Score “One” for the Constitution v. Executive Office Abusers

Some of the best news I’ve read in a long time.  There is still some sanity in our courts and an understanding that the U.S. Constitution set-up a separation of powers intentionally to protect you and I from government tyranny.

The Landmark Legal Foundation (aka Mark Levin) has done our Country a great service by forcing this issue into the courts and setting the precedent that Presidents and their Executive Branch must follow the laws of the Constitution.

Enjoy the article and don’t forget to send your thanks to the Landmark Legal Foundation for taking this issue to court.

YiT ~  Shelly

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Obama recess appointments unconstitutional

By Stephen Dinan

The Washington Times; Friday, January 25, 2013

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  Richard Cordray stands left as President Obama announces in the State Dining ... more >

VIDEO:

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  Runtime: 01:05White House: 'Strongly Disagrees' With Ruling

AUDIO

• Audio Clip: 01-25-13 Stephen Dinan with Andy Parks

RELATED STORIES

• Labor board vows to press ahead despite ruling

In a case freighted with major constitutional implications, a federal appeals court on Friday overturned President Obama’s controversial recess appointments from last year, ruling he abused his powers and acted when the Senate was not actually in a recess.

The three-judge panel’s ruling is a major blow to Mr. Obama. The judges ruled that the appointments he made to the National Labor Relations Board are illegal, and hence the five-person board did not have a quorum to operate.

But the ruling has even broader constitutional significance, with the judges arguing that the president’s recess appointment powers don’t apply to “intra-session” appointments — those made when Congress has left town for a few days or weeks. They said Mr. Obama erred when he said he could claim the power to determine when he could make appointments.

“Allowing the president to define the scope of his own appointments power would eviscerate the Constitution’s separation of powers,” the judges said in their opinion.

The judges said presidents’ recess powers only apply after Congress has adjourned a session permanently, which in modern times usually means only at the end of a year. If the ruling withstands Supreme Court scrutiny, it would dramatically constrain presidents in the future

Read more:http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/25/federal-court-obama-broke-law-recess-appointments/#ixzz2JEx3JfOr
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

LiveJournal Tags: U.S. Courts,Landmark Legal Foundation,Recess Appointments,NLRB,Executive Office,President Obama,Separation of Powers

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Of course the NLRB feels very confident that President Obama’s appointments will be upheld; so why adhere to a pesky verdict from an insignificant decision that goes against them?  They have important work to do and until someone forcibly stops them, they’re going to continue on as if nothing has changed.  Wonder if AG Holder’s office will step-in and uphold the federal courts ruling?

YiT ~  Shelly

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Obama’s Union-Controlled NLRB Thumbs Nose At Court Ruling, Chairman Vows To March Onward

By: LaborUnionReport (Diary)  |  January 25th, 2013 at 09:15 PM  |  29

Following Friday morning’s appeals court ruling that Barack Obama’s “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional, union attorney (and current NLRB chairman) Mark Gaston Pearce vowed to ignore the court’s ruling.

In a statement posted on the NLRB’s website, Pearce stated:

“The Board respectfully disagrees with today’s decision and believes that the President’s position in the matter will ultimately be upheld. It should be noted that this order applies to only one specific case, Noel Canning, and that similar questions have been raised in more than a dozen cases pending in other courts of appeals.

Click here to read the full story.

The Dismantling of the 2nd Amendment

With all of the debates on gun control which are happening around the nation on:

• Who’s to blame for mass murders?
• Why does anyone need a gun?
• How can we protect the children?
• What’s the need for mega-sized magazines for guns?
• This isn’t the 17th Century and the Founders wouldn’t approve of citizen’s having high powered, military style weapons today.
• We’ve got to register and restrict gun ownership, because guns are too dangerous.

Heard it before?  We’ll hear it again and again, I fear, because we’ve abdicated our responsibility to teach our children how to use and respect guns.  We’ve failed to teach our children that life is precious above all else.  We’ve allowed a culture of death and violence to permeate every aspect of so-called, entertainment to occupy our minds at leisure.  There is an apparent concerted effort between progressives in the media and politics to use fear to control us.

The 2nd Amendment was not written to make certain man would always be capable of feeding themselves, but to insure that man would always be capable of defending themselves from criminals and tyrannical government.

“A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

We the People have nothing to fear from a moral and well educated populace.  We the People should be watchful that an ever growing and powerful government does not enable itself to be our Father, Mother, Teacher, Warden and Priest.

The author of the post below, David Mamet, is a self-professed, born-again conservative.  David’s journey from progressive to conservative was a long struggle that he wrote about in his recently published book; “The Secret Knowledge on the Dismantling of American Culture.”  David’s latest published article in Newsweek sums up a lot of why we must resist the urge to give over our freedom and liberty to Big Government.

YiT ~  Shelly

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Gun Laws and the Fools of Chelm†

Jan 29, 2013 12:00 AM EST

The individual is not only best qualified to provide his own personal defense, he is the only one qualified to do so. By David Mamet.

Karl Marx summed up Communism as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This is a good, pithy saying, which, in practice, has succeeded in bringing, upon those under its sway, misery, poverty, rape, torture, slavery, and death.

‘In announcing his gun control proposals, President Obama said that he was not restricting Second Amendment rights, but allowing other constitutional rights to flourish.’

For the saying implies but does not name the effective agency of its supposed utopia. The agency is called “The State,” and the motto, fleshed out, for the benefit of the easily confused must read “The State will take from each according to his ability: the State will give to each according to his needs.” “Needs and abilities” are, of course, subjective. So the operative statement may be reduced to “the State shall take, the State shall give.”

All of us have had dealings with the State, and have found, to our chagrin, or, indeed, terror, that we were not dealing with well-meaning public servants or even with ideologues but with overworked, harried bureaucrats. These, as all bureaucrats, obtain and hold their jobs by complying with directions and suppressing the desire to employ initiative, compassion, or indeed, common sense. They are paid to follow orders.

Rule by bureaucrats and functionaries is an example of the first part of the Marxist equation: that the Government shall determine the individual’s abilities.

As rules by the Government are one-size-fits-all, any governmental determination of an individual’s abilities must be based on a bureaucratic assessment of the lowest possible denominator.  Click here to read the full story.

LiveJournal Tags: Second Amendment,Gun Control,Mamet,Fear and Envy,Government,Communism,Marx,Common Sense

Will History Repeat Itself Again? “Tyrants, Gun-Control & Children”

It’s not often that I find it necessary to repost an entire article.  It’s not often that I post from the controversial website InfoWars.com.  But with the ongoing controversy, the almost manic behavior of the media and politicians, to see who can out-do themselves on the un-Constitutional actions to infringe “Our 2nd Amendment Rights.”

I’ve been listening to all of the points being made on why and what they are planning to implement as gun control measures and do not agree a wit with their reasoning.

1. There is no admission that the perpetrators of these mass murders are not just mentally ill, they’re also under the influence of prescribed psychotropic drugs.
2. They are using this to further intrude on personal privacy by way of the doctor/patient relationship.
3. A likely outcome of the executive orders, or any gun legislation that bans selling guns to the mentally ill and a lot of individuals who need help getting through a personal struggle, simply will not reach out for help.  Would you?
4. There are so many un-enforceable laws out there now, this will end-up being just another costly law that will make no difference to the safety of law-abiding citizens.

Here is another interesting tidbit that anyone can easily find online if they look:

1. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State
2. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill
3. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State
4. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime

FBI 2010 homicide statistics for a total of 12,996 multiplied by 100 years, is 1,299,600 homicides.

Enjoy the pictures, they’re worth a 1000 words.

YiT ~  Shelly

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Other Tyrants Who Have Used Children As Props

Infowars.com / January 16, 2013

Obama’s shameless exploitation of children as set pieces is hardly new or original. In fact, tyrants and dictators have used kids as props down through the ages.

Here are a few more recent examples:

The Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin

China’s Mao Zedong

Germany’s Adolf Hitler

Cuba’s Fidel Castro

North Korea’s Kim Il-sung

Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez

Dictator Obama Exploiting the Children for Executive Action on Gun Control

LiveJournal Tags: 2nd Amendment,Agenda 21,Barack Obama,Communists,Constitution Day,Conspiracy Theories,Marxist,National Security,Patriotism,President,Politics,Regulations

Monetizing the Effects of Carbon - from WUWT

What a brilliant rebuttal to the argument.  If we apply the same logic to all of the costs that are being heaped upon people for potential ecological degradation from human activity, we should also benefit from the benefits that those same human activities cause.  There is no justifiable reason not to look at all sides of an issue to come to a conclusion.  The laws of physics taught mankind long ago that for every action, there is a re-action.  Likewise, for every cost there is a benefit.

Enjoy the article and share widely.

YiT ~  Shelly

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Posted on January 11, 2013 by Willis Eschenbach

I see that the New York Times (NYT) is going to close their environmental desk. Given that there still are actual environmental problems on the planet, I consider the closing as a sad commentary on the hijacking of the environmental movement by carbon alarmists. CO2 alarmism has done huge damage to the environmental movement, and thus to the environment itself.

In any case, a few months ago in the NYT Green Blog they talked about “monetizing” the “social cost” of carbon. The article said:

In 2010, 12 government agencies working in conjunction with economists, lawyers and scientists, agreed to work out what they considered a coherent standard for establishing the social cost of carbon. The idea was that, in calculating the costs and benefits of pending policies and regulations, the Department of Transportation could not assume that a ton of emitted carbon dioxide imposed a $2 cost on society while the Environmental Protection Agency plugged 10 times that amount into its equations.

How does one “monetize” something, and what is a “social cost” when it is in its native habitat?

First, the easy one. A “social cost” is generally some estimated or inferred cost to society from something, in particular a cost that is not reflected in the price of the item itself. For example, alcohol has a social cost in the form of a variety of societal problems. That cost is not included in the raw ex-factory price of alcoholic beverages.

First, the easy one. A “social cost” is generally some estimated or inferred cost to society from something, in particular a cost that is not reflected in the price of the item itself. For example, alcohol has a social cost in the form of a variety of societal problems. That cost is not included in the raw ex-factory price of alcoholic beverages.

Next, to “monetize” a social cost means 1) to attach some monetary value to that social cost, and then 2) to attach that monetary value to the retail cost of the product in the form of an increased price. In the case of alcohol, that is usually done through government taxes. Sometimes, the revenue from these taxes is dedicated to ameliorating that social cost. In the case of alcohol, that might be in the form of alcohol dependence programs or clinics. Other times the income goes into the general fund.

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My second objection is that while people are often in a hurry to monetize the social costs of something, they rarely take the necessary other step. They rarely are in a hurry to monetize the social benefits of something. But if you do one, you have to do the other. After all, this is why it’s called a “cost/benefit” analysis …

I have even had someone seriously argue that there is no need to monetize the social benefits, because they were already included in the market price. After all, he argued, the reason we buy something is because of the perceived benefits. So they are already included in the price.

I find this argument singularly unconvincing. Some benefits are already included in the price, and some aren’t. Since a single counter-example will serve to disprove the general theorem, let me take a social benefit of CO2 as an example. This is the known effect of atmospheric CO2 levels on plants, which is that they increase their production with increasing atmospheric CO2. Obviously, nobody goes out and buys gasoline for their car in order to help the plants, so it is not included in the market price. However, increased plant growth is an undoubted social benefit, a huge one that affects the whole world. Therefore, it is an un-accounted for social benefit, one which does not get included in the price.

Click here to read the full story.

LiveJournal Tags: Cap & Trade,Carbon Costs,EPA,Environment,Regulations,Taxes,Social Benefit,CO2