To recess or not to recess...

What’s new Today

Our #1 story is a one minute video of Margaret Thatcher.  #2 looks at Obama’s interpretation of the Constitution and the founders.  #3 looks at the Constitutional argument between the Senate and the President regarding being in a recess.  #4 talks about how the Nebraska Senate seat is pretty much lost to the Republicans.  #5 explains the various economic systems using two cows.  I’ve added my own which I dub Crony cowism.  Finally #6 includes how incivility by the left is rapidly growing.

1.  Thatcher on Socialism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=v2Vp1moqTKs

Take a minute and watch this.

2.  Obama and the Founders

Of course President Obama is not concentrating on campaigning, White House press spokesmen assured us -- as the president headed off to Chicago for three fundraisers and a drop-in at his campaign headquarters, two days after a high-roller fundraising choked off traffic five blocks from the White House, with the assistance of a score of D.C. police cars.

No one, or at least no one who is paying attention, is fooled. It's standard presidential procedure to say you're not absorbed in campaigning even as you go out to raise money every other day. Bill Clinton, in my view, spent an undue amount of time fundraising, George W. Bush spent more, and Barack Obama makes them both look like pikers.

So Obama's scorn for the truth in this regard is only a minor matter. His scorn for the Constitution is something else.

That scorn has been expressed most recently in his "recess" appointments of members of the National Labor Relations Board and the chairmanship of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The quotation marks are appropriate because when he made the appointments the Senate was not in recess as the Constitution requires.

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution says that presidential appointments must be confirmed by the Senate unless Congress provides otherwise. But anticipating that the government may need officials when the Senate is available, the section further provides that "The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of the next session."

What constitutes a recess? Article I, Section 5 provides "Neither house, during the session of Congress, shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days."

The House did not consent to the adjournment of the Senate this year, so there is no recess, and hence no constitutional authority to make recess appointments….

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/barone-obamas-1-man-rule-thumbs-nose-founders/313961

Obama basically is saying “It’s a recess when I say it’s a recess.” 

3.  Obama's Recess Appointments

[T]he Opinion places enormous weight on the fact that the Senate’s resolution providing for pro forma sessions declared that there would be “no business conducted.” There are two problems with this, as a legal matter. First, as the Opinion concedes, the important question is whether at these sessions the Senate is “capable” of exercising its constitutional functions — not whether, on any particular occasion, it has chosen not to do so. Second, in actual fact the Senate has conducted major business during these sessions, including passing the payroll tax holiday extension during a pro forma session on December 23. The Opinion weakly responds that, notwithstanding this evidence of actual practice, the President “may properly rely on the public pronouncements of the Senate that it will not conduct business.” It is hard to see why the Senate’s stated intention not to do business takes legal and constitutional precedence over its manifest ability to do so. The President is well aware the Senate is doing business on these days, because he has signed two pieces of legislation passed during them.

More fundamentally, the Opinion creates an implausible distinction between the legal efficacy of pro forma sessions for various constitutional purposes. According to the Opinion, a pro forma session is not sufficient to interrupt a recess for purposes of the Recess Appointments Clause, but it is sufficient to satisfy the constitutional command that neither branch adjourn for more than three days without the consent of the other (Art. I, §cl. 4) and that Congress convene on January 3 unless a law has provided for a different day. There is longstanding precedent that pro forma sessions are sufficient to satisfy these constitutional requirements. Why a pro forma session would count for some purposes and not others is a mystery. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that OLC is simply fashioning rules to reach to the outcomes it wishes.

Finally, it bears mention that a great deal of the authority OLC cites in support of the President’s authority to make recess appointments during intrasession recesses in the first place — wholly apart from the pro forma issue — consists of prior executive branch pronouncements that are at odds with both the language and the history of the constitutional text. It would not be surprising if the judiciary were to reject these self-serving executive interpretations in favor of more straightforward ones. In particular, courts might rule that the Recess Appointments Clause applies only when a vacancy “happens” during a recess, as the text of Att. II, § 2, cl. 3, says, and that “the recess” of the Senate occurs only between sessions, and not (as here) in the midst of a session. The OLC Opinion acknowledges as much, when it says that the appointments face “some litigation risk.” But the Obama Administration cannot be faulted for following longstanding executive precedent, which has been used by past Presidents both Republican and Democrat. It is only the novel arguments that I criticize here. It seems to me that the Administration is under special obligation to provide a bullet-proof legal argument when it declares invalid a strategy devised by Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2007, supported by then-Senator Barack Obama, and successfully used by them to stymie President George W. Bush’s recess appointment power. The law cannot change just because the shoe is on the other foot.

http://www.advancingafreesociety.org/2012/01/12/olc-recess/

An interesting look at the legality of Obama’s recess appointments. 

4.  Nebraska Shows 2012 Challenge for Democrats

When Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., announced his retirement, Democrats received a quick reminder of how bleak 2012 could prove for their Senate prospects. The retirement of Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad in North Dakota gives Republicans a near-gimmee. The open Nebraska seat, for which two strong Republicans are already in contention, could be a second. And that would leave Democrats no margin for error as they seek to defend against a GOP takeover of Congress' upper chamber.

Democrats' best hope in Nebraska, many have said, would be for former Sen. Bob Kerrey, D to return and run for his old seat. Kerrey, who is slightly more liberal than Nelson, recently finished a stormy tenure as president of The New School in New York City. (He is a decorated and wounded Vietnam veteran, and the leader of a Navy SEAL team which, as he admitted in 2001, participated in a massacre of civilians. Kerrey took responsibility for his team's actions when The New York Times explored the incident over ten years ago.)

Magellan Strategies, a Republican firm of whose work I am not really a fan, has released the first poll that I am aware of testing Kerrey in head-to-head matchups against the two leading Republican candidates. In both cases, he loses and fails to pull more than 40 percent support. Attorney General Jon Bruning beats him, 51 to 40 percent. Treasurer (and Former Attorney General) Don Stenberg, who litigated the pro-life side in the landmark Stenberg v. Carhart Supreme Court case, beats Kerrey, 47 to 39 percent.

Even factoring in the Republican lean that Magellan's polls tend to carry, this is an ugly poll, considering that Kerrey is probably the best known and most revered Democrat in the state. For Republicans, this means they might not have to worry too much about who among their primary candidates is "more electable."

But for Democrats, this has a deeper strategic significance. If they begin the 2012 cycle ceding two seats, their odds of holding the Senate majority are very slim….

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/poll-confirms-dems-uphill-battle-neb/314916

2012 is likely to be a repeat of 2008 but this time the wind is at the Republicans back.

5.  Using Two Cows to Explain the Theory of Government

Socialism

You have two cows. The government takes one and give one to your neighbor.

Communism

You have two cows. The government takes them both and promises you milk but you starve.

Fascism

You have two cows. The government takes them and sells you the milk.

Bureaucracy

You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours it down the drain.

Capitalism

You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

Redistributionism

You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point that you must sell them both in order to support someone else who already got a free cow from the government.

http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/using-two-cows-to-explain-the-theory-of-government/

They forgot one. 

Obamaism.  Your two cows puts you in the top 1%.  The government passes a law that says you can’t have two cows unless you get an exemption from them.  If you give them your cream, you get the exemption.  This is also known as crony cowism. 

6.  Hate Speech on the Left Increases

Last week, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D.-Fla.) linked the Tea Party to the tragic Jan. 8, 2011, shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D.-Ariz.). This is just one example, unfortunately, in a long line of slanders from the far left.

“I hesitate to place blame,” said Wasserman Schultz, Chair of the Democratic National Committee. “But I have noticed the tone take a very precipitous turn toward edginess and a lack of civility with the growth of the Tea Party movement.”

Wasserman Schultz is not alone. VP Joe Biden has compared the Tea Party to terrorists, and David Axelrod, President Obama’s political henchman, has compared Newt Gingrich to a monkey. The Washington Post quoted an Obama campaign e-mail to supporters in October of last year claiming the Republican plan for job creation is to “suffocate the economy for the sake of what they think will be a political victory. ” The President has referred to Republicans as “hostage takers.”

These statements are outrageous and are not part of a civil political discourse between the parties. Expect the left to use liberal hate speech as a means to distract the American people from the President’s failed big-government policies….

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=48791

It appears the call by Democrats for civility was only for the Republicans to hear.

Obama vs Tebow: Which one is the real winner?

What’s new Today

Our #1 story compares Tim Tebow to Barack Obama.  One humbles himself before his Deity, the other thinks he is a Deity.  #2 asks whether Obama’s recess appointments backfired on him.  It appears they may have.  #3 builds on the recess appointments and reviews the many illegal moves this administration has made.  #4 is an outline of what Obama’s five most “let them eat cake” moments have been.  #5 exposes a fund raising letter from People for the American Way using a lie.  #6 is a ridiculous story about the EPA requiring and fining the fuel industry for not doing something that is impossible to do.  #7 demonstrates what folly you can have from an out of control left wing government (in this case Greece).  #8 is a heartwarming story about Margaret Thatcher.  And finally #9 is an interesting look at the science of whether oil is a finite fossil fuel or something the earth continues to make within its crust. 

1.  Tim Tebow vs Barack Obama

…Upbeat and optimistic, having both physical and spiritual strength, unlike Barack Obama, Tim Tebow tends towards the positive and thus far appears to be doing a much better job of ensuring his team’s victory than hero Obama is at ensuring victory  for the Democratic Party.

Ironically, Denver Bronco number 15's home is the same Mile High Stadium where Barack Obama, positioned betwixt two Greek columns, made his celebrated acceptance speech, followed by the adulating roar of a packed house.

Yet the difference between Obama and Tebow is that, rather than wallow in the misguided adoration of star-struck people void of a relationship with God, true heroes exhibit an intrinsic reticence that issues forth from a heart that worships someone greater.

Tim Tebow speaks highly of others and humbles himself. He once said, "There are several things that keep me grounded and focused ... When you can humble yourself to say 'I'm no more important than anyone else. I just have a gift.'" That is quite different from Obama, who, in his first year in office, mentioned himself 1,200 times in 41 speeches.

Unlike Obama, who referred to his critics "purveyors of vitriol," Tim has yet to retaliate to his critics with harsh words or angry retorts.

Thus far, not humbled by shortcomings or failures, and as Obama prepares to inundate the nation with even more overconfident praise directed toward himself, the election season promises to bring personal exaltation to new heights, which is against everything Tim Tebow stands for. Yet hope springs eternal that America will not be duped a second time.

Regardless of the outcome, Tim Tebow could teach Barack Obama a thing or two about how heroes wait patiently for vindication to come based on the merit of their own character and performance. That patience may be why, after being told to discontinue writing Scripture references in his eye black, God stepped in and guided a dedicated servant's arm to write John 3:16 in the wind, an impossible occurrence that reminded a world searching desperately for a hero of the one achievement, in all of history,that really mattered.

Hence, if even for a season, while Icarus attempts to repair those melted wings, America has turned its eyes from Obama toward a young man who, with renewed strength, soars like an eagle; runs but does not grow weary; walks and does not faint; and whose hero is not himself, but whose hope rests solely in the Lord.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/obama_tebow_and_americas_hunger_for_heroes.html#ixzz1j9ACHcgO

Go Broncos!

2.  Did Obama’s Recess Appointments backfire?

“Why is Barack Obama’s approval number sinking again on both Gallup and Rasmussen? He hasn’t been in the news much–something that often helps him. Instead the focus has been on the fussing and feuding GOP candidates, the so-called ‘clown car.’ Could it be that the President’s brilliant populist power play of making a questionable recess appointment to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau backfired? It certainly doesn’t seem to have helped. On January 2, the RealClearPolitics average put Obama one point underwater, with a disapproval rating of 47.8 and an approval of 46.8. He appointed Cordray on January 4. He’s now almost 6 points underwater.”

http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/11/did-obamas-populist-power-play-backfire/

Obama does best in the polls when he stays out of sight.  That’s one of the reasons I’m looking to the coming election to be a disaster for the Democrats. 

3.  Obama’s law breaking

There has been for months a popular parlor game of tallying instances in which President Obama seems to have either ignored or simply bypassed federal law. But what started out as a way of exposing occasional hypocrisy is now getting a little scary.

Most recently, President Obama made several recess appointments — a tactic that as a senator he once criticized — even though Congress was not in recess. In December, the president signed a $1 trillion omnibus spending bill, but notified Congress that he might not abide by some of the very provisions he had just signed into law. During the Libya war, Obama felt that bombing Qaddafi’s forces did not really constitute military operations, and therefore he had no need to notify Congress under the War Powers Act.

It is clear that Arizona is not trying to circumvent federal immigration law, but rather is desperately trying to find some way to enforce it, given that the Obama administration has selectively chosen not to do so. In response, the federal government is suing the state of Arizona, even as it assures illegal aliens that they will not be arrested if they have not committed a crime — as if Obama can by himself decide that illegally entering and residing in the United States is not a federal crime in the first place.

President Obama argued that it was constitutional to force citizens to purchase federalized health care, and that all Americans would be subject to his new health-care law — except some 2,000 businesses and organizations that were given politically driven waivers. Obama decided to reverse the legal order of creditors in the bailout of a bankrupt Chrysler Corporation in favor of more politically suitable constituencies. The administration does not like the Defense of Marriage Act, and therefore announced that it won’t enforce it. When a federal judge struck down an Obama- administration ban on new leases for gas and oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama for a time ignored the injunction. When a BP oil leak in the Gulf outraged America, the president met with company executives and announced that they had agreed to set up a $20 billion “fund” to pay for imminent damage claims — as if our chief executive now meets with culpable private businesses to assess what he thinks they should pony up to avoid federal retaliation….

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/287704/obama-s-postmodern-vision-victor-davis-hanson

Is BHO the most lawless President ever?  He’s close if he isn’t. Andrew Jackson may have him beat.    

4.  Top 5 ‘let them eat cake’ moments of the Obama White House

1.       The Pain in Spain…

…Quotable: NYDN writer Andrea Tantaros labeled Mrs. Obama “more like a modern-day Marie Antoinette than an average mother of two” and noted that “the trip and glitzy destination contrasted with President Obama’s demonization of the rich that smacks of hypocrisy.”…

2.       Date Fright..

Quotable: Said Rick Santorum: “I think [Mr. Obama] has to realize that flying to New York is self-indulgent. Go down to the corner bar and have a drink, a shot and a beer. It does not matter where you go with your wife, it’s with your wife. That’s really the point.”..

3.       Concerted Efforts

Quotable: “The young people who read this stuff, hear this stuff, are getting a very dangerous and deadly message,” said president of the State Troopers Fraternal Association union David Jones, referring to Common’s lyrics…

4.       Hawaii Five-Oh No..

5.       Island of Misadventure..

Quotable: Sarah Palin called the president “tone deaf,” adding that she wouldn’t go on vacation if she was Mr. Obama, “especially to Martha’s Vineyard.”..

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/10/the-obamas-top-let-them-eat-cake-episodes/?page=1

There are a lot more details if you want to hit the link. 

5.   Left lies in Fund Raising Letter

It won't shock AT readers to learn that the Left is deceitful, but here's another piece of evidence: a fundraising letter from Ralph Neas's People for the American Way (PAW) arrived in the mail today. The outside of the envelope and the letter inside display a large photo identified as "Demonstrators at Presidential Inauguration." The signs held by these "demonstrators" read: "God Hates Obama," "Fags Love Obama," and "Hell to the Chief."

Anyone paying the slightest attention knows that signs with the word "fag" and "God hates..." most likely originate from the despicable Westboro Baptist Church, and sure enough, a Google search confirms that all these slogans are used by Fred Phelps's demented flock.

The PAW letter exhorts Americans to "Say 'No' to the Politics of Fear and Hate!" Below the photo, the letter opens: "The Republican Party has been hijacked by the Tea Party Movement and has now fully embraced Right Wing Extremism." The obvious implication is that the Westboro people in the photo are Tea Party members, those hateful terrorists who have hijacked the GOP….

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/01/people_for_the_american_way_identifies_photo_of_westboro_baptist_church_demonstrators_as_tea_party_m.html#ixzz1jALjJ7O2

Not only is Fred Phelps not a member of the Tea Party, but he is a democrat who has run in various Kansas Democratic Party primaries five times, but has never won. 

6.  Are Regulations hurting Business?

When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.

“It belies logic,” Charles T. Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, said of the 2011 quota. And raising the quota for 2012 when there is no production makes even less sense, he said.

Penalizing the fuel suppliers demonstrates what happens when the federal government really, really wants something that technology is not ready to provide. In fact, while it may seem harsh that the Environmental Protection Agency is penalizing them for failing to do the impossible, the agency is being lenient by the standards of the law, the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act….

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/business/energy-environment/companies-face-fines-for-not-using-unavailable-biofuel.html?_r=1

Quite frankly I wonder what congress would do if we had them pay the fine out of their salaries.  It would amount to just over $12,700 per person in Congress.  I would think they would complain and say how can they be held responsible for this.  But then how can we hold the motor fuel companies responsible for adding something to their fuel that DOESN’T EXIST??  

7.   Liberal Government:  Examples of Zero Common Sense

Greek disability groups expressed anger Monday at a government decision to expand a list of state-recognized disability categories to include pedophiles, exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs.

The National Confederation of Disabled People called the action "incomprehensible," and said pedophiles are now awarded a higher government disability pay than some people who have received organ transplants.

The Labor Ministry said categories added to the expanded list - that also includes pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists - were included for purposes of medical assessment and used as a gauge for allocating financial assistance….

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_GREECE_DISABILITY_DISPUTE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Surely murderers are morally disabled.  Shouldn’t we be giving them money as well? This is what liberal governance ends up like.   

8.   Margaret Thatcher’s greatest accomplishment

When asked about her most meaningful accomplishment, Margaret Thatcher, now embodied by Meryl Streep in the biopic Iron Lady, did not typically mention serving in the British government, defeating the Argentine invasion of the Falklands, taming runaway inflation, or toppling the Soviet Union. The woman who reshaped British politics and served as prime minister from 1979 to 1990 often said that her greatest accomplishment was helping save a young Austrian girl from the Nazis.

In 1938, Edith Muhlbauer, a 17-year-old Jewish girl, wrote to Muriel Roberts, Edith’s pen pal and the future prime minister’s older sister, asking if the Roberts family might help her escape Hitler’s Austria. The Nazis had begun rounding up the first of Vienna’s Jews after the Anschluss, and Edith and her family worried she might be next. Alfred Roberts, Margaret and Muriel’s father, was a small-town grocer; the family had neither the time nor the money to take Edith in. So Margaret, then 12, and Muriel, 17, set about raising funds and persuading the local Rotary club to help.

Edith stayed with more than a dozen Rotary families, including the Robertses, for the next two years, until she could move to join relatives in South America. Edith bunked in Margaret’s room, and she left an impression. “She was 17, tall, beautiful, evidently from a well-to-do family,” Thatcher later wrote in her memoir. But most important, “[s]he told us what it was like to live as a Jew under an anti-Semitic regime. One thing Edith reported particularly stuck in my mind: The Jews, she said, were being made to scrub the streets.” For Thatcher, who believed in meaningful work, this was as much a waste as it was an outrage. Had the Roberts family not intervened, Edith recalled years later, “I would have stayed in Vienna and they would have killed me.” Thatcher never forgot the lesson: “Never hesitate to do whatever you can, for you may save a life,” she told audiences in 1995 after Edith had been located, alive and well, in Brazil.

http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/87027/thatcher-and-the-jews/?all=1

A beautiful story of a famous woman before she was famous and while she was still just a young girl. 

9.   Is Oil a Fossil Fuel?

Here’s an interesting article which makes a case that oil is not a fossil fuel that is being depleted and which will eventually run out, but rather a product of natural processes within the earth which will continue to be created for as long as the planet is still around.  It’s worth your time to read it.

…To recapitulate, Stalin’s team of scientists and engineers found that oil is not a ‘fossil fuel’ but is a natural product of planet earth – the high-temperature, high-pressure continuous reaction between calcium carbonate and iron oxide – two of the most abundant compounds making up the earth’s crust. This continuous reaction occurs at a depth of approximately 100 km at a pressure of approximately 50,000 atmospheres (5 GPa) and a temperature of approximately 1500°C, and will continue more or less until the ‘death’ of planet earth in millions of years’ time. The high pressure, as well as centrifugal acceleration from the earth’s rotation, causes oil to continuously seep up along fissures in the earth’s crust into subterranean caverns, which we call oil fields. Oil is still being produced in great abundance, and is a sustainable resource – by the same definition that makes geothermal energy a sustainable resource. All we have to do is develop better geotechnical science to predict where it is and learn how to drill down deep enough to get to it. So far, the Russians have drilled to more than 13 km and found oil. In contrast, the deepest any Western oil company has drilled is around 4.5 km….

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3952

and here’s another link along the same line.

http://www.viewzone.com/abioticoilx.html