Federal Issues Committee :
The on-line links to the following articles can be found in the "issues archive" of our
Federal Issues Committee website [ http://www.indeedfree.com/fic/issues/archive.html ]
and also at the Federal Issues Committee webpage of IndianaArmstrongPatriots.com
Today's Items -
"The forthright statement of a dictator."
~ Mark LevinFrom IronicSurrealism.com January 5, 2012
: http://ironicsurrealism.com/2012/01/05/mark-levin-we-have-constitutional-crisis-the-road-to-dictatorship-is-paved-with-poisonous-language-like-obamas-audio/WAKE UP AMERICA !
Because if you are not furious, you have not been paying attention!
-- We Have A Constitutional Crisis On Our Hands
-- The Road To Dictatorship Is Paved With Poisonous Language Like His (Obama's
)Obama:
But when Congress refuses to act, and as a result, hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, then I have an obligation as President to do what I can without them. I’ve got an obligation to act on behalf of the American people. And I’m not going to stand by while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the people that we were elected to serve. Not with so much at stake, not at this make-or-break moment for middle-class Americans. We’re not going to let that happen. ~ Barack Obama January 4, 2012 –Shaker Heights High School, Shaker Heights, Ohio |
Levin:
"He’s just told you that he’s rewritten the responsibilities of the president of the United States. This could of come out of the mouth of Hugo Chavez, Castro. Or any two-bit banana republic dictator on the face of the earth"…."Obama is in a hurry, he wants to destroy the country at a breakneck speed. He hasn’t done enough apparently."…."Unilaterally appointing people to positions when the constitution says he does not have the power to unilaterally appoint." |
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The Foundry: http://blog.heritage.orgObama’s Tyrannical Abuse of Power
Posted By Mike Brownfield January 5, 2012
Standing behind a podium on a stage just outside Cleveland, President Barack Obama delivered a speech yesterday that will reverberate throughout history. No, its lasting impact will not come because of its soaring rhetoric. Instead, it will make its mark because it was at that moment on a Wednesday afternoon in Ohio that the President announced his plans to act in total and utter disregard of the
U.S. Constitution [2] with his illegal appointment of Richard Cordray to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).It’s an astonishingly reckless exercise of executive authority that Heritage’s Todd Gaziano
described [3] as a "tyrannical abuse of power." Never before in the 100-plus years of precedent on the recess appointment power has a President taken such an action while the Senate was still in session. Yet notwithstanding that fact, President Obama yesterday decided that he would be the first.Here’s why the President finds himself so far outside of constitutional bounds. Under Article II, section 2, clause 2 of the
Constitution [2], the President has the power to fill vacancies that may happen during Senate recesses, as Gaziano writes [3]. In this case, President Obama was seeking to fill the vacancy in the CFPB, a new agency that has come under significant criticism [4] given its unparalleled powers [5] to issue expansive regulations with virtually no accountability. Republicans in the Senate, to date, have refused to confirm the President’s nominees to head up the CFPB, vowing to block Senate approval until reforms are made [6] to the agency. So President Obama has decided to act without their approval by attempting to make a recess appointment. The trouble is that Congress is not in a recess because the House of Representatives never consented, as required under the Constitution, Article I, section 5. That means that the President simply does not have the power to make this appointment. Gaziano explains [3] the implications of the President’s actions:[The recess appointment] power has been interpreted by scores of attorneys general and their designees in the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel for over 100 years to require an official, legal Senate recess of at least 10-25 days of duration. (There are a few outlier opinions, never sanctioned by the courts, that suggest a recess of six to seven days might be enough–but never less than that.)
The President’s purported recess appointment of Cordray would render the Senate’s advice and consent role to normal appointments almost meaningless. It is a grave constitutional wrong that Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has already denounced. But it fits a pattern of extra-constitutional abuse by the White House that seems more interested in energizing a liberal base than safeguarding the office of the presidency.
Why take such action? The President says it’s because he can’t wait for Congress to act on behalf of the American people. The truth is that the President is hell bent on ramming through his agenda, and he is entirely unwilling to compromise with the duly elected representatives who sit in the House and Senate. By circumventing the Senate and appointing Cordray, the President can ensure that his big-government regulatory agenda is enacted without the reforms that Congress is demanding. Unfortunately, the Cordray appointment is not the only example of the President’s wanton, unilateral actions.
Apart from Cordray, the President also plans to
make three appointments [7] to the National Labor Relations Board without Senate approval, which will fundamentally alter the makeup of the board and enable the President to realize his Big Labor agenda. That means an unrestrained push to unionize businesses at all costs and punish companies that seek to grow in non-union states (as was attempted in the Boeing case) — even if it means harming both workers and the economy. And in the case of environmental regulations, immigration law, No Child Left Behind, the auto bailout [8],the selective enforcement of voting rights laws, and the regulation of the Internet (among others), the Obama Administration has in fact enacted its agenda via legislative fiat time and time again.In an interview last month with 60 Minutes,
[9] the President gave warning of his intentions to preside over an imperial presidency for the next year. "What I’m not gonna do is wait for Congress," he said. "So wherever we have an opportunity and I have the executive authority to go ahead and get some things done, we’re just gonna go ahead and do ‘em." The President now, though, seems to have made a significant course correction. With these latest illegal, unconstitutional appointments, the President has jumped at an opportunity to act regardless of the fact that he has no executive authority to do it. And under his feet is a trampled Constitution and 100 years of precedent for which he has no use. It’s time for Congress and the American people to take a stand against President Obama’s abuse of power. URLs in this post:John Griffing - a voice from the RIGHT
American Thinker
The Hitman Cometh: America to be 'War Zone'
An old adage reads, "If it quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck." The push by the Obama Administration to progressively strip Americans of basic liberties in the pursuit of political objectives has now taken on more draconian overtones, and no one seems to have noticed.
While the media quibbles over Romney versus Gingrich, the Occupy movement, and other diversions, President Obama continues to undermine law and order, dismantling the US Constitution piece by piece. When public officials seek to limit freedom, it can be concluded that these officials want to rule instead of govern. Cloaking seizures of power in clever misnomers does not validate the abuse of public office. What else can we conclude when Obama claims the illegal power to assassinate citizens at his
whim? If citizen assassination were the only example of executive malfeasance emanating from Washington, Americans could breathe easier, except that citizen assassination, e.g. Awlaki, has opened the floodgates for a barrage of new power seizures. The ground softened, the first brick laid, Obama can now proceed unchallenged.As I warned repeatedly in multiple articles over the last two years, the machinery put in place to thwart Islamic terrorism could be turned against citizens for political purposes, due to the broad constructions used in terror definitions. Only no one could have imagined the speed at which these things would
come to pass:The broad and ambiguous language found in the PATRIOT Act gives the president, whoever that may be, the power to determine what is and is not "terror." Section 411, G, vi, II of the PATRIOT Act defines a terrorist as anyone "designated, upon publication in the Federal Register, by the Secretary of State in consultation with or upon the request of the Attorney General."
Everything that follows is contingent on this loose definition -- i.e. warrantless wiretapping, warrantless entry, human tracking, access to bank statements and phone records, access to internet records, "enhanced" interrogation, and now assassination.
Illustrating the danger of such a legal construction is the fact that "terrorism" is increasingly used as a subjective slur to intimidate opponents. Recall that Democrats recently accused Republicans of "terrorism," in place of presenting actual solutions to America's budget crisis. The definition is adaptable it seems.
When the first citizen was felled by President Obama's new citizen assassination program, the act was lauded by members of
both parties as a tough and needed measure to successfully prosecute the war on terror. I counseled that this new and self-declared power would quickly morph into something dangerous to both democratic dialogue and the expression of ideas, potentially putting anyone with the temerity to criticize the President at risk. Since no one has seen the names of the persons supposedly on the classified "hit list," there is no accountability in the way the new program is leveraged or organized.And as CIA General Counsel Stephen Preston said to the American Bar Association (ABA) this past week, "I will make this observation that citizenship does not confer immunity on one who takes up arms against his own country. It didn't in World War Two...." Preston conveniently forgets Supreme Court precedent voiding the actions of President Roosevelt against American citizens of Japanese descent. This kind of semantic bantering though avoids the real issue: public officials, especially unelected ones, do not have the constitutional authority to decide when or under what circumstances to revoke the rights conferred by citizenship. Citizenship is, or it is not, but bureaucrats cannot be permitted to make citizenship conditional. If citizenship can be redefined by self-appointed political overlords, then the social contract that undergirds the American system ceases to exist. Besides, the Constitution already provides the mechanisms by which to address treason and rebellion. The attempt to make citizenship conditional then is a thinly-veiled means of silencing those standing in the way of total control, a goal apparently prized by Obama. Recall when Obama
instructed his staff to "identify all those areas in which we can act administratively without additional congressional authorization and just get it done." And consider that every major legislative "achievement" attributable to Obama has consisted of massive transfers of power to the executive branch from Congress and the American people.I wish I had been wrong about my predictions. But legitimized citizen assassination has paved the way for even more Orwellian
designs. Several weeks ago, Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) advanced legislation in the Senate that would designate the continental United States as a "battlefield." Under the provisions of the legislation, the military could then deploy within the US without any formal authorization under Posse Comitatus, which limits domestic deployment and guards against a police state. No declaration of martial law is necessary. Obama only need give the order, and then troops can march down American streets in search of "terrorists," real or hypothetical, since no real threat need be demonstrated. In his first term, Obama authored an executive order that transferred the power of deploying troops domestically from state governors to a council of persons answerable only to himself. A recipe for despotism and the virtual end of freedom in America now exist when this order and current proposals are combined. The horrific implications of converting America into an active warzone are obvious to any keen observer.Other sections of the legislation illegally claim the authority to round up citizens deemed terrorists by would-be apparatchiks at the White House and hold them "indefinitely," usurping the Habeas Corpus rights of American citizens. Section 1031 of the NDAA reads: "Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force ... includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons.... [including] [d]etention under the law of war without trial...."
If President Obama is willing to mirandize self-avowed foreign Islamic terrorists, but kill on sight an American citizen without so much as an attempt at peaceful apprehension, what can Americans expect from the President once "indefinite detention" becomes law? Considering Obama's clearly inverted understanding of how US law applies, i.e. civil rights in court extended to foreign persons and not to citizens, might it be prudent to conclude that he will also have the same inverse understanding of when and where to apply "enhanced interrogation?"
Why are Obama and his allies in Congress so eager to snuff out the lamp of liberty at home, for the promise of safety already attained? Previously imposed security measures have arguably already achieved the needed safeguards against domestic terror. Have any terrorist plots succeeded since 9/11?
Prior to becoming president, Obama once
implied the need to "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution...." He now applies the same philosophical bent, at odds with his oath of office, to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), telling the press categorically that he will not veto the legislation. Put simply, Obama sides with the enemies of freedom in Congress, and will allow the indefinite detention of American citizens to proceed. This is indeed a predictable response, considering Obama's abhorrent constitutional record, e.g. unconfirmed czars, undeclared wars, illegal drilling bans, private sector nationalization, rule by executive fiat, and more recently, execution of citizens without due process. Obama rationalized his support of the legislation because it gives him "discretion" as to how the controversial provisions will be applied. That is supremely comforting.To the everlasting shame of conservatives, certain members of the GOP are lending their support to these gargantuan power-grabs. Sen. Lindsey Graham
praised the indefinite detention provisions, rejoicing "for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield" and that people can be detained without trial, "American citizen or not." God help us.Together, citizen assassination and indefinite detention represent the biggest attack on freedom and human rights in American history, and this assessment includes the Alien and Sedition Acts.
The founding fathers had a word to describe the events transpiring in America today, the disregard of the Constitution, the centralization of power in a few hands:
tyranny.This will either be a nation of free men and women, or it will be the next in a long line of tyrannies. There is no one to save America if America falls. This generation must decide the fate of American liberty.
Jonathan Turley
- a voice from the LEFT(From Wikipedia)
: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Turleythe
guardianThe NDAA's historic assault on American liberty
By signing into law the NDAA, the president has awarded the military extraordinary powers to detain US citizens without trial
President Barack Obama rang in the New Year by signing the NDAA law with its provision allowing him to indefinitely detain citizens. It was a symbolic moment, to say the least. With Americans distracted with drinking and celebrating, Obama signed one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country ... and citizens partied in unwitting bliss into the New Year.
Ironically, in addition to breaking his promise not to sign the law, Obama broke his promise on signing statements andattached a statement that he really does not want to detain citizens indefinitely [1] (see the text of the statement here) [2].
Obama insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law first came to light.
As discussed earlier [3] the White House told citizens that the president would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Senator Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House and insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.The latest claim is even more insulting. You do not "support our troops" by denying the principles for which they are fighting. They are not fighting to consolidate authoritarian powers in the president. The "American way of life" is defined by our constitution and specifically the bill of rights. Moreover, the insistence that you do not intend to use authoritarian powers does not alter the fact that you just signed an authoritarian measure. It is not the use but the right to use such powers that defines authoritarian systems.
The almost complete failure of the mainstream media to cover this issue is shocking. Many reporters have bought into the spin of the Obama administration as they did the spin over torture by the Bush administration. Even today, reporters refuse to call waterboarding torture despite the long line of cases and experts defining waterboarding as torture for decades.
On the NDAA, reporters continue to mouth the claim that this law only codifies what is already the law. That is not true. The administration has fought any challenges to indefinite detention to prevent a true court review. Moreover, most experts agree that such indefinite detention of citizens violates the constitution.
There are also those who continue the longstanding effort to excuse Obama's horrific record on civil liberties by blaming either others or the times. One successful myth is that there is an exception for citizens. The White House is saying that changes to the law made it unnecessary to veto the legislation. That spin is ridiculous. The changes were the inclusion of some meaningless rhetoric [4] after key amendments protecting citizens were defeated. The provision merely states that nothing in the provisions could be construed to alter Americans' legal rights. Since the Senate clearly views citizens as not just subject to indefinite detention but even to execution without a trial, the change offers nothing but rhetoric to hide the harsh reality.
The Obama administration and Democratic members are in full spin mode – using language designed to obscure the authority given to the military. The exemption for American citizens from the mandatory detention requirement (section 1032) is the screening language for the next section, 1031, which offers no exemption for American citizens from the authorisation to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial.
Obama could have refused to sign the bill and the Congress would have rushed to fund the troops. Instead, as confirmed by Senator Levin, the White House conducted a misinformation campaign to secure this power while portraying the president as some type of reluctant absolute ruler, or, as Obama maintains, a reluctant president with dictatorial powers.
Most Democratic members joined their Republican colleagues in voting for this un-American measure. Some Montana citizens are moving to force the removal of these members [5] who, they insist, betrayed their oaths of office and their constituents. Most citizens, however, are continuing to treat the matter as a distraction from the holiday cheer.
For civil libertarians, the NDAA is our Mayan moment: 2012 is when the nation embraced authoritarian powers with little more than a pause between rounds of drinks.
This article was
originally published on Jonathan Turley's blog [6] and is crossposted by kind permission of the author.