NAPOLITANO: Congress’ unconscionable silence at president’s power grabs--Obama becomes imperial president without Republican resistance

Washington Times, by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, February 19, 2014

The political philosopher Edmund Burke once remarked that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good folks to do nothing.

A glaring example of the impending triumph of a constitutional evil that could be stopped by folks who have been largely silent is the tyranny coming from the White House. The folks who can stop this and are doing nothing about it are our elected representatives in Congress.

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It established the three branches of government, and it delegated “all legislative powers” to Congress.

American law rarely uses the word “all.” Yet the Framers chose that word precisely to confine the writing of law to Congress and to prevent a president from altering federal law by the selective manner of law enforcement and thereby effectively rewriting it.

The Framers sought to guard against the same evils by compelling the president to swear at the commencement of his terms in office that he will “faithfully” enforce the laws.

Read more!  

Is it legal for Obama to keep changing health care laws?

This is a must watch video--Obama dangles a carrot to business but look out for the strings attached!  

Megan Kelly interviews Judge Napolitano—Be sure and listen all the way through!

http://video.foxnews.com/v/3183622188001/is-it-legal-for-obama-to-keep-changing-health-care-laws/#sp=show-clips

What if the government rejects the Constitution?

What if the government never took the Constitution seriously? What if the same generation -- in some cases the same human beings -- that wrote in the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech," also enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to criticize the government? What if the feds don't regard the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land?

What if the government regards the Constitution as merely a guideline to be referred to from time to time, or a myth to be foisted upon the voters, but not as a historic delegation of power that lawfully limits the federal government? What if Congress knows that most of what it regulates puts it outside the confines of the Constitution, but it does whatever it can get away with? What if the feds don't think that the Constitution was written to keep them off the people's backs?


What if there's no substantial difference between the two major political parties? What if the same political mentality that gave us the Patriot Act, with its federal agent-written search warrants that permit unconstitutional spying on us, also gave us ObamaCare, with its mandate to buy health insurance, even if we don't want or need it? What if both political parties love power more than freedom? What if both parties have used the Commerce Clause in the Constitution to stretch the power of the federal government far beyond its constitutionally ordained boundaries and well beyond the plain meaning of words?


What if both parties love war because the public is more docile during war and permits higher taxes and more federal theft of freedom from individuals and power from the states? What if none of these recent wars has made us freer or safer, but just poorer?


What if Congress bribed the states with cash in return for their enacting legislation that Congress likes, but cannot lawfully enact? What if Congress went to all states in the union and offered them cash to repave their interstate highways, if the states only lowered their speed limits? What if the states took that deal? What if the Supreme Court approved this bribery and then Congress did it again and again? What if this bribery were a way for Congress to get around the few constitutional limitations that Congress acknowledges?


What if Congress believes that it can spend tax dollars on anything it pleases and tie any strings it wants to that spending? What if Congress uses its taxing and spending power to regulate anything it wants to control, whether authorized by the Constitution or not? What if anyone other than members of Congress offered state legislatures cash in return for favorable legislation? What if Congress wrote laws that let it break laws that ordinary people would be prosecuted for breaking?


What if the Declaration of Independence says that the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed? What if the government claims to derive powers from some other source that it will not -- because it cannot -- name? What if we never gave the government the power to spy on us, to print worthless cash, to kill in our names, to force us to buy health insurance or to waste our money by telling us that exercise is good and sugar is bad?


What if we never gave the government the power to bribe the poor with welfare or the middle class with tax breaks or the rich with bailouts or the states with cash? What if we don't consent to what has become of the government? What if the Constitution has been tacitly amended by the consent of both political parties, whereby instead of ratifying amendments, all three branches of government merely look the other way when the government violates the Constitution? What if the president cannot constitutionally bomb whatever country he wants? What if the Congress cannot constitutionally exempt its members from the laws that govern the rest of us? What if the courts cannot constitutionally invent a right to kill babies in the womb?


What if the federal government is out of control, no matter which party controls it? What if there is only harmony on Capitol Hill when government is growing and personal liberty is shrinking? What if the presidential race this fall will not be between good and evil, between right and left, between free markets and central planning or even between constitutional government and Big Government; but only about how much bigger Big Government should get?

What if enough is enough? What do we do about it? What if it's too late?

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written six books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is "It Is Dangerous To Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom." To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit http://www.creators.com/

SOURCE:  http://patriotsforamerica.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=2734278%3ATopic%3A354620&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_topic

Freedom Watch Video - The Plain Truth

11-24-11 Freedom Watch Video - The Plain Truth
The Judge questions whether our constitution means anything anymore.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX41SkKN0tQ&feature=email

Judge Andrew Napolitano: Can Congress Steal Your Constitutional Freedoms?

Can the president use the military to arrest anyone he wants, keep that person away from a judge and jury, and lock him up for as long as he wants? In the Senate's dark and terrifying vision of the Constitution, he can.


Congress is supposed to work in public. That requirement is in the Constitution. It is there because the folks who wrote the Constitution had suffered long and hard under the British Privy Council, a secret group that advised the king and ran his government. We know from the now-defunct supercommittee, and other times when Congress has locked its doors, that government loves secrecy and hates transparency. Transparency forces the government to answer to us. Secrecy lets it steal our liberty and our property behind our backs.

Last week, while our minds were on family and turkey and football, the Senate Armed Services Committee decided to meet in secret. So, behind closed doors, it drafted an amendment to a bill appropriating money for the Pentagon. The amendment would permit the president to use the military for law enforcement purposes in the United States. This, of course, would present a radical departure from any use to which the military has been put in the memory of any Americans now living.


The last time the federal government regularly used the military for domestic law enforcement was at the end of Reconstruction in the South, in 1876. In fact, the deal to end Reconstruction resulted in the enactment of federal laws forbidding the domestic use of American military for law enforcement purposes. This has been our law, our custom and our set of values to which every president has adhered for 135 years.

It is not for directing traffic that this legislation would authorize the president to use the military. Essentially, this legislation would enable the president to divert from the criminal justice system, and thus to divert from the protections of the Constitution, any person he pleases. And that person, under this terrifying bill, would have no recourse to a judge to require the president either to file charges against him or to set him free.

Can you imagine an America in which you could lose all liberty -- from the presumption of innocence to the right to counsel to fairness from the government to a jury trial -- simply because the president says you are dangerous?

CONTINUED:
http://townhall.com/columnists/judgeandrewnapolitano/2011/12/01/can_congress_steal_your_constitutional_freedoms

What if the Constitution No Longer Applied?

by Andrew P. Napolitano

What if the whole purpose of the Constitution was to limit the government? What if Congress' enumerated powers in the Constitution no longer limited Congress, but were actually used as justification to extend Congress' authority over every realm of human life? What if the president, meant to be an equal to Congress, has become a democratically elected, term-limited monarch? What if the president assumed everything he did was legal, just because he's the president? What if he could interrupt your regularly scheduled radio and TV programming for a special message from him? What if he could declare war on his own? What if he could read your emails and texts without a search warrant? What if he could kill you without warning?

What if the rights and principles guaranteed in the Constitution have been so distorted in the past 200 years as to be unrecognizable by the Founders? What if the states were mere provinces of a totally nationalized and fully centralized government? What if the Constitution was amended stealthily, not by constitutional amendments duly passed by the states, but by the constant and persistent expansion of the federal government's role in our lives? What if the federal government decided whether its own powers were proper and constitutional?

What if you needed a license from the government to speak, to assemble or to protest the government? What if the right to keep and bear arms only applied to the government? What if posse comitatus – the law that prohibits our military from our streets – were no longer in effect? What if the government considered the military an adequate dispenser of domestic law enforcement? What if cops looked and acted like troops and you couldn't distinguish the military from the police? What if federal agents could write their own search warrants in defiance of the Constitution? What if the government could decide when you weren't entitled to a jury trial?

What if the government could take your property whenever it wanted it? What if the government could continue prosecuting you until it got the verdict it wanted? What if the government could force you to testify against yourself simply by labeling you a domestic terrorist? What if the government could torture you until you said what the government wanted to hear? What if people running for president actually supported torture? What if the government tortured your children to get to you? What if the government could send you to your death and your innocence meant nothing so long as the government's procedures were followed? What if America's prison population, the largest in the world, was the result of a cruel and unusual way for a country to be free? What if half the prison population never harmed anyone but themselves?

What if the people had no rights except those the government chose to let them have? What if the states had no rights except to do as the federal government commanded? What if our elected officials didn't really live among us, but all instead had their hearts and their homes in Washington, D.C.? What if the government could strip you of your rights because of where your mother was when you were born? What if the income tax was unconstitutional? What if the states were convinced to give up their representation in Congress? What if the government tried to ban you from using a substance older than the government itself? What if voting didn't mean anything anymore because both political parties stand for Big Government?

What if the government could write any law, regulate any behavior and tax any event, the Constitution be damned? What if the government was the reason we don't have a Constitution anymore? What if you could love your country but hate what the government has done to it? What if sometimes to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best which governs least? What if I'm right? What if the government is wrong? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?

November 30, 2011

Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel, and the host of “FreedomWatch” on the Fox Business Network. His latest book is It is Dangerous to be Right When the Government is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom.

Copyright © 2011 Creators Syndicate

Sun Journal Letter to the Editor: Violence at AFP Summit in DC, by CCTA Vice Chairman, Nancy Murdoch

At 4:30 a.m. last Friday morning, my husband and I, along with a number of Eastern N.C. patriots got on a bus heading to Washington, D.C. to attend the “Defending the American Dream Summit", sponsored by Americans for Prosperity. We paid our own way to the event.


After arriving, we attended the opening events and the dinner honoring President Reagan, where we were fortunate to hear many amazing speakers. As Judge Andrew Napolitano began his remarks, he was interrupted by an infiltrator that began screaming at the crowd. As he was removed, the Judge affirmed the protesters’ right to his convictions, as much as he disagreed with them.

Later in the festivities we were shown a video of what was occurring outside the Convention Center. A number of protesters had shown up from the “Occupy” movement with a large “fat cat” balloon. We were advised to stay in groups and not engage with the protesters when we walked back to our hotel.

Those believing that the “Occupy” movement is non-violent are very mistaken. At one time no one was able to leave the building as the protesters blocked the entrances, banging on the glass and screaming. Eventually police were able to clear the doors and we were allowed to leave. Unfortunately, several older women were knocked down and suffered some minor injuries that could have easily been serious. A woman in a wheelchair was not allowed to leave, and a child was separated from her mother. The situation was chaotic, with the protesters being in charge more than the police. Traffic was blocked, and someone was run over by a vehicle. Anyone doubting the veracity of my statements can find videos online covering the events.

I have attended a number of tea parties, and have never seen violence of any kind, and no arrests. The “Occupy” movement has resulted in almost 3,000 arrests to date, rapes, assaults, a death, injuries, destruction of private property, and the loss of safety and movement for others. To compare these statistics to the Tea Parties is a joke, and would only be made by someone with a warped agenda. Media and politicians pushing the “Occupy” movement as representative of the American people will pay a price. To ignore the violence and applaud this type of disgusting behavior is an injustice to us all.

Nancy Murdoch
CCTA Vice Chairman
Havelock, NC