GOP Congressman Goes Off on Obama for 1 Minute on House Floor: ‘What Would Tyranny Look Like in America? Look Around’
Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) took to the House floor on Friday and delivered his second memorable — and scathing — 1-minute critique of President Barack Obama this month. See his first one, here.
The rhetorical theme of his most recent remarks was: What would tyranny look like in the United States of America?
“Mr. Speaker, the president decided to
raise energy prices on all Americans, which adversely affects the poor
the most and he didn’t ask Congress,” Bridenstine began.
“The president decided to unilaterally
reduce our strategic nuclear deterrent when more countries than ever
have nuclear weapons, no treaty that would require consent of the
Senate,” he said. “The president has decided which health insurance
plans the people are allowed to have. The president didn’t ask congress
or the people for that matter. The list goes on.”
He added: “In America, we are either moving more towards liberty or more towards tyranny.”
Bridenstine then took aim at the Obama administration as a whole, criticizing each branch of the federal government.
Bridenstine then took aim at the Obama administration as a whole, criticizing each branch of the federal government.
“Well I think, we should ask ourselves
what tyranny would look like in the United States of America,” he
continued. “An executive branch that picks and chooses which laws it
wants to enforce. A judicial branch that would allow to do so on grounds
of the executive branch did not defend the laws in the court. The
legislative branch would have very limited power because they turned it
all over the president and the people would feel like they had no
representation.”
He concluded by circling back to
answer his own question. “The president told us he was going to
fundamentally transform America, and I think that is exactly what he is
doing. I yield back.”
Bridenstine later uploaded the video
of his remarks to YouTube. The video is titled, “What would tyranny look
like in America? Look around.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/28/gop-congressmans-passionate-1-minute-address-on-house-floor-what-would-tyranny-look-like-in-america-look-around/
We might as well put the Constitution out of its misery.
By Mark SteynWednesday, June 26, 2013 — just another day in a constitutional republic of limited government by citizen representatives:
First thing in the morning, Gregory Roseman, Deputy Director of Acquisitions (whatever that means), became the second IRS official to take the Fifth Amendment, after he was questioned about awarding the largest contract in IRS history, totaling some half a billion dollars, to his close friend Braulio Castillo, who qualified under a federal “set aside” program favoring disadvantaged groups — in this case, disabled veterans. For the purposes of federal contracting, Mr. Castillo is a “disabled veteran” because he twisted his ankle during a football game at the U.S. Military Academy prep school 27 years ago. How he overcame this crippling disability to win a half-billion-dollar IRS contract is the heartwarming stuff of an inspiring Lifetime TV movie.
Later in the day, Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota and alleged author of the Corker-Hoeven amendment to the immigration bill, went on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show and, in a remarkable interview, revealed to the world that he had absolutely no idea what was in the legislation he “wrote.” Rachel Jeantel, the endearingly disastrous star witness at the George Zimmerman trial, excused her inability to comprehend the letter she’d supposedly written to Trayvon Martin’s parents on the grounds that “I don’t read cursive.” Senator Hoeven doesn’t read legislative. For example, Section 5(b)(1):
Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall establish a strategy, to be known as the ‘Southern Border Fencing Strategy’ . . .On the other hand, Section 5(b)(5):
Notwithstanding paragraph (1), nothing in this subsection shall require the Secretary to install fencing . . .Asked to reconcile these two paragraphs, Senator Hoeven explained that, “when I read through that with my lawyer,” the guy said relax, don’t worry about it. (I paraphrase, but barely.) So Senator Hoeven and 67 other senators went ahead the following day and approved the usual bazillion-page we-have-to-pass-it-to-find-out-what’s-in-it omnibus bill, cooked up in the backrooms, released late on a Friday afternoon and passed in nothing flat after Harry Reid decreed there’s no need for further debate — not that anything recognizable to any genuine legislature as “debate” ever occurs in “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”
Say what you like about George III, but the Tea Act was about tea. The so-called comprehensive immigration reform is so comprehensive it includes special deals for Nevada casinos and the recategorization of the Alaskan fish-processing industry as a “cultural exchange” program, because the more leaping salmon we have the harder it is for Mexicans to get across the Bering Strait. While we’re bringing millions of Undocumented-Americans “out of the shadows,” why don’t we try bringing Washington’s decadent and diseased law-making out of the shadows?
Just when you thought the day couldn’t get any more momentous, the Supreme Court weighed in on same-sex marriage. When less advanced societies wish to introduce gay marriage, the people’s elected representatives assemble in parliament and pass a law. That’s how they did it in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, etc. But one shudders to contemplate what would result were the legislative class to attempt “comprehensive marriage reform,” complete with tax breaks for Maine lobstermen’s au pairs and the hiring of 20,000 new IRS agents to verify business expenses for page boys from disparate-impact groups. So instead it fell to five out of nine judges, which means it fell to Anthony Kennedy, because he’s the guy who swings both ways. Thus, Supreme Intergalactic Emperor Anthony gets to decide the issue for 300 million people.
As Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben so famously says in every remake, with great power comes great responsibility. Having assumed the power to redefine a societal institution that predates the United States by thousands of years, Emperor Tony the All-Wise had the responsibility at least to work up the semblance of a legal argument. Instead, he struck down the Defense of Marriage Act on the grounds that those responsible for it were motivated by an “improper animus” against a “politically unpopular group” they wished to “disparage,” “demean,” and “humiliate” as “unworthy.” What stump-toothed knuckle-dragging inbred swamp-dwellers from which hellish Bible Belt redoubt would do such a thing? Well, fortunately, we have their names on the record: The DOMA legislators who were driven by their need to “harm” gay people include notorious homophobe Democrats Chuck Schumer, Pat Leahy, Harry Reid, Joe Biden, and the virulent anti-gay hater who signed it into law, Bill Clinton.
It’s good to have President Clinton’s animus against gays finally exposed by Anthony Kennedy. There’s a famous photograph of him taken round the time he signed DOMA, at a big fundraiser wearing that black-tie-and-wing-collar combo that always made him look like the maître d’ at a 19th-century bordello. He’s receiving greetings from celebrity couple Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche, who’d come out as gay the week before and, in the first flush of romance, can’t keep their hands off each other even with President Happy Pants trying to get a piece of the action. For a man motivated only by a hateful need to harm gays, he’s doing a grand job of covering it up, looking like the guy who decided to splash out for the two-girl special on the last night of the sales convention. Nevertheless, reacting to the Supreme Court’s decision, President Clinton professed himself delighted to have been struck down as a homophobe.
In his dissent, Justice Scalia wrote that “to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions.” Indeed. With this judgment, America’s constitutional court demeans and humiliates only its own. Of all the local variations through which same-sex marriage has been legalized in the last decade, mostly legislative (France, Iceland) but occasionally judicial (Canada, South Africa), the United States is unique in its inability to jump on the Western world’s bandwagon du jour without first declaring its current vice president, president pro tem of the Senate, majority leader, chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, and prospective first First Gentleman raging gay-bashers. As the Paula Deens of orientation, maybe they should all be canceled.
There is something deeply weird, not to say grubby and dishonest, about this. In its imputation of motive to those who disagree with it, this opinion is more disreputable than Roe v. Wade — and with potentially unbounded application. To return to the immigration bill, and all its assurances that those amnestied will “go to the end of the line” and have to wait longer for full-blown green cards and longer still for citizenship, do you seriously think any of that hooey will survive its first encounter with a federal judge? In much of the Southwest, you’d have jurisdictions with a majority of Hispanic residents living under an elderly, disproportionately white voting roll. You can cut-and-paste Kennedy’s guff about “improper animus” toward “a group of people” straight into the first immigration appeal, and a thousand more. And that’s supposing the administrative agencies pay any attention to the “safeguards” in the first place.
As I say, just another day in the life of the republic: a corrupt bureaucracy dispensing federal gravy to favored clients; a pseudo-legislature passing bills unread by the people’s representatives and uncomprehended by the men who claim to have written them; and a co-regency of jurists torturing an 18th-century document in order to justify what other countries are at least honest enough to recognize as an unprecedented novelty. Whether or not, per Scalia, we should “condemn” the United States Constitution, it might be time to put the poor wee thing out of its misery.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352350/simulacrum-self-government-mark-steyn
Newest foot soldiers for ObamaCare: Librarians
Growing up, I had an aunt who became a librarian because she dreamed of one day helping liberals push a ruinous boondoggle on a broke America.Aunt Gladys, if you’re up there and can read this somehow, your dream came true.
The nation’s librarians will be recruited to help people get signed up for insurance under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. Up to 17,000 U.S. libraries will be part of the effort to get information and crucial computer time to the millions of uninsured Americans who need to get coverage under the law…
Libraries equipped with public computers and Internet access already serve as a bridge across the digital divide, so it made sense to get them involved, said Julie Bataille, spokeswoman for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services…
Libraries also have public spaces where meetings can be held. And they already provide health information to 28 million people a year via public access computers, according to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal grant-making agency, which will coordinate the new effort with CMS. The two federal agencies also worked together during the rollout of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, experience that should help with this effort, Bataille said.
Libraries will be particularly important in conservative states that are not making much effort to promote the health law’s opportunities.Don’t think of it as conscription, think of it as … repurposing. The more ubiquitous the Internet and e-readers get, the less use people have for libraries and thus the further away from their core function libraries will drift. In theory they’re still about book-lending but credit the feds for recognizing their growing role as places lower-income people can get online for free. Per Gallup’s latest, fully 43 percent of the uninsured have no idea that they’re now stautorily required by Hopenchange to seek coverage. If you’re trying to reach the poor to let them know that they qualify for health insurance subsidies — or, rather, that they don’t qualify — then this is a no-brainer. Coming soon, presumably: Deputizing the postal service, another institution that’s being laid to waste by technology, to start selling policies door to door. Ever heard the expression that the federal government is now really just “an insurance company with an army”? Well, the insurance part of that equation needs an army too.
As for the other big uninsured constituency, how many young adults do you suppose are hanging out at the local public library these days, ripe to be sold by the local librarian on why healthy twentysomethings should crap away what little earnings they have on unnecessary health insurance in an economy as tepid as this one? But maybe I’m underestimating the strategy here: The less disposable cash young Americans are left with after complying with the mandate, the less they can afford to pay for smartphones, laptops, and their own private Internet access. If they’re desperate to get online, there’s always the local library, you know.
Exit question: If government workers of any and every stripe are really just a free-floating labor force for the feds, ready to be enlisted for whatever policy priority the ruling administration has in mind, how come librarians and mailmen haven’t been coopted to coordinate jobs programs for the unemployed?
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/29/newest-foot-soldiers-for-obamacare-librarians/
NFL… we’ll pass on pimping Obamacare, thanks
Kathleen Sebelius isn’t having a stellar week in terms of getting groups on board to promote Obamacare. Yes, she had something of a win with librarians earlier, but her more recent efforts seem to be falling on deaf ears. One place where she’s pushing to find public opinion movers is in major league sports, looking for these highly visible organizations to begin “promoting the health law’s opportunities” as she did with the librarians. The most highly rated of these groups – the National Football League – has apparently read the writing on the wall and decided to take a pass.The National Football League is used to big, bruising battles. But on Friday, it announced that it was likely staying out of one of the roughest fights in Washington: the war over Obamacare.
Earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius disclosed that the Obama administration was in talks with the sports organization to help promote the law, which enters a new phase as advocates prepare to begin enrolling millions of Americans in health insurance this fall.
… NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the league had not made any commitment to the administration.
“We have responded to the letters we received from members of Congress to inform them we currently have no plans to engage in this area and have had no substantive contact with the administration about [the health-care law’s] implementation,” he said in an e-mail.The “letter” in question refers to a note sent out by the Senate GOP on the subject of HHS asking the sports leagues to pitch in and help.
“It is difficult to understand why an organization like yours would risk damaging its inclusive and apolitical brand by lending its name to its promotion,” Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) wrote in a letter to six major sports organizations, including the NFL and Major League Baseball.In the end, the question put forth in that letter is the real issue here, far more so than the national debate over Obamacare. Why on Earth would the NFL be interested in dipping a toe in this mess – either for or against – in the first place? What good would it do them, or anyone else? The league gets involved in a lot of different charitable efforts, the majority of which I agree with and find to be a totally valid use of the NFL’s time, money and popular appeal. These range from charities seeking to cure various diseases and support the families of those battling them to youth activities promoting sports, exercise and health. And it’s nice to see them giving something back to the community.
But regardless how you feel about the law itself, this remains a largely political question. It involves issues of the power of the federal government versus the states and the individual far more than how many people have what kind of health insurance. The NFL is one of the few iconic, giant institutions in the nation which serve all of us, (unless you’re a Jets fan, of course) and turning it into a political stalking horse just pulls blocks out of its foundation. This was a good move on the part of the NFL, and I would say that even if they were refusing to support a political position I believed in strongly. We can get all the information we need from the usual sources, and I don’t need the NFL promoting responsible gun ownership, no matter how much I would accept their premise. I’d rather they get back to explaining what the heck is going on with Tebow.
But don’t worry, Ms. Sebelius. You can still use federal money to train students to indoctrinate their parents on it.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/30/nfl-well-pass-on-pimping-obamacare-thanks/
Homeland Security watchdog accused of whitewashing report
The man in charge of policing waste, fraud and abuse at the federal government’s third-largest department has been accused of suppressing a politically sensitive report, violating anti-nepotism laws and misusing agency resources, according to a letter from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security.Charles Edwards, deputy inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security and de facto head of the office, was ordered by Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill and Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson to provide sixteen separate document sets related to the allegations by July 19.
“This is supposed to be the most transparent administration in history, but we’re seeing a real pattern of this White House and their secretaries applying pressure to inspectors general to whitewash reports,” Johnson said in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The letter claims Edwards intentionally changed and withheld information from both the public and internal reports on the solicitation of prostitutes by U.S. Secret Service personnel in Cartagena, Colombia last year.
Johnson believes the suppression may have been done at the direction of political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security, raising doubts about the office’s independence from the agency it’s tasked with investigating.
Numerous other allegations came from over a dozen current or former employees and vary widely. Whistle-blowers claim that Edwards illegally employed his wife as an auditor within his office, obtaining improper benefits for her in the process.
In one instance, Edwards reportedly pressured subordinates to approve his wife’s seven-month teleworking stint in India and provided a government-issued Blackberry cellphone for her personal use while abroad.
He also stands accused of misusing federal funds by traveling regularly to Fort Lauderdale, Florida under the guise of conducting routine inspections of a local inspector general’s office. In reality, whistle-blowers allege that Edwards was attending Ph. D classes at Nova Southeastern University, billing airline tickets, car rentals and hotel fees to the federal government.
There have also been allegations that Edwards used government-issued vehicles to run personal errands and retaliated against employees who questioned his activities by placing them on administrative leave.
The government accountability group Cause of Action informed TheDC News Foundation that they have been investigating the inspector general for over a year.
“Cause of Action has been made aware, through DHS insiders, that Edwards potentially destroyed complaints filed by his own employees,” said Dan Epstein, Cause of Action’s executive director. “If this allegation proves to be true, Edwards could be facing time in prison.”
The Department of Homeland Security has been without a Senate-confirmed inspector general since February 2011. Charles Edwards assumed leadership of the office as acting inspector general at that time, but was forced by the Federal Vacancies Act to return to his position as Deputy inspector general in January of this year.
The Obama administration nominated Roslyn Mazer to be inspector general in July 2011, but she withdrew her nomination in June 2012 following a contentious confirmation hearing. The administration has yet to name a replacement nominee.
“This administration has a history of not filling inspector general positions,” Johnson said, pointing to vacancies at the Departments of State, Interior, Labor and Defense. “Those departments represent more than 50 percent of federal discretionary spending, and they’re all without a full-time inspector general.”
Johnson emphasized that his committee was committed to discovering the truth behind the explosive allegations. “The fact that the chairwoman [Sen. McCaskill] joined in our request for information shows how seriously we’re taking this,” he said.
“We’re looking forward to his prompt response to our request for information,” the senator concluded.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/28/homeland-security-watchdog-accused-of-whitewashing-report/#ixzz2XinT9M8w
Senators Ask if NSA Collected Gun Data
Potential to construct gun database, senators say
A bipartisan group of 26 senators, led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to detail the scope and limits of the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities in a letter released Friday.
“We are concerned that by depending on secret interpretations of the PATRIOT Act that differed from an intuitive reading of the statute, this program essentially relied for years on a secret body of law,” the senators wrote in the letter.
The NSA’s surveillance program has come under intense scrutiny following a leak revealing the agency harvested the phone metadata of millions of American citizens.
The senators noted that the federal government’s authority under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act is broad and rife with potential for abuse. Among the senators’ concerns was whether the NSA’s bulk data harvesting program could be used to construct a gun registry or violate other privacy laws.
“It can be used to collect information on credit card purchases, pharmacy records, library records, firearm sales records, financial information, and a range of other sensitive subjects,” the senators wrote. “And the bulk collection authority could potentially be used to supersede bans on maintaining gun owner databases, or laws protecting the privacy of medical records, financial records, and records of book and movie purchases.”
The senators asked Clapper in the letter whether the NSA used PATRIOT Act authorities to conduct bulk collection of other types of records, and whether there are any instances of the agency violating a court order in the process of such collections.
Civil libertarians say such surveillance is a violation of privacy. However, the government has defended the program, saying it helped thwart several terrorist attacks and is minimally invasive.
Second Amendment groups and Republican members of Congress have long warned against the creation of a national gun registry. Fears of such a registry bogged down several attempts to forge a bipartisan gun-control bill in the Senate earlier this year.
“In this country, the government can’t just monitor your constitutionally protected activities—like gun ownership—just because it wants to,” said Brian Phillips, a spokesman for Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah), who signed onto the letter. “The justification that, ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong, you don’t have to worry about it,’ turns us into a police state very quickly. That’s why Congress is right to seek broad oversight of the NSA’s data collection programs.”
http://freebeacon.com/senators-ask-if-nsa-collected-gun-data/
The Attempted Extortion of Paula Deen
The real story behind the Paula Deen scandal can be summed up in a single word: greed. The American judicial system and the media are being used as formidable weapons in a brazen attempt to extort money from Ms. Deen, in my opinion.This isn't a story about racism. It's all about the money.
The mainstream media have reported with glee only some of the gory details as Paula Deen's financial empire continue to crumble. The Food Channel, Wal-Mart, Target, and the publisher of her bestselling cookbook all have abruptly terminated their relationship with Ms. Deen. The firestorm erupted after it was widely reported that Ms. Deen gave a deposition in a civil lawsuit in which she admitted using the N-word.
Rarely if ever mentioned by the national press is the context in which the word was used, or the reason the deposition became public knowledge.
No one is interested in defending the use of that particular word, including this writer.
But for the record, the specific instance in which Ms. Deen admitted to using that specific word was in the privacy of her own home, used to describe a robber who had pointed a gun at her head. The mainstream media also doesn't seem to care that Ms. Deen could easily have lied about that specific incident, yet chose to tell the truth under oath.
Apparently there's a zero tolerance policy when certain people use the forbidden N-word.
Never mind that the epithet was uttered in privacy, after Ms. Deen had suffered considerable duress of being robbed at gunpoint.
That the usage became public knowledge only when Jackson's attorney began conducting a smear campaign intended to inflict irreparable harm on Ms. Deen's businesses also seems to be irrelevant information to the drive-by media.
The motive for the lawsuit has been made abundantly clear. Plaintiff Lisa T. Jackson wanted $1.25 million dollars that didn't belong to her, so she decided to sue Paula Deen and her brother.
Attorney Wesley Woolf left no doubt about the real motive of the plaintiff in January, when he sent a letter to Deen's attorneys demanding a $1.25 million dollar settlement. Woolf threatened to conduct the negative publicity campaign currently underway, making clear the consequences if their extortion demand was refused when he wrote (emphasis added):
...[the] economic losses they [Ms. Deen and Mr. Hiers] will experience if we are caused to bring this matter to a public forum. ... Exposure of the racist and sexist culture of her corporate and personal life is going to permanently and irreparably damage the value of her brand.
In her deposition, Ms. Jackson was forced to admit that she never heard Paula Deen utter a racial epithet, never knew her to discriminate against an employee based on gender, and never knew Paula Deen to sexually harass anyone.
Both plaintiff and defendant are white, making racial discrimination against Jackson an impossible charge to prove.
That would seem to make the accusations put forth in the lawsuit against Ms. Deen frivolous.
It has not been widely reported outside the local press that Jackson sent Deen and her brother a letter praising and thanking them both, only a few short months before filing suit. In an effusive letter she wrote:
When I came to work for this company, as a person, I felt hopeless. I needed something, some opportunity that could provide me hope as an individual, as a woman, to make it on my own. At 15, homeless, without parents and with a young child, my life was headed in a direction no one could ever assume positive. As you know, I did what I had to do to survive, but it clearly was not the freedom or happiness I ever hoped for... When I started working for Bubba, he gave me an opportunity that allowed me, over time, a freedom I have never experienced. He allowed me, for once in my life to take care of myself and for once, have faith in myself as a person and as a woman to know that I could do it on my own; y'all were my Aunt Peggy... I have been given opportunities that I never thought possible, all because of you and Bubba.
The person who wrote that letter now wants $1.25 million dollars? For what?
Let's forget for a moment that Quentin Tarantino and Chris Rock have both made a lot of money using that same word with recklessness and impunity, all under the guise of artistic license.
Obviously, the word isn't strictly verboten.
But the really interesting question is this: who profits from Ms. Deen's admitted use of the word, nearly thirty years ago?
There is a reason she was included in the lawsuit. She has the deepest pockets for Ms. Jackson to pick, using the legal system and the media to do her dirty work.
Obviously, this isn't a case about seeking justice.
It's about character assassination and Lisa T. Jackson's shameless grab for $1.25 million dollars.
Another Jackson -- Jesse Jackson -- recently jumped on the Paula Deen bandwagon when he announced in the Huffington Post that Paula Deen could be "redeemed."
How much do you think that will cost her?
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