The Patriot Post Brief 9-17-2012

________________________________________
The Patriot Post Brief 9-17-2012
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________

Constitution Day 2012

September 17, 2012

The Foundation

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." --preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America

Constitution Day 2012

Today, Sept. 17, 2012, marks the 225th anniversary of the signing of our Constitution at the Philadelphia (Constitution) Convention in 1787. The best way to honor the day might be to read it1. It's up to "We the People" to hold our elected representatives accountable for failing to honor their oaths2.

Mark Alexander has an extensive archive of columns on the Constitution3 as it relates to various subjects over the years. Don't miss it!

Today is also The Patriot Post's 16th anniversary. Thanks to our readers -- and our financial supporters4 -- for making what we do possible!

Essential Liberty

"Monday, Sept. 17, marks the 225th anniversary of the signing of the nation's second great founding document, the Constitution that provides Americans with limited government. ... The Constitution was drafted more than 11 years after the Declaration. The United States had won independence but was struggling under the weak Articles of Confederation. The Founding Fathers wanted to draft a document that would provide an effective but carefully limited federal government. Through a series of compromises, they did just that. They designed three branches of government -- legislative, executive and judicial -- that would check each other. If one tried to usurp too much power, the others would have an interest in bringing it back into line. Just as competition brings down prices in economics, competition would tend to keep any particular branch of government from acquiring too much power. ... The Constitution has held up well for more than two centuries, with only occasional modifications (the 27 amendments) through the years. Of course, people used to be a bit more serious about the idea that the Constitution said what it meant and meant what it said. Any 21st-century celebration of the Constitution should take note that the country is no longer keeping faith with its constitutional principles. Today, most 'laws' actually are rules and regulations enacted by bureaucrats in government agencies, not statutes passed by elected lawmakers. Even when Congress does pass legislation, such as the Dodd-Frank financial reform law or Obamacare, lawmakers leave many blanks and expect rule-makers to fill them in. That means the bureaucracy, peopled with federal 'experts,' essentially exists as an unelected fourth branch of government. ... Our constitutional framework of limited government requires a president who will actively use his granted powers but also recognize the strict limits on those powers. After the Constitution was complete, Benjamin Franklin noted that it made the country 'a republic, if you can keep it.' This Constitution Day, let's honor the framers and respect their work by changing America's course -- and returning to our constitutional roots." --Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner5

Read Heritage's 10 Steps to Save the Constitution6.

Insight

"I want to make one thing clear. This war against our constitution is not being fought way off in Madagascar or in Mandalay. It is being fought here -- in our schools, our colleges, our churches, our women's clubs. It is being fought with our money." --Senator William Jenner (1908-1985)

Government

"Constitutionally and by precedent, the House of Representatives has the exclusive prerogative to originate bills to appropriate money, as well as to raise revenues. ... No matter how Obama's presidency is viewed, if we buy into the notion that it's he whose spending binge is crippling our nation through massive debt and deficits, we will naturally focus our attention on the White House. The fact of the matter is that Washington has been on a spending binge no matter who has occupied the White House. In 1970, federal spending was $926 billion. Today it's $3.8 trillion. In inflation-adjusted dollars that's about a 300 percent increase. Believing that presidents have taxing and spending powers leaves Congress less politically accountable for our deepening economic quagmire. Of course, if you're a congressman, not being held accountable is what you want. ... Most members of our Republican-controlled House of Representatives say they're against Obamacare. If they really were, they surely would attach a legislative rider or some other legislative device to the Department of Health and Human Services' appropriation bill to ban spending any money on Obamacare; they have the power to. But they don't have the political courage to do so, and their lives are made easier by the pretense that it's the president controlling the spending. And we fall for it." --economist Walter E. Williams7

The Gipper

"It's time we stopped looking backward at how we got here. ... We must reach out and appeal to the patriotic and fundamental ideals of average Americans who do not consider themselves 'movement' people, but who respond to the same American ideals that we do." --Ronald Reagan8

Opinion in Brief

"An incendiary video about the prophet Muhammad, 'Innocence of Muslims,' was blamed for the mob attacks on our embassies in Libya and Egypt (and later, Yemen). ... One of the things we've learned all too well is that the 'Muslim street' ... have a near-limitless capacity to take offense at slights to their religion, honor, history or feelings. ... Are we really going to hold what we can say or do in our own country hostage to the passions of foreign lynch mobs? If your answer is some of form of 'yes,' than you might want to explain why U.S. citizens aren't justified in attacking Egyptian or Libyan embassies here in America. After all, I get pretty mad when I see goons burning the American flag, and I become downright livid when a U.S. ambassador is murdered. Maybe me and some of my like-minded friends should burn down some embassies here in Washington, D.C., or maybe a consulate in New York City? Of course we shouldn't do that. To argue that Americans shouldn't resort to mayhem, while suggesting it's understandable when Muslims do, is to create a double standard that either renders Muslims unaccountable savages ... or casts Americans as somehow less passionate about what we hold dear, be it our flag, our diplomats or our religions." --columnist Jonah Goldberg9

For the Record

"One of the ways of understanding the strange nonchalant response of the administration to prior warnings of trouble in the Arab Spring countries, and its contextualization of the violence on the anniversary of 9/11, is its belief that it is somehow separated from the object of the violence. Raging crowds and Islamic wrath could not possibly be connected to the enlightened Obama administration or, more generally to a U.S. that has been 'reset' on his watch -- given the three years of laborious Muslim outreach and the long-ago departure of George Bush. So we are to think away all those burning flags, stormed consulates, and dead Americans, and instead remember that the violence 'is a response,' a sort of cry of the heart against a couple of America-residing video makers -- and has nothing much to do with any anger at well-meaning Americans per se. Apparently no one in charge seems to grasp that this latest video pretext is simply yet another tool, in a long line of many, for premodern Islamists to manipulate and galvanize their fury against the United States, whose success and power obsess them no end -- no matter what we do or who happens to be in the White House, soaring Cairo speech and 'leading from behind' or not." --historian Victor Davis Hanson10