Obama

Barack Obama and the Left’s Willful Anti-Constitutionalism

Calvin Freiburger Commerce Clause, Constitution, dishonesty, Founders, health care, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, individual mandate, Left, Necessary and Proper Clause, Obama, ObamaCare, originalism, progressivism
The Obama Administration reportedly plans on tweaking the case for ObamaCare’s constitutionality it’ll bring before the Supreme Court, shifting its emphasis from the Commerce Clause, which empowers Congress to “regulate commerce…among the several states,” to the Necessary and Proper Clause, which empowers Congress to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution” the federal government’s constitutionally-authorized powers:
“The minimum coverage provision is … necessary to achieve Congress’s concededly valid objective of reforming the interstate market in health insurance,” the Justice Department said in its first Supreme Court brief on the merits of the mandate.
You don’t need to have spent so much as a day in law school to understand that this does nothing to improve the White House’s argument. The Necessary & Proper Clause only helps if the objective is identified by the Constitution, and they’re still relying on the commerce rationalization. Unfortunately for the Left, if we’re going by what the Constitution actually means rather than what they want it to mean, we already know that’s a dead end. Alexander Hamilton explained the Commerce Clause in Federalist 22:
The interfering and unneighborly regulations of some States, contrary to the true spirit of the Union, have, in different instances, given just cause of umbrage and complaint to others, and it is to be feared that examples of this nature, if not restrained by a national control, would be multiplied and extended till they became not less serious sources of animosity and discord than injurious impediments to the intcrcourse between the different parts of the Confederacy. “The commerce of the German empire is in continual trammels from the multiplicity of the duties which the several princes and states exact upon the merchandises passing through their territories, by means of which the fine streams and navigable rivers with which Germany is so happily watered are rendered almost useless.” Though the genius of the people of this country might never permit this description to be strictly applicable to us, yet we may reasonably expect, from the gradual conflicts of State regulations, that the citizens of each would at length come to be considered and treated by the others in no better light than that of foreigners and aliens.
In other words, the intended purpose of Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce was specifically to prevent the states from discriminating against one another through over-regulation, to erect a uniform standard that would keep the interstate flow of commerce mostly un-regulated. Further, Hamilton’s clearly talking about regulating the actions of state governments, not of individuals. Nothing in the Constitution comes even close to empowering the federal government to compel individuals to purchase a good or service. (For more on the Founders’ understanding of the Commerce Clause, see here.)
The most important thing to understand about this story is that this is not a difficult conclusion to draw. If you have a proper understanding of the purpose behind a written Constitution and how to interpret it, then the rest of the exercise mostly takes care of itself. One need not engage in much heavy theorizing or interpretation thanks to the simple fact that, in most cases, those who wrote the Constitution told us exactly what they meant.
In particular, Barack Obama has no excuse not to know better, considering that the man taught constitutional law. But as Ben Shapiro has been chronicling, Obama’s teaching was defined by an agenda to mislead his students about the law, making originalism subservient to his personal ideology. As president, Obama explicitly chose Supreme Court Justices based on criteria other than their judicial excellence, and his administration has been defined by chronic disregard for any limits on federal and executive power.
Simply put, Barack Obama has no respect for the oath he took to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” and he’s getting away with it in large part because our society doesn’t teach its citizens sufficient constitutional literacy to recognize it. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: conservatives can’t restore America’s founding principles if we don’t wake up and work to break the Left’s stranglehold on education.

New at Live Action – Nancy Pelosi Wants to Force Georgetown Law to Subsidize Sandra Fluke’s Promiscuity

Calvin Freiburger abortion, birth control, culture, Georgetown, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Live Action, Obama, ObamaCare, Pelosi, promiscuity, responsibility, sex

My latest Live Action post:

Pro-abortion, anti-liberty zealot Rep. Nancy Pelosi has inadvertently done the pro-life cause a favor. On Monday the House Minority Leader held a congressional hearing on the cost of birth control, and the testimony of her witness, Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, put the narcissism and disingenuousness of her cause on full display.

Without insurance coverage, contraception can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. Forty percent of female students at Georgetown Law report struggling financially as a result of this policy. One told us of how embarrassed and powerless she felt when she was standing at the pharmacy counter, learning for the first time that contraception wasn’t covered, and had to walk away because she couldn’t afford it. Students like her have no choice but to go without contraception.

Craig Bannister at CNSNews.com did the math and found that “At a dollar a condom if she shops at CVS pharmacy’s website, that $3,000 would buy her 3,000 condoms – or, 1,000 a year.” Divide 1,000 by 365, and it seems Ms. Fluke wants us to believe Georgetown girls are “having sex 2.74 times a day, every day, for three straight years.” Considering that my friends and I (male and female alike) managed to survive four years of college without having any sex, I don’t think the Georgetown kids cutting down a little is too much to ask.

Read the rest at Live Action.

New at Live Action – Newt Gingirch Reminds America That the Media Covered for Barack Obama’s Baby Killing Past

Calvin Freiburger abortion, evil, extremism, Gingrich, GOP, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, infanticide, Live Action, mainstream media, media bias, MSM, murder, Obama

My latest Live Action post:

Each presidential candidate had his ups and downs in last night’s CNN Republican debate, but former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had the evening’s most memorable moment. Moderator John King posed the following question:

Since “birth control” is the latest hot topic, which candidates believe in birth control and if not, why?

The audience’s raucous booing made clear they weren’t interested in the press’s latest talking point, and neither was Gingrich. He turned the tables beautifully:

I want to make two quick points, John. The first is there is a legitimate question about the power of the government to impose on religion activities which any religion opposes. That’s legitimate. But I just want to point out, you did not once in the 2008 campaign, not once did anybody in the elite media ask why Barack Obama voted in favor of legalizing infanticide. So let’s be clear here. If we’re going to have a debate about who is the extremist on these issues, it is President Obama, who, as a state senator, voted to protect doctors who killed babies who survived the abortion.

Right on cue, Naureen Khan of National Journal sprang into action to defend the president and the press:

According to Politifact, an independent fact-checking organization that looked into similar claims made by former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum on the campaign trail, Obama voiced his opposition to the new legislation as a state senator because it would have given legal status to fetuses and would thus have been struck down by the courts, and because Illinois already had laws to ensure infants who survived abortions would be given medical attention.

Not true…

Read the rest at Live Action. (I’ve previously examined Obama’s abortion extremism here, here, and here.)

Ron Paul Can’t See the Difference Between the Other Republicans and Obama

Calvin Freiburger conservatism, GOP, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Left, liberalism, Obama, politics, Ron Paul
An addendum to my post on why Paulites aren’t reliable GOP voters: Ron Paul suggesting to his fans that if the Republican nominee is anyone other than him, they might as well sit out the election:
“I think they’d all be better on taxes,” he said. “No, I don’t think any one would be a lot better [than Barack Obama]. That’s my problem and that’s the problem with the country. When you put people in office — you put a Democrat in, he acts like a republican too much, and when you put a Republican in, they act like a Democrat and they spend too much money. So I just don’t see a whole lot of difference with them.” 
Sure, unless you count stimulus, healthcare, abortion, infanticide, marriage, federalism, judges, religious liberty, gun control, immigration, unions, DOJ corruption, bailouts, national security, foreign policy, the Constitution, regulation, global warming, cap & trade, entitlement reform, or education. But other than that, the Republican candidates are exactly like Obama.
Ron Paul’s not a presidential candidate. He’s a cult leader.

New at Live Action – Michelle Goldberg’s Lame, Arrogant Excuses for the Obama Birth Control Mandate

Calvin Freiburger birth control, Constitution, dishonesty, freedom, health care, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Live Action, Michelle Goldberg, Newsweek, Obama, ObamaCare, religion
My latest Live Action post:
Hot off the heels of trashing Lila Rose, Newsweek’s Michelle Goldberg jumps into the ObamaCare-contraception fray with a Daily Beast column arguing that forcing Catholic institutions to offer birth control is no big deal. Unfortunately for the Obama Administration, however, her apologia is a train wreck of distortions and non sequiturs:

But many Catholic institutions are already operating in states that require contraceptive coverage, such as New York and California. Such laws are on the books in 28 states, and only eight of them exempt Catholic hospitals and universities. Nowhere has the Catholic Church shut down in response. 

Really? According to the non-partisan National Conference of State Legislatures, the actual number of states with religious exemptions is twenty, making the truth the exact opposite of what Goldberg describes. Maybe that has something to do with why Catholics would consider the White House’s decision a dramatic change in the status quo?

For the Sake of the Conservative Movement, Romney Deragement Syndrome Has to Stop

Calvin Freiburger blogosphere, conservatism, Dan Riehl, Erick Erickson, Gingrich, GOP, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Legal Insurrection, Mark Levin, Obama, Palin, romney, Romney Derangement Syndrome
The phenomenon of Romney Derangement Syndrome hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention during this election cycle, but it’s real. 
RedState.com has engaged in a smear campaign against Romney supporters and National Review for not being sufficiently anti-Mitt. Dan Riehl rants and raves about how conservatives should let Barack Obama win a second term if Romney is the nominee. Marco Rubio gives an awesome pro-life speech, and half the commenters at Hot Air can’t do anything but whine about Rubio being a phony because he’s too nice to Romney. Ann Coulter defends RomneyCare (in an admittedly flawed column that deserves a separate post), and Mark Levin can barely keep the contempt out of his ever-rising voice. Newt Gingrich engages in the most despicable distortions imaginable, and yet he’s still the victim in too many observers’ eyes. Jennifer Rubin is too sympathetic to Mitt for some, so she’s caricatured as a fraud and a joke.
People are whipping themselves into such a frenzy over Mitt Romney that they’re declaring friends enemies and deluding themselves into staying home on Election Day. (And many of them, incredibly, are doing it for a candidate who more effectively styles himself as a conservative, but substantively is no more conservative or outsider than Romney.)
Look, I get that Romney’s past is worrisome and his electability is problematic. I’m a Santorum guy. I get that the Republican Party needs to be taught a lesson. But now is not the time for an experiment in winning by losing. The stakes are too high.
The hope that a GOP defeat will finally shock the party into reforming itself is much, much too big an if to seriously weigh it against the damage Barack Obama would do in a second term. And I’m not even talking about the daily spending of money we don’t have, the continual erosion of liberty by unelected bureaucrats, or the burdensome regulations and tax increases (though all that alone would be enough to warrant replacing Obama with Romney).

Consider that his judicial appointments will further shape the American court system and shred the Constitution for decades beyond his presidency. Consider ObamaCare, most of which doesn’t take effect until 2013—if a new federal healthcare apparatus takes root, with brand-new entitlements Americans will be dependent on, it will be virtually impossible to dismantle. Consider that if the Left is allowed to import & regularize a permanent underclass through amnesty, before long these experts of voter fraud will have a brand-new pool of voters to ensure statist government for the rest of our lifetimes. Consider that an Obama who doesn’t have to worry about re-election will be more willing to consider any number of UN erosions of American sovereignty. Consider that Eric Holder will continue corrupting the Justice Department and persecuting states that try to crack down on vote fraud while allowing the fraud itself to go unpunished.

You mean to tell me stopping all that isn’t important enough to warrant holding your nose and voting for Mitt Romney? Really?

Besides, it hasn’t been that long since it was Mitt Romney who was the “conservative alternative” to John McCain (who we still managed to rally around), according to many of today’s RDS sufferers like Erick Erickson and Mark Levin, who told us that Romney shared our values and would uphold them in office. And as Ramesh Ponnuru writes:
He has not moved left since that time. His positions on policy questions are almost all the same as they were then. On a few issues he has moved right: He now favors a market-oriented reform to Medicare, for example. 
If Romney was to McCain’s right then, he is still. He’s to George W. Bush’s right, too. Bush never came out for the Medicare reform Romney has endorsed. Bush never said that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, either. Romney has.
Romney’s platform is solidly conservative on fiscal, social, and defense issues. Serious conservatives like John Bolton, Maggie Gallagher, John Willke, Robert Bork, and Jay Sekulow vouch for him. Supporting him won’t require us to sell our souls, but merely to hold him accountable to his promises afterward we oust Obama. He’s no Reagan, but he’s a step up from everyone we’ve run since then – John McCain, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, and George H.W. Bush.

Granted, maybe he’ll lose the election. Maybe he’ll be a disaster as president. I don’t know. But y’know what? Neither do Mark Levin, Michael Reagan, Sarah Palin, Erick Erickson, Jeffrey Lord, Dan Riehl, William Jacobson, John Hawkins, Thomas Sowell, Jeff Emanuel, or anyone else. Maybe he’ll destroy Obama and save the country from the brink of Armageddon. (And maybe, just maybe, the vote will be close enough that the RDS pouters like Riehl will be enough to cause Obama’s victory.) We simply won’t know unless we try.

Beyond 2012, this spectacle has revealed a deeper sickness within the conservative family. For all we’ve mocked liberals for the cult of personality they developed around Obama, too many of us have done the same. Too many (in most cases Perry and Gingrich backers) have rashly proclaimed their guy the Reaganite, the outsider, the true conservative savior, and therefore anyone not onboard (in most cases Romney backers) is either a pretender or a sellout, no matter how reasoned their argument or how genuine their past contributions to conservatism.

We shouldn’t be enemies. There’s no reason for us to be at each other’s throats. We’re all working to save our country, and we’re all just trying to weigh the relative strengths and weaknesses of three fallible men. Coming to different conclusions than one another about that is no sin, and can’t be allowed to divide us during such a critical turning point in our nation’s history.

New on American Thinker – There’s No Reason Libertarians and Gay Conservatives Can’t Support Michele Bachmann

Calvin Freiburger American Thinker, Bachmann, conservatism, gay marriage, Giuliani, GOP, homosexuality, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, hypocrisy, moderates, morality, Obama, social issues

My latest American Thinker post:
Whenever conservative candidates demonstrate their electoral viability, sensationalistic denunciations of said conservatives as beyond the pale are sure to follow. Last weekend, Michael Smerconish declared that Rep. Michele Bachman (R-MN) has “lost a young conservative” named Ben Haney by signing the Iowa Family Leader’s Marriage Vow, which suggests homosexuality is a choice. And that’s not all:
In 2004, at the National Education Leadership Conference, you said of the gay lifestyle: “It’s a very sad life. It’s part of Satan, I think, to say this is gay. It’s anything but gay.”
Then there’s your husband, Marcus, who obtained his Ph.D. by virtue of a correspondence course. He runs a mental-health clinic but, according to Politico, is not registered with any of the three state boards that certify mental health practitioners. (Minnesota is one of the only states in which you can practice mental health without a license.) Last year, when asked during a radio interview about parenting homosexual children, he said:
“We have to understand: barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined. Just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn’t mean that we are supposed to go down that road. That’s what is called the sinful nature. We have a responsibility as parents and as authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings from moving into the action steps. . .”
Marcus Bachmann has denied that his clinic engages in attempts to “pray away the gay,” but ABC’s Nightline recently aired an interview with a man who said that, at age 17, he sought help from Bachmann & Associates and: ” path for my therapy would be to read the Bible, pray to God that I would no longer be gay.”
First, some fact checking: According to the Minneapolis StarTribune, both Marcus Bachmann and interviewer Penna Dexter say the “barbarian” quote referred to children, not gays: “We believe that children are born with a nature that inclines them to challenge and break rules, and that it is thus the parents’ responsibility to guide their children along good and productive paths.” Further, Dr. Bachmann hasn’t denied that he advises gays to pray for sexual conversions; he simply clarifies that it’s “not a special interest of the business and would only be attempted at the client’s request.” However foolish or distasteful gays find such services, let’s keep in mind that they don’t affect anyone who doesn’t choose to utilize them.
As for the “is homosexuality a choice?” debate, I’ve mostly ignored it since it’s irrelevant to public policy—gay Americans would still deserve equal protection of their natural and political rights even if homosexuality was 100% optional, and there would still be powerful reasons to resist the redefinition of marriage even if everyone agreed that sexual orientation was set in stone from conception onward. That said, I suspect homosexuality is substantially predetermined because, as Haney says, “If you could simply choose who you were sexually attracted to, wouldn’t you choose the path of least resistance?”
Read the rest on American Thinker.

So, How’s the Economy Doing?

Calvin Freiburger Democrats, economy, employment, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Obama, politics
As Tom Blumer explains, not so good. Read the whole thing for the details, but here’s the summary:
So, after considering civilian population growth, employment is a painful 4% worse. Also, after considering population growth, GDP is only 2% better. If you give each factor equal weight (why wouldn’t you?), the economy is 2% worse almost 2-1/2 years after Barack Obama’s term as president began. And this is all before considering the frightening and potentially economy-crippling debt overhang and unprecedented deficits as far as the eye can see that Obama’s stimulus and other programs largely created, which would obviously move the meter even further in the “worse” direction.

New on NewsReal – Obama Discovers Flip Side of Identity Politics as Muslim Groups Give Him Failing Marks

Calvin Freiburger Democrats, Islam, Left, liberalism, NewsReal, Obama, political correctness, politics

My latest NewsRealBlog post:

It seems another demographic group Democrats once took for granted is snapping out of Obama fever. At the Daily Beast, David Graham reports that American Muslims don’t think the president’s actions match his pro-Islam rhetoric. Aside from insisting that Islam is a religion of peace and appointing a few Muslims to important positions, Obama hasn’t met enough with American Muslim groups or “remade the political landscape for Muslims”:

“Just like the last time, we’re quite happy if any president offers positive rhetoric toward the Muslim world or Islam, but it really needs to be backed up with concrete policy initiatives,” says Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a leading American Muslim group. “We’re still in Afghanistan, we’re still in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian situation has gone south. We’re not there—we’re just continuing with the previous policies.”

It’s not just foreign policy. Across the board, Muslims are expressing disappointment with Obama’s progress on issues relevant to them in the domestic policy realm. What they express is not so much anger as disillusionment, a recognition that the president hasn’t remade the political landscape for Muslims. (American Muslim opinions mirror international opinions. A Pew survey released Tuesday finds that citizens in majority Muslim countries remain skeptical of Obama.)

[…]

Exhibit A is the Park51 project, the proposed mosque and Islamic center in Lower Manhattan that opponents dubbed the “ground zero mosque”. After delivering what appeared to be a full-throated defense of the project, he walked back his comments the next day, saying, “I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there.” It was a crucial litmus test for many American Muslims—and one that Obama failed. “He’s still missing the political courage to stand up for communities, and not just Muslim communities,” says Shireen Zaman, the executive director of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a think tank on Muslim issues.

As the Left always does when discussing different ethnic groups, it’s simply assumed at the outset that the positions cited are intrinsically anti-Muslim.

Whatever you think of the wisdom of starting or continuing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, both conflicts were waged against specific governments the United States determined to be enemies, not against Muslims generally; indeed, both wars liberated their Muslim populations from nightmarish despots and gave them a genuine shot at liberty, so one could just as easily call a premature withdrawal from either theater anti-Muslim for enabling a descent back into totalitarianism.

Read the rest at NewsRealBlog.

New on NewsReal – What Does the Bin Laden Takedown Mean for Obama’s 2012 Prospects?

Calvin Freiburger bin Laden, Democrats, foreign affairs, GOP, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, NewsReal, Obama, politics, War on Terror

My latest NewsRealBlog post:

Democrats were understandably thrilled that it was their guy, Barack Obama, who finally nailed Osama bin Laden, who has for the past decade been as elusive as he was hated. But just how much of a political boon is the victory for the president? That’s the question asked today by the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky, who sees it as a major shift away from the Democrats’ dovish image:

But now, the killing of Osama bin Laden is changing this equation dramatically. Alleged Muslim Barack Obama did in two and a half years what Bush couldn’t do in seven and a half. It wasn’t just the result. The nature of the operation is still breathtaking, weeks later, and the risk Obama took, which he conveyed with masterful cool in his 60 Minutes interview, is mind-blowing (imagine if bin Laden hadn’t been there!). You can call the president who oversaw the operation many things, but weak isn’t one of them.

To talk as if there were two separate hunts for bin Laden is an astoundingly dishonest oversimplification. The truth is that American intelligence officials spent years following the key intelligence trail:

Some time after Sept. 11, detainees held by the U.S. told interrogators about a man believed to work as a courier for bin Laden, senior administration officials said. The man was described by detainees as a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and “one of the few Al Qaeda couriers trusted by bin laden.”

Initially, intelligence officials only had the man’s nickname, but they discovered his real name four years ago.

Two years ago, intelligence officials began to identify areas of Pakistan where the courier and his brother operated, and the great security precautions the two men took aroused U.S. suspicions.

Last August, intelligence officials tracked the men to their residence in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a relatively wealthy town 35 miles north of Islamabad where many retired military officers live […]

President Obama was made aware of the compound when it was discovered last year. By mid-February, the intelligence was solid and since mid-March, Obama led five meetings with the National Security Council regarding the issue.

Intelligence officials worked with the U.S. military to plan the operation and a small team accepted the risk and began to train for it.

On April 29, this past Friday, Obama gave the final go ahead.

Read the rest on NewsRealBlog.