By, Nancy Tengler
http://wiseandfrugalgovernment.blogspot.com
Many years ago, I worked for a Swiss company. I loved the people I worked with, I loved my visits to the home office in Zurich, I loved the elegance and history of the country. But there was one thing I didn’t understand. Neutrality. My Swiss colleagues would frequently say things like: Well, I don’t know, I’m neutral on that point. I couldn’t say really. My view of your strategy proposal is neutral. Then, one day it hit me. Neutral? How can anyone be neutral on any matter of significance? In my world view only two things inform neutrality–a want of knowledge or a want of courage. Even Webster’s defines the state of neutrality as lacking stamens or pistils…OK, so maybe I am reaching on that point, but, for me, neutrality is, at the very least, dangerous.
Recently many of my liberal friends have taken to calling themselves independent. I understand the distaste many feel for political parties. I generally share those views. Both are fraught with problems. Being independent denotes in their minds anyway, a kind of neutral ground. A place where criticism and labels can’t stick. And then there is the fact that Americans cherish independence. It is a badge we wear. Or at least used to.
Our way of life is changing quickly, each day our liberties are being consumed by the behemoth, lumbering incompetence of bureaucracy. This Administration has shown a reckless disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution. Twisting and obfuscating, politicizing friendly courts, ignoring the rulings of unfriendly ones. Honestly friends, neutrality is no longer an option. It is time to pick a side. Time to back a team, bet on a horse, double down on the side of liberty and freedom. Oh yes, and independence.
The ruling by Judge Bolton in the Arizona immigration case is just another example of the blurring of the separation of powers. According to The New York Times, Carter appointee and immigration law professor at Yale Law School Peter Schuck commented on Judge Bolton’s ruling, “She rushed to judgment in a way I can only assume reflects a lot of pressure from the federal government to get this case resolved quickly.” That ought to get the attention of some of my independent friends. Three branches of government, each independent of the other. Checks and balances. No collusion. No pressuring of one branch to another. That’s what the Constitution provides. Protecting that should fit right in with an independent view of the world.
And there’s more.
From The Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell:
“Taken alone, the White House’s behavior on this issue is troubling enough. But put into the broader context of the first 18 months of this Administration, a truly pernicious pattern emerges. First, there was the Obama Justice Department’s decision to dismiss voter intimidation charges against the New Black Panther Party. Then there was the Obama administration’s use of TARP to bail out its union allies in what bankruptcy law scholars have called “so outrageous and illegal that until March of this year [2009], nobody even conceptualized it.” Then there was the Obama administration’s shakedown of BP in the White House’s Roosevelt Room. Less than a week later after a federal court found its first oil drilling ban to be “arbitrary and capricious,” the Obama administration issued a second oil drilling ban that was wider and killed even more jobs than the first.”
Our founder’s had it right. I am on their side. The side of conservative constitutional values and the rule of law. To my independent friends: Consider that to preserve our cherished independence it may be time to come down on the side of the values that have made this country great: Our Constitution and the rule of law.
By, Nancy Tengler
www.wiseandfrugalgovernment.blogspot.com
President Obama is once again giving Joe Wilson fits. The President publicly decried the Scottish release of the Lockerbie bomber all the while signaling otherwise to the Scottish government in private diplomatic correspondence.
According to The Guardian:
“Although Megrahi was allowed to go home to die in Tripoli, Scottish officials believe this (the leaked correspondence) undermines Obama’s vigorous criticisms of the decision to free Megrahi earlier this month, when he said he was left “surprised, disappointed and angry” by the Libyan’s release.
The existence and content of the US embassy note was first disclosed by the Guardian last August, at the height of the controversy over Megrahi’s release, and its full text has now been leaked to the Sunday Times.
In it, the deputy head of the US embassy in London, Frank LeBaron, said the US believed Megrahi should remain in Greenock jail because of the seriousness of his conviction for killing 270 passengers and crew, and 11 Lockerbie townspeople, by bombing Pan Am flight 103 in 1988.
But he added: “Nevertheless, if Scottish authorities [conclude] that Megrahi must be released from Scottish custody, the US position is that conditional release on compassionate grounds would be a far preferable alternative to prisoner transfer, which we strongly oppose” (emphasis mine).”
The Scottish government took the U.S.’s response to represent only “half-hearted” opposition to Megrahi’s release. And so he was sent home. To Libya. On compassionate grounds. Because he had less than three months to live.
Yet now we learn according to a July 26th article published in The Scotsman, the medical expert who examined Megrahi, the convicted murderer and terrorist, did not endorse the view that he had three months or less to live:
“A cancer specialist who examined the Lockerbie bomber has revealed he did not endorse the view that he had less than three months to live. Professor Jonathan Waxman, one of the world’s leading oncologists, visited Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi in prison a year ago but said he was not surprised to see him alive today. Megrahi’s release on compassionate grounds was on the basis of a medical report which indicated he had three months to live – but next month will mark a year since he was freed.”
270 lives perished on Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988. Eleven more people on the ground also died that day. Mass murder. Lives cut short. Children taken from parents. Parents taken from children. Wives and Husbands. Grandmothers and Grandfathers. Murdered.
But in the twisted world of “compassion” that uneasily co-exists with the tragic reality faced by the victims each and every day, the prisoner, the perpetrator, the murderer is released. It is compassionate. He is dying of cancer we are told. And the victim’s families? They are forgotten in all hoo-haw. They are counting on society to remember, to rally around and do the right thing. Meanwhile, the president of the greatest, most compassionate and fair-minded country in the world, who claims to be “surprised, disappointed and angry,” the evidence would suggest, is none of the above. Another cold and calculated, purely political gesture that stands in direct opposition to the facts. Another Joe Wilson moment–for those of us paying attention–to swallow.
This one made me so sick, I couldn’t write about it for days. I hope you will join me in mourning the victims. The forgotten ones. It seems to me to be the truly compassionate thing to do.
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God” (emphasis mine).
Congressional Oath of Office
www.senate.gov
I am one of those people that think words mean something. I spend a great deal of my day with words. As a college professor, I love meeting new ones, sorting through my brain to recall old ones, searching the dictionary for a precise meaning of a specific one. I hang my hat on words. I depend on them. I respect them.
Which is why I am so troubled with the careless and reckless disregard for the meaning of words in our Congress and by this President. Joe Wilson took a lot of heat for shouting “you lie” during President Obama’s health care speech. Decorum aside I didn’t really see what all the fuss was about. We don’t live in a monarchy or a dictatorship. Disagreement, discourse–these are givens in a free society. One has to merely watch a few minutes of floor debate in the British Parliament to appreciate the relative benignity of Wilson’s comment. I am not justifying his outburst, I am merely reflecting on his right to do so. I encourage you to listen to the speech and determine for yourself if the President spoke the truth or Congressman Wilson did.
In Federalist 51, James Madison writes: 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.
Our government is out of control. In the last year and a half our President has repeatedly overreached the bounds of his office. Congress has passed thousands of pages of new legislation without reading it and without demonstrating a sound understanding of the very Constitution that provides their job description. The one that they have sworn to uphold. Their lack of respect for the Constitution may come from a lack of familiarity with same. House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Representative Jon Conyers referred to the “good and welfare” clause as his justification of the health care bill’s constitutionality. There is no “good and welfare” clause. Representative Phil Hare cited Americans’ right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as his constitutional justification for voting for the health care bill. The phrase life, liberty and pursuit of happiness comes from the Declaration of Independence not the Constitution.
When our representatives in Washington–our congressman and senators and president–swear to uphold the Constitution and then don’t, we have more than a problem on our hands, we have a crisis.
“When we continue to spend as if deficits don’t matter that means our kids and our grand kids may wind up saddled with debts that they’ll never be able to repay.”
President Obama on signing the Improper Payments Bill 7/22/10
“You just can’t make this stuff up.”
Nancy Tengler 7/23/10
This from the most outrageously spendthrift administration in the history of the United States. This from the man who increased the deficit from north of $400 billion when Bush left office to a CBO estimated $1.85 trillion in 2009.
Let’s start with a definition of terms shall we?
- deficit equals the difference between government revenues and government spending. During the last year of the Bush Administration the deficit was greater than $400 billion. In 2009, the first year of Obama’s Administration the deficit was estimated at $1.85 trillion. For 2010 it is expected to be around 1.5 trillion. Our government is borrowing 41 cents for every dollar it spends. It is crucial to understand that a deficit in one year is added to the deficit in the previous year. That cumulation of deficit spending becomes our debt. Current debt? $13.2 trillion or approximately $42,798 per citizen. And they’re just getting started.
- government revenues = taxes. Taxes are my money and your money being hijacked by the government to pay for programs we have no say in. Entitlements, give aways, preferential hiring and spending–things the Founders, in their wildest nightmares, could never have imagined. Sen. Byron Dorgan’s recent statement on the Senate floor is all you really need to know about Washington’s perspective on revenues and taxes. He went after Republicans who supported tax cuts that would “reduce this country’s income.” Our representatives in Washington think it is their money. Not ours.
Obama decries the spending out of one side of his mouth while signing into law another $33 billion extension in unemployment benefits almost simultaneously. $33 billion dollars we don’t have. Just pile it on, no problem. But don’t think we are going to “continue to spend as if deficits don’t matter.” No sir. We’re not going to saddle our children and grandchildren with debt. Not on your life.
Well, not at least until we have to start paying for Obama’s Health Rationing Plan. Wait to you see the bill for that one!
