forgottenliberty.com

Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY) is the House rules chairwoman.  She, along with the Democratic leadership, has designed a rule regarding the health care bill that trashes the Constitution and openly shows the Fascist tendencies of the Democrat party.  This rule, called the Slaughter Solution (after her name, not because it slaughters the Constitution) will consider the Senate health care bill to have passed the House if a correction to the bill is passed.  For example, the house can vote on a separate bill that removes the “Cornhusker Kickback” from the Senate bill and by doing so, the entire Senate bill will be considered to have passed.  Sound very democratic doesn’t it?  Vote on a portion of the bill and by default, you passed the entire bill.

This will allow the Democrats to pass health care by only requiring lawmakers to vote on correcting a portion of the bill that everyone is already in favor of correcting.  Then, Democratic members of the house can tell their constituents that they didn’t vote for the health care bill, but only voted to remove the abortion funding or the Cornhusker Kickback.  This may help Democrats look better in their campaign commercials, but it is a direct violation of the supreme law of the land.

The small city of King, North Carolina declared a state of emergency due to the winter storm that hammered the mid Atlantic region of the country a few days ago.  As part of this state of emergency declaration, the city empowered itself to severely infringed upon residents Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.  The city enacted many restrictions including a curfew, restrictions on alcohol, and a ban on selling or purchasing firearms and ammunition or the possession of any weapon off of one’s own property.  According to a local news agency,

Effective Sunday afternoon, alcohol restrictions and a curfew were lifted. All other remaining restrictions would continue until Monday, said Paula May, King police chief.

Other restrictions include a ban on the sale or purchase of any type of firearm, ammunition, explosive or any possession of such items off a person’s own premises.

It was so nice of the city on Sunday to give residents back the right to leave their house or buy a beer, but they still denied residents the right to bear arms off of their own property for another day. 

Thursday, the Supreme Court struck a victory for the 1st amendment by declaring large portions of the McCain-Feingold finance law unconstitutional.  Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority said,

…when Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.

By striking this down this bad law, large donors (including corporations) will now be able to purchase air time for political ads leading up to an election.  This did not go over well with liberals and I’ll tell you 2 reasons why.

Reason 1

Up until now, corporations had to give money directly to candidates because they could not spend it on advertising.  In the 2008 election, corporations donated significantly more money to Democrat candidates than Republicans.  Here are a few examples.  The percentages may surprise you.

1 Act Blue $3,151,038 100% Dem 0% GOP Solidly Democratic

2 Goldman-Sachs $1,656,954 71% DEM 29% GOP Strongly Democratic

3 Citigroup Inc. $1,582,857 63% Dem 37% GOP Leans Democratic

4 JP Morgan Chase & Co. $1,171,720 68% Dem 32% GOP Strongly Democratic

5 AT&T Inc. $1,094,144 45% Dem 55% GOP On the fence

6 UBS AG $1,068,953 62% Dem 38% GOP Leans Democratic

7 Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $947,815 98% Dem 2% GOP Solidly Democratic

8 Laborers Union $924,500 91% Dem 9%GOP Solidly Democratic

9 Morgan Stanley $923,850 62% Dem 38%GOP Leans Democratic

Now that these companies can actually purchase ads on TV, they will most likely use their money for flashy 30 second commercials instead of giving directly to politicians.  This means Democrats (and plenty of Republicans) will loose money that they have grown accustomed to receiving.  They don’t like this and now Obama and the rest of them are whining about it.

Reason 2

Our founding fathers were brilliant, educated men who debated vigorously about what the powers of the government should be. They came up with a Constitution, and later a Bill of Rights, which limited and numbered the powers of the government. These documents put many of the people’s rights down on paper with the expectation that these rights would not be infringed upon. When the government tries to restrict the rights of the people there will always be negative consequences. In this video, Dr. Hupp testifies before a Congressional panel about the effect a restriction on her 2nd amendment rights had on her and her family. She also educates our elected representatives on the true meaning of the 2nd amendment and the reason our founders placed it in the Bill of Rights. I know this video is old, and many of you may have seen it before, but it is a great reminder of why we must be vigilant and guard our liberties at all times. “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.” — Patrick Henry.

On Sunday, the White House signaled that it is willing to give up on the public option in the Health Care bill.  According to Politico:

President Barack Obama and his top aides are signaling that they’re prepared to drop a government insurance option from a final health-reform deal if that’s what’s needed to strike a compromise on Obama’s top legislative priority.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Sunday that the public option was “not the essential element” of the overhaul. A day earlier, Obama downplayed the public option during a Colorado town hall meeting, saying it was “just one sliver” of the debate.

He even chided Democratic supporters and Republican critics for becoming “so fixated on this that they forget everything else” — a dig at some liberals in his own party who have made the public option the main rallying cry of the health reform debate.

At the same time, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), one of six senators involved in bipartisan Finance Committee negotiations, all but declared the public option dead in the Senate.

“Look, the fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option,” said Conrad, who has pushed an alternative proposal to create a network of consumer cooperatives, on Fox News Sunday. “There never have been. So to continue to chase that rabbit, I think, is just a wasted effort.”

On the surface, this may seem like a victory for conservatives.  It looks like public pressure and opposition to the health care bill is causing the White House to retreat from the most liberal portion of the bill.  Some conservatives may be ready to pat themselves on the back and celebrate, but I’m still very nervous.  I’m nervous because

Health care reform has been in the news every day for a month now, and my recent posts have been a reflection of that.  I’ve covered the angry citizens at Town Halls, insults from leading Democrats directed towards anyone who disagrees with them (here’s a new one from Harry Reid, evil-mongers), and reasons why more government involvement in health care will bring the quality of care down and lead to rationing.  However, up to this point, I have not posted on a certain aspect of this debate that goes to the core of my political philosophy.  This morning, I was given the motivation to blog about it from a Mr. Larry Bassett, who wrote a letter to the editor in my local newspaper.  This particular letter raised my blood pressure a little bit.

The letter was titled Reform Needed Now.  Here is a portion of it: