Special to the Cape Charles Mirror by Paul Plante
As an American citizen who was born here, and who was educated here in American values by other older Americans who had just fought a war against Nazi aggression in Europe and Japanese aggression in the far east, or had held down the home front here while the war was being waged, I frankly find myself truly dumbfounded by all the comments coming out of the mouths of all these politicians following the firing of Obama holdover Sally Yates in the misnamed United States Department of Justice.
In an article in the British publication THE GUARDIAN, which I find often has better news coverage of what is going on in politics over here than do our main-stream rags, entitled “Sally Yates fired by Trump after acting US attorney general defied travel ban – White House says Obama appointee ˜betrayed’ justice department with letter instructing officials not to enforce president’s executive order” by David Smith and Ben Jacobs in Washington and Spencer Ackerman in New York on Tuesday, 31 January 2017, we have Sally Yates, herself, an Obama holdover, telling us as follows:
I am responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court remain consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right, Yates wrote in a letter to justice department lawyers.
At present I am not convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful.
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Those, people, are her own words.
According the Guardian article, as could be expected in this highly partisan and toxic political environment Washington, D.C. has become, Democrats condemned the dismissal:
Zac Petkanas, a senior adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said: Donald Trump can try to silence heroic patriots like Sally Yates who dare to speak truth to power about his illegal anti-Muslim ban that emboldens terrorists around the globe.”
“But he cannot silence the growing voices of an American people now wide awake to his tyrannical presidency.
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Now, people, this is where it simply gets absurd and heads towards insane at light speed, because to believe a word Zac Petkanas, a senior adviser to the Democratic National Committee, says above here, you have to believe in some kind of a weird and warped and bastardized and illegitimate alternate American history than that which I learned as a young American back at the close of WWII, when Washington, D.C. still functioned, before it developed the toxic partisan gridlock on view here in this Sally Yates kerfuffle.
So was Sally Yates really some kind of “heroic patriot” as Zac Petkanas, a senior adviser to the Democratic National Committee, says, because she refused to support an order of a president from a different party than hers telling her to enforce the law as written, when she had no trouble obeying orders from Barack Hussein Obama telling her to ignore the law as written?
Or was she simply someone who served at the pleasure of the sitting president and could be dismissed at will if he thought she was not capable of doing her job?
Let’s take a look and see as we should be doing as responsible and conscientious American citizens.
According to WIKIPEDIA, the United States Attorney General (A.G.) is the head of the United States Department of Justice per 28 U.S.C. § 503, concerned with legal affairs, and is usually assumed to be the chief law enforcement officer and chief lawyer of the United States government.
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28 U.S. Code § 503, entitled “Attorney General” merely says as follows concerning the position:
The President shall appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, an Attorney General of the United States.
The Attorney General is the head of the Department of Justice.
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Getting back to WIKIPEDIA, we have:
The attorney general serves as a member of the Cabinet of the President of the United States and is the only cabinet officer who does not have the title of secretary.
The Attorney General is appointed by the President and takes office after confirmation by the United States Senate.
He or she serves at the pleasure of the president and can be removed by the president at any time; the attorney general is also subject to impeachment by the House of Representatives and trial in the Senate for “treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors”.
The office of Attorney General was established by Congress by the Judiciary Act of 1789.
The original duties of this officer were “to prosecute and conduct all suits in the Supreme Court in which the United States shall be concerned, and to give his or her advice and opinion upon questions of law when required by the president of the United States, or when requested by the heads of any of the departments.”
In 1870, the Department of Justice was established to support the attorney general in the discharge of their responsibilities.
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Note those words clearly with respect to the supposed “heroic patriotism” of this Obama appointee Sally Yates: “serves at the pleasure of the president and can be removed by the president at any time” and “to give his or her advice and opinion upon questions of law when required by the president of the United States.”
That is quite a different version of the facts than what Obama holdover Sally Yates is trying to feed us in the Guardian, as can also be seen in an article from FINDLAW written by an attorney entitled “What Does an Attorney General Do?” by Christopher Coble, Esq. on April 24, 2015, we are informed thusly:
There are district attorneys representing every county that take criminal cases to trial.
And states have their own state attorneys and attorneys general.
The U.S. Attorney General’s Office, often referred to as the Department of Justice, is in charge of prosecuting federal crimes in federal courts, and the Attorney General is the head of that office.
While lower level attorneys in the office are often the ones actually in court, the Attorney General can set policy for the office, order investigations, and designate which laws will be a priority.
The Judiciary Act of 1789 created the office of attorney general and outlined its original duties:
“… to prosecute and conduct all suits in the Supreme Court in which the United States shall be concerned, and to give his advice and opinion upon questions of law when required by the president of the United States, or when requested by the heads of any of the departments.”
When you need a lawyer you ask that friend or cousin who went to law school.
When the U.S. government or any federal employee needs a lawyer, they go to the Attorney General’s office.
Along with the other most senior executive branch officials, the Attorney General serves in the president’s cabinet, advising and assisting the president in carrying out his or her duties.
Specifically, the AG will counsel the president on federal legal and law enforcement issues.
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Now, that is all consistent with what I learned about our federal government when I was a young American, so when I read in the Guardian about Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, telling MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show “It certainly reminded me immediately of the Saturday night massacre,” I have to wonder if we are even on the same planet.
Says Tribe in the Guardian: as if history is being collapsed into a black hole and everything is happening faster than the speed of light.
Yes, Laurence, we are headed towards total insanity faster than the speed of light, and it is off-the-wall people like you who are setting the pace.
For those too young to remember, the so-called “Saturday Night Massacre” was the term used by political commentators to refer to U.S. President Richard Nixon’s dismissal of independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and as a result the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus on October 20, 1973, during the Watergate scandal.
By way of review for comparison here, in that case from long ago, which bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the dismissal of Sally Yates today, despite Tribes delusions to the contrary, A.G. Elliot Richardson appointed Cox in May of that year, after having given assurances to the House Judiciary Committee that he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the events surrounding the Watergate break-in of June 17, 1972.
There we are talking of actual crimes committed, and the relationship of a sitting president to those crimes.
Here we are talking about a presidential order to protect our national security.
Apples and kumquats!
In that case, when Cox issued a subpoena to President Nixon asking for copies of taped conversations recorded in the Oval Office and authorized by Nixon, the President initially refused to comply.
On Friday, October 19, 1973, Nixon offered what was later known as the Stennis Compromise”asking the infamously hard-of-hearing Senator John C. Stennis of Mississippi to review and summarize the tapes for the special prosecutor’s office.
Cox refused the compromise that same evening and it was believed that there would be a short rest in the legal maneuvering while government offices were closed for the weekend.
However, on the following day (a Saturday) Nixon ordered Attorney General Richardson to fire Cox.
Richardson refused, and resigned in protest.
Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox.
He also refused and resigned.
Nixon then ordered the Solicitor General, Robert Bork (as acting head of the Justice Department), to fire Cox.
Both Richardson and Ruckelshaus had given personal assurances to Congressional oversight committees that they would not interfere, but Bork had not.
Although Bork would later claim that he believed Nixon’s order to be valid and appropriate, he still considered resigning to avoid being “perceived as a man who did the President’s bidding to save my job.”
Nevertheless, having been brought to the White House by limousine and sworn in as Acting Attorney General, Bork wrote the letter firing Cox.
And that, folks, for those of us who were around back then, was the Saturday Night Special of the crook, Richard Milhaus Nixon, who had to resign as president.
None of that occurred here.
Sally Yates refused to enforce the laws of this nation as written, and for that she was properly canned.
Refusing to enforce the laws of this nation as written certainly serves to make Sally Yates a “heroic patriot” to the Democrat party in America, the party of Obama, but to me who served in combat in this nation’s military in Viet Nam, Sally Yates is simply somebody we are a lot better off not having serving in a position of responsibility in our federal government.
Paul Plante says
Anticipating a question as to what I am talking about when I mention above “enforce the law as written,” I am referencing what is known as the “Secure Fence Act of 2006,” which Wikipedia informs us, has as its long title, “An Act To establish operational control over the international land and maritime borders of the United States. ”
With respect to the highly questionable statements of ex-acting attorney general Sally Yates in an article in the British publication THE GUARDIAN entitled “Sally Yates fired by Trump after acting US attorney general defied travel ban – White House says Obama appointee betrayed’ justice department with letter instructing officials not to enforce president’s executive order” by David Smith and Ben Jacobs in Washington and Spencer Ackerman in New York on Tuesday, 31 January 2017, that “I am responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court remain consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right,” and “At present I am not convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful,” I submit that the language in that long title is not all that hard to understand or comprehend, especially in the light of national security concerns and border security after 9-11-2001, when the impossible happened, and Saudi Arabian terrorists in this country as guests hijacked not one, not two, not three but four separate aircraft that they were then to fly with cruise missile accuracy, three out of four, into targets of international significance and importance.
Talk about a terrorist statement being made on an international scale about just how weak our border security really is, that was such a statement on steroids, and all the candid world heard it and saw it on TV as it was happening.
That led the 109th United States Congress to enact among other things the “Act To establish operational control over the international land and maritime borders of the United States” as Public Law 109–367.
According to its legislative history, which you would think a full-grown lawyer like Sally Yates would be aware of, it was introduced in the House as H.R. 6061 by Peter T. King (R-NY) on September 13, 2006 with Committee consideration by House Homeland Security, and it passed the House on September 14, 2006 (283–138, 1 Present) and passed the Senate on September 29, 2006 (80–19) and was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2006.
The Secure Fence Act of 2006 authorizes the construction of 700 additional miles (1,100 km) of the double chain link and barbed wire fences with light and infrared camera poles, and on October 26, 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act of 2006 (Pub.L. 109–367) into law stating, “This bill will help protect the American people.”
“This bill will make our borders more secure.”
“It is an important step toward immigration reform.”
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Note the key words “This bill will make our borders more secure.”
That means against all threats to our national security deemed to be so by the president of the United States of America, which right now, like it or not, and here I have to state that I did not vote for either Trump or Clinton, happens to be Trump, not Barack Hussein Obama, who had a very different philosophy on border security and national security than does Trump, who is seen here as acting in accordance with the “Act To establish operational control over the international land and maritime borders of the United States,” while Obama hold-over Sally Yates is perceived as acting against enforcement of that law by the lawful president of the United States who is Trump, not Obama.
If Trump as president deems those residents of countries we are at war with in the Middle East or elsewhere, Syria, Yemen, etc., where the purported reason for us being at war in those countries is to keep the terrorist dominoes from falling and to kill the terrorists there before they can come here to kill us, as threats to this nation who should be kept out, end of story.
So be it.
Does Trump have that power as president, whether we agree with the manner in which that power was exercised in this case?
Damn right he does, just as Lyndon Baines Johnson set the modern day example of presidential power in matters of national security in the summer of 1967 when he sent in both the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions to Detroit with live ammunition and “shoot to kill” orders to put down an insurrection in that city, and Abe Lincoln similarly set an example of presidential power back in the Civil War times when he suspended habeas corpus and jailed people deemed threats to our national security based on the fact that under the Constitution the federal government can unquestionably suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus if the public safety requires it during times of rebellion or invasion.
According to Wikipedia, the Secure Fence Act of 2006’s goal is to help secure America’s borders to decrease illegal entry, drug trafficking, and security threats by building 700 miles (1,100 km) of physical barriers along the Mexico-United States border, and additionally, the law authorizes more vehicle barriers, checkpoints, and lighting as well as authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to increase the use of advanced technology like cameras, satellites, and unmanned aerial vehicles to reinforce infrastructure at the border.
Congress has already approved $1.2 billion in a separate homeland security spending bill to bankroll the fence, though critics say this is $4.8 billion less than what’s likely needed to get it built.
Of importance to this discussion, proponents of the bill believe that it will encourage those who want to enter the country to pursue legal channels, while providing additional protection from terrorist entry into the country.
With respect to the history of that bill, on January 23, 2008 the 110th Congress introduced Reinstatement of the Secure Fence Act of 2008 (H.R. 5124) which called for Homeland Security to construct an additional 700 miles (1,100 km) of two layered, 14 foot (4 m) high fencing along the southwest border.
That bill died in committee and was never voted upon, and Congress failed to continue to fund the project past the initial $1.2 billion procured, in order to finish building the fence, which brings us to today, and Trump’s travel ban, if that is what it really is.
For reasons known to him as president, reasons we do not get to vote on to override his judgment, Trump has deemed people from certain countries we are at war with to be threats to this nation who should be excluded.
This is no different than the forced relocation and incarceration in camps in the interior of this country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry who lived on the Pacific coast during WWII, sixty-two percent of whom were United States citizens, as shameful as that might be today.
Exercises of power are exactly that – exercises of power, whether deemed shameful, or not.
With respect to national security and border security, in a May 10 2005 Statement of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Conference Report and Real ID Act, she stated on the record as follows:
I’m also deeply concerned that on an emergency supplemental to fund our troops and provide disaster relief for areas devastated by the tsunami we are being asked to vote on the so-called “Real ID” legislation.
Its supporters say it is supposed to make our country safer, but how do we know that?
We haven’t had any committee hearings or any debate about it in the Senate.
I had previously joined with my colleague, Senator Feinstein, on her amendment to prevent immigration proposals from being thrown needlessly into the emergency supplemental, and I am outraged that the Republican leadership in both the House and Senate decided to ignore this reasonable request and put this seriously flawed act into a bill to fund our troops.
Emergency legislation designed to provide our troops with the resources they need to fight terrorism on the front lines is not the place for broad, sweeping immigration reform.
I am in total agreement with those who argue that we need to address our immigration challenges and we must also recognize that we are still not doing what we should to fulfill the demands of homeland security.
And these issues do go hand-in-hand.
If we can’t secure our borders, we can’t secure our homeland.
We need a much tougher, much smarter look at these issues.
We need to make our borders more secure.
I’ve introduced legislation three years in a row to have a Northern Border Coordinator.
I’ve met with both Secretary Ridge and Secretary Chertoff.
We don’t know who’s in charge of the Northern Border.
We’re not even taking simple steps to rationalize our bureaucracy in Washington and figure out where the holes are and how to plug them.
We must continue our American tradition of welcoming immigrants who follow the rules and are trying to build a better life for their families.
We clearly have to make some tough decisions as a country.
We need to ensure that people using fake ids don’t cross our borders and jeopardize our homeland security.
We must confirm that people who enter our country are who they purport to be.
We need a system to apprehend criminals who are here illegally.
And we need to develop a much better entry and exit system so that we know who is entering our country and overstaying their visas.
We need a thoughtful, reasonable process to address our immigration challenges and make our nation secure.
This emergency bill does not provide that opportunity.
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That, people, was twelve (12) years ago now, and in that time, all the worthless, dysfunctional, faction-ridden Congress has done is dither, leaving our borders and our nation security unsecure.
So, like it or not, as president with the power to do so, Trump stepped in and acted, which is what his job description calls for.
And he did not violate the Constitutional rights of people who are not American citizens who reside in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan who are Muslims wanting to come here, because not being American citizens, and being outside the country, they have no rights under our Constitution to free entry into this country in a time of war, just as the Vietnamese had no rights under our Constitution when we were over there doing Lyndon Baines Johnson’s dirty work of slaughtering them because they weren’t Americans and had no rights.
Paul Plante says
In a time long ago, in a place that seems so very far away now, in the FEDERALIST No. 43, “The Powers Conferred by the Constitution Further Considered” For the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York, Virginian and future United States President James Madison, known as the “father of the United States Constitution,” quoted to us from Section 4 of Article IV of the proposed United States Constitution, as follows:
“To guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government; to protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened), against domestic violence.”
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With respect to this Trump order under discussion in here, as ham-handed as it might be, note the phrase “to protect each of them against invasion.”
That, people, is not a suggestion.
To the contrary, it is an obligation placed on the national government at the time this government of the United States was erected by ratification of the United States Constitution, and it is an obligation which continues down to this time.
And for the record, and this is important, since Trump is a member of the Republican faction in this country, and his order is under attack by the Democrat faction, the phrase “To guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government” means exactly what it says – “FORM” of government!
A REPUBLICAN FORM of government in every State in the Union does not in any way, shape or manner refer to the Republican party, a political faction in the United States of America that does not have a clue as to what Section 4 of Article IV of the United States Constitution says or means as is evidenced by the statement of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. in the USA TODAY article “Senate panel to investigate Russian election interference” by Erin Kelly published Feb. 2, 2017, that “Our goal is simple — to the fullest extent possible we want to shine a light on Russian activities to undermine democracy.”
No mention of our Republic is made by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham in that article, because in truth, our Republic is long since dead, and that for many years now.
Now, as Republican Senator Lindsey Graham makes clear, our Republic has been replaced with a democracy, and that democracy, not surprisingly, is being manipulated by Russia, and God alone knows how many other foreign nations, because that is always the ultimate fate of democracies, which is why we were supposed to have a Republic, instead.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all!”
How trite and childish that sounds today, doesn’t it, with people instead pledging loyalty and fealty to their political faction in their democracy as opposed to our former Republic?
With respect to democracy and faction, in FEDERALIST No. 10, “The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection” from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York on Friday, November 23, 1787, James Madison wrote:
AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.
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Ah, if only, people, for the “violence of faction” happens to be what we are living with right now today in the United States of America, not only at the federal level, where the Democrats and Republicans have made our federal government totally dysfunctional, but at the state and local levels, as well, as we see before our eyes cities like Cincinnati, San Francisco and New York City literally dis-unioning themselves from the rest of the nation by declaring federal laws null and void in those cities.
As Jemmy Madison said in FEDERALIST 10, “the friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice.”
“The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations.”
“Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”
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And there, people, is the contest going on right now in this very divided country over this question of the “rights” of people in other countries not citizens of this country to have free access to this country whenever they want and our “national security” can go straight to hell.
To see just how ridiculous this has all become, we have in the article “Clinton: ‘This is not who we are'” in THE HILL by Brooke Seipel on 29 January 2017, as follows:
Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Saturday tweeted in support of numerous protests that sprang up Saturday over President Trump’s executive order banning many refugees and others from predominantly Muslim nations.
“I stand with the people gathered across the country tonight defending our values & our Constitution.”
“This is not who we are,” Clinton tweeted.
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To which I respond, who the hell are we then, Hillary, and what are the values you are defending today, when back in 2005, when you were a United States Senator from New York, you told us we need “a thoughtful, reasonable process to address our immigration challenges and make our nation secure” and we “clearly have to make some tough decisions as a country” and that you were “in total agreement with those who argue that we need to address our immigration challenges and we must also recognize that we are still not doing what we should to fulfill the demands of homeland security” and “we need to develop a much better entry and exit system so that we know who is entering our country and overstaying their visas” and we must “confirm that people who enter our country are who they purport to be” and “if we can’t secure our borders, we can’t secure our homeland,” so that we need “a much tougher, much smarter look at these issues?”
When did any of that happen, Hillary?
And who were we then?
And what values were you defending back then, Hillary, if any?
And don’t give us that crap of telling us who we aren’t, as if we could not possibly know ourselves, without you as our mentor and guide in matters related to what it means to be an American citizen, because Hillary, in my estimation as an American citizen, I personally think you would be the last to know.
Getting back to Jemmy Madison and FEDERALIST 10:
By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
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That is both the Republicans and Democrats, people – citizens who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
In this case, the permanent and aggregate interests of the community happen to be with respect to keeping the people of this nation safe from foreign terrorists, and because someone they don’t like took action in that regard, we now have citizens like Hillary Clinton and her followers who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion to oppose that order, and thereby render this nation even less safe than it already is.
As Jemmy said in FEDERALIST 10:
From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction.
Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
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Spectacles of turbulence and contention, people, and faction.
That is what we are confronted with right now in this nation as a result of this Trump executive order which now pits those like Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton and their faction who want open borders in this nation for anyone who wants to come in against those who still recall 9-11-2001 and want more border security today, as Hillary Clinton said she was for in 2005, when her message was going out to a more conservative audience in upstate New York, as opposed to the liberal base she is pandering to, today.
Getting back to FEDERALIST No. 43, “The Powers Conferred by the Constitution Further Considered,” future United States President James Madison informed us as follows:
In a confederacy founded on republican principles, and composed of republican members, the superintending government ought clearly to possess authority to defend the system against aristocratic or monarchial innovations.
The more intimate the nature of such a union may be, the greater interest have the members in the political institutions of each other; and the greater right to insist that the forms of government under which the compact was entered into should be SUBSTANTIALLY maintained.
Governments of dissimilar principles and forms have been found less adapted to a federal coalition of any sort, than those of a kindred nature.
It may possibly be asked, what need there could be of such a precaution, and whether it may not become a pretext for alterations in the State governments, without the concurrence of the States themselves.
These questions admit of ready answers.
If the interposition of the general government should not be needed, the provision for such an event will be a harmless superfluity only in the Constitution.
But who can say what experiments may be produced by the caprice of particular States, by the ambition of enterprising leaders, or by the intrigues and influence of foreign powers?
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The intrigues and influence of foreign governments, people!
All of them, especially those we are presently at war with.
Which brings us once again back to the article in the British publication THE GUARDIAN entitled “Sally Yates fired by Trump after acting US attorney general defied travel ban – White House says Obama appointee ‘betrayed’ justice department with letter instructing officials not to enforce president’s executive order” by David Smith and Ben Jacobs in Washington and Spencer Ackerman in New York on Tuesday, 31 January 2017, where Obama holdover Sally Yates told us “I am responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court remain consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right” and “at present I am not convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful.”
Justice.
For whom, Sally?
Please tell us, because we are all waiting to hear that answer!
Paul Plante says
I must confess here that as an older person in America who can remember a time in this country when everyone was simply an American without the need for a hyphen, a time when everyone was still united in this country, or largely so, having just helped to defeat the twin menaces of Hitler’s formidable war machine in Europe and North Africa, and the equally formidable Japanese war machine in the far east, a time when we still had a Republic and a common political history as to how and why that Republic came into being, these times we are now in are so bizarre to me as to be nothing less than insane.
And how else to say it?
I mean, really!
For confirmation of that, let’s look again at the article “Clinton: ‘This is not who we are’” in THE HILL by Brooke Seipel on 29 January 2017, where we were all informed as follows:
Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Saturday tweeted in support of numerous protests that sprang up Saturday over President Trump’s executive order banning many refugees and others from predominantly Muslim nations.
“I stand with the people gathered across the country tonight defending our values & our Constitution.”
“This is not who we are,” Clinton tweeted.
end quote
With regard to Secretary Clinton’s 29 January 2017 statement that she stands “with the people gathered across the country tonight defending our values & our Constitution,” in a New York Times article from twelve (12) years ago entitled “The Evolution of Hillary Clinton” by Raymond Hernandez and Patrick D. Healy, July 13, 2005, we were informed as follows with regard to Hillary’s stance back then on refugees and others from predominantly Muslim nations coming across our borders:
As she gears up her re-election campaign for the United States Senate, Hillary Rodham Clinton is presenting a side of herself that might have given some of her supporters great pause just a few years ago.
Immigration
Among some leading Republicans, there is no better evidence that Mrs. Clinton is positioning herself for a presidential run than her remarks and record on immigration.
With Sept. 11 in mind, she has also cast immigration as a national security issue, pressing the president for more money for border security and highlighting the potential threat of terrorists entering New York and the United States through Canada.
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In 2005, Hillary Clinton cast immigration as a national security issue precisely because since time immemorial, all across the world, in all centuries and epochs, in all places, immigration has always been a national security issue, just as it still is today.
If you don’t believe me, just go ask the Romans what they think about the matter.
So when on 29 January 2017, Hillary Clinton told us she stands “with the people gathered across the country tonight defending our values & our Constitution,” a normal, rational, thinking person would be led to think and/or believe that Hillary was continuing with the stance on immigration being a national security issue that she was espousing in 2005.
But if a normal, rational, thinking person actually did think that, which would be irrational given the facts of the matter, that normal, rational, thinking person would be dead wrong, and dangerously so, as we shall soon see, which takes us back to the pernicious effects of factionalism in this country today which are proving toxic to the body politic in this country, as a democracy and a republic cannot stand side by side in the same nation as the legitimate government without the one destroying the other.
With regard to the pernicious effects of factionalism weighing in on this national security question before us today in the form of Trump’s admittedly ham-handed and ill-thought-out executive order, and the people in America that Hillary Clinton is standing with and cheering on, we have to go back to an Associated Press article entitled “Fueled by protest, liberals push for blockade of Trump picks” by Lisa Lerer on 31 January 2017, wherein we were informed about Hillary’s faction as follows:
Democrats are racing to respond to the wave of liberal outrage triggered by President Donald Trump, jumping into protests, organizing rallies and vowing to block more of the new president’s nominees — including, possibly, his pick for the Supreme Court.
Those steps may not be enough to satisfy their increasingly aggressive party base.
In the weeks after Trump’s election, Democrats debated whether the party should work with the new president on discrete policy initiatives, like infrastructure, or present a wall of opposition.
As protests sprang forth across the country, their furious constituents made it clear they’re demanding nothing short of complete resistance.
And more than 3,500 people have signed up on Facebook to march across Brooklyn to Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s home Tuesday night to protest his support for three of Trump’s Cabinet nominees.
“We need Senate Democrats to do everything in their power to shut down business as usual in the Senate,” said Anna Galland, the executive director of Moveon.org, a liberal group that’s been involved in organizing weekly anti-Trump protests.
end quotes
Now, think on this statement for a moment if you will, people: “We need Senate Democrats to do everything in their power to shut down business as usual in the Senate.”
Shut down business in the Senate?
What the hell, people?
Whose national government is this, anyway?
Is it the property now of “outraged” liberals who increasingly are the aggressive party base of Hillary Clinton’s political faction?
And if so, where does OUR Constitution provide for outraged liberals to have the right to literally shut down the functioning of OUR federal government, as if it were their play toy to break and then discard?
Who, other than a seditionist or a subversive, gets to shut down our federal government, where SEDITION is defined as conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state, such as shutting down the business of the federal senate, and SUBVERSION, which is defined as the undermining of the power and authority of an established system or institution, such as OUR United States Senate?
Which brings us to the FOX News article “Obama may challenge Trump more forcefully in coming months, report says” on 31 January 2017, where we are told:
It took former President Obama 10 days from leaving the White House before he spoke out against President Trump’s order to temporarily ban people from seven predominately Muslim countries.
The statement was from a spokesman, and it did not attack Trump directly.
Rather it appealed to protesters.
“President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country,” Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for the former president, said in a statement.
Obama and his team are not ruling out a forceful challenge to Trump in the coming months, Politico, citing people in contact with the former president, reported.
end quotes
Is Obama planning a coup here?
As to the “level of engagement” taking place in communities around the country that has Obama so heartened, we are given a good look at it in this article from the GOTHAMIST in New York City entitled “New Yorkers Put Schumer On Blast: ‘Stand Up Or Get Out Of The Way'” by Raphael Pope-Sussman on February 1, 2017, where we are informed as follows:
Hundreds of New Yorkers braved freezing temperatures Tuesday night on Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza at a rally calling upon U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to take a firm stand against the Trump administration.
The rally was the latest in a series of weekly gatherings poetically dubbed “What the F*ck, Chuck?” outside the senator’s Brooklyn home on Prospect Park West and his offices in Midtown.
As a series of speakers stood on a platform and shouted over a mobile PA system, protesters cheered and jeered as they held signs with slogans like “Buck Up Chuck”; “Resisting Trump Is Your Primary Duty”; and “Filibuster Filibuster Filibuster.”
Hae-Lin Choi, of the Democratic Socialists of America and Resist Trump NY, took the stage first, announcing herself as an immigrant and telling the crowd why organizers had called for the protest.
“Senator Schumer must be bold and stand with the working class,” she cried over the loudspeaker.
“He has to champion the resistance or get out of the way and we’ll find someone that will.”
As Choi spoke, the crowd chanted, “Stand up, or get out of the way.”
The crowd chanted the usual protest fare—”This is what democracy looks like”—but also more pointed messages, like “What the f**k, Chuck?” and “Grow a spine.”
end quotes
That is what has both Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton so excited, because that in fact is exactly what democracy looks like in real life.
And then there is the NBC WNJU story from New York City “Thousands Protest in Front of Sen. Schumer’s Brooklyn Home: ‘Chuck’s a Chicken'” by Steve Peoples on February 1, 2017, wh8ich provides as follows:
Thousands of angry liberals packed the icy sidewalk outside Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer’s Brooklyn apartment.
They mocked him with signs like “Grow a spine, Chuck!” and “Chuck’s a chicken.”
Such is the bind Schumer finds himself in as he emerges as the leader of the anti-Trump resistance on Capitol Hill.
The Senate minority leader is not only ridiculed and insulted by President Donald Trump but is also under fire from many of his own constituents, who complain that he is not fighting hard enough against the president.
“He has to champion the resistance or he has to get out of the way!” shouted 39-year-old Hae-Lin Choi, one of the leaders of the protest Tuesday night.
While the demonstrators who crowded into Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza acknowledged that the senator’s stand against Trump’s ban on travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries, and his opposition to the president’s Supreme Court pick, are a step in the right direction, they said they are still not satisfied.
“He needs to make it impossible for them to get anything done,” said Ali Adler, a 28-year-old Brooklyn woman.
The protests at Schumer’s doorstep show little sign of slowing down.
“We’re not going to sit idly by when our Democracy is crumbling beneath us,” said Celia Caro, a 50-year-old Brooklyn art teacher who said the recent women’s march was her first protest as an adult.
“I’m in for the long haul,” she said.
end quotes
Yes, indeed, people, her democracy is indeed crumbling beneath her and those like her who want to take over our government and shut it down, because as Jemmy Madison so wisely once said: Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
And this time around, we get to be the living witnesses as that happens!
Paul Plante says
In further response to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent TWEET to her supporters who are trying to shut down the United States Senate and our federal government, as if it were nothing more than a trinket that they alone could possess and destroy at will, there was a time in the United States of America, now seemingly long since passed, as we read about people bemoaning their Democracy crumbling beneath them, just as democracies have always done since the Greeks tried the experiment some 2500 years ago now, when “Republicanism,” which has absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan or the Republican party of today, was the guiding political philosophy of the United States.
Republicanism, which is a philosophy, not a politiical faction, a spirit that used to be uniquely “American,” was a major part of American civic thought since its founding, and it was instilled in me as a young American where I was raised after WWII beginning in kindergarten, and that by the women in my community who were my earliest teachers and who instilled in me at a young age the values that I hold dear to this day.
As a major part of American civic thought when I was young, “Republicanism” stressed liberty and unalienable individual rights as central values, making people sovereign as a whole, while rejecting monarchy, aristocracy and inherited political power such as Hillary Rodham Clinton thinks she is entitled to here in the United States of America today.
Of importance to this discussion, as we watch a political faction in this country trying to literally force the shutdown of our federal government, as if they alone own it, the political philosophy of “Republicanism” expected citizens to be independent in their performance of civic duties, where being “independent” in the performance of our civic duties meant thinking for ourselves, engaging in critical thinking, and knowing current events, as opposed to running mindlessly with the herd or mob and engaging in partisan factionalism, as had recently been the case in Nazi Germany where the “Good Germans” had stood by while their Hitler, their Fuehrer, destroyed the world around them in a fit in insane madness.
And “Republicanism” vilified corruption, which is perhaps why we never hear either major political faction in this country, or their adherents and supporters and KOOL-AID drinkers, ever uttering the word, or even acknowledging its existence as both factions try to capture control of the corruption and make it their own for their benefit and the benefit of their followers through what is known in modern American politics as the “spoils system.”
As Wikipedia tells us, the spoils system in our American politics and government, also known as a patronage system, is a practice in which the two political parties, after winning an election, give government jobs to their supporters, friends and relatives as a reward for working toward victory, and as an incentive to keep working for the party—as opposed to a merit system, where offices are awarded on the basis of some measure of merit, independent of political activity.
The term was derived from the phrase “to the victor belongs the spoils” by New York Senator William L. Marcy, referring to the victory of the Jackson Democrats in the election of 1828, with the term spoils meaning goods or benefits taken from the loser in a competition, election or military victory.
Getting back to “Republicanism,” which used to be the spirit that animated the people of the United States of America before partisan factionalism set in to create the opposing ideologues at war with each other in dysfunctional Washington, D.C. today, as we were once taught as children in this country, before democracy displaced our Republic, American republicanism was founded and first practiced by the Founding Fathers in the 18th century, and for them, republicanism represented more than a particular form of government.
To the contrary, and this is what made us who we once were, it was a way of life, a core American ideology shared by all, as was the case during the administration of Virginian James Monroe and the “Era of Good Feelings.”
It was further an uncompromising commitment to liberty, and a total rejection of aristocracy, and aristocrats such as Hillary Rodham Clinton.
As we were taught as children, “Republicanism” was based on ancient Greco-Roman, Renaissance, and English models and ideas, and it formed the basis for the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Constitution (1787), the Bill of Rights, and the Gettysburg Address (1863).
Again, of importance to this discussion, the term “Republicanism” is derived from the term “republic”, but the two words have different meanings, where a “republic” is a form of government, one without a hereditary ruling class, while “Republicanism” refers to the values of the citizens in a republic, and that statement takes us right back to the statement of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the article “Clinton: ‘This is not who we are’” in THE HILL by Brooke Seipel on 29 January 2017, where she says “I stand with the people gathered across the country tonight defending our values & our Constitution.”
But seriously, people, who is Hillary Rodham Clinton really standing with as she says that?
And that answer is staring us right in the face in the article from the GOTHAMIST in New York City entitled “New Yorkers Put Schumer On Blast: ‘Stand Up Or Get Out Of The Way’” by Raphael Pope-Sussman on February 1, 2017, as follows:
Hundreds of New Yorkers braved freezing temperatures Tuesday night on Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza at a rally calling upon U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to take a firm stand against the Trump administration.
Hae-Lin Choi, of the Democratic Socialists of America and Resist Trump NY, took the stage first, announcing herself as an immigrant and telling the crowd why organizers had called for the protest.
“Senator Schumer must be bold and stand with the working class,” she cried over the loudspeaker.
“He has to champion the resistance or get out of the way and we’ll find someone that will.”
end quotes
There is who Hillary Clinton is standing with, people – Hae-Lin Choi of the Democratic Socialists of America and Resist Trump NY who took the stage first to announce herself as an immigrant before telling the crowd United States Senator from New York Charles “Chuck” Schumer “has to champion the resistance or get out of the way and we’ll find someone that will.”
Those are the “values” that Hillary Rodham Clinton is defending, and they are far, far away from the values of American “Republicanism.”
With respect to the values of American “Republicanism” as they would pertain to United States Senator Charley “Chuck” Schumer of New York, who is fast becoming the creature of a howling, yowling mob from the Democratic Socialists of America led by immigrant Hae-Lin Choi, in FEDERALIST No. 27 to the People of the State of New York from the New York Packet on Tuesday, December 25, 1787, Alexander Hamilton, who came from very humble roots as a child, and who lived through a rebellion against one of the most powerful kings at that time on the face of the planet, told us as follows concerning who should be populating that important body in our federal government, to wit:
Various reasons have been suggested, in the course of these papers, to induce a probability that the general government will be better administered than the particular governments; the principal of which reasons are . . . that through the medium of the State legislatures which are select bodies of men, and which are to appoint the members of the national Senate there is reason to expect that this branch will generally be composed with peculiar care and judgment; that these circumstances promise greater knowledge and more extensive information in the national councils, and that they will be less apt to be tainted by the spirit of faction, and more out of the reach of those occasional ill-humors, or temporary prejudices and propensities, which, in smaller societies, frequently contaminate the public councils, beget injustice and oppression of a part of the community, and engender schemes which, though they gratify a momentary inclination or desire, terminate in general distress, dissatisfaction, and disgust.
end quotes
Watching what is going on in our times in New York City, where this same immigrant Hae-Lin Choi was quoted in the NBC WNJU article “Thousands Protest in Front of Sen. Schumer’s Brooklyn Home: ‘Chuck’s a Chicken'” by Steve Peoples on 1 February 2017 as calling Schumer “as corporate a Democrat as they come” – “bought and paid for by Goldman Sachs,” one has to seriously wonder whether Al Hamilton was smoking some of Tom Jefferson’s dope when he wrote those words, so outlandish an idea they seem today as we watch the United States Senate being riven by faction, while being populated by fools, idiots, morons, imbeciles, shriekers and screamers with no sense of decorum and who lack knowledge and are tainted by the spirit of faction, so that out of their ill-humors, and prejudices and propensities comes injustice and oppression of a part of the community, and schemes which, though they gratify a momentary inclination or desire, terminate in general distress, dissatisfaction, and disgust on the part of the rest of us in this country who are a part of neither worthless faction.
What a time to be alive, isn’t it, people?
As to the Democratic Socialists of America, the ones subjecting Senator Charley “Chuck” Schumer of New York to a classic “Struggle Session,” a form of public humiliation and torture used by the Communist Party of China in the Mao Zedong era, particularly during the Cultural Revolution, to shape public opinion and to humiliate and persecute political rivals and class enemies to benefit the target by eliminating all traces of counterrevolutionary, reactionary thinking, they are a democratic socialist organization in the United States that is a member of the Socialist International, a multi-tendency political international of democratic socialist, social democratic and labour political parties and other organisations in the world.
The Democratic Socialists of America came into being in this country when the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) became the largest democratic-socialist group in the United States, and in 1982 was merged with the NAM, a coalition of intellectuals with roots in the New Left movements of the 1960s and former members of Socialist and Communist parties of the Old Left.
For us Americans who answered the call back in the 1960s to go to VEET NAM as part of LBJ’s crusade to stamp out the RED MENACE of international Communism, and to keep the dominoes from falling so we would not have to face the specter of international Communism coming here to take away our rights and our Republican form of government, there is more than a bit of irony here, let me tell you, from the perspective that the Democratic Socialists of America, the real power today in America behind what is called the Democrat Party, has at times endorsed American presidential candidates, notably including John Kerry, Bernie Sanders, and Barack Obama, a noted student of Marxist ideology and the revolution of the proletariat and the rise of the vanguard party, which is what we are observing with these demonstrations in America today.
For those in America too young to remember the “RED MENACE” and Marxist ideology, a proletarian revolution is a social revolution in which the working class attempts to overthrow the bourgeoisie, a French term referring to people with a certain cultural and financial capital belonging to the middle or upper stratum of the middle class, or an affluent and often opulent stratum of the middle class (capitalist class) who stand opposite the proletariat class, which is a term for the class of wage-earners in a capitalist society whose only possession of significant material value is their labor-power or their ability to work, which is what Hae-Lin Choi of the Democratic Socialists of America was referring to when she said, “Senator Schumer must be bold and stand with the working class.”
Senator Schumer is to become a part of the Revolution of the Proletariat in America or else he will replaced with a tool who will.
God bless America, isn’t it, people, where if you don’t like the government, why, you just get together a mob and you change it.
Not surprisingly. proletarian revolutions are generally advocated by socialists, communists, and most anarchists, as opposed to those who adhere, like myself, to the American spirit of Republicanism.
Getting back to Obama, who is going to come out and forcefully challenge Trump for the leadership of America, Marxists like him believe proletarian revolutions will inevitably happen in all capitalist countries, related to the concept of world revolution, and the Leninist branch of Marxism, which Barack Obama is believed to cleave to, argues that a proletarian revolution must be led by a vanguard of “professional revolutionaries”, and this vanguard is meant to provide leadership and organization to the rest of the working class before and during the revolution, which aims to prevent the government from successfully ending it.
The formation of this “vanguard” of “professional revolutionaries” in America today who are meant to provide leadership and organization to the rest of the working class before and during the revolution have been on display in New York City in recent days, where they are trying to intimidate and coerce Senator Charley “Chuck” Schumer of New York into becoming their stooge or political tool to shut down the functioning of the United States Senate so they can then use the United States Senate to assume state power on behalf of the proletariat, and create a single party socialist state.
What a lofty goal, eh?
In the words of Alexander Berkman, a leading member of the anarchist movement in the United States of America in the early 20th century, famous for both his political activism and his writing, who emigrated to the United States in 1888 to live in New York City, where he became involved in the anarchist movement:
“There are revolutions and revolutions.”
“Some revolutions change only the governmental form by putting a new set of rulers in place of the old.”
“These are political revolutions, and as such they often meet with little resistance.”
“But a revolution that aims to abolish the entire system of wage slavery must also do away with the power of one class to oppress another.”
“That is, it is not any more a mere change of rulers, of government, not a political revolution, but one that seeks to alter the whole character of society.”
“That would be a social revolution.”
end quotes
And there is where we are at this present moment in America, people, on the verge of a social revolution that seeks to alter the whole character of society in America today, by force if necessary.
Will they succeed?
Only time will now tell, so stay tuned, people, believe me, much more yet to come!
Paul Plante says
For those of you who are just stopping by here for the first time and find yourself wondering about the title to this thread, that title comes out of a comment made by
Laurence Henry “Larry” Tribe in the Guardian about Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, telling MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show “It is as if history is being collapsed into a black hole and everything is happening faster than the speed of light.”
end quotes
Those with a sense of history and irony, especially when the irony is double and triple-stacked as it is here, notwithstanding the silly New York Times telling us irony is dead, can appreciate just how true those words are in these surreal times we find ourselves in today in the United States of America, a highly divided nation at war with itself with parts shedding themselves through the vehicle of disunion.
For those of you unfamiliar with who Laurence Henry “Larry” Tribe actually is in real life, he is a liberal scholar of constitutional law at Harvard, and he is cofounder of American Constitution Society as well as the author of American Constitutional Law (1978), a major treatise in that field.
For those not familiar with it, according to Wikipedia, the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS) is a progressive legal organization with a stated mission to “promote the vitality of the U.S. Constitution and the fundamental values it expresses: individual rights and liberties, genuine equality, access to justice, democracy and the rule of law.”
ACS was created as a counterweight to, and is modeled after, the Federalist Society, and is often described as its progressive counterpart.
The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies in its turn, most frequently called simply the Federalist Society according to Wikipedia, is an organization of conservatives and libertarians seeking reform of the current American legal system in accordance with a textualist or originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
It is one of the nation’s most influential legal organizations and it has played a significant role in moving the national debate to the right on the Second Amendment, campaign finance regulation, state sovereignty, and the Commerce Clause.
Of importance to this discussion, the Federalist Society, which began at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School in 1982 as a student organization that challenged what its members perceived as the orthodox American liberal ideology found in most law schools, plays a central role in networking and mentoring young conservative lawyers.
So here we are back to ideology, people, and the war we are seeing today between ideologies in Washington, D.C. that are bringing the functioning of our federal government to a standstill, as is witnessed in this excerpt from an article in THE HILL by Alexander Bolton on 1 February 2017, as follows:
The Senate has become embroiled in bitterness and name-calling less than two weeks after Inauguration Day.
The usually genteel chamber of Congress has been anything but recently amid controversial directives from the White House, Democratic opposition to President Trump’s political appointees and protests around the country.
Democrats on Tuesday slowed the pace of confirming Trump’s Cabinet nominees to a crawl, outraging Republicans, who accused them of unprecedented obstruction.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) appeared furious after Democrats refused to show up to the meeting he scheduled on Steven Mnuchin and Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), Trump’s selections to lead the Treasury and Health and Human Services departments, respectively.
“I think they ought to stop posturing and acting like idiots,” grumbled Hatch, the Senate’s president pro tempore and normally one of the chamber’s most decorous members.
“I’m very disappointed in this kind of crap,” he said.
“Some of this is because they just don’t like the president.”
The battle over the Cabinet nominees sets up an even more bitter battle over Trump’s Supreme Court pick.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), one of the Senate’s most liberal members, said this week he would filibuster Trump’s nominee no matter who it was because Republicans blocked Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, for nearly a year after conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died.
end quote
For what it is worth, as an older person in this country, I too think they ought to stop posturing and acting like idiots, but in truth, I think the real idiocy has just begun, as we can see from these following news items as to these demonstrations in question.
With respect to idiocy, and domestic terrorism, from CBS San Francisco on February 1, 2017, we have as follows:
BERKELEY, Calif. (CBS SF/AP) — Protesters armed with bricks and fireworks mounted an assault on the building hosting a speech by polarizing Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos Wednesday night, forcing the event’s cancellation.
Hundreds of protesters were observed at Wednesday evening’s event.
Over 2,100 people responded to a Facebook post that they would be attending.
Several student groups had called for protests and pledged to shut down the evening event.
Earlier Wednesday, the university sent a notice to all students that warned of crowds near the student union, where the 500-seat, sold-out event was scheduled.
“We anticipate there will be major protest/demonstration activity leading up to and surrounding this event,” the letter from school officials said.
It did not discourage protests but advised those who didn’t wish to participate to avoid the area.
By 8 p.m., a large crowd of people had moved off the campus and onto Telegraph Avenue.
They smashed ATMs at a Bank of America branch and set several trash fires on Telegraph Avenue.
After marching west on Durant Avenue, the group moved north on Shattuck Avenue, smashing windows and vandalizing a Mechanics Bank branch near the corner of Bancroft Way.
Chase and Wells Fargo branches were also vandalized.
A Starbucks location near campus was vandalized and looted.
Police also received reports that banks were set on fire in the area of Center Street and Shattuck Avenue.
At 9:23 p.m., BART officials announced that trains were not stopping at the Downtown Berkeley station due to a civil disturbance in the area.
end quote
That people, is what the Revolution of the Proletariat looks like in real life, and that people, is happening right here in our own country, not is some story from long-dead Rome or Russia at the time of the Russian Revolution.
And that takes us an article in the Washington Times entitled “Left uses violence but decries ‘speech as violence’” by Robert Knight, on February 5, 2017, wherein is stated:
Anarchy takes many forms.
There is street violence, like that at the University of California at Berkeley last Wednesday, a microcosm of the anti-Trump rioting all over the country.Laurence Henry “Larry” Tribe, born October 10, 1941, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University who also works with the firm Massey & Gail LLP on a variety of matters, on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, to wit:
“It is as if history is being collapsed into a black hole and everything is happening faster than the speed of light.”
A mob protesting a planned speech by Breitbart writer and self-styled iconoclast Milo Yiannopoulos turned ugly as 1,500 gathered.
Some were coaxed there by Occupy Oakland, whose website called for people to “Shut Down Milo at UC Berkeley.”
Some protesters wore black, used paramilitary tactics, threw bricks and fireworks at police, committed vandalism and started a fire.
Two hours before the speech, the college administration pulled the plug.
But the mob was not done.
“Even after the event’s cancellation, hundreds of protesters spilled off campus into the city streets, where the violence continued as they confronted drivers, engaged in fights, smashed storefront windows and set fires,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Several of the “fights” were beatings of suspected Trump supporters.
That evening, Occupy Oakland’s twitter feed proclaimed: “We won this night.”
“We will control the streets.”
“We will liberate the land.”
“We will fight fascists.”
“We will dismantle the state.”
“This is war.”
end quote
“We will dismantle the state,” people!
“This is war!’
There, people, is our future in this country staring us right in the face.
And that brings us back in time to FEDERALIST No. 5, Concerning Dangers From Foreign Force and Influence for the Independent Journal with John Jay, America’s first United States Supreme Court Justice, writing as Publius, to wit:
To the People of the State of New York:
It was remarked in the preceding paper, that weakness and divisions at home would invite dangers from abroad; and that nothing would tend more to secure us from them than union, strength, and good government within ourselves.
This subject is copious and cannot easily be exhausted.
end quote
Weakness and divisions at home, which we have now in copious amounts in this highly-divided country, are now inviting dangers from abroad, and have been since before 9-11-2001; and while nothing would tend more to secure us from them than union, strength, and good government within ourselves, the sad fact is that now, we have none of those things starting with good government in Washington, D.C., so no wonder Laurence Henry “Larry” Tribe,a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University who also works with the firm Massey & Gail LLP on a variety of matters, is saying on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, “It is as if history is being collapsed into a black hole and everything is happening faster than the speed of light.”
When you think about it, that is understatement to a high degree, which is really saying something about our times, people.
Fasten seatbelts, rough ride ahead due to turbulence is my thought, anyway!