By Dr. Jack Wheeler

It’s starting to look like 1948 all over again.

Mark Twain observed that while history doesn’t repeat itself, it often rhymes. The 2012 presidential campaign is now rhyming with that of 1948 in iambic trimeter – the poetic form tragedians of Ancient Greece such as Aeschylus and Sophocles used to best express portending doom.

So let’s revisit that extraordinary yesteryear of 1948, resulting in the most famous upset in American politics – Democrat Harry Truman defeating Republican Tom Dewey – and see how we can avoid a similar outcome by using it to our advantage.

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By Dr. Jack Wheeler

It’s time to choose. There’s only one thing that can extricate the world from the calamity descending upon it.

Jefferson is warning us right now about “the impious presumption of legislators and rulers…setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others.” Because Jefferson’s and Madison’s solution to preventing religious wars – Religious Liberty – is the solution to preventing the economic wars about to descend upon us.

That solution is Economic Liberty. That solution is the Separation of Economy and State – for precisely the same reasons for the Separation of Church and State. Such a separation – capitalism for real – is the only thing that will save the world from plunging into economic darkness. Violently.

With Obama’s Osawatomie Speech, we have reached the fork in the road of America’s future. The critical moment has arrived. If you can stomach it, read the whole thing. It is diabolically dishonest. He is actually claiming his Marxist-Fascist values are those of America’s. He has the mind-boggling demagogic chutzpah to claim that free market capitalism “doesn’t work – it has never worked.”

Free market capitalism – economic liberty – is the only thing that ever has worked to create widespread prosperity. What has never worked in history is what Obama advocates: socialism, fascism, and the destruction of economic liberty by government rules, hamstrings, restrictions, taxes, and subsidies.

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By Ron Holland

Just following Congress, the 2012 presidential campaign and the inability of citizens to influence government policy makes it clear to every American how broken the US political system has become. A few powerful interests run the entire show and the American people are being forced down a dark road to economic destruction. History shows us that Washington is immune to conventional national political action under the present system. What can freedom loving Americans do?

So do freedom advocates just give up or wait for the eventual collapse of the economy and the US political system?

There is only one effective, democratic and peaceful tool left to Americans to defend their liberties and restore the original republic of our founding fathers. It is the right of state sovereignty and nullification.

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By John Whitehead

The transition to a police state will not come about with a dramatic coup d’etat, with battering rams and marauding militia. As we have experienced first-hand in recent years, it will creep in softly, one violation at a time, until suddenly you find yourself being subjected to random patdowns and security sweeps during your morning commute to work or quick trip to the shopping mall.

Perhaps you have yet to experience the particular thrill, and I use that word loosely, of being manhandled by government agents, having your personal possessions pawed through, and your activities and associations scrutinized. If so, not to worry. It’s only a matter of time before more and more Americans will experience such a military task force knocking at their door. Only, chances are that it won’t be a knock, and they might not even be at home when government agents decide to “investigate” them. Indeed, as increasing numbers of Americans are discovering, these so-called “soft target” security inspections are taking place whenever and wherever the government deems appropriate, at random times and places, and without needing the justification of a particular threat. Worse, not only is this happening with the blessing of the Obama administration but at its urging.

What I’m describing–something that was once limited to authoritarian regimes–is only possible thanks to an unofficial rewriting of the Fourth Amendment by the courts that essentially does away with any distinctions over what is “reasonable” when it comes to searches and seizures by government agents. The rationale, of course, is that anything is “reasonable” in the war on terrorism. What the powers-that-be understand–and Americans remain oblivious to–is the fact that by constantly pushing the envelope and testing the limits of what Americans will tolerate, the government is thus able to ratchet up the level of intrusiveness that Americans consider reasonable.

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By Dr. Jack Wheeler

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), one of Victorian England’s most prominent Prime Ministers (1868/1874-1880), once commented to a friend: “There are two things that the public should never be allowed to see how they are made: sausage and the law.”

We are witnesses today of just how immortally trenchant Disraeli was back in the 19th century. For in truth, observing our politicians handling the current “debt crisis” is a far more repulsive sight than the inside of a sausage factory.

Yet if Disraeli were here now, he’d smile sardonically and remind us that (he was fluent in French) plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – the more things change, the more they stay the same.

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By Tara Servatius

Americans must to decide if, in the name of homeland security, they are willing to allow TSA operatives to storm public places in their communities with no warning, pat them down, and search their bags. And they better decide quickly.

Bus travelers were shocked when jackbooted TSA officers in black SWAT-style uniforms descended unannounced upon the Tampa Greyhound bus station in April with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and federal bureaucrats in tow.

A news report by ABC Action News in Tampa showed passengers being given the signature pat downs Americans are used to watching the Transportation Security Administration screeners perform at our airports. Canine teams sniffed their bags and the buses they rode. Immigration officials hunted for large sums of cash as part of an anti-smuggling initiative.

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By Rep. Steve King

As the government edged closer and closer to a shutdown last week, administrators in congressional offices and federal agencies were tasked with determining whether they and their employees provided “essential” or “nonessential” services.

Those employees deemed to be essential are allowed to continue working during a shutdown; those deemed to be nonessential are sent home.

This determination of essential versus nonessential probably sent a ripple of fear through employees of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). In my opinion, the IRS is one of the least essential agencies in the federal government. If I had my way, we would shut down the non-essential IRS forever.

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By Dr. Chuck Baldwin

On March 14, 2011, federal police agencies raided scores of marijuana-related businesses in a number of states–including my home State of Montana. Hundreds of people were detained, put in handcuffs, and their property seized. To my knowledge, however, only a handful has actually been arrested (at least in Montana).

Montana is one of several states in the union that has legalized marijuana for medical purposes. This was accomplished with overwhelming support from the Montana citizenry via a ballot initiative back in 2004. However, the feds view marijuana as an illegal drug, and seem hell-bent in forcing states such as Montana to submit to its dictation–regardless of what the will of the people within the states might be.

Ever since Appomattox Court House, states have been bullied into believing that their authority is subordinate, and, yes, inferior, to federal law. Big Government lawyers cite the US Constitution, Article. VI. Paragraph. 2. to justify their despotism. It reads, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

This paragraph of the Constitution has been construed to mean that the federal government may dictate any law to the states and the states have no right to resist. THIS IS NOT TRUE! Notice carefully what the Constitution says: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States WHICH SHALL BE MADE IN PURSUANCE THEREOF . . . shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” (Emphasis added)

This means that any federal law that is NOT “made in Pursuance thereof” or otherwise does not comport with the Constitution is NOT the “supreme Law of the Land.” Furthermore, it is the states that are the final authority over what is and is not lawful within their respective borders!

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By Rob Natelson

You can sympathize with the humanitarian motives of our Libyan intervention while still doubting its constitutionality.

The Constitution prescribes the rules about how the United States is to enter a war, and the Obama administration has violated those rules.

The administration argues that the hostilities, because limited, do not rise to the level of “war,” as the Constitution uses that word. But that position is almost surely wrong: Founding-Era dictionaries and other sources, both legal and lay, tell us that when the Constitution was approved, “war” consisted of any hostilities initiated by a sovereign over opposition. A very typical dictionary definition was, “the exercise of violence under sovereign command against such as oppose.” (Barlow, 1772-73). I have found no suggestion in any contemporaneous source that operations of the kind the U.S. is conducting were anything but “war.”

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By Conn Carroll

While Obamacare is rightly notorious as a fiscal nightmare, less well known is just how massively it transferred power from Congress to the executive branch. In fact, the full scope of Congress’s abdication is still unknown. What is now known, however, is that deeply buried within Obamacare was a $105 billion slush fund that assures its implementation into the future, no matter what future voters think or want.

This makes then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comment to the Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties about Obamacare, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” made a year ago tomorrow, ironically prescient. Just this past month, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) updated an October 2010 report titled “Appropriations and Fund Transfers in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).” The new report found that, unbeknownst to almost every Member of Congress, Obamacare contains $105 billion in direct implementation spending that bypasses Congress’s normal appropriations process.

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By Herman Cain

There is no denying it: America is the greatest country in the world. We are blessed with unparalleled freedoms and boundless prosperity that for generations have inspired an innovative and industrious people. America is exceptional.

American Exceptionalism is the standard that our laws reflect the understanding that we are afforded certain God-given rights that can never be taken away. We know that God, not government, bestows upon us these inalienable rights, and because of that, they must not be compromised by the whims of man. This makes us a unique nation, a nation that remains, as President Ronald Reagan once said, “a model and hope to the world.”

Unfortunately, some politicians have either forgotten or chosen to ignore the glory of our founding. In April 2009, President Obama told a reporter in Strasbourg, France: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” In saying this, the president implied that American Exceptionalism is nothing terribly special and instead simply chalked it up to the romanticism of patriotism.

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Last Friday, the House tacked defunding of the anti-gun ObamaCare law onto the “continuing resolution,” which is required to fund the federal government through September 30.

In a series of four votes, the House approved:

* An amendment offered by Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) to defund ObamaCare for the next six months;

* Two amendments sponsored by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) to defund previously appropriated provisions of ObamaCare; and,

* An amendment offered by Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO) to defund IRS implementation of the “individual mandate,” which is the ObamaCare requirement that forces Americans to cough up their medical information which could later be used by the FBI to block gun purchases (and forces them to buy government-approved insurance).

In addition, the House, by a sizable majority, adopted the Boren-Rehberg amendment to defund ATF’s efforts to create a new gun registry for many multiple gun sales. (Rep. Dan Boren is a Democrat from Oklahoma.)

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By Conn Carroll

This Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder sent his own version of a “Dear John” letter to the Speaker of the House, informing him that President Barack Obama’s Justice Department will no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in federal court. The letter clearly states that the decision was personally made by the President himself, who, supposedly just this week, came to the conclusion that DOMA violates “the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment” of the U.S Constitution. This purely partisan act is completely consistent with both President Obama’s unprecedented politicization of the Justice Department and the same-sex marriage movement’s end-run around for democracy.

DOMA was enacted by overwhelming majorities of both houses of Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. DOMA has two core provisions. First, it defines the words marriage, spouse, husband, and wife wherever they appear in the U.S. Code as referring only to the union of a man or a woman. Second, it defends the right of each state not to be forced to accept the redefinition of marriage in a handful of other states as a result of state court decisions or laws. Nearly 40 states have enacted state-level DOMAs, and 31 have embraced traditional marriage in their state constitutions. No state’s voters have ever voted to the contrary.

President Obama knows all of this. He also knows that his Administration’s litany of failures (unemployment above 8 percent, Guantanamo still open, exploding debt, etc.) has weakened him politically.

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By Mark Alexander

There’s currently a lot of talk about deficits and debt among the new House Republican majority; much of it is contentious intraparty debate about whether to raise the “debt ceiling.”

For the purpose of clarity, let me reiterate a few definitions.

The national budget deficit is the difference between the total spending budget (including interest on debt) authorized by Congress for each year, and total tax receipts. For this fiscal year alone (October 1, 2010, to September 30, 2011), the shortfall is projected to be 1.15 trillion dollars.

The national debt is the total of all outstanding U.S. Treasury obligations held by domestic and foreign individuals, institutions and governments, and is currently 14.05 trillion dollars.

The debt ceiling is the self-imposed limit Congress sets for what it can legally borrow to pay for all the government services that it can’t afford. A year ago, Congress increased that limit to 14.29 trillion dollars. But since Congress has authorized spending almost five billion dollars a day more than it takes in, that debt ceiling will be hit sometime between the end of March and mid-May.

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By Tibor Machan

Now that libertarianism has gotten some publicity in mainstream forums, those who are convinced of its merit have much work to do. This is because of the well publicized distortions of the position in prominent forums, especially by well credentialed academics in law, political economy, ethics, philosophy, and other disciplines bearing a public policy. You see, the idea that no one ought to coerce another even for noble purposes is pretty much common sense in America. Sure, some folks disagree, among them many highfalutin academics with great skills at sophistry. But the bulk of those who vote pretty much agree that when you want something from your fellows, you need to ask them instead of robbing them. So when this is being denied, lots of fancy footwork needs to be deployed, which is just what’s being done by numerous pundits at The New York Times and other outfits that champion all kinds of coerced wealth redistribution. (Of course, wealth redistribution goes on peacefully all the time, but that’s not under these statists’ control, so they don’t like it!)

What you can expect from these people is fancy discussions about how, in fact, the American system gives the legal authority to Congress and others in government to take, take, and take anything they want from you and me, as well as to force you to do what they want you to, “for the public interest.” And to make their case more palatable, they need to make it appear that the libertarian reading of the US political tradition – that reading that made it exceptional instead of just a watered down version of feudalism – is callous, heartless, and bent on undermining the public good at every turn. By besmirching the position this way, the unsophisticated citizenry, whose members are libertarian at the gut or second nature level, might then get turned around and give the statists the power they clamor for.

But here is an important piece of information that one can use to rebut this underhanded effort to discredit human liberty and to empower the statists: the American political system has a very clear doctrine of the public good (or interest). It is stated in the Declaration of Independence and it consists of a system of laws that secure the natural rights of the citizenry.

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By Bob Bauman

One hundred years ago today (2/6) Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the United States of America, was born in a little walk up apartment over a bank in the small town of Tampico, Illinois.

I had the honor of meeting Ron Reagan for the first time on the back of flatbed truck outside the Cow Palace in San Francisco during the 1964 Republican National Convention.

Ronald Reagan was a president with a sense of patriotism, proud of our Republic as a beacon, “a shining city on a hill,” for the rest of the world. He believed in fiscal responsibility and free market economics. He acknowledged God as the source of human rights and in whose Providence our nation was founded.

If only there was such a leader in America today.

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By MacAoidh

The Obama administration’s determination to strangle offshore drilling took a beating today as U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman found Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar in civil contempt for violating a court order Feldman issued dissolving the administration’s offshore drilling moratorium in June of last year.

Feldman’s eight-page ruling, which can be found here, sets forth the elements of what he calls a “determined disregard” for the order he gave in June to lift the moratorium. The judge goes through a chain of events which to him amounts to a pattern of behavior unmistakably showing a commitment to ban offshore drilling, and then refers the case to a magistrate in order to determine damages owed to Hornbeck Offshore Services and the other plaintiffs in the case by the Department of the Interior.

Hornbeck’s general counsel, Sam Giberga, said in a written statement, “What is striking about today’s ruling is that it holds the government, acting through its highest levels, in contempt of a federal court order.”

U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) issued a release condemning Salazar’s department for its actions and praising Feldman.

“Judge Feldman’s decision is a sharp rebuke of the Interior Department for continuing to place politics before all else following the BP spill. A ruling of this nature reveals that the judge believes that Interior blatantly disregarded his earlier ruling – undoubtedly because of their actions that led to the current de facto moratorium,” said Vitter.

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By John W. Whitehead

“Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America.”–Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), voicing his concerns over Congress’ passage of the USA Patriot Act (Oct. 25, 2001)

Russ Feingold, a staunch defender of the rule of law and the only senator to vote against the ominous USA Patriot Act, recently lost his bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate to a Tea Party-backed Republican. From the start, Feingold warned that the massive 342-page piece of legislation would open the door to graver dangers than terrorism–namely, America becoming a police state. He was right.

The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments–the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments–and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well. The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience were considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.

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“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Federal Judge Roger Vinson opens his decision declaring ObamaCare unconstitutional with that citation from Federalist No. 51, written by James Madison in 1788. His exhaustive and erudite opinion is an important moment for American liberty, and yesterday may well stand as the moment the political branches were obliged to return to the government of limited and enumerated powers that the framers envisioned.

As Judge Vinson took pains to emphasize, the case is not really about health care at all, or the wisdom—we would argue the destructiveness—of the newest entitlement. Rather, the Florida case goes to the core of the architecture of the American system, and whether there are any remaining limits on federal control. Judge Vinson’s 78-page ruling in favor of 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business, among others, is by far the best legal vindication to date of Constitutional principles that form the outer boundaries of federal power.

At the heart of the states’ lawsuit is the individual mandate, which requires everyone to purchase health insurance or be penalized for not doing so. “Never before has Congress required that everyone buy a product from a private company (essentially for life) just for being alive and residing in the United States,” Judge Vinson writes.

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By Rep. Steve King

Tomorrow (1/19), as one of the first acts of this 112th Congress, the House is due to pass language I introduced to repeal Obamacare: “as if such Act had not been enacted.”

This legislation would validate the strategy for repeal that I have been advancing since the day the law was signed. It will also set the stage for the next component of my repeal strategy: the inclusion of language in every appropriations bill to prevent federal funds from being used to implement or enforce any of Obamacare’s provisions.

When Obamacare passed last March, I immediately introduced a bill to repeal this unconstitutional law. My bill offered a “clean” repeal – not weighed down by any replacement language.

I knew that repeal supporters would need strength in numbers to succeed. I saw no merit in adopting a strategy that would be diminished by disagreements over specific aspects of replacement policy and, therefore, artificially reduce our totals.

Last summer, I began working on the second phase of my repeal strategy. I began gathering signatures on a discharge petition – to force a vote on my repeal bill. Not only did the discharge petition exceed expectations by attracting a bipartisan group of 173 signatures, but every member of the House Republican leadership signed it.

With such strong support, it was clear that my strategy was working. It also set the stage for the inclusion of my repeal language in H.R. 2, the repeal legislation that the leadership brought to the floor and that the House is set to pass.

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