The Patriot Post® · Chronicle

The Foundation

“If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws – the first growing out of the last.” –Alexander Hamilton

Editorial Exegesis

“The ‘constitutionality’ of the Obama health care law, Harvard Law School’s Laurence Tribe wrote in the New York Times earlier this year, ‘is open and shut,’ adding that the challenge against it is ‘a political objection in legal garb.’ In announcing [Monday] that it will consider the law’s constitutionality, the Supreme Court said it would give an historic five-and-a-half hours to oral arguments. Perhaps by his Cambridge standard, Mr. Tribe thinks the nine Justices are a little slow. We prefer to think this shows the Court recognizes the seriousness of the constitutional issues involved. It makes those who cavalierly dismissed the very idea of a challenge two years ago look, well, constitutionally challenged. … It’s true that without the mandate the law is unlikely to work, but the law is such a Rube Goldberg contraption that it won’t work with the mandate. We’d like to see the entire law overturned, but the mandate deserves its own constitutional judgment. It shouldn’t be found constitutional merely because Justice’s lawyers say its excision would ruin the entire law. Congress can’t drop unconstitutional provisions into laws hoping that the Court will bless them simply because not doing so would invalidate the larger law. … The Court itself deserves credit for deciding to take this case this year, even though it probably means issuing a decision in an election year. The law is already speeding the ruin of U.S. health care, increasing costs and reducing competition. It is easily the most unpopular major reform in decades and the most unpopular entitlement expansion ever. … These are issues involving the nation’s core understanding of the citizenry’s relationship to its government. Voters should have the chance to include the Court’s verdict on the law when they go to the polls in 2012.” –The Wall Street Journal

Essential Liberty

“The justices reportedly expect to make a decision by June. Whenever it comes, they’d better get it right. The case’s main focus is the law’s individual mandate, a provision that requires every American adult who doesn’t have health care insurance to buy coverage. If a majority of justices decide that such a demand is constitutional, this nation will suffer through a fundamental transformation that rises to the level of the ‘change’ candidate Barack Obama promised – or threatened – if he were elected president. An America in which Washington can require the citizenry to do its bidding in all things is no longer a free republic – though some might argue that freedom and our republican style of government have been crumbling for decades. If Washington can force Americans to buy health care insurance, then Washington can do whatever it wants. Old limits will be gone. A soft tyranny will replace the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. It’s impossible to overstate the magnitude of this case.” –Investor’s Business Daily

Upright

“The individual mandate is the poster child of this Administration and the liberals in Congress overstepping their authority to inject the government into the lives of its citizens. … If the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate, as it should, it should also strike down the rest of the law in its entirety. But the second step (the ‘severability’ issue) is a closer question. The Court might get the first part right (striking down the individual mandate) but get the severability question wrong and not strike down the rest of the law. So, until the day the law is fully repealed, the job is not done.” –Heritage Foundation’s Nina Owcharenko

“A couple of months ago, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Beth Brinkmann was standing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, defending the federal law requiring Americans to buy government-approved health insurance, when Judge Laurence Silberman asked her about broccoli. Specifically, he wanted to know whether a law requiring Americans to buy broccoli would exceed the federal government’s authority to regulate interstate commerce. ‘No,’ Brinkmann said. ‘It depends,’ she added. … Imagine the fun that Congress could have coming up with mandates aimed at coercing healthier lifestyles once it has a constitutional blessing as well as a fiscal justification. … If you value your freedom to spend your money as you choose, you should hope the Supreme Court rejects the Obama administration’s open-ended view of the Commerce Clause – no matter how you feel about broccoli.” –columnist Jacob Sullum

“President Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected for an unprecedented third term after two terms in which unemployment was in double digits for eight consecutive years. We may lament the number of people who are unemployed or who are on food stamps today. But those who give the Obama administration credit for coming to their rescue when they didn’t have a job are likely to greatly outnumber those who blame the administration for their not having a job in the first place. … There has probably never been a time in the history of this country when we more urgently needed to get a president out of the White House, before he ruined the country. But will the conservative Republican candidates let that guide them?” –economist Thomas Sowell

“President Obama was wrong to say at the Asia-Pacific economic summit that America has gotten ‘lazy’ in the past few decades at attracting foreign investment. What he should have said, in the light of his administration’s handling of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, is that America has become quite adept at blocking foreign investment. … TransCanada wants to invest $7 billion in building a pipeline across the United States to carry oil from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. If we were merely lazy, we’d have accepted the project and the thousands of associated construction jobs long ago. That would be the path of least resistance, not to mention common sense.” –National Review editor Rich Lowry

Insight

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” –novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

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The Demo-gogues

Oh please: “The president is focused like a laser on passing the American Jobs Act, on making sure we put people back to work. We need some help from Republicans.” –DNC chair and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)

Reaching: “President Obama is trying to make sure the middle class gets 17 different tax cuts for small business owners. Ninety-five per cent of Americans got a tax break at the outset of Obama’s administration. We are focused on getting things turned around, and while yes, we’ve increased our debt, we’ve done so in a way that has made sure the economy can start to turn around, and we would make even more progress if the Republicans would stop rooting for the economy to fail.” –Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Firing up the base: “Folks, you [unions] fired the first shot. It’s not about Barack Obama. It’s not about Joe Biden. It’s about whether middle-class people are going to be put back in the saddle again – because you are the people who make this country move.” –Joe Biden

Department of irony: “The very core of what this country stands for is on the line. The basic promise that no matter who you are or where you come from, what you look like, that you can make it in America if you try – that vision is on the line.” –Barack Obama

Blame Game: “Normally … the way politics works is if the overwhelming majority of the American people aren’t happy with what you’re doing, you start doing something different. So far that hasn’t happened in Congress – and the Republicans in Congress in particular.” –Barack Obama

Projection: “We’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted – 'Well, people would want to come here’ – and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.” –Barack Obama

Dezinformatsia

Speaking truth to power: “What is extraordinary about the president is his demeanor. You know, as all around is in chaos, the president has always maintained a confident and assured demeanor. Does he know something we don’t? Or is he just quite cool under pressure?” –CNN’s Piers Morgan

Multiple wrong choice: “[A]t the [last] Republican debate, some of the hopefuls … defended the practice of waterboarding which is a practice you banned in 2009. Herman Cain said, ‘I don’t see that as torture.’ Michele Bachmann said that it’s ‘very effective.’ So I’m wondering if you think that they’re uninformed, out of touch, or irresponsible?” –CNN’s White House correspondent Dan Lothian to Obama

More from the sycophants: “What [the GOP presidential candidates] wanted to do was level attacks against President Obama, but that’s going to be difficult as well. I don’t think the Republican nominee for president really feels like [foreign policy] is the most vulnerable area for President Obama. His foreign policy by a lot of accounts has been very successful, particularly on the war on terror, and I think they want to focus on the economy.” –NBC’s David Gregory on Saturday night’s GOP debate

Belly laugh of the week: “[Y]ou balanced the budget and cut the size of the government. How come you’re not a hero of the Tea Party?” –Time magazine’s Richard Stengel to Bill Clinton

Newspulper Headlines:

Promises, Promises: “Get a Grip or I’m Out Too, Says Obama” –Daily Express (London)

Out on a Limb: “Republicans Reluctant to Accept Romney as Nominee” –Washington Examiner

Questions Nobody Is Asking: “Time’s Stengel to Bill Clinton: Why Aren’t You a Tea Party Hero?” –HotAir.com

News You Can Use: “‘Stop Doing Things That Are Stupid’” –Defense News

Bottom Story of the Day: “World Headed for Irreversible Climate Change in Five Years, IEA Warns” –Guardian (London)

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

Village Idiots

Excuses: “[The Republicans are] good at this. They’re good at labeling you. And what I would say to you is I think [Obama] has presented balanced plans. If you look at this jobs plan, which I talk about in real detail in the book, several of the ideas, including the payroll tax cuts, in the president’s plan, were first proposed by Republicans who now oppose them, probably just because he’s for them. The president plainly has bent over backwards to try to cooperate with them, and still wants to. And I think that’s the right position.” –Bill Clinton

Hating the troops: “I think it is shameful that it is perceived as legitimate to solicit in an academic institution for support for men and women who have gone overseas to kill other human beings.” –University law professor Michael Avery opposing Veterans Day

Hate speech: “[T]here are a lot of parallels between John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama: The age; they’re both young politicians; they both spent a short time in the Senate; they both have beautiful wives; they both have beautiful kids. … [T]here’s also been this sort of atmosphere of real hate and obstructionism that surrounded both men. So, I began to think history repeats itself and at that point I thought to myself, ‘You know I really would like to write this book.’ And one of the things that I’d kinda like to say is, ‘Here is where hate will get you eventually. This is what happens. Finally, it’s the barrel of a gun.’” –author Stephen King on why he wrote his novel, 11/23/63

Short Cuts

“The left is always shrieking that the Republicans are going to nominate some right-wing nut for the presidency; if only that were true. The Republican base’s perfect candidate would be someone who emerged from his bomb shelter toting a shotgun with the sole purpose of dismantling government. We want someone who can barely restrain himself from violence when talking to the normal useless, arrogant, tax-and-spend politician. Someone who, when given a bill to raise taxes, wouldn’t only veto it but would also publicly burn it and then hunt down the perpetrators who wrote it.” –humorist Frank J. Fleming

“You know what you call a Democrat who makes as many verbal gaffes as Rick Perry? Vice president.” –comedian Jay Leno

“President Obama cut $4 billion from his administrative budget, but will spend the money on other programs. I swear, if Obama were in a sinking boat, he’d drill a hole to let the water run out.” –former senator Fred Thompson

“The Justice Department convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout Friday of selling weapons to South American terrorists. He broke all the rules. Under the WTO he’s required to sell the weapons to the Justice Department, which gives them to a gun store on the border, which sells them to a cartel, which sells the weapons to the South American terrorists. That’s how jobs are created.” –Argus Hamilton

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team