Justifying the Means

When I was ten years old, I cheated on a geography test. I didn't need to cheat and I was foolish to do it but

I wanted to get 100% so badly that the temptation overwhelmed my better judgment and I got caught by my teacher, Mr. Azar. Mr. Azar was really cool, he was the only male teacher I had in elementary school and I liked him a lot, so the fact that I deliberately disobeyed his instructions only amplified my embarrassment. Even worse, Mr. Azar had been one of my father's students at Indiana State University so they knew each other and Mr. Azar knew that my father would be deeply disappointed when he learned of my behavior, so he wrote a synopsis of my cheating on the test sheet and told me to bring it home for my father to read and sign and then return it the next day. Needless to say, it was a thoroughly humiliating experience that has stayed with me my entire life as an example of how much dealing falsely with others can cost me.

Bill Clinton never gave a damn about dealing falsely with others or embarrassment or humiliation but he cared a lot about what he wanted at any given time, whether it was money or marijuana or sex or dodging the draft or getting elected. After six terms as Governor of Arkansas, he left his state just as poor and hopeless as when he found it and then went on to continue his sociopathic behavior for eight years in the White House where he ruined the careers of the Travel Office staff, drove Vince Foster to suicide, enacted the largest tax increase in history at the time, groped Kathleen Willey, passed on Osama bin Laden, lied about Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky and pardoned Marc Rich. Obeying the law or social norms or even being nice to people were meaningless concepts to him because what he wanted was more important than anything else but in one respect, Bill Clinton's amoral and boorish behavior was less threatening because it was amoral and boorish. We were appalled and disgusted and shocked and we cheered his impeachment but we understood that what we were witnessing was the conduct of an egomaniacal boob driven to gratify his base desires. That is not what we are witnessing now.

Priest-King is committed to creating the model American commune that he has envisioned since his youth. From Saul Alinsky and Bill Ayres and Jeremiah Wright he has received a seething hatred of traditional America and the radical revolutionary doctrine needed to change it, because America was founded by rich white racist European men for their own selfish and greedy purposes and deserves to be broken up and rebuilt. He sees himself as the champion of all the people who are left out, ignored, cheated, deceived and bullied by traditional America, all the people who don't have a chance in a meritocracy where individual freedom, enterprise, self-reliance and limited government are supreme. The poor, feminists, minorities, homosexuals, unions, radical environmentalists, drug users and illegal immigrants all lose in such a meritocracy so traditional America has to be smashed and its broken bits and pieces swept up and reshaped into a fairer, more just society, a society that Karl Marx would be proud of. So, if this society would be not only a dramatic improvement over the original but a model for all societies across the globe, and reforming its health care system is a step toward that society, then anything Priest-King does is justified in achieving it, including brazenly lying to the American people, but here's an important distinction: Priest-King wants to lead the American people into the socialist sunrise and he empathizes with some of them but he doesn't love them and he certainly doesn't trust them. Obamacare is all about rigid state control of health care which by definition eliminates personal choice over which plan vou have or how high the premium may be. Heretofore, the majority of Americans have made choices with which Priest-King vehemently disagrees so he cannot allow them to continue making those choices in the future, else the New America will never be achieved. HE DOESN'T TRUST US TO MAKE OUR OWN DECISIONS, PERIOD. He alone has the knowledge, the wisdom, the expertise, the understanding and the insight needed to decide the fate of 313 million Americans and no-one can gainsay him, he has a sense of mission and an epic self-image that drives him so when he deliberately, consciously and repeatedly lies as to the effects of Obamacare, it is not to gratify some base physical desire but to accomplish a grand design and thus his lies are far more dangerous. Priest-King sees our freedom as an impediment to the America he wants to build and we can't be trusted to make our own decisions, so if he has to mislead us in order to accomplish his goal, then that is perfectly acceptable to him and perfectly antithetical to his oath as President.

As of this writing, over 3.5 million Americans have had their current health care coverage cancelled as a direct result of Obamacare. They can't afford the stratospheric premiums and deductibles of the new plans and they have no idea how they will get the care they need. There is real human pain being inflicted by Obamacare yet Priest-King insist that he didn't lie when he assured the public that, "lf you like your plan, you can keep your plan," and implies that the public should have known that their plans might be changed or even eliminated under the new regime. So it's our fault or the fault of the evil insurance companies who cancelled your plan, even though Obamacare requires them to cancel plans that don't comply with the new standards. The fact that millions of people are now exposed to medical and financial peril, and tens of millions more in the next year, is actually a good thing, he expounds, they'll find that Obamacare is sooo much better than their old defective plans so the lies continue, the suffering and the pain expand and deepen and the country slides toward catastrophe. After witnessing the horrors caused by Vladimir Lenin and Benito Mussolini, by Francisco Franco and Adolf Hitler, by Mao Tse-Tung and Ho Chi Minh, by Fidel Castro and Danny Ortega, you would think that Americans would be smarter than to fall for the same shopworn charms of socialism but we're not. Over sixty-six million of my fellow citizens thought they could get something for nothing from a Leftist demagogue weaned on Chicago goon politics and only now do they realize the depth of their mistake. Maybe it's not too late, maybe Obamacare can be stopped, maybe the damage can be contained and maybe America can be saved, but if it is indeed too late and the damage is irreversible, then we will know exactly when our doom was sealed and why: The moment we cast a vote for Barack Obama and because we believed a lie.

Misery Loves Company

Here's some more grist for the mill:

• The White House and Kathleen Sebelius promise that the HealthCare.gov website will be completely functional by 30 November. Meanwhile, the site continues to crash and when it's available, people cannot complete their applications for coverage and submit them. In fact, HealthCare.gov was unavailable during Secretary Sebelius' testimony to the House on Wednesday the 30th, at the same time she assured the Representatives that it was working.
• During her testimony, Secretary Sebelius also refused to provide an estimate for the number of Americans who have actually purchased health insurance through HealthCare.gov, promising that the administration would publish that estimate by 15 November. Her refusal was consistent with administration policy since White House spokesman Jay Carney and Priest-King himself decline to provide that information, likely because it is an embarrassingly low number.
• FoxNews reports that the major private health insurance companies in the United States are being intimidated by the administration into remaining silent on the entire Obamacare issue, also likely to prevent embarrassment for the President's signature legislative achievement.
• Appeals from a growing number of Democrat politicians notwithstanding, Priest-King refuses to grant a waiver for the individual mandate for any length of time, understanding of course that he has no legal authority to delay or alter any part of the law.
• Those states that are operating their own health care exchanges refuse to publish ratings for the various health care plans that would help citizens make more informed choices about the coverage they buy. The information is readily available but the refusal to provide such ratings seems intended to lure citizens into buying more expensive plans unwittingly.
• As of 29 October, about 1.5 million people have had their individual health insurance policies cancelled. One woman's monthly premium rose from $54 to $557, others have seen their premiums rise 800% with deductibles of $24,000, clearly unaffordable for the average American. This evidence directly contravenes Priest-King's repeated assurances that nobody who preferred their existing health coverage would lose it and that the average American would save $2500 under Obamacare.

The issues with the HealthCare.gov website are bad enough but eventually they will be solved - the administration will spend whatever they have to spend, hire whomever they have to hire and even blow it up and start over if necessary but the technical problems will be fixed. The website is merely the symptom of the law it implements, however, so if premiums and deductibles climb to stratospheric levels and millions of people lose their insurance and people are being herded blindly into health plans they cannot possibly afford and buying coverage they don't need, then the law is working as intended. Obamacare was designed to drive private health insurance providers out of business, forcing their customers into a single government-run construct where they would be trapped forever in a hopelessly wasteful, corrupt, unfair, unjust, complicated, socialist true believer's wet dream of a health care system, so the disintegration ofthe private health insurance market is expected. Imagine! Every American enrolled in Obamacare whether they like it or not, charged whatever premiums the government sees fit to charge, resources shifted from the healthy and the young and the industrious to the sick and the old and the indigent, everyone receiving the same mediocre level of care as slowly and inefficiently as a disinterested government can provide it: Rapture!

This end state - the elimination of the private health insurance market in favor of a massive government program - has been a goal of the Left in this country for decades. John Dingell advocated for the cause as early as the 1950's, Ted Kennedy (bang the drum slowly) championed it in the 1970's and of course, more recently, Priest-King himself predicted and embraced a single-payer system at a meeting of the Service Employees International Union in San Francisco in 2003. To the Left, the only way to ensure that everyone in America receives a nominal level of health care is to eliminate every other possibility and channel everyone (and their resources) into a government system that distributes those resources more fairly, from a healthy, middle-aged and prosperous businessman at the height of his earning potential to an 85 year-old illegal immigrant with tuberculosis and emphysema, for example. Government-controlled health care is an indispensable component of the socialist society that Priest-King envisions and is such a lofty goal and moral imperative that any means are justified in achieving it - requiring the aforesaid businessman to purchase prenatal coverage is one example and Priest-King repeatedly and deliberately lying to the American people is another. (We know, courtesy of NBC News, that the IRS briefed Priest-King in July 2010 that as many as two-thirds of those Americans who buy their own health insurance would lose their coverage as a result of Obamacare, amounting to some 16 million people, yet he continued to assure the country that "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan, period.") And make no mistake: As millions of people lose their insurance and choose to pay an annual fine rather than pay exorbitant premiums, Priest-King will resort to any means to ensure Obamacare's survival. The IRS will become the henchmen of the Sheriff of Nottingham, garnishing wages, condemning property, seizing tax refunds, confiscating retirement funds and savings accounts, grabbing America by the throat and choking every possible penny out of the unrepentant scofflaws because by God, America will be bent to Priest-King's will and nothing is going to stop him.

And what happens when the (illegally granted) waiver for the business mandate expires in September? Businesses across the country have already been cutting hours and staff to compensate for the extra burden imposed by Obamacare and when faced with certain doom, they will pink-slip their employees in the millions and muddle through as best they can. When Priest-King dictates mandatory minimum standards of coverage for each person whether they need something or not, driving up costs, what are private insurers to do but pass those costs on to their customers, and what are the customers to do but shed workers as fast as they can? The same IRS document obtained by NBC News indicates that as many as 93 million people will lose their employer-provided health insurance as a consequence of Obamacare yet Priest-King presses the accelerator to the floor, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. The entire health care system in the United States could collapse and it will be absolutely unnecessary. This is the new paradigm, America, and if you were stupid enough to vote for Priest-King once or even twice and you thought you would sail through a radical Leftist administration untouched, then you're not only a fool but a damned fool, but look at the bright side: You've got plenty of company.

Surrender Dorothy

As tough and unyielding as Americans tend to portray themselves to be, the real genius of the American character, especially in politics, is the ability to compromise. I'm hardly the first commentator to make this observation but it's useful to remind ourselves of this fact. Very, very rarely does anyone side demand and get everything they wanted on any one issue or other and in no small part because our system was designed that way. Democracy American-style is cumbersome, slow, purposely inefficient, a system in which cooperation, partnerships and negotiation are emphasized over brute power, a system designed to ensure that the views of as many people as possible are respected before decisions are made. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the competing plans of Virginia and New Jersey to determine Congressional representation were resolved by the Great Compromise, wherein the House of Representatives would be based on a state's population while in the Senate, each state would be represented equally, and the support of Southern states for the new Constitution was obtained by compromising on slavery. True, compromising on slavery merely postponed the violent resolution of that issue but   not compromising would have meant the failure of the Convention and likely the dissolution of the Union itself, so the compromise was made, the Constitution was adopted, the new country was provided a unique and amazing form of government and hope for an ultimate and peaceful resolution was placed in the hands of future generations.

Thirty-three years later, Henry Clay of Kentucky led the Compromise of 1820 in which most of the territory gained from France by the Louisiana Purchase was designated as free with the exception of Missouri, which was designated a slave state. The free Northern states didn't want to allow the expansion of slavery west of the Mississippi River but the slave-holding Southern states were threatening to secede from the Union if it were not, and rather than let the Union dissolve, those Congressmen and Senators from the North took what they could get - a mostly free land in the West and accepted something they didn't like - a toehold for slavery beyond the Mississippi. This legislation helped hold the Union together for another thirty years until Mr. Clay's services were once again called upon, this time to broker the Compromise of 1850. Disposition of the land gained from Mexico during our war with that country was the bone of contention in this case, again because the Southern states wanted to expand slavery into the western territories and the Northern states wanted to stop it, and again, the Southern states threatened to secede from the Union if their demands were not respected. Unfortunately, the compromise that Mr. Clay negotiated was a bad one, as the responsibility for deciding the status of new territories was passed from Congress to the territories themselves in a policy called "popular sovereignty," which encouraged slaveholding Southerners to move west and vote for slavery and which also led to violence between the factions. The Compromise of 1850 also included provisions strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act which required all citizens regardless of their political views to actively assist the authorities in capturing runaway slaves, a move that was immensely popular in the South and immensely unpopular in the North, but nonetheless, it bought the Union ten more years before the storm actually broke. When that storm broke, President Abraham Lincoln decided to allow free blacks to serve in the Union Army with the proviso that their officers should be white, which, although resented by the black regiments themselves, put 150,000 additional soldiers into the fight,undoubtedly shortening the war. Lincoln's ability to see the end result - the end of the war - allowed him to accept the criticism and resistance sparked by his decision and ultimately saved lives.

During the Cold War, President Nixon initiated the policy of detente with the Soviet Union which recognized the Soviets as a global superpower but which also reduced the tensions inherent in the previous policy of Mutual Assured Destruction. Nixon realized that if nothing changed, the Americans and the Soviets would eventually destroy each other and much of the rest of the world. Detente would come at a price - the Soviets would amass a huge nuclear arsenal, would dominate Eastern Europe, would establish Communist beachheads in Africa and Latin America and invade Afghanistan - but would reduce the immediate threat of a cataclysmic nuclear war. People may differ on the wisdom of Nixon's policy but if the goal was to prevent war, then the compromise succeeded. Within the current administration, Priest-King compromised in December 2010 by extending the Bush tax cuts and to revise estate taxes in order to prevent a shutdown of the Federal government. It was no coincidence that this compromise followed the "shellacking" delivered by the Republicans in the midterm elections that year but it nonetheless demonstrated that Priest-King himself is willing to compromise when it is in his interest to do so, so for him to flatly refuse to negotiate with the Republicans in our current crisis is a patently ludicrous position to take. To insist that the Republicans simply surrender their principles, their constituents and their interests flies in the face of 237 years of American history as well as political reality: The House Republicans cannot govern without Priest-King and Priest-King cannot govern without the House Republicans. Both sides need each other and cannot execute their duties without each other. Compromise should not be a dirty word.

But how did we get here? Why did the Federal government shut down for sixteen days? What was so important that 313 million people lived without a government for a fortnight plus two? One word: Obamacare. Conservative Republicans took a stand against Obamacare because it is a disaster and because their constituents demanded its defunding. Despite the criticism from the leftist Democrats and RINO Republicans, the conservatives insisted that fighting Obamacare and the associated colossal level of spending was worth a government shutdown. The initial evidence proves their claim:

• Creating the HealthCare.gov website and associated health care exchanges was supposed to cost $93 million. We now know that it actually cost $634 million, nearly seven times as much.
• Despite the massive resources lavished to create it, the HealthCare.gov website is dysfunctional. Users are required to create an account, divulging their personal information, before they are allowed to browse the available health care plans. The website also obscures the actual cost of the health care plans until the user has created an account, meaning the user is committed before they know how much they will have to pay. The website also frequently crashes.
• Premiums under Obamacare are 6-8 times what people previously paid for their health insurance, and deductibles for family coverage are as high as $10,000 per year. Consumers are liable to have their tax refunds seized to pay the premiums, their cars, their 401k retirement funds, even their homes.
• The Priest-King administration refuses to disclose how many people have actually purchased health insurance through Obamacare but the UK Daily Mail newspaper reports that only 51,000 people nationwide have signed up. If Obamacare was intended to cover 30 million uninsured Americans, this represents a colossal failure for the program, on top of the 2000± businesses and unions that have been exempted for a year.

So stopping Obamacare and stratospheric Federal spending was worth a bloody fight, even if we didn't win. For me, I would rather go down swinging than lamely accept the status quo. (Are you listening, Senator Corker? Are you listening, Congressman Peter King?) This law will ruin America and it is the obligation of our elected officials to stop it, slow it down or at least kick it in the knees. The fact that Priest-King and his cronies in the Senate defended it so desperately is an indication of how shaky they think it is. For example, the offer that the House Republicans made - a delay of the individual mandate for one year - was perfectly reasonable given that Priest-King had already unilaterally delayed the business mandate for the same period, but was absolutely unacceptable to the Emperor of the Americas. Why would he refuse to consider something so modest? Because such a compromise, though reasonable, would kill the plan. Obamacare hinges on tens of millions of healthy young Americans paying painfully high premiums in order to defray the health costs of an aging population (and 21 million illegals). Even a short delay would drain Obamacare of the billions of dollars it needs and would expire coincident with the midterm Congressional elections, magnifying the political danger the Democrats would face, so Priest-King refused, and refused, and refused again.

So if he defended Obamacare so ferociously, why couldn't Priest-King relent on government spending or the debt ceiling or entitlement reform? Why did he instruct Harry Reid to refuse to consider any of the eleven bills that the House passed that would have funded the government by parts, which is perfectly within its authority to do? To insist that Republicans give him everything he wants before he deigned to negotiate with them only enfuriated the opposition, stiffening their resolve to fight him, so why take such an intractable position when we were only 24 hours from the first default in our history? It is part of Priest-King's character to demand absolute obedience to his will and it was that part of George Ill's character that led the American colonists to rebel. His election and reelection confirmed in his mind that he has a mandate from the people to transform the United States from its corrupt and unjust founding to a true socialist model, that his word is holy writ, beyond question and to be obeyed. Skepticism and -God forbid it - open resistance to his leadership are treachery, even treasonous, and deserve to be crushed, and he discards evidence that his signature legislative achievement is failing just as his critics predicted. Preventing a default of the Federal government is not his primary objective so he will defend Obamacare to the last, watch the country he has twice sworn to defend slide into financial abyss, damn the Republicans to hell and then go play golf. To those Leftist Democrats and moderate Republicans who urged caution, who attacked Ted Cruz and Mike Lee as too extreme, who would rather go along to get along, who would rather quit than try, who oppose Big Government but just not today, I would ask two questions:

1. When ordinary Americans have their wages garnished to pay an $18,000 health insurance premium they cannot afford and they are driven to food stamps to feed their families,because you thought fighting like hell to prevent their ruin wasn't worth it, how exactly will you answer them?
2. Exactly where are your balls?

Theater of the Absurd

It would be funny if it weren't so serious:

• April 2007: Nancy Pelosi meets with Bashar Assad in Damascus in a deliberate attempt to undermine President George W. Bush's Middle East policy. She declares that, "The road to Damascus is the road to peace."
• John Kerry meets with Bashar Assad repeatedly between 2007-2011, stating that Assad is a "very generous" man.
• In 2011, Priest-King states that "Assad must go."
• On 20 August 2012, during a press conference, Priest-King states that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would constitute a "red line," implying that strong U.S. military action would result. This comment followed press leaks regarding the Osama bin Laden raid, the Flame virus used to cripple the Iranian nuclear program and aggressive Predator drone strikes to kill terrorists abroad, all designed to burnish Priest-King's reputation as a strong defender of U.S. national security during the Presidential election campaign.
• On 19 March 2013, chemical weapons were used against a rebel-held district in Aleppo, Syria. At Russia's urging, Syria asks the UN to investigate the attack, then Russia delays the investigation for a month until Great Britain and the United States confirm that sarin gas was used to kill 25 people and injure 86 others. Although his "red line" has been crossed, Priest-King does nothing.
• On 21 August 2013, chemical weapons were used against a rebel-held district in Damascus, killing over 1400 people including 400 children, in the middle of the night. Although it appears that the Syrian regime carried out the attack, Priest-King does nothing. The same day, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, sends a letter to Congressman Eliot Engel stating that American military intervention in the Syrian civil war would help rebel forces that do not support U.S. interests. It is estimated that foreign fighters linked to AI Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood constitute as much as one-third of the rebel force trying to overthrow the Bashar Assad regime, thus arming the rebels would also arm America's sworn enemies.
• On 30 August 2013, the British House of Commons sternly rejects a resolution on the use of force against the Assad regime for the chemical weapons attack on the 21st. With that setback in mind, Priest-King states that he has the authority to order an attack against Syria without Congressional approval and orders Navy warships to the eastern Mediterranean, but reverses himself the next day, announcing that he would request Congressional authorization for any military action. Public opinion trends heavily against any strike as the American people are exhausted after twelve years of war, a fact that Priest-King leveraged when he ordered the withdrawal of American combat forces from Iraq and Afghanistan the previous year, and support in Congress is tepid.
• While in Stockholm for the G-20 summit on 05 September, Priest-King states, "I didn't set a red line" concerning Syria's chemical weapons, contradicting his statement of the previous year and the emphasis he had placed on Congressional authorization, and confirmed that if Congress rejected the resolution on the use of force, he could still order an attack on his own authority. This was apparently an attempt to shift responsibility for any action - or inaction - to the Congress and the international community at large while still appearing assertive.
• 09 September 2013: As an overwhelming defeat of the Congressional resolution appears imminent, John Kerry states that Syria can avoid an attack by relinquishing control of its chemical weapons stockpile to the international community within a week, apparently as an offhand remark, but adds, "It can't be done." Within hours, Russia prompts Syria's foreign minister to accept Kerry's offer, forestalling the threatened u.s. strike, yet Priest-King still sends his senior national security staff to Capitol Hill to press for Congressional authorization anyway. The following evening, Priest-King addresses the nation, urging the public and Congress to support a military strike against Syria but announces that he was asking for a postponement of a vote on his resolution and that such a strike was also being postponed in favor of negotiations regarding the Russian plan.

In technical terms, this is called a Mongolian goatrope. It is an absolutely gorgeous train wreck, a confused, twisted, incoherent mess that laughably passes for foreign policy. No consistency, no plan, no single person in charge, nobody knows really what the objective is, not even the President. We embrace Assad, we demand his ouster; we toss out bluffs and throwaway lines that turn into policy, then follow them or ignore them as the wind blows; we do nothing, we threaten massive reprisal, we threaten "unbelievably small" reprisal, we do nothing again; we'll go it alone, we'll ask for Congress' authorization, we'll go it alone even if Congress declines authorization, we'll ask Congress to postpone a vote on authorization; we refuse to arm the Syrian rebels because many of them are Al Qaeda terrorists then threaten to attack the regime they are fighting to overthrow. And let's not forget that all this confusion is piled on top of hesitation to support the overthrow of the Tunisian government during the Arab Spring, followed by air strikes in support of the Al Qaeda-backed Libyan rebels (without Congressional authorization), followed by more hesitation regarding the protests in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, followed by full recognition of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in Egypt, followed by confirmation of U.S. recognition of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in Egypt as it was being overthrown by a popular revolt against their imposition of sharia law, followed by refusal to call the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in Egypt a coup.

Nobody, absolutely nobody knows what's going on and the result is a drifting, unmanned ship of state at a time and in a situation that demands firm, resolute American leadership, but the question we have to ask is, what is behind this Chinese fire drill? Why can't the American people have a firm, clear, consistent foreign policy? Well ...

1) Priest-King's focus has always been reshaping America into a socialist commune with foreign policy, to the extent he is interested at all, limited to diminishing the United States internationally. If the United States behaves less like a superpower and more like a big, amiable neighbor willing to loan a million cups of sugar, deferring all problems to the United Nations, goes his childlike logic, then other countries will stop acting so aggressively and settle down.

2) With that naivete in mind, Priest-King, like most post-Vietnam radicals, detests the U.S. military and the unilateral use of force to further American national interests. The thought of using the military to punish another country, even a thug like Bashar Assad and even to reinforce American credibility, disgusts him and he does everything possible to avoid it.

3) ...but thugs respect force and failing to follow up on a threat invites disrespect. If we know anything about Priest-King, it is that his ego is boundless and the idea that another leader disrespects him is unacceptable, thus ordering a military attack became more palatable. (Note: I am sure that Priest-King intended his "red line" remark as a bluff and believed he would never have to enforce it. His words alone, as Nobel laureate, Emperor of the Americas and Keeper of the Secret Flame, should have been enough for the dictator of
Damascus.)

4) Trying to reconcile points 2 and 3 is impossible for many of Priest-King's allies. They share his disgust for using the military for our own interests yet they want to remain loyal to the nation's first black President, thus they splinter: Dianne Feinstein allies herself with Ted Cruz, Dick Durbin sides with Jeff Flake, and for poor Ed Markey, voting "Present" in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was all he could muster.

5) Priest-King vehemently opposed the invasion of Iraq when Saddam Hussein had gassed 5000 of his own people to death in Halabja in 1988 and had gassed tens of thousands of Iranian soldiers during Iraq's war with Iran in the Eighties, and when Congress had expressly authorized such invasion. Yet he bombed Libya on his own authority in 2011 when Muammar Ghaddafi had used chemical weapons on nobody, so it seems that Priest-King's transient political interest is the governing principle where chems are concerned.

6) Having deliberately lowered American prestige and power abroad during his first term, having vacillated on Syria and having "reset" relations with the Russians (withdrawing missile defense radars in Poland and the Czech Republic, shifting the focus of American strategy from Europe to Asia, promising more "flexibility" regarding missile defense after his reelection), Priest-King should not be surprised that the Russians would quickly step in. Minus strong American leadership, that was bound to happen and Priest-King should have seen it coming. The plain fact is that the Russians want to win. Vladimir Putin could care less about international opinion or how badly Priest-King wants his approval but he cares intensely about winning and increasing Russian influence in the Middle East. He punked Priest-King at their summit a few months ago, he gave Edward Snowden asylum over our objections, he lectures us in The New York Times and holds Priest-King in contempt. He seized on John Kerry's stupid remark as manna from Heaven and ran with it, boxing Priest-King in and seizing the initiative. I'm glad that the likelihood of American soldiers dying in Syria has been diminished and I'm glad that we will likely not be dragged into yet another Middle East war, but the reality that Russia is controlling the agenda in Syria and not the United States should scare the bejabbers out of anyone.

7) Priest-King's "national security team" is staffed with the greatest cast of incompetents assembled since It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Samantha Power as our U.N. Ambassador, who sees the American military as a sort of Peace Corps with guns? Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary, who vigorously opposed the surge in Iraq in 2007 but wouldn't acknowledge its success, who publicly embarrassed himself so thoroughly during his confirmation hearings he has yet to recover? John Kerry as Secretary of State, who was for the $87 billion in supplemental funding for Iraq before he was against it, who flipped-flopped on trade, on the Israeli security fence, on the Patriot Act, on the death penalty for terrorists, on everything, who
invented the "global test" for American military action? Susan Rice as National Security Advisor, who brazenly and repeatedly lied to the American people over the terrorist attack in Benghazi last year that killed four diplomats including the U.S. Ambassador? It's a surprise that these people even know how to get out of bed, so trusting them with the security of the United States is like giving a shotgun to a muskrat.

This is mediocrity masquerading as statesmanship. Priest-King doesn't know what he's doing. He can't make up his mind what to do because he can't reconcile his leftist principles with the strategic interests of the United States. His philosophy is being exploded right in front of his eyes and he has no clue how to proceed, he's being completely outclassed and humiliated by Vladimir Putin, he's been played for a sucker and he's always two steps behind. His advisors are idiots. We are witnessing an inept, weak, inexperienced, bush league excuse of a President fail on the global stage and if we emerge from this crisis without going to war with Russia, or Syria, or Iran, we should fall down and praise God for His mercy in sparing us. That's the good news. The bad news is that we have three more years of this nonsense to go.

Shoulda Woulda Coulda

If George Zimmerman had stayed in his car, the whole sorry episode could have been avoided.

If George Zimmerman had obeyed the 9-1-1 operator's instructions, the whole sorry episode could have been avoided.

Although George Zimmerman got out of his car and ignored the 9-1-1 operator's instructions, those actions do not constitute criminal activity. He had a right to be where he was and to do what he was doing.

Trayvon Martin also had a right to be where he was and to do what he was doing.

If Trayvon Martin had walked to his father's fiancee's apartment, the whole sorry episode could have been avoided.

Trayvon Martin resented being followed by George Zimmerman. He called George Zimmerman a "creepy-ass cracker" while he was speaking on his cell phone.

George Zimmerman suspected that Trayvon Martin was associated with criminal activity. He resented that young black males avoided punishment for criminal activity in his neighborhood, generalizing that "these f-ing punks always get away." He was intent on following Trayvon Martin and preventing whatever crime might have been planned, regardless of the instructions he had received from the 9-1-1 operator.

George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin racially profiled each other and resented each other but Trayvon Martin used a racial slur to refer to George Zimmerman while George Zimmerman did not reciprocate.

Trayvon Martin decided to escalate the situation by ambushing George Zimmerman, knocking him to the ground, climbing on top of him, slamming his head into the sidewalk and pummeling him with his fists. The injuries inflicted were recorded by the Sanford, Florida, Police Department and were consistent with the physical assault that George Zimmerman reported.

While he was pinned to the ground and being beaten by Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman felt that his life was in jeopardy. He was aware of Florida's Stand Your Ground law (though he would later state otherwise) and he could not physically retreat, so he unholstered his pistol, which was registered and for which he had a concealed carry license, and fired one shot at Trayvon Martin at near-contact range, killing him. Although he had ignored the 9-1-1 operator's instructions not to follow Trayvon Martin, at no time did George Zimmerman surrender his right to defend himself.

George Zimmerman called 9-1-1 immediately after the shooting, waited for the police to arrive and cooperated fully with their investigation, which included five hours of interrogation during which he did not ask for a lawyer. Over the course of the next sixteen months, his version of events remained consistent.

At the time of the shooting, George Zimmerman had a police record, having been previously arrested for drug possession and assaulting a police officer. Since his arrests, he had attended community college where he excelled at law enforcement classes and learned about the Stand Your Ground law. He wanted to become a police officer himself and joined his neighborhood watch program because he was concerned about a series of recent burglaries and acts of vandalism.

At the time of the shooting, Trayvon Martin had been suspended from school for the third time that school year, his offenses including spray-painting graffiti on school property, possession of a burglary tool and suspected stolen property (women's jewelry) and possession of a plastic bag in which marijuana residue was found.

The Sanford Police Department's investigation concluded that George Zimmerman was justified in shooting Trayvon Martin and the Seminole County state prosecutor declined to press charges.

Six weeks after the shooting, Bill Lee, chief of the Sanford Police Department, was forced to resign and was replaced by Cecil Smith , who was black. Also, Florida Governor Rick Scott and Attorney General Pamela Bondi forced state prosecutor Norm Wolfinger to recuse himself and replaced him with Angela Corey, a more politically-reliable prosecutor and an ally in the Florida Republican Party.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appeared with Al Sharpton at a rally in Sanford on 11 April 2012, promising Federal support for the state investigation and to investigate George Zimmerman independently. The Department of Justice also provided taxpayer funds to support anti-Zimmerman protests intended to pressure Florida to charge George Zimmerman with murder, yet after interviewing 36 witnesses, the FBI concluded that George Zimmerman had no history of racism and thus charging him with a Federal hate crime was not justified.

On 12 April 2012, George Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin. In a television interview, he denied knowing about Florida's Stand Your Ground law and later lied about the value of a legal defense fund he had accumulated, perhaps to prevent seizure of those funds and to ensure that he could defend himself adequately. His bail was subsequently revoked.

During the trial, Judge Debra Nelson denied a number of defense motions and overruled a number of defense objections, the effect of which was to help the prosecution. Ben Kruidbos, an information technology employee at the state prosecutor's office, was fired for leaking information to the press, information that indicated that the prosecution was withholding evidence from the defense. Judge Nelson also instructed the jury prior to deliberations that they could consider convicting George Zimmerman of manslaughter if they could not convict him of second-degree murder, although Zimmerman had not been charged with that crime, in an apparent attempt to facilitate Zimmerman's conviction of something. However, the jury acquitted George Zimmerman of all charges.

Since the verdict, George Zimmerman has gone into hiding because of threats to his life. (He did, however, help rescue a family that had been involved in a car accident two weeks after he was acquitted.) Riots and protests broke out across the country after the verdict, property was vandalized, stores were looted, people have been assaulted in Trayvon Martin's name. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Eric Holder, Priest-King himself and assorted other race baiters have poured gasoline on the fire. Stevie Wonder refuses to perform in Florida as long as the Stand Your Ground statute remains in effect, and the NAACP insists that George Zimmerman be charged with a Federal hate crime, but what really does all this mean?

a) The case against George Zimmerman should never have been brought. Unrelenting political pressure from weak-kneed Republicans in Florida and hardcore Leftists across the country overcame experience and professional judgment. Eric Holder and Priest-King focused Federal attention on what was simply a local police matter, Bill Lee and Norm Wolfinger were sacked to ensure that George
Zimmerman would be prosecuted regardless of the merits of the case, that the prosecution would focus on race and only race and The New York Times would invent a new term, "white Hispanic," to shoehorn Zimmerman into the liberal template of violent white-on-black racism.

b) The evidence and the verdict disproved the racism theme. For all the politically-driven machinations to portray George Zimmerman as a deranged racist white cop wannabe who stalked and murdered a helpless Trayvon Martin, the prosecution simply couldn't prove their case. They had no witnesses, no testimony, absolutely zero proof that George Zimmerman acted out of racial hatred, and neither do the Feds: Their own investigation came up empty.

c) Trayvon Martin wasn't the innocent, cherubic teenager that the prosecution, the Leftist media and the politicians portrayed him to be. He was a discipline problem at school who liked to smoke dope, burglarize people's homes, steal their property and beat people up. (Text messages and photos found on his cell phone that confirmed his violent, anti-social behavior were suppressed at trial, as were his school records.) He thought George Zimmerman was a "creepy-ass cracker" who had no business following him that night so he jumped Zimmerman and was beating him senseless when he was shot. As with the illegal immigration debate when the Left purposely omits the word "illegal" to frame the people in question as innocent working-class victims of a heartless society, the Left is purposely omitting proof of Trayvon Martin's true character to press their theme that he was killed because he was black, yet another hapless victim of white racist America, and it insults our intelligence. Maybe the hard truth is that Trayvon Martin didn't deserve to be followed but deserved to be shot.

d) For the Left, America is and will always be a black-hating racist country. Nothing can be done to expunge the sins of slavery and Jim Crow racism. Three hundred-sixty thousand Union dead in the Civil War fighting to end slavery, sixty-five years of legal and social breakthroughs including the first black  President are wonderful facts but prove nothing. America's character is still unchanged, America still resembles 1925 Indiana, the Ku Klux Klan runs the country, flaunts its power, and lynches, shoots, burns and terrorizes blacks (and recalcitrant whites) into submission. The Supreme Court's recent nullification of that part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that required states of the Old South to submit their election laws to the U.S. Attorney General for review and approval, recognizing that racial progress has indeed been made since the law's adoption, has caused an uproar among the Left because in their minds objective evidence can never be enough. America will always be guilty, will always be prejudiced, will always need strict policing and thus the law should never, ever be changed, and the Trayvon Martin verdict just fanned the flames. The evidence - Zimmerman is Hispanic, not white; Trayvon Martin had a history of criminal behavior in his neighborhood and discipline problems at his school; had marijuana in his system at the time of the shooting; had a history of violent behavior; used a racial slur to refer to George Zimmerman while Zimmerman had to be prompted by the 9-1-1 operator to describe Martin as black; Martin initiated the physical confrontation - is angrily dismissed by the Left because it conflicts with their template of a cross-burning lynch mob America.

e) Fifty years' worth of social programs have destroyed the black community in the United States. Although they represent only 13% of the general population, blacks account for 38% of all murders and 48% of all murder victims and blacks are far more likely to be murdered by other blacks than by any other racial group. Alcoholism, drug abuse, homelessness, poverty, bankruptcy, divorce, fatherless children, illiteracy, suicide, unemployment, every metric of human misery has skyrocketed under the well-meaning but destructive oversight of the Left and there is a seething outrage and frustration among the black community at their state: How did this happen to us? Who did this to us? But these are rhetorical questions. Intelligent African-Americans know very well that socialism has ruined them but to admit it would invalidate everything they believe in, so they march, they protest, they riot and they search for someone else to blame than the liberal politicians and race hucksters who promised them the moon, they condemn the verdict, they condemn George Zimmerman, they condemn Stand Your Ground laws, they want revenge. But what would they have preferred to Trayvon Martin's shooting? If George Zimmerman had been left beaten and bloody on the sidewalk, it would hardly have made the news, and if Trayvon Martin had killed George Zimmerman, it would have been reported as simply a neighborhood dispute gone bad and it would have been forgotten. After all, that sort of thing goes on all the time - people die violently by the hundreds in Chicago every year and the Feds don't descend on the city the way they did upon tiny Sanford, Florida. What made the Zimmerman case different was George Zimmerman broke the rules by retaliating when Trayvon Martin attacked him. George Zimmerman was supposed to have allowed himself to be beaten and if he had been in his own apartment when Trayvon Martin was burglarizing it, he would have been expected to run away rather than defend his person and his property. The status quo was upset, and if this is really the reason why people burned cars and smashed store windows and looted businesses, then my friends, we need to change the status quo.

When people can't find jobs to support themselves, they turn to crime. When people think they're not responsible for themselves, they father and abandon their children. When they have no hope, they turn to drugs or the bottle. Socialism destroys the very people it claims to help. Jobs are replaced by subsidies, responsibility is replaced by bureaucracy, hope is replaced with dependence and an entire culture takes root. The fatal confrontation between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin absolutely could have been avoided but it wasn't, in large part because Trayvon Martin (despite a history contradicting it) thought that he was exempt from suspicion and once suspected, that physical violence was acceptable. His culture accepted that behavior, a culture anathema to a healthy, functioning society, and it has to be changed. Priest-King and his cluster of confederates earnestly believe, in the face of piles of empirical evidence that proves otherwise, that socialism will turn America into a paradise if only we abandon the traditional values of self-reliance, responsibility, hard work and free enterprise.  Socialism has begotten the culture in which Trayvon Martin was raised and if we are to prevent other teenagers from suffering the same fate, we have to dig up the root of the problem, so let's mourn Trayvon Martin, learn from this sad episode and grab a shovel.That would be a proper legacy.

Realpolitik

In 1953, the Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadeh, was overthrown by a CIA-backed coup and

replaced by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Mossadeh had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company the previous year, had balked at compensating the British for their losses and then cut off diplomatic relations with the UK while facing a mounting threat from the Tudeh, Iran's Communist party. President Eisenhower understood that if Mossadeh were overthrown by the Communists, the Soviet Union would control Iran's huge oil reserves, threaten commerce through the Persian Gulf, destabilize the Middle East and gain a major strategic advantage, so he authorized an operation that resulted in Mossadeh's ouster and the elevation of the Shah. Dirty and distasteful, yes, but given the circumstances, Ike had little choice: Stand on idealistic principles and suffer a strategic defeat or get his hands dirty and throw a roadblock in front of the Soviets.

Guatemala in 1954 was led by Jacobo Arbenz, a democratically-elected Leftist who had nationalized United Fruit, a US company, the previous year and who had refused to compensate the owners for their losses, and whose political base included a vocal and growing Communist Party. After Arbenz appointed several Communists to positions within his government, President Eisenhower decided that he wouldn't wait for Guatemala to become a Soviet satellite and he authorized a CIA operation to topple Arbenz, Operation PBSUCCESS. With clandestine radio broadcasts and by co-opting an existing anti-Communist guerrilla force, CIA convinced the Guatemalan Army that they faced overwhelming numbers and that the US was about to intervene. The army refused to support Arbenz, the President fled the country and Operation PBSUCCESS was a success, forestalling a Soviet beachhead in Central America.

In 1963, the United States sanctioned a military coup in South Vietnam in which a group of Army and Air Force officers overthrew and executed President Ngo Dinh Diem over his corrupt and autocratic rule, which had included rigging elections and arresting and executing political opponents. Occurring as it did only three weeks before President John F. Kennedy was himself assassinated, this event is tinged with more than a hint of irony given Kennedy's themes of hope and self-determination for post-colonial countries (he did found the Peace Corps, after all), but the United States was locked in a life-or-death struggle in the early 1960's with the international Communist movement. President Eisenhower had involved the United States in Vietnam to prevent a Communist takeover of Indochina based on the "domino theory" - if Vietnam collapsed, then Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma and Indonesia would soon follow - and Kennedy had adopted Eisenhower's policy and the underlying rationale. He held his nose at Diem's corruption but when the opportunity arose to get rid of him and replace him with someone who would hold free elections, respect free speech and the press, release political prisoners and take aggressive action against the Viet Cong, Kennedy didn't hesitate: Diem was killed and US interests were advanced.

The latest crisis in Egypt illustrates once again the Priest-King administration's painful ineptitude in foreign policy. From the 2008 campaign onward, Priest-King has trumpeted a Leftist approach to foreign affairs that included pandering to the Islamic world, the Russians, the Chinese, the Palestinians and the UN, cutting American military power, vacillating during the Arab Spring, retreating from Iraq and Afghanistan, alienating Great Britain and Israel and generally acting as a bystander in global affairs rather than as the world's only true superpower. Leftist dogma holds that an aggressive American foreign policy that gives top priority to American strategic interests is selfish, arrogant, anachronistic and crude, therefore, American interests should be ignored to mollify the bruised egos of other countries, even countries hostile to us. We are the world's oldest and greatest democracy so we must respect the results of democratic elections wherever they are held, even if the results run counter to our long-term interests; to do otherwise is hypocrisy, goes the Leftist fellow-traveler mindset. This approach, as you may have noticed, is characteristic of liberal philosophy on at least three points, namely:

1. America is always to blame
2. A preoccupation with the opinions of other countries
3. Ideology trumps reality

...and has proven wholly inadequate. In January 2006, HAMAS won a majority of seats in the Palestinian parliament in a democratic election. Nouri al-Maliki is the democratically-elected Prime Minister of Iraq. However, HAMAS is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and al-Maliki is an Iranian puppet, so the fact they both won free elections is not enough: We want democracies that also support our strategic interests.

Mohamed Morsi was elected President of Egypt in that country's first free election ever last year but is also a hardcore member of the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the oldest and most extreme terrorist groups in the Middle East. (Ayman al-Zawahiri is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, you will recall.) Since his election in June 2012, the Egyptian economy has tanked while Morsi sacked the most senior members of Egypt's military and intelligence structure, seized all executive and legislative power for himself, declared a state of emergency during which he could take any action he deemed necessary to "protect the revolution," cracked down on free speech and free exercise of religion (Christian churches have been attacked and Christians have persecuted to the point of crucifixion), promoted sharia law and pursued an extreme Islamic agenda. He was able, in only one year, to antagonize every segment of Egyptian society except the Muslim fanatics of his base and - notably - the Priest-King administration, who threw their full support behind him. The $1.5 billion in military aid that we give Egypt every year was confirmed and Hillary Clinton and Priest-King himself both publicly declared their support for Morsi's regime, again solely because he was democratically elected. And now he has been ousted by popular demand and Priest-King is flummoxed, unable or unwilling to grasp that he has bet on the wrong horse ..again.

Foreign policy is not for ideologues or the faint of heart. In Egypt's case, Hosni Mubarak was a dictator but a dictator that we could work with: He fought on our side in Desert Storm, he honored his treaties with us and with Israel, he kept a lid on Islamic extremists and he was a solid ally for thirty years. Throwing him under the bus in favor of Mohamed Morsi was a strategic mistake and we will pay for it. The Egyptians who protested and risked their lives to oppose Morsi are angry that we supported him and ignored their grievances, they will remember that we did nothing to help them in their hour of need, that the world's champion of freedom sat on its hands in their crisis, and they will never trust us again. The world is the way the world is, Mr. President, not the way you want it to be.

A Rising Tide?

Well, we're there. On 26 June, the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act so homosexuals

can receive Federal benefits and upheld the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision to overturn Proposition 8 in California, clearing the way for statewide recognition of homosexual marriages and setting the conditions for nationally-recognized homosexual marriage throughout the United States. Every warning that conservatives have issued on this subject has come true and every last warning has been ignored. God help our country.

Anthony Kennedy, Ronald Reagan's third choice to replace Lewis Powell in 1987, cast the deciding vote and wrote the majority opinion in the DOMA case, twisting logic to fit the outcome he wanted. He asserted that the definition of marriage had always been left to the States and the Federal government had no right to interfere, and I quote: "The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity." So, as far as the Supreme Court is concerned, DOMA had "no legitimate purpose"? Protecting traditional marriage from being mocked and degraded is "no legitimate purpose"? We're in a new country, my friends, a country in which a law passed by 342 Congressmen and 85 Senators and signed by the President of the United States with strong popular support, with the intent of defining marriage for the Federal government and not the States, may be voided by one man for his purpose, that is, advancing homosexuality in our society. Justice Kennedy arrogantly dismisses the idea that the Federal government might have an interest in the institution of marriage, but the whole point of DOMA was to prevent the very trend that is happening now: Pro-gay marriage States attempting to force conservative States to recognize the unions they have sanctioned, using the provisions in Article IV of the Constitution as their basis (that States must respect each others' laws). In short, DOMA was a constitutional device used to prevent an unconstitutional encroachment, and now has been voided as being unconstitutional itself, all so homosexual marriage may proceed.

Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the coup de grace to the Proposition 8 case on a technical point, specifically, that the people of California who drafted and helped pass the proposition had no standing in Federal court, given that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Prop 8 and the California state government refused to defend it. Although not a direct nullification of Prop 8 on its merits, this decision guts the proposition in effect and the Court covered itself in shame nonetheless. Here we had a lawfully crafted amendment to the California state constitution, approved by a strong majority of the voters, overturned by a notoriously liberal appeals court and a state government, elected to represent the people and enforce the laws faithfully, refusing to do its duty on purely ideological grounds. Given the state's abdication of their duty, what were the people to do but to present their case themselves? If the people's elected officials refuse to enforce the laws impartially, if they refuse to defend the laws and the courts refuse to uphold the laws, then the people are literally at the mercy of their government and that is not democracy but tyranny.

Both cases are defeats for traditional marriage by themselves but together, they signal a sea change for our country. The Supreme Court has decided to reshape American society according to their liberal views much as they did with Roe v. Wade in 1973, steering our country in a dangerous new direction in the face of strong opposition: If most of the people don't want homosexual marriage, then by thunder, we'll just force them to accept it! Or so goes the argument. On the one hand, they insisted that only the States have the right to define marriage and on the other hand, they rejected a State's lawful attempt to do just that. The only thing that mattered was sweeping away all opposition to homosexual marriage by plain judicial fiat and my question is: Then what? Having redefined marriage to suit themselves, how will the homosexual lobby and their liberal friends in the courts respond when polygamists demand equal treatment, or when pedophiles want to marry their victims, or when groups of people want to marry other groups of people? When the supply of desirable children available for adoption is exhausted (so the homosexuals may ape the family), will heterosexual couples be forced to surrender every other child, or every child, to the State for "redistribution"? The institution loses its meaning, becomes irrelevant and fades away, and our society devolves into a confused mass of self-centered dilettantes demanding recognition for their sexuality, however they choose to define it. Marriage, which used to mean only one thing, is then redefined to mean anything, or more correctly, nothing .

...which is what the homosexual lobby wants. Traditional marriage involves a moral judgment wherein one heterosexual man commits himself to one heterosexual woman for life, providing the perfect environment for the birth, growth and education of children and the prosperity of the family, and where there is moral judgment, there is God. Homosexuals cannot possibly match this arrangement, they are excluded - or rather they exclude themselves - by the lifestyle they choose, they bristle at the notion that what they are doing is immoral - how dare God judge them? -  they envy traditional marriage and want very much to mimic it, to share in its social and legal benefits, to be validated. The only way to have what they want, then, is to dispense with the moral dimension altogether, to affirm that sexuality is irrelevant, and to claim that by reserving marriage only for heterosexual couples, society demeans them. This claiming of victimhood goes a long way among the Left, it grants a measure of legitimacy for homosexuals that has obviously resulted in dramatic change in their favor, but what do these decisions mean for our democracy?

• Judicial diktat trumps the democratic process. Both DOMA and Prop 8 enjoyed very strong popular support and were passed by overwhelming majorities in the respective legislatures and they were both overturned. The ability of the people to govern themselves, therefore, through their elected representatives and through ballot initiatives, is seriously undermined, and the people's confidence in their government evaporates since the government may choose which laws they will honor and which they won't, at the same time insisting that the people strictly obey every law without exception.  The courts now have power not accorded them under our Constitution and be assured: They will use it as they see fit, and they will use it to gain even more power.

• Federalism will suffer since neither the Federal government nor the States will understand exactly what they may do.  The Defense of Marriage Act was voided in deference to the States and Prop 8 was voided in deference to a Leftist agenda, so where's the line, really?

• Religious freedom, especially for Christians, is diminished and will continue to suffer. What if a Christian wedding planner refuses to serve a homosexual couple? What if a Christian minister refuses to perform a homosexual wedding? Would a Christian church have its property seized for the same reason, would its members be liable for criminal prosecution?

The Left interprets these decisions as great victories for civil rights and they dismiss conservatives' concerns as the usual handwringing when society changes faster than they'd like, but be wary: If they believe they are riding a rising tide, a rising tide can indeed lift all boats but it can also drown everyone.

The Fosbury Flop

He's spent nearly $14 trillion and added $7 trillion to the national debt in barely four years, to no effect, but it's not his fault.

The unemployment rate has been over 7% for his entire administration, over 13 million people are out of work, nearly 3 million people are collecting unemployment benefits, there are more people collecting food stamps than at any other time in our history and over 4 million jobs have been lost during his administration, but it's not his fault.

The $789 billion stimulus plan failed, Obamacare will cost at least twice as much as advertised and will kill as many as 700,000 jobs, his green energy initiative resulted in multiple bankruptcies and no jobs and he hasn't passed a budget in nearly four years, but it's not his fault.

China and Russia refused to support tougher sanctions against Iran, Iran refused his direct appeals to abandon its nuclear weapons program and even accelerated it, he was asleep at the switch during the Arab Spring, Egypt is run by the Muslim Brotherhood, Iraq is falling apart, the Taliban will reconquer Afghanistan after we retreat, Pakistan is in turmoil, AI Qaeda is running loose across North Africa, Syria is a bloodbath, China, Russia and even Ecuador openly mock us over arresting the fugitive Edward Snowden, but it's not his fault.

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry is dead because Eric Holder allowed known drug traffickers to buy guns in the United States and take them back to Mexico to arm the drug cartels, and Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed by Muslim terrorists in Benghazi, Libya, because all their requests for extra security were denied and their urgent appeals for help during the attack were refused, but it's not his fault.

The EPA and the IRS conduct a campaign of harassment and intimidation against conservative non-profit groups, the Justice Department refuses to prosecute members of the Black Panthers for voter intimidation during the 2008 presidential election, and the same Justice Department obtains the private telephone records of over 100 Associated Press employees as well as Fox News reporter James Rosen in an effort to intimidate the press, but it's not his fault.

Two Gallup polls released recently indicate a 24-point gap between the people's dissatisfaction with the direction of the country and Priest-King's job approval. This phenomenon manifested itself very clearly in the 2012 presidential election when people recognized that the country was in horrible shape but refused to blame Priest-King himself, as if he were only a bystander in his own administration. What could explain this paradox? How can the same people complain about the effect of Priest-King's policies, who may have even lost their job or their business because of Priest-King's policies, but hold Priest-King himself blameless? Here are some ideas that I came up with:

Reason #1: The people polled were mainly Democrats with a natural loyalty to Priest-King.

Reason #2: The people polled were afraid to blame Priest-King in front of the pollster for fear of being called a racist.

Reason #3: The people polled think that Priest-King is trying hard but needs more time to turn things around, his staff are letting him down, circumstances are beyond his control and they want to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Reason #4: The people polled think that Priest-King is trying as hard as he can but they don't want to admit that the first black President is out of his depth.

Reason #2 is certainly valid since everything in the United States is viewed through the prism of race, especially these days. (On Tuesday the 25th the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that required states of the old Confederacy to submit any changes to their election laws to the U.S. Attorney General for review and approval, infuriating the Left.) Reason #3 is also valid as people, liberally-inclined or not, want to give their elected officials a fighting chance to prove they can do the job, but it also indicates a sort of recognition among those polled that Priest-King really isn't the Messiah the Left thought he was in 2008: If everything has to be perfect in order for his policies to work, then maybe his powers aren't as awesome as advertised. Reason #3 gets us closer but I think Reason #4 hits the nail on the head. With over four years' worth of empirical evidence proving that Priest-King's approach to domestic and foreign policy is an absolute disaster, over 66 million Americans nonetheless voted for his reelection and a plurality still approves of his performance. When Jimmy Carter mangled the Presidency and essentially gave up, the American people showed him the door; likewise when George H.W. Bush broke his famous pledge "read my lips: no new taxes," the voters turned on him and gave us eight years of Bubba. But with Priest-King, job performance isn't tied to job security and I think that reveals an embarrassing trait in those die-hard Priest-King supporters: they've set the bar pretty damned low for him, lower than any other President. For all the soaring rhetoric and imperial bearing and crowds of adoring fans and hope and change and hyperbole, people really don't expect a lot from the Priest-King of the Americas. He can sink us under a mountain of debt, he can raise taxes as high as the sky, he can interfere in every segment of American society (what business is it of the President to appear with Dave Letterman, to inject himself into a local arrest in Massachusetts or to comment on the Trayvon Martin case?) and fumble every foreign policy issue on the table and still be idolized by the masses. Millions of people thrown out of work and kept out of work, businesses ruined, homes and families destroyed, freedom lost, America diminished, yet Priest-King smiles and waves to his adoring fans and they forgive him all. After four years of pandering to the Islamic world, to Russia, to China, after four years of apologizing and bowing to foreign monarchs to prove how humble and contrite he is, what did that get us? When China and Russia had the opportunity to help us arrest the fugitive NSA employee Edward Snowden, they dismissed our appeals out of hand - even Ecuador felt empowered to kick sand in our face - and Priest-King said and did nothing, the President of the United States mocked and humiliated like a pimple-faced teenager in the school cafeteria. If my fellow citizens are satisfied with
mediocrity, failure, bankruptcy, abuse of power, lying, disrespect, criminal neglect and needless death from their Chief Executive, then I urge them to splash some cold water on their faces and wake up: If all they want is an empty suit, then go to Brooks Brothers.

Putting Two and Two Together

Hmm...:

20 January 2009: Priest-King is inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States.

15 April 2009: In protest of Priest-King's massive tax and spend policies, rallies are held across the country, drawing thousands of people and sparking the TEA Party movement.

September 2009: As Congressional politicians return home for the Labor Day recess, they face angry opposition at town hall meetings over their support for the stimulus package, the bank bailout bill, the government takeovers of General Motors, Chrysler, AIG and Goldman Sachs and the entire health care sector and the threatened cancellation of the Bush tax cuts. Public opposition to Priest-King's policies mounts.

November 2009: Republicans Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell are elected to the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia respectively.

January 2010: Republican Scott Brown wins Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat in Massachusetts, the liberal radio network Air America goes bankrupt and the Supreme Court, in the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission case, decides that private companies have the right to advocate for their political causes the same as labor unions. The TEA Party movement gathers serious momentum.

March 2010: The Internal Revenue Service begins systematic targeting of conservative political and religious groups applying for 501(c)3 tax-exempt status, harassing and threatening them with audits, arrest and prosecution, demanding voluminous, detailed and very private personal information to which the IRS had no legal right, and delaying approval of their applications indefinitely.

November 2010: The TEA Party drives the "shellacking," a massive midterm electoral defeat for the Democrats. The IRS targeting campaign against conservative non-profit groups intensifies.

November 2012: Priest-King is reelected President, in no small part because conservative support for the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, was soft.

May 2013: Six months after the election and only hours before the IRS Inspector General releases an internal review, the IRS admits that they had indeed deliberately targeted conservative nonprofit groups for harassment.

It is absolutely laughable that the Priest-King administration expects us to believe that a couple of junior agents at the IRS office in Cincinnati "went rogue" and began targeting conservative groups completely on their own. (The IRS Inspector General released another report today indicating that 292 conservative groups were targeted for harassment vice six liberal groups, blowing up the argument that conservatives and liberals suffered equally.) Using only the timeline above, we can see that serious, determined opposition to Priest-King's socialist agenda was building into a nationwide movement in early 2010. The TEA Party rallies, the bitter, angry town hall meetings with ordinary citizens standing up to their elected officials, the losses in New Jersey, Virginia and gasp! Massachusetts, and especially the Supreme Court's decision to allow corporate political activity on the same footing as labor unions - wiping out 35 years of liberal advantage where that was concerned - were sending shock waves through the White House. If something were not done quickly to stop it, the TEA Party movement would defeat Priest-King in 2012, reverse everything he had achieved and set the socialist agenda back for a generation, and Priest-King was simply not going to allow that. So what happened? The decision was quickly made, likely suggested by then-White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew and approved by Priest-King, to take the wind out of their sails but good, and what government agency inspires more fear than the dreaded IRS? If these dumb flyover country hicks wanted tax-exempt status for their TEA Party groups, then they would have to answer extremely detailed questions by the boatload, provide personal information about themselves, their friends, their colleagues and relatives which would then be handed to Priest-King's loyal Leftist pals to exploit, and the process would be slowed to a crawl. They would be interrogated by Treasury agents, audited and audited again, forced to provide the same information repeatedly, harassed, bullied, intimidated, threatened with prosecution, and a decision would never be made for their application. If everything worked, the TEA Party movement would float in the ocean, engines dead, at the mercy of the waves, powerless - unable to help themselves, much less unseat the Priest-King of all the Americas, and that's what happened.

But there's more at stake than the result of the 2012 presidential election, disappointing as that was. At the core of this scandal is the conscious decision by the Federal government to attack United States citizens for their political and religious beliefs, the 'exact circumstances that drove thousands of people to flee England and seek freedom in the New World. If this scandal isn't investigated to the fullest, if its full scope isn't discovered, if the instigators - whoever they are - aren't arrested, prosecuted and jailed, if the idea behind the scandal isn't crushed into powder, then the American people have no reason to trust the government that serves them and every reason to fear it. Citizens will be afraid to organize, to petition their government, to express contrary opinions, to donate to groups that advocate for their causes, in short, they will be deprived of the free exercise of their Constitutional rights and that is tyranny, pure and simple. So let the Congress investigate, let the grand juries be convened, let the guilty be punished and let the glittering legacies be sullied ...tyranny deserves nothing less.

What Else Would You Like To Know?

AMENDMENT IV: 

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. " 

Last Thursday the 6th we woke up to the news that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting almost every electronic communication in America - Facebook postings, Twitter feeds, text messages, cell phone calls, credit card purchases, etc. - to compile a massive computer database, in order to detect and hopefully disrupt terrorist attacks against the United States. The operation had been leaked to a British newspaper and the leaker, a guy named Edward Snowden, a contract employee of NSA in Hawaii, announced in a television interview that he felt that the scope of the operation vastly exceeded the spirit and the letter of the Constitution and that he felt compelled to expose it - after he had abandoned his job and his girlfriend in Hawaii for a five-star hotel in Hong Kong, of course, so he's no Jefferson Smith - so the American public would be aware of the government's activities. Now you would think that after years of bitterly criticizing President Bush's use of the Patriot Act and authorizations from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to conduct electronic monitoring of terrorist cells, while he was a permanent campaigner,er, Senator from Illinois, Priest-King would be the last person to defend this sort of wide-ranging drift net snooping, let alone actively use it, but once again, Priest-King defies conventional wisdom. After all, his Department of Justice obtained private telephone records of over 100 Associated Press employees, named Fox News reporter James Rosen as a possible "co-conspirator" in a national security leak investigation and obtained the private telephone records of Mr. Rosen's parents, and the IRS conducted a sustained campaign of harassment and intimidation of conservative advocacy groups during which they demanded volumes of detailed personal information which they then shared with liberal advocacy groups: What a guy!


SIDEBAR: ...and this is going on while the Priest-King administration leaked information about the Flame virus, the Predator "kill list," the Osama bin Laden raid, and stonewalls Congress about Benghazi. The theme: Information belongs to Priest-King alone. He can do whatever he wants with it. He wants to know everything about us, who we are, where we live, with whom we associate, what we say, what we eat, where we worship, what we believe, everything. He wants this information so he can control us, he may dispose of this information as he sees fit and anyone who thinks otherwise will be crushed.

SIDEBAR REDUX: The Attorney-General may sign a request to subpoena telephone records, accuse a reporter as a co-conspirator in leaking national security information, shop the request to three different judges until he found a judge who would approve it, lie to Congress that he'd never been involved in such a program, claim that he never intended to prosecute Mr. Rosen so he didn't actually perjure himself, and keep his job. This is a great country, isn't it?

Now coming back to this latest scandal, we are finally hearing the term "probable cause." The Constitution insists that if the government thinks I'm involved with a crime, they must obtain a search warrant based upon a reasonable suspicion and specify what they're searching for and where. That is the essence of that particular protection, that the government is NOT entitled to conduct general searches just to find out as much as they can and they are NOT entitled to keep whatever information they find. After 9/11, President Bush was deeply concerned about preventing future terrorist attacks and used electronic monitoring, authorized by the FISA court, to detect, identify and track communications between terrorists working overseas and their accomplices here in the United States. The Left, including Priest-King, slammed Dubya consistently for this focused, limited monitoring program but now we've gone miles beyond that. The government is sweeping up massive amounts of information on ordinary Americans, not because we are suspected of any crime or because we belong to a terrorist organization but to know as much as they can. I have not been charged with a crime, I have not been arrested, I have not been suspected, I live a fairly dull, ordinary, unexciting life but nonetheless the government wants to know everything about me. We can agree that we need to do everything we can to prevent future terrorist attacks like 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing, we can agree that nobody but the terrorists wants Americans to die and that government at all levels has to aggressively detect, pursue and deter terrorist threats, but within the bounds of the Constitution. Mr. Edward Snowden, like PFC Manning of WikiLeaks infamy, signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with the U.S. Government promising to protect the information to which he was granted access. (I'm sure that we'll find out more but it stinks to high Heaven that a) He was only in his job for three months before he leaked this information; b) He fled to China, our arch-rival in the Pacific; and c) He leaked this information the day before Priest-King's summit with new Chinese President Xi Jinping, seriously undercutting our negotiating position as we confront China over their hacking activities and their domestic surveillance program.) If he is extradited, he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law because the information he leaked did not belong to him, but now that it's out, it's time for a robust public debate about what the American people want and what they're willing to accept. A small, limited, tightly-controlled program focused on telephone calls from overseas to terror suspects in the United States is one thing, sweeping up every electron in America is quite another. The American people are justifiably suspicious of their government for the reasons I provided above as well as Priest-King's failure to enforce immigration law and the Defense of Marriage Act, allowing known Mexican drug traffickers to buy guns in the United States and use them to commit crimes in Mexico and, in Bill Clinton's day, sifting through hundreds of confidential FBI files to compile a White House enemies list. And let's not forget that under Obamacare, the medical records of every person in the United States are to be digitized and stored in a massive government database - the government will know which doctor you see, what medical conditions you have and which medications you take to treat them (and how much they cost), are you overweight, do you have a family history of heart disease or diabetes - so the government will be able to control your behavior. For God's sake, Eric Holder refused to deny, under oath, that the Executive Branch was spying on Members of Congress, so yes, the people have probable cause themselves to mistrust their government and to insist that it be restrained.

Case in point: In Katz v. United States, the U.S. Government suspected Mr. Charles Katz of running an illegal gambling operation across state lines and was using a public telephone to communicate with his confederates. The FBI placed a wiretap on the phone booth in question (they had things like that in 1967) without first obtaining a warrant, reasoning that because it was a public utility, Mr. Katz' conversations weren't protected by the Fourth Amendment. They obtained the evidence they needed, arrested and subsequently prosecuted Mr. Katz but in a 7-1 ruling, the Supreme Court overturned Mr. Katz' conviction on the ground that the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures applies to people, not places, and reminded the government they must operate within the law, especially where information is concerned.

The Federal government may think that because they own the Internet and the airwaves and the telephone lines, they can necessarily monitor - and archive, and exploit - whatever goes over them, but they can't. The Founding Fathers knew that a government that knows everything about everyone can bend the people to its will, and they had just fought a revolution against that kind of tyranny. Let's have this debate, let's vigorously protect against further terror attacks but if the government lacks probable cause, leave me alone.

If It Walks Like a Duck...

FROM THE CRIME DESK: Dr. Kermit Gosnell has been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in

prison without parole. A jury found him guilty of killing a poor Bhutanese immigrant woman and three infants who were born alive at his Philadelphia abortion mill, which as I have noted in this space, hadn't been inspected for seventeen years and was operated more like a butcher shop than anything else. (The judge dropped three other counts of murdering infants because nobody actually witnessed those particular crimes, so apparently physical evidence - the dead children - wasn't enough.) We are told that the jury agonized over the case for eight days before rendering their verdict, which we might expect after forty years of liberal indoctrination, but they eventually came to the right and natural conclusion: Murdering helpless children is wrong. I guess there's still hope for you, America.

IRS USED TO ATTACK HIS POLITICAL ENEMIES, PRIEST-KING SHOCKED: The Internal Revenue Service has targeted dozens of conservative groups applying for 501(c)3 tax-exempt status, requiring especially burdensome paperwork and detailed, intrusive information to which the agency is not entitled, and extending the approval of such status from weeks to years. We've also been informed that the IRS lied to Congress last year when they stated that no such program was underway, that the effort was not the work of low-level employees in one office (Cincinnati) but was created and managed from Washington, that the IRS was goaded by Democrat politicians on Capitol Hill to target conservative groups, that even Billy Graham Ministries received special scrutiny because of their opposition to gay marriage, that the information the IRS obtained was shared with the left-wing advocacy group ProPublica, and that aside from the acting Commissioner who was pressured to resign Wednesday, absolutely nobody has been disciplined for this criminal activity. Priest-King, for his part, hem-hawed on the subject at his press conference on Monday, trying to acknowledge the severity of the scandal without taking responsibility for it, but let's get real: The guy who fired the CEO of General Motors when he had no authority to do so wouldn't blink at using the IRS to bludgeon his political enemies. THIS IS SERIOUS, PEOPLE. An agency of the Federal government was directing its fearsome powers against American citizens because of their political and religious beliefs, denying them equal protection, collecting extremely private and detailed information to which it had no right, which it then shared with Priest-King's left-wing allies, lying to Congress and the public as to the existence and scope of its efforts, and breaking the law. The Left usually associates this sort of conduct with its favorite bogeyman, Richard Nixon, but they shouldn't be surprised that a man weaned on bare-knuckle Chicago politics would resort to it. For the sake of the American people, Darrell Issa should climb into the IRS with a proctoscope, find everyone involved with this mess and show them what it feels like.

NEWS SERVICE TELEPHONE RECORDS SEIZED, PRIEST-KING SAYS THEY DESERVED IT: We are informed that the Justice Department has obtained telephone records of at least a hundred Associated Press employees in an effort to find out the source of a national security leak that was reported last year (a plot to blow up an American airliner from Yemen to New York that was foiled). Although the intent of the DOJ's investigation was laudable and routine methods had failed, DOJ went waay over the line by casting such a wide net, especially against a news agency so friendly to the Left. Agitating the press, treating them like an enemy, is another hallmark of the Nixon administration but also of authoritarian regimes generally, and this scandal reminds us that Priest-King is an authoritarian of the first order. He demands absolute obedience, permits no disagreement or dissent and will go after anyone who gets in his way. (Remember how Obama refused to appear on Fox News for such a long time, how he demonized conservative figures like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, and urged his supporters during the campaign last year to take "revenge" on his opponents?) Pursuing national security leaks is a worthy goal but in this case, Priest-King is trying to freeze the American press, terrorize it and bend it to his will. The Left went ape over W.'s Patriot Act and FISA wiretaps when terrorists were the quarry; let's see how far when their outrage extends when their ox is being gored.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE: The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee heard testimony from three witnesses, all experienced State Department diplomats, who directly refuted the Priest-King Administration's account of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, last year and their characterization of it as a public protest gone terribly wrong. These three men - Gregory Hicks, Eric Nordstrom and Mark Thompson - risked their careers by naming names, times, and specific events that exposed Priest-King's
efforts to suppress the truth and mislead the American people as to the dea~hs of our consular personnel in Libya, as well as the threats they have received from their superiors in an attempt to intimidate them from testifying. The Priest-King Administration will smear these men as disgruntled hacks motivated by the desire for fame, fortune and the opportunity to humiliate their bosses, abetted by the Republicans in the House, but that will fall flat. What we have to remember is that we have four dead Americans, left to die in a lonely outpost in a dangerous part of the world, abandoned to their fate for no other reason than Priest-King's political fortune. For months leading up to the election, he had repeated the mantra, "Al Qaeda is on the run," had trumpeted the deaths of Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders, had waved his campaign of Predator drone attacks and the retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan as trophies of his inspired leadership. To admit that the attack on Benghazi was a coordinated, sustained, deliberate terrorist attack would contradict everything he had been saying, would call into question his strategy of disengagement and jeopardize his re-election, so Ambassador Chris Stevens and his brave colleagues were abandoned to a storm of fire and bullets not from an Al Qaeda affiliate but from a protest gone haywire. Nothing was done to help them. The consulate was physically relocated to an unstable part of an unstable country. Every request for extra security was denied. After the attack began, fighters weren't scrambled and the DoD ready team in Croatia wasn't deployed. (They would have arrived too late to save Ambassador Stevens but in time to save his embattled comrades in the consulate annex, which was attacked later.) The State Department's own counterterrorism bureau was excluded from the case and every reference to Al Qaeda and terrorism was deleted from official communications. Susan Rice parroted the Administration's phony version on every Sunday talk show, to the point of contradicting the Libyan President who immediately preceded her on CBS' Face the Nation. (The President was so insulted that he refused to cooperate with the FBI investigation, delaying the truth yet again.)

Taking all of these scandals together, we have an administration that is paranoid, obsessed with itself, out of control. Priest-King will resort to anything to protect himself, advance his socialist agenda and destroy his enemies, leaving our consular personnel to die, covering up his role therein, attacking American citizens for their political and religious beliefs and digging into the private communications of a free press. He and his cronies lie, steal, cheat and break the law, they deserve to be turned out into the snow and I pray that my fellow Americans snap out of whatever spell they've been under: If he walks like a crook, talks like a crook and acts like a crook, he's probably a crook.