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Congress Must Reassert its Authority and Preserve our Constitution

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120114_hn_immigration_640It’s unconstitutional.

It’s reckless.

It’s lawless.

All these things have been said about President Obama’s executive action on immigration—a breathtaking order that not only changes laws passed by Congress, but will likely send millions of mostly low-skill workers flooding into a workplace that is already struggling to raise wages and find room for all those needing jobs.

Immigration is a remarkably complex subject, and not just as a matter of policy. Our nation’s immigration laws can be difficult to understand. Our Constitution, however, isn’t complicated. Our system of government is simple.
Congress writes the law, the president executes the law, and the judiciary interprets the law. The president does not make new law.

That concept is called the “separation of powers,” and it’s of core importance to our democracy. As a bulwark against tyranny, our Founders determined that no single branch of government could perform all the functions of government—making, enforcing, and interpreting the law. In other words, our Founders took the classic powers of a king and divided them between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

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Finally . . . a Federal Judge Follows the Constitution, Upholds Traditional Marriage

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Photo Credit: BreitbartA federal judge has upheld Puerto Rico’s traditional marriage law, bucking the recent trend of federal courts to strike down state laws enshrining traditional marriage. District judge Juan M. Perez-Gimenez, a Carter appointee, delivered a ruling that relied on a conservative reading of the Constitution and legal precedent, and created the potential for a split among the U.S. circuits that could prod the Supreme Court to take up the question in future. . .

In an elegant decision handed down Tuesday, Perez-Gimenez relies on two basic arguments. First, he notes that the U.S. Constitution is silent on marriage, thus reserving authority over marriage to the states–and adds that a 1972 precedent to that effect in Baker v. Nelson, which other courts have considered void, still holds. Only the Supreme Court, Perez-Gimenez says, may overturn Baker–and to this date, he notes, it has declined to do so.

Second, Perez-Gimenez notes that last year’s twin rulings in the celebrated U.S. v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry do not actually void state powers to ban gay marriage. Hollingsworth v. Perry, he notes, was dealt with on procedural grounds, and though Windsor struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, it “reaffirms the States’ authority over marriage, buttressing Baker’s conclusion that marriage is simply not a federal question.”

Judge Perez-Gimenez leaves substantive questions about marriage for his conclusion, which is likely to be the most controversial part of the decision, but presents the case for traditional marriage as well as it has been put forth anywhere in recent years. Perez-Gimenez notes the “centuries”-old principle that “the very survival of the political order depends upon the procreative potential embodied in traditional marriage”

Furthermore, Perez-Gimenez notes, gay marriage activists have not explained how their logic, using the Equal Protection Clause, would preclude polygamy or incest. Such questions do not arise from “cruel discrimination and ridicule,” he says, but are legitimate and demand that proponents of a “right” to gay marriage “render reasons justifying the change and articulate the principles that they claim will limit this newly fashioned right.”

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Religious Liberty Advocates: Americans Don’t Care Enough About Their Constitutional Rights

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Photo Credit: Reuters Houston Mayor Anisse Parker is infringing upon American citizen’s basic constitutional rights and the people should be outraged, author Eric Metaxas told The Daily Caller.

“We should be out in the streets, banging pots and pans,” Metaxas said. “This is big news, and we should be alarmed: we should be sounding the alarm.”

The city of Houston subpoenaed sermons and personal correspondence on the topics of homosexuality and gender identity from a group of five pastors. This is not an issue of religion, but an issue of constitutional rights, Rev. Dave Welch, executive director of the Texas Pastor Council told TheDC.

“This kind of overreach by government, directly into constitutionally protected activities, both of petition and of speech and religion, is just unprecedented,” Welch said.

In response to the Houston subpoena, the Southern Baptist-affiliated Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) proposed that pastors across the nation send their sermons to the mayor’s office. The group’s president Dr. Russell Moore told TheDC that the ERLC had an immediate response of pastors in Houston and around the country that wanted to stand in solidarity with the pastors who had been subpoenaed.

Read more from this story HERE.

WATCH: College Officials Caught on Video Threatening to ARREST Conservatives Handing Out Constitutions

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Photo Credit: ARCHIVES.GOVThe First Amendment, particularly the freedom of political speech, is under assault in our country.

Democrats in Congress are trying to amend the First Amendment and place limits campaign financing, which is recognized as free speech. Fortunately, they have met with resistance in the Senate.

The attack on free speech is mostly evident though in the new creation of so-called “First Amendment zones” or “designated free speech areas”, which are designed to contain and constrain legitimate protests and expressions of political dissent.

College and High School campuses have been just as bad, if not worse, in their efforts to control political speech. A high school recently confiscated American flags from students on the anniversary of 9/11, and the University of Wyoming has PREVENTED a student who is an Army veteran from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, as it might be “offensive” to some students.

This politically correct push to not offend anyone is actually offensive in and of itself. It is also the driving force behind the restrictive “speech codes” found on most liberal COLLEGE CAMPUSES these days. Such is the case at Penn State University, where students were prevented from handing out Constitutions on Constitution Day, according to Breitbart.

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N.J. Cop in Obama Rant Speaks Out and Resigns

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

Richard Recine’s 36-year career as a police officer came crashing down this week after he was caught on camera saying police do not have to follow the Constitution because President Barack Obama doesn’t either.

On Thursday, Recine — who had retired from the Franklin police force in 2006 and was working part time here as a special police officer — submitted his resignation.

“I don’t want to give a black eye to law enforcement,” Recine, 59, said Thursday in an exclusive interview with MyCentralJersey.com. “People are saying some really nasty stuff about cops. I don’t want all officers painted with the same brush.”

Borough Administrator Herbert Massa said the resignation was accepted by Police Director Robert Manney, who had called Recine’s comments an “embarrassment.”

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SHOCK VIDEO: Cop Explains Why Police No Longer Follow the Constitution

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0 (93)By Matt Agorist.

A brutally candid video was captured and uploaded to youtube Monday of an Helmetta, NJ cop.

Steve Wronko had gone to the Helmetta Police Department with a list of objections about recent violations at the Helmetta Regional Animal Shelter. According to the Community outreach facebook page created to expose the atrocities of the shelter, Reform Helmetta Regional Animal Shelter, there is a long stemming controversy from the Helmetta Mayor, Nancy Martin.

Martin also happens to be the tax collector for the City of Perth. In 2011, Martin made her son, Brandon Metz, the head of the Animal Shelter. She also appointed him to Animal Cruelty Investigator, Borough Laborer, Water Meter Reader, and Certified Recycling Co-ordinator, according to the facebook page.

When Wronko went to the police department to voice his complaints about the violations of his Constitutional rights by this corrupt, nepotistic system, he was met with even more corruption.

Read more from this story HERE.

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sorry-obama-but-there-are-no-excuses-for-war-crimes-621x330Lefty Newspaper Slams Obama On Immigration: You Don’t ‘Have A License To Tear Up The Constitution’

By Justen Charters.

On Tuesday, the editorial board for the Washington Post penned a column calling out Obama for wanting to act without Congress on immigration.

From the Washington Post:

STYMIED BY congressional paralysis, President Obama is reportedly considering unilateral action to address — though surely not fix — the nation’s immigration policy mess and the more recent surge of minors streaming across the southwestern border.

Obstinate, hopelessly partisan and incapable of problem-solving, Congress is a mess. But that doesn’t grant the president license to tear up the Constitution.

Regardless of what President Obama thinks, he does not have the power to write laws or act without Congressional approval. Since Obamacare officially became the law, it has been changed by executive action twenty four times, according to the Galen Institute.

Read more from this story HERE.

Congresswoman Sees 'Threat' In Constitution

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

The head of a gun-rights organization is delivering a lesson on the Constitution to a member of Congress who claimed his statements on the Second Amendment constituted a threat against her.

“Allow me to explain the obvious,” Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, wrote in an open letter to Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.

“I have never encouraged, or even suggested, that anyone harm anyone. Rather, my speech was designed to educate citizens, and politicians, that it is the fact that Americans are armed that allows them to resist efforts to be dominated, intimidated, or controlled by politicians.”

His letter came after Maloney reported him to Capitol Police and the House Sergeant-at-Arms because of his statements in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.

In the interview, she alleged, “Mr. Pratt is actively encouraging his members to threaten violent action against members of Congress.”

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Nancy Pelosi Wants to Amend the Constitution to Overturn This Supreme Court Decision

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Photo Credit: AP / Cliff Owen

Photo Credit: AP / Cliff Owen

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) believes restrictions on political spending would guarantee more women, minorities and young people get elected, and she is willing to amend the Constitution to get those limits.

“We have the legislation to do it that dares to disclose who is this money coming from and amend the Constitution to overturn Citizens United,” Pelosi said when speaking Wednesday at the Make Progress Conference, sponsored by the Center for American Progress. “This special interest money is suffocating the airwaves, causing confusion.”

The Democratically-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee recently voted to send a bill to the floor to amend the Constitution to allow Congress and state legislatures to put spending limits on political campaigns.

The U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 in the 2010 Citizens United ruling and this year in the McCutcheon ruling that political spending is speech and caps by government violated the First Amendment.

“In order to take back our politics, we must reduce the role of money in politics and increase the level of civility,” Pelosi said. “I guarantee you, if we increase the level of civility and reduce the role of money, we will allow more women, more minorities, more young people to elective office.”

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University President Calls Law Requiring Study of Constitution ‘Archaic’

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Photo Credit: Thomas Cooper University of South Carolina president Harris Pastides is refusing to comply with a state law that requires all public universities to teach students about America’s founding documents, including the Constitution, calling it “archaic.” In a bit of irony that is apparently lost on Pastides, USC claims the state law is itself unconstitutional.

Section 59-29-120 of the South Carolina Code requires students be taught the “essentials of the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers,” and goes on to provide that “no student in any such school, college, or university may receive a certificate of graduation without previously passing a satisfactory examination upon the provisions and principles” of those documents. A number of South Carolina universities do not require students to take such courses or pass such an exam—most notably the state’s flagship institution: the University of South Carolina.

When asked about this by a student at an academic forum in 2013, the vice provost of USC, Dr. Helen Doerpinghaus, claimed that while the university did not follow the letter of the law, it did follow the “spirit of the law” by handing out pocket-sized Constitutions on Constitution Day. Under this logic, the university must believe it could teach students chemistry by handing out a copy of the Periodic Table on World Science Day on Nov. 10.

Starting in December 2013, several concerned state legislators wrote to the university asking about this failure. President Pastides responded by saying the law was “archaic” and giving multiple reasons for the university’s noncompliance. He also claimed that about 60 percent of students take a political science or history class that discusses these documents, which, of course, means that approximately 40 percent of students don’t take those classes and do not receive a proper grounding in our founding documents and the principles that animate them.

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Obama’s War on the Constitution

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Photo Credit: TownHall “You know I taught constitutional law for 10 years, I take the Constitution very seriously,” then-Sen. Barack Obama said while campaigning in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on March 31, 2008.

“The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all,” Obama continued, “and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States of America.”

More than six years later, we now know that Obama never had any intention of taking the Constitution seriously. Instead, he has violated its core provisions at every turn, launching unauthorized wars, rewriting legislation without Congress’ input, and even creating brand new laws out of whole cloth.

When Obama first uttered the phrase, “If Congress won’t act, I will,” he functionally declared war on the U.S. Constitution. And unless Republicans start standing up to Obama’s lawlessness, our republic may never be the same.

EMBRACING BUSH’S WAR POWERS
Obama made his 2008 promise to “reverse” Bush’s power grab after a supporter questioned why Obama had voted for reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2006 after he had promised to vote against the legislation when he was a U.S. Senate candidate in 2003.

Read more from this story HERE.