The Elephant in the Room

Why is no one, not rank and file GOP members, or the RNC leadership, or the conservative blogosphere, or talk radio, challenging the Constitutionality of HR 3200? We should be screaming from the rooftops every day the fact that the Constitution does NOT give unlimited authority to Congress to spend tax money on social welfare programs, or even a limited authority. Time and again, throughout our history, charity funded by the public coffers has been struck down, either before its passage by wise Congressmen or after in the courts. As a reminder, I offer up the following:

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress.... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America." - James Madison

“I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity.” To approve the measure "would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.” - Franklin Pierce

“Mr. Speaker: I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member on this floor knows it. We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.” - David Crockett

And, irony of ironies:

"As a matter of fact and law, the governing rights of the States are all of those which have not been surrendered to the National Government by the Constitution or its amendments. Wisely or unwisely, people know that under the Eighteenth Amendment Congress has been given the right to legislate on this particular subject, but this is not the case in the matter of a great number of other vital problems of government, such as the conduct of public utilities, of banks, of insurance, of business, of agriculture, of education, of social welfare and of a dozen other important features. In these, Washington must not be encouraged to interfere." - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

HR 3200 is not Constitutional. In truth, neither is Cap and Tax, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and the vast array of alphabet soup federal agencies. Follow the Constitution.

This Just In: No new Planes for the House

Fresh from the WSJ, the House has scrapped its plans for $550 million in new jet planes to fly around the world like rock stars on our dime. We did this, America. Keep it up. We can do the same with ObamaCare, Cap and Tax, and every hare-brained, un-Constitutional scheme that oozes out of the Obama administration.

Health Care and the 47 Million: A Breakdown

The absurd figure being tossed about by the Socialists in an effort to ram socialized health care and rationing down our collective throat are the "47 million uninsured Americans." Before I break that figure down, let's examine it just on its face. One, some simple math says that 253 million Americans have insurance. That's a lot of people to punish. The other key word here is "uninsured". It's not "47 million Americans with no access to health care at all", but that's the way the Socialists are selling it, as if one necessarily leads to the other: No insurance = no health care. That in itself is false and a lie. And now it's time for the breakdown:

20%, 9.4 million, aren't even Americans; they are non-U.S. Citizens (1)
43%, 20 million, earn enough to buy insurance but are healthy and choose not to (2)
25%, 11 million, already qualify for government-subsidized health care but choose, for whatever reason, not to get it (3)
12%, 6.6 million, those who make too much to qualify for Medicare but truly don't make enough to purchase private insurance.

So, if we are to do anything to reduce the number of uninsured, we should be targeting that last 6.6 million. Or better yet, let's understand why health care costs have skyrocketed (Hint: it's not 'greedy' doctors or insurance companies). Let's not punish the rest of American for a lie.

(1) U.S. Census Bureau estimates
(2) Employment Policy Institute
(3) Urban Institute

Sen. Barbara Boxer: A Racist Revealed

There's nothing I can say to add to this. It speaks for itself.

State of the Stimulus

So what have we gotten for our trillions of dollars in stimulus? Nothing, apparently. The fine folks at Innocent Bystanders have plotted out the actual unemployment figures vs the Obama economic team's pie-in-the-sky predictions. Not surprisingly, not only were Obama's predictions wrong, the stimulus has failed, badly:


For clarification, the dark blue line is Obama's "with recovery" projections, and the light blue line is without. The maroon dots are actual unemployment data as reported by the Labor Department. Now, granted, Obama has since said unemployment might top 10% this year, as if that makes it all better. Joe "The Fall Guy" Biden has come out and said they guessed wrong. Guessed wrong?! When it comes to putting my kids into debt to the Chinese by TRILLIONS, no had better be guessing.

Just as a reminder, here is the Heritage Foundation plot of Obama's deficit spending:


Remember this in 2010.

Bill Watch: HR 1913

The so-called hate crimes bill that passed under everyone's noses back in April (didn't even hear about this one on the Interweb). I particularly like this section:



So if the AG can dig up some politically-motivated reason, he can federalize the state courts. That's just great.

Call your Senators. This thing must die.

It can't hurt

So, I fired off a letter to Chairman Steele this morning, after finding out about the 8 Republican traitors (thanks to Ms. Malkin for compiling that). that voted for the steaming pile that is Obama's carbon tax. I fully expect it to dropped into the bit bucket (flames to dev/null and such), but as the title says, it can't hurt.

Dear Chairman Steele,

I'm surprised you keep a e-mail address publicly available, as I'm sure you get plenty of hate mail. The following will probably read rough and acerbic, but sometimes such is the nature of truth. The GOP leadership needs to, in short, grow some stones and a spine. The last few months have seen the Obama administration waste literally TRILLIONS of dollars on "stimulus" which has failed utterly to stimulate anything other the national debt and Obama's quest for power, the characterization of Constitution-loving conservatives as "extremists" (read: potential threats to the Obama regime), and now this monstrous, demon-from-hell carbon tax bill, based on bogus pseudo-science, that passed because 8 REPUBLICANS voted yes. The GOP can't even keeps its own people in line, and, as the GOP chairman, the buck stops with you.

I supported your run for GOP chairman, because you seemed like a solid conservative. The problem is, you're a nice guy. Under other circumstances, that wouldn't be an issue. But now is not the time for nice guys. When Obama and his socialist ilk are fulfilling 80 years of running roughshod over the Constitution, it is not the time to be nice. Obama has weaknesses; he can't stand up to truthful, fact-based criticism for long. You must shine the withering light of Truth on him; everywhere he goes, you must be there waiting. Stop trying to parse the citizens of the country like the Democrats do; educate them. People know Liberty when they see it and hear it, and believe me, people WANT to hear Liberty shouted from every rooftop. Hispanics want to hear Liberty; Asians want to hear Liberty; You KNOW blacks want to hear Liberty; AMERICANS want to hear Liberty. Give it to them. Stop the whining about how the media is tank for Obama; Witness the power of the Internet in Iran, and tell me that can't work here also. Stop being nice, and start fighting for this Union and our Constitution.

Best Regards