Blog Smith is inspired by the myth of Hephaestus in the creation of blacksmith-like, forged materials: ideas. This blog analyzes topics that interest me: IT, politics, technology, history, education, music, and the history of religions.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Global Roundtable: The Future of Economic Competition
Parag Khanna, author of How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance, moderates a panel of international economists Daniel Altman, author of Outrageous Fortunes: The Twelve Surprising Trends That Will Reshape the Global Economy, Dambisa Moyo, author of How The West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly--and the Stark Choices Ahead and Anand Giridharadas, author of India Calling.
http://bigthink.com/series/66?utm_source=Big+Think+Weekly+Newsletter+Subscribers&utm_campaign=ef1418c309-Wednesday_Newsletter_Shakespeare_4_6_2011&utm_medium=email
Obama impeachment: Bruce Fein on Libya
Lawyer drafts Obama impeachment
ARTICLE OF IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
RESOLVED, That Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following article of impeachment to be exhibited to the Senate:
ARTICLE OF IMPEACHMENT EXHIBITED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN THE NAME OF ITSELF AND OF ALL OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AGAINST BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT OF ITS IMPEACHMENT AGAINST HIM FOR HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS IN USURPING THE EXCLUSIVE PREROGATIVE OF CONGRESS TO COMENCE WAR UNDER ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8, CLAUSE 11 OF THE CONSTITUTION.
ARTICLE I
In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has usurped the exclusive power of Congress to initiate war under Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the United States Constitution by unilaterally commencing war against the Republic of Libya on March 19, 2011, declaring that Congress is powerless to constrain his conduct of the war, and claiming authority in the future to commence war unilaterally to advance whatever he ordains is in the national interest. By so doing and declaring, Barack Hussein Obama has mocked the rule of law, endangered the very existence of the Republic and the liberties of the people, and perpetrated an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor as hereinafter elaborated.
I.
THE IMPEACHMENT POWER
1. Article II, Section IV of the United States Constitution provides: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
2. According to James Madison’s Records of the Convention, 2:550; Madison, 8 Sept., Mr. George Mason objected to an initial proposal to confine impeachable offenses to treason or bribery:
Why is the provision restrained to Treason & bribery only? Treason as defined in the Constitution will not reach many great and dangerous offences. Hastings is not guilty of Treason. Attempts to subvert the Constitution may not be Treason as above defined--As bills of attainder which have saved the British Constitution are forbidden, it is the more necessary to extend: the power of impeachments.
3. Delegates to the Federal Convention voted overwhelmingly to include “high crimes and misdemeanors” in Article II, Section IV of the United States Constitution specifically to ensure that “attempts to subvert the Constitution” would fall within the universe of impeachable offences. Id.
4. Alexander Hamilton, a delegate to the Federal Convention, characterized impeachable offenses in Federalist 65 as, “offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words, from the violation or abuse of some public trust. They are of a nature which with peculiar propriety may be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done to society itself.”
5. In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted three articles of impeachment against then President Richard M. Nixon for actions “subversive of constitutional government.”
6. Father of the Constitution, James Madison, observed that, “Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other…. War is the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.”
7. James Madison also instructed that “no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
8. The exclusive congressional power to commence war under Article I, section VIII, clause XI of the Constitution is the pillar of the Republic and the greatest constitutional guarantor of individual liberty, transparency, and government frugality.
II.
THE “DECLARE WAR” CLAUSE
9. Article I, Section VIII, Clause XI of the United States Constitution provides: “The Congress shall have the power … To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;”
10. Article II, Section II, Clause I of the United States Constitution provides: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”
11. The authors of the United States Constitution manifestly intended Article I, Section VIII, Clause XI to fasten exclusive responsibility and authority on the Congress to decide whether to undertake offensive military action.
12. The authors of the United States Constitution believed that individual liberty and the Republic would be endangered by fighting too many wars, not too few.
13. The authors of the United States Constitution understood that to aggrandize power and to leave a historical legacy, the executive in all countries chronically inflates danger manifold to justify warfare.
14. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States, in Federalist 4 noted:
[A]bsolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.
15. Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 69 that the president's Commander-in-Chief authority
…would be nominally the same with that of the King of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first general and admiral of the confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war, and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies; all which by the constitution under consideration would appertain to the Legislature.
16. In a written exchange with Alexander Hamilton under the pseudonym Helvidius, James Madison wrote:
In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man; not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
17. James Madison also wrote as Helvidius to Alexander Hamilton:
Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded. They are barred from the latter functions by a great principle in free government, analogous to that which separates the sword from the purse, or the power of executing from the power of enacting laws.
18. On June 29, 1787, at the Federal Convention, James Madison explained that an executive crowned with war powers invites tyranny and the reduction of citizens to vassalage:
In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.
19. In a letter dated April 4, 1798, James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson:
The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature. But the Doctrines lately advanced strike at the root of all these provisions, and will deposit the peace of the Country in that Department which the Constitution distrusts as most ready without cause to renounce it. For if the opinion of the President not the facts & proofs themselves are to sway the judgment of Congress, in declaring war, and if the President in the recess of Congress create a foreign mission, appoint the minister, & negociate a War Treaty, without the possibility of a check even from the Senate, untill the measures present alternatives overruling the freedom of its judgment; if again a Treaty when made obliges the Legislature to declare war contrary to its judgment, and in pursuance of the same doctrine, a law declaring war, imposes a like moral obligation, to grant the requisite supplies until it be formally repealed with the consent of the President & Senate, it is evident that the people are cheated out of the best ingredients in their Government, the safeguards of peace which is the greatest of their blessings.
20. During the Pennsylvania Convention to ratify the Constitution, James Wilson, a future Justice of the United States Supreme Court, observed:
This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large: this declaration must he made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives: from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion that nothing but our national interest can draw us into a war.
21. In 1793, President George Washington, who presided over the Federal Convention, wrote to South Carolina Governor William Moultrie in regards to a prospective counter-offensive against the American Indian Creek Nation: "The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress, therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure."
22. President Thomas Jefferson, who served as Secretary of State under President Washington, in a statement before Congress regarding Tripoli and the Barbary Pirates, deemed himself “unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense." He amplified: "I communicate [to the Congress] all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight."
23. In a message to Congress in December, 1805 regarding potential military action to resolve a border dispute with Spain, President Thomas Jefferson acknowledged that "Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war, I have thought it my duty to await their authority for using force.” He requested Congressional authorization for offensive military action, even short of war, elaborating:
Formal war is not necessary—it is not probable it will follow; but the protection of our citizens, the spirit and honor of our country, require that force should be interposed to a certain degree. It will probably contribute to advance the object of peace.
But the course to be pursued will require the command of means which it belongs to Congress exclusively to yield or deny. To them I communicate every fact material for their information, and the documents necessary to enable them to judge for themselves. To their wisdom, then, I look for the course I am to pursue; and will pursue, with sincere zeal, that which they shall approve.
24. In his War Message to Congress on June 1, 1812, President James Madison reaffirmed that the shift in language from make to declare in Article I, Section VIII, Clause XI of the United States Constitution authorized at the Constitutional convention did not empower the Executive to involve the United States military in any action aside from defense against an overt attack. Although President Madison was convinced that Great Britain had undertaken acts of war against the United States, he nevertheless maintained that he could not respond with military force without congressional authorization. He proclaimed:
We behold, in fine, on the side of Great Britain, a state of war against the United States, and on the side of the United States a state of peace toward Great Britain.
Whether the United States shall continue passive under these progressive usurpations and these accumulating wrongs, or, opposing force to force in defense of their national rights, shall commit a just cause into the hands of the Almighty Disposer of Events, avoiding all connections which might entangle it in the contest or views of other powers, and preserving a constant readiness to concur in an honorable re-establishment of peace and friendship, is a solemn question which the Constitution wisely confides to the legislative department of the Government. In recommending it to their early deliberations I am happy in the assurance that the decision will be worthy the enlightened and patriotic councils of a virtuous, a free, and a powerful nation.
25. In his Records of the Convention, 2:318; Madison, 17 Aug., James Madison wrote that the power “To declare war” had been vested in the Congress in lieu of the power “To make war” to leave to the Executive “the power to repel sudden attacks.”
26. Mr. Elbridge Gerry “never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war,” but still moved with Mr. Madison “to insert declare—in place of make” in Article I, Section VIII, Clause XI. Id.
27. Mr. George Mason was against “giving the power of war to the Executive, because not safely to be trusted with it; or to the Senate, because not so constructed as to be entitled to it. He was for clogging rather than facilitating war; but for facilitating peace.” Yet Mr. Mason “preferred declare to make.” Id.
28. Mr. Roger Sherman “thought [the proposal] stood very well. The Executive shd. be able to repel and not to commence war.” Id.
29. Delegates to the Federal Convention overwhelmingly approved the motion to insert “declare—in place of make,” to deny the Executive power to initiate military action, but to permit the Executive to repel sudden attacks unilaterally. Id.
30. Then Congressman Abraham Lincoln sermonized:
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose — and you allow him to make war at pleasure…. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us" but he will say to you "be silent; I see it, if you don't."
The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.
31. Crowning the President with unilateral authority to commence war under the banner of anticipatory self-defense, prevention of civilian slaughters, gender discrimination, subjugation of ethnic or religious minorities, or otherwise would empower the President to initiate war without limit, threatening the very existence of the Republic. Although a benevolent Chief Executive might resist abuse of an unlimited war power, the principle, if ever accepted by Congress, would lie around like a loaded weapon ready for use by any successor craving absolute power.
32. Thomas Paine justly and rightly declared in Common Sense that "in America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."
33. Article 43 Paragraph 3 of the Charter of the United Nations provides that all resolutions or agreements of the United Nations Security Counsel “shall be subject to ratification by the signatory states in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.”
34. Article 43 Paragraph 3 of Charter of the United Nations was included specifically to allay concerns that prevented the United States of America from ratifying the League of Nations Treaty in 1919.
35. That treaty risked crowning the President with the counter-constitutional authority to initiate warfare. On November 19, 1919, in Section II of his Reservations with Regard to Ratification of the Versailles Treaty, to preserve the balance of power established by the United States Constitution from executive usurpation, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge resolved as follows:
The United States assumes no obligation to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any other country or to interfere in controversies between nations -- whether members of the League or not -- under the provisions of Article 10, or to employ the military or naval forces of the United States under any article of the treaty for any purpose, unless in any particular case the Congress, which, under the Constitution, has the sole power to declare war or authorize the employment of the military or naval forces of the United States, shall by act or joint resolution so provide.
The rejection of Lodge’s reservations by President Woodrow Wilson and his Senate allies insured defeat of the treaty.
36. Section 2(c) of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 clarifies Presidential authority to undertake military action as follows:
The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.
37. In United States v. Smith, 27 F. Cas. 1192 (1806), Supreme Court Justice William Paterson, a delegate to the Federal Convention from New Jersey, wrote on behalf of a federal circuit court:
There is a manifest distinction between our going to war with a nation at peace, and a war being made against us by an actual invasion, or a formal declaration. In the former case it is the exclusive province of Congress to change a state of peace into a state of war.
38. In Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U.S. 258, 267 (1890), the Supreme Court of the United States held:
The treaty power, as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms unlimited except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government or of its departments, and those arising from the nature of the government itself and of that of the States. It would not be contended that it extends so far as to authorize what the Constitution forbids, or a change in the character of the government, or in that of one of the States, or a cession of any portion of the territory of the latter, without its consent.
39. In his concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 642-643 (1952), which rebuked President Harry Truman’s claim of unilateral war powers in the Korean War, Justice Robert Jackson elaborated:
Nothing in our Constitution is plainer than that declaration of a war is entrusted only to Congress. Of course, a state of war may in fact exist without a formal declaration. But no doctrine that the Court could promulgate would seem to me more sinister and alarming than that a President whose conduct of foreign affairs is so largely uncontrolled, and often even is unknown, can vastly enlarge his mastery over the internal affairs of the country by his own commitment of the Nation's armed forces to some foreign venture.
40. All treaties are subservient to the exclusive congressional power to commence war. In Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 18 (1957), the United States Supreme Court held:
There is nothing in [the Constitution’s text] which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution. Nor is there anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification of the Constitution which even suggests such a result.
41. Unconstitutional usurpations by one branch of government of powers entrusted to a coequal branch are not rendered constitutional by repetition. The United States Supreme Court held unconstitutional hundreds of laws enacted by Congress over the course of five decades that included a legislative veto of executive actions in INS v. Chada, 462 U.S. 919 (1982).
42. In their dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004), Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia recognized the “Founders’ general distrust of military power lodged with the President, including the authority to commence war:
No fewer than 10 issues of the Federalist were devoted in whole or part to allaying fears of oppression from the proposed Constitution’s authorization of standing armies in peacetime. Many safeguards in the Constitution reflect these concerns. Congress's authority "[t]o raise and support Armies" was hedged with the proviso that "no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years." U.S. Const., Art. 1, §8, cl. 12. Except for the actual command of military forces, all authorization for their maintenance and all explicit authorization for their use is placed in the control of Congress under Article I, rather than the President under Article II. As Hamilton explained, the President's military authority would be "much inferior" to that of the British King… (Citing Federalist 69, Supra.)
43. On December 20, 2007, then Senator Hillary Clinton proclaimed: "The President has the solemn duty to defend our Nation. If the country is under truly imminent threat of attack, of course the President must take appropriate action to defend us. At the same time, the Constitution requires Congress to authorize war. I do not believe that the President can take military action — including any kind of strategic bombing — against Iran without congressional authorization."
44. Then Senator Joseph Biden stated in a speech at the Iowa City Public Library in 2007 regarding potential military action in Iran that unilateral action by the President would be an impeachable offense under the Constitution:
It is precisely because the consequences of war – intended or otherwise – can be so profound and complicated that our Founding Fathers vested in Congress, not the President, the power to initiate war, except to repel an imminent attack on the United States or its citizens.
They reasoned that requiring the President to come to Congress first would slow things down… allow for more careful decision making before sending Americans to fight and die… and ensure broader public support.
The Founding Fathers were, as in most things, profoundly right.
That’s why I want to be very clear: if the President takes us to war with Iran without Congressional approval, I will call for his impeachment.
I do not say this lightly or to be provocative. I am dead serious. I have chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. I still teach constitutional law. I’ve consulted with some of our leading constitutional scholars. The Constitution is clear. And so am I.
I’m saying this now to put the administration on notice and hopefully to deter the President from taking unilateral action in the last year of his administration.
If war is warranted with a nation of 70 million people, it warrants coming to Congress and the American people first.
45. In a speech on the Senate Floor in 1998, then Senator Joseph Biden maintained: “...the only logical conclusion is that the framers [of the United States Constitution] intended to grant to Congress the power to initiate all hostilities, even limited wars.”
46. On December 20, 2007, then Senator Barack Obama informed the Boston Globe, based upon his extensive knowledge of the United States Constitution: "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
III.
USURPATION OF THE WAR POWER OVER LIBYA
47. President Barack Obama’s military attacks against Libya constitute acts of war.
48. Congressman J. Randy Forbes (VA-4) had the following exchange with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates during a March 31, 2011 House Armed Services Committee Hearing on the legality of the present military operation in Libya:
Congressman Forbes: Mr. Secretary, if tomorrow a foreign nation intentionally, for whatever reason, launched a Tomahawk missile into New York City, would that be considered an act of war against the United States?
Secretary Gates: Probably so.
Congressman Forbes: Then I would assume the same laws would apply if we launched a Tomahawk missile at another nation—is that also true?
Secretary Gates: You’re getting into constitutional law here and I am no expert on it.
Congressman Forbes: Mr. Secretary, you’re the Secretary of Defense. You ought to be an expert on what’s an act of war or not. If it’s an act of war to launch a Tomahawk missile on New York City would it not also be an act of war to launch a Tomahawk missile by us at another nation?
Secretary Gates: Presumably.
49. Since the passage of United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 on March 19, 2011, the United States has detonated over 200 tomahawk land attack cruise missiles and 455 precision-guided bombs on Libyan soil.
50. Libya posed no actual or imminent threat to the United States when President Obama unleashed Operation Odyssey Dawn.
51. On March 27, 2011, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that Libya never posed an “actual or imminent threat to the United States.” He further stated that Libya has never constituted a “vital interest” to the United States.
52. United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 directs an indefinite United States military quagmire in Libya, authorizing “all necessary measures” to protect Libyan civilians, which clearly contemplates removal by force of the murderous regime of Col. Muammar Qadhafi.
53. In a Letter From the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate sent March 21, 2011, President Barack Obama informed Members of Congress that “U.S. forces have targeted the Qadhafi regime's air defense systems, command and control structures, and other capabilities of Qadhafi's armed forces used to attack civilians and civilian populated areas. We will seek a rapid, but responsible, transition of operations to coalition, regional, or international organizations that are postured to continue activities as may be necessary to realize the objectives of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973.”
54. In his March 21, 2011 letter, President Barack Obama further informed Members of Congress that he opted to take unilateral military action “…in support of international efforts to protect civilians and prevent a humanitarian disaster.”
55. President Barack Obama has usurped congressional authority to decide on war or peace with Libya, and has declared he will persist in additional usurpations of the congressional power to commence war whenever he decrees it would advance his idea of the national interest. On March 28, 2011, he declared to Congress and the American people: “I have made it clear that I will never hesitate to use our military swiftly, decisively, and unilaterally when necessary to defend our people, our homeland, our allies, and our core interests” (emphasis added).
56. President Obama’s humanitarian justification for war in Libya establishes a threshold that would justify his initiation of warfare in scores of nations around the globe, including Iran, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Myanmar, China, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Cuba, and Russia.
57. In Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote on behalf of a majority of the United States Supreme Court:
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
58. President Barack Obama has signed an order, euphemistically named a “Presidential Finding,” authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, further entangling the United States in the Libyan conflict, despite earlier promises of restraint. Truth is invariably the first casualty of war.
59. In response to questions by Members of Congress during a classified briefing on March 30, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated that the President needs no Congressional authorization for his attack on the Libyan nation, and will ignore any Congressional attempt by resolution or otherwise to constrain or halt United States participation in the Libyan war.
60. On March 30, 2011, by persistent silence or otherwise, Secretary Clinton rebuffed congressional inquiries into President Obama’s view of the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution of 1973. She failed to cite a single judicial decision in support of President Obama’s recent actions, relying instead on the undisclosed legal opinions of White House attorneys.
61. President Barack Obama, in flagrant violation of his constitutional oath to execute his office as President of the United States and preserve and protect the United States Constitution, has usurped the exclusive authority of Congress to authorize the initiation of war, in that on March 19, 2011 President Obama initiated an offensive military attack against the Republic of Libya without congressional authorization. In so doing, President Obama has arrested the rule of law, and saluted a vandalizing of the Constitution that will occasion ruination of the Republic, the crippling of individual liberty, and a Leviathan government unless the President is impeached by the House of Representatives and removed from office by the Senate.
In all of this, President Barack Obama has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.
Borders High Level Model (HLM)
Developed via funding from the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Borders High Level Model is a high-fidelity simulation and analysis program that aids policy and decision makers tasked with making key funding choices. Borders HLM uses serious gaming, force-on-force simulation, and a range of other Sandia capabilities.
U.S. Border Patrol Spends $1 Million Making a Videogame Simulating Their Job
Possible Shutdown Looms
The last such shutdown took place 15 years ago and lasted 21 days.
Under long-standing federal rules, agencies would not be affected that provide for U.S. national security, dispense most types of federal benefit payments, offer inpatient medical care or outpatient emergency care, ensure the safe use of food and drugs, manage air traffic, protect and monitor borders and coastlines, guard prisoners, conduct criminal investigations and law enforcement, oversee power distribution and oversee banks.
Mail deliveries will continue in the event of a shutdown. U.S. postal operations are not subsidized by tax dollars.
According to the shutdown scenario described by the administration, the government would have to significantly cut staffing across the executive branch, including workers at the White House and civilian employees at the Defense Department; close to 800,000 workers would be affected. Congress and the federal court system will also be subject to a shutdown.
At the Pentagon, defense officials were finalizing plans that would lay out how the department would deal with a shutdown. But they already have acknowledged that U.S. military troops - including those in war zones - would receive one-week's pay instead of two in their next paycheck if the government closes.
NBC’s Brokaw: Saudis ‘So Unhappy' With Obama They Sent Emissaries to China, Russia Seeking Enhanced Ties
“And a lot of those questions presumably will come from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia,” reported Brokaw on the Nightly News. “I was told on the way in here that the Saudis are so unhappy with the Obama administration for the way it pushed out President Mubarak of Egypt that it sent high level emissaries to China and Russia to tell those two countries that Saudi Arabia now is prepared to do more business with them.”
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Update: Driver Behind Shocking Car Crash Vid Says It’s Real
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The Path to Prosperity: America's two futures, visualized
This 3-minute video is a visualization of the House Republicans' budget, "The Path to Prosperity," presented by Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee.
For more information on our plan to avert the US's nearing debt crisis and chart a path of growth and prosperity, visit http://budget.house.gov
http://budget.house.gov/fy2012budget/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576242612172357504.html
Monday, April 4, 2011
Food Stamp Participation
Over 44 million Americans are now on the nation’s food stamp rolls — somewhere around 14.3% of the population. The Obama administration insists that the country is on the right track, but is this really what “economic recovery” looks like?
Victor Hanson and Peter Berkowitz -- Revolution in the Arab World
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and military historian, professor of classics, and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of numerous books, the most recent of which are Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, which Professor Hanson edited, and The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern, a volume of his essays.
Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
He is also cofounder and director of the Israel Program on Constitutional Government, has served as a senior consultant to the President's Council on Bioethics, and is a member of the Policy Advisory Board at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Obama Flip Flop
So what exactly did candidate Obama say in 2008 when it came to trying accused terrorists?
First, he was going to close Guantanamo, calling it an ineffective "legal black hole:"
"By any measure, our system of trying detainees has been a failure. Over the course of nearly seven years, there has not been a single conviction for a terrorist act at Guantanamo. There has just been one conviction for material support of terrorism," he said in June of 2008. "Meanwhile, this legal black hole has substantially set back America's ability to lead the world against the threat of terrorism, and undermined our most basic values. But make no mistake: we are less safe because of the way George Bush has handled this issue."
Then, he was going to restore habeas corpus rights to alleged terrorists:
"Our courts have employed habeas corpus with rigor and fairness for more than two centuries, and we must continue to do so as we defend the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy. We cannot afford to lose any more valuable time in the fight against terrorism to a dangerously flawed legal approach," he also said in June of 2008.
Promising to return America to the "moral high ground" in the war on terrorism, Obama issued a high profile executive order in his first official day as president that required the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed within a year.
But last month, the president signed a very different executive order - one that resumed military trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees. Still, White House officials insisted nonetheless the president "remains committed to closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay."
Despite that order, civil liberty advocates took solace in the fact the president and his justice department at least appeared to stand behind their vow to try accused terrorists in civilian courts.
That was, until Holder's expected announcement Monday.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Williams Says Fed Needs to Provide More Timely Data
April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Mark Williams, a former Federal Reserve bank examiner who is now an executive-in-residence at Boston University's School of Management, discusses the Fed's release of data on "discount window" lending during the financial crisis and prospects for transparency at the central bank. Williams speaks with Erik Schatzker and Lizzie O'Leary on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack." (Source: Bloomberg)
Fed Records Show Borrowing by Some Foreign Banks: Video
Fed Records Show Borrowing by Some Foreign Banks: Video
Mar 31, 2011 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve released thousands of pages of secret loan documents under court order, almost three years after Bloomberg LP first requested details of the central bank's unprecedented support to banks during the financial crisis. Erik Schatzker and Margaret Brennan report on Bloomberg Television's "InBusiness." (Source: Bloomberg)
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun." By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way.
What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up.
Privately, the Western parents may worry that their child does not test well or have aptitude in the subject or that there is something wrong with the curriculum and possibly the whole school. If the child's grades do not improve, they may eventually schedule a meeting with the school principal to challenge the way the subject is being taught or to call into question the teacher's credentials.
Burning Obama
April 3: An Afghan protestor beats a burning effigy of U.S. President Barack Obama during a rally in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Afghan protests against the burning of a Quran in Florida entered a third day with a demonstration in the major eastern city Sunday, while the Taliban called on people to rise up, blaming government forces for any violence. (AP)
Foreign Banks Tapped Fed’s Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak
The biggest borrowers from the 97-year-old discount window as the program reached its crisis-era peak were foreign banks, accounting for at least 70 percent of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program surged to a record.
“The caricature of the Fed is that it was shoveling money to big New York banks and a bunch of foreigners, and that is not conducive to its long-run reputation,” said Vincent Reinhart, the Fed’s director of monetary affairs from 2001 to 2007.
Bank of China, the country’s oldest bank, was the second- largest borrower from the Fed’s discount window during a nine- day period in August 2007 as subprime-mortgage defaults first roiled broader markets.
Arab Banking Corp., then 29 percent-owned by the Libyan central bank, used its New York branch to get at least 73 loans from the Fed in the 18 months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed. The largest single loan amount outstanding was $1.2 billion in July 2009, according to the Fed documents.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Obama’s draft registration from 1980
Retired Air Force Col. Gregory Hollister said the Social Security number on what he says is Obama’s draft registration begins with the numbers 042, which would be issued to someone born in Connecticut, not Hawaii.
Holocaust Denier, Deputy of Yasser Arafat Crafts Obama Doctrine
Abbas and Palestinian Authority leaders attend Fatah performance presenting Israel as Palestine
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian Authority leaders attend a song performance that presents Israeli cities and places as "Palestinian." This is an example of how the PA routinely denies Israel's existence and right to exist by referring to all of Israel as "Palestine," and referring to all Israeli locations as "Palestinian."
Palestinian Authority officials sitting in the audience:
- Mahmoud Abbas, Chairman of the Palestinian Authority
- Sultan Abu Al-Einein, Fatah Central Committee
- Hanan Ashrawi, PLO Executive Committee
- Abbas Zaki, Fatah Central Committee
- Al-Tayeb Abd Al-Rahim, President's office Sec. Gen.
- Yasser Abd Rabbo, PLO Sec. Gen.
- Ahmed Tibi, Israeli Arab Member of Knesset
Transcription:
"We commit and promise to stand behind you, oh Mahmoud Abbas, until Judgment Day. I am returning to you, the purest land, oh land of the free. No matter how long the nights of exile, I am returning to you, oh land. From Rafah to Rosh Hanikra (northern Israel) our coast, and Beit Shean (Israeli city). Above your soil, oh my land, is a picture of Garden of Eden. From Rafah to Rosh Hanikra our coast, and Beit Shean. Above your soil, oh my land, is a picture of Garden of Eden. From Rafah to Rosh Hanikra, north and south, are the picture's borders. From Haifa (Israeli city) and Tantura to the [Jordan] valley (i.e., all of Israel). I am returning to you, the purest land, oh land of the free."
[PA TV (Fatah), Feb. 27, 2011]
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Money and March Madness
March Madness makes nearly $700 million a year for the NCAA, but the players will never see a dime. Lowell Bergman talks to Hari Sreenivasan about his recent piece for Frontline that examines the money behind the NCAA.
Hoop Screams: Delaware’s Strange Anti-Basketball Jones
March Sadness: Couple Fights for Basketball Hoop
John McCafferty, 46, said the pole has been on the property since the 1950s, long before the Clear Zone law was enacted, and that he believes it is exempted from the law.
In any event, McCafferty said, the basketball hoop sits in a quiet cul-de-sac with little traffic and has never been a source of contention until now.
“It’s been there for 61 years, and it’s created no problem until this year,” he said.
The McCaffertys said they and other residents believe the controversy stems from an anonymous complaint from an elderly neighbor upset about having to slow down for kids playing in the neighborhood.
“This is obnoxious,” he said.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Melanie Phillips - British Media Incites Mass Murder and Hatred
Melanie Phillips:
"The British media is failing to report the attacks upon Israel, and only reporting Israeli responses, thus creating the entirely false impression that Israel is the aggressor. Thus in turn creating the kind of hatred of Israel in the world which is leading to mass murder"
מלאני פיליפס- התקשרות הישראלית מסיתה לרצח ושינאה נגד ישראל.
ממשלת ישראל שותקת.
Losing Our Sons Trailer
Announcing the upcoming release of "Losing our Sons," a documentary film investigation into the first successful homegrown Islamist terrorist attack on American soil. This is the story of a young African-American man from Memphis who converted to radical Islam, went to Yemen for terrorism training, and came back to murder a young Marine in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Young Black Activist Blasts Bill Ayers for Opposition to Charter Schools
Scary? Even Communists Surprised at ‘Radicalization’ of Wis. Dems
The heated rhetoric and aggressive attitude of some Democratic lawmakers in Wisconsin has surprised many, even revolutionaries, says a leader of the Communist Party USA.
Obama says too much testing makes education boring
Iranian Video Says Mahdi is 'Near'
It describes current events in the Middle East as a prelude to the arrival of the mythical tweflth Imam or Mahdi -- the messiah figure who Islamic scriptures say will lead the armies of Islam to victory over all non-Muslims in the last days.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Energized Muslim Brotherhood in Libya eyes a prize
Largely drawn from the devout educated middle classes and university campuses in Tripoli and Benghazi, the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood was founded in the mid-1950s.
In February, as protests in Libya began, Yusuf al Qaradawi -- an Egyptian preacher in Qatar widely viewed as the Muslim Brotherhood's chief spiritual guide -- issued a fatwa or religious ruling obliging any Libyan soldier who had the opportunity to do so to assassinate the leader.
‘Get Out of Darby!’: Video Captures Physical ‘Cop-on-Cop Confrontation’ in Philly Suburb
Bad blood spills over between cops in neighboring Delaware County towns, who are caught on camera in a cop-on-cop confrontation.
Fox 29 has new video tonight of a confrontation between police officers in Darby and Colwyn boroughs.
The county District Attorney is looking into the case, after a Colwyn officer accused Darby’s police chief of assaulting him.
Now its Not Days, Not Weeks but Libya Op To Last Months
The lack of clarity on that question reflects a worry for lawmakers clamoring to hear fuller explanations from the administration on why the U.S. was embroiling itself in another Muslim conflict and what the ultimate goals of the intervention are.
"When it comes to Libya, we started hearing from the U.K., France, Italy, other of our NATO allies," she added. "This was in their vital national interest."
Clinton declined to say if the U.S. might be willing to enter other conflicts where governments attack their own people. She told CBS'"Face The Nation" that it was too early to talk of intervention in Syria, where security forces have opened fire on protesters amid nationwide unrest. Unlike Gadhafi, Syrian President Bashar Assad is a "different leader" and many members of Congress who have visited the country "believe he's a reformer," Clinton said.
Asked about Yemen, where the embattled U.S. ally Ali Abdullah Saleh was just barely holding on to his 33-year-old grip on power, Gates cited grave concerns.
International cooperation took place in “record time,” Hillary said, adding that the 1990s bloodshed in places like Rwanda, the Balkans and Kosovo taught the world the dangers of delay. “I’ve never seen anything like it, where the world spoke so unequivocally,” she said on ABC.
The gist of Libya seems to be the preoccupation with the Islamic Middle East as a top priority for Obama and issues of genocide are now considered the top foreign policy focus.
Defense Secretary: Libya Did Not Pose Threat to U.S., Was Not 'Vital National Interest' to Intervene
During his campaign for the Presidency, in December, 2007, Barack Obama told The Boston Globe that “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
Earlier in 2007, then-Senator Hillary Clinton said in a speech on the Senate floor that, “If the administration believes that any -- any -- use of force against Iran is necessary, the President must come to Congress to seek that authority.”
Tapper asked Clinton, “Why not got to Congress?”
“Well, we would welcome congressional support,” the Secretary said, “but I don't think that this kind of internationally authorized intervention where we are one of a number of countries participating to enforce a humanitarian mission is the kind of unilateral action that either I or President Obama was speaking of several years ago.”
“I think that this had a limited timeframe, a very clearly defined mission which we are in the process of fulfilling,” Clinton said.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Studies shows the wealthy in America pay more of the nation's tax burden than in any other industrialized country
Giving the U.S. "the most progressive income tax system" in the world.
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