Exposing DC's biggest secret!

In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance reports,

With congress saying they will not be returning to work next week, it appears Kentucky representative Thomas Massie has decided to use the opportunity to expose Washington DC’s biggest secret. Something 99% of American voters do not understand:



Oh dear, he’s telling secrets. You see, congress doesn’t actually write legislation. The last item of legislation written by congress was sometime around the mid 1990’s. Modern legislation is sub-contracted to K-Street. Lobbyists write the laws; congress sells the laws; lobbyists then pay congress commissions for passing their laws. That’s the modern legislative business in DC.

Go here to read Sundance's fascinating explanation of how things work in Washington DC in 2020.

"Congress is the institution vested with the power to declare wars, to debate where we send troops, and decide which conflicts are funded."

David Harsanyi writes in the Federalist,

...Congress is the institution vested with the power to declare wars, to debate where we send troops, and decide which conflicts are funded. Presidents have been ignoring this arrangement, abuse authorizations for the use of military force (AUMFs), and imbue themselves with the power to engage in conflicts wherever they like, without any coherent endgame, and without any buy-in from Congress.

...It’s a bipartisan problem. Barack Obama, whose political star rose due to his opposition to the Iraq war, was perhaps our worst offender, circumventing Congress and relying on a decade-old AUMF, which he invoked 19 times during his presidency, to justify a half-hearted intervention against ISIS (not al-Qaeda) in Syria (not Afghanistan.)

..It was also Obama who joined Europeans in the failed intervention in Libya, where he worked under NATO goals rather than the United States law. There was hardly a peep from Democrats fretting over the corrosion of the Constitution.

...The only thing we can be certain of is that there few good options in the Syria mess, and that includes our allies. Although the Kurds have endured much as a people, and deserve our support, the Kurdish PKK, our allies in northern Syria, aren’t chaste freedom fighters but Maoists with ties to terrorist organizations.

Or, in other words, we face few good options mired in perhaps the most volatile situation in the world. Under these conditions, our foreign policy shouldn’t be driven by the arbitrary “great and unmatched wisdom” of any single person. This brand of unilateral power was problematic when the well-mannered Obama sold out Syria to coddle the Iranian terror state, and it’s problematic when an impulsive Trump acquiesces to the wishes of Erdogan. (Although Washington only seems to freak out when the word “withdrawal” is mentioned.)

Read more here.

Texas asserts sovereign immunity against Congress

President Trump is not the only one who is defying Democrat-controlled committees of Congress. Stephen Dinan reports in the Washington Times,

Texas is objecting to Democrats’ requests for documents probing the state’s efforts to clean up its voter rolls, and documents detailing the state’s efforts to protect faith-based adoption and foster care providers against an Obama-era rule about working with same-sex couples.

The clash could break new legal ground.

Ken Cuccinelli, a former Republican attorney general in Virginia, said he never encountered the situation during his time in office, but he added that two constitutional principles are at stake: the sovereignty of states and the supremacy clause, which gives the federal government an edge in clashes with states.

He said Texas makes a strong case in its letters for why it will prevail.

“Congress doesn’t get to do oversight over states — period. Nor can they compel action by state officers,” he said. “If I were a betting man, I’d take Texas and give two touchdowns on this one.”

Read more here.

"The vast federal bureaucracy that Trump is struggling to operate is the real government of America."

The Zman writes,

...democracy inevitably leads to some form of authoritarian rule, based in the urban areas. That’s where we are now in modern America. The illusion of democracy has disguised the deep contempt the ruling elite has for the people, but that contempt is becoming more obvious. At some point, they will simply stop pretending.

...This collapse of legitimacy results in a Congress that does very little. Instead, it relies on the Executive to do what it asks. The vast federal bureaucracy that Trump is struggling to operate is the real government of America. The FBI sedition scandal is a good example of the contempt with which the New Class holds the political class. They have no fear of either party in Congress, as they know they are powerless. Proof of that is the parade of people lying to Congress and never facing the consequences.

...What we have today is rule by a surprisingly small number of people. At the top is the global pirate class that owns the media, technology and finance. Under them are the lesser elites that rule over the academy, mass media, politics and foreign policy. This is the New Class, an elite within the bureaucracy that has a free hand in running the state, as long as they don’t anger their paymasters. At most there are a few thousand people controlling a few million person bureaucracy that runs the global empire.

Read more here.

Whose job is it?

In the Aspen Times, Glenn Beaton wrote a piece yesterday about the Supreme Court.

...This system has worked well for over two centuries. But over the past few decades the job of these justices has gotten harder. To their detriment and ours, we now ask too much of them.

We now ask the Court to decide, for example, whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant and whether contraceptive benefits should be mandated for Catholic nuns. Those issues wound up before the Court because Congress refused to decide them. Instead, Congress delegated the decision to unaccountable administrators at the EPA and unelected bureaucrats at the IRS.

These are not issues of law, but issues of policy. Congress dodges them for craven political reasons. They want to avoid disappointing one or another of their constituent groups. Congress does this because it works — for Congress.

The people are not blind to this game. That's why they overwhelmingly disapprove of Congress as a whole. But they still allow themselves to be seduced by their own representatives over and over at election time. Being seduced is destructive but seductive.

It's a failure of democracy, and it's our own fault.

Congress's abdication to the Court now risks the Court's reputation upon which its authority rests. The current justices — and also newly nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh — are extremely talented judges and very decent human beings. But they are only so-so policymakers and, moreover, they are unaccountable to the people.

Let's restore democracy. A good start would be for the Court to invalidate vague legislation that illegitimately delegates policy-making to unaccountable administrative agencies for review by unelected judges.

That would force Congress to make the hard policy decisions. That's Congress' job.

And it would force us to hold Congress accountable for those decisions at election time. That's our job.

Read more here.

A witless aider and abettor

I love this headline for Andrew McCarthy's important piece at The Corner:

We Interrupt Our Regular Trump Programming to Announce America’s Surrender to Iran and Global Governance

McCarthy writes,

At the New York Times website this morning, if you dig down under stories on the Donald Trump Circus, you will find a one-line link, buried beneath several other one-line links, to a report titled, “U.N. Vote on Iran Nuclear Deal Irks Congress.” Further burying the lede, you must scour down to a passing reference in paragraph four to find a glimmer of the real story: The Obama administration has already raced to the United Nations Security Council to spearhead action, today, that would adopt Obama’s Iran deal in a resolution that will begin the deal’s implementation.

The Times tut-tuts that this has left the people’s representatives in Congress “irked,” that lawmakers of both parties are “complaining that the Security Council action, expected Monday morning, would pre-empt the congressional debate.” Of course, the point is not that Congress’s pride is hurt. It is that the Constitution and the capacity of the American people to determine their own national interests are being torn asunder.

...In sum, the Obama administration has acceded to these demands by foreign sovereigns – some of which are enemies of the United States, and none of which guards the interests of the United States – that legal action imposing obligations on the American people be taken by those sovereigns not only before action is taken by the American people’s representatives but in violation of our Constitution.

...We should be asking each lawmaker who voted for the Corker Bill: If you did not want Obama to go to the Security Council before Congress could review the deal, why did you vote in the Corker Bill to allow the deal to commence without a vote from Congress? And why did you limit Congress’s review to statutory sanctions when there are so many other elements to the Iran deal – elements blatantly contrary to American national interests.

At the U.N. today, the Obama administration is colluding with our enemies and other foreign sovereigns to deprive the American people – through their elected representatives – of the power to determine what obligations they will accept under international law. The Obama administration has taken the position that Russia, China, and, yes, Iran, have a vote on our national security, but we do not. And in this betrayal, Congress has, at best, been a witless aider and abettor.

Read more here.

Should Congress limit abortions to 20 weeks?

Glenn Reynolds writes in USA Today that next week

the House is expected to vote on a 20-week limit on abortions. Such a limit polls well— Americans are much more supportive of early abortionsthan late-term abortions — and would still leave the United States with more-liberal abortion laws than nearly all of Europe. Even so, the Republicans need to be asking themselves — and the Democrats need to be asking them, too — where, exactly, Congress gets the power to limit abortions to 20 weeks?

But members of Congress take their own oath to preserve the Constitution, which imposes an independent obligation on them to take the Constitution seriously, not just to do whatever the Supreme Court will let them get away with. If, as Republicans in Congress keep telling us, they support limited government, then they need to support limits on government even when those limits stand in the way of doing something they want to do.

Will they?

Read more here.

A global joke

When was the last time you heard a union leader blast President Obama? Kenneth Palinkas, President of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council representing 12,000 United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) adjudicators and personnel said yesterday

“After the House passed its legislation to reverse the amnesty, all I hear is silence in the Senate. It seems Congressional leaders will not rise to defend the laws of the United States, but are giving in to the ‘imperial presidency,’ Palinkas says.

The new “border security” bill is “a global joke,”

“It’s not border security if anyone can recite the magic words and get waved right on in. Those who arrived in the 2014 border run are still here, often living on US support and even applying for US jobs. The bill also delays by years the implementation of biometric exit-entry to police the rising overstay catastrophe.”

"The President’s executive amnesty order for 5 million illegal immigrants places the mission of USCIS in grave peril. Instead of meeting our lawful function to protect the Homeland and keep out those who pose a threat to US security, health, or finances, our officers will be assigned to process amnesty for individuals residing illegally inside our nation’s borders. This compromises national security and public safety, while undermining officer morale."

Read more here.

What the US can do to help the people of Israel and Gaza

Caroline Glick is one of the best writers I read. She has written a very clear summary of the Israeli-Hamas war. She no longer believes a ceasefire is possible. She writes about what she understands to be Hamas' rationale for fighting, and then gives very explicit suggestions for what the United States can do to help the people of Israel and the people of Gaza. I will excerpt her column here, but I urge readers to go read her whole column.

Why did Hamas attack the Givati forces, kill two soldiers and capture 2nd. Lt. Hadar Goldin Friday morning in violation of the US-UN brokered 72-hour cease fire?

Hamas acted as it did, because it thinks it can get away with it. And Hamas thinks that it can get away with it because Hamas is convinced that it will win this war.

Hamas’s goal of opening Gaza to the world has nothing to do with helping the people of Gaza. Hamas wants open borders so that it can import arms and the means to rebuild its tunnels. It wants to open the borders so that it can replenish its coffers.

In other words, Hamas’s purpose in fighting this war is to ensure that Hamas can keep fighting.

From a financial perspective, it isn’t simply that Hamas is expecting to receive cash payments from Qatar, Turkey, Iran and the Palestinian Authority. Hamas runs Gaza. Hamas is the tax authority.

As Dr. Moshe Elad explained to Globes, Hamas siphons money off every dollar in aid transferred to Gaza because it controls all the aid pipelines. Every dollar of international humanitarian aid to UNWRA and every other organization goes through that pipeline and part of the funds are transferred to Hamas.

The reason that Hamas is certain that when the war ends, it will achieve its goal of opening Gaza’s borders is simple. The United States says so.

The official position of the US government is that a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will involve opening Hamas’s borders to the world. This position was spelled out by Secretary of State John Kerry in the draft cease fire that he sent to Israel last Friday.

Kerry’s draft said that a permanent cease fire agreement must include, “arrangements to secure the opening of the crossings, allow the entry of goods and people and… transfer funds to Gaza for the payment of salaries for public employees…”

After 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin was captured, Secretary of State John Kerry called the Qatari and Turkish foreign ministers to ask them to get Hamas to release him. Kerry’s move demonstrated that the US continues to view Hamas’s chief state sponsors as the most attractive allies in achieving a sustainable ceasefire. As Hamas’s sponsors, Qatar and Turkey insist that Hamas’s demand for open borders be met.

Under these circumstances, Hamas has no reason to stop fighting.

The first option is for Israel to retake control over Gaza. The aim of the operation would be to decimate Hamas physically.

Such an operation will be prolonged. It will result in the deaths of thousands of Gazan civilians, hostages as they are, to Hamas.

It will result as well in massive losses of IDF soldiers.

In short, it will be a very painful, heartbreaking process. But it will make it impossible for Hamas to enjoy open borders and so continue fighting.

The other option is for the US to credibly reverse its position and oppose any opening of Gaza’s borders for as long as Hamas remains in charge. For this to work, it is not sufficient for the Obama administration to retract its current position and publically oppose the opening of Gaza’s borders. Given the administration’s track record, Hamas’s leadership won’t believe that the policy reversal is real.

Strong Congressional action is also required.

The relevant committees in both houses must begin serious examinations of all manner of US funding to the Palestinians and how this money serves Hamas. Such an investigation should focus on UNWRA.

During this war – and in previous Hamas campaigns against Israel – we have seen Hamas use UNWRA schools as missile storage sites and missile launching pads. This week three soldiers were killed trying to seal a tunnel whose entry shaft was located in an UNWRA clinic booby trapped with over a ton of explosives built into one of the walls.

At a minimum, this tells us that UNWRA is subservient to Hamas. All UNWRA installations and personnel are controlled by Hamas. As a result, UNWRA is a subsidiary – willing or unwilling – of Hamas and all funds to UNWRA must be suspended until Hamas is no longer in control of Gaza.

Again, the central point is that for as long as Hamas exercises control over Gaza, everyone in Gaza and every entity operating in Gaza is controlled by Hamas. All assistance to Gaza assists Hamas and communicates the message that Hamas will win the war.

As a result, the only way for anyone to help the people of Gaza is to free them from Hamas. And the only way to free them from Hamas is to defeat Hamas.

Rather than support Israel’s efforts, the Obama administration has adopted Hamas’s language and refers to the blockade as “a siege,” intimating that there is something illegal about it.

It would be reasonable for the Armed Services Committees of both houses to pass resolutions calling for the US Navy to assist Israel in maintaining the blockade. They can also bring the commanders of the US Navy before them to testify regarding how the US is or can assist Israel in sustaining the blockade.

Such moves would symbolically communicate US commitment to keeping Gaza’s borders sealed. Certainly they would communicate to Turkey that its intention to take action to break Israel’s blockade is strenuously opposed by the US Congress.

And this brings us to another key move that Congress can make. Given the active support Turkey and Qatar are providing to Hamas in its terrorist war against Israel, it is imperative that Congress begin questioning nature of the Turkish and Qatari regimes and the legality of US military and other strategic ties with these two state sponsors of Hamas and al Qaeda.

In the case of Qatar, a good place to start is for members of both houses to follow the lead of House Chief Deputy Whip Rep. Peter Roskam who sent a letter to Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew Thursday questioning US diplomatic ties with Qatar in light of its massive financial support for Hamas and its facilitation of the funding of al Qaeda affiliates ISIS and the al Nusra Front.

Members of the Senate Armed Services committee can exercise oversight and state their intention to cancel through legislation the $11 billion dollar arms deal with Qatar that the Pentagon announced last week. In light of what the US now knows about Qatar’s central role as the banker and bankroller of Hamas and other Islamist terror groups, continued military sales to Qatar may well be prohibited under the Arms Export Control Act.

As for Turkey, under the dictatorial regime of Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, NATO member Turkey has joined Qatar, Iran and Syria as a massive state sponsor of terrorism. It funds and provides other material support for Hamas. It is a major funder of al Nusra and ISIS.

To date, Turkey has largely avoided Congressional scrutiny for its support for terrorism. As a member of NATO its forces continue to train with US forces and Turkey is contracted to receive a hundred F-35 warplanes from the US over the next several years.

With Turkey actively involved in Hamas’s war against Israel, the time has come for Turkey’s support for terrorism to be scrutinized, with an eye towards designating Turkey as a state sponsor of terrorism, or at a minimum, demoting its position in NATO. Relevant committees in both houses of Congress should hold formal hearings about Turkey’s support for terrorism.

In order to minimize suffering of the people of Israel and Gaza, and to ensure Israel’s national security and US national security interests in the Middle East, the US must join Israel in its goal of defeating Hamas. To that end, both the administration and the Congress must openly and credibly join Israel in rejecting any cease fire arrangement that provides for the opening of Gaza’s physical and financial borders so long as Hamas remains in control of the area.

Read more here.

A Lot Less Action

Guest post
by
Suzann Darnall

Two of my favorite songs are "A Little Less Conversation" (Elvis Presley) and "A Little Less Talk and A Lot More Action" (Toby Keith). The Elvis song includes the line, "A little less conversation, a little more action please". The Toby Keith title kinda says it all. But, I have to admit I am now finding a need for a lot more talk and a lot less action. In particular, I would like lots less action by Obama and his Dem cohorts in DC!

As much as I hate to hear Obama give one more teleprompter story-time, I do have to admit I prefer his oh so very dishonest words to any more of his oh so very destructive actions! Which are also dishonest in that they frequently violate the laws of the land and principles upon which our Constitution and country were founded. Not to mention that he and his minions so very often lie about what is going to be done, has been done, or will be done!

I know the Left loves to bring up Richard Nixon whenever anyone mentions the scandals swamping Obama's . . . ummm . . . transparent(???) administration. But, it still comes down to the fact that while Nixon lied, no one died! Unlike the four dead Americans in the Benghazi terror attack!!! And, while Nixon and his minions were guilty of breaking into an office, Obama and his minions are guilty of breaking an entire healthcare system! Much of it done outside the checks and balances of our Constitutional governance system.

Now Obama is threatening to even more completely bypass Congress with additional Executive Orders in his rush to leave a Leftist Legacy behind as he heads into the lame duck years in his presidency. The problem is that his agenda will leave our economy and society more than lame, it will cripple America for possible decades and even generations to come.

So, I am hoping and even praying that Obama becomes so enamored with hearing his own voice that he will be too busy appearing on late night television, daytime talk shows, and doing more of his non-campaigning campaign events to actually sign anything . . . except possible autographs for the idiots who get shivers up their legs upon hearing his teleprompter fairytales! Unfortunately, the Democrats running for office are also running from Obama, which cuts down on the potential for out of DC appearances we can hope for to fill up his calendar.

But, we can only hope there are still enough other Liberal speaking venues to keep Obama out and about for at least a good portion of the next few years. 'Cause we definitely need him doing a lot less action! Even at the price of having to listen to a lot more conversation . . . or teleprompter renditions of what passes for great oratory in the world of the Progressives.

© Suzann C. Darnall, FEBRUARY 2014

"Very simple, very simple, very simple, very simple"

This hysterical, emotionally disturbed guy is a Congressman from Colorado. Watch him become unglued in the House of Representatives because he cares so much about illegal immigrants. It's very simple.

Thanks to The Right Scoop for providing the video.

Remember when the F.B.I. was respected?

What has happened to the F.B.I.? Congressmen Darrel Issa and Jim Jordan have stated that the F.B.I. has impeded a Congressional investigation and interfered with a Congressional Committee's (Committee on Oversight and Government Reform) access to documents and information. The Congressional Committee has given the F.B.I. Director until 5 p.m. on December 16 to produce documents the Committee has been requesting since September 6, 2013. The Congressmen remind the F.B.I. Director of the criminal penalties (fines and imprisonment) he faces if he continues to deny the Committee the information it is requesting, which pertains to the F.B.I.'s targeting of people and groups that believe in conservative political views.