By Reuters. U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump blasted close rival Ted Cruz on Monday, threatening to file a lawsuit challenging his eligibility for the White House if the Texas senator does not take down his “false ads.”
The New York billionaire, whose campaign has long been littered with insults, called Cruz “totally unstable” and said he is “the single biggest liar I’ve ever come across, in politics or otherwise, and I have seen some of the best of them.”
Speaking at a news conference in South Carolina, Trump said he could “fight back” by bringing a lawsuit against Cruz over the fact that he was born in Canada, which Trump argues makes him ineligible to become president.
“If he doesn’t take down his false ads and retract his lies, I will do so immediately,” he said. (Read more from “Trump Is Threatening Cruz With This Major Lawsuit If Ted Doesn’t Remove ‘False Ads'” HERE)
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Donald Trump: Ted Cruz Is ‘Unstable’
By Jeremy Diamond and Tom LoBianco. Donald Trump escalated his battle with Ted Cruz on Monday, calling the Texas senator “unstable,” threatening a lawsuit and urging the Republican National Committee to “intervene.”
“One of the ways I can fight back is to bring a lawsuit against him relative to the fact that he was born in Canada and therefore cannot be President,” Donald Trump said in a statement. “If he doesn’t take down his false ads and retract his lies, I will do so immediately. Additionally, the RNC should intervene and if they don’t they are in default of their pledge to me. ”
The billionaire businessman later held a press conference in which he said he “never ever met a person that lies more than Ted Cruz.”
Trump continued to heap criticism on Cruz in an interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto Monday afternoon on “The Lead,” saying that with “guys like Ted Cruz — it’s all talk and no action.” (Read more from “Donald Trump: Ted Cruz Is ‘Unstable'” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/hqdefault-30.jpg360480Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-02-15 23:59:192016-04-11 10:52:36Trump Is Threatening Cruz With This Major Lawsuit If Ted Doesn’t Remove ‘False Ads’
Hillary Clinton’s stump speech has gone to the dogs.
Not really. But Clinton told a colorful story on Monday in Reno that ended with the former secretary of state barking like a dog . . .
“One of my favorite political ads of all time was a radio ad in rural Arkansas where the announcer said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if somebody running for office said something, we could have an immediate reaction to whether it was true or not. Well, we have trained this dog. Well, the dog, if it is not true, he is going to bark,'” Clinton said. “And the dog was barking on the radio and so people were barking at each other for days after that.”
“I want to figure out how we can do that with Republicans. We need to get that dog and follow them around and every time they say these things like, ‘Oh, the Great Recession was caused by too much regulation,’ arh, arh, arh, arh,” Clinton said, letting out a barking noise that caused the audience to laugh and some people to mimic her. (Read more from “Hillary Clinton Barks Like a Dog to Slam Republicans” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/15597723400_aa7befc853_b.jpg504720Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-02-15 23:58:322016-04-11 10:52:37Hillary Clinton Barks Like a Dog to Slam Republicans
A three-judge federal appeals panel in Washington has overturned a lower court ruling that allowed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to withhold documents from the public regarding its Fast and Furious gun-running scandal.
Senior Circuit Judge Douglas Ginsburg, who wrote the February 12 ruling, cited a prior case which found that “the test for determining whether an agency has improperly withheld records placed under seal by a court is ‘whether the seal, like an injunction, prohibits the agency from disclosing the records’.”
But “the government has not carried its burden in this case,” Ginsburg concluded.
However, Friday’s appellate ruling does not order the immediate release of the Fast and Furious documents which Judicial Watch had requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It merely sends the case back to the lower court for clarification.
In Operation Fast and Furious, Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents in Phoenix allowed drug cartel “straw purchasers” to buy more than 2,000 firearms in the U.S. and smuggle them over the border into Mexico, including two AK-47s used to murder U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in 2010. (Read more from “Appeals Panel Overturns Ruling Allowing DOJ to Withhold Fast and Furious Docs” HERE)
President Obama’s silence on a wave of recent killings of police officers is being ripped by law enforcement, with one Maryland sheriff taking to Facebook to mock that he will “save you a spot next to me!” at this week’s funerals for two deputies.
“Mr. President, your silence about these events SPEAKS VOLUMES!!!! PS: I’ll be standing outside in the cold next week with my deputies for the funerals of the Harford Co deputies; I’ll save you a spot next to me!” Facebooked Carroll County Sheriff Jim DeWees.
His post, blasted throughout law enforcement social media and highlighted by the National Sheriffs’ Association, has become part of the rallying cry among cops that the president is ignoring attacks on them, and even fostering anti-police feelings.
The Fraternal Order of Police even called on Obama to expand hate-crime laws to those targeting police. In a letter also posted on Facebook, FOP President Chuck Canterbury wrote, “Mr. President, that is eight officers–six in less than a week–who have been gunned down by assailants striking from ambush or career criminals with active warrants who decided they would not be taken into custody, no matter the cost. Enough is enough! This must end.” (Read more from “Obama Silence on Cop Deaths Ripped, ‘I’ll Save You a Spot’ at Funerals Mocks Sheriff” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Barack_Obama_at_White_House_gun_violence_meeting.jpg27314096Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-02-15 23:54:542016-04-11 10:52:38Obama Silence on Cop Deaths Ripped, ‘I’ll Save You a Spot’ at Funerals Mocks Sheriff
Before George Washington’s birthday was hijacked and replaced with a generic “Presidents Day,” February 22 was a day to celebrate the father of our country. Because Washington refused to become king and instead opted to humbly serve his country as its first elected president, the observance of his birthday is really a celebration of our Constitution and the entire republican system of governance upon which our nation depends. In that sense, Presidents Day is truly a day to recognize we are a Republic, not a monarchy.
In a revolutionary break from the rest of the 18th century political world, the newly-crafted Constitution vested the president with executive authority to “faithfully executive the laws,” not craft the laws. When contrasting the power of a king from that of a president, Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist #69 that “[T]he one [a president] can confer no privileges whatever; the other [a king] can make denizens of aliens, noblemen of commoners; can erect corporations with all the rights incident to corporate bodies.”
How far we have fallen that we now have a president who confers all sorts of privileges including “making denizens of aliens;” the very example of legislative authority Hamilton promised the people of New York would not be vested in the office of chief executive.
Although the power of the presidency was not to have any semblance of the power of the king, our Founders still felt that the faithful execution of the laws was a grave task that should only be vested in one man and in a man of faith.
In defending the decision by the Constitutional Convention to vest the executive authority in one man instead of a tribunal, the great James Wilson said the following during debate at the Pennsylvania Ratification Convention:
“[h]e cannot act improperly, and hide either his negligence or inattention; he cannot roll upon any other person the weight of his criminality; no appointment can take place without his nomination; and he is responsible for every nomination he makes.”
[Listen to a recent interview with the author:]
Hamilton in Federalist #70 explained the need for a one-man executive as such:
It is evident from these considerations, that the plurality of the Executive tends to deprive the people of the two greatest securities they can have for the faithful exercise of any delegated power, first, the restraints of public opinion, which lose their efficacy, as well on account of the division of the censure attendant on bad measures among a number, as on account of the uncertainty on whom it ought to fall; and, second, the opportunity of discovering with facility and clearness the misconduct of the persons they trust, in order either to their removal from office or to their actual punishment in cases which admit of it.
However, the Founders never envisioned two problems: the creation of political parties and the decline of religion and virtue among our civil society.
Political parties have rendered the desideratum of separation of powers and checks and balances moot. The legislature can no longer properly check a lawless executive because it is most often comprised of enough party loyalists who will operate in tandem with the president instead of as a separate body of government.
Moreover, we have lost a sense of how important religious virtue is for both the president and the people as a whole. The man we celebrate this time of year, our very first president, devoted the largest share of his seminal farewell address to the importance of religion and virtue:
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
When the president no longer believes religion is needed to maintain morality and when much of the society agrees with that view, there is nothing keeping the most powerful man in the country from acting despotically. Yet ironically, and thankfully for all of us, the one president who could have been a king was guided by the religious virtues to place the interests of the republic over his own power or ambition. Nobody expressed the importance of George Washington better than Calvin Coolidge during a 1927 speech honoring our first president:
His was the directing spirit without which there would have been no independence, no Union, no Constitution, and no Republic. His ways were the ways of truth. He built for eternity. His influence grows. His stature increases with the increasing years. In wisdom of action, in purity of character, he stands alone. We can not yet estimate him. We can only indicate our reverence for him and thank the Divine Providence which sent him to serve and inspire his fellow men.
[Listen to a recent interview with the author:]
We can only hope and pray that in 339 days our society is virtuous enough to elect a president who is endowed with a fraction of Washington’s religious virtue and guiding principles. (For more from the author of “Presidents Day Is Really About Honoring the Legacy of One Man” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/george-washington-statue-praying.jpg373663Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-02-15 10:45:472016-04-11 10:52:39Presidents Day Is Really About Honoring the Legacy of One Man
By Eva Ruth Moravec, Sari Horwitz and Jerry Markon. In the cloistered chambers of the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia’s days were highly regulated and predictable. He met with clerks, wrote opinions and appeared for arguments in the august courtroom on a schedule set months in advance.
Yet as details of Scalia’s sudden death trickled in Sunday, it appeared that the hours afterward were anything but orderly. The man known for his elegant legal opinions and profound intellect was found dead in his room at a hunting resort by the resort’s owner, who grew worried when Scalia didn’t appear at breakfast Saturday morning.
It then took hours for authorities in remote West Texas to find a justice of the peace, officials said Sunday. When they did, Presidio County Judge Cinderela Guevara pronounced Scalia dead of natural causes without seeing the body — which is permissible under Texas law — and without ordering an autopsy. . .
One of two other officials who were called but couldn’t get to Scalia’s body in time said that she would have made a different decision on the autopsy. (Read more from “Confusing, Conflicting Reports Surround Antonin Scalia’s Death” HERE)
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Scalia Found Dead With ‘Pillow Over His Head’
By WND. Since Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead in his resort hotel room at Cibolo Creek Creek Ranch on Saturday, questions have been flying about the immediate declaration of “natural causes” as the means of death.
According to the ranch owner, Scalia was described as “animated and engaged” during dinner Friday night. He was one of three dozen invitees to an event unrelated to law or politics . . .
Houston businessman John Poindexter, who owns the 30,000-acre luxury ranch, told the San Antonio Express-News: “He was seated near me and I had a chance to observe him. He was very entertaining. But about 9 p.m. he said, ‘It’s been a long day and a long week, I want to get some sleep.’”
Poindexter knocked on Scalia’s door about 8:30 the next morning. The door was locked and the judge did not answer. Three hours later, Poindexter returned from an outing and determined Scalia was still missing.
“We discovered the judge in bed, a pillow over his head. His bed clothes were unwrinkled,” said Poindexter. (Read more from “Scalia Found Dead With ‘Pillow Over His Head'” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Antonin_Scalia_official_SCOTUS_portrait_crop.jpg13081046Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-02-14 23:39:252016-04-11 10:52:39Confusing, Conflicting Reports Surround Antonin Scalia’s Death; Found With a Pillow OVER His Head
Mere minutes after the terrible news of Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia’s death broke across social media, left-wingers took to Twitter to gloat and spew:
[Warning: Graphic Language]
Fuck you, Scalia. Rot in hell. Learn the law while you down there, bitch. *spitshttps://t.co/XZfdZeAh5b
A few minutes after the hate wave came a stream of tweets from libs voting on their preferred replacement. Loretta Lynch? Eric Holder? Nope. The top vote-getter appears to be…Obama himself.
An exasperated Hillary Clinton wondered how to keep her husband in check after a newspaper report questioned her husband’s loyalty to President Obama and suggested Bill could cost him re-election in 2012, a newly released State Department e-mail revealed.
State Department counselor and Hillary friend Cheryl Mills sent her a Washington Post story headlined, “Bill Clinton’s ego could cost Obama in November,” on June 6, 2012.
“What can be done?” Clinton replied less than two hours later.
The exchange was one of a new batch of 550 private e-mails the State Department released Saturday. Of those, 84 were labeled “confidential,” the lowest level of classification. Three others, detailing Clinton’s role in some of the most pressing foreign-policy crises of the Obama administration, were classified “secret” . . .
The three “secret” e-mails revealed Saturday dealt with the former Secretary of State’s doing damage control after a US raid killed Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011 and an Egypt-Israeli border conflict at the Sinai Peninsula in August 2012. (Read more from “Hillary Anxious About Bill’s Loyalty During Election: Emails” HERE)
Justice Scalia’s final written dissent was in an obscure case that is only known to those in the electric power industry. But this case, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission v. Electric Power Supply Association, is the embodiment of what is wrong with the modern court system and exemplifies Scalia’s commitment to the written law.
Without getting into the weeds of the case, the Federal Power Act [16 U.S.C. § 791] authorizes the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to regulate wholesale electric power market but explicitly prohibits the FERC from regulating “any other sale” of electricity. Anything on the retail side is left to the states. In 2011, FERC promulgated a “demand response” regulation providing for monetary incentives to large electricity consumers, such as hospitals and schools, that reduce their consumption during peak usage times. This is one of the tools in the “clean energy” cartel’s arsenal to limit the use of fossil fuels.
Obviously, the case, its ramifications, and its stakeholders is an extremely complex case study. But the legal question was very simple. Does FERC have the authority to promulgate such a regulation on the consumer side when statute explicitly leaves this to the states and actually prohibits FERC from stepping outside of the wholesale market?
In an opinion eerily similar to King v. Burwell, in which Chief Justice Roberts completely rewrote Obamacare’s health care subsidy scheme in order to accommodate a lawless executive agency, Justice Kagan rewrote the Federal Power Act to do the exact opposite of its intent. Just like Obamacare was designed to only incentivized those states that establishes state exchanges, yet Roberts translated “state” into “federal,” Kagan translated “wholesale” into retail – manifestly opposite from the original intent of the statute.
At its core, the key function of the court is to apply statutes to cases and controversies, not rewrite statutes and the Constitution. As I’ve often said before, when executive agencies violate congressional laws, it is the quintessential time for the courts to step in and do their job; namely, interpret the law as written. Yet, in the FERC case, Roberts and Kennedy joined with the four liberals to overturn the D.C. Court of Appeals, which struck down the FERC rule, in an opinion written by the inimitable Janice Rogers Brown.
In his characteristic clarity for explaining the written law, Scalia demolished Kagan’s opinion, noting that anything that does not regulate wholesale markets is not within the authority of FERC:
While the majority would find every sale of electric energy to be within FERC’s authority to regulate unless the transaction is demonstrably a retail sale, the statute actually excludes from FERC’s jurisdiction all sales of electric energy except those that are demonstrably sales at wholesale. So what, exactly, is a “sale of electric energy at wholesale”? We need not guess, for the Act provides a definition: “a sale of electric energy to any person for resale.” §824(d) (emphasis added). No matter how many times the majority incants and italicizes the word “wholesale,” ante, at 19–20, nothing can change the fact that the vast majority of (and likely all) demand-response participants—“[a]ggregators of multiple users of electricity, as well as large-scale individual users like factories or big-box stores,” ante,at 7—do not resell electric energy; they consume it themselves. FERC’s own definition of demand response is aimed at energy consumers, not resellers.
Scalia went on to use the majority’s own examples against their conclusion. The bottom line in this case and in every case of statutory interpretation is that one must always interpret the law as written, not as one wants it written or in a way that would make things more practical.
This is what Scalia taught us for his almost three decades on the court. And it was so eloquently on display in this dissent published on January 25, 2016. The law is the law. If you don’t like it, there is a democratic process through which one can modify it. But the court is not the place for rewriting statutes.
It’s also worth reading another dissent Scalia wrote on January 25 in Montgomery v. Louisiana. In that case, Roberts and Kennedy joined with the four leftists to retroactively apply a decision rewriting the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause, thereby paving the road for the release of a number of violent murderers who were sentenced to life without parole.
Sadly, not only do we have 4-6 justices who, at any given time, believe it is their job to rewrite the Constitution and the role of the court, but we have 4-6 justices who abdicate their core Constitutional responsibility to interpret statutes as written and not factor in political considerations or efficient market outcomes.
Scalia’s untimely death leaves a gaping hole in an already irremediably broken institution. (For more from the author of “Justice Scalia’s Final Dissent” please click HERE)
Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead of apparent natural causes Saturday on a luxury resort in West Texas, federal officials said.
Scalia, 79, was a guest at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a resort in the Big Bend region south of Marfa.
According to a report, Scalia arrived at the ranch on Friday and attended a private party with about 40 people. When he did not appear for breakfast, a person associated with the ranch went to his room and found a body.
Chief U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia, of the Western Judicial District of Texas, was notified about the death from the U.S. Marshals Service. (Read more from this story HERE)
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Leftists: “Breathtaking” Consequences of Scalia’s Death
IMMIGRATION: United States v. Texas concerns the legality of Obama administration immigration policies that, if allowed to take effect, will temporarily enable close to five million undocumented immigrants to remain in the county. It is also the case that presents the most opportunity for chaos if the Court evenly divides on the outcome…
ABORTION: Another case out of Texas, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, also could lead to confusion if the Court evenly divides. Whole Woman’s Health is the greatest threat to Roe v. Wade to reach the Supreme Court in a generation. If five justices back the Texas law in this case, it is unclear that there will be any meaningful limits on states’ ability to pass anti-abortion laws. . .
UNIONS: Public sector unions are saved, at least for now. After oral arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, it appeared likely that an ambitious effort to defund public sector unions would gain five votes on the Supreme Court. Now this effort only has four votes. Moreover, because the plaintiffs in this case lost in the court below, a decision affirming the lower court in an evenly divided vote is effectively a victory for organized workers…
Editors note: ThinkProgress’s Ian Millhiser also discusses redistricting, affirmative action, “the fate of the Earth,” and birth control. See the full article discussing the implications of Scalia’s death HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-02-14 23:01:002016-04-11 10:52:42Supreme Court Justice Scalia Found Dead
