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THE FOUNDATION

"With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." --James Madison

The Constitution is an obstacle to Obama's plans

GOVERNMENT

"Thinking about today's massive deficits, we might ask: Where in the U.S. Constitution is Congress given the authority to do anything about the economy? Between 1787 and 1930, we have had both mild and severe economic downturns that have ranged from one to seven years. During that time there was no thought that Congress should enact New Deal legislation or stimulus packages along with massive corporate handouts. It took the Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt administrations to massively intervene in the economy. As a result, they turned what might have been a two or three-year sharp downturn into a 16-year depression that ended in 1946. ... Here's my question: Were the presidents in office and congresses assembled from 1787 to 1930 ignorant of their constitutional authority to manage and save the economy?" --economist Walter E. Williams

RE: THE LEFT

"After many a disappointment with someone, and especially after a disaster, we may be able to look back at numerous clues that should have warned us that the person we trusted did not deserve our trust. When that person is the President of the United States, the potential for disaster is virtually unlimited. Many people are rightly worried about what this administration's reckless spending will do to the economy in our time and to our children and grandchildren, to whom a staggering national debt will be passed on. But if the worst that Barack Obama does is ruin the economy, I will breathe a sigh of relief. He is heading this country toward disaster on many fronts.... This is a president on a mission to remake American society in every aspect, by whatever means are necessary and available. That requires taking all kinds of decisions out of the hands of ordinary Americans and transferring them to Washington elites -- and ultimately the number one elite, Barack Obama himself. Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the capabilities of what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power." --economist Thomas Sowell

POLITICAL FUTURES

"Respected economists like Donald Marron, Keith Hennessey, Bruce Bartlett and Kevin Hassett have all carefully chronicled the fact that the Obama stimulus package does not feature any real fiscal multipliers. They say the bulk of the package consists of transfer payments to individuals and states, along with tax credits that will produce no real incentive effects to spur economic growth. But the fact remains that numerous signs are now pointing to economic recovery. And the GOP needs to craft a smart political response to this. Obama and Biden will surely take credit for the better economic news, just as any White House would. It's the way the political game is played. But Republicans have to play the game, too. A tremendous summer rally is going on in stocks, and it's being driven by better corporate profits and improved leading indicators -- including a possible upturn in housing starts and sales, and a major downward spike in weekly initial jobless claims. So you have to believe the stock market is calling the tune for recovery. And while politics is not everything, I do believe that the shrinking prospects for Obamacare have been a big contributor to the stock market's recent surge. This sweeping new government insurance plan would lead to high-tax-and-spend-and-borrow-and-regulate nationalized health care, a big economic negative. Ditto for nationalizing energy through cap-and-trade-and-tax. If these initiatives fail, it is very bullish for stocks and the economy. ... But the White House is going to take credit for economic recovery anyway, and that's the newest political challenge for the GOP." --economist Lawrence Kudlow

FOR THE RECORD

"The administration has fulfilled a promise to cut spending by trimming $100 million from the 2009 budget. That's right -- $100 million with an 'm,' an imponderably small slice of this year's expenditures. Back in April, the White House stressed that President Obama, during his first Cabinet meeting, 'made clear that relentlessly cutting out waste was part and parcel of their mission to make the investments necessary for recovery and long-term stability.' Department heads were 'to identify at least $100 million in additional cuts to their administrative budgets.' Three months later, he has gotten his wish: The White House announced on Monday that the goal has been reached. To say such a cut is negligible is an exaggeration in the extreme. To fit that description, a cut first has to be visible. Though it was initially promoted as a seminal moment, this cut doesn't come close to meeting even the most reachable of benchmarks. In fiscal 2009, our federal government will spend nearly $4 trillion, according to the Office of Management and Budget's historical tables. The $100 million cut represents 0.0025% -- less than one one-hundredth of 1% -- of those outlays. ... Now, thanks to the administration's 'relentless' belt-tightening, the deficit will be $1.79999 trillion rather than $1.8 trillion." --Investor's Business Daily

LIBERTY

"How did the health-care debate decay to the point where we think it entirely natural for the central government to fix a collective figure for what 300 million freeborn citizens ought to be spending on something as basic to individual liberty as their own bodies? That's the argument that needs to be won. And, if you think I'm being frivolous in positing bureaucratic regulation of doughnuts and vacations, consider that under the all-purpose umbrellas of 'health' and 'the environment,' governments of supposedly free nations are increasingly comfortable straying into areas of diet and leisure. ... Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks -- drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high. Government health care would be wrong even if it 'controlled costs.' It's a liberty issue. I'd rather be free to choose, even if I make the wrong choices." --columnist Mark Steyn

THE GIPPER

"Our struggle for nationhood, our unrelenting fight for freedom, our very existence -- these have all rested on the assurance that you must be free to shape your life as you are best able to, that no one can stop you from reaching higher or take from you the creativity that has made America the envy of mankind." --Ronald Reagan

INSIGHT

"Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism.... A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers." --English writer Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

CULTURE

"The question of health care is not one of rights but of how best in practice to organize it. America is certainly not a perfect model in this regard. But neither is Britain, where a universal right to health care has been recognized longest in the Western world. Not coincidentally, the U.K. is by far the most unpleasant country in which to be ill in the Western world. Even Greeks living in Britain return home for medical treatment if they are physically able to do so. The government-run health-care system -- which in the U.K. is believed to be the necessary institutional corollary to an inalienable right to health care -- has pauperized the entire population. This is not to say that in every last case the treatment is bad: A pauper may be well or badly treated, according to the inclination, temperament and abilities of those providing the treatment. But a pauper must accept what he is given. Universality is closely allied as an ideal, ideologically, to that of equality. But equality is not desirable in itself. To provide everyone with the same bad quality of care would satisfy the demand for equality. ... In any case, the universality of government health care in pursuance of the abstract right to it in Britain has not ensured equality. After 60 years of universal health care, free at the point of usage and funded by taxation, inequalities between the richest and poorest sections of the population have not been reduced. But Britain does have the dirtiest, most broken-down hospitals in Europe. There is no right to health care -- any more than there is a right to chicken Kiev every second Thursday of the month." --British physician Theodore Dalrymple

OPINION IN BRIEF

"Barack Obama was a rock star on the campaign trail, and his aura went undimmed in his first few months of office. But then he began taking too many curtain calls. The applause subsided, but he kept coming back to center stage to try harder to wow us. He forgot what every star must learn, that you've got to know when to get off that center stage. If you don't have anything new to say, shut up. This applies even to presidents. He's reaching for applause lines with the same ol' same ol'. So his poll numbers begin to shrink. He pushes, and pushes, a flawed health care scheme without having anything new to add. ... The president likes golf because the greens provide refuge from the public. Just as he wants to get away from us, more of us feel the urge to get away from him. Too many press conferences and speeches without anything new to say bore us, too. While he works on his backswing and short putts, he might think about the tough questions that so far he can't answer. He can take his time getting back to us." --columnist Suzanne Fields

FAITH AND FAMILY

"Last August, Pastor Rick Warren stumped then-Sen. Barack Obama with a seemingly simple question. 'At what point,' asked Warren, 'does a baby get human rights, in your view?' 'Well, I think that whether you're looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade,' said Obama. It turns out, however, that an even simpler question once stumped the very person Obama now pays to give him advice about science: When does a human become a 'human being'? John P. Holdren is director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In 1973, he co-authored a book -- 'Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions' -- with Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich. ... The Ehrlichs and Holdren conclude ... by noting that legal scholars do not believe humans are constitutionally recognized as 'persons' until they are born. But the authors don't clarify when exactly, in their view, a developing member of the species homo sapiens ultimately turns into an actual 'human being.' ... The first meaning of 'being,' according to the Webster's Online dictionary, is 'the quality or state of having existence.' By definition, as soon as a human exists, he or she is a 'human being.' The abortionist, whose evil cause the White House science adviser championed, may succeed in terminating a human being's life on this planet. Undoing that child's humanity or the existence of his immortal soul are -- as Obama himself might put it -- above his pay grade." --CNS News editor in chief Terence Jeffrey

COAST GUARD BIRTHDAY

On August 4, 1790, the U.S. Coast Guard was created by Congress, which authorized Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton to build a small fleet of 10 cutters to protect the coast. The Coast Guard continues to serve a critical role under the Department of Homeland Security and we at The Patriot offer our thanks for a job well done. Happy Birthday and Semper Paratus! Please visit the Patriot Shop for a great selection of items bearing the Coast Guard's insignia.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

(To submit reader comments visit our Letters to the Editor page.)

"Does anyone else wonder how much of Obama's health care plan comes from Hillary Clinton's aborted 1993 scheme? I say 'Obama's plan' skeptically as it's doubtful that he spent any time before taking office conjuring up this abomination. It's far more likely this scheme has been festering in Congress for years, likely long before Hillary Clinton's ministrations brought it to a head. I'm sure Obama's handlers and most die-hard supporters see his momentum is slowing, thus the urgency to force it through while he has a measure of approval. If it doesn't pass this year, it won't pass in 2010 -- an election year." --Las Vegas, Nevada

"You note that the socialized medicine bill is over 1,000 pages. The Declaration of Independence is two pages, and the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, is about a dozen pages. Proves that if you can't dazzle them with brilliance you baffle them with bovine manure." --Cheyenne, Wyoming

"Is health care a right? I propose that one person's rights may not create a burden for another person. We have the right to free speech, but we may not force someone else to listen. We have the right to worship as we choose, but we may not compel another person to attend church with us. We have the right to keep and bear arms, but if our neighbor chooses not to, we may not require that he carry a firearm. A right to health care cannot exist because it requires that someone else provide it. Another person may not infringe on my Liberty by requiring that I provide for his needs. That was called Slavery, and has long been abolished in America." --Framingham, Massachusetts

THE LAST WORD

"By year's end [Obama] will emerge with something he can call health-care reform. The Democrats in Congress will pass it because they must. Otherwise, they'll have slain their own savior in his first year in office. But that bill will look nothing like the massive reform Obama originally intended. The beginning of the retreat was signaled by Obama's curious reference -- made five times -- to 'health-insurance reform' during his July 22 news conference. Reforming the health-care system is dead. Cause of death? Blunt trauma administered not by Republicans, not even by Blue Dog Democrats, but by the green eyeshades at the Congressional Budget Office. ... Whatever structural reforms dribble out of Congress before the August recess will likely not survive the year. In the end, Obama will have to settle for something very modest. And indeed it will be health-insurance reform." --columnist Charles Krauthammer

*****

Veritas vos Liberabit -- Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot's editors and staff.

(Please pray for our Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world, and for their families -- especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)