“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” –  Matthew 11:28-30

When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof, it’s peaceful as can be
And there the world below can’t bother me
Let me tell you now

When I come home feelin’ tired and beat
I go up where the air is fresh and sweet (up on the roof)
I get away from the hustling crowd
And all that rat-race noise down in the street (up on the roof)
On the roof, the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so
Let’s go up on the roof (up on the roof)

brief instrumental-chiefly strings

At night the stars put on a show for free
And, darling, you can share it all with me

I keep a-tellin’ you

Right smack dab in the middle of town
I’ve found a paradise that’s trouble proof (up on the roof)
And if this world starts getting you down
There’s room enough for two
Up on the roof (up on the roof)
Up on the roo-oo-oof (up on the roof)
Oh, come on, baby (up on the roof)
Oh, come on, honey (up on the roof)

[Fade]

Everything is all right (up on the roof)

Mike DeVine

Legal Editor - The Minority Report

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist for Examiner.com

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

More DeVine Gamecock rooster crowings at Modern Conservative, Hillbilly Politics, Unified Patriots,  Political Daily and Conservative Outlooks. All Charlotte Observer and Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-eds archived at Townhall.com.

When the Chief Justice of the United States convenes his regular Friday Conference tomorrow, four elves (or Santa and three elves) are required to determine if Ken Cuccinell’s direct appeal of ObamaCare is naughty or nice.

Federal district courts in Virginia and Florida found ObamaCare’s mandate that citizens’ wallets jump when AFLAC ducks quack, to be so much excess, and unconstitutional, water on our American’ backs.

Moreover, the whole of President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement melted under the latter’s constitutional sun shine, albeit without an injunction. As a result, the tentacles of socialized medicine were unleashed to poison private insurancepools that could make the legal issues moot if too many claims of 25-year old “children” with pre-existing cancerous conditions have to paid before non-highest courts weigh in.

Meanwhile, similarly situated courts in other states have upheld former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s thrice-rejected 2009 Christmas Eve lump of coal, thus inspiring Cuccinelli, Virginia’s Attorney General, to present the dirty stocking directly to our judiciary’s northernmost pole before being laundered in the circuits:

The Virginia petition has been re-listed for consideration at this Friday’s Conference, according to the Court’s docket.

——————

The Supreme Court on Monday left unresolved, at least for the moment, the fate of the state of Virginia’s attempt to get the Justices to rule on a very fast track the broad challenge to the constitutionality of a key feature of the new federal health care law.  The plea by the state to take up the validity of the new mandate to buy health insurance, before any federal appeals court rules on it, was before the Justices at their Conference last Friday, but no order on it came out with the Monday list.  The case is Virginia v. Sebelius (10-1014).

Bush v. Gore, Roe v Wade and the Scourge of ObamaCare

Rightfully, courts do not issue advisory opinions. The third branch is passive, waiting for cases and controversies to ripen before they weigh in on the proclivities of the non-robed occupants of the legislative and executive.  The Nine can’t hear every constitutional case for reasons biological and temporal, hence the lower courts. Eventually, the Supreme Court will reconcile all the appeals and decisions on ObamaCare, but why wait another year?

In extraordinary cases, one can get the 18 ears to prematurely perk up:

Supreme Court Rule Rule 11. Certiorari to a United States Court of Appeals before Judgment

A petition for a writ of certiorari to review a case pending in a United States court of appeals, before judgment is entered in that court, will be granted only upon a showing that the case is of such imperative public importance as to justify deviation from normal appellate practice and to require immediate determination in this Court.

Clearly it was “imperative” that America be spared more of Gore’s snippiness born of 2000 hanging chads in Tallahassee. God knows that Roe’s publicly important “choice” waited over 5000 years after Eve’s bite of the serpent’s apple.

Likewise, must the likely irreparable harm of ObamaCare regulations already burdening the health care and insurance industries be sacrificed upon the altar of refined circuit court dronings? Must the taxpayer-funded HHS Tower of Babel be fully-staffed and War and Peace-length death panel regs be promulgated before Roberts and Alito read the un-fine print? Must labor unions and even whole states of Maine continue to grovel for royal “waivers” or Oklahomans and South Carolinians choose (or not choose) nullification-like “opt-outs” from “exchanges” before Justice Anthony Kennedy gets to play King again?

We can only hope that at least four justices of the nation’s highest court will grant cert and spare us another year of ObamaCare poison and admit that obviously it is of such imperative public importance that the fate of 15+% of the U.S. economy not be held in peril while Obama prepares the edifice for denying pacemakers for 105-year olds so that they can take painkillers and go home.

Chief Justice Roberts rightly seeks conservative responses to appeals. He seeks to make rulings as narrow as possible so as not to overstep the bounds of judicial restraint. But the Constitution of the United States is written, as is Rule 11. There is nothing sacrosanct about any Circuit Court of Appeals when big dollars are being spent on a law that has already been found wanting legally and whose effect is already altering the lives of millions.

Mike DeVine

Legal Editor - The Minority Report

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist for Examiner.com

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

More DeVine Gamecock rooster crowings at Modern Conservative, Hillbilly Politics, Unified Patriots,  Political Daily and Conservative Outlooks. All Charlotte Observer and Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-eds archived at Townhall.com.

To advance anything less is to engage in a cynical game of chicken that betrays the trust conferred by the serious tea partiers that made the current GOP House majority.

Gamecock generally opposes games of “chicken”

For the record, this rooster opposed ever directly using the issue of the debt ceiling vote to achieve the  massive spending cuts, envisioned by the recent wave election, needed to avert another financial crisis. We favored a selective shutdown of the federal government in the likely event that President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) would reject the will We the People concerning the 2011 non-budget.

We were confident that a contest between the rejected policies of ObamaDems and the desires of the voters. Our confidence was only raised when the Commander-in-Chief made a pre-emptive strike against the armed forces by promising not to pay them as “essential” workers in case of a shutdown and instead promised to violate the 13th Amendment’s prohibition against involuntary servitude by making them work without pay so that Planned non-Parent(abortion)hood can continue to use federal funds.

Sadly, Speaker John Boehner, half the newly elected tea partiers and enough Democrats saw to it that we would have to settle for millions in cuts, instead of billions (albeit a puny amount); but not to worry our heroes assured us, as they will be fighting for trillions over the 2012 Ryan budget.

Even Ryan’s budget wouldn’t prevent Debt Ceiling breach

I think it was poor strategy to let so much time go by between the momentum of the greatest conservative electoral victory in over 60 years and a confrontation with discredited liberals. But it appears that before we can confront the liberal Democrats, we still have to defeat the majority of elected Republicans, given that only 59 in the GOP opposed the 2011 Continuing Resolution sell-out.

Meanwhile, my fears of an impending financial crisis that seeks signs of light at the end of a now nearly four-year-old tunnel, and that won’t wait for 2013, seems ever more imminent after this week’s Standard & Poor’s warning letter was received at the residence of the Full Faith & Credit of the United States.

Which brings us to the debt ceiling negotiations:

“…where some Republicans are already peddling the idea of a balanced budget amendment or spending caps as the serious reform they must have to raise the debt limit.  Those are as transparently political as last week’s budget deal –paper promises that don’t do anything right now to shrink government.” – Hugh Hewitt

It appears that America is the only nation on Earth that requires legislative votes to raise debt ceilings, and I could make good arguments for this anomaly based on prudence and our prosperous history. But shouldn’t the real prudence take place when the legislators are casting other votes that make the raising of the debt ceiling inevitable? And isn’t it unnecessarily risky to turn an accounting matter that most bond holders take for granted into a political football? I think so.

1/2 of 1/3 = 100% budget veto power

But since our self-immolated, Speaker Boehner-defined, “one-half of one-third” of the federal government insists on using the debt ceiling as an “inflection point” to achieve results; and since this naively optimistic rabid right wing convert sincerely hopes for relief, not only from 50 years of liberal Democrat assaults on Atlases and those that would be employed by Atlases, but especially from the Great Recession that Democratic Party majorities elected in 2006 precipitated and continue to elongate, we humbly suggest that the remedy for a “painful” and “un-clean” debt ceiling vote be worthy of such a great tumult among our creditors.

But Mike, we need not go all Rand Paul (Republican senator from Kentucky, pictured above) and propose $500B in cuts this year. We can save votes like that for the pristine 2012 budget from Mount Paul Ryan. Then we looked at the Ryan budget and discover that even if we enacted the Ryan budget and had its provisions retroactively applied to 2011, we would still face a debt ceiling breach.

What is a conservative to do? Given the fact that we can only stop incurring debt in one of two ways, i.e. immediately balance the budget or print money that further destroys the currency; and since we can’t achieve the former without cutting current registered voter beneficiaries of Medicare, I would settle for Hugh Hewitt’s suggestion, since I truly don’t want to give up on super-majorities of conservatives after Election Day 2012:

The Congressional GOP needs to identify its demand for a debt ceiling hike, and it shouldn’t be a paper exercise like a balanced budget amendment or “triggers” that can always be set aside.  It should demand one serious reform with immediate deficit reduction impact, like the block-granting of Medicaid.

Mr. Speaker, please listen, as you promised to do soon after the tea partiers made you Mr. Speaker: There is no risk-free way to either fix the budget, save the economy or even save your seat in Congress. We can win all the elections we want and even secure majorities (even super-majorities) and those mean old liberal “reporters” will still be able to echo Democrats and accuse you of starving orphans and widows.

Biggest risk is debt, not debt ceiling

In fact, the riskiest think you can do is to keep up the meaningless budget arcanities to try and fool us unwashed that millions are billions, while you plan on buying votes with appropriations. The economy will find you out. Besides, what will be the fun of having a majority in a reduced America that you had a chance to save?

One man with courage can make a majority

So far, only Obama and Reid have had the courage, because as we speak the wave election has accomplished nothing concrete that even the CBO can hang its hat on, much less Atlases that might actually create a job not staffed by a government bureaucrat.

Speaking of which, why not propose that all persons hired to promulgate ObamaCare and EPA carbon-emissions regulations be fired before the debt ceiling be raised? Oh, I know, its Ok for millions of us that pay the salaries of your colleagues to lose our jobs, but you can’t risk being blamed in a TV ad for cutting an employee of HHS.

We can eternally and continuously plan for the next election. Then, then, we will really show them. Poppycock!

We need for our elected representatives to muster the courage to confront Big Government now, before its too late. Yes, bond holders are watching the debt ceiling debate, but their better eye is watching The Debt itself threaten the value of their investment, i.e. the ObamaDem produced, not-s0-almighty Dollar, whose Standard is now deemed Poor.

Mike DeVine

Legal Editor - The Minority Report

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist for Examiner.com

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

More DeVine Gamecock rooster crowings at Modern Conservative, Hillbilly Politics, Unified Patriots,  Political Daily and Conservative Outlooks. All Charlotte Observer and Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-eds archived at Townhall.com.

The beginning of the end of  pathological Democratic Party separateness

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. – Luke 12:34 (ESV)

Before Barack Hussein Obama, there was Lyndon Baines Johnson and 45 years of white guilt/race card-playing victimization monogamy.  In the third year after white folks purged the guilt and gave the first Hawaiian-born (and defended by $5 Million lawyers), mixed-race, 20-year Rev. Hate-America Wright pew-parked, President the nukes, major cuckolding has commenced:

No wonder he’s become such good pals with Al Sharpton.

President Obama’s approval ratings among black voters plummeted last month to their lowest levels ever, while his support among Hispanics took a tumble in the same period, according to a surprising new poll released yesterday.

Blacks continue to back him by a wide margin, with 85 percent of respondents saying they approved of him in the latest Gallup poll.

But that number dropped a hefty 5 percentage points from last month, marking the lowest rating among that core constituency that he’s had since taking office.

Recessions concentrate the mind

Great recessions impart reality muggings and, when coupled with the fact liberal policies fail even when implemented by similar skin-colored liberals, a change of past voting behavior may be in the offing.

Go South, young brother

This may be especially expected given the recent non-voting behavior of blacks with experience living with the consequences of liberal Democrat policies in Northern cities and states:

The Census reported that waves of blue state blacks fled the stagnant job opportunities, high taxes and rotten social conditions of the mostly blue northern states to seek better lives for themselves in the south.

The Census story is a shocker.  First, according to the Times, the Blacks leaving tend to be the “younger and better educated”.  Second, the three states Blacks left in largest numbers don’t just include snake-bit Michigan; the other two are Illinois and New York.  Within those states, Chicago and the city of the New York (widely considered among the most successful cities in the country) are the places Blacks are deserting.  17 percent of the Black flight from Big Blue is from the Empire State; after almost a century of trailblazing social policy, New York State has succeeded in creating the most hostile environment for Blacks in the country.

It gets worse.  One would think that the Blacks who choose to stay in the cold, unwelcoming North would cluster in the cities where more liberal and humane governance models mandate such generous policies as “living wage” laws and where all the beautiful features of the blue social model can be experienced at full strength.

But one would be wrong.  Blacks across the North are fleeing the urban paradises of liberal legislation and high public union membership for the benighted suburbs.

Institutional Suburbanism – Join us!

One of the best kept secrets in modern America circa AD 2011, is that most whites got over race long ago. One of the most ridiculous myths is that there exists some sort of “white privilege” that makes life so much easier when pale of face.

USA Today recently combined the two lies with worries of racial “re-segregation” due to so-called racially-motivated “white flight” and neighborhood schools despite census, poll, and other realities to the contrary, such as that:

• The late Strom Thurmond’s son recently had the “privilege” of losing a race for Congress to Tim Scott (pictured with Allen West, above), a black man in an 85% white Palmetto State district that covers Fort Sumter, 150 years on; and that
• There are no two finer tea partiers in America than Florida’s Allen West, with Scott in the House of Representatives, and Georgia’s Herman Cain on the 2012 presidential campaign trail.

Somehow I don’t think so many blacks appreciate Attorney General Eric Holder’s declaration of America as “race cowards” from a man that promotes the stereotype of billy club-wielding New Black Panther intimidators of whites as acceptable in the black community.

Somehow I don’t think those blacks fleeing racist New York cops appreciate beer summits made necessary by gratuitous insults hurled at the thin blue line in Cambridge. Nor do they appreciate false charges of name calling at Glenn Beck-ralliers for MLK’s Dream.

Do blacks really wish to replace the next FBI Director with 10-years of anti-law enforcement apologizers for al Qaeda that will use the Voting Rights Act to thwart the census with false charges of “institutional racism” against those they voted for with their feet?

Somehow I don’t think so.

Barry Bond’s greatest crime was against Hammerin’ Hank Aaron, not Babe Ruth

After all, its the GOP that tried to save blacks in The District from the sweet nothings of Planned Non-Parent-Abortion-hood. Grant Hill chose Duke rather than the Fab Five Uncle Democrat Tomhood of Jalen Rose. Cam Newton is no less worthy of being called out for slothful late arrivals for NFL practices, and now its OK to call a black man lazy in America without having one’s heart ripped out and examined for venality.

Are Blacks fleeing the North for the South because they agree with Obama that whites who chose Hillary are scared “bitter clingers” to God, guns and bigotry, with “tribal” attitudes? Hardly. Blacks just wanna pursue God-ordained Life, Liberty and happiness with the choice of having a gun to defend their homes, not to mention more plentiful Sun Belt jobs. And while they are at it, they would appreciate less mocking of their struggles with skyrocketing energy prices from the Chief job-destroying Executive since Hoover.

More and more blacks are joining us whites that put our pants on one leg at a time before we walk out into a world that doesn’t stand up and cheer when it sees our skin, and for whom it is just as hard to afford Le Seuer peas and the gasoline to get to Kroger.

If Tim Scott can break the lily-white establishment ice, maybe some rough around the edges tea partier whites can! No need for racial appeals. Most members of the Party of Lincoln and Reagan came over based on the human issues of liberty, prosperity and peace through strength, rather than the usual class, race and envy appeals of the party that has Bill Clinton show New York’s McCall the back door.

I suspect more will be joining us in a Republican Party that rejects the racial politics of the senior Clarence Thomas-insulter Senator from Nevada ( see also Illinois) and the long form birth certificate-challenged Commander-in-Chief of Middle East apology tours.

The last refuge of a liberal may be racism, but what the non-racial conservative majority that refuse to swim in the media and Democrats cesspool realize is that the last refuge and best tour for blacks ends with the call letters of Atlanta’s 750-WSB-AM clear channel talk radio:

Welcome South Brother!

Mike DeVine

Legal Editor - The Minority Report

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist for Examiner.com

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

More DeVine Gamecock rooster crowings at Modern Conservative, Hillbilly Politics, Unified Patriots,  Political Daily and Conservative Outlooks. All Charlotte Observer and Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-eds archived at Townhall.com.

Media never mentions who decides which government employees are “essential”

It will be morally outrageous if President Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled Senate sacrifice the funding of  our armed forces for the next six months  on the altar of government-funded abortions in the District of Columbia. But the preemptive announcement by the administration that U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines must work without pay during a shutdown has already clinched the award for moral outrage after April Fool’s Day.

The United States Constitution does not address shutdowns per se, but does require Congressional authorization before funds are withdrawn from the Treasury.  Federal statutes grant the President the authority and discretion to defines who gets salary priority during emergencies.

If the Attorney General who called Americans moral race cowards while refusing to prosecute billy-club wielding New Black Panthers for voter intimidation is paid on time while an unpaid pilot lands a jet on a US Navy aircraft carrier near Libya, it will be because Obama made that choice. It will not be because of anything Speaker John Boehner and the Republicans refused to continue funding the abortion genocide in the nation’s capitol.

For Democrats, D.C. abortions are essential; military pay, not so much

Mind you now, the bill before the Senate does not eliminate all government funding for Planned Parenthood. It only eliminates funding for abortions performed in Washington. Yet, the Democratic Party threatens to force American warriors to worry about mortgage payments and infant formula while facing the Taliban lest one woman be denied a taxpayer-subsidized “choice”.

As a senator, Barack Obama twice voted against funding soldiers in harms way. As an Illinois state senator he opposed requiring life-saving medical treatment for infants born alive after “botched” abortions. As President, he has made affirmed his previous moral priorities.

The senior senator from New York makes clear the priorities of the Democratic Party in Congress when he exceeds even Sherman-esque declarations when he employs three “nevers” with respect to de-funding Planned parenthood.

The party of Jefferson, Jackson and JFK is no more

The world’s oldest political party has long been a solely owned subsidiary of the abortion lobby. In fact, while President Bill Clinton was selling out the liberals in the 90s on welfare reform, free trade and capital gains tax cuts, it was only his perfect record on appointing pro-abortion justices that kept the Feminist Left silent and their money flowing to the DNC.

Only FDR-opposed government labor unions give more money to the Dems and we have recently  seen to what outrageous lengths they are willing to go in Wisconsin to keep government as their dues collector. We can only hope that Harry Reid’s gang makes a run for the Canadian border to keep Margaret Sanger’s eugenics dream alive on federal territory.

How many Republicans does it take to hit a slow-pitched softball?

The GOP couldn’t have written a better a script to further expose the Democrats for what they stand for and to define the budget debate. We can only hope that the Speaker understands that while Republicans, in his words, only hold “one-half of one-third”; they also own an equal claim to a veto over any budget.

Many Republicans have sought to play down the significance of the current battle over billions in the 2011 budget given the gauntlet laid down for 2012 over many trillions of dollars. But who thinks that Obama and Reid would take the GOP seriously in 2012 if we surrender in the present battle over such small cuts.

This battle really exemplifies how that even in a Democratic Republic, one man with courage is often needed to make a majority even after super-majority wave election wins.

We can only hope that Speaker Boehner can muster but a fraction of Old Hickory-style courage.

A Hillbilly-Gamecock Production by

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Legal Editor - The Minority Report

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist for Examiner.com

More DeVine Gamecock rooster crowings at Modern Conservative, Hillbilly Politics, Unified Patriots,  Political Daily and Conservative Outlooks. All Charlotte Observer and Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-eds archived at Townhall.com.

Who knew that the mandatory deduction of union dues from government employee paychecks equals the front of the bus?

Legislators don’t wear robes, nor are their symbols blindfolded. Americans indulge partisan politics in lieu of anarchy, tyranny and/or continual armed combat. In 1776, we chose self-government over the arbitrary rule of a king, which arbitrariness is no less so when exercised by judicial oligarchs. In 1789 We the People ratified a Constitution that assigned “all legislative powers” to Congress, none to the judicial branch.

Yet, today in the Badger State, the Rule of Law meant to be secured by our Revolution, hangs in the balance of the recount of an election for a seat on the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in which the Democratic Party candidate (Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg) winked and nodded promises to be the Public Service Employee Union’s Super Legislator even as she sought to don the neutral black robe behind a sightless respecter of persons/non-union recognizing Lady Justice.

How did we get to this point of the political seduction of judges tempted to make law?

It started with Dred Scott (see also Roe v Wade et seq and the present Justice Anthony Kennedy, but I digress), but the latest version came in Wisconsin, when, after months of free political speech, the seminal “progressive” state elected majorities of Republicans to the State Legislature and a Republican governor. Their legislators passed a “non-fiscal” law, after prior notice of the date and time for the vote to all concerned including those Democrats that had fled the state to deny a quorum, that, among other things, ended the practice of taxpayer funding of union dues collection. Their governor signed the bill.  But before it could take effect, a state judge declared the bill void due to a lack of proper notice of the vote. The case has been appealed and is expected to eventually reach the state’s highest court.

That Governor Walker has so far complied with court rulings requiring the continued deduction of union dues from government paychecks has caused some on the right to howl. Others have bemoaned the supposed “lack of a legal strategy.”

Yes, my “one man with courage makes a majority” signature line celebrates a chief executive that famously once defied a U.S. Supreme Court order. But DeVine Law agrees with the author of The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law, in which Judge Robert Bork counsels that such exercises be rare and in which he supports the election of judges in political contests since so many have succumbed to the temptation to eschew judicial restraint in favor of result (political) oriented decisions.

The liberals are those that most often can’t arouse majorities to their preferred legal enactments, hence their “need” for help from the bench. Conservatives, on the other hand, usually benefit from rulings that honor the actual words of the Constitution and statutes. That the latter usually agree with the result of an honest interpretation of the laws should not be held against them, including the Republican incumbent in Wisconsin, Justice David Prosser.

The gnashing of teeth on the Right

The problem with criticisms of insufficient conservative legal strategies is that the Democrats play by different rules, i.e. no rules. They lose the election. No problem, let’s flee to Illinois and prevent the majority from passing laws we don’t like. They lose votes on bills. No problem, let’s shop for a liberal judge that will veto the majority.

The present ruling only attacks the process before which the law was passed. I actually suggested that they quickly re-pass the law with the prescribed notice rather than merely appeal the matter. Of course,  once the present case is resolved, the next appeal will attack the law on constitutional and/or statutory interpretation grounds, and I have no doubt that there are liberal judges-a-plenty ready to badger the English language to keep the taxpayer-funded, labor-union-deducted-dues-for-Democrats money laundering operation going.

If the Wisconsin Supreme Court were to ultimately rule against the bill on the grounds that its passage required a super-majority since it is “fiscal” bill because it merely “affects” fiscal matters, it will create chaos in state law. All bills not passed by such majorities could be challenged. Presently, the statute and court rulings narrowly define the term “fiscal” as only being those bills that directly affect state spending and taxes.

How much chaos would the Democrats create so that they have another crisis they can’t waste? There appears to be no limit, even if it means further abrogating the Rule of Law and self government itself.

There may come a time when it will be ripe for an Andrew Jackson moment in Madison, but not before the recount and more legal battles in search of blind, robed justice.

In the meantime, given the outrageous behavior of so many of today’s labor unions, especially including their celebration of sloth as Illinois fugitives, why not replace Labor Day with a national holiday on baseball’s Opening Day? At least until the next strike!

Mike DeVine

Legal Editor - The Minority Report

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist for Examiner.com

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

More DeVine Gamecock rooster crowings at Modern Conservative, Hillbilly Politics, Unified Patriots,  Political Daily and Conservative Outlooks. All Charlotte Observer and Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-eds archived at Townhall.com.

What a more wonderful world it would be if the worst threat from Muslims and Muslim clerics was that they would conduct mass Bible burnings.

Try as I might, this Southern Baptist just can’t seem to get worked up over the burning of Korans by a non-Southern Baptist in Florida even when the drive-by media continually reminds me that the burnings “provoked” retaliatory killings in Afghanistan. Still not feeling the outrage over smoking paper when General Petraeus insists that said fires “put our soldiers at risk.”

But Mike, that preacher is crazy. Fine, then lets have him examined by two psychiatrists and have him fitted for a strait-jacket, but first can we have all Muslims committed to an insane asylum that favor the killing of innocents in retaliation for the burning of their “holy” texts or the depictions of their “prophet”?

Fighting words and the imminent incitement to violence

I’m going to leave the policing of the clergy to sectarian leaders while I assist in policing the un-serious media and those who let that media determine what matters when Muslims kill innocents.

Muslims have been killing non-Koran burning Christians most of my life. My earliest memory of this trend was when Sirhan Sirhan gunned down Robert Kennedy. The media blamed an “atmosphere of hate” in the South. Never mind that RFK was gunned down in Los Angeles and that the murderer sought to eliminate a supporter of Israel.

I don’t remember any Christian-sponsored Koran burnings before September 11, 2001. I did read that more Korans were burned, along with the 3000 innocents, on that day as the World Trade Center towers fell. Have you forgotten? I haven’t.

It is certainly appropriate for Christians to continually explore Scripture’s teachings against unnecessary provocation, but the Muslim list of grievances against Christians, Jews and the secular Left would fill scores of “Why Do They Hate Us” books. If we let them determine what we can and can’t do lest they kill folks two weeks after the smoke of a Koran bonfire clears, then we might as well convert to Islam. A woman could still be put to death after converting if she “provokes” a man to rape her by allowing too much ankle to show beneath the burka, but at least the list of grievances is not as long.

The Gospel, fighting words and the First Amendment

The basic, non-Florida preacher, Christian message of Protestants, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox is that Jesus is The Way, The Truth and The Light and that no man cometh to The Father, except through Christ. Not Mohammad!

Does the preaching of that Gospel provoke Islamists to kill innocents more or less than Koran burnings? Sharia law provides for the death penalty for converting to Christianity and in many Muslim countries, the same penalty applies for preaching that gospel on land that Mohammad conquered with the sword.

Does General Petraeus suggest that we limit Sunday sermons to conflated cheek-turning homilies until Afghanistan is Connecticut? The Apostle Paul said that Christ’s Good News was a scandal to the world, and the reaction of Islamists and the secular Left to that gospel proves it.

I have great respect for my fellow Southern Baptist, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, but must take some exception to portions of his recent statement on the matter:

“Along with all Southern Baptists, I condemn the burning of any religious book. That is not the mark of a good neighbor, a good citizen or a civilized human being. I also condemn the riots and the killings of human beings in supposed retaliation for the burning of the Koran. This is also heinous behavior and is not in any way, shape or form justified by the burning of the Koran. In civilized society, one does not kill people for disrespecting or destroying the symbols or instruments of one’s faith.

“We will continue to condemn the burning of religious books and we will continue to condemn killing human beings in response to such despicable behavior. Both are barbaric and uncivilized, and the Muslim community can rest assured that we will continue to condemn a radical fringe that would burn Korans, and we expect them to join us in condemning their co-religionists’ killing human beings and using the burning of a Koran as the pretext for such murder.”

I appreciate that Dr. Land makes clear that there is no justification for the killing of innocents, but I think any definition of “barbaric” and “uncivilized” that includes the “burning of any religious book” renders the words meaningless.

Some have suggested that the act of burning is over-the-top, and given past obsessions with attempts to ban flag burning, recent events have made for seemingly strange bedfellows, especially in a nation whose revolution was preceded by serial Union Jack flag torchings and the burning of Tories in effigy. Our Supreme Court has recognized such burnings as protected symbolic speech.

It is true that English Common Law and recent court precedents recognize an affirmative defense to assaults and batteries up to and including homicide if one is “imminently incited” to violence through “fighting words” or conduct. But in the present case, the incendiary act took place two weeks before the murderous acts.

Case dismissed.

Weakness is the main provocation that endangers the troops

Finally, I would ask the Press that covered Cindy Sheehan and Code Pink; our Secretary of State that loudly declared while a U.S. Senator that such dissent was the “highest form of patriotism; and the non-Lieberman Democrats that produced the “Bush-lied” Era if our troops were put more at risk by a Florida preacher than by promises to pull out of Iraq if President George W. Bush was denied re-election.

Were our enemies emboldened to fight on when then Senators Obama and Clinton voted against funds for the troops?

Were the troops more endangered by burning pages in the Sunshine State or by a junior senator from New York refusing to condemn the characterization of our top military leader in Iraq as General “Betray-us”?

Did it put our troops less at risk to voluntarily burn our own Bibles in 2008 lest Afghans be offended by The Word? Why didn’t that cheek-turning act buy us enough Arab or other Muslim “street cred” so that the civilized of the East could resist the irresistible impulse to kill innocents when confronted with two-week old Koran ashes?

Weakness invites aggression. Brace yourself for more as long as even our military leaders keep yelling “how high” whenever NBC or a radical Muslim says “jump”. This kind of political correctness, moral equivalent “tolerance” is what led to Fort Hood.

Mike DeVine

Legal Editor - The Minority Report

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist for Examiner.com

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

More DeVine Gamecock rooster crowings at Modern Conservative, Hillbilly Politics, Unified Patriots,  Political Daily and Conservative Outlooks. All Charlotte Observer and Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-eds archived at Townhall.com.

March Braves-Gamecock Madness

The post-Vernal Equinox view of all things legal, political and sporting from Stone Mountain of Georgia, co-starring Cockstradamus from The Azores…

• When GDP does not a recovery make? When Massachusetts jobs fair is cancelled!
• The Speaker may be listening after all? GOP must hold firm on riders de-funding ObamaCare-Pelosi, Planned Parenthood, NPR/PBS in next budget/CR vote.
• Why is the man our president always makes sure and honors as  ”Minister”, willing to appear with the #3 member  of the Democratic Party in the House? After all, James Clyburn (D-SC) is a strong supporter of Barack Obama who directed military force against the good friend of Louis Farrakhan and Rev. Wright?
• War on Libya? Not so fast: Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes danced around the question in a Wednesday exchange with reporters aboard Air Force One. “I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone,” Rhodes said. “Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end. But again, the nature of our commitment is that we are not getting into an open-ended war, a land invasion in Libya.”

(What is left of) The Rule of Law

President Obama has no duty to defend traditional marriage in court. Presidents and judges take oaths to uphold the Constitution, and if the Chief Executive deems the Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional, then it is within its rights and discretion not to defend it. Voters have the right to take note and act accordingly.

Wisconsin, Government Employee Unions and Judicial Oligarchs

In his The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law, Judge Robert Bork outlines in detail our governmental system’s great and crucial reliance on judicial restraint, which reveals the great difficulty we have confronted by liberal Democrat judges in Wisconsin that are willing to re-write the law to reach a desired outcome.

We can only hope that a majority of the Badger State’s supreme court will stick with the narrow definition of “fiscal” and thus uphold the constitutionality of the new law restricting the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions, lest their ruling open up many other laws to challenge that would wreck havoc on the legal system of Wisconsin.

The Georgia General Assembly

DeVine Law is very happy about what the Republican majority is NOT going to do, and isn’t that quintessentially conservative:

• No sales tax on groceries
• No increase in already too high tobacco taxes
• No “birther” bill for presidential primary candidates

We hope that Republican Governor Nathan Deal gets to sign a bill allowing employers to use E-verify to insulate themselves from sanctions for employing illegal aliens and mirroring Arizona’s stop and frisk law emphasizing the identification of non-citizens.

Finally, sporting antidotes to the Obama Recession at War

John Calipari, Kentucky’s junior college-transfer genius, prevailed over Ohio State upperclassmen in the defining game of the 2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.  Clearly, the Wildcats will prevail in the Final Four. (Clearly, we also picked the Buckeyes three months ago, and on our bracket, to win the national championship, before this loss.)

As a card-carrying member of the dead-tree media and USC alumnus, I have tri-annually received the Fighting Gamecocks’ baseball, football and men’s basketball media guides for the past two decades. I now hold in my hands memorialized proof of the end of the 1801 Chicken Curse.

For the first time, a media guide celebrates the previous year’s National Championship won by a Fighting Gamecock’s team.  South Carolina defeated UCLA in last year’s College World Series. This weekend the now 4th-ranked Gamecocks lead the current #1-ranked Florida Gators, 1-0 in a crucial early-season 3-game SEC series.

• Meanwhile, the #17 Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech baseball team has won 14 in a row…

Mike DeVine Law aka Braves-Gamecock and Cockstradamus see a Braves-Red Sox World Series

• If the Atlanta team can catch the ball and throw the ball, they will be National League Champions.
• The name of our first fantasy league team ever is the Tucker (Ga.) Braves-Gamecock. Finally, we will be forced to learn the condition of the left-bicep of the utility specialist on the Mariners’ bench.
• NASCAR is Dixie’s defining cultural gift to the world.
• Tiger now in 28th place near the end of the third round at Bay Hill.

I’m sure it had been over a year since I had heard anyone blame Bush for the economy, and even longer since I had heard anyone defend President Barack Obama on anything at my local pub.

Yet, I heard both uttered by a heretofore mostly silent-on-politics friend there yesterday, soon after I had sought refuge from false moral equivalence allegations between German and other United Nations Security Council abstentions on Libya and the past behavior of a certain nation I call home, made in my Stone Mountain of Georgia home.

Admittedly, the then-sparse number of early afternoon occupants of nearby bar stools and I were in the middle of a group denunciation of all things Obama when the former erupted, but I was still a bit shocked given the source, the occasion of March Madness on the big screen TV and my known reputation as a rabid right-wing conservative. It was too much liberalism for me to take this particular weekend, so I went home immediately after summarily denouncing the untimely pronouncements.

In transit, I realized that what was so striking about the Blame Bush and Praise Obama statements is how rare it is to hear them even in an Atlanta Metro Area venue (DeKalb County is represented in Congress by Democrat Hank Johnson after Radical Cynthia McKinney represented the county for many terms previous) that is regularly populated by a goodly number of liberals, Democrats and mushy moderates. In fact, I can’t ever remember hearing anyone claim that “things have turned around” on the economy since the jobs recession began even before the bursting of the housing bubble and resulting financial crisis in 2008.

Elected tea partiers in name only doom America

[See update in last section below]

The silence of the 87 and not a dime’s worth of difference

Since President John F. Kennedy was gunned down there has been many dimes’ worth of difference between Democrats and Republicans, and there still is. The problem is that government has grown so large for so long and the economy is so weak that even establishment Republican dimes could tip us over the edge of the abyss.

Hence, the hope of the heretofore non-political tea partier candidates and their promise to fix the problems wrought by the professional politicians in Washington that buy their re-elections via the spending of other people’s money.

Their message resulted in the largest GOP House seat turnover since 1946. If ever there was a mandate for conservative change, this was it. Bigger even that the 1984 Reagan Morning in America and Newt’s 1994 Contract for America, the tea partiers promised to reign even the smaller dimes of Republican with 87 new faces.

Hopes were muted as the Lame Duck Congress gave Obama more power of the food we eat and allowed Obama Donkey-Ducks to betray Britain  in favor of Russia; and, GI Jack in Jill in favor of Jack and Joe.

But fear not, we were told in the dead of winter. Just wait till those 87 new members arrive in January within sight of the McConnells and the Lugars of the world. Then you will see real change!

It is now four days before the Vernal Equinox and Republicans have unilaterally surrendered on a government shutdown; refused to de-fund the Legal Services Corporation; expanded ObamaCare to cover the spading of dogs and cats; and betrayed their promise to cut even a puny $100B form a $3.7T budget.

EXPANDED OBAMACARE!

My conservative friends, if the GOP won’t significantly cut government spending after the 2010 wave, it will never be cut, no matter how many real conservatives are installed as elected Republicans or Republican Party precinct committeemen before 2012.

We were just handed the greatest conservative mandate since Elvis was a child and we are wasting it, and for what? Fear of Obama at 44%? Fear of the media that failed to stop the tea partier election wave? Just what cat has the tongues of the 87? And even when they speak, what do they say? Michelle Bachman is “a little disappointed” in the refusal of The Speaker to allow the $100B+ de-funding of ObamaCare for fiscal 2011 supposedly for reasons of rules “fairness” when 23 non-ObamaCare exceptions were made to the same “rule”.

A “little” disappointed?

Merely electing people that say the right things in even year Octobers solves nothing if they vote with the tax collectors for the welfare state, i.e. establishment Republicans.

There always seems to be an excuse for not cutting government, but this time, THIS TIME, it would be different. The tea partiers were different.

So far, their tea is unsweetened, lukewarm and bitter; and this after the greatest mandate possible in electoral politics. But not to worry you long-time opposer of third parties, we can get grass root bloggers in party positions before 2012 and then we will fix this matter.

Right.

Are we also going to insist that 2012 GOP freshmen hire us as bodyguards to protect them from Potomac Fever?

Is it really fear of the media or Obama that changes these grassroots firebrands between Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day? Is it really the desire for committee assignments that drives the golden silence? (Because if they remain silent, more gold will be bought as the American dollar collapses. Besides Bernanke’s trillions, it has been the hope that the 87 would take bold action that has held up the Dow and held back the deluge.)

Before the 2009 passage of the Stimulus of Democratic Party union dues withholding and ObamaCare, this column urged Democrats to vote NO and run for re-election on having voted NO on Obama’s agenda. That plea was not heeded. How many Dems would take that do over now?

Could it be that the 87 simply lack the courage to run on a record of having taken away government welfare for the middle class and would rather take their chances on touting the $15 they saved their gated-community voters on cutting the testicles off their Water Spaniel?

Have we slouched PAST Gomorrah, even while drinking tea? We insult the opposers of King George’s taxation without representation!

My friends, we haven’t the luxury of Democrat-lite. We are in a crisis economically. Under-employment and job market participation rates are at Great Depression levels. The jobs depression we live in is the longest, BY FAR, since the 1930s. Obama’s deficits rival those of WWII. The Fed’s trillions are already triggering inflation in food and energy that has the Middle East in flames as the price of going from Point A to Point B in these United States has folks passing over Le Seuer peas for the store brand lest they have to leave the ’99 Chevy on the side of the road as they lug the gruel ingredients the rest of the way home.

It may be too late to prevent a crisis already, but unless the elected tea partier servants of We the People BREAK WITH BOEHNER NOW, then the deluge will surely wash us away. Our call today is one step short of a call for a Third Party. In fact, we have never even used the term “tea party”. Rather, we call on the 87 tea partiers to break with Speaker Boehner’s caucus and oppose all RINO, puny, pathetic, and insulting moves meant to lure away a few Democrats to avoid crocodile tears by kids outside Yellowstone.

Reid has made clear that even $61B will ensure a shutdown.

We said here weeks ago that the GOP should embrace a selective shutdown strategy given this inevitability. Wouldn’t it be better to have a shutdown over Rand Paul’s $500B than the sissy $61B pro-rated lie?

I think so.

The Democratic Party is irrelevant to this discussion about saving America. They long ago left the playing field. Now, the only grownups left are the Republicans, who appear to be divided between the senile and cowards.

But there is still time. Hopefully, when Bachman is not re-drawing state lines between Massachusetts and Live Free or Die, she is in Cantor’s face threatening a caucus break. If she is not, then I am afraid that the disconnect between the voters and the Republic’s representatives is too wide for salvation in time to matter.

We can elect all the tea drinkers we want, but if they have not courage, it is all for naught. We can’t fix America from Wisconsin in the short term. If it is to be fixed, it must be done in D.C. National elections, tea partier speeches and progress in states are mere sideshows as compared to what is and is not done in the place where the gravy train went off the tracks, i.e. Washington.

Non-electoral strategies

In the short term we need to pull out all stops whether it be via oil drilling-, private property rights-, and free speech civil disobedience or even state nullification of unconstitutional mandates from D.C. Maybe we need another American Drive-In as well.

[UPDATE - MARCH 16, 2011]

“Clarification” order scolds DOJ to hurry up, then gives license to implement a law he deems unconstitutional

The only hope We the People had of preventing the solidification of socialized medicine pending a definitive ruling on President Barack Obama’s signature hope and change law no less than two years from now by the nation’s highest court, died last week at the hands of the man that had threatened to kill the administration’s assault on private health insurance dead in its tracks.

Federal U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson declared the entire health care bill unconstitutional, null and void on January 31, thus presenting the prospect, that before the tentacles of the federal government could wrap themselves around one-sixth of the U.S. economy, it would have to first prove its case to at least five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

A month passed in which several of the 26 State plaintiffs in the Florida case declared they would no longer implement the law Judge Vinson declared unconstitutional as Attorney General Eric Holder treated the 78-page order as no more consequential than a New York Times op-ed. Last month, Obama’sDepartment of Justice interrupted their contempt of Vinson’s jurisprudence by adding insult to injury with a motion to “clarify”, rather than take the usual course and ask for a “stay” of the ruling.

Sadly, Judge Vinson rewarded Obama’s contempt by issuing as un-asked for stay that essentially sentences the United States to unconstitutional governance for up to two years:

Judge Vinson filed a 20-page opinion today responding to the motion seeking clarification, and I find it pretty remarkable. I think it’s fair to say that Judge Vinson was not happy with DOJ. First, much of the new opinion is written as a rather defensive summary of his earlier opinion and, at times, a response to critics. Vinson then decided on his own to treat the motion for clarification as a motion for a stay, and then he granted his motion for a stay with an important condition: DOJ must file its appeal in seven days, and DOJ must then request an expedited appeal in the circuit court. This seems pretty unusual to me, given that DOJ wasn’t even seeking a stay from Judge Vinson. The pace of appellate litigation is normally up to the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, the litigants, and the Court of Appeals judges — not a district court judge.

Conservatives are supposed to be happy that the good judge harshly scolded Holder’s lawyers and required that they file an “expedited” appeal. Given all the legal maneuverings available in appeals to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Vinson may have trimmed a few weeks off a process that will likely last for no less than 18 months.

Maybe Judge Vinson knew that the 11th Circuit would have issued a stay, and so was doing what he thought was the best he could do under the circumstances. But it is not his job to help plaintiff lawyers along the appeals process.

His job was to pass judgment on the constitutionality of ObamaCare and prescribe a remedy appropriate to that determination.

Judge Vinson determined that the federal government hasn’t the power to regulate health care by forcing Americans to buy a private insurance policy or be fined. Yet, he decided its OK  for them to implement an unconstitutional law pending appeal.

Judge Vinson let us down.

Mike DeVine

Legal Editor - The Minority Report

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist for Examiner.com

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

More DeVine Gamecock rooster crowings at Modern Conservative, Hillbilly Politics, Unified Patriots,  Political Daily and Conservative Outlooks. All Charlotte Observer and Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-eds archived at Townhall.com.

www.devinelawvista.com

Obama and the Betrayal of America

The promise that the Bush-McCain weary heard was that there were no red states and no blue states, but just the United States. The stimulus would arrest the recession and keep unemployment under 8%. ObamaCare would lower the deficit and you could keep your own insurance if you wanted. Foreign nations would love the anti-cowboy, and oh yes, anyone that was saddled with white guilt would have it instantly purged.

Two years later down the yellow-brick road, the curtain has been rent and revealed, not a wizard, but rather a lawless, arrogant alien in the White House that is not just presiding over American decline but actually egging it on.

He is not alien because he wasn’t born in Hawaii, but, rather because he doesn’t love America and what it is and has stood for. Rather, he loves the Obama-nation he is in the process of building in which he issues waivers to those that tickle the King’s fancy and organizes communities for his Democrat like the hordes of spoiled public sector union brats in Wisconsin, that even FDR warned not to bargain with collectively.

But what to expect from a man raised by proud Marxists; educated by those that deem Bill Ayers a colleague; and preached to for 20 years in a church that honors a racist that our President Obama always calls “Minister” Farrakhan (and with whom his Most Reverend Wright traveled to Libya to honor a tyrant that survived Reagan’s bombs and surrendered his WMD to Dubya but who recently finally found a U.S. Chief Executive he could praise in B. Hussein).

On Day One of the Obama Era, the dreams from his UK-hating Kenyan father prompted him to remove the post-911solidarity gift of Winston Churchill’s bust from the Oval Office. To make amends he gave the Queen of England a CD of his speeches, slapped her on the back and gave Russia Britain’s nuclear secrets. All before bowing until his ears hit the floor to every two-bit Muslim potentate during two Apologize for America tours.

In further efforts to secure the love of the “international community” it equates the death cult in Gaza with the building of apartment buildings in East Jerusalem and sides with Iran’s mullahs over those innocents mowed down in Teheran streets. The result? Saudi Arabia mocks him in public, Pakistan tries a diplomat for murder despite immunity, Mexican soldiers treat the Arizona as grounds for maneuvers and China plays anti-American ditties in the White House to polite applause as Attorney General Eric Holder exonerates billy club-wielding New Black Panthers and sues Mexico’s Arizona territory.

Have we discovered any High Crimes or Misdemeanors yet, because it’s about to get worse?

Reform instead of recovery

How is ObamaCare working out for the nearly 20% of Americans that are either out of work or so under-employed that they can’t pay for necessities at Fed-inflated prices, much less consume any wants greater than Le Seuer brand-peas. Things are so bad that stories of proposed municipal laws banning roosters in backyards fill newspapers.

John Maynard Keynes complained of FDR’s misplaced focus on NRA price-fixing reforms while the nation cried out for recovery, but at least he put some folks to work through the WPA.

Obama delayed public works until his second year and then claimed there never was any such thing as “shovel-ready” projects. Has he even seen Hoover’s Dam or FDR’s TVA?

As senator and president he supported and fostered a TARP for Paulson, Geithner & Company that hasn’t even protected banks when one out of every nine of those that haven’t already closed are at risk of failure. No troubled assets have been recovered and no small business loans are being made since there are no expected profits with which to pay back said loans from a stimulus that only saved state and local government jobs and created federal regulators that kill jobs.

While star-struck Americans gazed upon the underside of Obama’s skyward-pointing chin and exposed nostrils, and so missed his promises to bankrupt the coal industry and have us learn a lesson from skyrocketing oil prices, now, thanks to lawless violations of court orders voiding oil-drilling moratoriums, followed by lawless EPA attacks against oil drilling on Texas fields and denials of permits for power plant construction after even a Democrat Congress refused his cap-and-trade attack on the poor and middle class; when it snows in New Mexico, we have to beg Old Mexico for heat.

The left-hand touts the Muslim Brotherhood as part of the “host of important non-secular actors” in Egypt while the right hand deems them not very religious. The MUSLIM brotherhood are not very religious? He must be referring to his own not very religious, and rare darkenings of churches or to the irreligious audacities issued from Wright’s pulpit about the CIA’s conspiracy to infect Blacks with AIDS.

Empty Promises

Restructured underwater mortgages never materialized while policies prevented the reaching of the necessary bottom to a housing market, when all the while 1000-page Dodd-Frank financial “reforms” paid off revolving door Democrat pals at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that blew the bubble up to bursting size in the first place.

Meanwhile, middle class taxpayers subsidize vanity GM cars for the rich as its stock dips below the IPO price.

He promised to end the running up of debt like Bush. He delivered on that one, as he ran up the debt at a currency-threatening rate three times the Bush rate and nearing post-WWII levels.

Promises were forthcoming that you could keep your own health insurance while attacking the very foundations of risk assessment and pricing with demands to cover “children” as old as 26 and pre-existing conditions on the day after cancer is diagnosed. Meanwhile, The Lawless One continues to impose an unconstitutional mandate to buy private health insurance in defiance of a court order that he hasn’t yet even asked be stayed. Obama does what Obama wants to do.

When all else fails, just take the painkiller and go home. Your life is no more precious at age 95 years than those 95+ day-old born alive infants he refused to protect from the floor of the Illinois Senate.

A Stranger in our Midst that chooses American decline

He seems a stranger in our midst that seems to get every issue not just wrong, but exactly wrong. He is no Jimmy Carter. No, Obama seems to choose American decline as a choice with no paean to “human rights” unless it is the right of humans to do right by his decrees. He takes apologize-for-America tours abroad to accept Nobel prizes while his rib-eating wife lectures the obese in a nation growing in numbers of those who will soon be able to see their own ribs if the great recession doesn’t abate.

Many of us are not surprised. We didn’t put our hands over our ears to drown out Rev. Wright or Obama’s musings on the flawed Constitution and Founders. Many of us were not so anxious to purge misplaced white guilt and give this stranger in our midst the nukes.

Must we endure two more years of this near-dictator while he continues to systematically dismantle the economy at home and our alliances over seas? While he defies court orders and “evolves” away defenses of traditional marriage?

Can he be stopped before the deluge? What will be left of America on Inauguration Day, 2013 if he remains our Chief Magistrate and Commander in Chief for another 23 months?

Democrats, have you no shame at what you foisted on this great country?

And if the above betrayals are not enough, have you forgotten:

• The planned KSM trial in NYC that former lawyers for al Qaeda would use to prosecute Bushlied/Cheney in their new positions with Holder’s Just-Us Department
• Would be Christmas Day, Times Square and Underwear Bombers that deserve Mirandizing
• False accusations of torture against patriotic Bush DOJ lawyers and CIA interrogators
• The botching of the case against al Qaeda’s Ahmed Ghailani in the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
• TSA gropings and strip teases
• Honduras
• Cuba
• Columbia and South Korean trade agreements
• Missile shields for Poland and Ukraine
• Gates-gate
• Jones Act refusal to clean up BP oil spill
• Race-based mortgage policy
• AIG pitchforks and threats against Bank CEOs
• Defiance of court order of net neutrality regs
• Stewardship of the oceans, i.e. Earth
• NASA, i.e. the Universe

Is there anything good and decent left that Obama has not betrayed?

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Americans collectively bargain at ballot boxes and in legislatures, not streets and front lawns

The acts of the Wisconsin teachers’ union and the SEIU look alien, foreign and Third World-ish to this former railroad union lawyer.

Is it just me or do the tactics and rhetoric of the public sector union and community organizers in Wisconsin seem other worldly? Do the crowds of illegally-striking teachers in Madison remind of the massive throngs that came to gaze upon Community-Organizer-in-Chief Barack Obama in Berlin during the 2008 campaign? What of the private sector SEIU thugs that attacked a wheelchair-bound black conservative tea partier during that same campaign that elected a President who recently betrayed the nuclear secrets of Britain, our most loyal ally on earth, to Russia’s dictator? The bows to Muslim and other foreign potentates? Appeasement of Iran’s mullahs? Hectoring of the survivors of the Holocaust and their progeny for building apartment buildings as the moral equivalent of a Palestinian death cult bent on suicide bombings over hero sandwiches at Tel Aviv Sbarros?

Who the hell are these people that fences from Vancouver to Bangor and San Diego to Brownsville couldn’t keep out? It seems the number one assimilation problem in these united states are not Spanish-speaking chicken plant laborers, but rather the 10th generation of those that landed at Ellis Island that now sings My Union Tis of Thee.

Like I said, who the hell are these “teachers”, “service employees” and the Harvard man unversed in transliteration that affects a Latin accent when speaking of barrios and makes sure to add the honorific “Minister” when referring to Farrakhan and goes all “Pock”-istan when referring to the Muslin nation with ten nukes.

The carmen that I represented in the 90s worked for the railroad, worshipped with their brothers at the Baptist Church, and, oh yeah, appointed union reps to work out overtime pay and safety rules. But never, after an election of We the People would they have insulted their state or country with paid days off to scream of the religion of “collective bargaining” as if that were the sine qua non essence of their existence and the mandatory withholding of union dues were their sacrament.

As Scarlett would say: “Tomorrow is another day.”

Tomorrow is when Americans that lose fair and square elections accept the will of their fellow citizens and wait for the next election to try and change matters to their liking. Americans don’t take to the streets en masse like the subjects of the latest Thugocracy in Venezuela.

At least most of us don’t.

But it seems that before 21st Century partiers started drinking tea; before useful idiot Democrats realized that B. Hussein was not J. Fitzgerald; and while too many Republicans were content to be the deck-chair arrangers of the Welfare State, some interlopers lucky enough to be born into the Affluent Society decided to shift loyalties to “Brotherhoods” of blood-suckers off the taxed profits of people that actually produced wealth.

I was 16 years old when I ran out of my Dad’s money but still wanted to buy that ’60 Chevy Mailbu. That was back in the days when teachers showed up for work everyday, even if there were two inches of snow on top of Dixie dew and all the bread and milk was gone from the shelves of A & P.

I don’t know billions of Chinese and I don’t know these people in the streets of the Badger State’s capitol city nor the one that currently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And I don’t want to know them. I want to defeat them again and again.

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Charlotte Observer, The Minority Report and Examiner.com archives

www.devinelawvista.com

[Updated}

Aaron Worthing of Patterico.com echoes our assertion of The Department of Justice and Attorney General Eric Holder's disingenuousness:

So the Obama administration’s lawyers have filed a “Motion to Clarify” where they pretend that they are not sure what Judge Vinson meant by his ruling.  You see a few states, such as Florida and Alaska, have decided in light of Vinson’s ruling that Obamacare is a dead letter to them (both states were parties to the decision).  This is the correct reading of the decision. Read it all here.

The Ace of Spades echoes Worthing and DeVine and goes further:

Worthing calls it "dishonesty" and I'll be straight with you: it's certainly misleading and if I wrote that motion I'd be waking up with cold sweats in the middle of the night for fear of getting sanctioned by the Court or a bar association. Read it all here.

Finally, as noted in comments below, Todd Gaziano, affirms DeVine Law Gamecock's take on the Motion to Clarify as "odd and ... insulting":

Late Thursday, February 17, the Obama Administration filed an incredibly odd and almost insulting “Motion to Clarify” the judgment in the case it lost against 26 states and the NFIB in the Obamacare litigation in Florida v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, No. 10-cv-00091 (N. D. Fla.)(Judge Vinson). With this motion, the Administration has now stated officially that, notwithstanding the Judge’s declaration of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) as unconstitutional, the Administration does not interpret the Judge’s order as requiring the Administration to cease carrying out the unconstitutional ACA. The “Motion to Clarify” does not explicitly seek reconsideration of Judge Vinson’s judgment declaring the ACA unconstitutional, nor does it seek a stay of that judgment; it simply says the Federal Government will not be following the Judge’s judgment declaring the ACA unconstitutional unless the Judge issues another order stating to the Government that the Judge did, in fact, anticipate its judgment to have immediate injunction-like effect.

This motion really is one for reconsideration of the entire case and to stay the judgment in disguise, but the Administration cannot meet the necessary standard to stay the judgment. Most legal observers would conclude that the Administration filed this “Trojan Horse” motion in bad faith.

[Resume original column]

At least in Brown v. Board of Education the court order voided de jure racial segregation only with “deliberate speed”…

On January 31, 2011, U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson declared ObamaCare unconstitutional and added:

“…there is a long standing presumption that officials of the Executive Branch [Obama Administration] will adhere to the law as declared by the court…”

Judge Vinson’s added that sentence to make clear that, this being a final order on the merits, there was no reason for an injunction to be issued since injunctions are usually only issued in cases of this type in which temporary relief is asked for pending a final order on the merits.

In the 17 days that have passed since the order, President Barack Obama’s Justice Department has announced an intent to appeal, but has not yet filed any appeal. More significantly, neither has the government filed a Motion to Stay enforcement of the order pending appeal. Instead, President Obama, through his press secretary, and the Defendant Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, have insisted that they retain the right to continue to implement ObamaCare regulations nationwide and have done so.

Meanwhile, various parties to the case, including certain governors and attorney general for plaintiff states, have ceased cooperating with the Obama Administration, on the grounds that to do so would violate their oaths of office to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. They deemed Judge Vinson to have clearly voided ObamaCare, thus removing it from the codification of the “laws of the United States.”

Late today, in an extraordinary move, Obama’s lawyers asked Judge Vinson to “clarify” his order. Such motions are quite rare as they imply that the author of the order is not skilled in the use of the English language. Of course, Eric Holder and company understand the order very clearly, but are not used to having fellow members of the bar speaking in a language other than liberal weasel-speak (i.e. lies that pretend to follow the Constitution accompanied by a wink).

Obama and Holder are desperate, for they know that to file the usual motion for a stay would be admit that ObamaCare is void and that they need the judge’s permission to continue to do anything in furtherance of the ObamaCare statute. So, they are trying to have their cake and eat it too. They are trying to trick Judge Vinson.

It won’t work.

The likely response from the court will be to put an exclamation point on the already crystal clear order either by issuing an injunction, that, in cases like this are quite rare since most civilians comply with court orders rather than risk spending time in jail for contempt; or the court will merely deny the request to force the 26 states that were parties to the case to comply with ObamaCare regulations.

Either way, the clock ticks towards the March deadline by which Obama must ask for a stay and admit the powers of a coequal branch of government.

Fellow conservatives, dare we wish for an early yuletide via a Vinson-mas gift that voids ObamaCare while it is appealed? Yes, we dare. What seemed a near impossible dream via the elected branches and the need for a new president and filibuster-proof Senate no earlier than 2013, could be only weeks away.

Yes, tea partiers, their is a Vinson Claus!

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Charlotte Observer, The Minority Report and Examiner.com archives

www.devinelawvista.com