All Debts contracted and
Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution,
shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as
under the Confederation.
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall
be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be
made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law
of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any
Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary
notwithstanding.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the
Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and
judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States,
shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but
no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any
Office or public Trust under the United States.[1]
The American Left equates sincere religious faith with bigotry. That’s
why Kavanaugh will face a religious test from Senate Democrats in his
confirmation hearings. In his remarks Monday night upon accepting President Trump’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh said this: “My judicial philosophy is straightforward. A judge must be independent, and must interpret the law, not make the law. A judge must interpret statutes as written, and a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.”
You’d think that would be enough to settle the question of whether Kavanaugh is fit to be a Supreme Court justice: he obviously is. But he also said he is “part of a vibrant Catholic community in the D.C. area,” which means there’s no question he’ll face stiff opposition from Senate Democrats. In fact, Kavanaugh will almost certainly face a religious test from Senate Democrats.
Never mind that religious tests are explicitly forbidden by Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, which states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Senators are of course free to vote against any nominee for any reason, including their own anti-religious bias. And while formal religious tests in statue have been outlawed since the Supreme Court settled the matter in 1961, Democrats these days have no special regard for the Constitution or Court rulings they don’t like. (Recall that in 2014, every single Senate Democrat voted to “amend the First Amendment” under the guise of campaign finance reform in a failed bid to undo the Citizens United ruling.)
Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
While We the People distract ourselves with porn stars and royal weddings, the cracks in our Constitutional order continue to multiply and widen.
Evidence continues to mount that a sitting president, Barack Obama, colluded in using the nation’s security and surveillance apparatus to subvert the campaign and then presidency of a legitimately elected candidate and president. This effort consisted of numerous illegalities: a mole planted in Donald Trump’s campaign; a FISA warrant granted on the basis of false opposition research paid for by his rival; the outgoing president’s expansion of the number of people allowed to unmask the identity of Americans mentioned in passing during surveillance; a rogue FBI director, James Comey, who illegally usurped prosecutorial powers to exonerate a felonious Hillary Clinton; and other FBI agents colluding in the plot to damage Trump. And don’t forget a Deputy Attorney General appointing the close friend of the fired and disgraced Comey as a special counsel to investigate the non-crime of “collusion,” an investigation that has gone on for a year with nothing to show but a handful of indictments resulting from dubious perjury traps.
To quote Bob Dole, “Where’s the outrage” at these attacks on the Constitution?
Outrage is surely warranted. These assaults on the rule of law and accountability to the people are akin to the catalogue of “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States,” published in the Declaration of Independence. Yet our “watch-dog” media in the main have become the publicists for this attack on the foundations of our freedom, as they flack for the political party that long has resented the limitation of power enshrined in the Constitution. Only a few Cassandras, notably FOX News’ Sean Hannity, are trying to alert the citizenry to the coming conflagration that if unchecked could leave the architecture of our freedom in smoking ruins.
In fact, what we are witnessing in the deep-state Democrats’ undermining of divided government, check and balances, and government accountability, is the culmination of a process begun over a century ago. Addled by the false knowledge of scientism and secularism in the 19th century, the progressives took aim at what they scorned as the archaic political structures based on the permanence of a flawed human nature’s susceptibility to corruption by power. Divided and balanced power, the progressives argued, is inefficient and incapable of solving the new conditions and problems created by industrialization and modern technology.
Instead, power must be concentrated, centralized, and expanded. The deliberations and votes of citizens in their towns, counties, and states must give way to the technocrats housed in bureaus and agencies, and trained in the latest discoveries and techniques of the “human sciences.” In 1925, Progressive publicist Herbert Croly expressed this hubristic and question-begging optimism for a “better future” that “would derive from the beneficent activities of expert social engineers who would bring to the service of social ideals all the technical resources which research could discover.” All they needed was the power and authority to create and apply the mechanisms of this new knowledge.
First, though, the Constitution’s antique structures must be altered. This “increased amount of centralized actions and responsibility” required, as progressive historian Charles Beard wrote in 1913, the discarding of the “strong, almost dominant, tendency to regard the existing Constitution with superstitious awe, and to shrink with horror from modifying it even in the smallest detail.” And it required discarding as well the notion of “inalienable” rights that precede government and lie beyond its power, a belief that Beard called “obsolete and indefensible.” Rights can be created by government in order to suit its own ideological and political aims, as FDR promised in his 1944 “Second Bill of Rights,” which expanded rights to include health care, recreation, and a good job, to name just a few of the gifts government would bestow on the people.
So given this long history, why are we surprised that today many of us believe we have a right not to have our feelings hurt, our opinions contradicted, or our sensibilities wounded even by statements of fact? Or that calls for weakening the Bill of Rights, particularly the First and Second Amendments, are made openly and taken seriously by substantial numbers of people? Or that agents of the government armed with all its coercive powers can violate our privacy and command our participation in politicized “investigations” that ruin our reputation and drive us to bankruptcy? Or that petty clerks across the land can force their way into our homes, businesses, schools, and churches in order to impose their visions of “social justice”?
Today we live in the world the progressives created, and that too many so-called conservatives have endorsed and enabled. The deep-state technocratic apparatus has encroached ever more deeply into citizen autonomy and freedom. Its millions of faceless, nameless functionaries are insulated from accountability to the citizens. Even when their politicized debasement of their responsibilities become known, they escape accountability and punishment, as have the IRS’s Lois Lerner and her enabling boss John Koskinen, disgraced FBI director James Comey, deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, and of course most egregiously, quondam Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who endangered classified materials on her rogue server, and turned the State Department into the bait for attracting donations to her private foundation.
The result has been a serious erosion of the bedrock principles of equality under the law, and accountability to the sovereign people––violations whose scope and gravity have become more obvious and numerous.
But we shouldn’t be surprised. Over the decades the preconditions of today’s excesses have multiplied and become more accepted. Few of us question any longer the deep state of unelected bureaucrats, a surveillance regime empowered to run wild through our private lives, the unholy alliance between big government and big business, and government agencies usurping the power to direct and manage our lives and our opinions. We now take for granted that government should expropriate wealth and redistribute it to political favorites, the very activity that political philosophers from Athens to our own Constitutional Convention warned is the modus operandi of the tyrant. We shrug off the abuses of power that currently are manifest in the machinations of the previous administration to empower its chosen successor, and the skullduggery of its minions still infesting agencies like the DOJ and the FBI.
In short, we have accepted the progressive “fundamental transformation” of the government’s role from protecting our freedom to “solving problems” that, with few exceptions like war, a free people are supposed to solve themselves through families, civil society, and city and state governments. We have been seduced by the promise of freedom without that responsibility and the accountability that make our choices potentially tragic. And now we see the federal leviathan rampaging in our most powerful agencies, and we are surprised? As the Founders were wont to say, “power is of an encroaching nature.” No human being or human institution is immune from the temptations of power, or satisfied with whatever power has been obtained. We are witnessing the truth of this wisdom right now, as criminals run free, the innocent are hounded, federal agencies are emboldened to defy the representatives of the sovereign people, and a special counsel is unrestrained by any limits on the scope of his power, even as those like Representative Devin Nunes––who is fighting against this cardinal sin of allowing or even enabling power to burst through its Constitutional restraints––are slandered and demonized.
For a century, progressives have been undermining the Constitution as they seek to expand and concentrate government power at the cost of freedom. Their rage at Donald Trump in part reflects their disappointment at seeing the success of Obama in accelerating their achievement of their goal thwarted by a blunt-talking indecorous outsider. Now they have called on all their deep-state powers to destroy the usurper who has snatched from them the victory Hillary Clinton promised to consummate.
This continuing scandal of government agencies corrupting their Constitutionally delegated powers is one of the most important threats to ordered liberty at least since World War II, one far more dangerous than the farcical cover-up of a two-bit robbery that was the Watergate scandal. If we allow those guilty of abusing the power of the state for partisan gain to get away with it, we will embolden even more enemies of freedom to do the same as soon as they get the opportunity. It is up to we the people to demand that Mueller’s inquisition come to an end, and that the true miscreants who have abused their power be investigated, indicted, tried, and punished. Only then will the fabric of the Constitution begin to be restored, and our freedom rearmored.
Three months after President Franklin Roosevelt named Robert Jackson attorney general, Jackson addressed a gathering of U.S. attorneys. He issued a worthwhile warning. "With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone," Jackson said in a speech delivered April 1, 1940. "In such a case," he said, "it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him." Sound familiar? "It is in this realm — in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies," Jackson said. Remember: This speech was delivered 78 years ago — by a Democrat. "It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself," Jackson said. A year later, FDR named Jackson to the Supreme Court. Almost five decades after that, then-Justice Antonin Scalia quoted Jackson's speech in his lone dissent on Morrison v. Olson.
The issue there was whether the independent counsel provisions in the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 were constitutional. Scalia said no. The Appointments Clause was key to this case. It says the president "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Court of Law, or in the Heads of Departments." Thus, the question of whether an officer of the federal government needs to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate turns on whether the individual is an "inferior officer" or what the court now calls a "principal officer." The Ethics in Government Act required an independent counsel to be appointed by a three-judge panel. That would be constitutional only if an independent counsel were an "inferior officer." The majority in Morrison concluded this was the case. Scalia obliterated their argument. He noted, for example, that the majority said, "Admittedly, the Act delegates to the appellant (the) 'full power and independent authority to exercise all investigative and prosecutorial functions and powers of the Department of Justice." "Once all of this is 'admitted,'" Scalia concluded, "it seems to me impossible to maintain that appellant's authority is so 'limited' as to render her an inferior officer." He further argued that the independent counsel statute violated the Constitution's separation of legislative, judicial and executive powers. "Governmental investigation and prosecution of crimes is a quintessentially executive function," he concluded. So what is the remedy if a president or executive officer engages in corrupt or criminal activity? "The checks against any branch's abuse of its exclusive powers are twofold," said Scalia. "First, retaliation by one of the other branch's use of its exclusive powers: Congress, for example, can impeach the executive who willfully fails to enforce the laws; the executive can decline to prosecute under unconstitutional statutes; and courts can dismiss malicious prosecutions. Second, and ultimately, there is the political check that the people will replace those in the political branches ... who are guilty of abuse." In 1999, Congress let the independent counsel law expire and the Justice Department issued regulations allowing the attorney general to name a special counsel. Under those regulations, as reported by the Congressional Research Service, a special counsel "shall exercise, within the scope of his or her jurisdiction, the full power and independent authority to exercise all investigative and prosecutorial functions of any United States Attorney." But U.S. attorneys are principal officers who must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. In the Wall Street Journal, Northwestern Law School professor Steven Calabresi, who clerked for Scalia, argued that special counsel Robert Mueller's "investigation has crossed a constitutional line" that even the majority drew in Morrison v. Olson. "Only a principal officer, such as a U.S. attorney, can behave the way Mr. Mueller is behaving," wrote Calabresi. "Mr. Mueller is much more powerful today than any of the 96 U.S. attorneys." Yet Mueller was not appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Calabresi concluded that those targeted by Mueller "should challenge the constitutionality of his actions on Appointments Clause grounds." Mark Levin, who served with Calabresi in the Reagan Justice Department, agrees. "Every defendant, suspect and witness, in this matter," Levin said on his website, "should challenge the Mueller appointment" as a violation of the Appointments Clause.
And why not? Try the mental health set. They get away with far worse than an arrest for trespassing when a consumer perps the impossibility of Violating the 1st Amendment.
A Michigan community college faces a lawsuit over a U.S.
Constitution giveaway that ended with its students arrested for
trespassing.
Kellogg Community College students Brandon Withers and Michelle
Gregoire were arrested Sept. 20, 2015, in Battle Creek after they
refused to stop handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution on campus.
Officials cited the school’s Solicitation Policy, which requires
permission for such behavior, before having the Young Americans for
Liberty members and a friend arrested.
Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit legal organization that
“advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith,”
filed a lawsuit on their behalf Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for
the Western District of Michigan.
“Today’s college students will be tomorrow’s legislators, judges,
commissioners, and voters,” ADF Senior Counsel Casey Mattox said in a
statement released Wednesday. “That’s why it’s so important that public
universities model the First Amendment values they are supposed to be
teaching to students, and why it should disturb everyone that KCC and
many other colleges are communicating to a generation that the
Constitution doesn’t matter.”
ADF’s lawsuit claims KCC’s “Speech Zone Policy” and the wording of
its code of conduct create an unconstitutional veto over speech. The
plaintiffs also claim the school selectively enforces its Solicitation
Policy. They cite a 2015 instance where members of an LGBT group
Spectrum were allegedly allowed to distribute literature without an
“information table.”
“Defendants were aware of Spectrum’s expressive activities, allowed
them to take place, and took no action to stop them or limit them to an
information table, despite their Speech Zone Policy,” the lawsuit
states. “In the spring of 2016, Mr. Withers observed a representative of
another political organization gathering signatures for a petition in
the outdoor, generally accessible areas of campus. Upon information and
belief, Defendants did not require this representative of this political
organization to obtain administrative permission before engaging in his
expressive activities and took no action to stop his expression,
despite their Speech Permit Policy.” Keep reading…
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis
introduced a constitutional amendment on Tuesday that would impose term
limits on members of Congress, following through on their December
announcement about the proposal.
“D.C. is broken,” Cruz said in a statement Tuesday evening. “The
American people resoundingly agreed on Election Day, and President-elect
Donald Trump has committed to putting government back to work for the
American people. It is well past time to put an end to the cronyism and
deceit that has transformed Washington into a graveyard of good
intentions.”
The proposal would limit senators to two terms (12 years total) and
representatives to three terms (six years total). President-elect Trump
campaigned on reining in Congress by implementing term limits, though it
is unclear if the incoming administration has been involved in the
proposal, which comes during Congress’ first week in session this year. Keep reading…
Thank You Wash Examiner and Nick.
We're envisioning a clay pigeon at a National Skeet Shooting Championship, with this crowd in Congress, but at least it puts the issue out front. Let's see Chuck Schumer, Chris Murphy, Richard Blumenthal, Dianne Feinstein and more explain why this Leadership 'Brain Drain' is a bad idea. Pass the Popcorn.
"Coming from California I'm mindful that the votes of my constituents count 1/3rd as compared to uh, Wyoming resident, and looking ahead to the stability of our democracy I don't think, that is a sustainable model, . . ."
She doesn't seem to have any qualms about Indentured Servitude.
According to new research, the United States spends over 200 billion annually on treatment and hospitalization for mental health issues, exceeding spending on heart conditions and cancer. Previous estimates of total healthcare spending by condition failed to account for costs associated with institutionalization but when this was factored into the latest research, the category of “mental disorders” moved to the top of the list by a substantial margin. More than 40% of spending on mental health issues are associated with institutionalization, the researchers found.
Ten medical conditions with the highest estimated spending in 2013 SOURCE Roehrig, 2016 NOTES Institutionalized populations include nursing home residents, long-term patients in psychiatric hospitals, and prisoners. Trauma is fractures and wounds. Pulmonary conditions include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, and other pulmonary diseases.
Roehrig, C., 2016. Mental Disorders Top The List Of The Most Costly Conditions In The United States: $201 Billion. Health Affairs, pp.10-1377. (Full Text)
(CNSNews.com) - Judge Rosemary Collyer of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an opinion today declaring that the Obama administration violated the Constitution by funding Obamacare subsidies for which Congress did not appropriate funds.
“Congress passes all federal laws in this country,” the judge wrote in her opinion in the case of U.S. House of Representatives v. Burwell.
“The Court will enter judgment in favor of the House of Representatives and enjoin the use of unappropriated monies to fund reimbursements due to insurers under Section 1402,” the judge said.
The opinion discussed the distinction between Section 1401 of the Affordable Care Act and Section 1402. Section 1401 provided for refundable tax credits to help cover the premiums of people who purchase health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges and who have adjusted gross incomes between 100 percent and 400 percent of the poverty level. Section 1402 provides reimbursements to insurers for lowering the “cost sharing”—i.e. deductibles, co-pays—for people who qualify under the law for such subsidies.
However, as written the Obamacare law incorporated the Section 1401 tax credits into the Internal Revenue Code, which includes language permanently funding such credits.
“Put simply,” the judge said, “ACA tax credits to subsidize health insurance for eligible taxpayers are permanently funded via the reference to ‘36B’ in 31 U.S.C. 1324(b)(2).”
However, the law did not make the cost-sharing subsidies of Section 1402 part of the Internal Revenue Code, and did not otherwise approve permanent appropriations for them. “Section 1402 is codified not in the Internal Revenue Code, but in Title 42, which includes federal laws concerning ‘Public Health and Welfare,’” said Judge Collyer.
Therefore, for Obamacare’s Section 1402 cost-sharing subsidies to be funded, Congress must pass appropriations funding them.
“The only result of the ACA, however, is that the Section 1402 reimbursements must be funded annually,” said the judge. “Far from absurd, that is a perfectly valid means of appropriation.”
“The question is whether Congress appropriated the billions of dollars that the secretaries have spent since January 2014 on Section 1402 reimbursements,” the judge said.
They have not, she determined.
“Paying out Section 1402 reimbursements without an appropriation thus violates the Constitution,” the judge said. “Congress authorized reduced cost sharing but did not appropriate monies for it, in the FY 2014 budget or since.
“Congress is the only source for such an appropriation, and no public money can be spent without one,” the judge said. “See U.S. Constitution Art. I, Section 9, Clause 7 (‘No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law…’). The secretaries textual and contextual arguments fail.”
In the conclusion of her opinion, the judge said: "The Court will grant summary judgment to the House of Represenatatives and enter judgment in its favor. The Court will also enjoin any further reimbursements under Section 1402 until a valid appropriation is in place. However, the Court will stay its injunction pending any appeal by the parties."
Administrators at Vassar College agreed to personally shred a pocket Constitution after an undercover reporter posing as a student complained that she felt “triggered” by its distribution on campus, while professors at Oberlin College confided that they shared the reporter's misgivings about the founding document.
The video was produced by Project Veritas, a non-profit established by conservative journalist James O’Keefe, and employs a similar style to the undercover ACORN videos that first brought him to prominence.
“Last week something kinda happened on campus that kind of really upset me and I ended up having a panic attack,” the reporter tells Vassar College Assistant Director of Equal Opportunity Kelly Grab. “It’s just I’ve been kind of hiding out in my room ever since kind of scared, so, finally somebody told me I should maybe come talk to you about it and see if there’s anything that can happen or anything … They were handing the Constitution out on campus.”
“Oh, CATO Institute,” Grab murmurs while looking the booklet over.
“They were handing it out and as soon as I saw it you know I started to not be able to breathe, hyperventilating,” the reporter elaborated. “My vision went blurry and I just—kind of just lost control.”
After establishing that the reaction was triggered merely by the offering of copies of the Constitution and not by anything the group had said, Grab offers her sympathies to the reporter.
“And so what I think you’re sharing with me is that your interaction in receiving this was harming, right?” Grab confirms. “And that’s what we certainly want to avoid; we don’t want to limit people in exchanging ideas or having opposing viewpoints, but when it’s disruptive or causing harm…”
“Yeah, which I think the Constitution does,” the reporter interjects. “I mean, it’s not just me, it’s—I mean I thought that Vassar wanted to create like a safe place here, you know a place that … where students could walk around and not be scared of seeing discriminating things on campus.”
Noting that “I’m sure there are also some people who, who maybe don’t understand the impact that this might have on folks,” Grab asks the reporter whether there is anything that can be done to create an “educational moment” regarding the issue.
“Yeah, I guess, maybe,” the reporter responds, suggesting that “maybe the Constitution should be removed from campus permanently.”
Grab stops short of endorsing that idea, but asks the reporter if there is anything she can do with the copy of the Constitution that was brought into the office.
“Honestly, can we just like destroy—like is there a shredder or something? Like I think it might be really therapeutic,” the reporter offers.
“Cathartic … Yes, I think we have a shredder in the front office there,” Grab replies. “Did you want to do it with me?”
The video then show Grab and the reporter enter another office, where Grab proceeds to shred the entire Constitution, page by page.
“Thank you, that made me feel better,” the reporter says, to which Grab replies, “[g]ood.”
A narrator then asserts that when the reporter tried the same story at Oberlin College, several professors made similarly shocking statements.
When the complaint was brought to Wendy Kozol, Professor/Chair of Comparative American Studies at Oberlin, she agreed after a long pause that “[t]he Constitution in everyday life causes people pain,” adding that she rarely discusses the Constitution in class, and that when she does she tends to focus on specific amendments.
After some prompting from the reporter, she concedes that her hesitancy reflects her belief that the document is flawed, and suggests working with student groups to host a dialogue concerning “the ways in which the Constitution in everyday life causes people pain.”
“So, obviously my end goal is I want the Constitution to not have such a central part here at Oberlin—I would like people to see how discriminating it is and how racist it is,” the reporter tells Kozol. “Do you think that’s a reasonable goal that we could get to?”
“Absolutely,” Kozol says. “I think there are a lot of people who will immediately agree with you and join the conversation and think about ways to limit, confine, or talk back; maybe you just want to talk back to the Constitution.”
Carol Lasser, Professor of History and Director of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Oberlin, likewise concurred that “[t]he Constitution is an oppressive document” because it intentionally makes change a slow process.
“I think birthright citizenship is right,” she whispers. “And you know that if that was up for a vote today we would lose it under the craziness of Trump and his seven dwarves.”
She then observes that “[t]he Constitution is not a sacred document in that sense,” citing the Second Amendment as an example and asking, “[w]hat could be clearer than, I mean at least from my point of view, that the founders never envisioned giving people carte blanche to own assault rifles?”
Colleen Cohen, Faculty Director of Affirmative Action and a Professor of Anthropology at Vassar, is even more indulgent of the reporter’s complaint, saying, “[i]t’s horrible that this is something that has caused you such pain,” and despairing that “unless the people are from off campus,” there is nothing the college can do to prevent the Constitution from being distributed.
“Can I destroy this?” she asks the reporter, referring to the Constitution. “Or did you want to hold on to it?”
“Well, could you destroy it?” the reporter says. “Maybe it will feel, you know, therapeutic for me.”
“I’ll put it through a shredder,” Cohen offers. “Yeah, I’ll put it in a shredder.”
Subsequently, Cohen hangs up her office phone and informs the reporter that she will not have access to the shredder until her secretary returns, but promises to destroy the document at that point.
O’Keefe also makes sporadic appearances in the video as he hands out pocket Constitutions while dressed in a comical Constitution costume.
“When this idea came up in our newsroom about campus administrators shredding the Constitution because it’s a trigger against students, we didn’t think people would actually fall for it,” he says at one point. “We underestimated just how stupid and politically correct these people are.”
“We were amazed and disappointed,” the narrator intones at the end of the film. “Political correctness and cultural sensitivity run amok.”
Jeffrey Kosmacher, Director of Media Relations and Public Affairs at Vassar College, told Campus Reform that nobody from Vassar would have any comment on this story.
Campus Reform likewise reached out to Professors Kozol, Lasser, and Cohen, but none had responded by press time.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @FrickePete
Thank You Mr Fricke and Campus Reform.
Academia. The tax funded hydroponic cess pits where social work, psychology, and psychiatry are planted, manured, and lovingly nurtured.
Abolish Tenure Now. These people have no business being guaranteed a pay check no matter What they do, for life.
“Honestly, can we just like destroy—like is there a shredder or something? Like I think it might be really therapeutic,” the reporter offers.
“Cathartic … Yes, I think we have a shredder in the front office there,” Grab replies. “Did you want to do it with me?”
Since the Obamunists, Central Planners, Wasteocracy, and Crony-crats are turning themselves inside out portraying their ObamaCare as something the Founders of America actually Intended, . . .
let's look to perhaps The most credible of those Founders, James Madison, the Father of the Constitution itself, for his take on Congress spending other peoples money to improve the 'General Welfare' of these United States.
To the House of Representatives of the United States:
Having considered the bill this day presented to me entitled "An act to set apart and pledge certain funds for internal improvements," and which sets apart and pledges funds "for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses, in order to facilitate, promote, and give security to internal commerce among the several States, and to render more easy and less expensive the means and provisions for the common defense," I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling the bill with the Constitution of the United States to return it with that objection to the House of Representatives, in which it originated.
The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation with the power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States.
"The power to regulate commerce among the several States" can not include a power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses in order to facilitate, promote, and secure such commerce without a latitude of construction departing from the ordinary import of the terms strengthened by the known inconveniences which doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress.
To refer the power in question to the clause "to provide for common defense and general welfare" would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms "common defense and general welfare" embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust. It would have the effect of subjecting both the Constitution and laws of the several States in all cases not specifically exempted to be superseded by laws of Congress, it being expressly declared "that the Constitution of the United States and laws made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges of every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." Such a view of the Constitution, finally, would have the effect of excluding the judicial authority of the United States from its participation in guarding the boundary between the legislative powers of the General and the State Governments, inasmuch as questions relating to the general welfare, being questions of policy and expediency, are unsusceptible of judicial cognizance and decision.
A restriction of the power "to provide for the common defense and general welfare" to cases which are to be provided for by the expenditure of money would still leave within the legislative power of Congress all the great and most important measures of Government, money being the ordinary and necessary means of carrying them into execution.
If a general power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses, with the train of powers incident thereto, be not possessed by Congress, the assent of the States in the mode provided in the bill can not confer the power. The only cases in which the consent and cession of particular States can extend the power of Congress are those specified and provided for in the Constitution.
I am not unaware of the great importance of roads and canals and the improved navigation of water courses, and that a power in the National Legislature to provide for them might be exercised with signal advantage to the general prosperity. But seeing that such a power is not expressly given by the Constitution, and believing that it can not be deduced from any part of it without an inadmissible latitude of construction and reliance on insufficient precedents; believing also that the permanent success of the Constitution depends on a definite partition of powers between the General and the State Governments, and that no adequate landmarks would be left by the constructive extension of the powers of Congress as proposed in the bill, I have no option but to withhold my signature from it, and to cherishing the hope that its beneficial objects may be attained by a resort for the necessary powers to the same wisdom and virtue in the nation which established the Constitution in its actual form and providently marked out in the instrument itself a safe and practicable mode of improving it as experience might suggest.
ARTICLE II Sec 2, Sec 3, and Sec 4 define the powers and limits on those powers of the
Executive Branch of the U.S. Govt.
SECTION 2. The President shall be Commander in Chief of the
Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States,
when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the
Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments,
upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he
shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United
States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of
the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present
concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the
Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges
of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose
Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be
established by Law; but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such
inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts
of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that
may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall
expire at the End of their next Session.
SECTION 3. He shall from time to time give to the Congress
Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration
such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on
extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of
Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may
adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive
Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be
faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United
States.
SECTION 4. The President, Vice-President and all civil
Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for,
and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Anyone see anything about Executive Orders?
If we wish to add, subtract, or alter powers To those enumerated in the
Constitution we look to Article 5.
ARTICLE V
The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem
it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the
Application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call
a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to
all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the
Legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in
three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be
proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to
the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the
first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no
State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the
Senate.
Were the Framers hiding a Constitutional Grant of Executive
Order over rides by Not telling us about Executive Orders?
ARTICLE VI
Clause 2
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which
shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be
made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the
Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the
Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
ARTICLE II
SECTION 1, Clause 8
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"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."
