Category Archives: Congress

Mike Maharrey: While You Were Obsessing Over Impeachment 0 (0)

by Mike Maharrey

Well, they did it!

The House impeachment hearings were little more than political theater — a partisan fistfight with the majority party coming out the “winner.” In the process, it created the illusion of deep division and disagreement. Devoted Democrats and Republicans are both convinced that their team is fighting for their interests against a determined foe on the other side of the aisle.

But while everybody obsessed over the political theater playing out on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, they completely missed the sideshow that could actually impact their lives. Even as Democrats and Republicans engaged in a contentious public spectacle in the media spotlight, they worked in concert behind the scenes to steal your liberty and your wealth.

While you argued over the gory details of impeachment with your friends on Facebook, Congress passed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. The nearly 3,500-page bill authorizes $738 billion in defense spending in Fiscal Year 2020. It creates a “Space Force,” so the U.S. can expand its empire into the cosmos. And Congress rejected a provision that would have made it just slightly harder for the president to unilaterally send American troops into combat. In other words, Congress agreed that it would not bother to do its job and declare war before sending the U.S. military to conduct offensive combat operations as required by the Constitution. It will continue to let the president make that call on his own. You know – the president the House just impeached.

Even worse, the current iteration of the NDAA extended provisions written into the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that effectively authorize government kidnapping. The vaguely worded sections purport to authorize the arrest and “indefinite detention” of anybody the president decides might be associated with “terrorism” and subject them to the law of war. In effect, the government can deem you a terrorist and lock you away without due process. Government kidnapping may sound like hyperbole, but that’s exactly what the NDAA authorizes in effect.

Speaking of war, while all eyes were glued to the three-ring circus in D.C., the Washington Post released documents revealing that the U.S. government has been lying to us about the war in Afghanistan for decades.

“A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”

As one three-star general put it, “What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking. If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction .?.?. 2,400 lives lost.”

This seems, maybe, just a tiny bit, significant. But the news barely saw the light of day. It was completely buried under an avalanche of impeachment reporting.

The sad truth is that these papers that have been mostly ignored provide legitimate grounds for impeachment – not just of Donald Trump, but Barack Obama and George W. Bush to boot. But when it comes to war, Congress maintains a bipartisan consensus supporting the endless, unconstitutional foreign interventions and the presidents who run them. And the media is complicit, focusing on the fake wrestling matches on Capitol Hill instead of reporting on real wars

And while we’re on the subject of bipartisan consensus, let me remind you that Congress reauthorized sections of the Patriot Act in the latest stopgap spending bill. This means the federal government will be able to continue to spy on you without a warrant and in complete disregard of the Fourth Amendment. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) predicted it would happen.

Today, while everyone is distracted by the impeachment drama, Congress will vote to extend warrantless data collection provisions of the #PatriotAct, by hiding this language on page 25 of the Continuing Resolution (CR) that temporarily funds the government. To sneak this through, Congress will first vote to suspend the rule which otherwise gives us (and the people) 72 hours to consider a bill. The scam here is that Democrats are alleging abuse of Presidential power, while simultaneously reauthorizing warrantless power to spy on citizens that no President should have… in a bill that continues to fund EVERYTHING the President does… and waiving their own rules to do it. I predict Democrats will vote on a party line to suspend the 72 hour rule. But after the rule is suspended, I suspect many Republicans will join most Democrats to pass the CR with the Patriot Act extension embedded in it.

And indeed they did.

And finally, while Congress-critters battled it out on the House floor, behind the scenes, congressional leaders worked with the Trump administration to hammer out a $1.4 trillion spending agreement. According to an Associated Press report, the deal “fills in the details of a bipartisan framework from July that delivered about $100 billion in agency spending increases over the coming two years instead of automatic spending cuts that would have sharply slashed both the Pentagon and domestic agencies.”

So, let’s review. While America was mesmerized by the pro-wrestling event on Capitol Hill, Congress agreed to maintain the government’s “authority” to kidnap you, to keep spying on you without a warrant, to continue unconstitutional wars, and to spend you deeper into debt.

Political theater makes for splashy headlines and heated debates, but it really has very little impact on your life. The political class, including the mainstream media, would prefer you pay attention to the fluff, not to the things that really matter. Perhaps instead of obsessing over impeachment or the latest debate over a Trump tweet, you would be better served to pay attention to what they don’t want you to pay attention to.

TAC: https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2019/12/20/while-you-were-obsessing-over-impeachment/


Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center. He is from the original home of the Principles of ’98 – Kentucky and currently resides in northern Florida. See his blog archive here and his article archive here. He is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. You can visit his personal website at MichaelMaharrey.com and like him on Facebook HERE

John Anthony: HOW TO ANNIHILATE U.S. SOCIALISM AND FORCE WASHINGTON TO LISTEN 0 (0)

by John Anthony

Socialism’s barbs have sunk deep into the heart of America’s soul.  We see the Titanic struggle as Democrats and Republicans jointly hamper Trump’s attempts to return choices to the people. Washington will never willingly stop its progressive control, but we can make them.

As one who has studied the progressive/socialist movement from the Congressional halls to small communities across the country, I believe we have a rich opportunity to adopt an explosive method to defeat the anti-Constitutional forces in America.

For years, Constitutionalists have joined marches, attended meetings, written articles, and built networks.   Through speeches, seminars and videos we have exposed regionalists for grabbing local authority, sustainable development for driving up housing costs, and federal regulations for usurping local land use and zoning laws. Experts in education, climate science, and Constitutional law have bared how our federal agencies and court system are turning the land of the free into regions of the fettered.

Despite successes, every week reveals the incessant ‘tick-tock’ of the socialist advance.

In September 2016, the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority used taxpayers’ money to reduce the monthly rents to $75 for HUD residents who visit relatives overseas for up to 3 months.  The agency felt it was unfair that East Africans should have to face fiancial hardship to take an international trip most working Americans may never be able to afford.

In 2014, an affordable housing developer proposed building low-cost housing in a closed Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania warehouse.  When the voters and officials rejected the plan for zoning reasons, the developer contacted HUD who sued Whitehall.  By December 2016, Whitehall agreed to change their zoning laws, operate under a court-appointed monitor, and pay the developer $375,000 for costs including “out of pocket expenses.”

In a socialist society, the government defines ‘fair’ and votes become a minor nuisance.

The progressive movement in America has advanced so far that in 2016, the unelected Thrive Regional Partnership consisting of 16 counties in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, urged their faked regional community to take “inspiration” from the works of Parag Khanna.  Khanna is a global strategist who preaches that nations must merge into connected regions overseen by direct technocracy.  He advocates that the American Democracy of our Founding Fathers, (he apparently does not realize the U.S. is a Constitutional Republic,) is “crumbling” and must be replaced by a technocratic intelligentsia.

Khanna’s technocracy model recommends we eliminate the U.S. Senate and replace the President with a 7-member panel of elite, ivy-league educated experts who are better equipped to make decisions than squabbling elected officials and uninformed citizens.  The nation would consist of regions managed by unelected councils. Local community members would merely have an opportunity to offer input. (Think of a regional planning session where all opinions are welcome, but only those that meet the pre-determined outcomes are accepted.)

This Communist nightmare is closer than you think. Regions like San Francisco’s Association of Bay Area Governments and Minneapolis’ Twin Cities Regional Council, routinely force through transit lines, toll roads, complete streets, and housing projects against voter’s wishes.

Along with dozens of other regions, these groups and hundreds of existing Councils of Governments are salivating to turn Khanna’s’ direct technocracy into your future.

President Trump has thrown a monkey wrench into the left’s relentless drive toward a centrally managed nation.  He has been immensely successful in re-working bad trade deals, opening industries for growth, and reducing costly federal regulations.  Perhaps his greatest accomplishment is the exposure of the vitriol and atrocities of the leftist establishment.

Still, Trump is not enough.

HUD’s 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, handed the progressive movement a legal tool to bludgeon communities into central planning and assault the poor while masquerading as their rescuers.  AFFH represents the clearest threat to independence, property rights, and local autonomy in our history.

Yet, HUD’s recent resolution of the AFFH-based Westchester case and the confirmation of Dr. Carson as HUD Secretary have left the rule fully intact.

We must disconnect local communities from federal dependence because it is the lifeblood of socialism. Big government does not help the poor, it feeds on them.  Since 1965 the U.S. poverty rate has not wavered from between 11% and 15%, ever!  This, despite spending over $20 trillion.

The left needs the poor to be poor.  It is the only way they can garner the votes to remain office.  Imagine entering an election cycle knowing that 11% – 15% of the people think they need you for they fear they will not eat.

It is not just poverty that propels socialism. The socialist movement eliminated Christianity in government and education because they know what our Founders knew. Only a moral society can be a free society.  Without a Christian moral foundation, America devolves into more offenses and violence, which leads to more elitists and tighter state control.

It is time to attack the heart of the progressive beast. The only way to kill the socialist movement is to free the poor, eliminate the demand for federal money and reinstate the church as the center of community life.

A growing society of independent, financially successful, Christian practicing, and capitalist African-Americans and Latinos is the equivalent of an Ebola outbreak inside the haughty progressive political community.

This much-abused base must be realigned with people who have no political axes and no concern other than to help them out of poverty and to share in freedom.

Community programs are already proving that low-income minorities will change their allegiances when they feel the benefits of new opportunities. That is why, in the Spring of 2017 I started the Miss Mary Project.  We are a church-based program that teaches working age members of low-income families in urban and suburban areas, not just how to get a job, but how to excel on the job and become indispensable, promotable employees. Rather than help people rise to just above poverty, we help propel them to a lifetimg of success, reducing the need for federal programs.

Our work is based on 30 years of corporate leadership training experience and builds on existing successful programs for the poor.  The Miss Mary Project has been so well-received that we are already opening publicly supported centers in Chattanooga, TN and Greenville, SC with plans to go nationwide.

We can defeat socialism, but not through reactionary and survivalist methods.  We must once again make the church the center of our community life and engage in and support positive local programs that truly help people become financially independent and free of government.


Read John Anthony’s Biography

Warren, Waters and The Tsunami of Tolerance 0 (0)

Warren, Waters and The Tsunami of Tolerance- “See how quickly leftist tolerance is replaced by violence and vitriol.”

by Bill Lockwood

Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Maxine Waters (D-CA) epitomize the Democratic Socialist Obstructionist Party. Both radical women are leading candidates for Lenin’s Disruption of Society Award. Unfortunately, these twin-sisters of the communistic left are chieftains in the Democratic Party, even if one of them is not really of “Native American” bloodline, as she had boasted.

During the debate over whether or not to nominate Senator Jeff Sessions as Trump’s Attorney General, Elizabeth Warren boldly violated the standing rules of the Senate by calling the conservative icon a “disgrace.”

Endeavoring to skirt around the Senatorial regulations which forbid such name-calling, Warren did her nefarious work of trying to besmirch the character of Sessions by “quoting” the late Senator Ted Kennedy. She nevertheless violated Rule XIX which reads, “No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words, impute to another Senator or to other Senators, any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.” The presiding officer at the Senate, Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) rightly sat Warren down.

Warren’s comrade-in-arms, U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA), meanwhile has launched a full-fledged publicity campaign on television saying that “she believes there may be reason to impeach Donald Trump.” She echoed this sentiment on Capitol Hill last Monday.

This is the tolerance of the Radical Left. 

Tolerance” has been the primary doctrine of the left for several decades. It has been preached on television, in the schools, in the halls of Congress, in collegiate classrooms, in editorial columns; in movies, music festivals and other forms of entertainment. Churches have been boycotted for supposed lack of it; Christians have been shamed for supposing there are still some activities which are sinful; legislation and judicial decisions have been handed down demanding that private businesses be more inclusive in spite of religious views; sports teams have refused to compete in states that seem to be less than “tolerant” on bathroom issues; and on and on.

This tsunami of tolerance with its creeds of “open-mindedness” and “inclusion” have always been suspected to be in reality a cover to stifle the free flow of ideas, particularly concepts of biblical morality and the Constitution.

Donald Trump’s election has completely verified this judgment.  Even such pleasantries as “reaching across the aisles” and “compromise” were crafted to bring to heel Constitutionalists. “Compromise” has resulted in a complete disfigurement of the Constitution and the concept of Limited Government under God as conceived and crafted into law by our Founders.

See how quickly leftist tolerance is replaced by violence and vitriol. This is because of the nature of left-wing is revolutionary to orderly society. Liberalism is not broad-minded at all, nor has it ever been. It is foolish for those on the right to have ever supposed it was.

With their hair on fire the socialistic left is no longer making any pretense of being magnanimous. From the state house to the court house to the field house the pink leftists in our nation are fomenting rebellion against the rule of law the likes of which we have never seen. They will not be mollified by the economic success of Trump’s policies nor placated by expanding freedoms of Americans. Tolerance was always and only a sham to gain political control.

Who’s Minding the List? 0 (0)

Who’s Minding the List?

by Bill Lockwood

Last week the Congressional Democrats were in full left-wing 1960’s hippie-socialist mode as they lawlessly staged a sit-down on the floor of Congress. Like the radicals of the old Kent State that they are, only now with suits and skirts, they chanted their pro-communist anti-gun slogans as they waved homemade signs. After Orlando, these radicals think to get their foot in the door on what the left has always been after—Gun Control. Remove the ability of the citizenry to defend itself.

“Moderate” (read “weak”) Republicans such as John Cornyn (R-TX) tried to mollify the Democratic rascals by proposing that mandatory three-day investigations be conducted by the Federal Government when someone on the “terror watch list” tries to buy a gun. His proposal would have allowed the Attorney General to block purchase of firearms while investigations were conducted. His proposal failed.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) went further. Her proposal would authorize the Attorney General to block any person from purchasing a firearm if there was a reasonable belief that the weapon might be used in terroristic attacks. Apparently, Loretta Lynch’s speech about winning over terrorists with “love” did not stick with Feinstein.

Fortunately, these measures failed to move forward. The Second Amendment is a PROHIBITION against the Federal Government from entering into this territory. The right of “the people” shall not be infringed to “keep and bear arms” is a codified right precisely to defend ourselves from an over-reaching government. Usurpation and intervention by the federal government were the two most prominent dangers to the drafters of the Second Amendment. This is why the “Bill of Rights” opens with the law, “Congress shall make NO LAW…”

Alexander Hamilton argued in Federalist #84 that since our government is only a “limited government” with only a few specified powers it would have absolutely NO authority to regulate a citizen’s freedom of speech, religion, etc. Neither is there any federal authority to register or confiscate firearms or to block sales to those whom it considers possible “terrorists.”

Now enters the “Terror Watch List.” As baffling as it is, it seems the Republican Senators and Congressmen who are intent on mollifying the thuggery of the Democrats have forgotten who writes this list! When Obama became president and Janet Napolitano was the Secretary of Homeland Security, those who were singled out for government “monitoring” were: returning “military veterans” who were “facing significant challenges” as they sought to “reintegrate” into society. This situation, per Napolitano and Obama, “could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”

Obama’s “Terror Watch List” also included “right-wing extremists.” In Obama’s Lexicon that includes those who study the Constitution or who are Tea-Partiers, or members of such organizations as the John Birch Society. Never mind that there are currently Islamic Jihadi Terroristic Training Camps in America—for these we must spread the banquet table. But we must watch those Constitutionalists!

I will put these proposals by Cornyn and Feinstein in simple syllogistic form.
•    The the Federal Government disallows those on the terror watch list access to firearms.
•    Those on terror watch list (per DHS) include “right-wing extremists” and “returning veterans.”
•    Thus, the Federal Government disallows returning vets and right-wingers guns.

For an encapsulated view of those bold hypocrites who are minding the Terror Watch List, consider also the recent interview that leftist Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) granted to a reporter on Gun Control.

The Reporter asks Charlie: “Why should, say, the uber-wealthy have that protection [ability to carry firearms] but individuals who are law-abiding citizens in your district should not?”

Charlie: “Well, law-abiding citizens just shouldn’t have to carry a gun. You know that, so you’re not going to push me in that direction.”

Reporter: “But you’re protected by guns all over the place here in the Capitol.”

Charlie: (Laughing) “Well, that’s a little different. I think we deserve—I think we need to be protected down here.”

That attitude speaks for itself. Yes, it does make a difference who is minding the “Terror Watch List.”

Back to Homepage