Democrat Senator Jim Webb Will Not Run for Re-election in 2012

from Swampland at Time, written by Jay Newton-Small:

“Senator Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat, announced today he won’t run for a second term. Webb’s decision not to engage in a rematch with former Senator George Allen, whom Webb beat in 2006 by less than half of 1% of the vote, blows open the field for Democrats. Virginia went for President Obama in 2008 53% to John McCain’s 46% but just a year later Republican Bob McDonnell won the governor’s mansion by a whopping 17-point margin and in 2010 midterm elections Dems lost half their Old Dominion congressional seats.

Virginia will be a top priority for President Obama’s reelect in 2012, which means Dems will be pressed to find a top tier replacement for Webb ASAP. Former Governor Tim Kaine, who now heads the Democratic National Committee, said last month that he would not run if Webb chooses to retire. Kaine himself was vague, saying in a statement only that he’s confident Dems will hold the seat in 2012. The three Dems unseated last November, freshmen Tom Perriello and Glenn Nye and 14-term veteran Rick Boucher, could be considered as they have name recognition and proven fundraising abilities. Boucher, in particular, has the strongest resume having represented a fairly Republican district (Cook R+10) for 28 years.

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Patty Murray was quick to point out that the state isn’t a shoo-in for the GOP: Allen must first weather a primary and Richmond Tea Party leader Jamie Radtke has already declared her candidacy. Other potential GOP candidates include popular Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, former Gov. Jim Gilmore and Rep. Rob Wittman. “As Republicans face a brutal primary between a flawed Washington establishment candidate and a right-wing extremist who is raising money at a good clip, Democrats will field a strong candidate,” Murray said in a statement. “The 2012 Virginia Senate race will be competitive but Democrats will prevail there just like we did in 2006 and 2008.”

Still, the retirement increases GOP chances at taking back the seat as incumbents are generally harder to beat. It also makes it harder for Dems to hold the majority in the Senate which they control with 53 seats. The retirements of Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman and, particularly, Kent Conrad of North Dakota together with Webb’s announcement today makes 2012 an increasingly tough and expensive year to defend for Senate Dems.”

Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2011/02/09/webb-decides-to-call-it-a-day/#ixzz1DVBJk0F0

Dick Morris Reports: “Earmarks are Gone!”

“Unnoticed and unreported, victory has been won! Earmarks are gone! First the Senate and House Republicans agreed to give them up. Then President Obama followed suit in his State of the Union. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid initially scoffed at his president’s proposal, but he was forced to back down by his colleagues and the Senate Democrats have now adopted a two-year moratorium on earmarking. So the FY 2012 and 2013 budgets will be earmark-free! Thanks go to the Tea Party activists, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz), and some stalwart Republicans for this achievement. Several years ago, earmarks topped out at $60 billion a year. Last cycle, they ate up $15 billion of spending. Now they will go to zero. This reform puts an end to a singular form of corruption in which Senators and Congressmen passed out earmarks with one hand and raked in campaign contributions from lobbyists for the projects with the other. This form of legalized bribery has accounted for between one-quarter and one-third of the typical campaign war chest of Democratic Senators up for re-election in 2012. But no more!”      Dick Morris

The Farce of Koua Fong Lee’s Killings…..and Dickens didn’t even write it.

Scott W. Johnson of PowerLine is offering us this tale of woe from Minnesota Justice:

“Four years ago Koua Fong Lee killed three Minnesotans when he rammed his 1996 Toyota Camry into the rear of another car at the Snelling Avenue exit of Interstate Highway 94 in St. Paul. Lee’s car careened into the other car somewhere between 70 and 90 miles per hour and Lee was, not unreasonably, convicted of negligent vehicular homicide.

Lee’s particular Toyota model was never part of the controversy over the alleged unintended acceleration of certain models of Toyota cars. No mechanical problem was found with the car after the accident. The trial judge nevertheless granted Lee a new trial on the ground of ineffective assistance of counsel after the Toyota controversy seemed to lend some credibility to Lee’s account of how the accident happened. Former Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner declined to prosecute the case again. Lee is now free once more to drive the city streets.

Unbelievably, to my knowledge, no one other than me has asked Gaertner why she threw in the towel on the case. In comments she made about the case before a local lawyers’ group this past October, Gaertner made it clear how much she disliked being asked around town about Lee’s eight-year sentence (a sentence the prosecutor had requested after Lee’s conviction). Wasn’t the sentence too harsh? Prosecuting crimes can really be a bitch; it may not always be the best way to win friends and influence people.

Gaertner said she stood behind the case she originally brought against Lee after deliberating over it for a year after the accident and taking heat about the delay from the local chapter of the NAACP; the deceased victims of Lee’s negligence were all black. Gaertner also said the state legislature should revisit or clarify the law against negligent vehicular homicide. In response to my question asking why she threw in the towel on the case, Gaertner cited the difficulty of getting a jury that could fairly adjudicate the case as well as the loss of collective community support for additional punishment of Lee.

Michael Fumento exposed the absurdity of Lee’s exculpatory claims in an excellent New York Post column. For some reason Fumento’s analysis has never seen the light of day in the local media.

Moving from the realm of tragedy we now enter the realm of comedy and farce or some mixed genre that Polonius might have noted (perhaps “tragical-comical-historical-pastoral”). Lee and his family have filed a lawsuit against Toyora in federal district court in St. Paul. In the lawsuit Lee alleges that Toyota is responsible for the problems flowing from his conviction and punishment.

Lee alleges that he required psychological counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder because of both the accident and his imprisonment and that he now requires sleep medication. Toyota recently moved for the dismissal of some of Lee’s claims. Law students struggling with the concept of “proximate cause” in their Torts class may be helped by this example:

In documents filed Monday in U.S. District Court, attorneys for Toyota said many of Lee’s claims are without legal merit and should be dismissed. Among them, they said Lee can’t claim damages for his incarceration because any alleged wrongful conduct by Toyota could not have directly caused his trial and imprisonment.

“The reality, of course, is that many independent actors – including police, prosecutors, defense counsel and jurors – played pivotal causative roles in sending Koua Fong Lee to prison,” Toyota’s attorneys wrote.

Now comes word that federal investigators have found no evidence of sudden acceleration by Toyota automobiles resulting from electronic failures. What about the mechanical problems previously identified by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration? Forbes reports the NHTSA investigation finding that the “vast majority” of cases of unintended acceleration were actually due to what NHTSA called “pedal misapplication” — stepping on the gas instead of the brake, or in addition to the brake. (In his New York Post column this past August, Fumento had revealed that NHTSA was sitting on this finding.) Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood rejected the straightforward description of “driver error” — when a reporter asked if the problem was drivers making a mistake, LaHood shot back, “Nobody up here has ever insinuated the term that you used, driver error” — but adults can draw the appropriate conclusion.

Pedal misapplication? The case of Koua Fong Lee calls for some such euphemism to cover the institutional failures that have made Lee a free man portraying himself as a victim while pursuing a lawsuit against Toyota. I can’t think of a good euphemism at the moment. With thought of the Lee case in mind, however, I do have a word of advice for Twin Cities motorists: Drive defensively!”

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Another Look at Theodore Dalrymple…..a man I, too, admire….

Five years ago or so, I had never heard of either name, Theodore Dalrymple or Anthony Daniels.   I can’t remember the exact sequence of events, but I think I first heard of him being interviewed by Dennis Prager on Dennis’ radio show.  Or maybe it was the second or third timed Dalrymple had been interviewed by Dennis.  In amongst these ‘visits’ I bought Dalrymple’s book, “Our Culture, What’s Left of It”, and found it a text for my generation, my age, and my experience.

I had graduated philosophically from socialism, a social requirement when I was in college 50 plus years ago,  to my “Reaganism” of today.   I discovered  over the past two decades, that in this process, I have been almost mesmerized  by converts from Marxism/socialism stuff to the freedom world of expression and enterprise  stuff of mind…the dreamy stuff.   The ‘stuff’ was always there fully imbedded in my being by my old maid  school teachers and the second world war as well as at home in the neighborhood in which I lived.

This metamorphosis  set me free of the weight I had to carry from the dogma I learned my ‘betters’ at university.

David Horowitz was the greatest shocker among these converts.  I was  past 39 years old when I discovered that this Communist writer of the late 50s and agitator of the early American Cultural Revolution period of the late 1960s had experienced some epiphany.

Dennis himself described his own development culminating in his final  great crossing over the bridge of Liberalism  to vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Theodore Dalrymple came from an established Communist family, but in Britain.  His book, “Our Culture” did it, for he wrote what I would like to have written….with chapters like:  The Frivolity of Evil….The Rage of Virginia Woolf,  How – and How Not – to Love Mankind…..Trash, Violence, and Versace:  But is it Art? ….  Why Havana Had to Die…..All Sex, All the Time…….Who Killed Childhood?……The Barbarian at the Gates of Paris…..and others.

And it isn’t a novel.

Mr. Dalrymple doesn’t have a happy future in store for western humanity.   And that did interest me as well.

Today I found this view refering to my Dalrymple’s writings.   Here is what he reported:

“I’m a longtime admirer of Theodore Dalrymple, the pen name of the retired English psychiatrist Anthony Daniels. I read his reports regularly in National Review and other periodicals, and have also read two of his books.

In his writings Mr. Dalrymple chronicles his extensive experience with the most dysfunctional members of the English working class, whom he encountered regularly in a professional capacity while working in major British hospitals. His view of the underclass in the UK is understandably quite jaundiced. He does not see any hope for Britain — based on his observations, his country has systematically destroyed its essential social capital in the lower and lower middle classes.

So it was no surprise to read his take on the English Defence League, as posted earlier today at The Corner. His post, entitled “Luton’s Muddy Message”, is mostly directed at Prime Minister David Cameron, whose recent disappointment with Multiculturalism has been in the news for the last few days. Mr. Dalrymple’s descriptions of the society now administered by Mr. Cameron are apropos:

• “Britain has the highest crime rate in Western Europe, despite having a third of all the closed-circuit television cameras in the world to oversee the population”
• “state-sponsored social pathology”
• “the British state is a swamp of corruption”

And so on. But then comes this somewhat offhand reference:

• “…members of the thuggish and fascistic English Defence League marched through Luton…”

Before I discuss Mr. Dalrymple’s lamentable recycling of the standard MSM caricature of the EDL: in the interests of full disclosure, I am in personal contact with various leaders and members of the EDL, and have a high regard for them. So I am not impartial.

Mr. Dalrymple, like Mark Steyn, is a professional doom-sayer. Both men make their living announcing the imminence of Götterdämmerung. As such, they are committed to the “brand”, and anything which alleviates the apocalyptic gloom is automatically rejected.

The very formation of the English Defence League refutes some of Mr. Dalrymple’s most cherished basic beliefs — the main one being that the English working class is an irredeemable sinkhole of depravity.

In reality, of course, anyone who works closely with the EDL discovers that they are by and large kind, generous, decent, hard-working, patriotic people who uphold old-fashioned values.

Yes, they’re sometimes a rough sort — they are working-class, after all. And they have their share of problems — no one in our degraded postmodern world can avoid such difficulties — but EDL members are startling in their open and cheerful determination to escape the hell to which fifty years of politically correct socialist Multiculturalism has consigned them.

This fact violates the central doom-tenet devised for England by the Dalrymple worldview. Hence, the EDL must be fascistic street thugs. What else could they be?

In this he is in agreement with the Communists, the Anarchists, Labour, the Lib-Dems, the Tories, the BNP, and the Muslims, all of whom say much the same thing.

Strange bedfellows indeed.

I haven’t encountered Mark Steyn’s take on the issue, so I don’t know if he arrives at the same conclusions. But one would expect all professional doom-sellers to be forced into a similar position, because hope, optimism, and the possibility of real change for the better are threats to the brand.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
A person who habitually predicts a doomsday scenario may find it hard to let go of it. If his livelihood depends on the genre, then one may expect him to be even more insistent in defending and reinforcing this viewpoint. Evidence that seems to contradict the forecast will be discounted or explained away so that the dire future that awaits us all may remain undisturbed.

I, too, am a forecaster of doom, but a more general type of doom, without a particular form or time frame. Thus I can afford to be flexible when new data arrive, and incorporate them into my worldview without much damage to my previous positions — or my pride.

The end is near, in the sense that the Western welfare state will collapse soon. There’s no telling exactly when it will happen, nor what the exact process will be, but collapse it must — the entire structure is the largest Ponzi scheme in history, and its demise within a generation or so is a mathematical certainty.

As Fjordman likes to say, this will not be the end of the world, but it will be the end of the world as we know it. The process will in all likelihood involve massive suffering and loss of life on a scale to make the Great Leap Forward look like a rugby scrum.

Yet something new, some progeny of Western civilization, will emerge from the ashes. No one can say exactly what it will look like, but it won’t be based on the great schemes and scholarly constructions devised by our current academics and political thinkers. Virtually no one who now holds a position of power or influence will be a part of the rebirth — and many of them will be lucky to survive the general reckoning when the system finally implodes.

What comes after will be built by the struggle and sacrifice of ordinary people whose decency and grit form the basis for my optimism. Their virtues — honor, loyalty, courage, self-sacrifice, and humility — are notably absent from our current political and cultural leaders, but they are routine among the general citizenry. I find them in the Tea Parties, in ACT for America, in the various European and Australian Counterjihad groups — and in the EDL.

I work with such people every day, and they are a constant source of inspiration. They’re one of the main reasons I keep doing this job. And they will form the backbone of the new culture when its time eventually comes.

Writers like Theodore Dalrymple and Mark Steyn may be out of work when the great change arrives. After all, when Doom has come and gone — and not quite the doom one expected — what’s a professional doom-sayer to do?”

Further comment:  Having read the above, I believe this review to be true that Dalrymple did indeed write his attacks on the English Defence League, an organization, as it happens, I adore,  or at least it leader, Tommy Robinson for this young man’s grasp of the gravity, clarity of language in explaining the gravity, and the guts he has to put himself into the battle, and I admit, that he is from the WORKING CLASSES…..(The American in me.)

Tommy Robinson and his bunch look as if they would never become too proud to work in a McDonald’s if need be.  Now that is a standard the means a great deal to me and many from my generation, Theodore Dalrymple, notwithstanding.

Nevertheless, I like this Dalrymple very much.   I thought, however, he had migrated to France about six years ago in retirement.   Perhaps he has read the French press about the Liton demonstration a few days ago.

I am wondering if he missed the report that the student classes at UK universities are harassing this group, the EDL, whereever they give their speeches.  These Marxist troublemakers call themselves, “United Against Fascism” yet are organized to suppress and censor free speech.

I ask you, dear reader, to review for yourselves the goings on with the Islamist racists in Britain…..as with the American southern border, if the elected government does not defend neighborhoods, who will?

I think Tommy Robinson, thus far, is a  hero for freedom and understanding the issues.   Follow up with your own research to arrive at your own conclusions.   Here is but one video in which Tommy Robinson is interviewed.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b95_1292186443

Free Speech Troubles in Canada………Islamism again the problem child

 On January 18th the film Iranium was scheduled to be shown at the National Archives Theatre in Ottawa, but it was canceled at the last moment due unspecified threats of violence, and after complaints by the Iranian embassy.

Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore vigorously insisted that the Iranian government could not dictate to Canadians what movies they could or could not watch, and ordered the National Archives to screen the film. The event was rescheduled for last Sunday, and tickets were sold out in advance. Security for the showing cost the organizers $15,000.

Clare Lopez of the Center for Security Policy spoke after the movie was shown, and answered questions from the audience. Besides the issues about Iran brought up by the film, she covered a wide range of other topics relating to Islam and the danger to the West from sharia.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for recording and YouTubing Ms. Lopez’ excellent talk. The two-part video of the discussion is below the jump:

Clare Lopez at Iranium #1

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2011/02/clare-lopez-speaks-after-iranium.html#more

Pimping at Planned Parenthood

This article below is from the Family Research Council understandably disturbed by “pimping” now occuring at your ‘municipal’ planned parenthood shop just around the corner.

It seems folks in that neck of the woods believe tax payers should know where their taxes are invested>

Washington Update:   “If a pimp can make it there, they’ll make it anywhere.”

“As members gear up for the first of two hearings on taxpayer-funded abortion, Lila Rose is doing her part to supply them with all the evidence they need to shut down Congress’s side business with Planned Parenthood. Today, Live Action released another installment in its clinics-gone-wild video series. (For those of you keeping score at home, this is the sixth video in seven days.) This time, the team took their cameras inside the walls of a Bronx, New York clinic, where not one, but two employees coach a pimp to beat the system and get taxpayer-funded services for his 14-year-old prostitutes, who–oh by the way–may also be illegal immigrants.

When the actor explains that he runs a sex ring with eighth graders, the staffer can barely stifle a yawn. “Mmm hmm,” she says, indifferently. “How do they go about, you know, being able to get the access even in spite of what they do, you know?” the pimp asks. “Yeah, like, like I said, everything’s confidential,” the staffer replies. “They don’t have to tell anybody what it is that they do when they make the appointment.” Later, the man admits that some of the girls aren’t U.S. residents. “That’s fine. Like for our benefit program,” the staffer explains, “we do require they bring us some documents…” Then, the prostitute pipes up. “You wouldn’t need to know that they work at night? … [T]hat they do sex work at night?” “None of that,” Planned Parenthood promises. “We don’t need to know anything. Everything is totally confidential.” She goes on to describe how they could fake a letter, pretending to be the girls’ guardian.

Moments later, the Live Action crew approaches one of the clinic bosses at the elevator. The third sentence out of the pimp’s mouth is, “We’re involved in sex work.” The supervisor’s response to underage sex enslavement is the same as her colleague’s: “Mmm hmm.” “In terms of insurance,” she explains after hearing his concerns, “they would probably speak to one of our entitlement people,” she offers. “They don’t have to be citizens to get the insurance, and it’s confidential.”

So far, Planned Parenthood isn’t exactly bowling over Congress with its credibility. However, if there is one positive thing about Planned Parenthood’s ethical failure, it’s that these videos are at least prodding the organization to provide some much-needed education on child sex abuse. To help tamp down some of the controversy, the group’s headquarters released a statement this morning promising to “retrain employees” on how to report abuse of minors. “We want to be crystal clear for those millions of people who come to us and trust us that we will never put a minor at risk,” spokesman Stuart Schear said. Unfortunately for Cecile Richards and company, the organization will have a tough time distancing itself from a long, dark history of doing exactly that. In the last four years of Live Action videos, Planned Parenthood has shown itself for the cold and calculating business it is. Being pro-abortion is one thing. Being pro-abuser, pro-prostitution, and pro-profit, at taxpayer expense, is quite another. Let’s defund them now.”

The above article was sent in by Mark Waldeland.

Prager Fans: Acquaint Yourselves to “Gates of Vienna”

Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/8/2011

Morocco and Libya, two North African countries that have so far escaped the popular unrest in the region, are on the lookout for incipient domestic disturbances. Libya has set up a task force to monitor growing discontent expressed through the social media on the internet, and is expanding state spending on certain programs to short-circuit popular protests. Banned Islamists in Morocco are calling for regime change.

In other news, New York State TV executive Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan has been convicted for the beheading murder of his wife. Meanwhile, three churches in central Java were attacked and destroyed by Muslim mobs.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, DF, Fjordman, HB, Insubria, JD, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Posted by Baron Bodissey at 2/08/2011 11:53:00 PM 0 comments Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Google Buzz

O’Reilly, Bloviating over His Meeting with Pope Obama, Interviews Charles Krauthammer

Obama is pretending he has learned his lessons not to be so Marxist.  (He got clobbered in November.)   Claims he always has been tolerant of conservatives and Fox.  (This is another Obama lie.) 

 “Child” O’Reilly pussies up to Obama …….either in submission to a higher office, or working ‘under cover’ for higher tv ratings trying to con more independents and lefties to fall in love with ‘him’…..O’Reilly, not Obama.  Both are skilled in deception.  Opinion:  Compared to Obama’s abilities at deception, O’Reilly is a “Child”.

“Child” O’Reilly’s contention Obama is really no longer a Marxist.   “Child” O’Reilly insists Obama isn’t even a socialist, because “Child” O’Reilly claims a society cannot be “socialist” until it confiscates personal property.   O’Reilly is convinced Barack Hussein Obama is a changed man.

Krauthammer won’t have it.   Nor will I.  Nor will anyone who spends any time listening to Obama during his acting performances to all crowds and is aware of his training and experience.   The man is a Marxist by religion.

Below is a video of O’Reilly trying to sell Charles Krauthammer a new bill of goods regarding Barack Hussein Obama:

 Charles Krauthammer,  with his intellectual arsenal fifty times more brainy than O’Reilly and one hundred times more forthright and honest, as well as being a thinker about matters beyond ratings, Krauthammer evaluates Obama as a snake in the grass with all of its incumbent skills. 

Below is a video of O’Reilly trying to sell Charles Krauthammer a bill of goods that Barack Hussein Obama is now a centrist:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/02/09/krauthammer_on_oreilly_interview_obama_a_very_skilled_politician_.html

Postscript:  Marxist, Hugo Chavez,  still allows most Venezuelans to own their own homes and in some cases still own their own businesses.   Questions  for the Bill O”Reillys of the world…..Is Hugo Chavez a Marxist?   Is Hugo Chavez a Marxist even when he claims he is!

Justice Scalia Reminds Congress that the Constitution IS the Law of the Land, Despite Obama Democrats’ Disdain for It

The following article is from the American Spectator, written by Ron D. DeSantis and Adam Paul Laxalt, titled “Scalia’s Timely Advice”.

“U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia offered the members of Congress who attended his “constitutional seminar” some timely advice: read The Federalist Papers. This advice, if heeded by members of the 112th Congress, would represent a welcome change in the priorities of our national legislature. From the defeated Phil Hare, who admitted he “didn’t worry about the Constitution” to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who reacted in disbelief when asked whether the Constitution constrained her ambitions, the 111th Congress was conspicuous for the number of members that exhibited a blissful disregard for the Constitution they swore to support and defend.

Of all of the handiwork of the 111th Congress, no single act displayed its members’ indifference to Madisonian constitutionalism more than ObamaCare. Because of the nation’s fiscal crisis, the budget-busting quality of ObamaCare is, understandably, the focus of many critiques of the law. But if members of Congress heed Justice Scalia’s advice and consult the writings of Publius, they will find that, irrespective of its costs, ObamaCare is an affront to the ethic of constitutionalism that Founding Fathers like James Madison embraced.

The provision mandating the purchase of private insurance, which has received the most attention because it is the focus of strong challenges in the courts, threatens to wipe away any discernible limitations on the scope of the federal government’s authority to regulate commerce. As Madison famously explained in The Federalist No. 45, the “powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.” As a congressman, Madison warned against constructions of the Constitution that rendered the government “no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.” If inactivity can be characterized as commercial activity, then virtually anything is ripe for federal supervision, converting the Constitution into an “unlimited government,” which is precisely what the Founding Fathers tried to prevent.

While the individual mandate affirmatively violates the Constitution, other aspects of ObamaCare conflict with the philosophy underlying it. The sheer enormity of the law undermines self-government. In The Federalist No. 62, Madison remarked that “It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.” ObamaCare checks in at a cool 2,700 pages of dense, legislative jargon; can a citizen really be expected to understand the inner workings of this colossal law?

Though 2,700 pages long, ObamaCare intentionally left a large number of critical questions unanswered, delegating vast authority to executive branch agencies. This enables the bureaucracy to issue dense, lengthy rules that spell out the thorny details of “transformational change.” According to Madison, such easily mutable rules give an “unreasonable advantage…to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uninformed mass of the people.” The advent of ObamaCare “waivers” has vindicated Madison’s warning, for such “waivers” have been issued to politically-connected entities like the Service Employees International Union, which spent $27 million in support of Obama’s presidential campaign and is adept at influencing pliable public officials. Incredibly, the same powerful groups who flexed their political muscle in favor of “transformational change” are now able to exempt themselves from its enactment. This is precisely the type of politics that American voters rejected in the 2010 midterms.

Such rank favoritism notwithstanding, allowing executive branch agencies to impose far-reaching restrictions and mandates on the American people, such as dictating the minimum “essential benefits” that Americans are forced to maintain under penalty of law, further corrodes the political accountability that is a prerequisite for liberty. In The Federalist No. 63, Madison identified the need to structure the government in a way that “a ready and proper judgment can be formed by the constituents” respecting its actions. ObamaCare delegates legislative authority so dramatically that unaccountable executive branch officials possess boundless discretion to institute policies that affect the medical care and livelihood of millions of Americans. By subcontracting important legislative decisions to bureaucracies, elected officials insulate themselves from the political responsibility that is the hallmark of a government of, by and for the people.

Though challenges to ObamaCare in the courts show promise and should be pursued, the constitutionalist critique of the law should not be confined to the judicial sphere. Judicial decisions are final but they are not infallible. James Madison understood that supine courts would not always enforce the Constitution, and explained in that, in such instances, “a remedy must be obtained from the people,” through ordinary politics. The 2010 elections demonstrated that the people are intent on exercising this remedy.

Opponents of ObamaCare should continue to press the political case for repeal in a way that goes beyond mere dollars and cents. Repeal is also about preserving an ethic of constitutionalism rooted in limitations on government, political accountability, and equal justice under the law.

Let’s hope that members of Congress listen to Justice Scalia. By governing in a way that is faithful to the philosophy of limited government articulated in The Federalist Papers, the 112th Congress has a unique opportunity to earn the reputation as the “Constitutional Congress” and, in the process, save our nation from the ambitions of its rulers.

Englishman Patriot, Tommy Robinson, on Youtube………This Guy’s Exceptional in the Fight for English Survival

Americans must get acquainted with the British struggle to survive as a western culture against Liberal and some Conservative Party’s politically correct rule of multiculturalism while Islamic hate and crime brazenly run rampant throughout the country.   And no one dares to confront them while afraid to be called racists.

At last there is an opposition force led by a working class young man with the political name, Tommy Robinson.

He has become a very effective speaker for restoring English rights to the majority population instead of reserving rights only for minorities…….

As in our own United States, a battle is brewing between local folks and the policies and politics the national elites who run government thrust upon local populations.    The town is Luton.   The battle is the local community objecting  to massive muslim  settlements being forced  upon towns like Luton by the UK political elites of London to appease Islamicists by giving them all sorts of rights and protections not afforted the ‘native’ populations.   Please click on to meet Tommy  Robinson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAq4KhfOd-s

In another interview (below), “Tommy Robinson on Sky News”, the interviewee is challenged, not quite harassed bythe newsman who has a difficult time listening to Robinson’s explanations. 

This is a priceless interview for it exposes not only the leftwing influence laboring the  newsman’s hostility toward  the local defender of the neighborhoods, but also it exposes a class distinction……the soft, ‘worldly’ aware pompous  middle class crowdubg   upperclass stratum and verse,  against a street worker, a laborer with a beautiful laborer’s language with clarity strengthened by his duty to defend his world, his England………..at one time a very noble world.

Today that world is in doubt……but the ‘educated’ newsman doesn’t seem to have a clue.

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2011/02/tommy-robinson-on-sky-news.html