Issues
The topic of the14th Amendment of the United States Constitution is continuing to stir debate in Washington, with those who favor increasing the debt limit at any cost raising the specter of President Obama simply overruling Congress and authorizing the issuance of new debt without the consent of lawmakers. According to this storyline, the president need only invoke Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which states that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned.” If Congress refuses to abide by its constitutional obligation to ensure government debts are paid, argue certain of Obama’s supporters, then the president would be justified in simply imposing his will on Congress to ensure that the 14th Amendment’s prohibition of government default is honored.
It seems that the government’s tentacles know no bounds. For Julie Bass of Oak Park, Michigan, never has a statement been truer. Bass is currently facing serious jail time for growing vegetables in her front yard.
The Blaze explains:
Ms Bass and her family live in a modest home Oak Park, Michigan and after a sewer line repair forced them to dig up their front yard, they decided that instead of replanting it with grass, they would grow vegetables in nice, raised beds. The city of Oak Park does not like the idea and wrote Julie a citation. She disagreed and is now facing a jury trial and possibly 93 days in jail.
JBS CEO Art Thompson's topics this week — The EPA Plays Punch and Judy with the American People; and Obama administration reaches out to militant Islam.
A conservative legal advocacy group has come to the rescue of a New Jersey man who was told by authorities in his community that he could not display a cross in his yard. In early July the Alliance Defense Fund sent a letter to officials in the township of Livingston asking them to cease from employing an ordinance prohibiting homeowner Patrick Racaniello from displaying crosses in various areas of his front yard. Local police had used the ordinance as justification for ordering Racaniello to remove a cross he was displaying on a tree in his front yard in celebration of Lent, after one of his neighbors had complained.
“It’s ridiculous to stop citizens from displaying a cross on their own property,” said ADF attorney Jonathan Scruggs, who is representing Racaniello. “The Constitution guarantees the right of Americans to express their religious beliefs in this fashion, and no local ordinance can trump that.” Scruggs noted that in the present case, “the ordinance itself doesn’t actually even prohibit these crosses. The law is being used in a vague fashion to stop him from doing what he wishes on his own private property.”
In an op-ed published last Thursday in the Wall Street Journal, Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), declared that “Republicans in the Senate are united” behind the passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment. Senators Snowe and DeMint mentioned no exceptions to the roster of Republican senatorial support for the controversial addition to the Constitution. In fact, all 47 Republican Senators are said to favor the erstwhile effort to restrain government and reduce spending.
“With our federal debt exceeding $14 trillion — nearly 100 percent of our gross domestic product — fiscal calamity is jeopardizing our standard of living and undermining our national security,” the statement warned.
Even reliable friends of the Constitution such as Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) are adding their voices to the BBA chorus.
With the federal borrowing clock allegedly ticking down to financial Armageddon on August 2, discourse on Capitol Hill is becoming predictably envenomed. The official Republican position, framed repeatedly by House Speaker John Boehner, is that no legislation to raise the debt limit will be admissible without deep spending cuts, and that tax increases of any sort will not be countenanced by the Tea Party-fueled Republican majority in the House. The Obama administration and its allies in Congress are making calls from a time-dishonored playbook, pushing for tax increases on the rich rather than meaningful cuts in government spending, and accusing Republicans of calculated obstructionism.
Texas Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, one of only a handful of congressmen with a commitment to fiscal responsibility and a genuine yen for limited government, issued a statement warning of coming Republican duplicity in the face of the continued refusal of the Obamaites to contemplate deep budget cuts without a massive tax increase: "Sources in Washington tell me that House Republican Speaker John Boehner [pictured] is considering a deal to raise taxes as part of a debt limit 'deal.'"
Last week saw the observance of the quintessential American holiday — our Independence Day. From coast to coast Americans celebrated with their usual vigor the greatness that is the United States. Sadly, much of that patriotism was not based on true Americanism. Instead, for a majority of our citizens, the vision of what America has been, is, and will be is but a mutation of what our nation is supposed to be about.
In its simplest terms — terms most believed by those who were intellectually raised on a diet of mainstream media and government schools — July 4 celebrates the independence that our Founding Fathers achieved from the British in 1776. But it’s much deeper than that. When they cut ties with the motherland, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the other signers of the Declaration of Independence were also cutting ties — then and for the future — from onerous forms of government. They were founding a nation, perchance heaven on Earth, based on the basic yet so magnificent premise that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
A significant change to the constitution of the liberal Presbyterian Church (USA) — (PCUSA) — took effect July 10 that allows practicing homosexuals to serve as clergy in the storied mainline denomination. Last year delegates to the PCUSA endorsed the change to drop the requirement, written in the church’s constitution, that church ministers live “in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness.” The change required approval by a majority of the church’s 173 regional presbyteries, which occurred in May of this year, with Minnesota’s Twin Cities district casting the deciding vote.
The change will still require the approval of individual presbyteries, and some districts have indicated that they will continue to prohibit openly homosexual ministers. As they have in other mainline denominations, homosexual activists have aggressively pushed for the PCUSA to endorse their lifestyle for the past decade or more, and more than 100 churches have left the denomination as it has increasingly compromised its scriptural position on sexuality.
Pills found on board a 2nd century B.C. shipwreck were packed with crushed carrots, parsley, onions, alfalfa, and other vegetable matter, conforming to the recipes contained in ancient medical treatises.
While the texts themselves were discovered long ago, the cache of ancient pharmaceuticals found onboard the sunken ancient vessel is the first time the medicines themselves have been found.
The definite usefulness of the medicines is as yet unknown, but archeologists believe that these pills were likely stored on board as part of an ancient “first aid kit” for use by sailors suffering from a variety of ailments.
Ron Bloom, President Obama’s former car czar, has been finding himself in hot water as of late. First, he has been called on by the House Oversight Committee to answer for actions he took and statements he made in the midst of the controversial auto bailout in 2009. Then, the same committee demanded that the czar explain his remarks of praise for Chinese dictator Mao Zedong and his clear affinity for violence in order to achieve particular goals, all of which were captured on video and aired on Fox News’ Glenn Beck Program.
Conservative pundit Glenn Beck was one of the first major media outlets to expose car czar Ron Bloom for statements he made in praise of Mao Zedong’s violent tactics. Beck aired a video clip of Bloom issuing the statements in 2009. The same video clip also exposes Bloom as a staunch opponent of the free market system. The clip features Bloom making the following assertions:
