The road to PC police Hell was paved with good White Guilt intentions. The Road from ObamaGates Hell was paved by Obama’s election.

The fact of the election of a Black man by an overwhelmingly Caucasian nation purges the long misplaced white guilt and with it, indulgences for ObamaGates race cards.

For at least the past 25 years, most Americans have been living a post-racial life. Unfortunately, most of the Americans in the Press, Academia, Hollywood and the Democratic Party haven’t joined us and too many in the Republican Party have lived in fear of being branded racists by the PC police, and so, the majority have been silenced.

The effect of the election of Barack Obama is too end the silence in the face of blacks’ acting the fool and their race hustling apologists of all hues.

My first column in the dead-tree MSM with the Charlotte Observer challenged whites to move beyond white guilt and to treat blacks as equals by holding them to the same standards of behavior as they would other whites.

Sgt. Crowley, his racially diverse colleagues, Republicans, Bill Cosby and Juan Williams refused to indulge the childish behavior of Harvard Professor Henry Gates and were repelled by President Obama’s racial profiling, i.e bigotry against whites and the police.

Crowley refused to apologize; fellow officers of all major racial groups vouched for his character; a black female officer and Obama voter vowed never to vote for him again; many Republicans eschewed the usual “on the one hand, on the other hand” beltway gobbledygook; and Bill Cosby denounced Obama’s uninformed playing of the race card. Juan Williams called the President a liar.

It takes some level of courage to publicly challenge a President that stands between his (banker) enemies and the pitchforks!

The presumption of guilt against whites is impossible to maintain in the first nation in  history to elect a minority to its highest office, and given the stakes of war and peace and one’s wallet, the days of lip-biting indulgence of leftist racial BS are over!

How dare you not recognize me

The Professor’s face is well-known to the elites in Cambridge, Mass., and C-Span policy wonks. He imagines his visage must be venerated in all the homes of his Harvard hometown. He also thinks the vulgar rap lyrics of 2LiveCrew are the 20th Century equivalent of William Shakespeare reincarnated in Robert Burns’ body, but I digress.

The eminent “scholar” resorted to yo’ mama dozens when the protector of his property dared not recognize him, despite the fact that the chiseling of Gates bust had only just begun at Mount Rushmore…

Rev Wright’s G-D KKK America and Michelle’s down right mean country

I read Obama’s two biographies; understood the obvious import of the 20-year pew-parked butt and learned in the alternative media of his dismissal of voter intimidation charges against New Black Panther Party thugs in Philly, so I wasn’t shocked at Mr. Barack Too Cool for School’s racial profiling of a white cop.

Barack Hussein Obama is an angry at White America, middle aged man. Period.

Pinocc-ear-o

And he is increasingly seen as a liar by more and more Americans post non-Stimulus bill and health care bill surprises.

Moreover, given his nomination of a Sonia Sotomayor that denied earned promotions to white and Hispanic firefighters because they weren’t black, and given even liberals’ revulsion at the thought of being denied advancement due to their race or gender, the President is increasingly being seen for the angry, leftist he is.

He and Sotomayor are out of step with whites and blacks that are weary of rolling their eyes in silence at the ridiculous court manufactured concepts of “disparate impact”, “institutional” racism, and diversity, as excuses for American self loathing.

Do we want to catch burglars or not?

I cringe when I listen to liberals bemoan the suggestion that criminal suspects not be fully and accurately described so that they can be apprehended. General Honore had it right with the media after Katrina and it applies to the race hustling left: They are stuck on stupid.

Oh yes, there is huge hole in Manhattan and 3000 are dead. Yes, we saw 18 guys that were, variously 5 feet 8 inches to 6 feet 2 inches in height; weighing from 170-220 pounds; with short well coiffed hair.

Go get ‘em! Oh, what color were they? Why, what good would that do in capturing them?

Stupid! Call it stupid. Don’t fear the PC police.

Handcuffs

The President and others bemoan the fact that Yo’Mama Gates was handcuffed? Does Obama and the left not understand that most police departments long ago adopted policies of handcuffing all those arrested for the very reason of not wanting to be accused of favoritism based on, among other things…race!

Wonder if Gates will have to miss his next hectoring session at the National Press Club due to wrist injuries?

Please!

Americans have no more patience for blacks acting the fool. If OJ gets paroled tomorrow and kills another blond woman and a thin white man, there will be no more silence if blacks  with glazed over eyes claim the blood was from a rare T-bone. We will call them fools this time. I actually did the first time.

Treating a group like children for 40 years, as the the Left, Democratic Party, Media, Academia and the Press have, will produce child like actors named Gates and we will be saddled with them for a time. But that these incidents occur doesn’t define if we are a post-racial society or not.

How We the People react decides that verdict.

And don’t confuse America with its pathetic press.

America needed the JFK style Affirmative action that sought out qualified blacks and many whites needed to be shamed into changing, but it was never right for courts and the government to construct legal fictions and impose such change.

We the People did the job just fine in spite of the Left.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Recent history showed we couldn’t even trust a GOP Congress under Bush to control government spending. The past century of history reveals the myth of the conservative blue dawg Democrat.

Blue dawgs are mostly drawl and that’s all when it comes to final votes on major legislation, and yet, they are now Americans’ only hope to avoid, at minimum, a near decade long Great Recession prolonged by a government take over of the 1/6 of the economy that is health care.

A yellow dawg democrat is one that would vote for a democrat even if he were a yellow dog. Blue dogs are democrats from mostly conservative districts that vote republican for President, and claim to be fiscal conservatives, but whose main claim to fame has been to advocate tax hikes to pay for the liberal welfare state and pork for their districts.

We are told there are 52 such hounds in Nancy Pelosi’s House kennel and yet only 8 House members of all species voted against the $780B stimulus; only 2 against the $4T budget outline with a $1.8T deficit in 2009-10 and none against the $480B Omnibus Spending bill.

Did we mention drawl and that’s all?

Millions of yellow dawgs chose to board the elephant in the 80s after too many kicks in the head from the donkey; even more fled to Newt in the 90s; yours truly fled from Gore in 2000; and now this message from an even more recent convert:

Republican Ralph Hall knows a lot about politics, having been first elected a county judge when Harry Truman was president. Now the 86-year-old is a member of Congress from east Texas, a job he’s held the past 29 years. Yesterday, he stood up at a conference of GOP House members to issue some words of warning about the health care bill they’re now debating.

He reminded them that he had served for nearly a quarter century in the House as a Democrat before switching parties in 2004, so he knows the mindset on the other side of the aisle. He warned fellow Republicans not to pay too much attention to the opposition to radical health care reform from moderate Blue Dog Democrats.

“In the end, Speaker Pelosi will break them,” he told his colleagues. She will use every tactic available, he said, to force wayward Democrats to vote for “her bill,” much as she did on cap-and-trade legislation. Another Republican who had often tangled with GOP House Speakers agreed, saying that Speaker Pelosi is “far more willful” than Newt Gingrich or Dennis Hastert were in their day.

This rooster recently heralded the possible dawn of Blue Dawg democrat power based mainly on a group of 8-12 Senate democrats led by Evan Bayh (D-IN) who have blocked the energy tax assault on the poor and middle class that ObamaDems call cap and trade. Scores less than 52 democrats voted against the energy bill in the House in a vote that the Speaker manipulated to win by a few votes while giving “cover” to all the drawls that needed same proving:

DeVine’s Law: To Be a Democrat is to empower the left

So, while it is heart warming to see some democrats blocking ObamaPelosi’s non-health care bill in committee and making statements of revulsion with same on television, I feel like I have seen this movie before and that the ending was not a Mr. Smith Goes to Washinton moment. In this Capra classic Claude Rains shoots Jimmy Stewart and successfully covers up the murder.

But all hope is not lost, especially if one looks to the now bluer than in the past Tar Heel State where a recent Raleigh News and Observer story stumbled into the following reality concerning budget negotiations:

Democrats generally agree that tax increases are needed…

Heard that song before? It was number one on the charts during the last Great Democrat Recession called the 70s Show.

And yet, after months of advocating tax increases alomg with her Democrat majority pals in the state legislature, the newly elected on the coattails of Barack Obama Governor Beverly Perdue rejected a general income tax increase on all taxpayers. Of course, the rejection was accompanied by the class warfare rhetoric and a wink that tax increases on “the rich” would be acceptable. South Carolina and Alabama may soon have an even greater influx of this demographic from NY and NC, but I digress.

The main point is that when We the People assert ourselves, like we did on amnesty for illegals two years ago and cap and trade two months ago, and like the Tar Heels above, we can tame even rabid tax and spend blue dawgs and keep them from going yellow with cowardice.

The blue dawgs are already being threatened with “floor votes” publicly. I can’t imagine what is happening behind closed doors, but some of the dems’ drawls are sounding a bit higher in tone. Liberals do, after all, favor “fixing” canines and males of all species.

Imagine though, using a floor vote as a threat? Boggles the mind, so fearful are the ObamaDems of what the public already knows about the health care bill and what will be found out during an August recess during which time the dog’s ears will be prickling with the sound of their voting masters. They fear scared dogs in September won’t be as fearful of Master Pelosi’s Clyburn Whip after We the People taming.

But the seeds of We the People’s defeat at the blue dawgs’ paws are already becoming clear to observers of past cavings, and they lie in the possible “fixes” of specific provisions already highlighted in the alternative media. The danger is the all too frequent exercise, even at times with republicans in starring roles, of supposed antidotes for specifically toxic provisions highlighted in the press that ignore much more dangerous provisions elsewhere and which doesn’t even fi the problem intended.

Diversions that could give Blue Dogs cover

Few private insurance plans cover abortions unless to save the life of the mother. The total amount of money spent on abortions, despite the over 49 million babies killed since 1973, is put a drop of water in the ocean of the money spent on health care.

It has been pointed out that ObamaCare does not prohibit taxpayer-funded abortions. Of course, it should prohibit same, but even if it did the greatest evils of the overall bill that threaten the elderly with pain pills instead of life-prolonging surgery; the private insurance industry overall; and the long-term health of a medical cost-burdened economy would remain.

Greatest dangers are public (government) “option and broad grants of authority to bureacracy

So long as any health care legislation includes a mandated public “option”, it is clear that the government insurance would become the only option within a few years at most as employers substitute the cheaper version sold by a profit-loss immune Big Brother.

Moreover, so long as the executive branch, government agencies and/or panels of medical experts retain vast authority as to the specifics of which patients qualify for what treatements at what age, the public would be buying a pig in poke and essentially giving up their present rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness via health care purchases in a free market in favor of handing over their lives and Liberty to an all powerful Big Government:

Isn’t the point of the Democrats‘ push to reform the health care system based on establishing health care as a right?  That’s what the politicians say of course.  But in reality the result will be the exact opposite.

Part of the problem is that most Americans don’t understand what a right is.  A right is not a guarantee that the government (i.e., other people) will provide you something for free.  We have the right to engage in religious expression, but that doesn’t mean that the government pays for the construction of the church.  We have the right to peacefully assemble, but the government doesn’t promise to supply your transportation.  You have the right to keep and bear arms, but don’t expect the government to provide you with a free firearm and bullets.  You have the right to free speech, but the government won’t grant you free radio or TV air time.

What makes something a right is not whether the government can force somebody else to pay for it.  What defines something as a right is whether the government can or cannot prohibit you from doing it. (President Obama notoriously called these “negative liberties”.) If the government can’t stop you from doing it, then it’s a right.

When Poison Pills are the cure

We the People must insist upon reading the government insurance company’s policy provisions before buying it. No medical experts like the current Most Powerful Man on the Planet who slanders pediatricians prescribing organ removals for profit and who coldly tells the daughters of pain-free centenarians to take pain pills sans pacemakers as they await the inevitable ticker malfunction.

Let’s see the treatment schedule first. Surely your experts are better than those that stopped and 572 laws in Leviticus?

Insist that President Obama, Michelle and the girls, all members of Congress and their families and all government employees take the government option as a condition for passage.

Then, after ObamaCare dies with the passage of that amendment maybe we can get down to some real reform that would open up interstate commerce to a free nationwide insurance competition and make government only a safety net insurer of catastrophic illness.

Auto insurance doesn’t cover oil changes, after all, and just because a Democrat feigns affinity for Huckleberry Hound doesn’t mean the blue isn’t the same hue as the blue in Obama and Pelosi’s shades in Chicago and Fisco.

There are a few real conservatives among the pack like Parker Griffith of Northern Alabama, but no where near 52, and so only if We the People will kill ObamaCare, will it be killed.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Updates and original publication @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

For the first time ever, GOP Judiciary Committee veteran will vote against a Supreme Court nominee

South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham is now the leader of a, thankfully smaller, Republican group of Senators equating the consequences of presidential elections with repeal of advise and consent clause and fealty to Oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution.

When Justice David Souter announced his retirement in May, this column made clear our loathing of past GOP Supreme court nomination strategies led by the former Chairman or Ranking Member (depending on which party held the majority in the U.S. Senate) Orrin Hatch (R-UT), pictured, and our hope that the clear failure of those past strategies coupled with the decision of the GOP caucus to elevate Alabama’s Jeff Sessions to Ranking Member on the committee would un-Hatch Hatch.

Cockstradamus’ wish and prognostication came true yesterday:

For the first time in his 33-year Senate career, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch will vote against a Supreme Court nominee.

Hatch decided Friday to oppose Sonia Sotomayor when her nomination comes before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. Sotomayor, who would become the high court’s first Hispanic justice, is widely expected to easily win confirmation in the next few weeks.

“I reluctantly, and with a heavy heart, have found that I cannot support her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Hatch said in a statement. “Although Judge Sotomayor has a compelling life story and dedication to public service, her statements and record were too much at odds with the principles about the judiciary in which I deeply believe.”

Of course, the statements and records, respectively of Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were ever bit as much at odds with the principle of fealty to the Constitution; judicial restraint and every other principle about the judiciary that the senior Senator deeply believes in, as are those of Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

But Hatch famously later bragged on the 80-90% GOP votes for those liberal activists on the grounds that “elections have consequences” and that President Clinton’s nominees were “well qualified” based on the “gold standard” of ABA recommendations. No matter that the ABA’s gold was given to anyone that could walk and chew gum at the same time; hadn’t been disbarred and were never discovered in various states of undress with live boys or dead girls (or vice versa).

The mantle of Hatch’s past diminution of the consequences of the elections of senators; their Oath to uphold the Constitution and their equally as significant Advise and Consent role in the seating of federal judges and Supreme Court justices has been taken up now by the senior Senator of the Palmetto State, despite his withering cross-examination of President Barack Obama’s nominee to the point of uncomfortable embarrassment with her disembling:

The Palmetto State’s senior senator excoriated Sonia for her blatantly bigoted brunch staple that her sex and ethnicity made her more likely to render better decisions that white men, reminding her that had he made a similar statement he would be bum-rushed from elected office.

Graham recounted the approbation of a fellow 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals jurist for her summary dismissal of the claims of Frank Ricci and other non-black firefighters that the U.S. Supreme Court reversed.

Finally, the Republican lawyer painstakingly and repeatedly questioned the former board member/fund raiser concerning her Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund’s civil court advocacy that the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of slavery requires taxpayers to pay for the abortions of poor women.

Yet, despite all that, Senator Graham (R-SC) announced he would vote for her. To date, only four other Republicans have announced for Sotomayor, and reports indicate at least 75% of the Republican caucus will vote against her, despite her sterling personal story.

This is quite a turn around from the failed Hatch strategy that eased two liberal activists on to the court; failed to adequately defend Robert Bork from character assassination; and failed to draw clear lines of distinction for voters on the dramatic differences between the parties on the rule of law.

Polls indicate that the public already were repulsed by Sotomayor’s racist statements even before the hearings and with the anticipated strong GOP vote against her, it is just possible that for the first time in two centuries, the courts could well be an issue in an election campaign in 2010.

Thanks to the new Sessions strategy (that Cockstradamus also DeVined) Sotomayor and Obama’s brand of race-based injustice will be hung around the ObamaDems’ necks.

[This column is the latest in a series, all parts of which may be accessed here.]

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Updates and original publication @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Human nature is leap challenged and that’s the way it is

My most vivid, earliest memories include the clippety-clop sound of JFK’s horse-drawn caisson; the headline of the Spartanburg Herald reporting the assassination of MLK; and gazing at the Moon with my younger brother minutes after Walter Cronkite’s reporting of Neil Armstrong’s small step onto the Lunar surface.

I remember being baptized three years later and looking back 40 years later think the only truly positive giant leap for mankind was nearly 2000 years ago by God made flesh and baptized, who, in love made correction possible from the deadly giant leap from Eden.

Leaps in context

By 1969 Mama, Daddy, Pop, Nana, Sunday School and Grammar school had imparted a clear world view of good and evil; that the greatest commandments are to love God and to love one’s neighbor as oneself; and a heroic view of my country as the greatest force for good this side of eternity that the world had yet produced.

In 2009, after engaging in some adult evil; being betrayed by many men that were among the greatest beneficiaries of America’s goodness, including technological leaps; and after realizing that probably the greatest leap for mankind since Calvary occurred in 1776, the impartations of 40 years ago stand immutable.

Despite Og’s invention of the wheel; Rome’s viaducts; and Glenn’s orbit, a communist slayed Camelot’s Arthur and an Islamist slayed Sir Lancelot. The next year the Star Spangled Banner was planted in the Sea of Tranquility.

The face of Columbia Broadcasting met us in our living rooms to mourn our beloved dead and marvel at American man’s exceptionalism. But that face and other faces within the limited spectrum of broadcast television and, later, like-minded faces on cable TV also betrayed the heroic vision of 1776.

But, I no longer blame Uncle Walter.

Rather, I blame Adam, Eve, technology, affluence, cowardice and us all.

Technological, accidental journalistic monopolization

Before television, the press was on paper and than also, on the radio, with numerous choices, mostly partisan, that competed for customers based on accuracy and like-mindedness. One’s objectivity and reliability had to be earned.

The limited spectrum of the technological leap of television changed the relationship between the press and the public, and not at all totally for the good.

Walter Cronkite is rightfully respected as a great reporter, journalist, newsman and good man, but his out-sized reputation as the most trusted man in America, who was singularly capable of telling us the way it was, was not deserved. No man would ever deserve that appellation and attendant power. Had there been no Cronkite, the image of some other man would have been elevated to God-like status by the flickering magic boxes manufactured by Maxnavox.

We are told that the 1950s-1970s were the golden age of objective journalism. We were told of the McCarthy “era”; that the assassinations of the Kennedys were due to an “environment of hate” fostered by right wingers; and that Reagan was a fool.

We weren’t told that the Democrats’ abandonment of the then-victorious South Vietnamese in 1975 was responsible for the slaughter of millions of Hmong, Vietnamese and Cambodians.

We were betrayed by the vaunted “objective” monopolistic anchors with a monolithic world view. We would have been similarly betrayed by any such small group of the accidentally revered, even with a different world view.

But we deal with what actually was, and what actually happened is that Americans were made to feel ashamed of their past and guilty for their prosperity. We were betrayed by the greatest beneficiaries of the prosperity, none of whom ever chose to give it back.

The Giant Leap of 1776

Most all of world history before 1776 was one of tyrannical oppression and the constant struggle for enough food to eat. America is an aberration but it seems too many of the golden, objective era of journalism never understood why. They forgave all other cultures their greater sins and blamed America for what we did or what we didn’t do that caused or “allowed” the evils of others. We were betrayed.

Most of the great superpowers of the past were nations that enslaved and raped other nations.

America ended slavery and has liberated most of the world. America has had the highest standard of living since 1830. Today, the world has free trade and our poor are obese.

How could we afford all this? How can we at once have our poor live better than the Kings of the past and afford a military that can defeat the megalomanicas of evil? One need only look at what the Founders wrought with Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness as unalienable rights. The fact that man could rule himself and keep the fruits of his labor and private property that would give him the incentive to take risks to create wealth. The moral heart of capitalism that requires that the first customer be satisfied if one wishes to sell widget #2.

Yet, for too long we were told that we were evil, greedy people. We were betrayed.

John F. Kennedy loved liberty and hated communism, the then latest incarnation of man’s conceit from the Garden to “be as Gods” and thus a prevention of giant leaps for mankind. Surely our fealty to Christ has something to do with the numerous large leaps, even if not giant, to fashion a society the  huddled masses of the world yearn to occupy?

We were betrayed

Yet, that objective media for too long heaped scorn on our public acknowledgments of faith. We were betrayed.

I don’t pine for the days before Cable TV, Rush Limbaugh and the Drudge Report. I also don’t blame Uncle Walter for the sins inherent in the journalism world he inherited. He did as well as any one man could have done with that inordinate power and surely loved America.

But we are better off with the vast competition in the press today. Dan Rather couldn’t pawn off the forgeries on Bush National Guards, for instance.

I am most proud of America when it has helped others, as in pre-TV World War II or when Reagan used the technological superiority of America to free the non-free world and tear down the Berlin Wall. Those were giant leaps. Yes, technology helped, but that technology was made possible in the first instance by the 1776 recognitions of man’s nature and by the courage to act on Christ’s moral imperatives for our neighbors.

I would love to see some giant leaps for mankind in Israel, Iran and Honduras. Some leaps that recognize good and evil; loves our neighbors enough to spurn a fawning press; and again gazes upon the Shining City on a Hill as the last, best hope for man.

Update here

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Yes Lindsey, elections have consequences, including those of U.S. Senators and not just Presidents. And shouldn’t the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, its amendments and the Oath to uphold it have consequences too?

[This is part three of DeVine Law series during Sotomayor nomination hearings. Parts one, two and columns prior to the hearings are here.]

I speak, of course, of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and the impending advise and consent vote on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be an associate justice on the Supreme Court.

No senator better exposed the likelihood that President Barack Obama’s first nominee to the nation’s highest court would not abide by the required Oath to uphold the Constitution that he described as “fatally flawed.”

Latina wiser than white and male Latino firemen raising funds for 13th Amendment required tax-payer funded abortions

The Palmetto State’s senior senator excoriated Sonia for her blatantly bigoted brunch staple that her sex and ethnicity made her more likely to render better decisions that white men, reminding her that had he made a similar statement he would be bum-rushed from elected office.

Graham recounted the approbation of a fellow 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals jurist for her summary dismissal of the claims of Frank Ricci and other non-black firefighters that the U.S. Supreme Court reversed.

Finally, the Republican lawyer painstakingly and repeatedly questioned the former board member/fund raiser concerning her Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund’s civil court advocacy that the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of slavery requires taxpayers to pay for the abortions of poor women.

Only a “yea” vote “let’s her off the hook”

I defended Senator Graham from charges that he “let her off the hook” on the above, and especially the “slavery” question, given that he didn’t produce a Perry Mason-like confession of some sort. But what I saw in the exchange was a very uncomfortable, yet effective Graham exposing a programmed liar denying knowledge of the obvious, over and over again.

Subsequent to that exchange, Byron York of the Washington Examiner uncovered documentation of then Lawyer Sotomayor’s intimate involvement in the case, which were admitted into the record by Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

Yet, incredibly, despite the strong record established by Senator Graham and his other GOP colleagues on the Committee, it appears that he (and at least three other already announced Republicans) will, at last truly let her off the hook by voting to confirm the nomination.

All causes are not created equal

In an interview on Fox News Channel after his final questioning of Judge Sotomayor, Graham was asked to compare the Democrats’ objections to Justice Samuel Alito for his brief college membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton.

Graham rightly objected to the Democrats’ guilt by association attempts to tar Alito with statements by other alumni to which the nominee never expressed assent nor which were ever presented as group policy.

Yet, Graham takes the bait of the interviewer to make the following sweeping statement with respect to Sotomayor’s slavery definition (approx. minute 41:10:

“…But I’m not going to disqualify a lawyer for embracing causes I disagree with. I would have loved to be a lawyer on the other side of that case showing that it is a bad act to force taxpayers to pay for abortions…”

But Lindsey, you are “on the other side” now! And by “other side” I do not mean Republican vs. Democrat.

Your “cause” is the Constitution, including the Civil War Amendments written in the blood of your South Carolina ancestors, and the likelihood the nominee will uphold the Oath. She would have the power to “interpret” the word slavery in accordance with her “cause” that would besmirch and insult the deaths of American soldiers in The War Between the States, and most horribly those held in human bondage across the Fruited Plain.

This was not a case where Lawyer Sotomayor was hired by a group to defend them in a criminal court, nor even as a Plaintiff in a civil case. At least in the former case, one would have a defensible excuse absent otehr evidence of her fealty to causes anathema to the cause of Liberty.

But no, in this cause, she is the Plaintiff.

You go on to say on FNC that she her judicial record doesn’t reveal an activist judge (how could it unless she were a masochist given that she is bound by precedent) but that you were most “concerned” by her statements (see Wise Latina; judges making public policy; and basing decisions on European public opinion and foreign law).

You are rightly concerned with her public statements. They make the case against her confirmation as well. But in the matter of the PRLDF’s slavery re-definition case, you have the greater statement of her time and money and work to raise money to re-define the Constitution! Now that’s a statement!

But since she is a “lawyer embracing a cause you disagree with” you can’t disqualify her? Maybe Rush Limbaugh should replace your “Vice-President (for John McCain)” and Senator “Grahamnesty” nicknames in favor of “Non-Sequi-Sena-tur”.

Would no “cause” be vile enough for a lawyer to embrace to cause you not to embrace them? Does the term “advise and consent” mean so little to you?

Deference as unilateral disarmament

But Graham’s incoherence reaches new heights when he conflates rulings based on the “heart” with “ideology” and then broadly re-defines and demonizes judicial philosophy as ideology.

Graham argued that Obama had voted against Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito because they differed with him on ideology, and that going by that standard, he would not be inclined to support the presumably far more liberal Sotomayor.

“He used a standard, I think, that makes it nearly impossible for a person from the opposite party to vote for the nominee,” said Graham.

“When I look at her record, her ideology, I’m deeply troubled,” he added.

Ok, so he is deeply troubled by her ideology but objects to an Obama standard because it inhibits the appointment of nominees due to differing party ideologies.

In his FNC interview he declares that it would be “disastrous for the country” to apply Obama’s standard.

Lindsey, what has been disastrous for the country have been the appointment of justices that embrace an ideological judicial philosophy that the Democratic Party embraces that views the Constitution as an impediment to overcome through rhetorical flourishes as they carry out Obama-desired fundamental changes absent ratification by We the People.

In other words LG, not all ideologies are equal. As National Review exclaims in objecting to a Washington Post editorial calling for GOP unilateral disarmament; “It’s unreasonable for the Post to expect Senate Republicans to sign off on a nominee where there are legitimate questions for the sake of a one-sided comity.”

Ideology vs. Intellect, Charater and Temperament

Incredibly, Graham’s concern for an ideology that legalized the killing of millions of the unborn pales in comparison to his concern for the feelings of interns, pages, lawyers before the court and his fellow justices:

In his post-meeting news conference Graham also raised questions about Sotomayor’s temperament. He said that while she was friendly in the meeting, he could not simply ignore reports from other lawyers she’s dealt with that she has a fiery temper.

“I think she does have the intellectual capacity to do the job,” Graham said. “But there’s a character problem. There’s a temperament problem that they — during the time they’ve had to be a judge, that they were more of an advocate than an impartial decider of the law. And I’ve got to find out, in my own mind” about her temperament.

Of course she has the intellectual capacity. It has always been a red herring conceit of the elites to suggest that the Constitution is written in some code only Yale and Harvard graduates and Nicholas Cage can discern.

Then, he conflates “character” with “temperament” after glossing over the real character issue inherent in an ideology that allows one to view the supreme law of the land as a “living” document that they can re-write over the objections of super-majorities of We the People in Constitutional Conventions, Both Houses of Congress and/or State Legislatures.

The urgency for “Non-Sequi-Sena-tur” is whether a Justice might have a bad temper? Would that more Republican Senators had some righteous indignation that caused them to lose their tempers as The Constitution is shredded by liberal judges appointed by Democrats.

Nomination and the consequences of the next election

Finally, let us return to the Washington Post’s glee with Graham’s un-Hatching of the old strategy we hoped had been buried:

Most important, he acknowledged that elections do, indeed, have consequences. Mr. Graham may yet vote against confirmation for Judge Sotomayor. But if he does, it seems likely to be on the merits as he views them and not as a ploy for political gain.

Senators don’t owe presidents favorable votes on their nominees. But they do owe the president, the nominee and the American people a vote based on an honest assessment of the nominee’s qualities and qualifications.

In my lifetime Republicans have never used Supreme Court nominations for political gain. Democrats nearly always do. The merits of the nominee’s qualifications oil down to whether she can be trusted to uphold, rather than re-write the Constitution, as the other Democrats on the Court routinely do, and which President Obama and his party advocate.

Its about ideology Senator Graham, not whether the lawyer for the Appellant in her first case is rudely dressed down.

Your fear of disaster should Republicans and Democrats never vote for nominees of the other side is misplaced. What matters is the Constitution. The worse result of the stalemate you fear is that vacancies on the court go unfilled. So what?

Wouldn’t it be great for the American people to finally take notice of a party that wishes to make law for life no matter what they believe? Wouldn’t it be grand if, finally, the liberals are called to account for their subterfuge on an issue so vital to the nation yet so elusive in holding to account?

The table is set for just such a public epiphany. The grossly racist statements of Sotomayor caused her approval rating to drop 30 points even before the hearings so that all Americans, including women and Hispanics, oppose her nomination.

Americans don’t like the race grievance spoils system that renders their hard work a nullity. Not only do we have Obama’s empathy statement and Soto’s racist statements, but we also have a real live case in which she applied her racist views against deserving of promotion firefighters because they weren’t black.

We can hang Sotomayor around the Democrats’ necks in the 2010 and 2012 election.

The hanging will be more powerful if more, rather than less understand that future elections have consequences as well, and that we can’t abide more Sotomayors that will re-define slavery to enslave us all with their vile ideology.

Pat Buchanan spells out 2010 strategy with justifications.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Supreme Court nominee flees from President Obama’s “empathy” standard and her own record

Update - Part three is here

What if John Roberts had declared in his nomination hearing for Chief Justice of the United States that rather than being an umpire-like judge calling balls and strikes, he intended pitch? Does anyone believe that President George W. Bush wouldn’t have immediately withdrawn the apostate before the Senate consented to appoint him the starter on opening day?

Obama’s Gold Standard for Judging: Empathy

Long time constitutional law professor, Barack Obama declared, on the occasion of his announcement of Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination, and many times over a long period of time that the most important qualification for a judge is that they have sufficient “empathy” for the poor and minorities and that a judge must follow what is “in their heart” when the law and the facts don’t lead them to a just result.

Judge Sotomayor herself has, variously and over the past 20 years, expressed similar views:

“I am willing to accept that we who judge must not deny differences resulting from experiences and heritage, but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.”

Yet, in response to questioning from Senator Jon Kyle (R-AZ), she denied believing her own words:

No, sir. That’s — I don’t — I wouldn’t approach the issue of judging in the way the president does. He has to explain what he meant by judging.

Sotomayor was standing less than three feet away from the President (pictured above) when he declared she was most qualified to be his chief empathizer on the nation’s highest court. She appears not to be hearing-challenged. She had expressed similar views on empathy in the past.

Why the denial at the nomination hearing of her previously expressed views? And why not a peep from the Nominator-in-Chief?

I would hope that the Steelers would beat the Gators

On at least seven occasions, Judge Sotomayor stated the following or words of a similar construction:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

I am unaware of any non-castrated former white males that have lived the life of a woman. Not sure what form of Michael Jackson-like skin treatment could also infuse Latino ethnicity. But I do know a lot of wise Caucasians, Blacks, Asians and male Latinos with rich experiences.

The Democratic chairman of the committee, Patrick Leahy (D-VT) when asked on Sunday about the nominee’s “wise Latina” remark, expressed his hope that Republicans judge Sotomayor on what is said in the hearings. Now we know why.

Apparently we can only know what the words of liberal Democrats mean when they are under Oath in judicial nomination hearing, as yesterday, under relentless questioning from the Ranking Member of the Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Sonia finally succumbed:

It was bad, because it left an impression that I believed that life experiences commanded a result in a case, but that’s clearly not what I do as a judge. It’s clearly not what I intended in the context of my broader speech, which was attempting to inspire young Hispanic, Latino students and lawyers to believe that their life experiences added value to the process.

I suspect that the white supremacists of past centuries also used such views to inspire their youth.

Fund-raising Puerto Rican PAC Board membership as slavery

The resume of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge is filled with references to her memberships in numerous womens’ and Hispanic organizations, with none more prominent than the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund (PRLDF). The nominee was extensively questioned about her participation in the political action committee. An excerpt:

GRAHAM: OK. Are you familiar with the position that the fund took regarding taxpayer-funded abortion? The briefs they filed?

SOTOMAYOR: No, I never reviewed those briefs.

GRAHAM: Well, in their briefs, they argued, and I will submit the quotes to you, that if you deny a low-income woman Medicaid funding, taxpayer funds, to have an abortion, if you deny her that, that’s a form of slavery. And I can get the quotes. Do you agree with that?

SOTOMAYOR: I wasn’t aware of what was said in those briefs. Perhaps it might be helpful if I explained what the function of a board member is and what the function of the staff would be in an organization like the fund.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) repeatedly tried to get Sotomayor to express her opinion on the PRLDF’s expansive definition of slavery, but all we “learned” was that this Wise Latina spent years raising money for an organization she knew next to nothing about?

Senator Leahy, other Democrat Senators and Sotomayor herself, when confronted with such extreme past statements and associations, repeatedly resort to directing sceptics to her record as an Appeals Court judge. But Appeals Court judges are bound by precedents of the Court on which she aspires to serve. That court is bound by no higher power save the Oath they take to uphold the Constitution and service during “good behavior.”

Sadly, Congresses have either approved of bad behavior or considered gross violations of the Oath to be good behavior, as it hasn’t impeached a judge for calling white, black based on a living Constitution judicial philosophy for over 200 years. So, if she can get four other justices to agree on the PRLDF’s definition of slavery, then it will be the law.

Accurate Quotations of Democrats as Defamation

So, what are we to believe, the plain and obvious meaning of Sotomayor’s statements, associations and record of the past twenty years or her characterizations of same over the past twenty hours of testimony?

The Democrats would have us apply the same standard we applied to the 20-year pew-parked butt in Reverend Wright’s Hate G-D America Church friend of unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. They would have us again be hear no evil, see no evil monkeys.

Judge Sotomayor has remained as coldly calm during her cross-examinations as her Empathy for Black Panther voter intimidators President. Earlier we rhetorically asked if a President Bush wedded to judges as umpires only would let a nomination go forward  if that nominee renounced umpiring. And of course he would not.

So, why doesn’t President Obama withdraw his supposed un-empathetic apostate? The answer is obvious. The typical liberal game that cries libel and slander when their obvious views are recited back to them.

They wink at each other knowing they have to obfuscate their views to pass muster when in the glare of public examination lest they ignite a firestorm across the Fruited Plain.

Their radical liberal views can’t stand the light of day, so they turn down the lights….and lie, and lie and lie.

Judge Sotomayor aka Toto-deny-or of her past, now plays Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas and John Roberts in an effort to wink her way to the bench.

But given her embarrassing deconstructions at the hands of relentless white male Senators I would not be surprised to see them in 2010 and 2012 campaign ads when Democrats, partially as a result of these hearings, are denied the opportunity to appoint more Toto-deny-ors that could define away more of their Liberty by calling it slavery.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Democrats should own race-based injustice label after Supreme Court nomination hearing

[For Update/Second DeVine Law report on Sotomayor hearing, see
Sotomayor as Toto-deny-or]

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution demands equal protection for all persons. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of a society based on character content judgments and supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination against individuals based on race or sex in a wide variety of areas in public life, including employment.

Monday’s start of the Senate hearing for President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace the retiring Justice David Souter presents the Republican Party and DeVine Gamecock Law (pictured) with a rare opportunity to expose the Democratic Party’s long-practiced opposition to a blindfolded Lady Justice in favor of race and gender based injustice, that they call “social justice”.

Blind Justice vs. Race/Sex-based Injustice

Given the starkly racist statements of Judge Sonia Sotomayor coupled with the replacement of Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, there is every reason to believe that the political landscape in 2010 and 2012 will finally include a more informed American electorate on the perils to their Liberty from Democratic party judicial nominees.

Homey don’t play dat

This is a hard issue to crystallize for voters, but it appears the sheer toxicity of the nominee’s “wise Latina” remark has already taken a dramatic toll on her reputation as the most recent Rassmussen poll recounts:

In a poll conducted May 26–27 Rasmussen found that likely voters wanted to confirm Sotomayor by the margin of 45% to 29%. This was an underwhelming margin, to be sure, given all the laudatory media coverage, and may have been an early warning sign that Sotomayor could be vulnerable.

A month later that 16-point advantage has disappeared. Rasmussen’s June 29–30 survey found that support for her confirmation has fallen 8 points, to 37%, while opposition has risen 10 points to 39%.

The cross tabs tell an interesting story. The biggest movement against Sotomayor comes from the following voter groups:

Women: In the May poll women supported Sotomayor’s confirmation 45% to 24%. Now they oppose it 31% for to 40% against. Feminists take note. That’s a dramatic, and unexpected, 30-point turnaround.

Age 30-39: In May this age group supported her confirmation by a two to one margin (49% to 24%). Now these 30-somethings oppose her promotion to the High Court – only 29% support her now while 47% oppose her – a decisive 43-point negative shift.

Independents: (Note: Rasmussen refers to unaffiliated voters as “other.” I’ll refer to them here as Independents.) In May, Independents gave Sotomayor about the same level of support as the country as a whole (41% to 29%); now they oppose her by more than a two-to-one margin, 23% to 49%, a 38-point turnaround for the worse.

By race: Though blacks still support her by a solid margin, 57% to 13%, that margin is down from 71% to 4% in May, a 23-point drop. Similarly, the racial group Rasmussen calls “other” (which presumably includes Hispanics and Asians) supported her 48% to 25% in May but now opposes her confirmation 32% to 43%, a negative swing of 34 points.

Rasmussen also picked up a negative movement in her favorability ratings. In May, a few more voters checked the “very favorable” box (20%) than the “very unfavorable” one (17%). By late June, she was upside-down on this important measure, with only 14% very favorably disposed toward her and 24% very unfavorably disposed.

What happened as Earth tilted past its Summer solstice? Americans learned of one of the hottest opinions of the first Hispanic nominee to the nation’s highest court:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

The vast majority of Americans are repelled by such bigoted ideas anathema to what America stands for, especially given what we have achieved to overcome our segregated past. The disgust is multiplied exponentially when such ideas are brought to bear against one’s ability to earn a living by working hard and playing by the rules.

Obama’s hubris and Over-Ricci

So it should come as no surprise that the Sotomayor is so unpopular given the revelation of her Second Circuit Court of Appeals vote to deny promotions to non-black firefighters earned via testing because no black firefighters passed the test.

Thankfully, the court to which Judge Sotomayor aspires reversed the Ricci case. Now the only question is whether the white dyslexic fireman will be “Borked” or subjected to another Democratic Party “high-tech lynching” ala Clarence Thomas, when he testifies.

Un-Hatched Sessions

The President surely knew the nominee’s record and racist statements but nominated her anyway. No doubt he was counting on a beleaguered GOP to resort to the old “Hatch” strategy that treats life-time appointees to the Third Branch of government like deputy Agricultural secretaries since “elections have consequences.”

But Jeff Sessions’ election to lead the opposition will also have a consequence as the junior senator from Alabama reveres the Constitution he and Supreme Court nominees swear an Oath to uphold more than ABA ratings and co-starring guest spots on Sunday Shows.

There will be no Hatch-like boasting years from now about near unanimous GOP votes for judicial activists like Sotomayor’s soulmates, Breyer and Ginsburg. Sessions has been eloquent in recent floor debate concerning the solemnity of the Oath and disqualifying judicial philosophies that treat the Constitution as no more binding than the European public opinion that the nominee has cited as proper authority for making policy from the bench.

The experienced trial lawyer that spend most weekends in Alabama instead of the Georgetown cocktail circuit knows how make witnesses own their own words in a very pleasant, Southern gentlemanly sort of way, and has the courage to do so.

Judicial activism defined

The Democratic chairman of the committee, Patrick Leahy (D-VT) when asked recently about the nominee’s “wise Latina” remark, expressed his hope that Republicans judge Sotomayor on what is said in the hearings.

This comment is quite revealing of the general modus operandi of Democrats as well as their “living Constitution” judicial philosophy that allow them to re-invent the world each day to suit their agenda.

In other words, they lie. In fact, most times when you hear them speak of how “smart” or “intelligent” is one of their own (Bill Clinton comes to mind), it is usually a euphemism for their ability to obfuscate their true positions, i.e. lie.

It takes a barrage of words to pass off oligarchical usurpations of power as constitutional, that is, when they even bother to mention the world’s oldest governing document. For just as they want Sotomayor judge solely by her hearing script explanations of her past rather than the plain meaning of her past utterances, so do they also exalt their modern, enlightened social preferences over the plain meaning of words ratified two centuries ago. Hence their denial and projection even over the meaning of the term “judicial activism”:

Anyone who believes that only “liberal” judges are “activists” should read Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent in last week’s Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder.

If an activist is a judge who wants to use the power of the courts to substitute his preference for the will of the people’s elected representatives, then Thomas fits the definition.

Astounding the new found liberal exaltation of the preferences for majorities given that their resort to judicial re-writings of the law was necessitated by their inability to persuade majorities to endorse their loony views, but I digress…or do I. Maybe the ObamaDem hubris and overreach is informed by their belief that the mainstream America that elected Obama has come around to their view. As we pointed out above, Rassmussen indicates another reality.

But we shouldn’t be surprised when a liberal defines judicial philosophies without any reference to the Nation’s Governing Document. For them, it is merely a obstacle they must navigate in imposing their policy preferences no matter is they subvert the will of super-majorities ratifying Constitutions and their amendments; referenda by We the People or statutes passed by legislators.

Judicial activism has one meaning and one meaning only: intentional subversion of the written law thru misinterpretations. It is the re-writing or amending of the Constitution from the bench, rather than via the required amendment process.

Finally we have a stark example of what liberals and Democrats have been doing to subvert the Rule of Law on an issue and in a forum in the fullness of time that promises to change the political landscape.

Even most liberals resent being denied the fruits of their hard earned labor. Most Americans are not racist and eschew race-based decisions. They can read the English language and had thought that Democrats and judges were as literate. They also revere the courts. But now, they catch a glimpse of what liberal judges mean by “interpret the law” as applied to a law they know well, i.e. the Constitution’s blood-drenched demand that the law be color blind.

ObamaDems are playing with fire and should soon learn the wisdom of their past stealth nominees as they get burned with an un-wise Latina.

And getting burned does not require that Sotomayor’s nomination be defeated. In fact, they would probably get charred less if she were defeated because then they could re-habilitate themselves a bit with a stealth nominee as a replacement that could denounce Sotomayor’s record.

No, the GOP understands that no matter who Obama nominates, they will rule the same from the bench. The burning, which appears to have already begun, is from the publicity of Sonia’s racist views and actions. The Democrats will finally reap the racial seeds of poison they have sown for the past 40 years.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed

Is the real coup in the Americas being engineered by the Secretary of State against a 3am challenged White House?

Three weeks ago Hillary Clinton spent 72 hours to finally convince the Non-Meddler in Chief to denounce the Islamist Junta in Iran for the violent repression of hundreds of thousands of voters protesting an obviously fixed Presidential “election.”

In the immediate aftermath of the election, President Barack Obama had rushed to make clear to Iran’s “Supreme Leader” that he was still anxious to deal with the tyrants no matter how they treated their own citizens.

Then two weeks ago, the President, newly liberated from meddlesome meddling bans abroad, rushed to echo Venezuela’s previously elected dictator, Hugo Chavez in denouncing the removal of the Honduran President from office by its Supreme Court and Attorney General as a “coup.” The military had carried out the order to stop the former President from wreaking havoc in the streets leading a mob in an illegal referendum to allow him to serve for life.

Now, it appears the grown-up former First Lady has rescued the boy president admirer of despots and American values once again:

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said today that Costa Rican president Oscar Arias will serve as international mediator in the Honduran political crisis.

Clinton made the announcement at the US state department after meeting privately with Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, who was forced into exile on 28 June. She said Zelaya as well as the politician who took over as Honduran leader, Roberto Micheletti, agreed to the Arias role as mediator. She said Arias would work on the problem from Costa Rica, not in Honduras.

Clinton noted that Arias won the Nobel peace prize in 1987 for helping broker an end to central America’s civil wars. She said she spoke to him earlier today.

“He is the natural person to assume this role,” she told reporters, adding that while the Obama administration continues to support the efforts of the Organization of American States (OAS) to resolve the crisis, she felt it was necessary to also name a specific mediator.

Clinton also called on all parties to refrain from further violence in an effort to resolve the political crisis.

She said her meeting with Zelaya was productive. “I reiterated to him that the United States supports the restoration of the democratic, constitutional order in Honduras,” she said.

Presidents Obama, Chavez and Castro had called for the restoration of Zelaya to the Presidency and for onerous OAS sanctions. But as the details of the affair came out, it has become clear that no military coup has occurred and that nearly the whole of the Honduran people would not abide the return to office of the real coup leader.

It appears to this observer that Secretary of State Clinton has produced a device for her President to save face via a mediation that merely supports the restoration of democracy, which is already effected given the return to civilian rule within minutes.

I would expect that the mediation will restore the former President’s cherished photos of Chavez and spare pajamas and urge the OAS not to punish the Banana industry for rejecting dictators for life.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

America was born 233 years ago last week with a Declaration of Independence signed in the City of Brotherly Love. Five Hundred years ago Friday a man was born to love God that helped define much of what embodies the independence that has defined the Shining City on a Hill and the greatest hope of man on Earth.

John Calvin must be ranked as one of the greatest men of the Second Millennium after the birth of Jesus Christ, and not just for his role in the Protestant Reformation of the Christian Church though that role alone was monumental.

Clearly, absent the reforms set in motion by Martin Luther’s 95 theses in Germany and Calvin’s Institutes in France, western civilization and its American jewel would likely not have achieved its paramount position in world history.

Contrary to revisionist historians hostile to the Christian Church, the Reformation enabled the Enlightenment from the Dark Ages with Judeo-Christian principles essential to a New World of tolerance and reason. The Church, not secularists, built the university.

Man, not the King, is entitled to the fruits of his labor*

Did Calvin want us to abstain from all material pleasures? He wrote that God “meant not only to provide for necessity but also for delight and good cheer. . . . Has the Lord clothed the flowers with the great beauty that greets our eyes, the sweetness of smell that is wafted upon our nostrils, and yet will it be unlawful for our eyes to be affected by that beauty, or our sense of smell by the sweetness of that odor?” He opposed any doctrine that “deprives us of the lawful fruit of God’s beneficence.”

Liberty under God trumps Church and State

Calvin also opposed doctrines that deprive us of political liberty. His understandings—that God-given laws are superior to those of the state, the king, and any other institution, and that individuals have direct access to the Bible, without dependence on pope or priest—are common now, but compare them to the political and theological theories fashionable before his time. In ancient times, pagan states revered leaders as semi-divine. Those who argued with such bosses were seen as deserving death. In medieval times, the interpretations of church officials often trumped the words of the Bible itself (which few people could read). They identified God’s kingdom on earth with a church monopoly, and hanged, burned, or decapitated some with other ideas.

Separation of Church and State and the Protestant Work Ethic

Calvin and other Reformation leaders, though, separated church and state while emphasizing the importance of believers working to lead the state. Calvin contended that, since God reigns everywhere, His followers should be entrepreneurs in every strategic institution, including government, civil society, commerce, media, law, education, the church, and the arts. This emphasis led directly to what has become known as the “Protestant ethic,” with its unleashing of individual initiative and its emphasis on hard work in purportedly secular areas. Many kinds of labor are equally worthy, Calvin argued, and those in charge of one activity should not dictate to others.

Anti-Statism

Calvin’s writings also had an implicit anti-statism. Since fundamental law comes from God, obeying the law means obeying God, not necessarily the state. Rebellion against an unlawful state act, led by “lesser magistrates” such as local leaders, is really a justifiable maintenance of true law. One Calvin disciple in 1579 wrote Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (”Vindication Against Tyrants”), which emphasized the limits of power.

It is a shame that the revolution in Calvin’s France nearly 300 years after his birth threw off respect for Creator endowed rights and that Europe in general has relegated God to equivalence with Zeus.

It is part of the Miracle at Philadelphia that America’s Founding Mothers and Fathers understood that only a moral and religious people could handle the freedom they set in motion that allowed for Independence not only from a King in England, but from the world history of tyranny itself, as TMR’s Pilgrim exclaims:

The Founders knew that ninety-nine percent of the human race has had to live out their lives under tyranny.

My prayer today is that We the People not succumb to the Siren Song of alluring Big Government that would deform Calvin’s reforms reflected in the Statue of Liberty his France gave to the New World.

*All quotes but final quote are from Marvin Olasky

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

“They want us to surrender.”

That is a direct quote from a mostly non-political observer I met during my recent vacation who confessed confusion with the mostly opposite takes of economic, foreign and other political events found on Fox News Channel vs the Drive-Bys (CNN, NBC, et al).

Yet, this non-ideological victim of the Great Recession reaches a quintessentially conservative conclusion succinctly reduced to layman’s terms: The ObamaDems want Americans to surrender their independence for dependence on government.

Stimulants vs. Depressants

What else can we conclude, given their obvious definition of stimulants that makes depressants obsolete?

During this gamecock’s respite from announcements of dawns, President Barack Obama and surrogates have floated a “second stimulus” trial balloon.”

A second stimulus? Yes, I remember the nomenclature of the first $780B bill accompanied by breathless demands for immediate passage lest unemployment reach as high as 7.9% before Christmas on the way to the eventual collapse of the American economy inherited from the Bush Administration. No mention of a Democratic Party-controlled Congress since 2007 that, with then Senator Obama’s votes, passed the budgets and the Fall of 2008 Housing/Credit Crunch bailout bill, but I digress.

The “Recovery Act” aka Stimulus was essential to arrest the “worst recession since the Great Depression” (never mind the worse numbers in 1981-2 about which we have more to say below) and, we were told, would “save or create” two million jobs. Congress passed it with but three Republican votes on a Friday. The President signed in 72 hours later. Guess “immediately” has a different meaning in Obama-tongue?

Weeks after the passage of the first stimulus, in an effort to stop the precipitous tanking of the stock market, the Obama Administration said that the economy wasn’t as weak as previously thought. Yet, in recent weeks the President follows Vice-President Joe Biden in blaming the skyrocketing unemployment rate and post-Bernanke printing press mini-rally, fall in the DOW on underestimating the severity of the inherited recession.

Dizzy yet?

Republicans warned at the time that the Stimulus would not live up to its name unless one meant to stimulate government by creating new, permanent federal bureaucrats to regulate what remains of a ravaged private sector and save state government jobs.

Republicans must quit saying the Stimulus has not created nor saved jobs. It has. The problem is that the jobs are those that taxpayers will have to fund in perpetuity and not the kinds that produce taxpayers with real jobs in the private sector.

Second? Obama has sold five bills as stimuli

That was the first stimulus, but we have been scared into accepting a monstrous budget that threatens to destroy the currency with a $1.8 trillion deficit in Obama’s first year as compared to Bush’s worst deficit of less than $450B. And oh yeah, the few shovel-ready jobs were mostly postponed until the second half of the next election year (curious) when the gardening implement more likely to be needed will be wheel barrows as inflation-adjusted wallets.

We have been told that the budget, the $400 Omnibus Spending bill, Cap and Trade (and tax and tax and tax…food and energy aka necessities that is a direct assault on the poor), and Nationalized Health Care are ALL necessary for recovery. Stimuli by other names stink the same, but do increase in price.

So, what do we conclude about the need for a second stimulus bill?

1980-82 vs. 2008-10: what works and what doesn’t

I’m waiting on the first one.

In 1980-1, Ronald Reagan inherited an economy from a filibuster-proof Democratic confess and President with inflation, unemployment and interest rates all worse that the one inherited by Obama from Bush and the Dems in 2008-9. President Reagan was able to get a real stimulus passed by a Democratic Congress. We know it was real because of the unprecedented, historic 25-year recovery that followed.

The private sector was stimulated by tax-rate and regulation cuts. Reagan’s party actually suffered Congressional losses in 1982 due to the drastic steps required to rein in inflation via restrictive monetary policy, but won a landslide in 1984 and later took over Congress for the first time in 40 years ushering in a conservative era that even Bill Clinton had to embrace.

It seems that the post-Clinton Democratic Party doesn’t prefer that “kind” of stimulus, as they have yet to even try to encourage small business formation. Rather, they demonize entrepreneurial producers and investors and continue policies that have kept them on strike, where they have been since the Democrats took over Congress in 2007 with promises not only of no more tax cuts but, rather, tax increases on those that actually stimulate the economy.

I favored the extension of unemployment benefits and would have loved to see more shovel-ready highway projects funded in 2009 to relieve suffering, but those provisions were a minuscule portion of the trillions in debt we have incurred to save and create jobs for government growthulus.

We need to repeal most of the five stimuli passed or proposed and pass a real stimulus that cuts tax rates and regulations; and which encourages expanded oil exploration and the building of oil refineries and nuclear power plants, all of which have been on hold for 31 years.

But then again, if ObamaDems were to do that, they would be surrendering their Utopian vision of a government-directed economy and populace to the old run of the mill, historically-tested means of stimuli that have come to be known as conservatism’s favored Free Market Capitalism.

The only question remaining is will the ObamaDems surrender due to election-prospect realities before too many recession-ravaged Americans surrender to Big Brother.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

What if, on January 21, 2001 instead of accompanying Vice President-Elect Dick Cheney to the Inauguration, Vice President Al Gore had led a large, angry mob in a march on Florida’s State Capitol building in Tallahassee to hand out Presidential survey election ballots ruled illegal by the Supreme Court? What if either of our impeached Presidents, Andrew Johnson or Bill Clinton, had lost their respective removal trials in the U.S. Senate but refused to vacate the White House and relinquish power?

Would police action to remove either Gore, Johnson or Clinton from office, pursuant to orders of the Supreme Court and at the direction of the Attorney General, whether or not carried out by U.S. Marshals, Florida State Troopers, the FBI, Secret Service or the U.S. Army, immediately after which the person next in the line of succession under the Constitution assumes the office of Chief Executive, be considered a coup?

Merriam-Webster defines a coup d’etat as:

a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics ; especially : the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group

President of the United States, Barack Obama aka Leader of the Free World and famed non-meddler in the affairs of Iran, whose small group of ruling Mullahs came to power via a sudden, decisive exercise of political force that overthrew the existing government while violently seizing American hostages, has joined Marxist Dictator Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) and Communist Dictators Fidel Castro (Cuba) and Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua) in denouncing the removal of Honduran President Manual Zelaya as an “illegal coup”.

Is this the lowest day in the history of the United States’ presidency? Obama’s un-clenched hand remains extended to the freshly bloodied fists of Iran’s Ayatolla Khameini and President Ahmedinijad. I say freshly since well before the mullahs shot down unarmed innocents in the streets of Tehran of late, their hands have been encrusted for decades with the blood of Americans and others via terrorist attacks in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and the Khobar Towers. Obama remains willing to “deal” with those murderers.

Yet, the recent events in Honduras have brought about Obama’s conversion to the Church of Meddlesomeness to the point of isolating a small, poor Democracy? What great injustice has drawn the stare of our President’s evil eye?

Let us look at the series of events our converted Meddler-in-Chief denounces as a “coup”, in light of its actual definition (Noah Webster, pictured above) and the Rule of Law:

Constitution limits Presidential terms

Mel Zelaya is, or was, the President of Honduras. He and Hugo Chaves were tight. So tight, it seems, that Zelaya wanted to emulate Hugo by changing the Honduran constitution to allow him to run for office until he durned well gets tired of it.

President plays no role in enactment of Constitutional Amendments

To change the constitution in Honduras you have to convene a constituent assembly. The president cannot do that. The Honduran congress must approve a national referendum calling for the constituent assembly to consider changes to the constitution. Zelaya didn’t like the part about the constitution requiring approval of the congress before a national referendum could be called. So … he decided to call one on his own.

President acts outside his Constitutional Authority

OK .. so here we have President Zelaya calling for a national referendum when he doesn’t have the power to do so. The next problem is obtaining ballots! Since the Honduran congress had not called for the referendum, as required by the constitution, the government certainly wasn’t going to print the ballots! After all, how smart would it be to print ballots for an illegal referendum? So … Zelaya had to get the ballots printed elsewhere. Here’s an idea! Get his pall Hugo Chavez to print them! Yes! That will work!

Supreme Court declares President’s actions unconstitutional

So Chaves prints Zelaya’s ballots and they’re shipped to Honduras. Enter the Honduran Supreme Court. The court considers Zelaya’s election in light of the requirements of the Honduran constitution, and rules the referendum illegal and unconstitutional. The court then issues an order to the Honduran military telling them not to do the logistical work associated with Zelaya’s phony referendum. Remember, now … all of this has one primary goal. To get rid of the term limits limiting Zelaya’s rule in Honduras.

President defies Court Order

After the supreme court’s decision, General Romeo Velasquez tells President Zelaya that he is subject to a proper order from the Supreme Court and will not be able to carry out Zelaya’s referendum. So … Zelaya fires him. The Supreme Court orders Zelaya to reinstate Velasquez, and Zelaya refuses to do so.

Military detains President as he leads an illegal mob intent on its own coup d’etat

At this point Zelaya’s ego is getting the better of him. If the military won’t run his illegal referendum, he’ll just do it himself. He gins up a mob and leads them to the military compound where Hugo’s ballots are stored and then has his supporters begin distributing the ballots to the masses.

President arrested for criminal acts but is mercifully allowed exile rather than prosecution

Based on the Supreme Court’s ruling the Honduran attorney general said that the proposed referendum was illegal and said that he would arrest anyone attempting to carry out the election. Zelaya was arrested by the military and was escorted out of the country.

Not a coup

Messy situation, but not a coup, given that the military never seized control of the government as the Speaker of the House assumed the Presidency on an interim basis pending the already scheduled November election.

Not a few suggest that it would have been better to have detained Zelaya in country and removed him via impeachment, but his actions were wreaking havoc on civil order. It should also be noted that all major institutions in the country, including his own political party, supported his removal from office.

Compare to Obama’s actions in the USA

Shall we return to the definition of coup d’etats as we analyze how Obama became CEO of Chrysler, General Motors and large segments if the banking industry?

TARP was passed by Congress in 2008 for the purpose of Protecting the financial industry by Relieving banks of Troubled Assets, hence the acronym.

To date, no bank has been relieved from the first troubled asset. Instead, hundreds of billions have been used to buy government ownership in banks, and to takeover GM and Chrysler, all with no constitutionally mandated just compensation paid to creditors or shareholders whose property interests were taken.

Rather, taxpayer money has been funneled thru under duress bankrupticies for political payoffs to labor unions with taxpayers on the hook for future products liability, debts and losses by the auto companies and banks.

In effect, a small group (Obama/Geithner/Bernanke) overthrew and/or altered existing corporate governance under the Rule of Law via the sudden and decisive force of the Executive Branch of the Government of the United States.

Would that President Obama would eschew constructive coups in the America; denounce them among the Axis of Evil; and quit imagining them where they haven’t occurred in Central America.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.