Washington Is Not A Swamp

“Drain the Swamp” has become a rallying cry for Trump supporters to fix Washington. Referring to Washington as a swamp is very unfair to swamps. Swamps are very productive ecosystems and Washington is anything but.

A more appropriate phrase would be “Pump out the cesspool.”

Congress The Only Children Who Get Recess

At a time when most grade school kids no longer get recess, Congress is about to take its August recess even though much of their work (e.g. healthcare reform and the budget) remain unfinished. How appropriate that the only children in America guaranteed recess are our elected officials! Sad. Very sad!

If Trump Caves His Presidency is Toast

As the hour approaches for President Trump's address to Congress, there are already rumors that he will make major concessions on illegal immigration. If that is true it will be his George H. W. Bush, "Read my lips. No new taxes." moment and his presidency is toast.

Hillary's Victory Dance A Bit Premature?

I have to admit I was despondent about the FBI Director's decision not to recommend prosecuting the case against Secretary Clinton for her private email server and mishandling of classified information. When I heard that Director Comey was being called to testify before Congress, I thought, "Why  bother? You (and the People) lost; it's over." What made matters worse was the long list of lies laid out by Comey and his description of Hillary and her staffers' extremely careless handling of classified material and yet neither she nor anyone else would not be held accountable. After Comey's public announcement, Hillary's smug and gloating "victory dance" at a campaign event in North Carolina with President Obama by her side made the decision all the more galling. Then something surprising happened and my spirits began to lift.

Little by little, portions of Comey's testimony made their way to the media and the questions by the members of the House committee began to reveal that there were serious flaws in the FBI's investigation; most notably, investigators never compared their findings against Clinton's sworn statements to Congress. Any inconsistencies would show she either lied to Congress or the FBI. Either way, each one would be a felony and the result would be very big trouble for Ms. Clinton. Just ask Scooter Libby. By the close of business today, the State Department announced it was reopening the probe into Clinton's email scandal.

Perhaps Hillary's celebration was just a bit premature.

Don't Fear Convention of the States - It is Time!

Article V of our Constitution prescribes two methods to add amendments. The first - most familiar method - is where two thirds of both Houses of Congress propose amendments. The second method which has never been used is a convention of the States. Unfamiliarity with this second method has created much trepidation and opposition to it ever being used. It is incorrectly believed that a Convention of the States would result is a complete rewrite of the Constitution. This fear is unfounded because this method is only to propose amendments not draft an entirely new document. Further, just as with the first method, any proposed changes would require approval by three fourths of the States. These safeguards were put in place to prevent a runaway of the process.

Virginia delegate George Mason proposed and argued for the second method for amending the Constitution as a safeguard against tyranny. He envisioned a time when Congress could not be relied upon to regulate itself. Two issues, term limits and balancing the budget, are perfect examples of his concerns and constitute a form of soft tyranny emanating from Congress.

A January 2013 Gallop poll showed 75% of Americans favor term limits on Congress and other polls show as high as 85% of Americans believe there should be an amendment requiring a balanced Federal budget. These are things the citizenry wants but will never be proposed by Congress because it would diminish its power. The only way to get these and many other needed reforms such as overturning the 17th Amendment and returning the selection of Senstors to State legislatures, is through the convention of the States process. It is time. We shouldn't fear this process. It was specifically designed to protect the States and ultimately the individual citizens from an out of control Congress and it is the last, best hope for saving the nation. We need this now!

Misplaced Faith

I find it very curious and difficult to fathom how some on the left have such a problem with religion, especially Christianity. Seems they just can't stand to be told what to do by an omnipotent Supreme Being that they don't have any faith in but don't seem to mind being told what to do by 535 lying, cheating, stealing, pompous humans in DC that only 13% (their approval rating) of Americans have any faith in. I find that curious indeed!

Justice Roberts Got It Right But Still Got It Wrong

Regardless of whether or not you are in favor of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), last Thursday's Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare was a disaster for the rule of law in the United States.

Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, said, "The ACA was passed to improve health insurance markets, not destroy them." thus he concluded that the intent of Congress in their wording that subsidies would only apply to those who purchased their insurance through exchanges, "Established by a state" had to mean both federal and state exchanges because otherwise the Act would be a failure. He reasoned that Congress would not have written the law to fail. That might have been avoided had they not had to "Pass the law in order to know what's in it." but that is beside the point.  So John Roberts got it right in that Congress wouldn't have written the law so that it would fail but he got it wrong when he concluded that allowing subsidies only for those who got their health insurance though state exchanges would result in the ACA failing. What Justice Roberts misses is that Congress saw this wording as a way to make the Act succeed not fail. According to Jonathan Gruber, the architect of the law, subsidies only for state established exchanges was a key provision because it was seen as a way to pressure states to establish their own exchanges. State exchanges, not federal subsidies, were seen as the key to success for the ACA.  Liberals gambled that citizens in the various states would insist that their state legislatures set up exchanges so they could receive the subsidies. Like so many other shenanigans associated with this law, this backfired and once again Justice Roberts saved a poorly constructed law, written by a lazy, conniving Congress. This is a terrible precedent for the rule of law. It should not be up to the Court to find ways to save bad laws yet once again this is exactly what the Supreme Court did for a second time with regard to the ACA. As a result, Congress will continue to pass overly complex, poorly conceived, self-contradicting laws written by staffers and lobbyist, and they can count on the Courts to rule on what the law should have said rather than what it does say. What this does is abdicate Congress' Constitutional role of writing law as the duly elected representatives of the people to 9 unelected men and women in black robes who are appointed for life and accountable to no one. The result is the death of the rule of law in America.

With over 2800 pages, one can only wonder what future harm this abomination of a law will do to America and our system of laws. What will Justice Roberts and the rest of the justices do when Congress figures out that allowing children to stay on their parents health insurance until they are 26 destroys one of the major premises of the ACA - namely that the mandatory insurance premiums of young, healthy Americans will pay for the insurance of older, less healthy citizens. Did Congress really mean that children can stay on their parents' insurance until they are 26? I guess we will have to wait and see what John Roberts says Congress meant.

Syria: Heads the Bad Guys Win; Tails America Loses

30 months and 100,000 deaths into the civil war, there are no good choices for the US regarding Syria. Instead of supporting the original, pro-American, moderate opposition in the beginning, the United States stayed on the sidelines while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted 'Bashar al-Assad is a reformer.' This from the woman President Obama called, "... one of the finest secretary of states we've had."[sic] (I guess proper English wasn't stressed at Punahou, Occidental College, Columbia University or Harvard Law School!) But I digress. While the Obama Administration hung on to the notion that Assad was a reformer, Assad went about destroying the moderate opposition which was soon replaced by a collection of radical, al Qaeda affiliated, extremists. To make matters worse, President Obama, in order to appear tough during his re-election campaign, painted the US into a corner with his "red line" regarding the use of chemical weapons. Now we are faced with having to choose between the brutal dictator, Assad, and the America-hating Islamists but choose we must. Further complicating our decision is the fact that it isn't completely clear exactly who used the gas against the mostly civilian victims. Most likely it was Assad but there is also the possibility that it was the extremists. Assad clearly had the greater capability to use chemical weapons but he also had the least to gain. He is winning his fight against the opposition without using chemical weapons and using them would only draw the ire of America. On the other hand, the rebels are far less capable of deploying chemical weapons but the Islamists have demonstrated a willingness to kill civilians if it leads to their ultimate goals. If Assad gets the blame and the US attacks his military capability, it just might turn the tide of the war in favor of the extremists. All this has the makings of a "good Democrat" war - one in which the US has very little national interest, has little to gain, has little support from our allies and is opposed by the United Nations. Unlike the case for war against Iraq (ADMITTEDLY IT PROVED TO BE A BAD DECISION) which had the support of a coalition of over 40 countries, 17 UN resolutions condemning Saddam Hussein and his regime, the support of the UN, authorization from the Congress to use force, and the belief by nearly every world intelligence service that Iraq possessed WMDs, the case for attacking Syria is far weaker. While not insignificant, Assad allegedly killed about 1500 people with chemical weapons as opposed to the thousands of Iranian soldiers during the Iran-Iraq War and thousands of his own citizens during the Kurdish uprisings known to have been killed by Saddam using chemical weapons. Further, unlike the build-up to the Iraq War, Obama has managed to assemble a coalition of only 5 countries - France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. These are good allies but certainly not without their own motivation which is probably vastly different from ours. As a result of his failed effort to gain wide international support, the US was embarrassed when British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was denied authority to use force against Syria by the British House of Commons after pledging to help. Humiliation loves company! Lastly, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned that any military strikes against Syria would be illegal unless in self-defense under the UN charter or if approved by the UN Security Council. Since Syria is unlikely to attack the US directly and Security Council members, Russia and China, are opposed to any military action against Syria, these criteria will not likely be met. Congress may ultimately approve the president's use of force but only because the country has been put into a position where unless we act, its credibility will be damaged by yet another inept Obama Administration foreign policy blunder. So this is where things currently stand: Heads the Bad Guys Win; Tails America Loses!