www.wsj.com/articles/the-tyranny-of-the-administrative-state-1497037492

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Tyranny of the Administrative State

Government by unelected experts isn’t all that different from the ‘royal prerogative’ of 17th-century England, argues constitutional scholar Philip Hamburger.

By 

John Tierney

June 9, 2017      Mr. Tierney is a contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal

New York

What’s the greatest threat to liberty in America? Liberals rail at Donald Trump’s executive orders on immigration and his hostility toward the press, while conservatives vow to reverse Barack Obama’s regulatory assault on religion, education and business. Philip Hamburger says both sides are thinking too small.

Like the blind men in the fable who try to describe an elephant by feeling different parts of its body, they’re not perceiving the whole problem: the enormous rogue beast known as the administrative state.

Sometimes called the regulatory state or the deep state, it is a government within the government, run by the president and the dozens of federal agencies that assume powers once claimed only by kings. In place of royal decrees, they issue rules and send out “guidance” letters like the one from an Education Department official in 2011 that stripped college students of due process when accused of sexual misconduct.

Unelected bureaucrats not only write their own laws, they also interpret these laws and enforce them in their own courts with their own judges. All this is in blatant violation of the Constitution, says Mr. Hamburger, 60, a constitutional scholar and winner of the Manhattan Institute’s Hayek Prize last year for his scholarly 2014 book, “Is Administrative Law Unlawful?” (Spoiler alert: Yes.)

“Essentially, much of the Bill of Rights has been gutted,” he says, sitting in his office at Columbia Law School. “The government can choose to proceed against you in a trial in court with constitutional processes, or it can use an administrative proceeding where you don’t have the right to be heard by a real judge or a jury and you don’t have the full due process of law. Our fundamental procedural freedoms, which once were guarantees, have become mere options.” ​

In volume and complexity, the edicts from federal agencies exceed the laws passed by Congress by orders of magnitude. “The administrative state has become the government’s predominant mode of contact with citizens,” Mr. Hamburger says. “Ultimately this is not about the politics of left or right. Unlawful government power should worry everybody.”

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www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/05/forget_what_you_hear_our_narcissist_president_is_winning.html

May 23, 2017

Forget What You Hear: Our Narcissist President Is Winning

By William L. Gensert

I first became aware of Donald Trump in the late seventies.  I was not impressed.  In fact, I didn’t like him.  I thought he was a braggart and a man who went out of his way to disrespect women.  I wouldn’t have said so at the time, but he was clearly a narcissist.

Growing up in an Italian neighborhood in the Bronx, I have been around men like him all my life.  They’re going to do this; they’re going to do that.  They have this; they have that.  I took him to be a person so full of himself that his company would be unbearable.

I didn’t give him much hope of winning the presidency, either, but as election day neared, friends would ask what I thought a Trump presidency would look like.  Forced at that point to think about it, I would say that as a businessman, at least he would make quality appointments to the power positions in his administration – you can’t run a successful business without being able to delegate authority to a strong team of employees. 

As far as Trump’s narcissism, I’m not sure that hurts him as a president.  Sure, he could show better discretion with what he says – he does seem to have an almost Plaxico Burress-type dedication to shooting himself in the foot (see L’Affaire Comey).  Yet I think you need to have a certain amount of narcissism to be a successful president, although it doesn’t guarantee success. 

Just look at our second-most recent president, a solipsist so narcissistic he actually thought his mere presence would slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.  Barry took narcissism to a new level, seemingly believing himself some kind of god, a belief fed by the nearly total hagiographic coverage he received from the Fourth Estate, our once nationally treasured free press, reduced to sycophantic (more like “sycofanatic”) exaltation of the “light bearer,” the man with the “crease.”

The difference between Barry’s narcissism and Trump’s is this: Trump is the guy who looks at the most beautiful girl at the party and says, “I can get her number.”  Barry would look at the same girl and say, “She wants me.”  Trump would then pursue the girl, and Barry would walk away, because obviously, she is not good enough for him, and besides, someone told him there’s a mirror in the next room. 

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Jesus would hold women’s hands to support them during abortion: abortionist

FORT WORTH, Texas, March 4, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — The abortionist who appealed to the Supreme Court in oral arguments this week says Jesus would supportively hold the hands of women as they abort their children.

Amy Hagstrom Miller, whose Texas abortion business conglomerate Whole Women’s Health owns and runs seven abortion facilities, says she is “mission-driven” by her commitment “to human rights and justice.”

She is fighting state legislation requiring her abortionists to have a local hospital admitting agreement, and requiring her abortion mills to have cleanliness and facility standards up to the required standards of other surgical clinics.

Legislators say the laws protect the health and safety of women. Miller says the laws were only passed to create fear and discourage women from choosing abortion.

In an interview with the pro-abortion website alternet.org, Miller explains that she reassures hesitating Christian mothers and encourages them to abort by telling them, “The majority of our patients are Christian. The majority are mothers already.”

“I was raised in a liberal Christian tradition, and I come to the work (at one of her seven abortion businesses) because of that background,” she shared.  “The Jesus that I was taught about would be holding the hands of women inside the clinic.”

One of the pro-life laws passed in Texas is an informed consent law, which gives women the choice to look at an ultrasound of her growing baby, which must be done anyway to determine the baby’s gestational age.  Proponents of the pro-life law say seeing an ultrasound has encouraged many women to keep their baby and choose life.  

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www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-the-stolen-supreme-court-seat-1485995357?tesla=y

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Myth of the Stolen Supreme Court Seat

Democrats set the standard for the GOP on judicial confirmations.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks to reporters in the Ohio Clock in Washington, D.C., Jan. 31. PHOTO: CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY/NEWSCOM/ZUMA PRESS

 

February 2, 2017

The confirmation battle over Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuchis off and running, and opponents already know he’s superbly qualified with a fine judicial temperament. But Democrats are still itching for a fight, and their first line of offense is the myth of the “stolen” seat.

“This is a seat that was stolen from the former President, Obama,that’s never been done in U.S. history before,” declared Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley in announcing that he will attempt to filibuster Judge Gorsuch. “To let this become normal just invites a complete partisan polarization of the Court from here to eternity.” The “stolen” line is echoing across Progressive Nation, but it’s a complete political invention.

The “theft” is supposedly the GOP Senate’s refusal last year to vote on President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat. But the standard of not confirming a Supreme Court nominee in the final year of a Presidency was set by . . . Democrats. And by no less a Beltway monument than the current Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer.

“We should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances,” Mr. Schumer declared in a July 2007 speech to the American Constitution Society. Democrats then held the Senate and Mr. Schumer was putting down a marker if someone on the High Court retired. George W. Bush didn’t get another opening, but Mr. Schumer surely meant what he said.

The Democratic theft standard goes back further to Joe Biden’s days as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In June 1992 in President George H.W. Bush’s final year, Robber Joe opined that the President “should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not name a nominee until after the November election is completed.”

Naming a new Justice, he said, would ensure that a confirmation “process that is already in doubt in the minds of many will become distrusted by all.” If Mr. Bush made an election-year nomination, Mr. Biden said his committee should consider “not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over.”

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EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:   The problem is worldwide and growing by the day. The thinking that defeating ISIS will resolve the issue is naive. ISIS Is merely the “flavor of the day.” Yesterday (and perhaps again tomorrow) it was al Qaeda. Before that, it was Islamic Jihad. The Muslim Brotherhood and its ally Hamas dates to the thirties and is stronger now than ever. Boko Haram in Africa and Abu Sayef in the Philipines remind us the problem is not restricted to any particular region. Fundamentalist Islam is a world power and it has declared war on the world.

There were many losers in the election. Hillary would seem to be the biggest but in the great scheme of things she is not. She may turn out to be a bit player, after all.

The Democrats and liberals, in general, were set back exponentially and now control less of the government than at any time since the 1920s or perhaps even in the history of their party founded in 1828. They lost not only the Presidency, The House, and the Senate but will soon see the Supreme Court transformed into a bastion of Constitutionalism for at least a generation to come. The GOP will hold governorships in 33 states, the most in nearly a century. Some are predicting the end of a liberalism that threatened the very nature of the Republic. It may take decades to realize the full impact of what has happened, but America has been put back on the “right” path after decades sliding into a moral and economic abyss.

The Media lost “bigly”, especially CNN and the New York Times as did many others who did all within their power to  ensure Trump never entered the White House. They are now hoping they will see the inside of the White House in days to come.

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This election is unlike any other in our nation’s history. Like many other voters, I have struggled to determine the right course of action in this general election. In Cleveland, I urged voters, “please, don’t stay home in November. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket whom you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.” After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump. I’ve made this decision for two reasons. First, last year, I promised to support the Republican nominee. And I intend to keep my word. Second, even though I have had areas of significant disagreement with our nominee, by any measure Hillary Clinton is wholly unacceptable — that’s why I have always been #NeverHillary. Six key policy differences inform my decision. First, and most important, the Supreme Court. For anyone concerned about the Bill of Rights — free speech, religious liberty, the Second Amendment — the Court hangs in the balance. I have spent my professional career fighting before the Court to defend the Constitution. We are only one justice away from losing our most basic rights, and the next president will appoint as many as four new justices. We know, without a doubt, that every Clinton appointee would be a left-wing ideologue. Trump, in contrast, has promised to appoint justices “in the mold of Scalia.” For some time, I have been seeking greater specificity on this issue, and today the Trump campaign provided that, releasing a very strong list of potential Supreme Court nominees — including Sen. Mike Lee, who would make an extraordinary justice — and making an explicit commitment to nominate only from that list. This commitment matters, and it provides a serious reason for voters to choose to support Trump. Second, Obamacare. The failed healthcare law is hurting millions of Americans. If Republicans hold Congress, leadership has committed to passing legislation repealing Obamacare. Clinton, we know beyond a shadow of doubt, would veto that legislation. Trump has said he would sign it. (more…)

www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/11/george-soros-the-money-behind-the-transgender-move/

The money behind the transgender movement

Billionaire George Soros opens his wallet to transform America

By Kelly Riddell – The Washington Times – Thursday, August 11, 2016

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE :  Mr. Soros‘ IRS Form 990 gives us some clues. He’s funded a Streetwise and Safe organization in New York, with the purpose of supporting a “national project focused on increasing safety for LGBTQ youth during interactions with law enforcement and developing advocacy skills to engage debates around discriminatory policing practices,” according to his 2014 tax return.

Mr. Soros also gave $525,000 to Justice at Stake, a group that’s looking to promote diversity in the courts for people within the LGBT community.

“This lack of diversity on the bench can lead to the appearance of bias, and even actual bias,” the group’s website warns. “A more diverse bench improves the quality of justice for all citizens.”

You see, winning court rulings is not enough, you need to control the courts in order for them to be fair.

Three years ago, a Supreme Court ruling paved the way for gay marriage.

After it, the mainstream media had one question: What was next for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement? They had, after all, won the big fight. In addition, many corporations had adopted policies barring discrimination based on sexual orientation, and two of America’s most watched shows at the time “Modern Family” and “Glee” featured openly gay characters.

“I really do believe [the Supreme Court ruling] is the domino that is going to tip over the rest of the dominoes,” Wilson Cruz, an LGBT activist, told CNN at the time. “Do not get in the way of this train, because it will run you over.”

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