Is Power of the Purse a Constitutional Concept?

     One of the biggest complaints from some on the Right in the conservative movement is that their elected representatives in congress have not done enough, or even all they can, to stop the Obama agenda. The charge against Republican leadership in the House and Senate is that they roll over for President Obama. Evidentiary to that charge is that Republican leadership refuses to use the power of the purse to stop the Obama agenda. I counted myself in that camp until I realized the hypocrisy of that well-intentioned position.
     The very same persons who claim constitutional fidelity in opposing much of the Obama agenda seem to have no problem being infidels to that very constitution as it applies to their own agenda, right or wrong. If we as conservatives say we want to hold the president, any president, and congress, any congress, to the principles of the constitution as they relate to enumerated powers, we must hold ourselves to the same standard.
     Primarily, the constitution gives the authority of raising revenue, laying taxes and imposts, and paying the debts of the United States to the House of Representatives. The Senate of the United States has a secondary role in the revenue process insomuch as it can add amendments to such bills. The framers of the constitution felt that all fiscal matters should at least originate in the House because it was closer to people than the Senate. This of course was before the Founders' purpose for the Senate was bastardized by the 17th amendment by allowing popular election of its members.
     There is no such wording as power of the purse present in the United States constitution. And even that oft used phrase has morphed from the congress' responsibility to pay the nation's debts to meaning they have some constitutional power, which does not exist, to defund of their own accord outside the legislative process, or even shut down parts of the government over policy disagreements with the president.
     As conservatives we are right to question and criticize any president who oversteps his constitutional boundaries. But we are also bound by the same document, whose enumerated powers gives congress certain authorities and responsibilities, none of which includes withholding payments for government functions with which we do not agree. The Founders' never intended for the authority to pay the nation's bills to be used as a political tool against a president from an opposing Party. And we run the risk of engaging in hypocrisy when we claim such powers, and then spew invective at members of congress for actually following the constitution by not exercising those fallacious authorities.
    

Illegal Immigration: The Cancer of the Republican Party

     The presidential election of 2016 would have been a coronation for the Republican nominee. The average voter being at the end of their rope with the lawless Obama administration and the virtually no-growth economy. A coronation, that is until Donald Trump, et al misdirected the Republican electorate away from every other issue that is plaguing this nation except illegal immigration. Not that illegal immigration is not a problem for this country, however, it is an issue, more than any other I have seen, which has been dominated by emotion displacing reality.
     Real debate about solutions to this nation's illegal immigration problem has been replaced by invective doled out by the Trump-ites aimed at anyone who disagrees with anything short of mass deportation of upwards of 11 million persons. Every other well intentioned position is characterized as amnesty by those who are too politically simplistic or intellectually lazy to engage in an honest analysis of the problem and consider any other action but the aforementioned mass deportation.
      The Kato Institute (a well respected Libertarian think tank) has recently completed an exhaustive study on the illegal immigration problem. Their findings will, I am sure, earn them the ire and acrimony of the deport-them-all crowd. But one of the tenets of conservatism is a pursuit and respect for the truth, whether that truth supports the conservative ideology or not. The Kato Institute's findings are in opposition to some of the fanciful rhetoric being spread like manure by a particular Republican presidential candidate and his votaries. But as someone once said, "You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts."
     Kato has found that even with the well publicized child migration of some 15 months ago, the illegal immigrant population in this country has actually decreased in the last ten years. That, by the way, was the last time we had an economy growing at more than the pathetic 2% it has been since President Obama was inaugurated. Kato has found that the illegal immigration population has shrank by several million in that period.
     Further findings of the Kato study show that the illegal immigrants who are in this country have a lower unemployment rate, and rate of welfare use, than those persons actually born in this country. Poking more holes in the delicate fabric of the deport-them-all crowd's argument for such an action. Many illegals, almost half, entered the country legally and have simply overstayed their visas. Many more have been here for more than a decade and have jobs, have raised families, and even own property.
     Kato has also found that the incarceration rates for illegal immigrants is actually lower than for those who were native born to this country. Further alienating the deport-them-all crowd from the actual facts. I do not intend to suggest that illegal immigration is not a problem, only that the fallacy that binds the argument of the deport-them-all crowd has caused them to be zealots against those on their own side of the aisle with respect to 80% of the other issues facing this country.
     The cancer of extremism clothed in misconceptions, manufactured realities, and downright lies is eating away at the Republican Party like a cancer. If not stopped, and some reason brought to the discussion, we will not only lose next November's election, but very possibly any opportunity to recover the nation from the oppression of Socialism in which we have been sinking evermore quickly.
    

Thoughts of Memorial On This 9-11 Anniversary

     I have recently taken a job where I am instructing 16 year olds. One thought that has occurred to me during the time I have spent with them is how very long it has been since I was that age. A second thought that has pierced its way into my conscious thoughts is that these bright-eyed youths have no memory of a pre-911 world. This is especially salient to me on this, the 14th anniversary of the worst attack on American soil by a foreign power since the British invaded and burned Washington DC to the ground during the War of 1812.
     As I have listened to the memorializing on radio and elsewhere, and the almost mandatory recounting of each person's recollection of that horrible morning, I can not help but think of those teens in my class. What must they think of their elders' painful and tortured retelling of an event which to them is as ancient a historical marker as Pearl Harbor was to my generation? After all, to them this day is filled with the immediate concerns over that math test in second period, whether the object of their affections returns those affections, and hoping they pass their drivers' examine.
     Of course fourteen years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, was a decade removed from the end of hostilities between us and them. Today's remembrances are a mile marker on the road of our struggle with the enemy that attacked us 14 years ago, not a look back at the highway of that battle that we have long ago exited. There is no memorial celebration knowing that we were ultimately victorious over our attackers. There is only the stale taste of our strife with an enemy that only seems to grow stronger and more resolved.
     Many on this day have chosen to mark the anniversary of the 14 year old act of war as if it were a battle from some distant conflict. Others have chosen to relive the event as if somehow they can recapture the minutes and hours before those aircraft, guided by their terrorist masters, plunged us headlong into a dark and barbarically murderous future. But then history always moves forward, never backwards. And we must live through the history we are given, day by day, conflict by conflict.
     It is important to remember the significance of this anniversary of 9-11, and pay cognitive homage to the awareness that this struggle, and this war, has not ended. But it is also important to understand that we have been changed irrevocably as a country, those of us that lived through that day as adults, and those who have no personal memory of that day.
     I have tried to place myself into the mindset of growing up in a post-911 America, I cannot. I went through that day, and the days of aftermath that followed. Those students in my class did not. To them the post-911 world, as chaotic as it may seem, is perfectly natural. Every generation is somehow changed by events from the previous generation. And each one in its own way loses some of the innocence that is associated with youth as defined by the older generation. So on this anniversary of 9-11 allow yourself the memorial of your experience. But be careful not to deny others with disparate experiences the reaction to this day that that experience requires of them. Even if it is no memorial at all.     
    

Justice For Sale In Baltimore

     Traditionally, wrongful death law suits are filed after the criminal liability of a person's death has been settled. Occasionally a family of someone who may have died as a result of another's negligence or intent will file a suit against such a person before the criminal aspects of the case have been adjudicated. Baltimore city leaders, headed by Stephanie Rawlings Blake (the mayor of that city who gave "room for those who wished to destroy" to do so), has decided to pay the family of Freddie Gray $6.4 million in compensation for his death in the back of a police van. This decision was arrived at before the family has even filed a suit against the city.
     In addition to being fiscally irresponsible with Baltimore taxpayers' money, Ms. Blake has jeopardized one of the founding principles of this country, i.e. a fair trial for her six officers being charged for Mr. Gray's death. By paying out city funds to the family of Freddie Gray before any resolution to the criminal case against the officers, or the filing of any civil case by the family, Ms. Blake, et al have essentially admitted the city was at fault, and by extension the officers charged in this case.
     How can these officers hope to ever be treated fairly by jury members who are culled from the very city that has admitted guilt in the case before the gavel has been pounded to initiate the legal deliberations on the merits of the charges against them? It is analogous to one's employer paying the city for an employee who has not even received a traffic violation. I am not an attorney, but if I were representing any of the officers in this case I would think this move by the city of Baltimore would be reason for a change of venue for my client(s) trial.
     There is certainly reason to believe that Mr. Gray had some, if not all, responsibility in his own death. He apparently had a well documented history of injuring himself and trying to sue others for those injuries. And now it appears as though his family, with the aid of Baltimore Mayor Blake, will finally receive the big payoff that Freddie dreamed of for so many years. And the taxpayers of Baltimore are the innocent dupes of this flim flam operation in which the dead Freddie Gray and Mayor Stephanie Blake have colluded to defraud them.
     In this new America justice apparently is for sale and has become the property of the highest bidder, in this case the Baltimore city leadership. No need, in the mind of Stephanie Rawlings Blake and her ilk, to wait for justice from an actual court of law with a judge and jury, they know better what justice looks like. This decision to award the family of Freddie Gray $6.4 million is not just a sin against fiscal probity, but a violation of the very cornerstone of our republic and its legal system. The actions of Mayor Blake completely ignores the concept of innocent until proven guilty.
    
    
     

What Law Did Kim Davis Break?

     Kentucky Clerk of Courts Kim Davis has gone to jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses, because to do so for same sex couples would violate her religious conscience. There are many on the Right that have said she is wrong to expect to keep her job while choosing to not perform this one aspect of her position. The argument from many on the Right is, "Well it is the law and she must obey it or resign her elected position." They also employ the worn and to oft used platitude, "We are a nation of laws, not men."
     Primarily I am in agreement with the ideal expressed in the latter statement above. However, if we claim to be a nation of laws, the most sacred of which is the constitution of the United States, then the "law" that Ms. Davis has violated is opinion and not law. The constitution is very clear that the sole legislative ability in the United States of America is vested in the bicameral body known as the House of Representatives and the Senate. And since those august bodies have passed no legislation which was signed into law by the president respective of same sex marriage, what law then is Ms. Davis violating?
     The idea of judicial review breathed to life by Marbury vs. Madison was in the opinion of the defendant in that case (and primary father of our constitution) not in keeping with his understanding of this nation's guiding principle. How much more dismayed would Mr. Madison be today if he could see the representative republic he helped to originate imprisoning one of its citizens for practicing her religious freedom of conscience guaranteed by the very document he helped frame? There is nothing to suggest, even by judicial review, that a Supreme Court decision in one case could bypass the constitutional legislative mandate given to congress in favor of law by fiat.
     Think about the tyranny of a government that only needs the opinion of 5 justices to impose their will on a nation. It is a concept that is completely antithetical to the principles of our republic which were so torturously brought into being by the Founders. The whole concept of Supreme Court decisions having the weight of law corrupts the foundations of self-government in which the Founders believed so mightily. And if the deliberative process of congress is bypassed in such a manner, how much easier the road has been paved for tyranny.
      If a government is given the awesome authority to impose, not law but opinion, on its citizens, whether elected or appointed official or ordinary citizen, then the nation is no longer a republic but has crossed the line into oligarchy. And if that same government, lead by five lawyers in robes, is given domain over millennia-old institutions of civilized society and the prerogative of God, then we as a nation have certainly left Liberty's stage and are waiting in the wings of oppression and tyranny.

Political Correctness: Not Just For Leftists Anymore

     As a conservative I have always held in high esteem the Founders fidelity to the tenets of free speech enshrined in the United States constitution. Along with limited government and fiscal responsibility, freedom of speech has always been the foundation upon which Liberty was built and maintained. The assault on free speech that is in opposition to the Leftist agenda has been the cornerstone of that destructive ideology's edifice of oppression. It is what has given birth to political correctness and speech codes on the campuses of the modern day university.
     I have been less than sanguine to witness in recent years the same assault on free speech committed by the Left taking root in the garden of conservatism on the Right. Thoughtful disagreement among some on the Right has been replaced by invective aimed at anyone who strays from the absolutism of their political ideology. This behavior has recently reached a crescendo of acrimony in the struggle between the so-called establishment and those who refuse debate on the intellectual merits of positions held by those they deem unworthy of the conservative moniker.
     My thesis is in no way an endorsement of the establishment in the Republican Party. But for anyone holding dear the ideals of free speech to meet distinctions on public policy held by fellow conservatives as differences of ideology is not only an affront to that ideology, but a violation of the very tenets of the First Amendment of the U.S. constitution. If as conservatives we allow our intra-party debates to occupy the intellectually low brow position of insult and invective, we are in a real sense no different than those on the Left who impose speech codes and the misguided guardrails of political correctness.
     Political correctness is after all a desire to dismiss truths that its practioners find in contradiction to their political ideology. So while the political correctness practiced by the Left is rightly found to be antithetical to free speech, the political correctness practiced by some on the Right can not justly be held in higher esteem in the eyes of free speech than that engaged in by the Left. To characterize some on the Right with which one disagrees as traitors, treasonous, or worse, is as much an exercise in intellectual laziness as that which is perpetrated by the Left against all those on the Right.
     Illustrative of my thesis is the illegal immigration debate on the Right. Those who are absolutist refuse to engage in the intellectual heavy lifting of debating their points of contention with those who support a comprehensive solution to the problem. They instead re-characterize the position held by those with whom they disagree as amnesty. This creating a straw man argument for what they find as an offensive position has a kinship with the method of those on the Left who impose political correctness in order to avoid an honest debate on a subject. As conservatives we should give preference to facts and data, or at least well thought out argument over simply demonizing those with whom we disagree. Otherwise we run the risk of being just as much an enemy of free speech as those on the Left. 

Is Conservative Anger Completely Justified?

     I have heard much recently about the anger in this nation generally, and on the Right specifically, being the inspiration for the unexplainable support for Donald Trump. Anger, properly focused, can be an agent for change. It was, after all, the anger generated against George W. Bush and Republicans which lead to the election of Barack Obama. And one would have to be in a coma to say that in the ensuing 6 1/2 years there has not been change. So while anger can lead to change, that change is not always desirable to the cause of Liberty.
     As for the anger that has birthed the explosive candidacy of Mr. Trump, one can make the case that much of it is generated and unfocused. The target of the Republican primary voter has been softened by the constant attacks over the last few years of the Republican "establishment" by some in Right-Wing media. So steps in Donald Trump, never one to miss an opportunity whether created by his actions or the actions of others, to coalesce the manufactured anger into poll numbers for his presidential campaign.
     Do not misinterpret my characterization of some of the current anger on the Right as manufactured to suggest that I believe all of it is. The cause of just anger about the current administration, and the seemingly weak opposition to it from congressional Republicans, has been compromised by exaggerations and emotionalism. The road to national redemption has been enveloped by the fog of political absolutism in judging current Republican office holders by the measure of what is perfect, instead of what is good.
     I have previously outlined the accomplishments of the Republican-controlled congress, such as cutting the deficit by 70% in the last 4 1/2 years. But for those who have drank the cool aide served up by Mark Levin, Michael Savage, et al, facts will not dissuade them from thinking that any Republican who holds elected office is part of the "establishment," and therefore worthy of derision and acrimony. My aim is at those who have not allowed themselves to pollute their intellects with the dirt of gossip, the dust of rumors, and the infestation of invective.
     I have tried to look at every situation, whether personal or public, as being not as good or as bad as some may define it. Especially those who may have an agenda for defining situations one way or another. And looking at the facts that have lead to the anger which has created out of whole cloth the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, I see some of that anger being justified and some being built upon the foundation of speciousness. I have always known that the truth and facts never mattered to the Left when they interfered with their political agenda. But the Donald Trump campaign has shown me that there are at least a quarter of those on the Right who seem to operate under the same fallacious understanding of reality.