Obama - Eighteen Months and Counting

We are approaching the eighteen month mark of the Obama Presidency and what a ride it has been. Despite Candidate Obama’s criticism of the deficit under the Bush administration, President Obama has presided over a quadrupling of deficit spending and has to date, added a whopping $2.36 trillion dollars to the national debt. The White House’s own calculations show that the spending levels outlined in the President’s budget will add another $9.7 trillion dollars to the national debt over the next ten years. That assumes of course, that we have a budget.

While the Federal government has been busy involving themselves in matters in which they have absolutely no constitutional authority such as healthcare, internet content and taking control of auto manufacturers, Congress has failed to focus on the things they are mandated by law to do such as securing the US borders, overseeing Federal agencies and adopting a budget. Of course, if you have no budget, you don’t have to make the hard choices of what to cut to keep it in balance. Instead, the Federal government continues to address spending by passing bill after bill that extend current spending levels and raising our debt ceiling to keep the cash flowing.

The Obama administration’s contribution to the national debt will shortly equal what Bush spent in the last four years of his presidency. Since his inauguration, Obama has raised the national debt 20% as a percentage of GDP (the entire national economy or Gross Domestic Product) and current calculations show that we will owe 100% of GDP by the year 2015. George Bush added $4.36 trillion to the debt during his entire eight years in office and even though Obama spoke harshly about the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush administration, President Obama is now poised to far exceed that measure of irresponsibility within the next two years. Moody’s has already warned that America is on the verge of losing its triple A bond rating if we do not reign in our current spending craze. The loss of that rating would require us to pay higher interest on our existing debt and an increase of just a couple of points on a twelve trillion dollar debt would spell financial ruin for the nation but the spending continues unabated.

So what else has the last eighteen months brought us? The Obama administration has brought deep divisions between every race and economic strata in the country. The tactics used to promote their Socialist agenda has created an atmosphere of controversy that has pitted entire groups of people against each other. As the administration tries to gain support for its dangerous and short sighted energy bill, they have gone as far as suggesting it is a race issue; that minority communities are unfairly burdened with a disproportionate amount of industrial pollution. They have taken the seriousness of the civil rights movement of the 1960’s and are trying to frame every aspect of their agenda in terms of racial and economic justice. They are shamelessly using low income and minority communities to forward this agenda; an agenda that will drive those communities deeper into poverty as a very few of the Progressive elite sit back and watch their wealth and power multiply. Of course, since those elite Progressives are friends of the President and the Main Stream Press, those fat cats will be exempt from the same scrutiny used to examine the earnings of Wall Street executives.

Unions and former 1960’s radicals have been instrumental in writing the Stimulus bill, the Healthcare Bill and the Energy Bill. The language in those Bills has funneled billions of tax payer dollars into special projects that benefit the interests that helped write the bills. The President has already thumbed his nose at hard working Americans by issuing an executive order giving preference to Union contractors in government projects costing more than $25 million dollars. That order effectively blocks 80% of private contractors from those projects simply because their employees have not unionized. Under the Healthcare Bill, hospitals are only eligible for Federal funds for training programs if their staffs are unionized; clearly a gift to Andy Stern and the SEIU for their help during the election. Of course Union preferences won’t mean much if we continue on the path of national bankruptcy. After all, you need to have money to fund projects and training programs.

The Obama administration has adopted a policy of sheer luck where counter-terrorism is concerned. Catastrophe has only been avoided because the weapons training that our latest would-be assailants received was flawed and the devices they used failed to detonate. Still, Obama plans on only adding an additional 100 people to review and update the no-fly list but needs 17,000 new IRS agents to make sure you buy healthcare insurance. Our Attorney General, Eric Holder, has problems using the term Radical Islam in connection with these failed terrorists but Director of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano has no problem using far more troubling descriptors when it comes to defining the dangers posed by Tea Party protestors. In fact, the only danger the Tea Party represents is that they mean to block the President’s agenda and that is something the current administration will not tolerate.

Cass Sunstein, Obama’s “Regulatory Czar” has even suggested that our government use tactics once reserved for the Soviet KGB and discretely infiltrate Tea Parties and other groups that protest the administration’s plans. Sunstein would also like to see the government use its power to organize information campaigns to counter the Tea Party message and promote the President’s agenda. Excuse me, but isn’t that called propaganda? If you don’t believe this administration has no problem using propaganda to gain support and power, take the case of Obama’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan. The White House has impeded any attempt by the press to gain access to Kagan for an interview. They even contacted a school where Kagan’s brother teaches and “suggested” the school deny news access to Kagan’s brother. Instead, an unnamed White House staffer conducted a sanitary interview of Elena Kagan and that is the only material that has been given to the press. What are they hiding? Even Kagan’s thesis has been scrubbed from the internet; a thesis that clearly said she lamented the failure of Socialism to gain momentum in the United States.

The past eighteen months has brought America closer to financial ruin that at any other time in history. The programs and policies of this administration have depleted our ability to respond quickly to additional economic downturns and have placed us dangerously close to the point where we may not be able to afford to adequately defend ourselves. While the Feds corral militia groups in Michigan, North Korea has been acting with impunity against South Korea, apparently unafraid of a meaningful American response. While Congress launches a harsh campaign against Toyota because of safety concerns, Iran continues on the path to nuclear arms without a worry in the world. While the Mexican drug war continues to spill over the border into Arizona and Texas, the Obama administration is seeking to seize private property in Vermont to strengthen our border with Canada.

Obama refuses to answer questions about the radical past of his closest advisors. He refuses to answer questions about why his campaign spent nearly a million dollars to seal documents and information about his past. He refuses to answer questions about why his Social Security number was part of a group of numbers reserved for residents of Connecticut, a State in which he never resided and why that number was issued a full three years after his first known job at a Hawaiian ice cream shop. He refuses to answer questions about why his application for student aid was filed stating he was a foreign student of Indonesian patronage. He even refuses to answer the question about why the birth certificate he submitted to the Federal Elections Commission, a birth certificate issued in 1961, has no State seal and shows his father’s race as African when African is neither a race nor a nation; nor would it have been used as a description of race in 1961 America.

We have a long way to go before November 2012….I only hope the nation can survive that long.

Paul

The Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments

We have been exploring the Bill of Rights since last week. We have made some important statements about these protections, particularly the First and Second Amendments in conjunction with the apparent efforts of the current administration and its supporters to at the very least, weaken those rights. While I do not want to ignore any of these Amendments, I do want to accelerate the process slightly so that we can get to a timely discussion on the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. The importance of which will be readily recognizable to anyone once the discussion begins.

This is not to imply that the following three amendments are not as equally critical to the existence of a free nation, but these amendments, which are for the most part, self explanatory and with the exception of the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment, are rarely challenged.

I will say that the discussions we are to have on the Ninth and Tenth Amendments will overshadow these three only in their immediate connection to current flow of politics and to the efforts many States are now pursuing to reinforce these rights in the face of increasing pressure and interference by the Federal Government.

The Sixth Amendment
Right to Speedy Trial, Confrontation of Witnesses.
Ratified 12/15/1791.

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”

It is a safe assumption that all Americans agree that the innocent should be free and the guilty should be punished. To insure justice to that end, the Sixth Amendment requires that all persons facing criminal prosecution do so in a fair and impartial way and that the trial that will determine a person’s guilt or innocence be held within a reasonable period of time.

In 1966 Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, determined that a public trial was not absolute and could be denied if the publicity associated with the trial would impact or prevent a fair and impartial verdict. While important, this case was related only to the right to a public trial and not a speedy one.

In many other justice systems innocence was not presumed and those facing charges also faced the reality that they were considered guilty until such time as their innocence could be established. The incarceration was harsh and the trials to establish guilt or innocence happened expressly at the convenience of the government, which could be years.

A measure to establish what is considered “speedy” had to be defined if this amendment were to have any meaning at all. Incredibly, it wasn’t until 1972 that a reasonable challenge had been made to the Supreme Court requiring that they rule on what measure should be used to determine if a person’s right to speedy trial had been violated. That case, Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 alleged that the defendants right to a speedy trial had been violated and required a judgment from the court as to the exact definition of what would constitute a violation of law.

The court rendered a decision that the speed at which a trial should proceed must be determined by the facts in each individual case and did write four criteria with which the courts could base that determination on. Those four points are:

Delay:
1- Length of Delay: A delay of a year or more from the date on which the speedy trial right "attaches" (the date of arrest or indictment, whichever first occurs) was termed "presumptively prejudicial" (but the Court has never explicitly ruled that any absolute time limit applies.)

Reason for delay:

2- The prosecution may not excessively delay the trial for its own advantage, but a trial may be delayed to secure the presence of an absent witness or other practical considerations.

3- Time and manner in which the defendant has asserted his right: If a defendant acquiesces to the delay when it works to his own benefit, he cannot later claim that he has been unduly delayed.

4- Degree of prejudice to the defendant which the delay has caused.

The Supreme Court ruled against the petitioner, Willie Barker, in that he had previously waived his right to a speedy trial by agreeing to the continuances, and that the verdict was not prejudiced by the delays. However, the importance of this case is evident in the crafting of the four points that would determine the viability of future challenges to this Amendment.

The following year (1973), the Supreme Court heard the case of Strunk v. United States, 412 U.S. 434 in which these criteria were put to the test. The Supreme Court found in favor on the petitioner based on the four points established in Barker v. Wingo, and overturned a conviction obtained in his trial after it was determined that Strunk’s rights to a speedy trial had in fact been violated.

The Seventh Amendment
Trial by Jury in Civil Cases.
Ratified 12/15/1791.

“In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”

Even where a legal, rather than an monetary , issue is in question, the judge has a role in the determination of the verdict. The Supreme Court has held that judges may render an opinion on the facts in dispute provided that the jury actually determines the dispute after deliberation. A judge may also direct the jury to pay special attention to certain evidence and require the jury to answer certain questions relating to the case in addition to giving a verdict. If the judge deems the plaintiff's evidence insufficient, he may direct the jury to find in the defendant's favor. The jury may, however, return a verdict contrary to the judge's direction.

As common law provided, the judge has the power to set aside (or nullify) a jury verdict that he deemed was reached contrary to the evidence or the law but common law precluded the judge from himself entering a verdict. Where a judge has nullified a verdict on these grounds, only a new trial with a new jury would be the only permissible course.

The Eighth Amendment
Cruel and Unusual Punishment.
Ratified 12/15/1791.

“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.:

The Eighth Amendment is almost identical to a provision in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, in which Parliament declared, "as their ancestors in like case have usually done...that excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
In 1947 the Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment did, in fact apply to the individual States as well as to the Federal government.
While the 1878 Supreme Court did issue general prohibitions against a number of punishments including drawing and quartering, public dissecting, burning alive, or disemboweling, it would not be until 1972 (apparently a very busy year for the Supreme Court) that the court finally rendered a decision that spelled out, yet another four points that could be used to determine whether a punishment could be construed as cruel or unusual.

Those points are:

1- The "essential predicate" is "that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity," especially torture.
2-"A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion.”
3- "A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society.”
4- "A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary.”

As far as the death penalty is concerned, the Supreme Court has had a mixed bag of decisions over the years. Some cases centered on the method used for execution and others in the actual imposition of a death penalty where the victim of the crime had not been killed such as in cases of rape.

The argument on the death penalty is a morally charged subject that is deeply contested where ever it is used. Instead of outlawing the practice entirely, The Supreme Court has instead, prohibited the use of language that would require a mandatory death sentence for certain crimes and has also required that special legal procedures be used to guarantee that capital crimes are pursued with great care and are scrupulously prosecuted. To meet this requirement, some States have opted to remove the duty of imposing the death sentence from the judge altogether and have instead, opted to hold two separate jury trials; one to determine guilt or innocence and upon conviction a second trial to determine the severity of the punishment ranging from imprisonment to execution.

I myself do not oppose the death penalty for certain crimes but we have all seen overzealous prosecutors that are more interested in a conviction than the truth. Case in point was the rape case involving the 2006 Duke University Lacrosse team. North Carolina District Attorney Mike Nifong ignored exculpatory evidence that would have cleared the Duke students of any wrongdoing and had continued to shape the actions of police and other persons involved in the case. Mr. Difong then aggressively pursued a false trial for what some have said was his goal to gain the notoriety that comes with winning a conviction in a highly publicized trial.

I would submit that some dangerous men just like Mike Nifong, still exist within the criminal justice system. With that in mind, only irrefutable physical evidence should allow us, a reasonable and civilized society, the certainty required to escort convicted criminals towards the death penalty regardless of the alleged crime. If we are to deprive one of their life as the supreme form of punishment, we must be deadly sure that there is no mistake in how that conviction was obtained. We must be sure that we are right by a factor of 200% or more or answer for our lack of diligence in a far higher court.

Paul

The First Amendment, Part One

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Central to the principals of American Freedom is allegiance to the Constitution. Our elected officials must, to assume office, fulfill a requirement to swear an oath to defend and support the Constitution. Our trust as a nation is placed in the word of law and not the word of a leader. Even the military, under direct orders from the President, have sworn to defend the Constitution as their primary mission and to obey the orders of the President only if his orders do not conflict with that.

The founding fathers added the amendments in order of their importance to the cause of liberty. Therefore, the first amendment must possess the highest degree of importance for the well being of the Republic. This amendment covers a wide area of freedoms that had historically been denied to the common citizen and governmental retribution for the infraction of laws surrounding religion, speech and free assembly had been traditionally, swift and brutal. It was critical to secure the high ideals that this new nation was to represent, that these rights were guarded as aggressively as they had previously been denied. Given the importance of this amendment, we will address each of the clauses individually over the next three days.

The most misunderstood of these principals is the first. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” The modern incarnation of this passage is the separation of Church and State. The men who founded our nation were statesmen, lawyers, businessmen, land owners and tradesmen. They were also openly religious and sought to secure the blessings of God on this nation by recognizing His divine word that man was and ought to be, free.

Many of the early settlers to this new continent came here to seek the freedom of religious expression; a freedom denied to them by the Church of England. The founding fathers celebrated their beliefs openly but recognized that belief assumes many forms. That all men should have the comfort of worshiping in the faith of their choice, free from coercion, free from ridicule and free from reprisal. To that end, they established language in the form of a Constitutional Amendment that would prohibit the United States from establishing a “State Religion” similar to the Church of England.

That was meant to allow all citizens to worship in their own way. Unfortunately, modern man brings modern thought into the discussion. Public schools once began each day with a prayer. Atheists saw this as the establishment of religion and bombarded the courts with suits claiming that the freedom of religion, or non-religion, was being trampled on by this practice. Reading the letter of the law, the courts had no alternative but to agree and remove the mandates of prayer from public schools. However, the courts, as usual, went too far and the separation of “Church and State” slowly became the separation of “Church from State”, prohibiting any public display of religion. In essence, it has been mutated to say “freedom from religion” instead of the word of law which is “freedom of religion”.

Remember that the intention was to allow the free worship of God, each in his own way. Now we have adopted a policy where school children that choose to pray are prohibited from doing so in public places. That any public display that acknowledges the faith of the American people is abolished and that public monies can not be used to assist charities and community organizations that are operated by religious organizations. This was never the intent of the First Amendment. I do not believe that the government should endorse one religion over another but it has the obligation to recognize the faith of all of its citizens. It should not lead a school in prayer but neither should it prevent those that wish to pray from doing so. It should not celebrate one religious event over another but it should celebrate the freedom with which American’s celebrate these events for themselves.

I could go to the extreme and point out that by the definition posted in the New Merriam-Webster Dictionary that progressivism meets three of the four definitions given to describe religion and is therefore logically, a religion itself. While progressivism is primarily a political frame of mind the believers in this ideology also eagerly point out the morality of the goals in their political aims. It is dangerous for one to assume that their morality is superior to all others, just as it is dangerous to claim that one religion is superior over another.

Following the logic of the modern Supreme Court and all of the opponents of public displays of religion I would submit that the endorsement and display of progressive ideology be equally expunged from all public venues. That the Congressional Progressive Caucus should be disbanded and a full accounting of the public funds used to support it be made known to the American people and that progressive organizations should also be prohibited from receiving public funding.

We can go down the list of the groups and ideologies, both left and right, that have had a strangle hold on the governmental process and apply this equally among them. In the end, once we weed out the political groups that pursue their aims with “religious” fervor, we will eventually end up with public support for only a small group of individuals that look very much like the men that founded this country; those that would seek justice for all and posses a keen recognition of individual liberties and freedoms.

Hmmm….Sounds like a great idea! Let’s found a nation based on those principals!

Tomorrow: Part two of the First Amendment. Freedom speech and freedom of the press.”

Paul

Progressives and the Courts

In a recent exchange on Twitter, the discussion had turned to Congressional Progressives and I didn’t get the feeling that there is a true appreciation of how dangerous these people really are. There are really only two things standing between Progressives and the realization of their goals. No, it is not the Tea Party movement but they have added a critical component and it is not Congressional Conservatives and Moderates because they are two few in number. The real roadblocks are the United States Constitution and exposure. For the Progressive agenda to move forward the United States Constitution must either be redefined or completely altered and even more important, the true nature of their agenda must remain secret to the voting public.

Most of America’s people live their lives comfortably in the middle of the political spectrum. They recognize the need for essential services but are fiscally conservative. They do not see America as an aggressor but they recognize that the only real deterrent to the aggression of other nations is a military that is adequately armed and trained for war. They willingly reach out to help anyone in a time of need but do not appreciate a government entitlement machine that makes those in need recipients for life. They welcome lawful émigrés to this nation but demand that our borders and our country are protected from those that would enter illegally for the purpose of exploiting America’s generous nature. Most of all, they are not isolationists at heart but want to see some common sense applied to trade agreements and the import tax structure that will preserve our industries and economic well being. Any blatant attempt to violate these basic ideals was historically met with angry retribution at the polls.

Thomas Jefferson warned us about the evils of print news when he said that “A man who reads nothing is better informed than a man who reads nothing but newspapers.” In Jefferson’s day, print news was actually worse than today’s media. It was mostly personal opinion and would openly praise their friends while publically roasting their enemies with little concern for the truth. As newspapers became corporations (and as the law began to deal with those that would print outright falsehoods) the press became more responsible and over time, had begun to establish trust with the public.

There had been no real shift in the basic ideals of the American electorate but starting with the Progressive era in the early 1900’s, there was another major shift in the reporting of news. Papers in major cities began to editorialize again rather than report and they intentionally infused the news with the opinion of the author rather than detail the events of the day. Since there were very few alternative news sources, they were quite successful at shaping the opinions of their readers without much criticism or notice.

The Progressive wordsmiths seeking to shape public opinion through their papers enjoyed, or rather exploited, the faith they had established with their readers during the decades of work by dedicated reporters that were interested in truth over ideology. Now it was different. Progressives sought to change America and before that could happen, they had to either change American opinion or obfuscate the true purpose of Progressivism in a jumble of doublespeak. Isn’t it ironic that now that the press has come full circle Mr. Jefferson looks more like a prophet than someone who was merely commenting on the common practices of corrupt news men during his lifetime?

Now that the news was being crafted to support the agenda of Progressives, the human aspect was being calmed, if not controlled. Those that did not believe the positive press given to the Progressive movement would be demoralized with the unending stories about the excesses of the wealthy and the abuses they waged against the poor defenseless workers. The relentless assault in the press dulled the senses of readers until they were not even sure what the truth was anymore. Fortunately, we now have a multitude of new sources for information. The internet and cable television have shattered the monopoly held by the graduates of liberal schools of journalism and the people have overwhelmingly responded by seeking those sources over traditional media by a factor of two and three to one.

Progressives are the one group in America that truly believes that the ends justify the means. They began the underhanded work of using the courts to redefine the Constitution early in the 20th century while people were still under the ether of the liberal press. Roscoe Pound was a noted legal scholar and educator. In 1908, he was part of the founding editorial staff of the first comparative law journal in the U.S., the “Annual Bulletin” of the Comparative Law Bureau of the American Bar Association. He was also the founder of the movement for "sociological jurisprudence", an influential critic of the U.S. Supreme Court's "liberty of contract" (freedom of contract) line of cases and one of the early leaders of the movement for American Legal Realism.

Sociological jurisprudence was a new idea in law at the turn of the 20th century and would provide the means whereby the courts could assume the role of not simply trying a case based on current law but could instead be used to bring divergent interests into alignment with each other. The long and the short of it is that it is a sociological tool whereby the courts could “translate” law as society changed rather than rely on the written word of law. That one move would give Progressives unbridled power to alter the Constitution through judicial interpretation rather than through the Amendment process intended by the founders.

Of course to make sociological jurisprudence work they needed to nullify the intent of the founding fathers. That would be done through the theory of Legal Realism. Legal Realism states that all people are flawed and therefore, the laws written by man must contain some measure of those flaws. The founding fathers, it was argued, were not trying to construct a nation for all men but to protect their own limited interests. It was therefore right and proper to “adjust” those laws by interpretation using the lens of the modern era to affect a more just society and those interpretations would include the United States Constitution. That was the only way the Progressives could craft legislation that directly violates the Tenth Amendment, allowing the Federal Government the ability to seize powers that previously belonged solely to the States and the people.

Healthcare is a perfect example. The Constitution does not grant the Federal Government the authority to direct, control or regulate healthcare but the government has been using sociological jurisprudence to broaden the power granted to Congress to “provide for the general welfare” under Article I, section 8 of the Constitution since the time of Theodore Roosevelt. The original meaning of this phrase, as clearly enunciated in the Federalist Papers, was to provide for the general welfare of the Union as an entity or a collection of States. It did not give Congress the authority to provide anything directly for the citizens of this nation except for an America free from Federal interference so that they could pursue “life, liberty and happiness” as each saw fit. Progressives had tainted the courts so that the “general” in that phrase was reinterpreted to mean all of the citizenry and not simply the nation and that is now being used as the justification for this onerous healthcare reform act.

Unfortunately, Progressives are not all about doing things for the “general welfare” out of some undying sense of social justice. The roots of Progressivism are based in a firm belief that there are people in this world that are highly advanced and that these “elite” must accept the responsibility for those that are incapable of making proper choices for themselves. The early Progressives looked to Europe for guidance took many cues from Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and other radical philosophers. They were firm believers in eugenics and the theory that superior qualities could be bred to create a ruling class of elites and that out of necessity, governmental powers would eventually be limited to that ruling class. Some even proposed the elimination of people that fell below an acceptable minimum of intelligence or drive. George Bernard Shaw felt that a life that was of no use to society could not be much use to that unfortunate person either. He suggested that chemists devise a humane gas that would kill instantly and painlessly and that we should even play classical music as we marched people of limited use to their demise.

Curiously, one of the Progressives that helped flesh out the idea for a universal healthcare system, Ezekiel Emmanuel, brother of Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel. Ezekiel had written about the need to ration care based upon the ability of the patient to contribute to society. While that is a far cry from Shaw’s call for gas chambers, it still results in an early demise for those that cannot effectively add value to the collective and tells me that the Progressive’s view of human life is far less sacred than that of the founding fathers.

The only thing that preserves our Constitution; our protection against this politically inbred army of self proclaimed elites is the constitutionally mandated separation of powers. That separation guarantees that major changes in our government are only possible if an overwhelming majority of the people support those changes. It is noteworthy to mention that every Progressive President to date has sought to sidestep the separation of powers required in the Constitution and expand the power of the Presidency through agencies, bureaucracies and now, Czars. If they succeed, that will mark the beginning of the end of the Republic.

Paul