I am pleased that a scholar of Professor Tribe’s distinction should come to the defense of our Constitution.  Yet, Professor Tribe is of the school of legal jurisprudence which allows the Supreme Court to effectively revise the Constitution to adapt it to changing circumstances.  Professor Seidman’s argument that we must abandon constitutional strictures in order to assure a fresh political conversation is the logical extension of Professor Tribe’s own philosophy.  If the Supreme Court is not obligated to respect the original written Constitution, why should anyone else be?

The Wall Street Journal and Megyn Kelly have asked Professor Seidman the obvious question:  why he did not look to amending the Constitution rather than abandoning it altogether?  He rejected this approach because the amendment process is too “arduous.”  He has a point in that our Constitution is currently the most difficult in the world to amend.  However, if Professor Seidman finds the amendment process too arduous, isn’t the better solution to reform the amendment process to make it less arduous?  A re-invigorated amendment process would provide an orderly method to incorporate the democratic debate Professor Seidman professes to favor without the risks of justifying a free-for-all of constitutional disobedience (“constitutional disobedience” is the name of his forthcoming book).

One suspects though that his critique, which goes back at least to Woodrow Wilson, is really about supplying a rationale for members of the ruling elite like Professor Seidman to disregard aspects of our Constitution which they dislike.  A functioning amendment process might actually let the hoi polloi, such as those nasty Tea Party people, have a voice in our Constitution.  They might pass a strong Balanced Budget Amendment and other amendments reversing the Supreme Court decisions which have permitted federal power to expand far beyond its original constitutional bounds.  The people might even ignore wise members of the law school professoriate like Professor Seidman (and Tribe).  It might even make the first three words of the Constitution (We The People) more than a poetic rhetorical flourish.

It is quite arrogant of Professor Levinson to describe a document which has served and endured for 225 years as imbecilic.  But he is not alone.  In this criticism he renews the complaints of progressives since Woodrow Wilson frustrated by their inability to get the Founders’ convoluted tri-partite federal government structure to act decisively and vigorously to address the many problems they are sure the federal government can solve.  Fortunately, Professor Richard Epstein has written an excellent rebuttal to Professor Levinson, pointing out how many of our modern problems began precisely because in the early 20^th century the Supreme Court allowed the federal government to breach its constitutional bounds and expand far beyond its original constitutional functions.  Professor Epstein goes on to show how many of Professor Levinson’s proposed constitutional innovations would just make matters worse.

What leftists like Professor Levinson can not, or will not, recognize is that any expansion of a government’s power must necessarily detract from the liberty of its people.  That is the very definition of government.  It is the institution which people in society permit to curtail their liberty in order to benefit from living in society.  As Professor Epstein notes, we “should not defend a state of anarchy to ward off the excesses of state power. But unless we once again find the middle ground between too much and too little government power, we will continue to suffer as a nation.”  The Founders’ brilliant insight was to create an institutional framework for reaching that middle ground.  They could not see into the future to know exactly what the appropriate level of government power should be.  But they could create a balanced government system which would make it difficult to expand government power without the consent of many different political actors.  This would protect the interests of liberty against the forces always pushing to expand government power.  Professor Epstein concludes that the “original Constitution was not imbecilic.  On many questions, it reflects a level of wisdom that has unfortunately been lost today.”

However, there is one critical point where both professors shoot wide of the mark.   The main point of Professor Levinson’s piece is that the Article V amendment process is now moribund.  He writes that the “last truly significant constitutional change was the 22nd Amendment, added in 1951, to limit presidents to two terms.”  I would disagree – the last truly significant constitutional change was actually the 19^th Amendment, added in 1920 to extend the franchise to women in all the states!  He continues that the “near impossibility of amending the national Constitution not only prevents needed reforms; it also makes discussion seem futile and generates a complacent denial that there is anything to be concerned about.”

Professor Epstein’s response shows that there is in fact much to be concerned about.  In the absence of a workable amendment process, the Supreme Court has usurped that function and, as well summarized by Professor Epstein, in decisions beginning even before the Roosevelt New Deal Court created a situation where “today’s working Constitution is quite different from the sparer government regime put in place by the original Constitution” and this “increased role of the government in the economy has had a negative effect on American society.”

The issue is, what do we do about it?  Professor Epstein and I had a brief exchange on this during a recent Federalist Society teleforum on his new book, Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the Rule of Law,  Professor Epstein first noted that none of the current Supreme Court justices, including the “conservative” ones, had shown any inclination to reverse the last 80 plus years of Supreme Court precedents which have effectively amended the Constitution to allow this vast expansion of federal power.  When I asked if he could craft a constitutional amendment to annul these decisions he assumed I was suggesting an amendment which would be initiated by a second constitutional convention under the current Article V as advocated by Professor Levinson.  Professor Epstein expressed his opposition to such a convention because “Sandy Levinson would run it.”  (I agree with Professor Epstein here, having written in an earlier post that one reason to oppose the convention method of constitutional amendment is because law professors and politicians would control it.)

Professor Epstein stated that his approach was to build the normative case for returning to limited government.  This is a worthy pursuit and I pray for his success in persuading many others.  But even if he is successful, by what method would the return to a more limited government be implemented?  To restore something approaching the pre-New Deal limited federal government would require overturning dozens, maybe hundreds, of Supreme Court precedents.  If even conservative stalwarts like Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia will not do this, how will it be achieved?  Will we rely on politicians to simply vote to restore limited government?  To think that this could be accomplished simply by the normal political processes belies all experience.  And even if one President or Congress rolls back the federal leviathan to some extent, that work can easily be reversed by the next set of politicians to promise that Nanny Sam will fix everything.

The only way to restore some form of limited federal government is to turn to the ultimate power the Founders gave us – amendment.  Only amendment can effectively overcome the decades of hoary Supreme Court precedents which underlie the federal leviathan.  These would not be radical amendments of the type Professor Levinson advocates.  Instead, these would be amendments simply restating and re-affirming the original constitutional limits on the federal government.  Of course, the federal Congress will not initiate amendments limiting its own powers.  Therefore we must reform the amendment process to enable the states to initiate amendments without having to go through either Congress or the unworkable and outmoded mechanism of a convention.  This will open the path for grassroots constitutionalists to restore the constitutional balance Professor Epstein advocates.  Such an “amendment amendment” proposal can be found here.

We will not know with certainty until the actual decision is released, which Court observers expect will be in June.  Justice Kennedy has disappointed constitutionalists before, and is capable of cobbling together some narrow reason to let the individual mandate and the entire law survive.  However, assuming the law is ruled invalid, what next?  Historical comparisons are never exact, but those who have studied the rise of the modern federal regulatory state can feel a sense of déjà vu over the events of the last few days.

In the mid-1930s, a series of headline-making Supreme Court decisions overturned not one but many aspects Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.  Some observers thought the whole Roosevelt program dead, and expected a major Republican comeback in the 1936 elections.  Instead, FDR went on the attack, blaming “economic royalists” for the continuation of the Depression and denouncing the Supreme Court for blocking Democrats’ efforts to use government to “help” Americans recover from the Depression.  One can reasonably argue that the entire Democrat campaign was a massive prevarication, but politically it worked.  FDR won re-election in a landslide, and Democrats made substantial gains in Congress.

In the midst of this political attack, one of the Supreme Court justices who had been voting against the New Deal laws, Owen Roberts (no relation to the current Chief Justice), switched to uphold a New Deal law like one the Court had struck down only a year before.  Shortly thereafter Roosevelt launched his infamous “court-packing” scheme, so Roberts’ vote has since become known as the “switch in time that saved nine.”  However, more important than this, other justices who had been voting against the New Deal laws began to retire.  Although he had not been able to appoint a single justice in his first term, by the end of his presidency FDR had named eight of the nine justices.

Starting from 1937, the increasingly Democrat Supreme Court reversed most of the anti-New Deal decisions, and effectively eliminated all constitutional restraints on federal economic regulation.  This culminated in the 1942 Wickard v Filburn decision which held that if an economic activity might affect interstate commerce the federal government can regulate it.

Wickard is the foundation on which not only Obamacare, but almost every other modern federal economic regulatory scheme is based.  It is the basis for allowing the EPA to regulate the use of tiny parcels of land and to stop any economic activity which might affect a single obscure species found in only one state.  It is the basis for preventing a local farmer who only sells locally from calling his produce “organic” unless she or he complies with reams of federal paperwork.  The examples go on ad nauseam.  At the end of his presidency, FDR boasted that, although he had lost the battle over his court-packing plan, he had won the war of bringing the Supreme Court into line with his New Deal philosophy of vastly expanded federal power.

What lessons do the events of the 1930s have for us today?  First, it is still critical that Obama be defeated.  It is almost certain that any decision against Obamacare will be 5-4.  Justice Scalia is 76 years old and Justice Kennedy is 75.  While Justice Thomas is “only” 63, he is said to be frustrated with his lonely stance of firmly standing by the Constitution’s original meaning (even Scalia can drift from respect for the Constitution’s original meaning).  All Obama has to do is to replace any one of these three in a second term, and the Supreme Court will shift to upholding the leftist agenda by consistent 5-4 votes, including reversing any decision against Obamacare by the current Court.

As many have pointed out, a decision overturning Obamacare may ironically help produce this result if conservatives get complacent over a Supreme Court victory.  Obama will be relieved of the burden of defending the wildly unpopular law, yet will be able to energize his base by denouncing the “Republican” Supreme Court’s obstruction of his efforts to “help” the people.  (On the other hand, there might be a somewhat offsetting advantage if Romney is the Republican nominee, since he is ill-equipped to attack Obamacare.)

Second, a Supreme Court decision against Obamacare could dilute the energy for reducing federal power back to something approaching its original constitutional bounds.  The legal arguments presented against Obamacare assume the validity of all prior Supreme Court decisions.  A decision overturning Obamacare will draw a line against the further expansion of federal power, which is a very good thing, but it will do nothing to roll back the previous expansion of federal power since the New Deal.  The EPA and all of the other alphabet soup of czars and regulatory agencies will remain undisturbed.  Again, complacency and lack of a clear target are the dangers.

(However, there is a somewhat offsetting advantage here also.  The publicity over the Obamacare cases has significantly raised public awareness of Wickard and its ilk, cases which even most lawyers had forgotten about if they were more than a few years out of law school.  This can only help in the larger war of educating Americans on how the federal government has expanded far beyond the limits the framers so carefully built into the Constitution.)

Third, a victory in the Supreme Court will perpetuate the myth that the Supreme Court will protect our freedoms.  As the FDR New Deal cases like Wickard and many since show, the Supreme Court is just as capable of taking away our freedoms as it is of preserving them.  We need to get over the New Deal idea that the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution, and has the right to change its meaning to keep it up-to-date with current social thought.  We can not rely on the Supreme Court.  Only the political victory of Americans who respect the Constitution, reinforced by constitutional amendments restating and re-affirming the Constitution’s original meaning and structure, can permanently assure the restoration of our freedoms and Republic.

To accomplish the first we need to elect constitutionalists to Congress and state and local offices, not just the presidency.  To accomplish the second, we need to reform the amendment process to allow states to initiate and enact amendments without having to go through Congress or the unused and archaic mechanism of a convention. Such a proposal can be found at http://www.timelyrenewed.com/?page_id=317.

James W. Lucas is an attorney and the author of Timely Renewed: Amendments to Restore the American Constitution and the forthcoming Are We the People?: Using Amendment to Take Back Our Constitution from Big Government, Big Business, and the Supreme Court.   He blogs at www.timelyrenewed.com.

A few days later the HuffPo reported that the Banks Figure The Feds Are A Safer Investment Than You.  This article notes that despite record low interest rates on Treasury debt, banks are investing in that instead of making loans to small businesses.  The banks can still make money on treasuries because they can borrow from the Federal Reserve for essentially no interest.  The Fed is doing this “because it sees the economy as dead in the water.  And the banks are sitting on that cash hoard because they, too, see the economy as dead in the water.”  So much for Obama administration hype about the economy surging on the rebound.

Of course, neither article explicitly makes the connection that these facts totally undermine the Obama administration’s economic claims.  But that is to be expected of the leftstream media.  More interesting is that they illustrate the Left’s failure to understand the deep relationship between the Left’s great nemesis, Wall Street, and its great love, Washington.  There is a reason Goldman Sachs people gave four times as much money to Obama in 2008 as they gave to McCain.  The flow of money from the Fed and the feds to the banks under Obama dwarfs all of the other bailout boondoggles.

Progressives dream that they can somehow purify Washington, and rescue it from Wall Street.  However, centralizing power can only facilitate centralizing wealth.  As I have argued elsewhere, progressives need to realize that Wall Street’s dominance of the nation will only end when Washington’s dominance of the nation ends.

Newt’s complaints about judicial legislating are very legitimate.  The extent of our judiciary’s exercise of anti-majoritarian power is inconsistent with democratic governance.  However Newt’s proposals, while technically constitutional as Mr. Levey argues, run the risk of promoting destabilizing confrontations between the branches, and worse could be dangerous in the hands of a leftist President and Congress.   The better solution to judicial imperialism is the majoritarian process provided in the Constitution, which is amendment.  Constitutional amendment would be an orderly and democratically legitimate way to overrule anti-majoritarian judicial decisions.

Unfortunately, the path of constitutional amendment is considerably restricted by requirements of Article V which are the most stringent of any written constitution in the world.  Worse, half of Article V is moribund as its requirement that the states can only initiate amendment proposals through a convention has effectively blocked their introduction of amendments which would limit the ever-increasing centralization of power in Washington.

If Gingrich wishes to curtail judicial imperialism, he would do better to promote the re-energizing of the amendment process through the reform of Article V.  There are several ways Article V could be amended to facilitate greater use of the amendment process to check the excessive power of the judiciary while still preserving its fundamental concept of requiring super-majorities to change our foundational law.  The most important of these would be eliminating the archaic and useless requirement of a convention for states to initiate amendment proposals.  Eliminating the convention requirement would permit amendments to arise directly from the states which are much closer to popular influence than the remote elite Washington establishment which currently holds a monopoly on the meaning of our Constitution.    A specific proposal for such an “amendment amendment” can he found here.

Now we are told that, because of split control of the government for the next two years, we must compromise on budgetary matters.  While I personally believe that we must instead make a stand and finally  push back the bloated behemoth which is our federal government, I am willing to accept the wisdom of my betters in Washington and try to think of ways to compromise.  And I think I have come up with one!  Let PBS and NPR keep their government funding, but subject them to the fairness doctrine.

It’s a beautiful compromise.  Leftists get taxpayer money for their public broadcasting and at least a partial implementation of the fairness doctrine.  After all, if the fairness doctrine is so great, why not get it implemented whenever and wherever possible?  Although conservatives may object to its imposition on private broadcasters, surely they can not complain about its application to taxpayer-funded broadcasting?  And on my side, although my preference would be to end all taxpayer funding of any broadcaster, as a fiscal conservative I would consent to such a compromise in a spirit of “moderation” and “reasonableness,” and of course above all to avoid being called an extremist by Chuck Schumer.

So what would our beloved PBS and NPR look like under the fairness doctrine?  Well, take as an example the 90 minute documentary I just watched on my local PBS station called “Journey to Planet Earth: Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.”  Hosted by Matt Damon and starring “environmental visionary” Lester Brown, this documentary presented as incontrovertible fact the view that if we don’t reduce our CO2 emissions by 80% by 2020, human civilization is certainly doomed.  (By the way, don’t worry.  We can easily achieve this goal.  All we need is a complete government takeover of the economy like in World War Two. Whew, what a relief!)  Now I think it would be completely reasonable under the fairness doctrine to require PBS to give an equal amount of time in an equivalent time slot to a documentary questioning climate change science.  Or any program sympathetically reporting on gay marriage would require a program of equal length and placement sympathetically reporting on the opposition to gay marriage.  Any program warning of the dangers of right-wing extremism would require one reporting on the dangers of left-wing extremism.  NPR commentators would have to be strictly allocated across the political spectrum, which means they would suddenly have to sign up a host of conservatives (maybe they could just make a deal to carry Rush Limbaugh?).

Yes, a beautiful compromise.  Or maybe, as the man said in the covert video, they would finally agree that public broadcasting would be better off without federal funding.

The constitutional language in question states that “all persons born … in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens.  It was included in the 14th Amendment as a last minute afterthought to overrule the Dred Scott decision and assure that the freed slaves would be citizens.  Some are arguing that the “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” language should allow Congress to exclude anchor babies by statute, but that argument does not seem to be gaining much traction.  Many others have argued for the repeal of this section of the 14th Amendment all together.  Then Congress clearly could deal with the issue by statute under its power to “establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.”  The problem here is that the hurdles to constitutional amendment are tremendously high.

Therefore, as long as we’re looking at amending the first section of the 14th Amendment, what we really need to do is look at the second sentence of the first section as well.  This is the sentence which contains the “due process” and “equal protection” phrases which federal courts have used as an open-ended license to rewrite the Constitution in accordance with their personal policy preferences.  It is under these phrases that federal courts dictate to state and local governments on police and a host of other local matters, it is these phrases that federal judges have expanded to include not only race discrimination but any other privileged group which the judges deem to be entitled to special protection, it is these phrases which gave us Roe v. Wade and the Perry v. Schwarzenegger decision in California which will mandate gay marriage throughout the United States if it prevails in the Supreme Court.

A blog post is not the place to detail the innumerable judicial abuses of the 14th Amendment.  Instead, let’s focus on the solution, which is to amend the first section of the 14th Amendment to restore its original meaning.  That original meaning was only to ban governmental race discrimination.  The great originalist constitutional scholar Lino Graglia of UT has long argued for this, and I lay it out in detail in my book Timely Renewed: Amendments to Restore the American Constitution.   In the process we could also remove the now misused first sentence.  But, more importantly, we could remove two dangerously vague phrases which have empowered an unchecked elitist judiciary to impose its social values on America by judicial fiat.  That is worth the effort of amending the Constitution.  For more, please see http://www.timelyrenewed.com.

There is much being said and to be said about President Obama’s decision to send US military forces to do whatever it is they are doing in Libya.  Some of this commentary is even noting that there is something in the Constitution about going to war, even citing Section 8 of Article 1 which vests in Congress the power “To declare War.”  Since the last time the United States declared war was 1941, most Americans have no recollection of Congress actually doing this.  However, all living Americans have very real knowledge of the United States being at war, for we have been almost continuously involved in military action from the end of the last declared war (World War Two) to the current moment.   How is it that we have been at war for six decades without any declaration of war?

In that time Presidents, both Democrat and Republican, have promoted the idea that the President has a right independent of Congress to send US forces into combat.  For most of our history this idea would have been rejected as a violation of the separation of powers written into the Constitution.  According to Madison, the constitutional arrangement was that Congress decided whether to engage in hostilities and only then would the President carry out the operations as commander-in-chief.

Since the 1950s this clear arrangement has broken down and the situation has become very murky.  As noted, Presidents have claimed the power to launch operations on their own authority.  Sometimes they solicited vague authorizations from Congress short of a formal declaration of war, such as the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which Lyndon Johnson used to expand the US involvement in Vietnam, or the resolution which George W. Bush used to invade Iraq and Afghanistan.  When the Presidents do not bother consulting the Congress, the Congress has acquiesced by not taking any action to stop the President and continuing to authorize appropriations to fund the actions.

Once, in 1972, Congress did push back by passing the War Powers Resolution.  This requires the President to notify Congress of the commencement of a military action, and then get a congressional approval within 60 days.   Most scholars consider the War Powers Resolution to be fairly ineffectual in restoring congressional priority in decisions to go to war.  Even so, Richard Nixon vetoed it (it was passed by more than the two-thirds of Congress needed to override the veto) and every President since has rejected its attempt to limit their power to commence military action.  Despite his statements in support of the War Powers Resolution when he was a Senator, President Obama now appears to be as willing to reject it as have all of his recent predecessors.

My purpose here is not to comment on the wisdom of any of our military engagements since 1945, including the current exercise in Libya.  My concern is deeper.  I believe in the wisdom of the separation of powers in the Constitution.  Governments possess no power more terrible than the ability to go to war.  The Framers felt that no single officer of the government, even the President, should have the power to go to war on his sole and exclusive authority.  We have lost sight of that fundamental principle, and as a result 80,000 Americans have died in wars launched contrary to the requirements of the Constitution.

Of course, supporters of presidential war powers have responses to this.  They say that modern warfare is murkier and faster than in the times of the founding.  In our times, there is not enough time for a debate in Congress.  I am willing to concede that modern circumstances are different.  However, is that sufficient justification for a de facto amendment of the original constitutional arrangement?  Is this simply another example of the concept of the “living Constitution”?  This philosophy basically says that the federal government can change the constitutional allocation of powers to adjust to modern conditions without a formal amendment to the Constitution if they can get away with it.  Despite the fact that many so-called conservatives have supported this shift in the war-making powers, if we are going to respect the Constitution and the rule of law, we must reject this interpretation just as vigorously as we do other modern distortions of the Constitution.

So how do we deal with the changed modern conditions of war?  In chapter 7 of my book Timely Renewed: Amendments to Restore the American Constitution, I propose an amendment which moves the requirement of congressional approval back to a point where proper congressional deliberation is still possible.  This is before US forces are even sent overseas.  The amendment would require a distinct congressional approval for any deployment of US forces outside of US territory, and further require that that approval be renewed every two years or else the troops have to be brought home.  Not only will this restore the Congress’ original constitutional authority to make the basic policy decision about our foreign wars, but also force us to review our far-flung worldwide military operations in an era of massive budget deficits.  See http://www.timelyrenewed.com

To begin, let’s just go back to basic procedure under the Constitution.  The Congress appropriates funds to run the government, and any tax measure must be initiated in the House.  This is the power of the purse which the House of Representatives inherited from the British House of Commons.  This power was fundamental to establishing parliamentary primacy over the monarchy, and consequently gave birth to modern representative government.  The President is then charged with spending the funds as dictated by Congress.  The government only shuts down if the President vetoes the congressional appropriation bills.   It is this presidential veto which effectuates the government shutdown, not Congress.  THE PRESIDENT SHUTS DOWN THE GOVERMENT, NOT CONGRESS.

Now currently there is a complication in that the President may not have an appropriation bill to veto because the Democrat-controlled Senate may not act.  However, in that case, the Democrats are still the ones responsible for the shutdown because the House has appropriated funds for the government to operate.  The decision to close down the government now still lies with the Democrats, either in the Senate or the White House.

Technically the Constitution does allow the President to veto appropriation bills.  However, by threatening in advance to veto the House’s appropriations bill because it does not fund everything he wants, President Obama is essentially trying to coerce the House into giving him more money.  Again, it is presidential action which is threatening the crisis.

The Constitution sees the executive and legislature as co-equal branches.  However, beginning with Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, the Presidency has gained ascendency over the Congress.  It is Congress, and particularly the House of Representatives, which the Framers saw as being the branch of the government which should be “first among equals,” particularly in fiscal matters.   The original scheme was that Congress decided what money to raise and what to spend it on, and the President merely administered the expenditures authorized by Congress.

The coming budget crisis is about more than the fiscal survival of our Nation, as important as that is.  It is about whether an ever more powerful President can misuse the threat of a veto to coerce more money out of the people and their House, or whether it is in fact Congress which decides the Nation’s spending as the Framers contemplated.

It can be very difficult for adults to stand their ground when children throw a tantrum when they don’t get what they want.  However, it is time for the adults in the House of Representatives to call Barack Obama and Harry Reid’s shutdown threats what they are — a tantrum thrown by over-indulged children who have finally been told that they can’t have all the goodies they have become accustomed to because the family can’t afford them any more.  At stake is more than the House’s paltry $60 billion in spending cuts.  This battle could determine whether we can ever re-set the constitutional balance to restore the people’s House to its rightful place of primacy over the Presidency on matters of the public purse.

For further discussion on restoring the original constitutional order, see http://www.timelyrenewed.com

The point is the distressing number of conservative commentators who have compared the scene in Madison to the scenes of the protests in Cairo.  The resemblance is only superficial and making it is dangerous.  While I am aware that there is a more complex story behind the Egyptian protests than the happy-face pro-democracy image portrayed in the lamestream media, nonetheless the Egyptian protesters were objecting to a regime which fundamentally violated human rights.  There is no comparison between the Egyptians’ situation and the protests in Madison against a freely, properly and duly elected representative government.

The more accurate comparison for the scenes in Madison is to the violent protests in Athens last year, where government workers went berserk over an insolvent government’s efforts to ask them to share in the pain of resolving the financial crisis brought on by their nation’s unsupportable welfare state.  Although, given our modern 24 hour news media induced attention span, it is difficult to recall the Greek protests of a few months ago, it is worth the effort.  Comparing selfish public unions to those Egyptians who really were bravely seeking more political freedom is both an insult to the Egyptians and to give undue political credence to the welfare statist power-grabbers in Wisconsin.