Florida: Mega church pastor partners with former CAIR chairman to oppose “anti-sharia” bill

Posted on March 30, 2013 by creeping

via floridafamily.org

Dr. Joel C. Hunter, senior pastor of the Northland Church in Longwood, Florida, asked Atif Fareed, former Chairman of CAIR Florida, to read Hunter’s statement opposing SB 58 Application of Foreign Laws in Certain Cases to the Florida Senate Committee on Governmental Oversight and Accountability on March 21, 2013.

Mega church senior pastor of 15,000 evangelical Christians partners with Islamist to oppose anti-Sharia bill in Florida Legislature.Perhaps you can educate Dr. Hunter with facts regarding Islam, Jihad, Islamists, CAIR, Sharia and Taqiyya. joel.hunter@northlandchurch.net

Dr. Joel C. Hunter Northland Church

Dr. Joel C. Hunter, senior pastor of the Northland Church in Longwood, Florida, asked Atif Fareed, former Chairman of CAIR Florida, to read Hunter’s statement opposing SB 58 Application of Foreign Laws in Certain Cases to the Florida Senate Committee on Governmental Oversight and Accountability on March 21, 2013.

Atif Fareed told the committee:

But I want to read something very important to you today.  I am a Muslim, but a senior pastor of an evangelical church, the Northland Church, Dr. Joel C. Hunter, he sent me an email yesterday afternoon and he wanted me to read this to you.  And this is how his letter goes exactly word by word:

“To my state senators:  As a pastor of one of the largest churches in Florida I believe  Senate Bill 58 will do more harm than good if enacted.  Its effect will be to increase bias rather than protection.  It seems to me to be a cure without a disease.  Existing law and judicial precedent have proved sufficient to deal with any concerns addressed by this proposed law.   Having confidence in both our constitution and the character of our judicial process I agree with the America Bar Association, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Civil Liberties Union that this law and House Bill 351 will be detrimental rather than the good intended.  As a conservative evangelical Christian it is unusual for me to side with the ACLU but I think objecting to unnecessary law is a conservative principle as well as a libertarian one.  In deed not making laws unless they are absolutely necessary is at the core of our character as a country.  Thank you for considering my views.  Dr. Joel C. Hunter, Senior Pastor Northland Church distributed.

To see the video recording of Atif Fareed’s presentation to the Senate Committee click here and advance the video to the 68 minute mark.

“I could not wait until the committee meeting was over to inquire if Joel Hunter actually authorized or requested Atif Fareed to present this statement to Florida Senators.”  Notes David Caton, Florida Family Association President.  “I sent the below email to Joel Hunter to which he affirmed Yes in less than five minutes.  He must be really proud to align with the Council on American Islamic Relations.”

From: “david caton”
To:    “joel hunter” <joel.hunter@northlandchurch.net>
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2013 11:26:05 AM
Subject: Statement presented to Florida Senate

A gentleman just presented a statement allegedly authored by Dr. Joel Hunter condemning SB 58 Application of Foreign Law in Certain Cases.  Did Dr. Joel Hunter write and authorize this statement?

From: “Joel Hunter” <joel.hunter@northlandchurch.net>
To: “david caton”
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2013 11:30:10 AM
Subject: Re: Statement presented to Florida Senate

Yes.

Sent from my iPhone

Hunter claims he is a “conservative evangelical Christian…” yet:

• The Northland Church web site gives this bio of Hunter:  “Dr. Hunter served in the inaugural year on the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which advised President Barack Obama on substantive policy issues, …. He continues as a spiritual advisor to the President.”
• Dr. Joel Hunter prayed during the 2008 Democratic National Convention where Barack Hussein Obama was nominated to run for president.  Click hereto see his prayer on Youtube.com

Here is some background on Atif Fareed, the spokesman who Dr. Hunter selected to give a speech in support of the Council on American Islamic Relations political agenda:

• Chairman of the American Muslim Community Centers, Inc.
• Former Chairman of CAIR Florida, Inc.
• Fareed participated in a rally to defend the Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian, on the opening day of Al-Arian’s trial in Tampa. (Islam Online, ‘Arian Trial Case of Freedom of Speech: Lawyer,’ June 7, 2005)
• Prior to getting involved with CAIR, Fareed was a representative for the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), an Islamist political lobby group that has, in the past, defended Hezbollah and has called for Israel’s destruction. (Zionist Organization of America, ‘ZOA: White House Was Wrong To Send Representative To Convention Of ProTerrorist, Anti-American Group,’ December 23, 2003)
• “Ariel Sharon is a warmonger and only the United States can stop him.” (statement by Atif Fareed, International Herald Tribune, ‘U.S. support for Israel,’ LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, April 24, 2002)
• Fareed, a pilot for Southwest Airlines, has admitted to being questioned by the FBI for nearly three hours, asked if any Arabs approached him for flying lessons and if he would submit to a lie detector test. (Los Angeles Times, Muslims: Private Moments in the Public Eye,’ August 12, 2004
• “On September 10, I was a good guy. I became a bad guy on September 11.” (Los Angeles Times, ‘Vegas Muslims: Faith and Vice Under a Neon Sky,’ August 12, 2004)
• “It took skill to fly sophisticated planes nearly 500 mph into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.” (stated by Atif Fareed, Las Vegas Weekly, ‘The reality-propaganda gap: Mainstream media slammed for whitewashed news,’ November 1, 2001)

Cuomo’s Shameful SAFE Act

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE          www.nationalreview.com           PRINT

By Charles C. W. Cooke March 25, 2013 4:00 A.M. All things being equal, New York State’s infamous new gun laws will go down in history as a prime example of the folly of hysterical calls to action; and Governor Andrew Cuomo, who led the chase for the measures, will join them in disgrace. After 20 children were killed in Newtown, Conn., last December, progressives saw a golden opportunity to reverse the liberalizing tide of recent firearms law and leverage the national outrage in favor of long-desired gun-control codes. Freed by his reelection, the president declared, in an increasingly tiresome formulation, “Now is the time to do the right thing for our children, our communities, and the country we love.” In Albany, it appears that the governor took him literally. Legislation cast in the wake of tragedy invariably carries with it the stench of the mob, and when it’s contrived in haste to protect “the children,” this is doubly so. Parliaments and institutions might protect us from the sight of angry, rash, pitchfork-wielding villagers in search of blood, but, however sanitized our politics have become, the impulse of rabble-rousing politicos is the same: Something must be done, it must be done right this second, and all naysayers are on the side of the monster. Wise men understand this, and they act to cool passions. Andrew Cuomo, we have learned in recent months, is not a wise man. His signature now adorns a law that has proven unworkable from start to finish. Next time we are told that we cannot wait for democracy or reflection to soothe passions, we might remember the course that New York has taken. In Newtown’s aftermath, reacting became synonymous with fixing the problem; expressing support for change was treated as if it were the same thing as preventing tragedy; and those who urged patience or reason were seen as siding with the devil — or, worse, the Second Amendment. These tendencies were widespread, but Cuomo’s rhetoric stood out in particular, ranging as it quickly did into the extreme. So grave was the new threat, Cuomo warned, that New York State should consider “confiscation” of “assault weapons,” or, if that was too drastic, it should enforce “mandatory sales to the state.” There had been, we were told, a “sea change” in America. From now on, everything would be different. Shouting his way through his State of the State speech on January 9, 2013, the governor outlined his thinking. “Guns impose huge economic costs, as well as [a cost in] lives,” he bellowed. “Fear of gun violence invades neighborhoods, causing disruptions in the normal rhythms of life, work, and school. That threat depresses property values and puts a drag on economic development.” This being so, and legislation being inescapable, there would be time for neither public input nor committee hearings. In a startling move, Cuomo issued a “Message of Necessity,” using a provision in the state’s constitution designed to permit expedited state action in a case of emergency. This gave Cuomo the power to suspend the usual democratic rules and charge forward. He couldn’t allow public debate, he argued, lest it “cause a rush on the market of people who wanted to buy assault weapons.” He couldn’t allow the usual three-day waiting period between a bill’s being introduced and a vote’s being held, in case legislators asked difficult questions or tried to stall the measure. In a move that would have made Nancy Pelosi proud, Cuomo allotted state lawmakers mere minutes to read the bill before voting on it. Indeed, so aggressive were Cuomo’s tactics that theAlbany Times Union, which was supportive of the basic thrust of the legislation, editorialized that he behaved like a man possessed of “a truncated view of the legislative process and a cynical view of representative government.” The governor disagreed: “If there is an issue that fits the definition of necessity,” Cuomo shot back, “I believe it’s gun violence.” And so, one month after Sandy Hook, on January 15, the second day of New York’s 2013 legislative session, a vote was held. The bill passed by 104 votes to 43. At 5 p.m. the following day, the governor signed the bill. New York had a new law: the SAFE Act. The Wall Street Journal noted politely that Cuomo was “eager” to be the first governor to act. State Senator Greg Ball put it more bluntly: Protesting against the bill late on the night of its passage, Ball said, “We haven’t saved any lives tonight, except one: the political life of a governor who wants to be president.” The senator’s understanding of Cuomo’s priorities was perceptive, but it was not simply that the governor wanted to claim credit for the “first bill.” It was also, Cuomo boasted, the “best bill.” The new legislation would allow his administration and the New York legislature “to say to people, yes, we went through terrible situations, but we saw, we learned, we responded, and we acted, and we are doing something about it.” Andrew Cuomo was proud of himself. He had succeeded in achieving all the points on his “seven-point agenda to stop the madness of gun violence” just six days after he’d announced it. New York now had “the toughest assault-weapon ban in the nation, period” — an odd yardstick, perhaps, but important to the man in Albany. “You can overpower the extremists,” he claimed ebulliently, “with intelligence and with reason and with common sense.” His bill, he told reporters, was packed full of all three. Not everyone bought it. The reliably anti-gun New York Times described the governor’s behavior as “peculiar,” and worse: Mr. Cuomo negotiated in secret with a few other powerful politicians on a dog’s breakfast of legislation that got no public discussion at all and was passed by state senators who had not even read it — because they were not given a chance to do so. The resulting bill is hard to judge on the merits. It’s a snarl of good ideas, strange ideas, and ideas that seem quite bad. While some items should figure into federal gun-control legislation, Washington should not take New York as an example of how to go about this difficult business. The backlash against the SAFE Act was swift and strong. Doctors immediately slammed a provision requiring mental-health professionals to report patients whom they consider a risk to themselves or others. “The people who arguably most need to be in treatment, and most need to feel free to talk about these disturbing impulses,” may be the ones that the law makes least likely to do so, complained Dr. Paul Appelbaum of Columbia University, speaking to USA Today before the governor had even signed the bill. The consequences of the law, he continued, would probably be that at-risk gun owners “will either simply not come, or not report the thoughts that they have.” The chairman of the psychology department at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, Dr. Steven Dubovsky, was even harsher: “It’s pure political posturing. . . . No patient is going to tell you anything if they think you’re going to report them.” That these thoughts were poured out to a newspaper in the wake of the bill’s passage and not delivered to a committee hearing tells you all you need to know about the manner in which the law was compiled. Police spoke up, too. The law, which among other things sought to ban all magazines that hold more than seven bullets and to prohibit the carrying of guns on school grounds, carried no loophole for police or other law-enforcement officers. “Won’t that be a problem?” a few bright sparks asked. “What if there’s a school shooting?” No, no, said Cuomo. You’re fine! We’ll fix that. Next? The entertainment industry raised its head, wondering aloud if it would be exempted from the regulations when producing movies and television in the state. Sure, said Cuomo, on the fly. You’re fine, too! We’ll fix that in the cleanup. Last week, gun owners complained, too, pointing out that it is all very well to ban the sale and use of magazines that hold more than seven rounds, but there was a small problem: There are very few magazines for sale that hold only seven rounds. Don’t worry about that, Cuomo said. That’s just a “grammatical error.” Citizens, he decreed, “you can have a magazine that can hold ten bullets, but you can only have seven bullets in the magazine unless you are at the range or in competition.” This concession was unwelcome to the president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, who told the New York Times, “We don’t want to have to tell the mother of a young man who’s just been shot and killed that he was killed with the ninth bullet.” Questions abound in response to arguments of this nature. Presumably the mother would be just as upset about her son’s demise if he were killed with the fifth bullet, so why not ban that one, too? And what evidence is there that a single criminal — who, by the logic of our brave legislators, is prepared to shoot someone dead — will follow a law determining how many rounds he may have in his gun? Alas, when adults say things like this in all seriousness, nobody laughs. At least some of the complaints, however, seem to be having an impact: In a begrudging bow to reality, the state senate, including five renegade Democrats, effectively suspended the seven-bullet limit “indefinitely,” as of this weekend. “The suspension means magazines holding up to 10 rounds will continue to be sold,” Bloomberg reported Sunday. The rest of the law remains intact. Before the massacre at Newtown, Cuomo had an approval rating of 74–18. After he pushed the bill, it dropped to 59–28, still high but a dramatic drop. Among Republicans in the state, he moved from 68–18 to 44–43. Cuomo “was afraid of the public rising up — and the public has risen up,” New York Conservative-party chairman Mike Long says. “There are 52 counties that have introduced resolutions calling for repeal. There are 40 counties that have passed resolutions. Three weeks ago, citizens held the largest rally that ever took place in Albany: over 5,000 people.” By the time people took to the streets, a petition urging Cuomo to revisit the law had collected 83,000 signatures. The legislation is subject to a legal challenge from the National Rifle Association’s New York affiliate, the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association. The group filed a federal lawsuit last week that challenges the constitutionality of the measure and requests an injunction. The suit claims that the limits on magazine capacity and the expansion of the “assault weapons” ban restricts the right of “law-abiding citizens to keep commonly possessed firearms in the home for defense of self and family and for other lawful purposes.” Not challenged by the lawsuit, but no less worrying to Second Amendment defenders, are the creation of a statewide gun registry (which usurps the local registries that previously obtained) and the requirement that gun owners undergo background checks through the New York NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) in order to buy bullets — the first such rule in the country. Also unchallenged are the restrictions on existing weapons that prevent owners of grandfathered firearms from handing them down to their family members or selling them to neighbors or friends. These provisions, it appears, were urgent, because the children deserved them. Provisions to secure classrooms, on the other hand, were not, and they have been delayed indefinitely, subject to the findings of a committee that has not yet been formed. This is unsurprising. As Representative Kieran Lalor told the New York Daily News: One of the bill’s sponsors was asked on the Assembly floor whether this law would have prevented the horrible murders of students and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He answered, “No.” When some of his colleagues gasped at his honesty, he changed his answer to “Maybe.” Practical questions remain. New York State has not yet indicated how it intends to process the 1 million guns that must be registered within the year. If the law is to be obeyed, 2,500 guns per day will need to be registered. There is currently no system in place to do this. The irony here is obvious: The state will rush to divert time, resources, and treasure in order to set up a system with which only the law-abiding will comply. More haste, less speed, the old saying has it. Cuomo’s behavior has served primarily to illustrate the truism that a rushed law is a bad law. “Government,” as George Washington is supposed to have said, “is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.” It is the role of leadership to inject as much reason as possible into the fire. The mob may call for blood — that is its prerogative — but leaders must demand that reaction be deferred. As governor, Cuomo has failed in his primary task, choosing instead to incite the crowd, and using the force of the state to indulge its clamor. New York is not safer for the passage of the SAFE Act, but it is a little more stupid. Next time we are told in urgent tones that “now is the time for action,” we might remember the fiasco in Albany — and ask politely for a hiatus. — Charles C. W. Cooke is an editorial associate at National Review. Permalink

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The Truth About Government Ammo Purchases

The Patriot Post • http://patriotpost.us

---

March 8, 2013

“There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.” –George Washington

The last few months have seen troubling news of massive government purchases of ammunition. Agencies from the Social Security Administration to the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Homeland Security have purchased millions of rounds. But is the whole thing more hype than substance?

Ever since Barack Obama was first elected in 2008, he has been selling guns and ammunition at a faster clip than any gun salesman could hope for. And since his re-election, citizens have been faced with severe shortages of both. This can only be exacerbated by large government purchases. The Social Security Administration (SSA), for example, purchased 174,000 rounds and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) bought 320,000 rounds. More understandable in purpose but also perhaps more staggering in scale, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) put in a request for 450 million rounds, while the FBI intends to purchase 100 million.

The headlines are ominous, but some of the hype can be put in perspective by doing a little math. National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke does just that¹. The SSA’s request for 174,000 rounds amounts to just 590 rounds for each of its 295 inspector general agents “who investigate Social Security fraud and other crimes.” Some of us might go through 590 rounds in an afternoon at the range. As for the USDA, 320,000 is enough to provide the same number of rounds for 542 agents, and, through the Forest Service, those agents have an area the size of Pakistan to cover.

When it comes to the bigger orders, Cooke writes, “The FBI and DHS’s apparently vast orders are deceptively presented by the conspiracy theorists. It is true that in 2011, the FBI ordered up to 100 million bullets for its 13,913 special agents (which works out to 7,187 per agent). And, yes, the Department of Homeland Security — a composite department that oversees USCIS, Customs and Border Protection, FEMA, ICE, the TSA, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and the National Protection Directorate — placed a request for up to 450 million rounds for its 65,000 armed personnel (which works out to 6,923 per agent). But in the real world, ammunition is not divided up and handed out on such a basis. What is bought is stockpiled and then allocated on the basis of need. The DHS’s order is expected to last for at least five years, and it was placed up front primarily as a cost-saving measure.” Indeed, DHS is not even bound to buy that much; they merely have a tab on which to order more rounds as needed.

That certainly doesn’t mean there aren’t questions or that we should simply shrug and look the other way. For starters, the Department of Education recently placed an order for “27 Remington Brand Model 870 police 12-gauge shotguns.” This might lead any reasonable person to ask, as Cooke does, “Whether it is in possession of one bullet or 1 million bullets, should the federal Department of Education be armed in the first place? If so, why?” We would add, should there evenbe a Department of Education? But that’s a topic for another day. The DoE has been known to botch raids² when it was the wrong enforcement vehicle from the start.

The same questions could be asked of any number of bureaucracies. Does the Social Security Administration really need an armed enforcement division? We’ve known some unruly seniors in our day, but that seems to be overkill.

Then there’s the information that’s just plain false. Reports have been circulating that DHS has procured 2,717 Mine Resistant Armor Protected (MRAP) vehicles. The truth is, DHS has had retrofitted MRAPs since 2008, and now has 16 of them³ for serving “high-risk warrants.” The figure of 2,717 comes from a delivery to the Marine Corps, not DHS. None of that, however, takes away from the problem that these are more properly military vehicles for war zones, not law enforcement tools. The militarization of law enforcement is undeniably troublesome. Furthermore, DHS is the same bureaucracy that claims right-wing extremists⁴ pose a threat, and it’s run by an administration that thinks that “weapons of war” shouldn’t be on our streets. Unless they’re the ones driving them, apparently.

There are certainly troubling trends here and very real threats to our Liberty, but we must be careful not to exaggerate. While readers know that we never minimize the outrageous growth of government beyond its constitutional bounds, it also doesn’t seem to us that the government is, as some have put it, “stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest.” Questions about procurements and functions? Absolutely. Apocalypse? Not yet.

Government and Politics

News From the Swamp: Government by Perpetual Crisis

The House passed a continuing resolution this week by a vote of 267-151 to fund the federal government for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2013. The bill staves off a potential government shutdown on March 27 and it makes no attempts to reverse the sequestration cuts that went into effect on March 1⁵. It sets the spending level at $982 billion, $61 billion less than last year. The bill also allows the Pentagon a degree of flexibility in how its funds can be spent, in one instance cutting money from research and development to increase operations and maintenance. It extends the federal employee pay freeze currently in effect, which runs counter to Barack Obama’s executive order calling for a 0.5 percent hike.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where Democrats may attempt to change the funding scheme, but are reticent to reverse sequester cuts for fear of risking a government shutdown.

The CR clears the decks for the next major budget fight, yet again increasing the debt ceiling. The House and Senate GOP leadership remains steadfast in their opposition to more tax hikes with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) saying, “The president got $650 billion of higher taxes on the American people on January the 1st. How much more does he want? When is the president going to address the spending side of this?” We all — including Boehner — know the answer to that question already.

Barack Obama has begun a new outreach effort, however, taking several Republican senators to dinner Wednesday to work toward fiscal deals, including a not-too-late sequester replacement. No surprise, it includes [$680 billion in tax increases | http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323494504578340181878017820.html. Of course, he needed a 20-car motorcade to drive six blocks to dinner, so the sequester didn't hurt all that much.

Sequester Politics

In Obama's 'Republican Sequester' 2014 Endgame⁶, Mark Alexander wrote, "Republicans and pundits should hit all the sequester softballs Obama is throwing their way, out of the park!

"For example, Obama's civilian budgeteers at DoD have cancelled all high profile appearances of military precision flying teams at air show events for the remainder of 2013. Fact is, those events are key recruiting tools for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corp, and every hour of flight is a training hour for the pilots.

"In response, Republicans should very publicly demand that Obama cancel all political and recreational junkets on Air Force One, including his upcoming Martha's Vineyard golfing vacation. Each of these vacations and political junkets cost millions of dollars -- a huge and unnecessary expense. Additionally they should demand that all senior administration officials use commercial transportation for official business rather than the large expensive fleet Boeing executive jets. All savings should be reallocated to offset sequester cuts to vital national security operations.

"Air Force One is Obama's biggest political platform, and no news organizations or commentators have associated the military cuts with the wasteful use of AF1."

From the 'Non Compos Mentis' File

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are doing what they usually do -- seeking out imaginary racism in every crack and crevice. Lo and behold, they've found racism lurking in the Republican Sequester⁶.

"Sequestration will impact everyone," said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), "but it will have a particularly harmful effect on communities of color who were hit first and worst by the great recession, and have yet to significantly feel the effects of the recovery. Federal budget cuts under sequestration would quickly mean cuts to federal, state and local public-sector jobs, which disproportionately employ women and African-Americans."

Del. Donna Christensen (D-Virgin Islands) chimed in, saying, "African-Americans are more likely to work in the public sector, where the jobs are going to be cut. We already have the highest unemployment, and will be severely hurt by the reduction in unemployment benefits."

Look no further than the failed socialist policies of Barack Obama and his leftist congressional brethren. When Obama took office in 2009, the unemployment rate for blacks was 12.7 percent. It's now hovering around 14 percent. As for the black teen jobless rate, it's near 40 percent. If black Americans would re-examine their 9:1 voting preference for Democrats, Republicans might actually be able to alleviate this soul-crushing joblessness.

Gun Grabbers on the Move

Four pieces of civilian disarmament legislation made it to the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday. While Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) "assault weapons" ban was included in the final package, it faces tough odds of getting anywhere in Congress. Democrats instead chose a piecemeal approach, the reasons being twofold: It increases the likelihood that something gets passed, and if a major overhaul fails, Republicans will face the backlash when Democrats cry wolf.

One of the bills being considered is a bipartisan proposal "that would for the first time create specific federal prohibitions on gun trafficking and the straw purchasing of firearms," according to the Associated Press. Recall that these were the same tactics used by the ATF in the infamously (and tragically) botched Fast and Furious sting operation. We're glad to see Congress agrees that the feds shouldn't be trafficking firearms to Mexico.

In related news, "States with the most gun control laws have the fewest gun-related deaths," trumpeted the Associated Press this week, citing a study⁷ by Dr. Eric Fleegler of Boston and published in JAMA Internal Medicine. However, Fleegler is an anti-gun activist and used data from the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, one of the most anti-gun organizations in the country. Also, though he considered all 50 states, he excluded the District of Columbia. The Brady Center did their own calculations based on findings in a dozen states and came to the conclusion that -- surprise -- we need more gun control. The inconvenient truth is that the "gun-related deaths" prevented by tougher gun laws are suicides, not homicides. In fact, the homicide rate was slightly higher in the 10 states with the most regulation. DC's rate is nearly four times that of the rest of the country.

The Brady Center wasn't the only leftist group promoted by the press either. USA Today placed a piece on an anti-gun study by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) front-and-center of Tuesday's edition. PIRE's study purports to show that gun violence cost $12 billion annually. Not surprisingly, financial help is given to the institute through a company tied to none other than far-left billionaire investor George Soros.

The New Cabinet: Even Further Left Than Before

Barack Obama announced three new cabinet nominees this week, and each of them is seeking to aid in the president's goal of "fundamentally transforming the United States of America." Gina McCarthy is on tap to run the EPA, and she's fully prepared to continue pushing the president's global warming agenda. McCarthy, currently head of the EPA's air and radiation division, has been behind the agency's draconian carbon emissions policies, which are responsible for bringing the coal industry to its knees. Her fingerprints are on the moratorium on new coal-fired power plants and forcing the shutdown of older plants. When McCarthy rises to the top spot, she will likely go in for the kill, forcing utilities to continue shutting down coal plants in turn for receiving so-called credits that could be sold to other coal plant operators so they can stay in business a little longer. All this amounts to an end run around Congress to install the "cap and tax" plan that died during Obama's first term.

The war on the energy industry will continue on a second front with Obama's nominee for energy secretary, MIT physicist Ernest Moniz. Moniz participated in writing a 2010 report for the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, calling for $16 billion in annual taxpayer funding for renewable energy. It was this mentality that gave us Solyndra and other untested, unreliable and unsatisfactory renewable boondoggles during Obama's first term. Moniz is also a proponent of "energy demand management," a euphemism for the government's arbitrarily setting energy rates to drive customers toward particular energy suppliers and away from "undesirable" sources. And although Moniz has demonstrated support for natural gas in the past, he has recently come around to the radical environmental view on the evils of fracking. Those fears are largely unfounded, of course, but that won't stop the new energy secretary from standing in the way of smart energy policy.

Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the president's nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, is currently the deputy at OMB. Burwell served in the Treasury Department and the White House budget office during the Clinton administration. She also has experience running philanthropic efforts for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walmart Foundation. This hefty resumé may not mean much in the long run though. We're not sure why Obama has need of a budget director when he has no budget to direct.

Economy

Jobs Numbers Are (Mostly) Positive

News of the sequester reached the private sector in February, which embraced the paltry reduction of government growth by creating 236,000 new jobs. The headline unemployment rate fell for the first time to a pre-Obama level of 7.7 percent. Real unemployment, including those who have given up looking for work, also edged lower to 14.3 percent. Other economic news is good as well -- the Dow closed at nominal record highs for three straight days this week, surpassing 14,300 and beating records set in 2007. "On the other hand," as The Wall Street Journal points out⁸, "the Dow would need to rise another 8% or so to reach its previous high in inflation-adjusted terms."

All is not well in the jobs market, either. Another 296,000 Americans left the labor force entirely in February, bringing the participation rate to a 32-year low of 63.5 percent. And if March's numbers decline at all, look for Obama to blame the "Republican Sequester." Overall, the U.S. economy is remarkably resilient, pressing ahead despite four years of crushing economic policy, and now $600 billion in tax hikes.

Income Redistribution: A New Peak

While the argument over who caused the sequester continues to dominate the media, a scarcely noted sidebar is that the bean counters at the Congressional Budget Office are predicting 2013 will be a record year for federal revenue, finally surpassing the pre-recession record of $2.6 trillion set in 2007. All told, in 2013 the federal government is expected to take in $2.7 trillion for the first time. Of course, they will spend more than $3.5 trillion in that same time frame, sequester included.

While federal revenues are finally returning to those before the 2008 financial crisis, there is a growing inequality in taxation -- a disparity that Barack Obama made all the worse by his tax increases on couples earning more than $450,000 a year or single filers who eclipse the $400,000 mark. An Associated Press report⁹ found that wealthy taxpayers are paying a share of the tax burden rarely seen since 1979, the point when the AP chose to begin its research. As expected, those in the lowest quintile of income pay a negative tax burden; in other words, via the "Earned" Income Tax Credit, they're net takers from actual taxpayers.

Yet the fact the government is living large these days doesn't seem to dissuade the NeoComs in Washington from wanting to tax the rich even more as Obama's rhetoric and Senate Democrats' efforts to stop the sequester proved again. Socialists will always run out of other people's money, as Margaret Thatcher famously said, but Washington Democrats seem determined to quicken the pace.

Regulatory Commissars: ObamaCare Exchange Regulations Finalized

While some states are still debating whether to succumb to the siren song of "free" federal money for Medicaid expansion, and while Republicans in the House are shirking their promise to defund ObamaCare, bureaucrats are behind the scenes writing the regulations that will dictate how insurance companies will operate in the brave new world of the so-called Affordable Care Act. Last week, in another trademark Friday afternoon news dump, the White House dropped some 700 pages of new regulations on an unsuspecting public. Three of the four rules dropped by HHS are final rules, while the fourth, concerning the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) slated to start in 2015, is a proposed rule, with comments being accepted for 30 days after publication in the Federal Register.

Nancy Pelosi told us that we had to pass the bill to find out what was in it¹⁰. She was right -- the ACA delegated much of its authority to an unelected cadre of Beltway bureaucrats to write new mandates like these that will only take full effect once insurance exchanges become operational next year. These regulations will "help to ensure every American has access to high-quality, affordable health insurance," claims the Department of Health and Human Services. We may not have access to a doctor, and the insurance may not pay for certain procedures once we're deemed unworthy of treatment -- but at least we'll have access to health insurance.

Around the Nation: State Department Weighs in on Keystone

"We don't need this dirty oil." This preposterous statement was made by California Democrat Henry Waxman regarding the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The 1,700-mile pipeline would bring oil into the U.S. from Canada, a friend and ally. If the U.S. rejects Keystone, the oil will go to China. Still, Waxman and others on the Left claim it will harm the environment. The State Department disagrees. Last Friday, it issued a 2,000-page report outlining the "minimal environmental impact" Keystone would have on fish, water, vegetation, soil and endangered species. State put out a similar report in 2011. Yet neither report received much comment from the Obama administration or coverage from the Leftmedia.

While the Obama administration would never make such an overt comment against Keystone, they have been no more supportive of the venture than Waxman. Obama has been dragging his heels for over three years, despite the fact that Keystone would bring between 700,000 and 830,000 barrels of oil to the U.S. each day as well as create 179,000 much-needed jobs. In the meantime, TransCanada and other equally perplexed Canadians wait for the green light. Eventually, if the delays persist, then Canada will move on to a more willing buyer, exactly as the administration is hoping. Since the Left is so opposed to fossil fuels, someone should get them to share the unicorn dust they use to heat their homes.

Security

Drones and Filibusters

The use of drones to take out terrorists overseas has become the hallmark of Barack Obama's war strategy, but the possible use of drones over U.S. soil may have reached the boiling point this week. During hearings on the subject, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked Attorney General Eric "Fast and Furious" Holder directly: Is it a violation of due process to fire a missile at a guy on American soil if he's not engaged at the moment in carrying out a terrorist attack? The question was prompted by a letter Holder issued Tuesday claiming that drone strikes are legal in the U.S., but that the administration has "no intention" of doing so. Cruz finally got Holder to shift from saying such drone use wouldn't be "appropriate," with all that word implies, to plainly saying that the federal government does not have constitutional authority to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil unless that citizen poses an imminent threat.

The fight continued when, on Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted 12-3 in favor of White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan becoming the next CIA director. The vote came only after the Obama regime agreed to give Congress access to Justice Department memos that lay out Obama's legal reasoning for using drone strikes overseas to kill U.S. citizens accused of working with al-Qa'ida and other terrorists.

On Thursday, Brennan won confirmation from the full Senate, 63-34, despite concerns over his record and his support of the regime's drone policy. But that came only after Wednesday's impressive 13-hour filibuster by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who was determined to force the administration to provide a written answer on drone strikes of American citizens. The filibuster drew eight other senators, including one Democrat, Oregon's Ron Wyden, onto the Senate floor. Paul wryly noted, "Barack Obama, in 2007, would be down here with me arguing against this [drone policy]. It amazes me and disappoints me how much he’s changed.”

Paul eventually got an official answer: “Does the president have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on an American soil?” Holder wrote. “The answer to that question is no.” Still, Sens. Paul and Cruz are working on a bill to spell it all out.

North Korean Saber Rattling

On Thursday the UN Security Council unanimously approved new sanctions against North Korea, following Pyongyang’s detonation of a nuclear weapon in February. The sanctions will primarily target North Korea’s financial dealings, including international money transfers and the supply of luxury goods for the regime. Still, it’s doubtful that new sanctions will sway the minds of a regime that has systematically starved its own people for 60 years, kept its border with South Korea an armed tinderbox, sunk a South Korean warship and launched ballistic missiles over Japan. North Korea didn’t help its own cause by threatening a nuclear attack against the United States just as the UNSC was settling in for the vote on sanctions. They have also now declared an end to the non-aggression pact with South Korea. China holds the trump card in any issue involving North Korea by virtue of their shared border, meaning only China can truly stop money and goods from entering or leaving. And even the Chinese appear to have run out of patience with the lunatics next door.

Elsewhere along the Axis of Evil, Secretary of State John Kerry demonstrated his deep mastery of the obvious on Tuesday when he acknowledged Iran has moved closer to achieving nuclear capability over the past year. Excuse us if we don’t act surprised¹¹. After the Europeans tried to reason with Iran from 2003-2005, and after the UNSC tried from 2005-2008, and after Barack Obama himself tried since taking office in 2009, suddenly he recognizes the threat and really means to do something about it. Joe Biden assured the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee on Monday that the president “is not bluffing” and “all options, including military force, are on the table.” This claim might be more reassuring if given by a man known for something other than comic relief.

On a related note, two Iranian warships entered the Chinese port of Zhanjiang this week for a goodwill visit, a remarkable voyage of nearly 5,000 miles for a navy whose ships all predate the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Readers will recall the December visit by two Russian warships to Iran’s main naval base at Bandar Abbas. This latest visit sends the same signal of friendship as that expressed by the Russian Navy. Considering Chinese and Russian veto power at the UNSC, these goodwill visits don’t bode well for the White House’s attempt to sway Iran’s behavior.

Hugo Chavez Is Dead

Venezuelan socialist thug-dictator Hugo Chavez died Tuesday after a two-year bout with cancer, leaving a degree of political uncertainty in the South American nation. There is poetic justice in noting that Chavez died the same day as Joseph Stalin 60 years earlier. Vice President Nicolas Maduro, who accused the U.S. of poisoning Chavez with cancer, will now take the helm until elections are held within 30 days.

Chavez was a former tank commander who first tried to take power through a coup in 1992. After serving prison time for the attempt, he ran for election in 1998 and held power through political intimidation and punishment, as well as skillfully exploiting Venezuela’s oil reserves and churning up anti-American passions by posing as David against Goliath. He was hardly the man of “democracy” that Useful Idiots of the Left claim him to be¹², and Jimmy Carter had far nicer things to say of Chavez than he ever dreamed of saying when Ronald Reagan died in 2004. We’d link to Carter’s fawning statement on his website but were alerted to malware on the page. How appropriate.

Chavez claimed to fight for the poor, and that endeared him to Hollywood leftists such as Sean Penn and Oliver Stone, and deluded Democrats such as former Rep. Joseph Kennedy. Yet as with all socialists who secure power, he used it primarily for his own gain. His family fortune is estimated to be about $2 billion. Man of the people, indeed.

On a final note, Chavez once took the podium at the UN after George W. Bush and smugly declared, “The devil came here yesterday, and it smells of sulfur still.” Yet Chavez, who claimed to be Christian, reportedly uttered the last words, “I don’t want to die. Please don’t let me die.” Perhaps he knew he was, in fact, about to smell sulfur again.

What Sequester?

The dreaded sequester has the federal government cutting everything from employee hours to White House tours. But some things are important enough that money for them can be found. The Obama administration awarded $37 million in foreign aid to Pakistan this week, despite a disturbing anti-American trend in that nation. On Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that Egypt would be receiving another $250 million in foreign aid, with that much again to follow in the near future. The world’s largest Arab nation is now under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood, which at best is unsympathetic to U.S. interests in the region, if not (yet) outright hostile. It’s not likely that our money will win us friends and influence terrorists.

In related news, 100,000 Christians have fled Egypt since the Brotherhood’s takeover.

Speaking of Egypt, John Kerry and Michelle Obama were set to personally award the International Women of Courage Award to Samira Ibrahim of Egypt until it was discovered that she celebrated 9/11 and the death of Jews. The award has now been postponed.

Culture

Village Academic Curriculum: Battling Insanity

On the “education” lunacy front, a 16-year old Florida high schooler was suspended last week¹³ due to an “incident” with a weapon. His involvement? He wrestled a loaded gun away from a would-be shooter aiming it at another student. The school called it an “emergency suspension.” According to a school spokesman, “If there is a potentially dangerous situation, Florida law allows the principal to suspend a student immediately pending a hearing.” Apparently, the school administrators don’t have enough sense to distinguish between a potentially dangerous situation and ending a potentially dangerous situation.

Meanwhile, a seven-year-old Maryland second-grader was slapped with a two-day suspension¹⁴ for allegedly biting his breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun. Actually, the boy wanted to form a mountain but misfired, er, mis-chewed. School officials deemed the boy’s breakfast to be loaded and dangerous, and thereby suspended him. Ludicrously, they then even offered counseling for other students troubled by the incident. (Of course, guilt by angular association means a number of things are taboo¹⁵.)

With the insane running the educational asylum, it’s no wonder school choice is gaining ground. Last week, Alabama became the 22nd state¹⁶ (plus Washington, DC) to offer school choice, either via vouchers, tax credits, scholarships, or education savings accounts. The move by the state legislature marked Alabama’s first foray into private-school choice. Unfortunately, Circuit Judge Charles Price blocked the governor from signing the bill until hearings are held later this month.

And Last…

Some things in this world are stranger than fiction. Such was the case in a story from Independence, Oregon, where a 19-year-old on his way to visit family decided to stop for a rest — and burglarize a farm. He stole several things, which he hid behind a barn before fleeing on foot. He then stole a pickup, also on the farm, returned to the house, and loaded up his spoils. Before leaving, he added a shotgun and an AR-15 to his take. While he drove across a field to make his escape, however, he hit a bump, causing a part of the shotgun caught in the trigger area of the AR-15 to shift and depress the trigger. The AR fired once, striking and killing the burglar. Early reports are that the shotgun had indeed failed a background check. Either way, someone should alert Joe Biden. Despite his sage advice, when this shotgun needed to defend itself, it went for the AR-15.

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

---

Links

1. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/342161/great-ammunition-myth-charles-c-w-cooke
2. http://reason.com/blog/2011/06/08/dept-of-education-swat-team-up
3. http://www.businessinsider.com/homeland-security-serving-warrants-mrap-2013-3
4. http://patriotpost.us/alexander/3101
5. http://patriotpost.us/editions/17008
6. http://patriotpost.us/alexander/17100
7. http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1661390
8. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323494504578342631491032660.html
9. http://www.boston.com/business/personal-finance/2013/03/03/tax-bills-for-rich-families-approach-year-high/tPcmllN0iKPUSpp53v8WcI/story.html
10. http://patriotpost.us/perspective/5246
11. http://patriotpost.us/editions/2478
12. http://patriotpost.us/editions/17080
13. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/02/high-school-student-disarms-gunman-gets-suspended/
14. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/342106/gun-shaped-pastry-leads-school-suspension-7-year-old-andrew-johnson
15. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=145971215570285&set=a.120487688118638.24692.120036531497087&type=1&theater
16. http://blog.heritage.org/2013/03/02/alabama-passes-historic-school-choice-plan/

WHY THE “BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT” IS A HOAX AND A DEADLY TRAP

WHY THE “BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT” IS A HOAX AND A DEADLY TRAP

 

By Publius Huldah
March 2, 2013
NewsWithViews.com

You can not responsibly support a proposed Amendment to Our Constitution unless you have read and understand the proposal and how it would change our Constitution. You must look behind the nice sounding name! Will the Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) really ”reign in” the federal government? Will it really ”show them” that they have to balance their budget the same as we do?

Or does it actually legalize spending which is now unconstitutional? Is itactually a massive grant of new constitutional powers to the President and the federal courts – a grant which will cut the Heart out of The Constitution our Framers gave us?

Amending the Constitution is serious business – and you are morally bound to get informed before you jump on The Amendment Bandwagon.

So, lay aside your giddy joy at the fact that all 47 U.S. Senate Republicans are co-sponsoring the Balanced Budget Amendment, Senate Joint Resolution 10 (March 31, 2011). Let’s go through it. What you believe the BBA will do, and what it will actually do, are two very different things indeed.

But First: How Did We Get a National Debt of $14.4 Trillion?

Congress gave us a debt of $14.4 trillion which increases at the rate of $4 billion a day. Let us look at a few of the items which comprise this $14.4 trillion debt: Congress spent $2.6 million to teach Chinese prostitutes how to drink responsibly. Congress appropriates $147 million a year to subsidize Brazilian cotton farmers. Congress spent $3.6 million to fund a study of thesex lives of dope-smoking, menstruating monkeys. Congress paid $500,000to paint a salmon on an Alaska Airlines passenger jet. Congress appropriates$6.9 billion a year for the National Science Foundation where they fund such research as that which revealed the amazing fact that sick shrimp do not perform as well on stamina tests as do healthy shrimp.[1] Citizens Against Government Waste’s pig book shows Congress spent $16,547,558,748. on pork projects last year. In Sen. Tom Coburn’s Waste Book 2010, which lists 100 spending projects, he shows that $1.5 million was spent to spruce up apartments in Shreveport, La. before they were torn down.

All this spending – every penny of it – and trillions more which is not here listed – has one thing in common: It is all unconstitutional as outside the scope of the powers delegated to Congress in the Constitution. Congress has no constitutional authority to spend money on these projects. So! It was Congress’ unconstitutional spending which put us in the mess we are in today.

What Does Our Constitution Permit Congress To Spend Money On?

WE THE PEOPLE ordained and established a Constitution wherein the powers WE delegated to the federal government are limited and defined – “enumerated”. Read the list at Art. I, Sec. 8! Basically, all WE gave Congress authority to do for the Country at large is international relations, commerce & war; and domestically, the creation of an uniform commercial system (weights & measures, patents & copyrights, a money system based on gold & silver, bankruptcy laws, mail delivery & road building.) Some Amendments authorize Congress to make laws protecting civil rights. That’s about it, Folks! The list of objects on which Congress may lawfully appropriate funds is short. The only significant authorized expense is the military. James Madison, Father of the U.S. Constitution, said in Federalist No. 45 (9th para):

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” [boldface added]

Note that Madison contemplated that the federal government would be financed in large part by taxation on foreign commerce. That is because the constitutional powers of the federal government are so limited & defined! The States and the People are to handle everything else.

Do you now see that Our Constitution does not authorize Congress to pay for a museum for neon signs ($5.2 million), to archive memorabilia for a rock group ($615,000), or to post poems in zoos ($997,766.)? [See Sen. Coburn's Waste Book 2010]. Congress has no lawful authority to do most of what they do. They just do it because they want to, they have been doing it for a long time, and WE haven’t known enough to stop them. Our $14.4 trillion debt was caused by Congress’ spending in thousands of areas where they have no constitutional authority to spend.

Is the BBA Really the Solution?

So! These 47 Senate Republicans (and some in the House) are showing you how much they now “care” about fiscal responsibility by supporting the BBA.But think: Why don’t they control their spending now? The Republicans control the House - NO spending can get through the House unless the Republicans approve it. So if the Republicans really wanted to control spending and balance the budget, they could do it now. Why don’t they do it? Because they don’t want to.

Furthermore, the BBA they support with such broad smiles and glib promises of future fiscal responsibility, doesn’t make them control their spending. Instead, it would legalize spending which is now unlawfuland would markedly increase the powers of the federal government. And it would do nothing to reduce spending. In short, the BBA is a Scam and a Terrible Trick.

What Would We Get From the BBA ?

In plain English, this is what the 10 Sections of the BBA mean [but read it yourself - it's very short]:

Section 1: They won’t spend more than they take in unless they vote to spend more than they take in.

Section 2: They won’t spend more than 18% of the GDP unless they vote to spend more than 18% of the GDP.

Section 3: The President will write the budget: He will designate the taxes, and what the money will be spent on. He won’t spend more than he decides to tax you for, and he won’t spend more than 18% of the GDP. The GDP is a computation made by the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the Department of Commerce, an agency under the control of the President. [Do you see? The President controls the agency which computes the number which limits his spending.]

Section 4: Congress won’t make a law raising your taxes unless they vote to raise your taxes.

Section 5: Congress won’t raise the debt limit unless they vote to raise the debt limit.

Sections 6 & 7: Congress can waive the above provisions of the BBA (except for Sec. 4 which says they can’t raise your taxes unless they vote to raise your taxes) when there is a declared war or a “military conflict” which they think justifies their waiving the above provisions of the BBA.

Section 8: Courts can’t order your taxes to be raised. [But you can bet your life that this section, together with section 3, will be seen to authorize the President to order that your taxes be raised.]

Section 9: I leave this to others to explain. But be assured the President’s minions will define stuff however he wants; make stuff “off-budget” or “on-budget” to fit his agenda.

Section 10: Congress can make laws to enforce the BBA, and can rely on numbers provided by the President who is to be given constitutional authority to order tax increases & decide how to spend the money.

So! Do you see? You get no benefit from the BBA. But it will cause us irreparable harm.

How Would the BBA Cut the Heart Out of Our Constitution?

1. It would Transform Our Constitution From One of Enumerated Spending Powers To One of General (“Unlimited”) Spending Powers.

Congress’ Powers are Enumerated. Thus, the objects on which Congress may lawfully appropriate funds are limited to those listed in the Constitution. Congress has ignored the limitations on its powers for many decades – but at least the limitations are still in the Constitution, to be invoked if We The People ever repent.[2]

But the BBA, by ignoring the unconstitutional objects of Congress’ spending, and by merely limiting the amount of such spending to 18% of the GDP & the taxes the President assesses, repeals the enumerated powers aspect of our Constitution. Furthermore, if Congress limited its appropriations to its enumerated powers, they could not possibly spend a sum as vast as 18% of the GDP. Thus, the BBA is clear intention to repeal the enumerated powers, and transform the federal government into one of general and unlimited powers.

Congress’ idiotic spending is now unlawful & unconstitutional. But with the BBA, it would become lawful & constitutional, as long as the total spending doesn’t exceed the limits (unless they waive the limits). With the BBA, it will become lawful for them to appropriate funds for whatever the President (who will write the budget) says![3]

2. The BBA Transfers Control of the “Purse” from Congress to the President.

The federal government didn’t even have a budget until Congress passed theBudget and Accounting Act of 1921. That “law” purported to grant budget making power (taxes & appropriations) to the President.

But the Budget Act of 1921 is unconstitutional: The Constitution places the taxing & appropriations powers squarely in the hands of Congress - not the Executive Branch; and contrary to the beliefs of indoctrinated lawyers, Congress may not “amend” the Constitution by making a law.[4]

Article I, Sec. 8, cl. 1, grants to Congress the Power to lay and collect Taxes; and Art. I, Sec. 9, next to last clause, grants to Congress the Power to make the appropriations:

“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.”

Accordingly, for most of our history, Congress made appropriations as the need arose; determined the taxes, and kept records of both. [See Bruce Bartlett's excellent history of the appropriations process.]

Our Framers gave us an elegant system of separated powers, whereCongress commands the purse - not the Executive Branch and not the Judicial Branch! In Federalist No. 78 (6th para), Alexander Hamilton outlines this separation of powers:

“…The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules … The judiciary … has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society…”[5]

In Federalist No. 58 (4th para from end) Madison explains why the House alone is granted power to propose taxes (Art. I, Sec. 7, cl. 1): To protectThe People from overreaching by the other branches of the federal government:

“…The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose, the supplies requisite for the support of government. They, in a word, hold the pursethat powerful instrument by which we behold, in the history of the British Constitution, an infant and humble representation of the people gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing … all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government. This power over the purse may … be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance…”

Ponder Hamilton’s and Madison’s words. You must understand what they are saying if we are to restore our Constitutional Republic. Otherwise, the BBA will usher in a totalitarian dictatorship.

Pursuant to the unconstitutional Budget Act of 1921, the President has been preparing the budget. Since the Budget Act is unconstitutional, the President’s preparation of the budget has been likewise unconstitutional. Section 3 of the BBA would legalize what is now unconstitutional and unlawful.

But Section 3 of the BBA does more than merely legalize the unlawful. It actually transfers the constitutional power to make the appropriations and to determine taxes to the President. Congress will become a rubber stamp.

Now look at this pretty little snare: Section 8 of the proposed BBA says:

“No court of the United States or of any State shall order any increase in revenue to enforce this article.” [emphasis added]

Our Constitution does not grant to courts any power to “order” tax increases. So why does Sec. 8 of the BBA say they can’t do it?

It’s a trap! There is an ancient maxim of legal construction which goes like this: “The Expression of One Thing is the Exclusion of Another“:

“An implied exclusion argument lies whenever there is reason to believe that if the legislature had meant to include a particular thing within the ambit of its legislation, it would have referred to that thing expressly. Because of this expectation, the legislature’s failure to mention the thing becomes grounds for inferring that it was deliberately excluded. Although there is no express exclusion, exclusion is implied. …” [emphasis added]

Why does Sec. 8 of the BBA exclude the President? From this exclusion, one may reasonably infer that the intent of Sec. 8 is to permit the President to order tax increases. If the BBA is ratified, you can be sure that Presidents will claim power under Sec. 8 of the BBA to order tax increases. That inference is strengthened by the fact that Sec. 3 of the BBA transfers constitutional power over the Budget to the President.

So! The BBA surrenders the purse to the President! Our Framers understood the danger of having the sword & the purse held by one person. That is why our Constitution provides for Congress to make the decisions on taxes & appropriations; and, as pointed out in Federalist No. 72(1st para), the President is to apply and disburse “the public moneys in conformity to the general appropriations of the legislature.”

With the BBA, Congress’ sole remaining constitutional function over taxing & spending will be to rubberstamp the dictates of the President.

3. The BBA grants judicial power over taxing & spending to the federal courts.

Article III, Sec. 2, cl. 1 states: “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases…arising under this Constitution.”

If the BBA is ratified, it will become an Amendment to the Constitution which is subject to the judicial authority of the federal courts.

You say the BBA won’t transfer power over the purse to the President? You say Congress won’t become a mere rubberstamp whose sole remaining function over taxing & appropriations is to enact into law the dictates of the President?

Who will decide? Since this would be an issue “arising under the Constitution,” the supreme Court will decide. The Judicial Branch – a branch which Hamilton took care to point out should have no power whatsoever over The Purse.

And so five (5) people on the supreme Court will decide an issue which goes to the heart of our Constitution – an issue which the People clamoring for the BBA don’t even know exists. And remember: Our supreme Court is filled with fallen people who looked at Sec. 1 of the 14th Amendment and said it means that women may kill their babies. They looked at the 1st Amendment and said it means that Congress may regulate political speech, and courts may ban Christian speech in the public square, but it gives Westboro “baptists” a “right” to spew their filth & hate at private funerals of dead American heroes.

If the BBA is ratified, do you really want five (5) of those judges deciding this issue?[6]

What is the Solution to The Financial Plight Congress has put us in?

We have 47 Republican U.S. Senators who don’t understand [or do they?] the ramifications of the BBA which some of them (most notably Senators Jim De Mint & Mike Lee) are determined to cram down our throats. Many supposedly conservative talk show hosts & pundits (most notablyRedstate.com) are carrying their water. Whether these people are fools or tyrants, I do not know. But you must learn that you can not trust anybody. You must insist that people prove what they say!

Oh my People! The grinning politicians who promise you “fiscal responsibility” with their BBA will actually strip you of the protections of Our Constitution. Their BBA will legalize a totalitarian dictatorship. Do not be deceived by them – they are leading you astray, and their BBA will destroy us.WE THE PEOPLE must reclaim our glorious Heritage. We must find & support candidates who understand the Constitution, obey it, and agree to work to dismantle the unconstitutional federal apparatus. We can eliminate the trillions of dollars of unconstitutional spending by restoring constitutional government. In an orderly fashion, we can dismantle the multitude of offices and agencies and departments of the last 100 years which harass us and eat out our sustenance.

Oh you Proponents of this thoroughly Evil Scheme: I throw my glove in your face: Show me, if you can, where I am wrong. Or rethink it.

Click here to visit NewsWithViews.com home page.

Footnotes:

1. Our Constitution does not authorize Congress to fund scientific research. Congress’ only power in the areas of the arts and sciences is to issue patents and copyrights (Art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 8). If Congress obeyed Our Constitution and stopped funding “scientific” research, the proponents of these idiotic studies would have to do something useful instead of sucking at the taxpayers’ teat.
2. We must repent of our desire to live at other peoples’ expense. This is the contradiction which undermines the Tea Party. Many don’t want a constitutional government of limited & enumerated powers. They just want to eliminate funding for programs they don’t like. They want their social security, their Medicare, their government retirement pensions, their perks. I beg each of you who is now living at other peoples’ expense: Are you willing to sacrifice your grandchildren so that you can keep your handouts? Or will you accept an orderly & gradual dismantlement of the unconstitutional “entitlement” programs?
3. Are you aware that federal executive agencies are forming their own SWAT teams? Are you aware that DHS is federalizing our local police and using their fusion centers to turn them into a national secret police – America’s version of the STAZI? Building Obama’s “civilian national security force” which is “just as powerful just as strong just as well funded as the military” takes money. Lots of it! The BBA will permit the President to write into the Budget the funding needed to build this armed force; and it will be under his sole & personal control.
4. Article V sets forth the exclusive methods of amending The Constitution.
5. In Federalist No. 26, Hamilton addresses how Congress is to determine (after public deliberations) the appropriations for the military; and warns that the President must never be given power over the purse respecting armed forces:

“The legislature of the United States will be OBLIGED, by this provision [Art. I, Sec. 8, cl. 12], once at least in every two years, to deliberate upon the propriety of keeping a military force on foot; to come to a new resolution on the point; and to declare their sense of the matter, by a formal vote in the face of their constituents. They are not AT LIBERTY to vest in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence….” (9th para) [capitals are Hamilton's; boldface mine]

“It has been said that the provision which limits the appropriation of money for the support of an army to the period of two years would be unavailing, because the Executive, when once possessed of a force large enough to awe the people into submission, would find resources in that very force sufficient to enable him to dispense with supplies from the acts of the legislature….” (12th para)

Do you see that Hamilton warned us not to trust the President with power to determine the funding for the armed forces? Learn from Hamilton & Madison. Or perish.

6. If the President disagrees with the supreme Court’s decision, he – who would, thanks to the BBA, hold both the sword & the purse – could ignore it with impunity.

© 2013 Publius Huldah – All Rights Reserved

Publius Huldah is a retired attorney who now lives in Tennessee. Before getting a law degree, she got a degree in philosophy where she specialized in political philosophy and epistemology (theories of knowledge). She now writes extensively on the U.S. Constitution, using the Federalist Papers to prove its original meaning and intent. She also shows how federal judges and politicians have ignored Our Constitution and replaced it with their personal opinions and beliefs.h

E-Mail: publiushuldah@gmail.com

Llisten to the spoken word-called sustain!

CPAC Turns Away Pamela Geller

Posted on March 3, 2013 by creeping

And essentially they are turning their backs on the entire counter-jihad movement. Khan, Norquist, CAIR, ISNA and all the other Brotherhood entities are giddy that there will be no discussion on the Muslim Brotherhood’s rapid expansion. via Breitbart:CPAC Turns Away Pamela Geller.

For the last four years, Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com and the American Freedom Defense Initiative have held events at CPAC featuring guests she invites to discuss the influence of Islamism on America. But this year, the American Conservative Union (ACU) has no room for Geller or her message.

In 2009, she brought Geert Wilders, who is the head of the third largest party in the Netherlands and has spoken out against the Islamization of his country.

In 2010 she held an event that her organization, The American Freedom Defense Initiative, hosted, titled “Jihad: The Political Third Rail”, with speakers like Allen West, Wafa Sultan, Simon Deng, Anders Gravers, and Steve Coughlin.

In 2011, she hosted an event discussing the Ground Zero Mosque with 9/11 families. In 2012, the event was titled “Islamic Law in America.”

In years past, the events were standing room only thanks to their popularity, but that apparently was not enough to counter pressure brought to bear from somewhere to exclude Geller’s message.

Geller and her coworkers recently won a court battle allowing them to post ads that countered the #Myjihad ad campaign that posited that jihad was a peaceful word. Yet despite the law’s defense of her rights, the ACU will not stand up for her against critics.

New ads up. Geller comments on her Atlas Shrugs website:

I won’t be at CPAC this year. Every year AFDI organizes a must-see event, addressing issues that the Grover Norquist/Suhail Khan cabal refuse to address (jihad, sharia, the war on freedom in the West).

This year, I applied to speak and was ignored. I tried to get a room for an AFDI event, “The War on Free Speech,” and was ignored. So, for the first time in five years, I won’t be at CPAC. Last year Suhail Khan bragged out loud that he (and his other operatives) had successfully kept Robert Spencer and me from being invited to speak. He went so far as to warn people not to attend our events or read our books.

In several articles I took on Grover Norquist and his powerful influence over CPAC, most notably here and here. As soon as I published my Newsmax column concerning his perfidious influence at CPAC, my Newsmax column was taken down and my name and picture were removed from the Newsmax page….. it was two slots away from Grover’s. My weekly column never appeared at Newsmax again. It was axed.

Now this. I might add, every AFDI event at CPAC was standing room only. We turned people away every year.

Spencer comments on his Jihad Watch website: 

After staging a succession of standing-room-only events at CPAC the last few years, dealing with issues that Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan preferred to obfuscate, Norquist and Khan have won, at least for now: Pamela Geller and I won’t be hosting a presentation at CPAC this year, and it will feature no serious discussion of the central issue of our age.

That makes this victory all the sweeter. I will be at CPAC, even though I will not be cohosting an event, and will give Suhail Khan a friendly greeting.

Barely any discussion at all in fact according to CPAC’s agenda there’s only one discussion and it’s on Iran and a screening of a Newt Gingrich film that is not an official CPAC event.

Muslims Suhail Khan and Grover Norquist are moderating numerous events.

 

Chavez: Holding the President’s Men Accountable

By Linda Chavez March 2, 2013 6:27 am

en one of Washington’s most distinguished journalists — Bob Woodward — accuses the White House of rewriting history, even liberals should take note. And when the White House responds by threatening him, you would think the story would become a national scandal. What makes the story even more important is that it deals with an issue that has dominated the news in recent weeks: the Draconian budget cuts that will take effect on March 1 unless a last-minute deal is reached in Congress.

Woodward has accused the White House of misrepresenting the president’s role in creating the plan to cut $1.2 trillion from the budget over the next decade. In his book “The Price of Politics,” Woodward describes in detail how the idea for the sequester came about. Writing in The Washington Post on Feb. 22, Woodward said that “the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of (then Office of Management and Budget Director Jack) Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.” Woodward not only names the individuals involved, but also gives exact timelines for when the discussions took place and how the final agreement came about.

Woodward’s complaint is not only that the White House is trying to place sole responsibility for coming up with the idea of the automatic cuts on Republicans, but also that it has now demanded that Republicans accept tax increases as a part of any deal, which was explicitly rejected when the deal was cut. “So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts. His call for a balanced approach is reasonable, and he makes a strong case that those in the top income brackets could and should pay more. But that was not the deal he made,” he says.

Careful reporter that he is, Woodward phoned Gene Sperling, chief economic adviser to the president, before the article was to be published to get his version of events. But the phone call didn’t go well, according to Woodward. Sperling reportedly yelled at him for most of the conversation and then followed up with an email apologizing for raising his voice but also doing something far worse. The email, reprinted in Politico this week, shows Sperling threatening Woodward.

“I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying … that Potus (president of the United States) asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim.”

Such ominous remarks coming from the president’s economic adviser are meant to intimidate. Reporters — even one as famous as Woodward — need access to pursue stories. And if a top White House official lets it be known that a reporter is persona non grata in the White House, the message goes out to others not to talk.

Worse, it is an example of this White House’s imperious style — one that hearkens back to another presidency with which Bob Woodward is all too familiar.

Woodward became a national figure as a young man reporting on the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation. Woodward’s bestselling book, “All the President’s Men,” is a chilling account of what happens when the people surrounding the president decide that protecting their boss is more important than upholding the oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution, which each of them takes.

In the case of the Nixon White House, the corruption emanated from the Oval Office. Woodward is not accusing President Obama of directing his men (and they are mostly men) to try to squelch legitimate journalistic inquiry — but if the president is not at fault, he has an obligation to clear the record. And Obama is doing just the opposite.

In the days leading up to the automatic cuts, the president has been out campaigning against Republicans, laying on their shoulders full blame for failing to reach a deal. But it is the president who has rewritten the terms of the agreement reached in 2011.

Sperling’s threat against a senior journalist was not made in a vacuum: It is an attempt to cover up the president’s own dissembling. The only cure is for the president to admit his misstatements and hold accountable those who would flaunt their power to keep the truth from emerging.

—

Linda Chavez is the author of “An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal.” To find out more about Linda Chavez, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at http://www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM

 

Conservative Justices Voice Skepticism on Voting Law

 

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February 27, 2013

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By ADAM LIPTAK

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WASHINGTON — A central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 may be in peril, judging from tough questioning on Wednesday from the Supreme Court’s more conservative members.

Justice Antonin Scalia called the provision, which requires nine states, mostly in the South, to get federal permission before changing voting procedures, a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked a skeptical question about whether people in the South are more racist than those in the North. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy asked how much longer Alabama must live “under the trusteeship of the United States government.”

The court’s more liberal members, citing data and history, said Congress remained entitled to make the judgment that the provision was still needed in the covered jurisdictions.

“It’s an old disease,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer said of efforts to thwart minority voting. “It’s gotten a lot better. A lot better. But it’s still there.”

Four of the nine-member court’s five more conservative members asked largely skeptical questions about the law. The fifth, Justice Clarence Thomas, did not ask a question, as is typical.

The law, a landmark achievement of the civil rights era was challenged by Shelby County, Ala., which said that the requirement had outlived its usefulness and that it imposed an unwarranted badge of shame on the affected jurisdictions.

The county’s lawyer, Bert W. Rein, said that the “problem to which the Voting Rights Act was addressed is solved.”

In reauthorizing the provision for 25 years in 2006, Congress did nothing to change the criteria for inclusion under the provision, relying instead on a formula based on historic practices and voting data from elections held decades ago. Much of the argument concerned that coverage formula.

Should the court strike down the coverage formula, Congress would be free to take a fresh look at what jurisdictions should be covered. But making distinctions among the states based on new criteria may not be politically feasible.

Four years ago, the court signaled that the law may need revision to withstand constitutional scrutiny, hinting that Congress might want to take a fresh look at the places subject to the preclearance provision, called Section 5. Congress failed to act.

Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. said Congress had made a considered and cautious decision in extending the act.

Debo P. Adegbile, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said that “our right to vote is what the United States Constitution is about.”

Section 5, originally set to expire five years after the law was enacted, was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1966 as a rational response to the often flagrantly lawless conduct of some Southern officials then.

Congress repeatedly extended the requirement: for 5 years in 1970, 7 years in 1975, and 25 years in 1982. Congress renewed the act in 2006 after holding extensive hearings on the persistence of racial discrimination at the polls, again extending the preclearance requirement for 25 years.

But it made no changes to the list of jurisdictions covered by Section 5, relying instead on a formula based on historical practices and voting data from elections held decades ago. It applies to nine states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — and to scores of counties and municipalities in other states.

Last May, a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the law. Judge David S. Tatel, writing for the majority, acknowledged that “the extraordinary federalism costs imposed by Section 5 raise substantial constitutional concerns,” and he added that the record compiled by Congress to justify the law’s renewal was “by no means unambiguous.”

“But Congress drew reasonable conclusions from the extensive evidence it gathered,” he went on. The constitutional amendments ratified after the Civil War, he said, “entrust Congress with ensuring that the right to vote — surely among the most important guarantees of political liberty in the Constitution — is not abridged on account of race.”

“In this context,” he wrote, “we owe much deference to the considered judgment of the people’s elected representatives.”

The dissenting member of the panel, Judge Stephen F. Williams, surveyed recent evidence concerning registration and turnout, the election of black officials, the use of federal election observers and suits under another part of the law. Some of that evidence, he said, “suggests that the coverage formula completely lacks any rational connection to current levels of voter discrimination,” while other evidence indicates that the formula, “though not completely perverse, is a remarkably bad fit with Congress’s concerns.”

“Given the drastic remedy imposed on covered jurisdictions by Section 5,” he wrote, “I do not believe that such equivocal evidence can sustain the scheme.”

The Supreme Court last considered the constitutionality of the 2006 extension of the law in a 2009 decision, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder. But it avoided answering the central question and ruled instead on a narrow statutory ground, saying the utility district in Austin, Texas, that had challenged the constitutionality of the law might be eligible to “bail out” from being covered by it. Still, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, was skeptical about the continued need for Section 5.

“The historic accomplishments of the Voting Rights Act are undeniable,” he wrote. But “things have changed in the South.”

He said: “Voter turnout and registration rates now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.”

“The statute’s coverage formula is based on data that is now more than 35 years old,” he added, “and there is considerable evidence that it fails to account for current political conditions.”

But the chief justice said the court should avoid deciding hard constitutional questions when it could. “Whether conditions continue to justify such legislation is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today,” he wrote.

Wednesday’s argument in Shelby County v. Holder, No. 12-96, indicated that the justices are now prepared to provide an answer to the question they left open four years ago.

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CPAC is not a Republican convention.

Obama’s sequester deal-changer

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By Bob Woodward, Published: February 22

Bob Woodward (woodwardb@washpost.com) is an associate editor of The Post. His latest book is “The Price of Politics.” Evelyn M. Duffy contributed to this column.

Misunderstanding, misstatements and all the classic contortions of partisan message management surround the sequester, the term for the $85 billion in ugly and largely irrational federal spending cuts set by law to begin Friday.

What is the non-budget wonk to make of this? Who is responsible? What really happened?

The finger-pointing began during the third presidential debate last fall, on Oct. 22, when President Obama blamed Congress. “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” Obama said. “It is something that Congress has proposed.”

The White House chief of staff at the time, Jack Lew, who had been budget director during the negotiations that set up the sequester in 2011, backed up the president two days later.

“There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congress for there to be some automatic trigger,” Lew said while campaigning in Florida. It “was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure.”

The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book “The Price of Politics” shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.

Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.

Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. Nabors has said, “We didn’t actually think it would be that hard to convince them” — Reid and the Republicans — to adopt the sequester. “It really was the only thing we had. There was not a lot of other options left on the table.”

A majority of Republicans did vote for the Budget Control Act that summer, which included the sequester. Key Republican staffers said they didn’t even initially know what a sequester was — because the concept stemmed from the budget wars of the 1980s, when they were not in government.

At the Feb. 13 Senate Finance Committee hearing on Lew’s nomination to become Treasury secretary, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) asked Lew about the account in my book: “Woodward credits you with originating the plan for sequestration. Was he right or wrong?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Lew responded, “and even in his account, it was a little more complicated than that. We were in a negotiation where the failure would have meant the default of the government of the United States.”

“Did you make the suggestion?” Burr asked.

“Well, what I did was said that with all other options closed, we needed to look for an option where we could agree on how to resolve our differences. And we went back to the 1984 plan that Senator [Phil] Gramm and Senator [Warren] Rudman worked on and said that that would be a basis for having a consequence that would be so unacceptable to everyone that we would be able to get action.”

In other words, yes.

But then Burr asked about the president’s statement during the presidential debate, that the Republicans originated it.

Lew, being a good lawyer and a loyal presidential adviser, then shifted to denial mode: “Senator, the demand for an enforcement mechanism was not something that the administration was pushing at that moment.”

That statement was not accurate.

On Tuesday, Obama appeared at the White House with a group of police officers and firefighters to denounce the sequester as a “meat-cleaver approach” that would jeopardize military readiness and investments in education, energy and readiness. He also said it would cost jobs. But, the president said, the substitute would have to include new revenue through tax reform.

At noon that same day, White House press secretary Jay Carney shifted position and accepted sequester paternity.

“The sequester was something that was discussed,” Carney said. Walking back the earlier statements, he added carefully, “and as has been reported, it was an idea that the White House put forward.”

This was an acknowledgment that the president and Lew had been wrong.

Why does this matter?

First, months of White House dissembling further eroded any semblance of trust between Obama and congressional Republicans. (The Republicans are by no means blameless and have had their own episodes of denial and bald-faced message management.)

Second, Lew testified during his confirmation hearing that the Republicans would not go along with new revenue in the portion of the deficit-reduction plan that became the sequester. Reinforcing Lew’s point, a senior White House official said Friday, “The sequester was an option we were forced to take because the Republicans would not do tax increases.”

In fact, the final deal reached between Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2011 included an agreement that there would be no tax increases in the sequester in exchange for what the president was insisting on: an agreement that the nation’s debt ceiling would be increased for 18 months, so Obama would not have to go through another such negotiation in 2012, when he was running for reelection.

So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts. His call for a balanced approach is reasonable, and he makes a strong case that those in the top income brackets could and should pay more. But that was not the deal he made.

Read more from PostOpinions: Bob Woodward: Time for our leaders to delegate on the budget Robert J. Samuelson: The lowdown on Lew Jennifer Rubin: Jack Lew’s truth problem Eugene Robinson: The sequester madness

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