The Patriot Post Brief 2-28-2011

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The Patriot Post Brief 2-28-2011
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation

"Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness." --James Wilson

Opinion in Brief

"Attorney General Eric Holder announced that President Obama had concluded that the administration would no longer defend Section 3 of DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act]. ... As he has in so many other areas (EPA, the offshore drilling ban, IMF), Obama has usurped the authority of the other two coequal branches of government to make himself, in effect, not just chief executive but super-legislator and a supreme judicial authority. Holder admitted in his statement that the Justice Department 'has a longstanding practice of defending the constitutionality of duly-enacted statutes if reasonable arguments can be made in their defense,' but not otherwise. But it is preposterous to suggest there are no reasonable arguments to defend the statute when 5,000 years of human history and the express act of Congress fly in the face of that statement. According to professor John Yoo, 'in the few cases that the Supreme Court has heard gay rights cases, it has never adopted (the standard Obama is applying).' In announcing a new standard, Obama claims that the legal landscape has changed in the 15 years since DOMA was passed. You know the drill: Society has 'evolved.' ... It is not Obama's place to make this determination, especially when the people have already done so in such emphatic terms through their duly elected congressmen. ... We have an imperial president who is refusing to enforce a law passed by powerful congressional majorities while persisting in enforcing a law (Obamacare) that two federal courts have already invalidated. The only common denominator is that Obama believes he is the law." --columnist David Limbaugh1

Culture

"One of the most insidious practices of the insidious Obama Justice Department is the sabotaging of litigation -- i.e., DOJ purports to defend some statute or government policy so that it can appear to be moderate, but uses its resulting control over how the case gets litigated to forfeit some of the best legal arguments supporting the statute/policy. This way, DOJ can steer the case toward the radical outcome the Obama base desires rather than the outcome DOJ is ostensibly pursuing. On balance, I far prefer that Obama's Justice Department openly advocates for the outcome desired by Obama's base, as it is finally doing with DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act]. This way, the court can appoint lawyers who will truly defend the statute with the best legal arguments available. ... Regardless of where the DOMA litigation goes from here, what's interesting is the administration's political calculation as the president gears up for the 2012 campaign. Obama has clearly decided that it's more important to be publicly aligned with his base -- which he desperately needs to drum up enthusiasm for his reelection -- than to pursue the more subtle (and effective, albeit unethical) strategy of masquerading as DOMA's defender while actually undermining the statute." --columnist Andrew C. McCarthy2

Faith & Family

"When the family fails, the economy suffers and social pathologies ensue. This invites government intervention, which contracts liberty.... The federal government's programs are no substitute for a mom and a dad in the home. The hard data demonstrates that all children living in intact homes do better in school -- and this costs taxpayers nothing extra. ...What right is more important than the right to life? If we cannot be secure in our persons, will we remain long secure in our property? ... The family that remains together -- and that worships regularly -- can point the path to society's renewal. ... The fiscal costs of social breakdown are massive. Fewer people mean a weaker economy: It has been estimated that since 1970, abortion has cost the nation a minimum of $35 trillion. And government pays hugely for pathologies that derive from broken families and broken lives." --Tony Perkins3, President of Family Research Council

For the Record

"During the past week, Barack Obama has found no time to condemn the attacks that Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has launched on the Libyan people. But he did find time to be interviewed by a Wisconsin television station and weigh in on the dispute between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the state's public employee unions. ... Unions, most of whose members are public employees, gave Democrats some $400 million in the 2008 election cycle. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the biggest public employee union, gave Democrats $90 million in the 2010 cycle. ... The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public employee unions, who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party. ... Now hard economic times have left voters wondering why public employees pay practically zero toward their health insurance and pensions when they have to pay plenty themselves." --columnist Michael Barone4

Re: The Left

"NHJ Journal.com reports that Rep. Michael Capuano, a Massachusetts Democrat, said this [last week] at a Boston 'solidarity' rally: 'I'm proud to be here with people who understand that it's more than just sending an email to get you going. Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary.' ... It will not surprise you to learn that Capuano is another 'civility' hypocrite. On Jan. 9, the day after a madman in Tucson, Ariz., got a little bloody, the Globe quoted him: 'What the hell is going on? There's always some degree of tension in politics; everybody knows the last couple of years there's been an intentional increase in the degree of heat in political discourse. ... If nothing else good comes out of this, I'm hoping it causes people to reconsider how they deal with things.' ... Capuano's rhetoric ... was not just violent but authoritarian. He urged government employees to 'get a little bloody' -- to commit violent acts against citizens, as if this were Libya. ... [P]ublic sector 'collective bargaining,' in which public officials 'negotiate' with the unions that helped elect them, is essentially a conspiracy to steal money from taxpayers. Capuano, it seems, would like to escalate that to armed robbery." --columnist James Taranto5

The Gipper

"The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us. Business doesn't pay taxes, and who better than business to make this message known? Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business. Begin with the food and fiber raised in the farm, to the ore drilled in a mine, to the oil and gas from out of the ground, whatever it may be -- through the processing, through the manufacturing, on out to the retailer's license. If the tax cannot be included in the price of the product, no one along that line can stay in business." --Ronald Reagan6