complaint in federal district court.  A rotating pinwheel of other progressive groups join the suit and, often, The Brennan Center for Justice provides additional help through legal counsel.

The lawsuits at issue all involve violations of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA).  The NVRA requires states to conduct voter registration through (1) motor vehicle registration agencies, (2) mail, and (3) public assistance agencies.  HAVA (1) provides funds to states to improve election administration, (2) establishes minimum election administration standards for states, and (3) creates the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).  NVRA and HAVA require states to designate a “chief state elections official” to coordinate and implement state responsibilities under the acts.  Most states have designated their secretary of state as the chief state elections official.  Project Vote directs information-gathering to the secretary of state for each targeted state.  If the secretary of state becomes a stumbling-block to the efforts of Project Vote, SoSP targets that secretary of state for removal.  If the secretary of state aids and abets Project Vote, SoSP supports that secretary of state for re-election.

We start with a look at the past suits brought against the states.

MICHIGAN
In 2004, Project Vote targeted provisional ballot rules established in the state of Michigan.  At issue were requirements for voter identification with the submission of provisional ballots and how those provisional ballots must be cast in the correct jurisdiction.  Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land (R) defended the lawsuit, which was filed one month prior to the election.  The Director of Elections, under the Secretary of State’s guidance, agreed to revised rules allowing provisional balloters to provide identification within a week of the election, but did not budge on the requirement for provisional ballots to be cast in the proper jurisdiction.  Judge David M. Lawson of the Eastern District of Michigan sided with ACORN on provisional ballots cast in an improper jurisdiction.  The Appellate Court for the 6th Circuit promptly reversed. Secretary of State Land won re-election in 2006, prior to the Secretary of State Project getting full traction, so SoSP was not able to target her office until this year.  SoSP has now endorsed candidate Jocelyn Benson (D), who has organized campaigns in opposition to Secretary of State Land’s efforts to clean up Michigan’s voter rolls.

OHIO
In 2005, Project Vote targeted Ohio for alleged violations of the NVRA requirement to provide voter registration applications at public assistance agencies.  Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (R) vigorously defended this lawsuit.  Not only was he able to get ACORN dismissed as a party to the lawsuit, he was able to get the entire case dismissed.  ACORN’s dismissal had to do with the intricacies of 3rd party suits.  Essentially, ACORN alleged that it had to spend money to correct violations of the NVRA.  The court found that ACORN would have spent that money anyway.  The problem for Project Vote was that they did not understand the relationship between the secretary of state and the local public assistance agencies under Ohio law.  Up against a secretary of state that was not going to “play ball,” ACORN lost.  Unfortunately (and of major consequence), SoSP now targeted Ohio.  Secretary of State Blackwell was replaced by SoSP endorsed candidate Jennifer Brunner (D) in 2006.  ACORN subsequently re-filed the case, with a secretary of state ready to “play ball,” and won.

MISSOURI
In 2007, Project Vote targeted Missouri for alleged violations of the NVRA requirement to provide voter registration applications at public assistance agencies.  Having learned their lesson from Ohio, and a previous case in Missouri that established local election authorities as responsible for NVRA requirements, Project Vote began their dirty work.  This time they had Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (D), who was only in charge of coordinating state responsibilities under the NVRA.  Judge Nanette Laughrey of the Western District of Missouri had absolved Carnahan of all responsibilities under the NVRA in a previous case.  Carnahan had all the information Project Vote needed and none of the liabilities.  The Department of Social Services and 3 local election authorities, faced with a secretary of state who failed to train them properly and whose staff actively worked with Project Vote and their allies, settled for $450,000 and 4 years of humiliating oversight.  Subsequently, the Secretary of State Project endorsed Carnahan for re-election.

As Project Vote and their allies worked together to undermine clean elections, their approach grew more sophisticated and more targeted. Working hand in hand with other groups funded by large progressive donors like the Democracy Alliance, different groups like the Advancement Project now step forward in each state, working in tandem or in progression to push progressive electoral demands at the state level.  As you will see, similar suits have been filed in states supported by the SoSP, and candidate support follows these suits when they are not successful.   We are going to dig into the successes and failures of these multiple faces of the same malignant movement to understand where they’ve been and where they are going.

What you will first see is this: In Michigan and Ohio, faced with a Republican unwilling to provide Project Vote with the fodder to commence a lawsuit and raid state coffers, ACORN and its lawyers failed.  After installing their favored candidate in Ohio, Jennifer Brunner, ACORN won.  And to my personal disgust, ACORN was also successful in Missouri, aided by the “helpful” staff of Robin Carnahan.  To the Secretary of State Project and ACORN, this provides a roadmap for future lawsuits and the raiding of state treasuries.  For us, this will be our battle plan to defeat the plans of the progressive host.

On Friday, I appeared on Bill Moyers Journal with Harvard law prof and cyberspace theorist Lawrence Lessig to discuss the whys and wherefores of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. From the show’s writeup:

The Supreme Court’s January 2010 decision of the Citizen’s United v. Federal Election Commission on campaign finance regulations has caused a stir around the political spectrum. A poll from Angus Reid Public Opinion found that 65 percent of people surveyed disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision — 67 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Republicans, and 72 percent of independents.

Libertarian journalist Nick Gillespie says all that worry is misplaced in a much-watched video “Three Reasons Not to Sweat Citizens United.” “If you want to get bent out of shape about something, direct your ire at a massive and constantly growing government that has its hands in virtually every aspect of economic and social life in America,” Says Gillespie.

Harvard legal scholar Lawrence Lessig disagrees, viewing the ruling as a another step in the takeover of democracy by big money. In an article for THE NATION entitled “How to Get Our Democracy Back: If You Want Change, You Have to Change Congress,” Lessig calls for a constitutional convention to make public financing of campaigns the law of the land, “What both sides must come to see is that the reform of neither is possible until we solve our first problem first — the dependency of the Fundraising Congress.”

As you might guess, we didn’t agree on much, but it was a spirited and civil conversation well worth having. A full transcript is available, along with video of the segment and links to related materials, by clicking on the image below.

This week we broke the story of possible criminal wrongdoing in the government takeover of insurance giant AIG. In the last several months, the US government has tried, unsuccessfully, to throw out plaintiff Kevin Murray’s case, alleging that the government’s takeover of AIG puts it in the position of supporting and promoting Islam and Shariah finance.

This past Tuesday, Federal district court judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff rejected the Treasury Department’s and the Fed’s effort to prevent any further discovery while the government attempts to convince the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to overrule Judge Zatkoff’s earlier ruling rejecting the government’s motion to dismiss the federal lawsuit challenging the government’s takeover of AIG on First Amendment-Establishment Clause grounds.

Tim Geithner: The “extraordinary move to depose a sitting Treasury Secretary”

The lawsuit, captioned Murray v. Geithner et al., was brought by attorneys David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise, representing the plaintiff, Kevin Murray, a tax payer and former combat Marine who served in Iraq. The federal lawsuit alleges that the U.S. government’s takeover and financial bailout of AIG was in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Specifically, at the time of the government bailout (September-December 2008), AIG was (and still is) the world leader in promoting Shariah-compliant insurance products. Shariah is Islamic law, and it is the identical legal doctrine that demands capital punishment for apostasy and blasphemy and provides the legal and political mandates for global jihad followed religiously by the world’s Muslim terrorists. By propping up AIG with tax payer funds, the U.S. government is directly and indirectly promoting Islam and, more troubling, Shariah.

After the court rejected the government’s motion to dismiss the case and granted Plaintiff’s attorneys until May 2010 to conduct discovery into the AIG takeover, the government filed a motion asking Judge Zatkoff to certify the case for immediate appeal of his denial of the motion and to stay all further discovery. Today the government got its answer: No and no.

In what is an extremely well-written opinion, Judge Zatkoff scolded the government lawyers for filing the wrong motion at the wrong time and then proceeded to tell them they would have lost in any event because his earlier denial of the motion to dismiss was proper and well-considered.

The Court’s recent decision is especially timely and critical for Plaintiff Kevin Murray because his attorneys had previously filed a motion to compel Secretary Timothy Geithner to sit for a three-hour deposition. The basis for the “extraordinary move to depose a sitting Treasury Secretary” arose because Plaintiff’s counsel had earlier deposed the witnesses provided by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board and the government witnesses either testified inaccurately or feigned ignorance. The only one with all the answers turns out to be Secretary Geithner.

While forcing high government officials to sit for a deposition in civil litigation is extraordinary, federal rules allow a court to take this step when the government official has personal knowledge of a relevant element of the litigation and where the moving party has no reasonable alternative. In this case, attorneys Yerushalmi and Muise argued in their court papers that this exception fits their circumstances in spades.

“The witness designated by the government to testify on behalf of the Fed was less than forthright in his sworn testimony,” Plaintiff’s counsel Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center explained.  “To his credit, he admitted he had prepared for his deposition by reading media reports and not actually reviewing the relevant documents. That might suggest that his lack of candor was willful blindness.”

David Yerushalmi, who is co-counsel with Robert Muise, laid out the grounds for the motion:

At the time of the takeover decision, Secretary Geithner was the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and he was the leading advocate of the AIG takeover. Moreover, he designed how the U.S. government would not only bail out AIG with tax payer dollars, but how the government would illegally take control of 80% of the voting shares through what was patently an illegal and invalid trust arrangement. It is apparent from the discovery we’ve conducted to date that this was done purposefully and with an intent to conceal the illegal takeover with a fraudulent trust.

Attorneys Yerushalmi and Muise want to ask Secretary Geithner:

• Why he forced AIG to take on so much debt that AIG’s credit rating, already in peril, was sure to collapse without yet additional government funds, essentially guaranteeing AIG would remain a ward of the state?
• Why he imposed such Draconian terms on AIG that there was no way it could survive without additional billions from U.S. tax payers?
• Why he then used AIG to secretly funnel 100% payoffs to AIG’s counterparties, including his colleagues and friends at Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and the European giant, Société Générale.  In other words, why did Geithner decide to destroy AIG’s chances of survival as a private entity while surreptitiously saving and preserving private ownership of other domestic and foreign financial companies? And,
• Why he took control of 80% of AIG’s voting shares without legal authority to do so and used a fraudulent trust arrangement to conceal the illegal takeover?

Breaking News: The court just today granted plaintiff Murray’s motion for leave to amend the complaint to include yet additional TARP funds provided to AIG after the filing of the complaint. While the court did not allow the plaintiff to add AIG as a defendant as he had also requested, Murray’s attorneys tell us that they had accomplished enough discovery to know where to look for the skeletons in AIG’s closet in any event.

More coming soon.

Editors Note: This post is re-printed with permission from The Nation magazine, where it appears as the February 4, 2010 cover story. You can see a video interview with Professor Lessig about the piece here, or take action on issues raised in the piece by visiting FixCongressFirst.org.

We should remember what it felt like one year ago, as the ability to recall it emotionally will pass and it is an emotional memory as much as anything else. It was a moment rare in a democracy’s history. The feeling was palpable–to supporters and opponents alike–that something important had happened. America had elected, the young candidate promised, a transformational president. And wrapped in a campaign that had produced the biggest influx of new voters and small-dollar contributions in a generation, the claim seemed credible, almost intoxicating, and just in time.

Yet a year into the presidency of Barack Obama, it is already clear that this administration is an opportunity missed. Not because it is too conservative. Not because it is too liberal. But because it is too conventional. Obama has given up the rhetoric of his early campaign–a campaign that promised to “challenge the broken system in Washington” and to “fundamentally change the way Washington works.” Indeed, “fundamental change” is no longer even a hint.

Instead, we are now seeing the consequences of a decision made at the most vulnerable point of Obama’s campaign–just when it seemed that he might really have beaten the party’s presumed nominee. For at that moment, Obama handed the architecture of his new administration over to a team that thought what America needed most was another Bill Clinton. A team chosen by the brother of one of DC’s most powerful lobbyists, and a White House headed by the quintessential DC politician. A team that could envision nothing more than the ordinary politics of Washington–the kind of politics Obama had called “small.” A team whose imagination–politically–is tiny.

These tiny minds–brilliant though they may be in the conventional game of DC–have given up what distinguished Obama’s extraordinary campaign. Not the promise of healthcare reform or global warming legislation–Hillary Clinton had embraced both of those ideas, and every other substantive proposal that Obama advanced. Instead, the passion that Obama inspired grew from the recognition that something fundamental had gone wrong in the way our government functions, and his commitment to reform it.

For Obama once spoke for the anger that has now boiled over in even the blue state Massachusetts–that our government is corrupt; that fundamental change is needed. As he told us, both parties had allowed “lobbyists and campaign contributions to rig the system.” And “unless we’re willing to challenge [that] broken system…nothing else is going to change.” “The reason” Obama said he was “running for president [was] to challenge that system.” For “if we’re not willing to take up that fight, then real change–change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans–will keep getting blocked by the defenders of the status quo.”

This administration has not “taken up that fight.” Instead, it has stepped down from the high ground the president occupied on January 20, 2009, and played a political game no different from the one George W. Bush played, or Bill Clinton before him. Obama has accepted the power of the “defenders of the status quo” and simply negotiated with them. “Audacity” fits nothing on the list of last year’s activity, save the suggestion that this is the administration the candidate had promised.

Maybe this was his plan all along. It was not what he said. And by ignoring what he promised, and by doing what he attacked (”too many times, after the election is over, and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and the special interests move in”), Obama will leave the presidency, whether in 2013 or 2017, with Washington essentially intact and the movement he inspired betrayed.

That movement needs new leadership. On the right (the tea party) and the left (MoveOn and Bold Progressives), there is an unstoppable recognition that our government has failed. But both sides need to understand the source of its failure if either or, better, both together, are to respond.

At the center of our government lies a bankrupt institution: Congress. Not financially bankrupt, at least not yet, but politically bankrupt. Bush v. Gore notwithstanding, Americans’ faith in the Supreme Court remains extraordinarily high–76 percent have a fair or great deal of “trust and confidence” in the Court. Their faith in the presidency is also high–61 percent.

But consistently and increasingly over the past decade, faith in Congress has collapsed–slowly, and then all at once. Today it is at a record low. Just 45 percent of Americans have “trust and confidence” in Congress; just 25 percent approve of how Congress is handling its job. A higher percentage of Americans likely supported the British Crown at the time of the Revolution than support our Congress today.

The source of America’s cynicism is not hard to find. Americans despise the inauthentic. Gregory House, of the eponymous TV medical drama, is a hero not because he is nice (he isn’t) but because he is true. Tiger Woods is a disappointment not because he is evil (he isn’t) but because he proved false. We may want peace and prosperity, but most would settle for simple integrity. Yet the single attribute least attributed to Congress, at least in the minds of the vast majority of Americans, is just that: integrity. And this is because most believe our Congress is a simple pretense. That rather than being, as our framers promised, an institution “dependent on the People,” the institution has developed a pathological dependence on campaign cash. The US Congress has become the Fundraising Congress. And it answers–as Republican and Democratic presidents alike have discovered–not to the People, and not even to the president, but increasingly to the relatively small mix of interests that fund the key races that determine which party will be in power.

This is corruption. Not the corruption of bribes, or of any other crime known to Title 18 of the US Code. Instead, it is a corruption of the faith Americans have in this core institution of our democracy. The vast majority of Americans believe money buys results in Congress (88 percent in a recent California poll). And whether that belief is true or not, the damage is the same. The democracy is feigned. A feigned democracy breeds cynicism. Cynicism leads to disengagement. Disengagement leaves the fox guarding the henhouse.

This corruption is not hidden. On the contrary, it is in plain sight, with its practices simply more and more brazen. Consider, for example, the story Robert Kaiser tells in his fantastic book So Damn Much Money, about Senator John Stennis, who served for forty-one years until his retirement in 1989. Stennis, no choirboy himself, was asked by a colleague to host a fundraiser for military contractors while he was chair of the Armed Services Committee. “Would that be proper?” Stennis asked. “I hold life and death over those companies. I don’t think it would be proper for me to take money from them.”

Is such a norm even imaginable in DC today? Compare Stennis with Max Baucus, who has gladly opened his campaign chest to $3.3 million in contributions from the healthcare and insurance industries since 2005, a time when he has controlled healthcare in the Senate. Or Senators Lieberman, Bayh and Nelson, who took millions from insurance and healthcare interests and then opposed the (in their states) popular public option for healthcare. Or any number of Blue Dog Democrats in the House who did the same, including, most prominently, Alabama’s Mike Ross. Or Republican John Campbell, a California landlord who in 2008 received (as ethics reports indicate) between $600,000 and