Big Dogs House

Was Arizona A Sacrificial Lamb?

Jun 25, 2012 Commentary, Political

One would like to think that any court, especially the Supreme Court, would rule based on the Constitution. In an ideal world the judges would look at a case and compare it to what is allowed in the Supreme Law of the land and then decide if it passes muster or not.

Unfortunately, our country is not like that as many judges ignore the Constitution in order to push a political or idealistic agenda. For instance, there is no way that a case involving the right of an American citizen who is not otherwise disqualified (criminal, mental illness, addiction, etc) to own a gun should be shot down by any court. The fact that Second Amendment cases have been 5-4 decisions in our highest court speaks volumes about how some justices view the Constitution and the citizens who own that document.

Today the Supreme Court struck down three of four provisions of the Arizona Immigration Law, a law that was written with the same wording as the federal law and one that did nothing more than enforce ALREADY existing federal law.

Chief Justice Roberts voted with the majority on this and there might be a good reason. Justice Kagan recused herself because she was Solicitor General and was involved in the case against the law. If Roberts votes the other way the decision is split at 4-4 and the lower court ruling that invalidated the entire thing would be upheld. At least this way Roberts ensured that the most important part of the law, that which allows police officers to check immigration status, was upheld.

There is another take on this that I have heard and it is that Roberts voted this way because Obamacare is going to be overturned (or parts of it are) and Roberts wants to be able to show the Arizona case as proof that he is thoughtful in his process and that overturning Obamacare was not political.

It is sad that this takes place but the Court has been a political entity since FDR fiddled with it. Justices are selected based on their political ideology and less so on their judicial qualities. Presidents put people on courts not who will uphold the Constitution but who will provide political decisions in a party’s favor. If justices ruled by interpreting the Constitution (and this means reading what the Founders wrote about what it means and not some liberal living document mumbo jumbo) then there would be no issues and there would be fewer 5-4 decisions.

There would also not be a necessity for justices to vote one way to demonstrate that their decisions are not political. There would be no outcry over judicial activism and we would not have Barack Obama and his liberal minions berating the court and trying to intimidate them.

Supreme Court Justices are supposed to interpret law in accordance with the Constitution and base their decisions ONLY on that document. There should be no reference to foreign law or public feeling or opinion polls and there darn sure should not be decisions that run contrary to the words of the Constitution and those who wrote it.

We have these things because nine people sit on a court and play games.

As an aside, Justice Scalia wrote agreat dissenting opinion in the Arizona Case. His was well reasoned and followed the Constitution. It is too bad others could not do this as well.

I think that Roberts voted the way he did in order to keep the entire law from being shot down because of the split. But I can’t help but wonder if he feels as if this were a blessing because now he is on record as voting with the liberals on the Court in favor of Obama’s position so that when Obamacare is shot down (if it is) he will have cover.

It is a shame that our system of government has come to this and unless changes are made we will soon hit a death spiral from which we cannot recover.

On Thursday of this week we will know how Obamacare plays out. We will know if the Court takes its job and its duty to the Citizens seriously or if they have committed us to the loony bin of a banana republic.

Time will tell. I think at least part of the law will be struck down but with politics instead of adherence to the Constitution the MO of the SCOTUS, one can never tell.

Justice Kagan recused herself from this decision because of her role as Solicitor General. She should have recused herself from Obamacare but since she was placed on the Court by Obama to uphold it you can bet she will vote on it.

Though it might get interesting if she did recuse. That would make it a 4-4 and things would really be boogered up.

We will see Thursday if we are a nation of laws or a nation of men.

In Arizona Sheriff Arpaio already answered regarding law…

Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: arizona immigration law, games, obamacare, politics, supreme court

Obama: So Transparent Anyone Can Donate

Apr 4, 2012 Political

Barack Obama claimed his regime would be the most transparent in history. Why, we would be able to see through it all because he would hide nothing from us.

Then, of course, he set about hiding things. He is not transparent and he does the very things that he scolded George Bush for.

Hell, he even threw in the individual mandate after chiding Hillary Clinton about how it was wrong during the Democrat Primary in 2008.

But I might have to change my mind about Obama’s transparency. Barack Obama is so transparent that anyone can donate to his campaign.

Barack Obama’s donation page is not set up with the usual security that helps to prevent people from illegally donating money to his campaign. He did the same thing in 2008 and it is believed (and documented by some web sites such as Atlas Shrugs) that illegal donations flowed freely into his campaign.

The same thing is happening now.

As reported here, the campaign takes illegal donations and people are demonstrating how easy it is. How much more of a flag does one need than the name Illegal Contributor? How much more of a flag does one need than having an address as the State Penitentiary? If the website used the credit card verification code (like the Republican’s sites do) then this donation would have been flagged as potentially illegal. The code would not have matched the address.

But Obama does not want illegal donations stopped. If they do not flow into his campaign he will not be able to get huge sums of money from illegal donors both here and overseas.

Practically all of us know how the Democrat media would be playing this if a Republican were getting illegal donations and did not have security in place. The cries would be heard around the world.

Obama, who was an alleged Constitutional Law professor, excoriated the Supreme Court during one of his State of the Union Addresses. It involved their decision on campaign contributions and Obama was not happy with it.

Isn’t it amazing that the same Democrats who scream about unlimited donations have no problem with allowing unlimited illegal donations to flow into the Obama campaign?

Let me decipher. What Obama was saying when he railed against that decision was; hey, we don’t like the idea that you allowed everyone to receive as much money as we do. How dare you level the playing field?

The case Obama did not like was Citizens United.

In November the citizens are going to unite to send Mr. Transparency packing.

Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: citizens united, election fraud, fec, illegal donations., lies, Obama, supreme court

The Constitution Trumps ALL Other Reasons

Apr 3, 2012 Political

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case against Obamacare and the initial impressions from most thinking people are that it will not stand. The impression is that the individual mandate will not pass Constitutional muster and that the entire law might be struck down. The left realizes this and has begun its attacks. They have been chastising Justices for being unwilling to read a 2700 page law to determine which parts can be saved.

This anger comes from the same people who did not read it before they voted to pass it.

There is speculation that Obama already knows how things will shake out and I think that if he does it is because Justice Kagan leaked the results of the vote to him.

He made his first public statements on the issue yesterday and he discussed how it would be unprecedented for this law to be ruled unconstitutional. He discussed how justices are unelected and he said that the bill was passed by a “strong majority” in Congress.

This is all bluster and to me indicates he knows how the vote went and he is positioning himself to run against the Republicans who challenged this and the “activist” court that threw it out.

The Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land, period. In that document the Supreme Court is charged with making sure the actions of the Executive and Legislative branches are within the confines of it. The Court is not activist if it rules that the Constitution was violated. An activist court is one that makes its own rules or laws. One that follows the Constitution is not activist no matter how much Obama claims it is. It would be an activist Court if it went through the legislation and decided piece by piece which parts are OK. That is for Congress to do. The Court only needs to decide Constitutionality of the mandate and then decide to scrap the entire law or not. Congress should handle the aftermath.

It also matters not one bit how many members of Congress voted to pass a bill. If every single member voted to pass a bill establishing the Catholic Church as the official church of the United States it would be unconstitutional. You can bet that Obama and every other person screaming about the majority in Congress who passed Obamacare would be lining up to oppose such a ruling because it violates the First Amendment to the Constitution. Obama would not say the Court should not overturn it because it was passed by a strong majority, he would be screaming about violating the Constitution.

We have a Supreme Court to ensure that majorities of any kind do not violate the Constitution and pass laws that affect people in violation of our law. That is their function and they are tasked with that duty.

One thing is certain; the number of members of Congress who voted on something is not a criterion the Court uses to determine if an item is Constitutional.

James Clyburn (D-SC) has suggested that Obama run against the Supreme Court. As Obama pointed out, they are unelected but his public statements leave the impression he is doing just that.

Perhaps, but it will do him no good. If Obama is concerned with majorities, a large majority of Americans (larger than the majority that passed Obamacare) oppose Obamacare and those folks will not be swayed by some argument that runs contrary to the idea that the Supremes upheld the Constitution.

Liberals will generally support Obama but are fed up with high unemployment and gas prices so they might stay home on Election Day.

Blacks, of course, will support him in overwhelming numbers no matter what he does.

The important take away is that the Constitution trumps all other items and that the Supremes are tasked with ensuring that document is upheld by the other two branches of government. This is why Obama does not like the Constitution and why he feels it is an outdated document.

It is also why he ignores it.

The true activists on the Court are the liberal justices whose work involves social engineering. They do not follow the Constitution and they work to uphold liberal ideas with little regard for the Constitution.

These justices Obama does not refer to as activists.

Obama says rejection would be unprecedented but he is wrong (hyperbole anyone). I would like to say it is unprecedented that something that is so obviously unconstitutional would go down to a 5-4 ruling.

Sadly, a 5-4 ruling is the norm as liberals ignore the Constitution in favor of social engineering.

Obama is proud of them even if he does not understand the Constitution.

Maggie’s Notebook has an interesting article.

The Daily Caller has an article about Obama’s hollow threat to the Supremes…

Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: Democrats, kagan, laws, lies, Obama, obamacare, supreme court

The Obama Spin Machine Thinks You Are An Idiot

Mar 29, 2012 Political

“The confidence of the people will easily be gained by a good administration. This is the true touchstone.” –Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788

The mark of a good administration is one that tells the truth. Americans are adults and most prefer the truth. We might not like it and we might get angry but we want to know the realties. Unfortunately, politics involves doing and saying whatever is necessary to get elected and then to hold office.

Barack Obama lectured Hillary Clinton on why we should not have an individual mandate in health insurance and once he was in office he pushed for that mandate. After three days of Supreme Court hearings it looks like that mandate could be his undoing.

That is where the spin comes in and that is where they think you are an idiot.

The White House is rebranding the individual mandate as the “individual responsibility clause” of the bill. The White House goes further by claiming that the individual mandate, oops I mean the individual responsibility clause, was a Republican idea.

You read that right. The White House is claiming that the unpopular mandate was the invention of the Republicans. While this should come as no surprise because this White House always blames someone else, it should be seen for what it is. It is a blatant attempt to rewrite history and blame the Republicans for the mess that this has become.

But wait, it gets worse.

The White House is calling this bill a bi-partisan effort. For those with any doubt, bi-partisan means that the two parties involved supported the effort. I guess by some abstract, twisted logic one could call it bi-partisan since Democrats and Independents supported it but that is not what the White House means.

The White House is saying it was bi-partisan in an effort to place equal blame for the mess on both parties so that the damage can be spread out and Obama can be portrayed as a victim of bad Congressional decisions.

If it was a bad decision why did he push it, why did he defend it and why did he sign it?

More to the point though, the bill is not bi-partisan because NOT ONE SINGLE Republican voted for it.

The Democrats made deals, bribed members, and used legislative trickery to get this bill passed and it was ALL done by Democrats.

Keep that in mind folks. The Republicans were not allowed to be part of the negotiations. Their ideas, those that were considered, were voted down or excluded. They were not included in the meetings and they had no say in the process.

The whole thing was entirely a Democrat effort and only Democrats voted for it and they did so in the middle of the night around Christmas while wheeling Robert Byrd in in his wheelchair.

It was the Democrats who made a big show of the issue by parading around with a huge gavel while inventing stories of racist comments. Remember all that fanfare? Remember the show and the big grins on their faces? Remember how proud they were to have passed this thing? Remember it all because they are now trying to change the story.

This mess belongs entirely to Barack Obama (his signature legislation we are told) and his Democrats who rammed it down our throats.

We had to pass it to see what was in it and when that happened people liked it even less. Now the answer to Pelosi’s question is becoming clear.

Remember? She was asked if it was Constitutional and her reply was “are you serious?”

Yes, we were and that issue has been addressed this week. While anything can happen it is becoming very clear that the SCOTUS does not hold the view that the mandate is Constitutional. Even if it does, the end result will spell disaster.

Now the regime is trying to shift blame, rewrite history and implicate Republicans in this total Democrat mess.

So I will have to respond with Pelosi’s words…

Are you serious?

Most of us are not that stupid…

Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: bi-partisan, bribes, Democrats, kickbacks, lies, Obama, obamacare, spin, supreme court

Democrats In Panic Mode

Mar 27, 2012 Political

It looks like it was not a good day for Obamacare and by extension, all those law makers who pushed it. While it is certainly too early to tell and anything can change, it appears that the government had a bad day in front of the Supreme Court. The Solicitor General was so bad that Justice Ginsburg and Justice Kagan interjected to help him out. They were pushing him in the right direction and assisting him in making his case. By the way, Kagan should have recused herself but she is a liberal and they have no ethical principles.

The conservative Justices asked tough and pointed questions that the SG was not prepared to answer. The left has hopes it can pluck one of the conservative justices and win a 5-4 decision (because the liberals will obviously never vote in favor of the Constitution) and they might succeed. Some are left wondering if Roberts or Kennedy will be that fifth vote and most say it is too close to call. I think it will be 5-4 overturning but it would not surprise me to see the thing go the other way.

Our Supreme Court has been a political branch rather than a judicial overseer for far too long and has engaged in social engineering many times. I believe that it is a sad thing that there is not a unanimous decision against something the Constitution does not allow. To see that a number of our highest judges can’t get on board with the Law of the Land is disheartening.

However, I can understand why the Court is confused. The Obama regime called the fine a penalty and then a tax and then a penalty and then a tax and Obama has argued both sides of the mandate. He argued one way as a candidate and another after he won (he was against it before he was for it). This is well illustrated in this video:

This very plainly shows that Obama argued one thing when he wanted you to vote for him (which many of you foolishly did) and then another way after he suckered you into voting for him. This is probably the kind of deception he was signaling when he told the Russians to give him space because he would have more flexibility after the election. Imagine how he could really screw us over when he does not have to worry about reelection…

Like I indicated, it is too early to tell and we really won’t know for sure until the ruling comes out in June but the talking heads were very sure that today was a bad day for the government. The Obama media were all sweating bullets, NPR, CNN, and the rest were in disbelief.

They are already writing the mandate off.

Next up is the severability. If they overturn the mandate will they trash the entire law or just the mandate? There is no severability clause so the entire thing should go but it is unlikely they will do that.

What does it mean? If they only throw out the mandate the other parts of the law will cause private insurance companies a lot of headaches and the Democrats would love nothing more than to have that happen so they could push for a single payer system. Many on the left say that Obama wins either way but I am not so sure.

If it is upheld then it will cause more Republicans to go to the polls to vote in people who will overturn it.

If only the mandate is overturned then Republicans will work just as hard to vote people in to get rid of the rest.

If it is completely overturned then all the people in Congress who voted for this will be painted as people who forced unconstitutional legislation down our throats and the deals and bribes will be brought to bear on them in the election.

In any event, the last two scenarios will cause a lot of Democrats heartburn as they worry about how it will affect their jobs…

It looks now like it might have been a bad idea for Obama to insult the justices during his State of the Union address. It certainly looks like his vote against John Roberts to be on the Court was unwise.

Not that the judges would hold a grudge…

But who would blame them?

UPDATE: The Daily Mail points out much of the same…

UPDATE 2: Kagan helping Soclitor General One wonders if she was not really arguing the case for the government…

Cave canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: lies, mandate, Obama, obamacare, overturn, supreme court, unconstitutional