Issues
Although reporters from communist-controlled media in China are welcome at a summit between the National Governors Association and their Chinese communist counterparts in Salt Lake City this weekend, William Jasper, senior editor for the constitutionalist magazine The New American, is not.
Six above-the-fold headlines in the space of just three days speak volumes about the liberal-left’s campaign strategy leading up to Election Day 2012. All were widely reported, although they covered issues of lesser stature than the $14 trillion economic impasse-cum-sink-hole that dominates newscasts. This makes the six headlines all the more revealing of liberal Democrats’ end-game, no matter who technically wins the presidency or a few congressional seats.
The man often irrelevantly identified as the “black motorist” who indirectly caused 1992’s race riots in Los Angeles, which left 53 dead and $1 billion in property destroyed, was arrested again early this week.
Last week, police collared Rodney King, the man who wanted to know why we all just can’t get along, yet again for driving under the influence. Under the influence of what, we are not given to know. Maybe it was alcohol, maybe it was marijuana. But we do who was arrested. Rodney King.
King became the poster-child for police brutality when four Los Angeles cops beat him with batons after he charged them in an alcohol-fueled rage following their stopping him after a high-speed chase. Videotape of the beat down surfaced on television news.
On Tuesday evening, President Obama was being interviewed by Scott Pelley, who asked the President whether he could guarantee that Americans would get their Social Security checks if the debt ceiling weren't raised:
Can you tell the folks at home that, no matter what happens, the[ir] Social Security checks are going to go out on August the 3rd?
Obama: Well, this is not just a matter of Social Security checks. These are folks on disability and their checks. There are about 70 million checks that go out each month.
Pelley: Can you guarantee, as president, that those checks will go out on August the 3rd?
Obama: I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved the [debt] issue, because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.
It’s time for Congress to stop proposing new amnesty programs and to begin enforcing the immigration laws we already have.
To the voluminous body of evidence that the television and film industries are comprised of doctrinaire leftists determined to promote their political program via these media, we can now add Ben Shapiro’s recently released Prime Time Propaganda. This work is at once too long and too predictable, it is true. But in spite of its vices, it would be unfair to begrudge Shapiro the commendation for the service that he supplies — namely, a much needed reminder of the variety of typically subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways in which Hollywood routinely attempts to invite sympathy from consumers for causes that they would otherwise reject.
My intention here, however, is not to review Shapiro’s book. Rather, I wish to say a couple of things about the relationship between art and politics that he, among legions of others, addresses.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been butting heads with Senate Democrats and President Obama in recent weeks in budget and debt ceiling negotiations, but the Kentucky Republican has also been getting flak from members and supporters of his own party. The conservative organization FreedomWorks, which played a prominent role in organizing the Tea Party movement of 2009 and 2010, put out a message on Twitter this week urging its followers to call McConnell and "Help him find his spine." The Tweet was in response to a backup plan McConnell has offered to break the deadlock in negotiations over raising the debt limit before the current borrowing authorization expires on August 2.
With the national debt currently at roughly $14.3 trillion, Republican congressional leaders, including McConnell, have been demanding White House support for cuts in entitlement programs, including Social Security, and Medicare, in return for raising the debt limit. They have also insisted there be no tax increases.
It seems strange sometimes, the things that trouble Senator John McCain. Take the NATO war on Libya, for example, in which the United States is a participant, if not the outright leader.
Libya has, so far as is generally known, committed no recent offense against the United States or our NATO allies, nor threatened to do so. The African nation poses no threat to America and her interests abroad, nor has it made any assault on our nation’s honor. Yet President Barack Obama has waged an air war against Libya without any authorization by Congress, let alone a declaration of war, which power the Constitution assigns to Congress. He has gone past the time allotted by the 1973 War Powers Act for either obtaining the support of Congress or ceasing the military action.
According to a Reuters report, President Obama is using the worst fear mongering tactics to frighten seniors into pressing their Congressmen to vote for a $2.3 trillion rise in the debt ceiling. In an interview on Tuesday, Obama said that checks to recipients of Social Security may not go out in early August if he and the Republican congressional leaders do not agree on a deal to raise the debt ceiling.
"I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue," Obama said in an interview with CBS, according to a transcript on the network's web site. "Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Obama said.
In an Internet commentary on the president’s tactics, Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge, writes:
Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to Be President, by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D., Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011, 392 pages, hardcover.
It’s a simple concept as laid out in Article II, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution: “No Person except a natural born Citizen … shall be eligible to the office of President.” For over 200 years this straightforward requirement has pretty much limited those seeking the nation’s highest elected office to individuals born on U.S. soil of parents who are U.S. citizens. Until now.
With the election of Barack Obama, the nation has faced an array of troubling questions about how constitutionally qualified the 44th President of the United States really is to occupy the White House.
