What the hell is going on here?  What is the Congress and the government trying to do?  Why is it no one knows about this?  H.R. 2499 hits the floor tomorrow – and the press hasn’t made a peep. Perhaps everyone is cool with adding another star to the flag? This bill supposedly gives Puerto Rico freedom or something — which is weird because they already have that. What does the bill actually do? Opens the door for America to go from 50 to 51 states………..and creates a couple of million more Democrat voters.

EDITORIAL: Puerto Rico deserves better

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Democratic House leadership has announced plans to ram through a bill to stack the deck in favor of statehood for Puerto Rico. Amazingly enough, several ordinarily sensible conservatives, including House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence, are poised to help them. The collaborators ought to reconsider. Arguments in favor of political self-determination may seem reasonable, but the bill in question actually tramples self-determination in favor of an underhanded political power grab.

The single worst part of H.R. 2499, dubbed the Puerto Rico Democracy Act, is that it would allow former Puerto Ricans to vote in a pro-statehood advisory referendum even if those former residents are already registered voters in a U.S. state. Instead of voting “early and often,” this might be called the “vote here, there and everywhere” stratagem. It is fundamentally undemocratic at its core.

At its root, the bill is deliberately designed to unfairly make it harder for Puerto Rico to keep its current status as a territory with special benefits rather than as a state. It does so by setting up a complicated two-step voting process that helps proponents of all other options – statehood, full independence or some sort of weird hybrid – gang up against the option of remaining as a territory. Several previous referenda have shown that the option of remaining a territory is the first choice of a plurality of Puerto Rico’s residents, but this system effectively would take that first choice off the table.

There also is the problem that Puerto Rico is a predominantly Spanish-speaking land. No other state has ever joined the union without having English as its only official language.

Some, like Mr. Pence, might see a move toward statehood from the standpoint of a Jack Kemp-like outreach to people trying to grab the American dream. However, the late Republican leader himself surely would be turned off by the underhanded features of this legislation. He also surely would listen to his fellow New York representatives of Puerto Rican descent, both Democrats, who oppose this horrible bill. Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez and Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat, all have objected to various aspects of the proposal.*

Ms. Velazquez, who favors a constitutional convention in the territory to decide how to approach the issue, testified before a House committee last summer on the bill. “The process promoted by those bills,” she said, “has been perceived to be skewed in one form or another. It is now time to break this cycle.”

There is no good reason for any member of Congress to support such a skewed process.

* Correction: Contrary to an earlier version of the editorial, Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-NY) is a supporter and co-sponsor of H.R. 2499, the Puerto Rico Democracy Act.

EDITORIAL: Angry, hateful, violent, extremist liberals

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Imagine a group of angry demonstrators toting swastika-festooned protest signs calling politicians Nazis, shouting obscenities and racial remarks and throwing rocks and bottles at police officers sent to keep order. No, these are not Tea Partiers. They are the mob that turned out last week to protest Arizona’s new immigration-enforcement law. This group of liberal rowdies has been dubbed the Tequila Party.

For the most part, liberal media coverage overlooked all the leftist violence. Typical headlines described the protest as “mostly peaceful,” with media outlets avoiding details about why they had to use the qualifier “mostly.” Reporting a near-riot by the opponents of the Arizona law doesn’t fit the dominant media storyline.

Some of the editorial bias is blatant. An Associated Press story about the Arizona immigration law quoted a 13-year-old Hispanic boy saying, “We can’t be in the streets anymore without the pigs thinking we’re illegal immigrants.” The Washington Post sanitized the boy’s views towards law enforcement by replacing the word “pigs” with “[police].” If a Tea Partier used a slur of any kind, it’s doubtful it would be given the square-bracket treatment. It would probably be a banner headline.

The assumption that Tea Partiers are hate-filled bullies explains why major media outlets rushed out reports that demonstrators in Washington opposing the government health care takeover subjected black members of Congress to racial slurs and spat on them. The accusations were never proved, and substantial video evidence and eyewitness accounts suggest the events never happened. There was no press coverage, however, when supporters of illegal immigration used physical intimidation tactics and made threats of violence against demonstrators on the National Mall the same day.

At a Tea Party rally in Searchlight, Nev., on March 27, supporters of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threw eggs at buses carrying attendees and later harassed and threatened some of them. The limited-government advocates at FreedomWorks have begun publicizing the hateful e-mail and voice messages they have received, as well as documenting other examples of angry leftist violence, intimidation and extremism.

The most press coverage on this effort to expose hateful liberal extremism came when voice-over actor Lance Baxter stupidly left a voice mail asking for “the percentage of people that are mentally retarded who are working for FreedomWorks.” As a result, he lost a high-profile gig with Geico insurance. Mr. Baxter’s crime was his politically incorrect use of the word “retarded.” If he had inquired about the percentage of illiterate, fascist, tea-bagging racists at FreedomWorks, we suspect he would have been given a pass, and probably some kind of award.

Negative views like this are part of the embedded narrative of Tea Party coverage. But the storyline suffered a tectonic shift when an April 12 CBS News/New York Times poll of self-identified Tea Partiers found that they were not illiterate rednecks, but tend to be older, better educated, higher income, married people. They make up 18 percent of the population, compared with 20 percent who self-identified as somewhat or very liberal.
The Tea Partiers do not incite violence; they are salt-of-the-earth middle Americans who are desperately worried about the misguided policies and wrongheaded vision being promoted by President Obama and his congressional allies. Contrast them with the younger, less educated, lower income, angry, racially motivated mob that turned out in Phoenix. The Tequila Party and gangsters like them represent the core and the pride of the liberal base. If an angry, shouting mob throwing bottles at police is the face of contemporary liberalism, it’s no wonder Americans are turning against them in droves.

Nearly every time I look up I see Barack Obama.  If it’s not his picture, it’s his image.  It’s very, uh, totalitarian, you know?  It’s almost all Obama all the time.  But in those seemingly rare instances when it’s not Obama, it’s guess who?  Bill Clinton.

The former president, a known pathological liar and sex offender, was recently interviewed by ABC News for some insight into the selection process for the justice who will replace the retiring John Paul Stevens.  Why anyone would value the opinion of this liar and slanderer is beyond me, but then again, I’m not a liberal.  So go figure.

But one statement in his interview that caught my attention was Clinton opining about the 2000 presidential election in which he called the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision one of the “most bizarre rulings in the history of the Supreme Court. I think one of the five worst.”

The liberal bashing of that decision has been going on since December 12, 2000 and is probably one of the most misunderstood Supreme Court decisions in the history of the republic.  The purposeful misstatements, misrepresentations, and inappropriate characterizations of the motives of the court’s conservatives, by the liberal Left, has damaged our country, and I believe, started the Democrat demonization of the Republican Party that has taken on Joseph Goebbels-like derangement.

It’s time to finally end the slander and put some facts on the ground, and while I’m at it, show Bill Clinton, and others like him, to be mean spirited ideologues.

So here’s the deal.

Beyond some broad outlines provided by the Constitution, elections for president are conducted by the states using state law to count and tabulate ballots.  In 2000 Florida had rules and laws in place to handle any complaint about the vote.  In addition, and in accordance with state law, Florida had set up deadlines by which votes had to be certified, or they would not be counted.  All states have such laws and Florida did as well.

Florida’s election law required that recounts be automatically conducted if the margin of victory between both the candidates was less than ½ of 1%.  Florida conducted that recount and the margin of Bush’s victory was reduced from 1700 votes to 327 votes.  Bush was still the winner.

Nevertheless, Gore called for a manual recount in 4 overwhelmingly Democrat counties – Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, Broward and Volusia, and on November 12^th, Palm Beach and Volusia did begin hand recounts.   But an important deadline was looming which said that counts not received by the secretary of state, Katherine Harris, by the seventh day following the election shall be ignored.  That was the state law.

Actually, all 67 Florida counties had until 5:00pm on November 14^th to produce certified vote counts.  In accordance with state law, Harris had no discretion to extend or waive the deadline.  None.

By November 15^th, with the deadline passed, Harris announced she would not accept additional recounts.  She also asked the Florida Supreme Court to stop all manual recounts already underway.   Remember, these actions were totally consistent with Florida law.

By Florida law, this should have ended the matter with Bush being declared the winner of the state electoral votes, but it didn’t.  It’s at this point that the plot began to thicken, and in fact, the Florida Supreme Court started disregarding state laws in their attempt to get Al Gore elected.

On November 17^th, the Florida Supreme Court, on its own and without any specific complaint being filed, issued a temporary stay against Harris, stopping her from certifying the election results on the day and time required by Florida law, pending a full hearing before the court.

On November 21^st, the Florida Supreme Court ordered that manual recounts should continue but must be completed within 5 days (November 26^th).  The Florida Supreme Court ruled that Harris had actually abused her role as secretary of state and could not enforce the lawful Florida deadline.  In other words, the Florida Supreme Court completely ignored the existing Florida law and instead imposed its own arbitrary new deadline.  At this point the Florida Supreme Court was, as they say, “entering unchartered waters” and making rules up as they went along.

On November 29^th, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case about whether the Florida Supreme Court’s order of November 21^st was constitutional.

While all of this thwarting of the law by the Florida Supreme Court was going on, Broward County had completed their manual recount, but they had changed their counting rules in midstream to include dimpled ballots, as well as later including chads with barely discernable indentations, all in an effort to get Gore more votes.  At least one Democrat counter was caught bending ballots so light would pass through an otherwise unpricked Gore chad.

In Palm Beach County, the standards for counting ballots kept shifting as well.  At first dimpled ballots had not been counted, but then later they were.  Later still, every other kind of marked chad was added to the count.

On November 26^th, after the Florida Supreme Court’s own deadline had passed, Harris was legally obligated to certify the results, which at that point showed Bush still had more votes.  And with that, according to the Constitution of the United States, the election was over.  George Bush was elected President.  That was that.  Now this is very important; no matter what happened after this moment, and plenty did, the election was over.  The Florida governor certified the vote and sent it to the national archivist in accordance with federal law.  Even though, as you’ll see, actions in this case continued, the vote was over.  Bush was elected president.

Unfortunately, that important point was missed by the Florida Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court and the media because the legal haggling kept going.

Now we’re getting to the end.  On December 8^th, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the manual counts should continue in all Florida counties, not just the 4 contested counties, which had significant numbers of “undervotes”.   Undervotes are ballots in which no presidential candidate was recorded.  In addition, and without setting any standard for counting ballots, the Florida Supreme Court order also set aside its own November 26^th deadline.  In effect, the Florida Supreme Court was saying they would essentially do anything, and take whatever time was necessary, and use whatever local counting method could be devised on the fly, to get the correct vote, the Al Gore vote, counted.  (And isn’t this reminiscent of the Democrat desire to get the health care bill passed regardless of the cost to the civil society?)

This was the smoking gun of constitutional abuse.  No deadlines, no counting standards, and no final decision until Gore had more votes.  Total manipulation to enforce a partisan and biased agenda.

On December 9^th, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 that the Florida manual counts must be halted.  It should be noted that two of the dissenting justices actually agreed that the manual counts should be halted but had other issues that caused them to dissent.  Otherwise the vote to stop the manual vote would have been 7-2.

On December 12^th, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 that the Florida Supreme Court had violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution by ordering statewide manual recounts with different standards in the various counties with no deadline for completion.

The U.S. Supreme Court did not select George Bush as president.  Instead, U.S. Supreme Court stopped the rogue Florida Supreme Court from violating the rule of law.

Those are the facts of the case.  Any self-respecting, thoughtful person could see the manipulation underway by the Florida Supreme Court and its allies in the Democrat Party in an effort to get their candidate elected no matter what the cost to the civil society, the laws of the land and the damage to our country.  The attempt to “steal” the election was on the part of the Democrat Party and, if anything, it is they who should be shunned for their near criminal acts, which they continue today (sees Al Franken, Bob Torricelli, and Chris Gregoire, to name just a few).

So why do people like Bill Clinton insist this decision was one of the “most bizarre rulings in the history of the Supreme Court?”  Are they stupid?  Are they moronic?  Are they merely misinformed?  Or are they something approaching ugly and evil?  You make the call.

Now you know the facts.  Even the ideologues know the truth, but to them facts mean nothing.  Make sure you spread this around.

And that’s all there is to it.

So here’s the deal.  It seems that Bill Clinton had some negative things to say Friday about people in the Tea Party movement.  He says they tend to say dangerous things and belong to militias, and threaten those with whom they don’t agree and, now here’s the best part, seem to be following the same path that the Oklahoma City bombers took to get to a state of violence that could not be contained.  This disgraced former Democrat president, a complete degenerate and pathological personality, has the nerve to disparage those attending Tea Party rally’s as anti-American and prone to violence.  This man, accused several times of rape and sexual assault by a number of women going back decades, believes Tea Party supporters are an enemy of the nation.  Of course, there is not a single shred of evidence or a single incident that would in the least prove any of his lies and falsehoods, but that’s what we’ve come to expect from the Joseph Goebbels inspired political Left.  And, amazingly enough, the people on the political Left agree with him.  Is blood shooting from your eyes like it is from mine?

It just so happens that this past Thursday I was riding on a bus to the Washington DC Tea Party rally and I took some special time to look around and take note of the people traveling with me.  There were about 40 of us, mostly over 50, but some much older than that.  I counted at least 4 hearing aids and 1 lovely, but not particularly young, pregnant woman.  For most of the 1 hour trip there was a line back and forth from the restroom.  Some folks wore American flag shirts and hats with patriotic slogans and everyone just happened to be white.  Of course, anyone would have been welcomed on the bus, but apparently only white people decided to take this specific bus.  No matter.  Some people had signs they planned to hold at the rally, all of which were handmade, some by grandchildren.  And one guy asked permission if he could sell bracelets with the words “Repeal and Replace”.  And everyone was excited about the prospect of making a statement, sort of a “telling truth to power” thing.

So in response to the unholy Bill Clinton I’d say this was a great bus trip because the people on that bus were just like me.  They were conservatives and conservatives believe in one thing above all others.  Conservatives believe in the Constitution of the United States, the way the Framers wrote it.

There’s nothing in the Constitution that gives the central government the authority to tell you what light bulb you can use, or how much water is permitted to run through your toilet, or how far a gallon of gas can take you and what kind of car you must drive, or how much salt or fat you’re allowed to have in your food or any of the other minutiae of our lives that the federal government is presently getting involved in.  And there’s nothing in the Constitution that gives the government the right to tell you can’t spend your own money to see whatever doctor you want or to buy whatever insurance you want or to have whatever medical procedure you want.  Or limit the amount of CO2 you’re allowed to exhale.

I assume the guy on the bus selling bracelets had in mind the health care bill, the one Bill Clinton’s kind of corrupt Congress passed using bribery, threats and extortion and to get it through, with of course the uncompromising assistance of the fifth column mainstream media.  But actually, I think that bracelet would look better on the wrist of the democrats and other Marxists and their drones because “Repeal and Replace” really, for them, means repeal and replace the Constitution.  That’s what they want and that’s where they’re going.  Just ask Barack Obama.

Look at how the words of the Constitution have been changed from their 18^th century meaning to the 20^th and 21^st century meanings of today.

Take the word “welfare”.  During the townhall meetings last summer many congress people were asked where in the Constitution they find the notion that the government can force Americans to buy health insurance.  Many said they found that particular government power in the preamble, which says in part “promote the general welfare.”

The 18^th century use of the word “welfare” meant the central government was to create an environment in which people could go about their lives without harassment or interference from the government.  As long as they broke no laws or committed no fraud and honored their contracts, the government would not, and could not, intercede in their lives.

Today, welfare means entitlements and wealth redistribution.  It means $12 Trillion in national debt on our way to $20 Trillion before the end of this decade alone.  It means unfunded government liabilities already totaling over $100 Trillion with no end in sight.  It means certain servitude for the generations of the future whose money we are spending today.

Does anyone honestly suppose Framers like James Madison wrote the preamble thinking “ah yes, government taking money from those who earn it and giving it to those that have not earned it is a good thing.  Yes, our new national government should do exactly that.”  Who believes that?   Does anyone honestly believe Founders like Washington, Adams, Franklin and Jefferson fought against King George thinking “once we get this king and his taxation tyranny off our backs we’ll set up our own government and we’ll be able to take money from one group and give it to another group.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.”  Is that what happened?

The same kind of bastardization of the 18^th century word “regulation” used in writing the Constitution should be compared with its 20^th and 21^st century counterpart.  The commerce clause is the section (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3) from which almost all government control of free enterprise resides.  The clause states, in part, that the United States Congress shall have power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations and among the several States……”.

What the Framers meant by “regulation” was that the government should make “regular” the commerce between the states, to create a business friendly environment from which commerce would be able to grow, flow freely and become normal.  Barack Obama’s use of regulation means roadblocks to commerce, rules and statutes to follow, government involvement in the day to day and on and on.

And now our very capitalistic culture is in jeopardy of being destroyed.  America is systematically being made poorer.  That’s the Barack Obama plan, the plan make everyone a victim, dependent on the government.  What’s happening is no accident.

None of this would be happening if the Constitution were being followed.  None of this would be happening if conservatives and Tea Partyers were in control.

Those against the Constitution believe in all government all the time.  Tea Partyers believe in limited government, liberty, personal property, personal responsibility and the Constitution the way the Framers wrote it.

I would ask Bill Clinton which of us is the enemy of our nation.  His government of looters and takers and government controlling the number of toilet paper rolls you’re allowed to have, or our Tea Party inspired government of opportunity, free markets, capitalism and freedom.

The Constitution is black or white.  You either believe in it, all of it, or you don’t.  There’s no middle ground.  It’s not “living and breathing.”  It means today what it meant before and what it’ll mean tomorrow.  It’s the rock upon which our country is built.  You’re either with it, or you’re against it.  You’re either on the right side, or you’re on the wrong side.  It’s as simple as that.

And that’s all there is to it.