Congress needs a diaper change

Temper tantrums, however fun they may be to throw, rarely solve whatever problem is causing them.

                                                                              ― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid

1. Did you know that 60% of Republicans support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants? They do so long as President Obama’s name is not associated with it. If the President supports it or pushes for it, that support drops to 39%. Since when did a good idea stop being good idea because you don’t like the messenger? For example, I despise Sarah Palin but if she actually supported a good policy idea that I also supported, I wouldn’t stop supporting it if I found out we agreed. That’s what grown ups do.

2. A journalist over at The Week, Taegan Goddard, is actually proposing that the President “…consider reverse psychology and propose the opposite of what he really wants.” Why? Because it has finally become clear to some in the media that the Republicans are simply opposing anything the President supports without any thought to the actual merits of the policy idea and by their own admission! See #1 above. How many of you are parents and resorted to using reverse psychology on your toddler in order to get compliance on something? So instead of demanding that the Republicans in Congress act like grown ups and do their damn jobs, the burden of compliance (caving to GOP demands) or manipulation (reverse psychology) is being placed on the President. I would go with demanding adults act like adults, but that’s just me.

3. Which leads me to this story…..Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said,

Here’s my belief: let’s take Obamacare and put it on the table,” he said. “If you want to look at ways to find $1.2 trillion in savings over the next decade, let’s look at Obamacare. Let’s don’t destroy the military and just cut blindly across the board.

Since Obamacare has significantly slowed the rate of healthcare cost increases and saved us all about $1.5 billion (if not more) in the first year of implementation and if that continues could save as much as $15 billion or more in the next decade, how does this proposal make any sense whatsoever?  We can’t find $1.2 trillion in Obamacare and even if we could, it would defeat the purpose of the law AND cost about 40 million people the healthcare coverage that is now available to them.  Graham and his Republican ilk would want to make these paltry (at least to them cuts) rather than making smart cuts from incredibly bloated segments of the government like the military.  Heck, even the military doesn’t want or need all the extra funds and equipment Congress is trying to give them.

The REAL solution to sequestration, which would be like taking a hatchet to the budget, is for Congressional Republicans to get off their butts and start making bipartisan decisions on the surgical cuts that need to be made and not let the sequestration occur at all.  So the solution to sequestration is for Graham and his colleagues to do their damn jobs!   But wahhhhhh, baby wants to do it his way!!!!!!!!!!!!  If baby can’t have it his way, then the budget can just get hacked up indiscriminately.  The “scorched earth” approach is effective in war but not so effective in governing. Of course, immature minds can’t understand this.

I get sooooo tired of having to remind them to put down their binky, take their thumb out of their mouths (or asses, which is more likely when we’re talking about Congress) and grow up.

Sense and Sensibility

Jumpin Baby Jeebus on a cracker! A writer over at the National Review, a bi-weekly conservative magazine that’s been around for about 40 years now, got irritated with the President for having the temerity to say that the Holocaust was “senseless”. The writer, Elian Johnson, responded by saying that Nazism wasn’t senseless because so many Germans supported it. Here’s the quote:

Nazism may have been an ideology to which the United States was — and to which the president is — implacably opposed, but it is hardly “senseless.” By the early 1930s, the Nazi party had hundreds of thousands of devoted members and repeatedly attracted a third of the votes in German elections; its political leaders campaigned on a platform comprising 25 non-senseless points, including the “unification of all Germans,” a demand for “land and territory for the sustenance of our people,” and an assertion that “no Jew can be a member of the race.” Suffice it to say, many sensible Germans were persuaded.

Now, ponder that a moment, will ya? There are so many things wrong with this statement. First, it’s anti-semitic. Jews not being admitted to “the race” is sensible? Did he really write that?! Yes, yes, he did. Second, he’s wrong on the numbers in regards to popularity. I think at the height of the Nazi movement, there were about 8 million members (1945) of the Nazi party in a population of over 78 million (1938)–so that’s about 10%. Of those, there were in 1944, 800,000 SS members–the Nazi elite who were responsible for protecting Hitler, controlling the non-Nazi military officers, and conducting the systematic execution of undesirables.  So that’s 1% were actively engaged in one of the greatest evils man has ever seen. The others? They were regular people, desperate, naive, tricked and sometimes willfully blind.   And then there were the 2/3 of the country that didn’t vote for the Nazis.  Which leads the next point.

Third, historically speaking, there was nothing sensible about how the German people chose the Nazi party. One could only think this if they didn’t know much about German history or even very much about the sociological modus operandi of how hate groups rise to power. Pre-WWII Germany was a classic case of a country in turmoil, vulnerable and desperate for help. They had high unemployment and hyperinflation which led to far too many people going hungry. Add to that the loss of pride in country. Germany lost WWI and Europe enacted some pretty strict punishments on the country. It was thought, at the time, that this would deter Germany, who had one of the largest and best military forces in the region, from becoming aggressive again. Instead it had the opposite effect. It demoralized the German people, embittered the German military forces, and made everyone in Germany suffer by worsening the effects of the economic downturn that followed WWI. So you had a country that had within a single generation descended from the pinnacle of European power and culture to a punished and ostracized nation barely able to feed itself.  They were angry, very angry, not just at Europe but also at their established leaders that had lost WWI and gotten them into the entire mess in the first place. The one thing Germans didn’t do was blame themselves or really take any responsibility.

So along came the Nazi Party–new blood, new faces. They offered Germans some pretty easy answers. The first thing they did was fill their heads with promises of fixing the economy–it’s easy to fix an economy if you control everything (China is the perfect example of this).  Once the Nazi got enough power, they could affect the economy positively because they would remove it from the vagaries of currency fluctuations based on free markets.     The other thing they did was tell Germans that the mess the country was in was not their fault. It was the fault of the old regime and the “others”, in this case most often Jews. They told Germans that they were an exceptional people, above all others. Of course, this is exactly what the German people most wanted to hear–wonderful bumper sticker answers to complicated geo-political problems.   Besides telling people what they wanted to hear, they also used sheer brute force. For example, they joined with the Socialist Party by convincing them they honestly had good will and common cause with them (hence the addition of the term to their name) and as a result they gained a lot of votes they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Once they had those offices, they then turned around and destroyed the Socialist members from within. Then they leveraged their current position to move to the next level. They did this all the way to the top of the country’s power structure very quickly–too quickly.

Those in business and finance that they couldn’t bribe or convince to join their cause, they threatened and killed. Once they had control of enough of the banking industry, they began to use the banks to persecute their political enemies, along with many other strong-arm tactics. Any party or politician who didn’t join the Nazi party and encourage their supporters to vote for them was threatened, framed for crimes they didn’t commit, beaten or killed, had their bank accounts frozen and their property seized, etc. While they subverted and manipulated the political and financial actors, they were also busy recruiting among the traditional Weirmacht Army officers. Many officers joined the Nazi not because they were bigots or because they wanted to be political in any way (which they had assiduously avoided in the past), they simply wanted Germany returned to its former glory–they appealed to their patriotism and nationalism. And Hitler promised them that would occur. Essentially, the Nazi’s made all the right promises and all the right threats to get to the top but none of it would have been possible had the country not been so vulnerable in the first place.  How Johnson thinks that “sensible” decisions were made under such conditions is just either ignorant or a dangerous reinterpretation of history.

The fourth and final point I wanted to make was that even IF the entire Nazi Party knew of the underlying evil agenda (they didn’t)….even IF they all participated in the evil things they did to rise to power (they didn’t)…even IF two-thirds of German voters voted for the Nazi Party (they didn’t, only one-third did)….it doesn’t make their actions sensible. No, a sensible reaction from Germany would have been to pause after WWI and acknowledge how they played a role in it. When the Nazi’s started to advocate for radical change they would have looked at all the options and found a solution that didn’t require destroying an entire race of people. When they first read Mein Kampf and realized the ultimate consequences of Hitler’s hatred, they would have found a way to stop him before he became too powerful. But they didn’t. It was too easy to sit back and hope that those evil thoughts on paper would never actually come to be in reality.  The German people simply wanted to be rescued and Hitler offered them that with an added helping of guilt-free scapegoating*. I think this is why the German people carry to this day a tremendous amount of guilt about the Holocaust.   Just because only a small portion of the Nazi’s and the country actively participated in the Holocaust, the entire country still made it possible through voting for the Nazis or acquiescing in the face of obvious fascism. Ultimately,  just enough Germans supported their crazy ideas to the point that it was okay to take the Jew’s business.  But they didn’t realize the Nazis weren’t just confiscating his factory, they were also killing him and his entire family.  They could envision the first but not the rest.  But now they recognize that they SHOULD HAVE known that any idea that focuses on the persecution of a single group of people will ALWAYS lead to even worse  actions and that eventually leads to evil. There is no bottom to this slippery slope.   Therein lies their great national shame.

Johnson not only doesn’t understand that Germany feels such shame, he doesn’t see that what they did was all that wrong.  Johnson’s logic is that if a movement is popularly supported by a generally sensible people**, then their platform must be sensible as well.  Fortunately, our country has a balance of powers where neither the Tyranny of One*** nor the Tyranny of the Majority is possible or at least, they cannot rise quickly to power in our system.  As such our governmental system is supposed to counter and slow the spread of the kind of destructive reasoning that Johnson uses in his execrable article.   That doesn’t mean he isn’t having an effect.  He is reinforcing hatred in the minds of our own Neo-Nazi groups and probably influencing the naive, desperate, ignorant or paranoid among conservatives, of which we have no shortage lately.  I can’t read stuff like this and sit silent.  No good person should.  For evil to triumph, the good only have to do nothing.  The Germans understand this, but do we?

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Notes:

*Sounds similar to “illegal immigrants are hurting the U.S. economy” doesn’t it?  

**Germany enjoyed and to a certain extent still enjoys a reputation for excellence in a variety of areas including engineering and manufacturing mainly due to a national characteristic of being very slow, methodical, and meticulous.  The other side of this coin is that once they start down a course, they don’t change direction very easily.  That slowness to change was considered very sensible in the 1800′s and early 1900′s, when slow action and thoughtfulness was considered the height of virtue.  However, their meticulous nature was the source of quite a bit of irony after WWII.  Historians point to the precise and detailed lists of Holocaust victims kept at various concentration camps–the Nazis knew what they were doing was wrong but they just couldn’t help themselves–records had to be kept otherwise how could they keep track of the amount of gold recovered from their victims teeth, the clothes that were taken and sent back to the major cities to be given to poor Germans, the possessions confiscated including works of art, silverware, money, etc.  Indeed, a very sensible people are the Germans.   As horrible as the concentration camp records were, they have been crucial to identifying the millions who were killed, to convicting the Nazi criminals who ran the camps, and to helping survivors figure out what happened to their family members.  

***In spite of conservative nuts who think the President is a dictator, they’re just out of touch with reality and wouldn’t know a dictator if they slapped them in the face…which makes me think….How much fun would it be to have actors who look like dictators (Chavez, Castro, or Jung Il) show up to right wing demonstrations and join in their protest? I would be very interested to see what they do.

Thoughts on the Day

• Ann Coulter is a disgusting human being–she thinks the government should make a list of all women who have had abortions. I honestly don’t think she believes a single thing that comes out of her mouth. She’s a grifter making a ton of money off ignorant, conservative American voters just like Beck, Limbaugh, etc. But the irresponsibility of such talk, all for the sake of making money, takes my breath away. What’s next? Scarlet A’s for the women on the list? I have a suggestion. How about a big “C” brand for Coulter’s forehead?*
  
• It’s official. Sheriff Joe Arpaio now has members of his all volunteer posse patrolling carrying weapons at approximately 50 schools in Maricopa County today. Congratulations Arizona! You’ve joined the ranks of third world countries with authoritarian governments. Woohoo! So proud, I could weep. Fortunately they’re not patrolling in Peoria where my daughter goes to school or I would be there following their ass around with a protest sign and videotaping their dumbasses. I wonder how they would feel if I came with my Ruger Speed 6 loaded with jacketed hollow point 38 Special rounds with two speed loaders full? If they can carry on campus, why can’t I? I have security clearances or at least, I used to. I’m more qualified than many in his damn posse, some of whom have a criminal past.   Ht to Bob Cesca

• Here’s a question for you to ponder. Why are private for profit charter schools not held to the same standards as public schools? They receive our tax dollars. Here’s another. How come no one ever talks about the profit being made by these private corporations and how they’re in bed with the standardized test makers? Why are we allowing corporations who only care about the bottom line take over public functions like schools, prisons, health care, etc? What is most important in those particular types of services? The profit or the people? Whenever a profit motive is introduced corruption and a lack of oversight gets introduced. At least with government we have oversight, legal recourse, etc–we have built in mechanisms for controlling them. Charter schools are a new and growing business and it’s a particular problem in Ari-loony-zona. Unfortunately, there is no proof that they actually educate our kids any better or educate them on the right things. They also play favorites. They take the cream of the crop and leave the rest, the harder to teach to the underfunded public schools. The entire set up is a national recipe for failure. If you care to read more, Kay over at Balloon Juice follows educational issues and she’s got a ton of information on this topic.
• They were fer em before they were agin em! The President has nominated former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) to replace Panetta as the Secretary of the Department of Defense. Of course, if you hop into the “way back” machine and go to the mid-2000′s you’ll see that McCain and other GOP leaders thought Hagel was the bees knees. Now that the Brown Muslim Manchurian Socialist Usurper has chosen him, they don’t think he’s qualified.  They must think we’re stupid….oh, that’s right….
• Here’s some background information you need to remember when you start hearing about the “fight over the debt ceiling” in the coming months. Raising the debt ceiling does NOT authorize the President to spend more. It authorizes the President, specifically through the Treasury Department, to pay the bills on debt that CONGRESS PREVIOUSLY AND CONSCIOUSLY decided to incur. Here’s a simple metaphor. You work for a company with a board of directors. The company needs to buy some new property and buildings. The Board itself sets the limits on how much they can spend. The Board then proceeds to spend more than they were authorized. The Board now has to raise the limit on what they can spend to pay for the extra amount. But the Board is trying to blame the office secretary that pays the bills and accusing him/her of asking for unlimited spending power. If the Board refuses to raise the limit, does not pay those bills, the company’s credit will be destroyed. This company is crucial to their industry and if it collapses so will those related companies. Similarly, the President is trying to pay the bills. The US is the largest issuer of currency–money and credit. So the entire world economy depends on us and our good credit status. If we default on paying our debts, our credit goes bad. If our credit goes bad a serious of dominoes will fall and affect the world economy, very, very badly. Do you see how crazy it is to play politics with such a serious issue? Do you see how the Republicans are jeopardizing us and even the entire world by doing so? It’s madness.
• A Republican Lobbying group in Washington, D.C. is taking the term “Republican” out of their name. However, they are saying that they still “represent the governing wing of the Republican Party”. Is you or is you not a Republican? This is like naming a law that allows the federal government to spy on citizens without a warrant the “Patriot Act”. Doublespeak bullshit.
• You know how conservatives and even some moderates have been saying we need to “cut spending” and “tighten our government belt” like they did in Europe in response to the recent Recession? Well they were and are wrong. According to the International Monetary Fund:
  

  On Friday, in its first working paper of the year, it revealed the full horror of what did happen. Personally authored by the fund’s chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, the paper said for every dollar those nations cut their budgets their economies crumpled something more like $1.50.

  [snip]

  His defence [sic] is that in normal times they would have got it right. In normal times a budget cut of $1 would have cut economic growth by 50¢. But the times weren’t normal. European interest rates had been cut to nearly zero, meaning there wasn’t the normal room for authorities to cut further, and households were more heavily indebted than normal, so cuts to their income flowed through more quickly than normal to cuts in their spending. And the starting point was different. The European economies had been in recession, which was far from normal.

  The U.S. was one of the few nations, other than China, to actually do some Stimulus and the U.S. is in much better shape than most of Europe as a result. And the situation in the U.S. remains similar to what the conditions were in Europe at the time they decided to trod down the austerity path–low interest rates and households still heavily indebted. We have a consumer driven society. If consumers don’t have liquidity to spend on stuff the economy cannot and will not grow.  We don’t need austerity–we need investment in our national infrastructure and new, sustainable energy.

• Remember Lt. Bradley Manning, the young man who leaked classified material to WikiLeaks who then plastered it all over the Internet? Well I’ve been saying all along that his treatment during pre-trial detention was excessive and illegal. I KNOW what is acceptable and what is not, even in a military prison, and the way they treated him was unacceptable. Innocent until proven guilty, folks. Anyway, seems a judge actually agrees with me. Regardless of whether you think Manning did the right thing or not (I don’t think he did, actually) you should stand up for his rights in this particular regard. This is America dammit–we shouldn’t allow this kind of thing.
• And finally, have you heard about SHART? They are the Society of Heavily Armed Resistance Troopers….and they want a “Gun Appreciation Day”!**

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Notes:   

*The C stands for a word that rhymes with “bunt”

**Hehe, the “article” purports to be from Smallwood, TX….small wood indeed

Democracy Causes Conniptions

Some “Free Marketeers” are very upset that President Obama won re-election. So upset that they are taking out their anger on their own employees, most of whom don’t even receive liveable wages. For some reason, these very wealthy people are unwilling to take any money out of their millions in profits [or out of wastage (see free pizza's from Papa John's below), or out of unnecessary advertising, or out of unnecessary trips, or from new operating efficiencies, etc] and invest it in their own workers.

See what these idiots refuse to see is that having healthier workers means that you have more productive workers and that always improves the bottom line. But you have to be patient because it’s a long term benefit and therein lies the rub. Long term planning and long term profits aren’t what most modern day entrepreneurs are all about. It’s the quick turnover profit that fills their dreams. Because of that thinking, some businessmen have decided to poop on the little guys to help heal their hurt feefees. Here’s a list….All of these guys win the 2012 Biggest Self-Centered Short-Term Thinking Douche Award _TM:

**Owner of Papa John’s, can give away a million free pizzas but won’t cover the cost of health insurance for his employees. He’s blaming Obamacare and saying he will reduce employees to less than 30 hours. If he didn’t want to take the cost of health care out of the free pizzas, he could simply charge more for his pizzas–5 cents added to each pizza would cover it. 5 cents, yup, that’s it. His pizza sucks anyway and I rarely order from them.  And after this, I’ll never order from his company again, never.  How do you like that Free Market?

**Owner of Murray Energy, the guy who forced his miners to lose a day of work and pay to expand the crowd at a rally for Romney and serve as publicity tools. He’s actually laying people off. He blames the President for the decline of the coal industry and refuses to recognize that 1) coal is a finite source of energy, 2) there is no such thing as clean coal but the President actually supported it’s use anyway so he’s tried to help the industry and 3) the natural gas industry is primarily responsible for the decline of coal, not this President or any other  President. He likes the Free Market so long as it isn’t free to make his dumb ass obsolescent.

**Time-share magnate (many properties here in AZ, look at that picture of the idjit and his skanky wife) threatened to shut down his businesses but no word on whether he actually followed through. I’m sure it scared the shite out of his employees though.  So nice to frighten the little people who have no control over how the country votes.  Again, a boycott of this jerk’s businesses is probably in order.

**A FL franchise owner (has several, Dairy Queens, Denny’s, Hurricane Bar & Grill) who announced he’s putting a 5% surcharge on every bill and then told the public, either pay the surcharge and tip normally OR reduce the tip you give to your server by 5%. Yes, pay your servers less–you know the ones that are often given the federal minimum wage–$2.13 an hour. Sure take 5% more out of that. Brilliant idea. I would suggest to this guy that he never, ever eat at one of his own restaurants again because servers are known to get back at people by messing with their food.  And if anyone ever deserved a loogie in their food, it’s this guy.

Wherein I address the libertarians: Question 1

This post is the result of a “discussion” on Facebook between some self-proclaimed libertarians and their accusations that Obama Supporters ignored a long list of things about the President–cool aid drinking and all that.  I couldn’t answer their “list of things” on Facebook so I will address them one by one on my blog.  Unbeknownst to these libertarians, they don’t understand that Obama Supporters really do consider these “things” and think them through.  We just come to different conclusions than they do.  Maybe this series of posts will open their mind and allow them to see how a “liberal thinks” (like observing us in the wild maybe /snark) but I won’t hold my breath.  At the very least, maybe someone will be a little more informed, which is all good.

What is the NDAA and who signed it into Law?

Okay, some history because it matters. The original AUMF ¹ of 2001 (passed by Congress, signed by G.W. Bush) was to be used against Terrorists. It allowed Pres. to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those that perpetrated or harbored those who perpetrated in Sept 11th. This has been interpreted to mean that the Feds could use warrantless wiretapping, even against American citizens and later interpreted by G.W. Bush for the purposes of indefinite detention and to justify the use of Military Tribunals to prosecute terrorists in Guantanomo Bay ². There was another AUMF in 2002 that was used to invade Iraq. In 2011, Congress proposed another AUMF that allowed for the indefinite detention by the Military of any accused terrorists.

Critics charged that the way the law was written, indefinite detention could be used against American citizens. This third AUMF renewed the 2001 AUMF with even more expansive language on who the Feds could target. So in addition to  those who were responsible for 9/11, they targeted anyone who substantially supports Al Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces. Last thing it did was put restrictions on the Excecutive Branch’s ability to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo  This third AUMF was not passed on it’s own but included in a larger Dept of Defense budget bill in 2012, called the The National Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Obama.

All of these bills and provisions were begun by Congress, passed unanimously by conservative Senators and Representatives and some liberal defectors. They are, for the most part, Congress giving powers to the Executive Branch. President Obama openly spoke of his problems with the powers that Congress seemed so awfully eager to give him. The Supreme Court and the lower courts had already stated that the AUMF 2001 was considered Constitutional. The President had no qualms re-newing those provisions. But in regards to detaining citizens and other provisions not addressed by the Supreme Court, he was very, very concerned–Concerned enough to openly threaten a veto. In the end he created a signing statement, in which he said:

“The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it. In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists….under section 1021(e), the bill may not be construed to affect any “existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.” My Administration strongly supported the inclusion of these limitations in order to make clear beyond doubt that the legislation does nothing more than confirm authorities that the Federal courts have recognized as lawful under the 2001 AUMF. Moreover, I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens.

He also had other problems with the bill, such as Congress preventing him from transferring Guantanamo detainees to U.S. soil so they could be prosecuted criminally, which in turn prohibited him from being able to close Guantanamo . Furthermore, if he didn’t sign the bill it also meant that our active soldiers, veterans and their families would have gone unpaid and unsupported. Beyond the moral implications of not taking care of them, there is a practical consideration too. You don’t just stop paying your soldiers ³, particularly in the middle of two wars.  Unfortunately his signing statement does not in any way bind future Presidents. And that’s really where the problem lies.

Now I want to know why Pres. Obama’s critics want to pin this on him and him alone? The two other branches have created and supported these hideous laws. How is the Executive supposed to control that in a legal manner? He can’t except through veto power.   At the time the NDAA was being passed the Senate had enough votes and the House would have likely found the votes to override his veto ( remember this is when Republicans were reflexively doing the opposite of what the President wanted). Then it would have become law without ANY limitation statements being added (i.e., the change in language that says not construed to affect any existing law regarding detention of citizens) AND without the signing statement, little comfort as that may provide. It’s still better than nothing, which is what the veto would have gotten us.

It confuses me when conservatives critics call the President a dictator (or Hitler) because of the NDAA and yet demand he act like a dictator to stop passage of the law.  You can’t have it both ways.  He’s a real President abiding by how our system works and following the rules.  This often constrains him as much as helps him (or any President that gives a damn about the Constitution–G.W. Bush couldn’t even spell the darn word much less abide by it).  It also means that we end up with abominations like the NDAA sometimes and the process to reverse such things is drawn out and very frustrating.

So in the end, I don’t blame President Obama for the NDAA but I do very much oppose it. I also believe that his signing statement is sincere. On the other hand, I have no confidence whatsoever that any conservative of either party or even a center-Democratic President would have such reservations or abide by the signing statement ⁴. Indeed American history has shown us time and time again, that regardless of which party controls the Executive Branch, once that Branch is granted powers, that Branch never gives it up unless forced to ⁵. Therefore, critics of President Obama on this particular issue need to be pressuring those idiots in Congress and/or hope that some more liberally minded Justices get appointed to the Supreme Court.  Otherwise, every four years habeas corpus could be threatened anew.  That’s not how it’s suppose to be.  But blaming President Obama alone for it, is simplistic and distracting.

Notes:

1. Authorization for Use of Military Force
2. On the issue of the Military Tribunals, SCOTUS rejected this argument so technically it doesn’t include that power.
3. That’s what happened just after the American Revolution and almost caused our very young country to experience a military coup, wherein the unpaid veterans of the Continental Army met to find out how they could force Congress to pay them. Washington went becasue he wanted to give input and because he was afraid that violence might result. During the meeting the Veterans discuss a coup and proposed that Washintong be made King…he declined, calmed the veterans assuring them that Congress would deliver and our democracy survived.
4. The 2011 version of the AUMF was sponsored by Sen. John McCain, former Presidential candidate–phew, thank God it was Obama who in won in 2008. As for Romney, the guy who was once again advocating for the use of torture, he wouldn’t have thought twice suspending Habeas Corpus. So any conservative that supported Romney or told you Romney was more in support of Liberty than Pres. Obama because of NDAA is just plain wrong. And on the issue of Romney’s views on Liberty and women’s rights…I’d supposedly be free under a Romney admin but the government could shove things into me without consent and they can condemn me to death or a lifetime of obligation, expense, effort, etc I do not want if I just so happen to be pregnant.  That sounds an awful lot like slavery to me.  But I digress….
5. Hence the War Powers Resolution of 1973