Our Shredded Constitution, Part I: Free Exercise of Religion

Our Shredded Constitution, Part I: Free Exercise of Religion

on Fri, 28 Feb 2014

Americans take justifiable pride in the freedoms given to them by nature or God and enshrined in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. As we seem to be finding out day after day, however, those rights are no longer of any real value; they are, as James Madison suspected they would be, “parchment barriers” against the encroachment of government and a population conditioned to believe that rights originate with that government, not from a higher power.

Founding philosophy believed that the legitimacy of government sprang from defending rights inherent to human beings; if the government were to violate those rights, it would undermine its entire raison d’etre. Too many Americans today do not ask whether government defends our rights; instead, they ask, why government should allow Americans to exercise their rights.

The result has been a complete shredding of American rights altogether. The Bill of Rights is now a relic of what it once represented, a Swiss cheese of liberty. In this series, we will be examining the Bill of Rights and determining just how much is left of those rights after government has shredded them. We begin with the most controversial provision of the week: freedom of religious exercise.

The Meaning of the Free Exercise Clause

The First Amendment contains this provision: “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise [of religion].” This seems clear on its face; Congress cannot ban a religion. But there is play in the joints here. Is religion just something in your head, or something you practice? And if so, how do we reconcile general laws with specific religious practice?

To answer that question, let’s look at the writings of James Madison, the creator of the Bill of Rights. He helped write the Declaration of Rights in Virginia, insisting that rather than the language of George Mason, which seemed to suggest that freedom of religion existed only thanks to the kindness of government; his text suggested instead that “all men are entitled to the full and free exercise,” meaning that the right to freedom of religion preceded government. He wrote in 1785 that religious exercise was “precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.”

Madison’s original First Amendment language read this way: “the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship...nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed.” Conscience, Madison wrote elsewhere, “is the most sacred of all property.”

In other words, government was designed topreserve the right of religious practice. Barring some other countervailing right – for example, your right to life, or your right to property, or your right to religious practice – religious exercise cannot be infringed.

How The Supreme Court Perverted The Free Exercise Clause

The battle at the origin of the republic was not over secular government ramming its values down the throats of religious individuals, but over religious sects using the government to harm other religious individuals. And the Supreme Court’s perversion of Madison’s principle to accommodate such efforts began with Reynolds v. United States (1879), which allowed federal law banning consensual polygamy to trump early Mormonism. Not state law, which would have been perfectly legitimate under the Constitution – federal law. In 1940, the Supreme Court applied the free exercise clause to the states under flawed incorporation theory.

The worm, for a brief while, began to turn. InSherbert v. Verner (1963), the Supreme Court found that it was unconstitutional to deny benefits to Seventh Day Adventists for taking Saturdays off; in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), the Court found that Amish families could school their children at home. But then, in Employment Division, Oregon Department of Human Resources v. Smith (1990), the Supreme Court found that a Native American tribe could not use peyote in religious rituals, because drug laws are “neutral law of general applicability.” In other words, free exercise only stretches as far as government says it stretches.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court had alsoestablished a line of cases striking down laws enshrining traditional morality – laws that were secularly-based, but coincident with religious values. In Roe v. Wade (1973), for example, the Court suggested that it would be unconstitutional for states to regulate abortion. In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the Court decided that states could not prohibit sodomy. And a series of appellate cases all over the country have now suggested that state laws restricting marriage to a man and a woman violate the Constitution.

Where We Stand

The combination of these toxic rulings leads to a perverse outcome: religious Americans cannot avoid neutral laws of general applicability, and yet religious Americans also cannot have a say in the laws of their communities, lest they violate separation of church and state. The natural effect is that laws are passed coercing religious people into violating their religious precepts.

The only question now is how far courts will go in directly undermining the free exercise clause. Courts across the country are now deciding on whether the federal government can force religious Americans – whose religious practice extends to their personal lives and their businesses – to fund insurance covering abortion and take part in same-sex weddings. It is only a matter of time before the anti-religious movement in the country insists that non-profit status be removed from churches that refuse to practice same-sex weddings. After all, neutral laws of general applicability in some states suggest that discrimination against gays and lesbians by private parties – defined broadly by some courts already to include discrimination against gay and lesbian behavior – is illegal.

The right to free exercise has been turned on its head: instead of a right to exercise your religion free of the bounds of government, the government now gets to decide just how much of your religion you are allowed to exercise.

Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org.Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.

Russia Seeks Access to Bases in Eight Countries for Its Ships and Bombers

www.cnsnews.com

Russia Seeks Access to Bases in Eight Countries for Its Ships and Bombers

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Russia map

(CNSNews.com) – At a time ofescalated tensions with the West over Ukraine, Russia says it is negotiating with eight governments around the world for access to military facilities, to enable it to extend its long-range naval and strategic bomber capabilities.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday the military was engaged in talks with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Algeria, Cyprus, the Seychelles, Vietnam and Singapore.

“We need bases for refueling near the equator, and in other places,” ITAR-Tass quoted him as saying.

Russia is not looking to establish bases in those locations, but to reach agreement to use facilities there when required.

The countries are all strategically located – in three leftist-ruled countries close to the U.S.; towards either end of the Mediterranean; in the Indian Ocean south of the Gulf of Aden; and near some of the world’s most important shipping lanes in the Malacca Strait and South China Sea.

Access to the new locations would extend the Russian military’s potential reach well beyond its existing extraterritorial bases, at the Syrian port of Tartus and in former Soviet states – Ukraine’s Sevastopol, Armenia, Belarus, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and the occupied Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Shoigu said Russia was also beefing up its existing military presence in the post-Soviet region, doubling its troop numbers in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and deploying a regiment of troops to Belarus where it already has fighter aircraft stationed.

“Russia has started reviving its navy and strategic aviation since mid-2000s, seeing them as a tool to project the Russian image abroad and to protect its national interests around the globe,” the RIA Novosti state news agency commented.

“Now, Moscow needs to place such military assets in strategically important regions of the world to make them work effectively toward the goal of expanding Russia’s global influence.”

During his previous tenure at the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin in 2002 shut down a Cold War-era radar base in Cuba and a naval base in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam. Russia cited financial constraints, but the move was also seen at the time as an attempt to improve relations with Washington.

The listening station near Havana had been a key intelligence facility for decades, while the Vietnamese base, which was built by the U.S. during the Vietnam War, was leased to the Soviet Union in 1979 and became the largest Soviet base in the world beyond Moscow’s Warsaw Pact allies.

Upon his return to the presidency in 2012, Putin began exploring options to renew alliances with the communist countries, and Russian Navy chief Vice Admiral Viktor Chirkov said that year Cuba and Vietnam were in the frame.

Russia is now helping Vietnam to upgrade facilities at Cam Ranh Bay, including a submarine training center, and Russia is negotiating for preferential access to refueling and repair facilities there for its ships.

As for the Western hemisphere, Russian Navy ships in 2008 made their first visit since the end of the Cold War, holding joint maneuvers with the Venezuelan Navy in the Caribbean, navigating the Panama Canal, and making a port call in Havana.

Russian Navy vessels visited Cuba again in 2009 and last August – and on Wednesday, a Russian intelligence-gathering ship, the Viktor Leonov, docked in Havana harbor with no explanation from the government or state media coverage, the Associated Press reported.

Russian strategic bombers alsovisited the region in 2008 – for the first time since long-range flights by the aircraft were halted after the Soviet Union’s collapse – and again last fall, when two Tupolev “Blackjacks” carried out combat training patrols between Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Russian defense spending has been climbing sharply in the years since its last military engagement – the invasion of Georgia in August 2008 – and early this year it was reported to have overtaken Britain to become the world’s third biggest spender, behind the U.S. and China.

According to the British consultancy HIS Jane’s, Russia’s defense expenditure has more than doubled since 2007, and will have tripled by 2016.

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NRO Staff - Krauthammer’s Take: Obama Tells the World We Aren’t Going to Do Anything About Invasion of Ukraine

NRO Staff - Krauthammer’s Take: Obama Tells the World We Aren’t Going to Do Anything About Invasion of Ukraine

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As reports are coming in that Russia has placed 2,000 troops in Crimea, within the borders of Ukraine, President Obama said that “the United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.”

Charles Krauthammer responded on Special Report tonight saying, “The Ukrainians, and I think everybody, is shocked by the weakness of Obama’s statement. I find it rather staggering.”

Krauthammer thinks Obama’s statement is about “three levels removed” from actual action. He explained: Obama said “we will stand with the international community — meaning we are going to negotiate with a dozen other countries who will water down the statement — in affirming that there will be costs — meaning in making a statement not even imposing a cost, but in making a statement about imposing a cost — for any military intervention.”

 “What he’s saying is we’re not really going to do anything and we’re telling the world,” Krauthammer said.

4th Quarter GDP Slashed 25%

4th Quarter GDP Slashed 25%

on Fri, 28 Feb 2014

The Commerce Department announced Fridaythat its revised estimate of GDP growth in the 4th Quarter was revised down to 2.4% annual growth. Initial estimates had put GDP growth at 3.2%. Economists had expected a downward revision to 2.5%, making Friday's report a disappointment. It is a dramatic drop from the 3rd Quarter estimate of 4.1% growth. 

For the full year, the economy grew by a weak 1.9% in 2013. This is down sharply from the 2.8% growth registered in 2012. The downward revisions in the 4th Quarter numbers reflected smaller than estimated increases in personal consumption and private inventory build-ups. 

The markets and many economists continue to expect an acceleration in economic growth in 2014. Recent data, however, counters this sentiment. The economy did seem to pick up steam in the 3rd Quarter last year, but the year ended with a clear deceleration in the economy. 

One surprise in Friday's report was an increase in inflation higher than initial estimated. Prices increased 1.5% in the 4th Quarter, 25% higher than originally reported. Excluding food and energy, prices rose 1.8% in the quarter, compared to a 1.5% increase in the 3rd Quarter. 

Whispers persist that Hillary won’t run: Health may be worse than disclosed

dailycaller.com

Whispers persist that Hillary won’t run: Health may be worse than disclosed

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 Hillary Clinton. Win McNamee/Getty Images.  

If you listen to the chattering class in Washington, D.C., Hillary Clinton is a virtual certainty for the 2016 Democratic nomination, and the front runner in the next presidential race.

But in private, rumors persist that the former Secretary of State may not even be capable of making it to Iowa and New Hampshire. Clinton, these skeptics often say, will not run for president again because of health concerns.

These ubiquitous rumors of her health have been fueled in part by the supermarket tabloids. The National Enquirer wrote in 2012 that Clinton had brain cancer, something a spokesman dismissed then as “absolute nonsense.” In January of this year, the Globeclaimed that Clinton secretly had a brain tumor.

Asked about her health on Thursday, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in an email to The Daily Caller: ”To your question, very caring of you to ask. She’s 100%.”

But these rumors suggesting otherwise date back to the end of 2012, when Clinton’s health made headlines as she finished her term as secretary of state: aides explained then that she developed a stomach virus, hit her head, suffered a concussion and subsequently developed a blood clot in her brain but was being medicated and was expected to recover.

But skeptics say there is much more the story of her health, which has recently been the subject of increased speculation in Washington.

Because of these rumors, some on the right have been convincing themselves that Hillary is sick and therefore won’t run — a bombshell that would upend the 2016 race.

Roger Stone, the GOP consultant,wrote on Twitter recently that Clinton is “not running for health reasons,” telling followers to “remember you heard it first” from him.

Conservatives aren’t the only ones skeptical about whether or not Clinton has been open about her health. At the time of Clinton’s hospitalization in 2013, Melinda Henneberger of the Washington Post wrote a piece titled, “How sick is Hillary Clinton?”

“Already,” Henneberger wrote, “reports that describe Clinton’s right transverse sinus venous thrombosis as potentially life-threatening, though apparently caught in enough time, sound a lot more serious than the word from her doctors that the secretary is ‘making excellent progress and we are confident she will make a full recovery.’ She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family and her staff.’”

Henneberger asked then if we would “really be shocked to learn down the road that reports during her hospitalization had put a positive spin on her condition?”

“Our public officials have trained us to take everything they say with a healthy dose of skepticism,” Henneberger continued, “and on a matter as sensitive as a head injury followed by denials of any neurological symptoms, I’m not sure why we would or should unquestioningly accept the word of any politician.”

Some have noted Clinton’s change in appearance, including the addition of thick glasses, since her hospitalization. “One doesn’t need to be a physician… to have seen that Clinton has not appeared exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed of late,” Mary Stanik, a former Minnesota health care spokeswoman, wrote in 2013. “She looks to have gained a significant amount of weight since 2008. She seems pale, tired, and yes, aged. She’s said that she would like to know again what it’s like to not be tired.”

Last year, a Clinton aideacknowledged that her health crisis caused her to stop wearing contact lenses.

“She’ll be wearing these glasses instead of her contacts for a period of time because of lingering issues stemming from her concussion,” spokesman Philippe Reines told ABC News in 2013. “With them on, she sees just fine.”

Noonan: America and the Aggressive Left

Half the country feels—and is—beset by government. That's not progress.

By 
• PEGGY NOONAN

The constant mischief of the progressive left is hurting the nation's morale. There are few areas of national life left in which they are not busy, and few in which they're not making it worse. There are always more regulations, fees and fiats, always more cultural pressure and insistence.

The president brags he has a pen and a phone. He uses the former to sign executive orders. It is not clear why he mentioned the latter since he rarely attempts to bring legislators over to his side. Who exactly is he calling? The most hopeful thing he's done is signal this week what he'll be up to after he leaves. He will work with young minority men. Good. He is a figure of inspiration to them, and they need and deserve encouragement. This also leaves us understanding for the first time the true purpose of his so far unsuccessful presidency: to launch a meaningful postpresidency. I'm glad that's clear.

But to American morale. Here one refers to recent polling data. Gallup in December had 72% of those polled saying big government is a bigger threat to the future than big business and big labor—a record high. This may be connected to ObamaCare, an analyst ventured. Rasmussen this week had only 32% of those polled saying the country is headed in the right direction, with 61% saying we're on the wrong track. Both numbers fluctuate, but the right track is down two points since this time last year and the wrong track up three. Gallup also had only 39% of respondents saying they saw America in a positive position, with less than half thinking it will be better in five years.

None of these numbers are new, exactly, as they reflect long-term trends. But they never lose their power to startle. The persistent blues, the lack of faith, the bet that things won't get better—it just doesn't sound like America.

We are suffering in great part from the politicization of everything and the spread of government not in a useful way but a destructive one. Everyone wants to help the poor, the old and the sick; the safety net exists because we want it. But voters and taxpayers feel bullied, burdened and jerked around, which again is not new but feels more intense every day. Common sense and native wit tell them America is losing the most vital part of itself in the continuing shift of power from private to public. Rules, regulations, many of them stupid, from all the agencies—local, state, federal—on the building of a house, or the starting of a business. You can only employ so many before the new insurance rules kick in so don't employ too many,don't take a chance! Which means: Don't grow. It takes the utmost commitment to start a school or improve an existing one because you'll come up against the unions, which own the politicians.

It's all part of the malaise, the sclerosis. So is the eroding end of the idea that religious scruples and beliefs have a high place that must culturally and politically be respected. The political-media complex is bravely coming down on florists with unfashionable views. On twitter Thursday the freedom-fighter who tweets as @FriedrichHayek asked: "Can the government compel a Jewish baker to deliver a wedding cake on a Saturday? If not why not." Why not indeed. Because the truly tolerant give each other a little space? On an optimistic note, the Little Sisters of the Poor haven't been put out of business and patiently await their day in court.

I think a lot of people right now, certainly Republicans and conservatives, feel like a guy in a batting cage taking ball after ball from an automatic pitching machine. He's hitting the ball and keeping up and suddenly the machine starts going berserk. It's firing five balls a second, then 10. At first he tries to hit a few. Then he's just trying to duck, trying not to get hurt.

That's how people feel about the demands and dictates. The balls keep coming at them politically, locally, culturally. Republicans and conservatives comprise at least half the country. That's a lot of people.

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In the dark screwball comedy that is ObamaCare, the Congressional Budget Office revealed last month the law will provide disincentives to work. Don't worry, said Nancy Pelosi, people can take that time and go become poets and painters. At first you think: Huh, I can do that, I've got a beret. Then you think: No, I have to earn a living. Then you think, poor hardworking rube that you are: Wait a second, I'm subsidizing all this. I've been cast in the role of Catherine de Medici, patroness of the arts. She at least had a castle, I just get a bill!

The IRS is coming up with new rules making it harder for independent groups to organize and resist the constant messages and claims of government. Meanwhile it warns taxpayers they must be able to prove they have insurance coverage when they file their 2014 taxes or they'll face a fine (or tax, or fee), which the government has decided to call a "shared responsibility payment." It is $95 per adult and $47.50 per child to a maximum of $285, or 1% of your household income, whichever is higher. People already enraged by canceled coverage, higher premiums, huge deductibles, lost doctors and limited networks, fume. And the highest-ranking Democrat on Capitol Hill, Majority Leader Harry Reid, goes to the floor of the Senate to say of the ObamaCare horror stories that "all of them are untrue." They're "stories made up out of whole cloth." spread by "the multibillionaire Koch brothers."

Imagine that—you have real problems caused by a bad law, and Mr. Reid tells you that what you are experiencing in your own life is a lie made up by propagandists. He sounded like Lenin. There is no cholera in the new Russia.

The NSA is a real and present threat to your privacy, HHS actually never has to come up with a true number on ObamaCare enrollments or costs, and at the EPA no one talks anymore about whyAl Armendariz, a top regional administrator, felt free to brag in a 2010 speech that his "philosophy of enforcement" could be compared to the practice by ancient Roman soldiers of crucifying random victims. When it surfaced, he left the agency. Did his mindset?

People feel beset because they are. All these things are pieces of a larger, bullying ineptitude. And people know, they are aware.

Conservatives sometimes feel exhausted from trying to fight back on a million fronts. A leftist might say: "Yes, that's the plan."

But the left too is damaged. They look hollowed out and incoherent. Their victories, removed of meaning, are only the triumphs of small aggressions. They win the day but not the era. The result is not progress but more national division, more of a grinding sense of dislike. At first it will be aimed at the progressive left, but in time it will likely be aimed at America itself, or rather America as It Is Now. When the progressive left wins, they will win, year by year, less of a country.

Three Cups of Tea

Three Cups of Tea

The Tea Party still holds the high ground this year for its third national election.

John Fund

The Tea Party turns five years old this week, and the mainstream media are filled with stories saying it has lost clout and influence. Certainly the unfair assaults on it as racist and extremist have taken a toll, but in terms of where the political landscape is right now, I’d easily take the Tea Party’s tactical position over that of its liberal critics.

For now, the midterm elections are shaping up as a disaster for Democrats. MSNBC host Chris Matthews said last Sunday that “to the Democrats, this election, a rosy scenario is to lose five Senate seats, not six,” the number the GOP needs to pick up to win Senate control. “They could lose ten,” Matthews concluded.

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Indeed, Republicans such as Virginia’s Ed Gillespie and Colorado’s Representative Cory Gardner, who had no plans to run for the Senate last year, are jumping in. Gardner told Republican strategist Joe Brettell in a recent interview that he thinks Democratic incumbent Mark Udall can be beaten for one reason: Obamacare. “He’s vulnerable because 335,000 Coloradans have had their health insurance canceled, because he was a rubber stamp for President Obama and displayed a lack of leadership for the state.”

In addition, Republican strategists note that the most inexperienced tea-party candidates are unlikely to win GOP primaries this year, pointing to the flagging fortunes of Steve Stockman in Texas and Matt Bevin in Kentucky. An exception is Republican state senator Chris McDaniel, who is closing in on 78-year-old GOP senator Thad Cochran in Mississippi. But McDaniel is a seasoned candidate and Mississippi a safe seat for the GOP no matter who wins the primary.

It’s a mistake to focus on a single poll at any point in the election cycle, but this week’s New York Times survey is worth noting because a) the size of its survey means a smaller margin of error than in most polls and b) the Times’ pollster has a history of getting results that lean in favor of liberals in Democrats.

If that’s the case, the Times poll spells Trouble for Democrats, with a capital T. Despite the internal fissures within the GOP, Republicans are favored by voters for Congress this fall by 42 percent to 39 percent. A big reason is President Obama’s dismal 41 percent approval rating, with only 38 percent approving of his handling of the economy. Among independents, only 31 percent like his economic performance. That may be one reason why independents now tilt by a decisive 43 percent to 29 percent in favor of Republican candidates for Congress this fall.

Democrats will point to a Times poll result showing that 40 percent of voters think Republicans are nominating candidates who are too conservative. But the same survey shows that 41 percent of voters think Democrats are putting up candidates that are too liberal. The two-party system increasingly chafes at more and more voters.

But it’s Democrats who have to bring their base out, and there are signs that their voters aren’t as enthusiastic about voting this fall. As much as the media focuses on GOP divisions, consider that four out of ten Democrats now think the economy is “fairly bad” or “very bad.” Even on social issues, Democrats are more divided than commonly thought. Only 55 percent of Democrats now say abortion should be “generally available,” with 26 percent supporting greater restrictions on its availability and 16 percent supporting an outright ban.

Obamacare continues to drag down the president’s numbers. A full 42 percent of respondents in the Times poll want it repealed entirely, up from 34 percent in January. Among independents a full 45 percent now support full repeal.

All of this looks like good news for Republicans, until one recalls that the last 30 years have seen many GOP challengers to Democratic incumbents falter. In fact, in the 16 national elections since 1982, the GOP has defeated only 14 incumbent Democrats (less than one per election) while the Democrats have defeated 36 incumbent Republicans. And Republicans will have to beat incumbents to have any chance of taking back the Senate.

That’s why Obama’s approval numbers’ staying low is important to Republican prospects. It gives them their best chance to create a wave election that could topple incumbents. “Over the last decade, just nine Senate candidates have won elections with a president of their party below his national approval average in their state,” National Journal has concluded. “That’s about one success in every ten races.”

On that score, the 2014 Senate playing field is potentially brutal for Democrats. Democrats are defending seats in five states — Alaska, Arkansas, Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia — where Obama’s approval rating was at or below 35 percent in 2013, according to Gallup. In four other states where Democrats hold a Senate seat that’s up in 2014, Obama’s approval rating was well below his national average of 46 percent: Louisiana (40 percent), Colorado and Iowa (42 percent), and North Carolina (43 percent). In Oregon, New Hampshire, and New Mexico the president had a 45 percent job-approval rating, just below his national average. That’s a whopping total of eleven Democratic seats that could potentially be in play this November. Only a couple of GOP seats are in jeopardy, and in both Georgia and Kentucky the Obama approval numbers are weak.

The New York Times poll shows that 24 percent of Americans consider themselves supporters of the Tea Party, down from its high-water mark of 31 percent at the time of the 2010 election. But that still represents an energized base of supporters, many of whom are eager to vote. Democrats don’t have anything like that now, given that the “hope and change” pro-Obama fever of 2008 has faded and it’s so much harder to turn Democrats out in midterm elections.

That all helps explain that despite all the premature notices of the Tea Party’s decline this week, there were so many smiles at yesterday’s fifth-anniversary celebration in Washington (sponsored by Tea Party Patriots and Breitbart.com, among others). In politics it helps to be right, and most of the warnings tea-party advocates issued about the Obama administration have been validated by events.

Boehner on WH Meeting with Obama: We Agreed Most on Immigration

Boehner on WH Meeting with Obama: We Agreed Most on Immigration

on Thu, 27 Feb 2014

When House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and President Barack Obama met one-on-one for an hour at the White House on Wednesday for the first time since 2012, they found they agreed most on one issue: amnesty. 

At his press conference on Thursday, Boehner was asked, "When you sat down with President Obama this week, what was the one area where you found the most agreement, if any?"

After saying he was not going to outline what they discussed, Boehner replied, "We had a very healthy conversation on immigration."

When asked if that was the answer to the question, Boehner responded by saying, "You asked the question ... I gave an answer." 

Obama said that his greatest regret of 2013 was not getting comprehensive immigration reform legislation, which the Congressional Budget Office determined would lower the wages of American workers, enacted. Obama said that was his top priority for last year. He has also insisted that he would not sign any immigration reform law that did not have a pathway to citizenship for the country's illegal immigrants. 

But after the House GOP leadership released its "immigration principles," Obama said he may be open to working with Republicans on immigration, as long as the law did not create "two categories of people," meaning he felt whatever came out of the House would eventually allow illegal immigrants to gain citizenship. 

After Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) blasted the immigration principles as "amnesty," House and Senate GOP leaders said they would not move forward on immigration until Obama could prove to them he could be trusted with enforcing any new immigration laws. Amnesty opponents have indicated that GOP leaders may be attempting a head fake to buy time to secure the votes needed to pass immigration reform legislation that big-business interests like the Chamber of Commerce, along with the institutional left,desperately want. 

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) also said that he believed the "immigration principles" would eventually allow illegal immigrants to get citizenship, stating he did not believe there was anything in there that would permanently grant "second-class citizenship" to illegal immigrants. 

Boehner did not gain the trust of amnesty opponents when he hired Rebecca Tallent, who tried to help Sen. John McCain pass comprehensive immigration reform, as his top immigration adviser at the end of last year. Republican leaders have said that immigration reform would be a top priority in 2014, with House GOP Conference Chair Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) saying that she thought it was still possible for immigration legislation to be enacted this year. 

Amnesty advocates--like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)--have said that this year is the last chance to pass sweeping immigration legislation. 

Bachmann: Time to Take Gavel out of Reid’s Hand as We Did to Pelosi

Bachmann: Time to Take Gavel out of Reid’s Hand as We Did to Pelosi

on Thu, 27 Feb 2014

Michele Bachmann (R-MN) joined the Tea Party 5th anniversary event, but said she could not stay long because “I’m being audited by the IRS.” Bachmann thanked the Tea Party for what they did for this nation “What you did for America was stellar...it was life changing.” She added, that because of the tea party movement “you took the gavel out of Nancy Pelosi’s hand.”

The congresswoman from Minnesota said that there is one thing that progressives understand, and that is elections. Bachmann said that the only thing Democrats and progressives can talk about now is the 2016 election. She says the reason for that is they do not want conservatives focusing any more of their energy on the 2014 elections and they do not want Democrats to be reminded of the firepower like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio, who were installed in the last two elections, that have pumped dynamism back into the GOP.

Representative Bachmann is very hopeful for the continued success of the tea party movement because “the movement at its core is an intellectual movement. It is a movement based on ideas. Ideas that I would put up against any ideas in the world.” The congresswoman said there was a group a little over 200 years ago that put up the same ideas “not only did they put those ideas up they contended for those ideas. They put “their blood, their treasure, their families, they laid everything on the line.” Of course, Bachmann was referring to the men and women of the American Revolution. Bachmann thanked everyone in the room for being a patriot and for all those who “have laid it all on the line.”

Bachmann faulted conservatives for listening to and believing what the mainstream media says about conservatives. In Sun Tzu’s the Art of War, Michelle told us that the first two rules are you need to understand yourself and you need to understand your enemy. Bachmann asserts that we have done a poor job in the first rule, knowing ourselves.  She said that conservative principles should be motivation enough to keep us in the game. “And let’s remember we are the adults in the room.”

The congresswoman also reminded the audience that the Constitution protects our rights to keep private property and to build and keep wealth. The definition of wealth she says is just the retention of capital. “President Obama is fine if we want to earn capital, but he doesn't like it so much if we keep our own capital. He sees that our job is the purpose of giving it over to him.”  This government capital grab she insists has nothing to do with the original ideas of the founding fathers and the revolution that spawned America.

Bachmann ended her speech with a small history lesson. She reminded us that the world was once safeguarded by what was called Pax Britannica until American dominance after World War II changed the conditions to Pax Americana, in which the United States became both the Economic and Military super power of the world. Bachmann warns that now China has become the world super power in terms of trade. “I’m not saying the party is over but it’s time for us to sober up and wake up and recognize that in my opinion that China becoming a world power does not make a safer world.”

According to Bachmann, Americans do not want to be under a “Pax China or a Pax Russia or a Pax Iran.” Bachmann opines that progressives, given their ideological tendencies, make America weaker and, therefore, this makes her concerned about where the world may be heading. She says that is why our ideas matter. Bachmann maintains that we have an opportunity to take the gavel out of Harry Reid’s hand, as we did Nancy Pelosi. “So let’s not Blow it!” According to Bachmann if we achieve that we can then install a constitutional conservative for President in 2016. “Let me tell you if we do that not only will our children thank you but the world will thank you.”

CBO: The military is getting squeezed | Human Events

CBO: The military is getting squeezed | Human Events

By: John Hayward  
2/26/2014 09:16 AM

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Yesterday’s announcement of deep military cuts prompted criticism that our armed forces were being squeezed for cash to fund domestic spending programs.  A report from the Congressional Budget Office supports that contention, as noted by Doug McKelway at Fox News:

As the Obama administration announces proposed sweeping defense cuts, a Congressional Budget Office report documents how increases in other areas of domestic spending may be forcing the White House to reduce money for the military.

The CBO report finds that mandatory spending, which includes Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, is projected to rise $85 billion, or 4 percent, to $2.1 trillion this year.

Interest on the debt is worse. It is projected to increase 14 percent per year, almost quadrupling in dollar terms between 2014 and 2024. “We are going to be spending more in interest in a couple of years then we do on national defense,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, R-Calif., told Fox News.

That’s exactly what critics of runaway government spending have been warning about for years, only to have there warnings dismissed by “tomorrow never comes” debt addicts with indestructible faith in the ability of Big Government to print as many dollars as it needs.  It wasn’t that long ago that warnings of debt interest surpassing the Pentagon budget were considered sky-is-falling alarmism.  Now we’re only a few years away from the first chunks of sky landing the helmets of our troops, and the decks of our ships.

A correspondent reminds me that Army cuts are getting all the headlines today, but the Navy is also seeing dangerous reductions.  With the Army cut to the bone – cut through the bone – the Navy will probably be gobbled up by entitlement spending and debt service next.  The idea of a small, high-tech force of planes, drones, and special operators has little room for naval power beyond aircraft carriers, and some subs for nuclear deterrent.  Perhaps questions will be asked by cash-hungry politicians about just how well those carriers need to be defended.  It’s silly to think of America fighting a major naval engagement, right?  Nobody’s going to seriously threaten our carriers and subs, right?

And while there was plenty of bipartisan cooperation in the creation of this all-consuming debt crisis, let me be blunt: not a single Democrat alive will do anything to stop it, or even slow it down.  Not enough Republicans will, either, especially if their caucus is filled with people who think reducing the annual growth of a spending program from 12 percent to 10 percent constitutes a “cut.”  But we’re at least a decade away from any major Democrat admitting the problem exists, let alone doing something about it.  (I can give you a rough idea of when they’ll wake up: the day when mandatory debt-service and entitlement spending crushes a program that doesn’t run through the Pentagon.)

One of the troubling things about military cuts is that ramping back up to crisis levels is a lot harder than pouring a few more billion into a phony “stimulus” program.  There are plenty of “shovel-ready jobs” in time of war, but those shovels require complex manufacturing capacity to create, and a lot of training to handle properly.  The decline of military influence within the broader American culture will also be difficult to reverse; I fear we civilians have already grown too far from our defenders.  I take the success of projects like the “Lone Survivor” movie as a sign many Americans share those concerns.

Blithe assurances that we’ll never face another large-scale military challenge have preceded every large-scale military challenge in history.  In this case, I think there’s a good deal of reverse-engineered finger-crossing in those assurances.  The fiscal reality is that we can’t afford a large military any more, and within a few years, we won’t be able to afford one at all.  Mandatory spending will crowd everything else out within our lifetimes.  Our military capability is one of the first things to go – it’s happening right now.  The choice between guns and butter is not difficult for politicians to make, when a throng of people line up outside their windows to demand the “free” butter they are “entitled” to.  Free butter is expensive, especially when you buy it with maxed-out credit cards.

Ukraine and Our Useless Outrage | National Review Online

Ukraine and Our Useless Outrage | National Review Online

Don’t step over the line and re-militarize the Rhineland. Absorbing Austria would cross a red line. Breaking up Czechoslovakia is unacceptable. Get out of Poland by the announced deadline. The rest was history.

Don’t dare blow up another American military barracks overseas. Don’t even consider another attack on the World Trade Center. Don’t even try blowing up one more American embassy in East Africa. Don’t ever put a hole in a U.S. warship again. The rest was history.

President Obama issued yet another one of those sorts of warnings to stop the violence to Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych just before protesters drove Yanukovych out of office. “There will be consequences if people step over the line,” Obama threatened.

Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national-security adviser, amplified that veiled warning. He called the Ukrainian government’s repression “completely outrageous” — as opposed to just outrageous or completely, completely outrageous. 

Secretary of State John Kerry joined the chorus of condemnation by hinting at economic sanctions if Yanukovych didn’t stop his violent crackdown on protesters.

Why does this rhetorical assault sound familiar?

Over the last five years, Obama has issued serial deadlines to Iran to cease and desist from its ongoing enrichment of uranium. All the while, more Iranian centrifuges went on line.

Later, Obama turned from deadlines to red lines. He threatened Syrian president Bashar Assad with one about using chemical weapons. “A red line for us,” the president warned, “is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.”

Assad moved over that American red line, using chemical weapons to gas his own people, and is now winning the war against the Syrian insurgents. In the end, an embarrassed Obama was reduced to denying that he had ever issued a red line in the first place: “I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line.”

The administration’s latest cry of “outrageous” does not seem so absolute either. Remember, the president himself used that exact adjective to condemn the IRS scandal when it was revealed that the tax agency was inordinately focusing on conservative groups.

Later, after various key IRS officials had invoked the Fifth Amendment, resigned, or abruptly retired, Obama brushed off the scandal. It was, he said, mostly a media event conjured up by “outraged” journalists. Somehow, a scandal that the president once decried as institutional abuse ended up as a media melodrama perpetrated by unduly outraged reporters.

Will the Ukrainian mess now abate due to Kerry’s hints at sanctions?

Given Kerry’s loud global-warming sermonizing and the administration’s serial threats, bad actors abroad probably believe that burning too much coal is more likely to anger the U.S. than shooting protesters or gassing enemies.

After the Obama administration finally assembled a coalition of allies to impose tough sanctions against Iran, and after the trade embargoes began to bite the theocracy, Obama, without warning his coalition, abruptly relaxed those embargoes and entered into talks with the Iranians.

The message? Imposing sanctions is a difficult business. When they finally work, they are likely to be abruptly lifted if the squeezed nation sends out a few peace feelers and wants to feign appearing reasonable.

The U.S. has now shot so many rhetorical arrows that its quiver of indignation is empty — and the world’s troublemakers may know it. An administration that ignores almost all of its own Obamacare deadlines surely cannot expect others to abide by any timetables it sets abroad.

There may be no viable solutions to the violence in Syria or Ukraine. The messes in Egypt and Libya, the Chinese provocations to their neighbors, the North Korean lunacy, and the spiraling violence in Venezuela certainly have no easy answers. But not knowing quite what to do is not the same as knowing certainly what not to do.

Although the U.S. alone seems to honor its promised deadlines of withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq, the world’s aggressors sense that the Obama administration’s bluster will be followed by more bluster. Therefore, they have decided to risk aggrandizements while they can. In the mind of Vladimir Putin, today Ukraine, tomorrow the Baltic States or Eastern Europe. In the minds of the Iranian theocrats, if chemical WMD are okay in Syria, why not nuclear WMD in Iran? In China’s view, when Japan backs off, why shouldn’t Taiwan, South Korea, or the Philippines?

Such a seemingly insignificant loss of deterrence is how wars often start — when an aggressive nation bets that loud words signal that consequences will never follow. So it is emboldened to up the ante to try something even riskier.

America’s step-over line/deadline/red line outrage is long past monotonous and empty — and the result has been an ever scarier world.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His latest book is The Savior Generals, published this spring by Bloomsbury Books. You can reach him by e-mailingauthor@victorhanson.com. © 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Confronting the Russian bear | The Australian

Confronting the Russian bear | The Australian

GIVEN the significant setback events in Kiev represent for Moscow’s strategic ambitions, there can be little surprise about the way Russian President Vladimir Putin has now embarked on a tactic of deliberate sabre-rattling, ominously ordering 150,000 troops and hundreds of tanks and fighter aircraft into a state of “combat readiness” on Ukraine’s doorstep. It remains to be seen how this action plays out, but what is clear is that by making the move, Mr Putin has signalled his refusal to accept the reality of what has happened in Kiev and set out on a dangerous course that could lead to the break-up of Ukraine and what would inevitably be a catastrophic civil war.

Military intervention by Moscow would be a disaster. US President Barack Obama, in a swift response from Air Force One to news of Mr Putin’s “combat readiness” order, has gravely warned against “provocative rhetoric and actions” while NATO defence ministers have bluntly served notice the alliance will defend Ukraine’s “sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity”. However enraged he may feel with pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych ignominiously put to flight, Mr Putin would be foolish to ignore such warnings. Unpalatable though he clearly finds the prospect, he now has no alternative but to accept that Ukraine is inevitably headed towards signing the historic pact with the EU that lies at the heart of the anti-Moscow uprising. Moscow does have legitimate interests in Ukraine. In Russian-speaking Crimea, ceded by the old Soviet Union to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine in 1954, pro-Russian separatist demonstrators are doing battle with ethnic Tatars and pleading for intervention by Moscow to save them from the new authorities in Kiev.

Mr Putin is anxious about the fate of his hugely important Black Sea Fleet based at the Crimean port of Sebastapol but the forceful warning from Mr Obama and NATO’s defence ministers should leave the Russian President in no doubt about the dangers he risks if he launches any military intervention in Ukraine in the way he did in Georgia in 2008. With the pro-European mood running so strongly in Kiev, Moscow must accept it now has no practical alternative but to work with the new authorities in Ukraine, not against them. A provocative show of military might across the border, meant to intimidate, is not the answer.

Can Ukraine avoid partition? – Telegraph Blogs

Can Ukraine avoid partition? – Telegraph Blogs

I wish it were as easy as goodies against baddies, students against secret policemen, democrats against autocrats. In the early stages of an uprising – what we might call the Arab Spring Phase – Western media, wanting to simplify things for their readers, gloss over the complexities. Later, when things turn tragic, those readers can be left baffled.

Don’t get me wrong. Viktor Yanukovych was a nasty piece of work, whose goons carried out unspeakable crimes. My sympathies were with the protesters, both in general (the vision of a pluralist, market-oriented Ukraine is more wholesome than that of a country tied to Putin) and on the specific issue that triggered the demonstrations (a free trade agreement is better than a customs union, because it is non-exclusive).

But the ousting of a thug doesn’t mean that “all shall be well / and all manner of thing shall be well”. This is, after all, not the first time that Yanukovych has been toppled by street protests. Ten years ago, crowds in the same places pushed him from office and, in new elections, installed their candidate, Viktor Yuschenko. Years of corruption and failure followed, and Yanukovych came back, in an election that observers agreed had been free and fair, in 2010.

Ukraine means “edge” or “borderland” (Krajina in the former Yugoslavia shares its etymology). To Russian nationalists, Kiev is the cradle of Russian nationhood, and Ukrainians are the Little Russians who, along with the White Russians and the Great Russians, comprised the historic motherland. Plenty of Russians will tell you that Ukrainian is a Russian dialect and Ukrainian national identity a creation of, first, Polish and, later, Austrian occupiers. They point to the many famous Russians who might as easily be called Ukrainian – Gogol, Tchaikovsky, Brezhnev – arguing that the distinction is synthetic and pointless.

Ukrainian patriots respond by pointing to the result of their 1991 referendum, when 92.3 per cent of voters, including a clear majority of Russian-speakers, voted for independence. There were majorities for separation in every region – even Crimea, which had always historically been part of Russia until whimsically given to Ukraine by Khruschev (another Russian with Ukrainian connections) in 1954.

These two views – Ukrainians as a historic people, Ukrainians as a strain of Russians – frame the present quarrel. Most Russian nationalists allow, albeit reluctantly, that Ukrainian national consciousness exists. Alexander Solzhenitsyn grumpily accepted that western Ukrainians, after the horrors of the Soviet era, had been permanently alienated from Mother Russia; but he insisted that the frontiers were arbitrarily drawn under Lenin. If Ukrainians claimed independence on grounds of having a separate national identity, he argued, they must extend their own logic to the Russian-speakers east of the Dnieper.

Look at the two maps below: the first showing the linguistic division, the second the result of the last presidential election. The Slavophile-Westerniser split (to borrow nineteenth-century Russian terminology) is not only about language, of course. There are always complexities: Russian-speakers who are fiercely anti-Moscow, Western Ukrainians who associate the Tymoshenko years with cronyism and sleaze. Still, 13 years after independence, there are few signs that the two sides of the country are melding.

Obama's Bogus Budget | RealClearPolitics

Obama's Bogus Budget | RealClearPolitics

“With the 2015 budget request,” The Washington Post reported last week, “Obama will call for an end to the era of austerity that has dogged much of his presidency."

Well, it’s about time! The end of austerity cannot come soon enough, as far as your humble correspondent is concerned. And a quick look at the historical budget tables shows why: In 2008, the federal government spent just a hair under $3 trillion. After six years of President Slash-and-Burn, spending has shrunk to almost $4 trillion. If we keep cutting like this, it will be down to $5 trillion before you know it.

These savage reductions have taken place in nearly every major federal program. Take defense spending: The year before Obama took office, it stood at $594 billion. It’s now $597 billion. Back in 2001 it was almost $300 billion. Even if you adjust for inflation, it’s clear that defense spending has shrunk at an alarming rate.

Same deal for food stamps: Under President Barack Obama, spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has gone from $40 billion to $78 billion, in constant dollars. And that’s after it went from $20 billion to $40 billion under Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush. Spending cuts like that are simply barbaric.

But they are par for the course. Using inflation-adjusted, 2012 dollars, federal spending on K-12 and vocational education has gone from $41 billion in 2002 to $100 billion in 2012. During the same period, Medicare spending has gone from $293 billion to roughly $500 billion. Transportation spending? It went from $86 billion to $138 billion. Medicaid and related programs? $223 billion to $327 billion. Energy? Half a billion to $9 billion.

If we keep hacking away at federal spending like this, pretty soon we won’t have any federal government left! No wonder the economy has been so sluggish: We obviously need more stimulus.

Clearly, trends like these cannot go on. You can’t cut your way to prosperity; America needs to be building up, not tearing down. We need more investment in basic research — research like an important new project being funded by the Fish and Wildlife Service, which is giving $175,000 to a grant recipient who will use the money to study “the Swimming Abilities of Native Stream Fishes in the Northern Rockies-Upper Great Plains Regions of Montana.”

Studying the swimming abilities of fish is precisely the sort of research the federal government is best at. But if we don’t wise up and start spending money faster, we might have to do without it. Then where will we be?

It’s not just America. There has been a lot of austerity in Europe, too. Just ask Paul Krugman, the great economist who writes for The New York Times. “You see,” he patiently explained last week, “some but not all members of the euro area … were forced into imposing Draconian fiscal austerity” during the recent economic downturn — the results of which were “nasty, in some cases catastrophic, declines in output and unemployment.” (Krugman has been explaining this patiently for some time. In his 2012 piece on “Europe’s Austerity Madness,” he pointed out that “with erstwhile middle-class workers reduced to picking through garbage in search of food, austerity has already gone too far.”)

Just how bad has the European austerity been? According to a piece in the Financial Post last May, in 2007 government spending consumed 45.6 percent of the GDP of countries in the European Union. By 2012, that percentage had shrunk to a shockingly low 49.4 percent. No wonder the economy over there stinks.
Clearly, we cannot allow any more of those darn foreigners to enter America and bring any of that austerity nonsense with them. Unfortunately, we are going in the wrong direction on border control, too. A decade ago, we had almost 10,000 border-patrol agents. Now we have more than 21,000. Border fencing, meanwhile, has increased 370 percent. Deportations are at an all-time high. It’s like we don’t even care about sealing the border any more.

One more data point should clinch the case: In January 2013, The Washington Post reported that “Congress funded Customs and Border Protection at $11.7 billion — 64 percent more than FY 2006 and $262 million more than in FY 2011, despite the new climate of austerity.”

Yes, the new climate of austerity. Thank heavens we’re putting an end to that. 

Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/02/26/obamas_bogus_budget_121730.html#ixzz2uXgtSxaH
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