OBAMA MAKES POLYGAMY A 21st CENTURY ISSUE

Czars, czars, and more czars. Much has been written and reported about the radical left appointees in this administration, and it keeps getting more horrific. What planet are these White House people from anyway? You have to wonder if we will ever be able to recover from this administration, but the tide seems to be turning, so let's keep up the watch, Watchdogs.

The supreme authority on marriage, family and feminism, the lovely and inspiring Phyllis Schlafly of EagleForum writes about another czar:


Obama Makes Polygamy a 21st Century Issue
by Phyllis Schlafly, November 6, 2009

No sooner had we celebrated the exit of Barack Obama's Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, because of his Communist connections, another off-the-wall Administration embarrassment surfaced. President Obama nominated for commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) a woman who signed a radical manifesto endorsing polygamy.

We thought our nation had settled the polygamy issue a century and a half ago, but this nomination makes it a 21st century controversy. Obama's nominee for the EEOC, a lesbian law-school professor named Chai R. Feldblum, signed a 2006 manifesto endorsing polygamous households (i.e., "in which there is more than one conjugal partner").

This document, entitled "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships," argues that traditional marriage "should not be legally and economically privileged above all others." The American people obviously think otherwise, and current laws reflect our wishes.

Feldblum is not the only pro-polygamy Obama appointee. His Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein, wrote a book in 2008 called "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness" in which he urged that "the word marriage would no longer appear in any laws, and marriage licenses would no longer be offered or recognized by any level of government."

Sunstein argues that traditional marriage discriminates against single people by imposing "serious economic and material disadvantages." He asks, "Why not leave people's relationships to their own choices, subject to the judgments of private organizations, religious and otherwise?"

Sunstein also suggests "routine removal" of human organs because "the state owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions, and it can remove their organs without asking anyone's permission."

The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was passed in 1996 by overwhelming majorities in Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has identified more than 1,000 federal laws that are based on the traditional definition of marriage, including the tax laws that permit married couples the advantage of filing joint income tax returns and the Social Security benefits awarded to fulltime homemakers, both very popular federal laws.

The peculiar push to recognize polygamy as just another variety of marriage is a predictable and logical corollary of the political movement to recognize same-sex marriage. If our government cannot define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, it follows that there can be no law against the union of a man and several women.

For years, polygamy, even though it is totally demeaning to women, has been embraced by the powerful American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Polygamy is one of the many controversial issues that were not raised during ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg's so-friendly Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

The ACLU's feminist president, Nadine Strossen, stated in a speech at Yale University in June 2005 that the ACLU defends "the right of individuals to engage in polygamy." On October 15, 2006, in a high-profile debate against Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Strossen stated that the ACLU supports the right to polygamy.

Speaking to the Federalist Society on November 18, 2006, the ACLU's executive director, Anthony Romero, confirmed his organization's support of polygamy.

The massive immigration that the United States has accepted in recent years includes large numbers of immigrants from Third World countries that approve of polygamy as well as marriage to children and to close relatives. We wonder if polygamists have been admitted to the U.S. and if they are continuing these customs in U.S. neighborhoods.

Attacks on the traditional legal definition of marriage come from the gay lobby seeking social recognition of their lifestyle, from the anti-marriage feminists, and from some libertarians who believe marriage should be merely a private affair, none of the government's business. These libertarians want to deny government the right to define marriage, set its standards, or issue marriage licenses.

Government now has and should have a very important role in defining who may get a license to marry. In America, it is and should be a criminal offense to marry more than one person at a time, or marry a child or a close relative, even though such practices are common in some foreign countries.

In Socialist Canada, which has already approved same-sex marriage, polygamy has suddenly become a live issue. British Columbia's Supreme Court is now being asked to decide if polygamy should remain illegal.

We may have to depend on the Republican Party to maintain government's proper role in defining and protecting traditional marriage. The very first Platform adopted by the Republican Party, in 1856, condemned polygamy and slavery as the "twin relics of barbarism," and the 2008 Republican Platform calls for "a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union of a man and a woman, so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it."

Further reading:
"Beyond Gay Marriage", The Weekly Standard, 08/17/2006

Marriage

Feminism

WHAT'S IN AND WHAT'S OUT OF HEALTH CARE LEGISLATION

Don't let the FOX News diversion spin work. Obama definitely does lose sleep over this, but America is losing sleep about the government takeover. Government health care takeover will be going on behind closed doors this week, and America has to be engaged.

Healthcare 'Reform' is just another Redistribution of Wealth scheme, and they are going to get this passed by hook or by crook. Either way it's underhanded, and the only chance they have had to do this in 100 years.

Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum writes:

What's In and What's Out of Health Care Legislation
by Phyllis Schlafly, October 23, 2009

As liberals rush ObamaCare through Congress, let's review the disparity between promises and text. Joe Wilson's declaration "You lie!" is ringing truer with each passing day.

Barack Obama promised "transparency" and giving the public five days to read the bill, but Senator Jim Bunning's (R-KY) amendment to require the bill, along with a final Congressional Budget Office score, to be posted online 72 hours before the vote, was defeated. Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) and Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) have been trying to get the House to agree to post the bill 72 hours before the vote, but while most Republicans have signed on, the Nancy Pelosi leadership is unwilling.

The Democrats still hope to rush the bill through unread. The 1,100-page Stimulus bill was posted online only 13 hours before the vote, and the 1,200-page Cap and Trade bill was posted only 15 hours before the vote.

Obama promised that the health-care bill would not cover illegal aliens, but Senator Chuck Grassley's (R-IA) amendment to require immigrants to prove their identity with a photo I.D. was rejected.

Obama promised that if you like your current health insurance you won't have to change it, but Senator John Cornyn's (R-TX) amendment to assure present insurance owners that they won't have to change their coverage, and that they can keep the coverage they have with their current employer without government driving up cost, was defeated.

Obama's appointment of 34 czars includes a Health Care Czar, but Senator John Ensign's (R-NV) amendment to require any health care czar to be subject to the constitutional Senate confirmation process was defeated. Obama's new Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein, defends removing organs from terminally ill patients and from deceased persons even though they did not consent to be organ donors.

Obama promised that "under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions," and his Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tried to divert attention from this bold lie by obfuscating the Hyde Amendment. But the Hyde Amendment is not a law; it's a one-year-at-a-time rider that applies only to current Medicaid programs, and would not apply to the health-care law.

The Democrats five times (twice in Senate committees, three times in House committees) defeated amendments to prohibit the health-care plan from spending federal money or requiring health insurance plans to cover abortions. They also defeated Senator Orrin Hatch's (R-UT) amendment to respect the conscience rights of health-care workers who do not want to perform abortions because of moral or religious objections.

One amendment that did pass was Senator Maria Cantwell's (D-WA) amendment that gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the power to define cost-effective care for each medical condition and to punish doctors who treat high-cost patients with complex conditions. That has been Obama's goal from the beginning and will inevitably lead to the "death panels" Sarah Palin warned about.

Former Senator Tom Daschle, who was scheduled to be Health and Human Services Secretary or Health Care Czar until he had to bow out, said that the law should be written in generalities so the bureaucrats can fill in the details. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and a key Obama health care adviser, may be behind the Stimulus legislation that will send "embedded clinical-decision support" to doctors via computer to warn them about what is "appropriate" and "cost-effective," backed up by the threat to impose financial penalties on doctors who are not "meaningful users."

The Democrats' health-care "reform" carries a trillion-dollar price tag, will vastly increase the national debt hanging over our children and grandchildren, impose socialist control over one-sixth of our economy, and force us to obey totalitarian dictates. The mandate on employers to provide health insurance will result in lower wages and fewer jobs.

The mandate on individuals to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, even threatening jail for those who fail to conform, amounts to a massive tax increase on individuals and families whose health insurance may lack all the new federally specified requirements.

Obama's "spread the wealth around" policy is evident in the big expansion of Medicaid combined with large cuts in Medicare. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt says that the combination of mandates to buy insurance, guaranteed issue, and community rating amounts to massive income distribution that is hidden from public view and not even debated.

Finally, we are subject to the deviousness of what House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) calls the 70 phantom amendments that were added in secret after the bill was voted out by the committee. The bill may be even worse than we think.


Further reading:

Health Care Reform

STEP BACK & START OVER ON HEALTH CARE

We are about to borrow one Trillion (with a T) dollars, just to keep going, then borrow another Trillion dollars to start government run health care. This is just funny money to them, and it's not about health care. It's about control.

Obama lied again, when he spoke before his beloved union on Labor Day saying "if you have a better plan, put it on the table". Number one, he has not let Republicans participate in the health care bill. Number two, Republicans have a plan that will work without government control, but the Democrats want nothing to do with it.

From The Heritage Foundation:


Step Back and Start Over on Health Care
September 9, 2009

Just in case you hadn’t already heard, President Barack Obama will deliver what the media is describing as a “make or break” health care speech tonight. But don’t feel bad if you have to miss it. According to the Wall Street Journal, President Obama has already given 27 speeches entirely devoted to health care and he has mentioned the issue prominently in another 92. The American people already know what Obamacare looks like: more power to Washington, less choice for patients and doctors, trillions in new deficit spending, job killing employer mandates, and unprecedented government intrusion into every American’s private life.

No wonder 44% of independents tell Gallup they would direct their Representative to vote against Obamacare (compared to only 29% of independents who would vote for it).

No matter how much the President and his liberal allies try to deny it, the American public signaled in hundreds of town hall meetings last month that they believe health care reform is headed in the wrong direction. The Obama administration may believe that the election of liberal majorities to the White House, Senate, and House meant that the American people wanted Washington to control more of our lives, but that is simply not the case.

Pew’s annual survey of Political Values and Core Attitudes found that “Independents Take Center Stage in Obama Era” and that “independents are more conservative on several key issues than in the past.” Specifically, in 2009 only 43% of independents say government should help more needy people even if it means going deeper into debt. That is down from 57% just two years ago.

Congress needs to take a fresh sheet of paper (rather than 1,000+ pages that some congressional members won’t even read) and start again to craft a reform bill with conservative principles that have proven wide support with independents. 13 years ago, President Bill Clinton cemented his standing with independents by working with conservatives to reform our nation’s welfare system. President Obama still has the chance to work with conservatives and enact meaningful health care reform. Here are just two steps the President and Congress could take to win support from both sides of the aisle:

• Start with giving states more freedom to experiment with health care reform. Give the states incentives to figure out ways to make coverage more affordable and accessible and experiment with ideas like allowing people to buy coverage from partnering states and medical malpractice reform. We’ll see what works and what doesn’t on a smaller scale and build from that.

• Level the playing field for people who can’t afford coverage by making the tax treatment of health insurance fairer for them. By giving tax breaks for health insurance similar to those enjoyed at the place of work, Americans will be able to buy and own affordable coverage. In addition, instead of expanding Medicaid, offer assistance to lower-income families with subsidies offset by existing spending.

According to The Hill, at least 23 House Democrats already have told constituents or hometown media that they oppose Obamacare as currently composed. That means Speaker Nancy Pelosi can only lose 15 more members of her caucus if she wants health reform to pass. Rather than add another $1 trillion to the national debt or create even more czars, commissioners or advisory boards to make our health care decisions, let’s demand that Congress take a step back and start over.

HAD ENOUGH? OBAMA'S JOHN MITCHELL STRATEGY

We cannot spend enough time on this Van Jones debacle, because it's not about Van Jones. It goes to the core of what is wrong with this administration. Too much power grab, too much government will awaken the American people, whose freedom is inbred -- born from one of the hardest fought wars for freedom.

From the American Spectator:


Had Enough? Obama's John Mitchell Strategy
by Jeffrey Lord, September 8, 2009

''Watch what we do, not what we say''
-- Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell to reporters as Nixon Administration began.

"Had enough?"
-- Republican slogan in the 1946 congressional elections.

Had enough?

Van Jones was not a vetting problem, he was a "getting caught red-handed" problem.

As discussed on Friday in this space, Jones would never, ever have been allowed in the door of the White House with his nutty record -- much less be hired to work there -- unless people at the top thought of him in, an ideological sense, as one of their own. This episode has nothing to do with vetting, with race or anything else other than that the curtain was momentarily pulled aside to reveal what President Obama and company really, truly believe.

More to the point, it shows exactly where they are trying to take the country.

As the President prepares to address the health care rebellion that burst into public view at town hall meetings across the country, and as the real meaning of the Van Jones resignation begins to sink in, let's look back a moment. Turn to what seems to be an eerily familiar strategy that was, in the day, famously associated with President Richard Nixon and his attorney general, John Mitchell.

William Safire explains how it worked.

Mr. Safire, the wonderfully talented and fearless Nixon aide and loyalist who wound up his career in the public eye as the resident conservative on the New York Times editorial page, described Mitchell's "watch what we do, not what we say" strategy this way in an essay at Mitchell's death in 1988:

Coming from the law-and-order campaign manager with the visage of a bloodhound, that epigram was interpreted as the epitome of political deceptiveness.

But his intent was to reassure blacks that, foot-dragging poses aside,
the Nixon Justice Department would accomplish desegregation. John Mitchell knew
that the appearance of a tilt toward white Southerners would ease the way for
acceptance of steady civil rights progress for blacks, and sure enough, what he
did in this area was much better than what he said.

The objective was admirable. Integrate the segregated public schools of the South -- a legacy of the Democrats -- while proclaiming other intent. Notably, this also worked. To his opponents' teeth-grinding acknowledgment, it was in fact Richard Nixon who saw to it that segregated schools in the American South went the way of the dinosaurs.

The sudden burst of attention surrounding the resignation of Obama "green jobs czar" Van Jones serves notice that the president who was a community organizer and follower of Saul Alinsky has up until now been effectively putting the Nixon/Mitchell stratagem to work -- resurrecting it on behalf of some of the furthest left causes on the American political scene. If watching what was said while not paying attention to what was being done worked for Nixon and Mitchell on school integration, it can work for what is really the Obama agenda.

The Nixon-Mitchell approach was working for Obama, in a fashion. Everybody was watching, almost hypnotically so, what Mr. Obama said -- the wonderful verbal imagery, the now unmistakable voice earnestly oozing words like "keep your doctor" "tough choices" "putting a sweeping economic recovery in place" and, of course, the trademark "yes we can!" The polls were high, the good-will abounded.

But almost no one in the mainstream was, per John Mitchell, watching what Mr. Obama and company were actually doing: effectively attempting to re-make America in the image of the oldest of far left-wing nostrums, using socialism, identity politics (racism), appeasement and soft tyranny to overhaul a nation built on principles of freedom and liberty. Changing a country of vast prosperity created by a devotion to bread baking economics into a nation of economic beggars, based on long discredited leftist theories of bread slicing economics. With Mr. Obama and his political allies doing the slicing.

Were it not for the conservative opposition on talk radio, in the blogosphere, on Fox News (Glenn Beck, please take an extremely well-deserved bow), and in publications like this one, Van Jones would still be wearing his White House pass. Because it is here in these places -- and only these places -- that people spend their time actually learning what Mr. Obama is really doing -- not just listening to the pretty words. They will, as learned long ago, not be getting it from a mainstream press that has sold its journalistic soul to liberalism and Mr. Obama. On Sunday, a furious New York Times columnist Tom Friedman sat on NBC's Meet the Press and referred to the Internet in the context of Van Jones record as "an open sewer." As Byron York at the Washington Examiner trenchantly pointed out, the number of stories on Mr. Jones in the Times preceding his resignation? Zero. Ditto with the three broadcast networks and the Washington Post.

The reaction as reality of all this has dawned, as was abundantly evident in one town hall meeting after another across the country the last two months, is now furious. It can perhaps best be captured in the two word question asked of the nation in the 1946 elections by Republicans running against fourteen years of the New Deal:

Had enough?

The question in 1946 was answered with a GOP landslide.

When exactly in the last nine months did you reach the point where you "had enough"?

• When you heard the Obama stimulus bill was 1,071 pages long and members of Congress passed it without reading it?

• When you heard that Congress passed the $747 billion dollar Obama "stimulus" bill on the principle that spending tax dollars would keep the unemployment rate below 8% -- and then it shot up to almost 10%?

• When you realized that the Obama administration had stopped talking about the 3.5 million jobs that would be created by the stimulus bill and had subtly changed the term to "jobs created or saved" -- a term not measured by the Labor Department, Treasury Department, nor, most tellingly, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics? And then you heard that the stimulus had already "created or saved" at least 150,000 jobs.

• When you heard the federal government and Obama union allies had taken control of General Motors, a private company?

• When you heard the federal government forced Chrysler, another private company, into bankruptcy, giving control to Obama union political cronies and the federal government?

• When you heard the head of General Motors, a private company, was fired by the President of the United States?

• When you heard the president appointed a "pay czar" to regulate the salaries of private sector executives?

• When you realized "health care reform" meant government rationing of your health care?

• When you realized that government rationing of health care would mean the government "counseling" the elderly on when and how they should die?

• When you realized health care reform meant a $500 billion cut in Medicare?

• When you heard the President say he approves of a policy in which the government tells your Mom "that maybe you're better off not having the surgery but taking the pain killer"?

• When you realized members of Congress had no intention of living by the same health care plans they were trying to force on you?

• When you heard the Obama White House admit that the president would not rule out breaking his pledge not to raise taxes on those earning under $250,000, saying: "it is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out, no matter what"?

• When the White House underestimated the ten-year deficit by $2 trillion, insisting all the money it was spending would cost only $7 trillion -- then putting out the news on a Friday night that it would actually be $9 trillion?

• When you heard the "cash for clunkers" program was supposed to run from July to November, but was so mismanaged it ran out of its $1 billion allotment in a week -- and car dealers all over America are now mired in both debt and paperwork because the government hasn't figured out how to pay them. And the program set to expire in November was canceled in August?

• When you understood the Attorney General announced he will re-open investigations as to whether CIA officials who protected the country should be prosecuted for their efforts, something the president said he would not do?

• When you realized that for the first time in American history, U.S. soldiers were being forced to read an enemy captured on the field of battle their Miranda rights (which begin, "You have the right to remain silent")?

• When you realized the president had hired over thirty "czars" like Van Jones to run the government, none confirmed by the U.S. Senate as is constitutionally required of senior policy makers?

• When you heard that the Obama "green jobs" czar, White House aide Van Jones signed a "Truther" petition, was an enthusiastic supporter of cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, and belonged to a group which the Washington Post -- after the fact of Jones's resignation and with the greatest of delicacy-- described as having "Marxist roots"?

• When you heard that the Federal Communications Commission now had a "diversity officer" named Mark Lloyd who is a fan of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez's efforts to shut down free speech a free press? Said Lloyd: "This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies."

• When you heard that Americans challenging their elected representatives on the details of health care and all of the above were being labeled as "Nazis" and "un-American" by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and as "thugs" by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid?

Maybe there was something else in the last nine months that finally convinced you there was real trouble in Washington. But as this (partial) list of activities makes one thing plain, to borrow astronaut lingo: Houston, we have a problem.

What is that problem?

The American people have reached a "tipping point." They have begun to realize with startling clarity that the common thread running through every action listed above -- and more - is a drive to deprive them of their freedoms. Whether it's the freedom to be president of General Motors subject to the approval of a board of directors and shareholders, or the freedom for you to choose your own health care without government rationing, more and more people are now getting what is at stake here. That tipping point is even captured numerically in the latest Rasmussen poll that shows the Obama approval numbers going south, with 53% opposed to the president and 47% in favor, the kind of plunge not seen since Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon.

The abrupt White House decision to ask for a Joint Session of Congress is a clear admission that President Obama feels compelled not just to try and salvage the tattered remains of his so-called "health care reform." What is really going on here is a frantic attempt to distract attention from the core beliefs motivating this president, his staff, his administration and his allies. An attempt to get the country to look away from an increasingly long list of absolutely chilling actions and appointees that flow directly from those beliefs.

Those beliefs are exactly why Van Jones was working in the White House. They are what got him in the door. It's the belated recognition by everybody else that got him shown the door.

So what do we have here?

We have a president who is once again about to take center stage, supposedly to talk health care. But this time, Americans are on to his use of the Nixon/Mitchell strategy. They are no longer willing to sit quietly and watch what Barack Obama says. They now understand in increasingly vivid detail what it is he is trying to do.

They understand in their gut that Van Jones was not some vetting mistake, not an accident of process, but rather a symbol of the entire belief system that now resides in the White House.

Which makes the next set of questions as follows:

• Again, who hired Van Jones, approved Van Jones, vetted Van Jones?

• Who hired Mark Lloyd over at the FCC? Who was his sponsor, who vetted, who approved, what did they know?

• When will Congress put a stop to the appointment of these unelected "czars"?

• And for good measure, let's ask the question the Old Media will never have the guts to ask:

Just what role has Valerie Jarrett, the enthusiastic booster of Van Jones and senior Obama loyalist on the White House staff, played in all these personnel decisions?

The New Media proceeds.

IS OBAMACARE CONSISTENT WITH OUR 1st PRINCIPLES?

Our Founding Fathers created our Constitution specifically for separation of powers, creating the legislative, executive and judicial branches. Yet, Obama is determined to undermine this by creating more and more power to the executive branch in history.

The bigger the government, the less the freedom.

The Heritage Foundation writes:


Is Obamacare Consistent With Our First Principles?
September 8, 2009

Late this Saturday night President Barack Obama’s Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Van Jones, resigned amid what the Washington Post calls another “lapse in the administration’s vetting procedures.” That’s putting it mildly. Jones is an admitted former communist and black nationalist. His Ella Baker Center for Human Rights produced a rap record in 2005 “hosted by” cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal, in which Jones links the Palestinian fight against Israel as part of the “global struggle against the U.S. led security apparatus” that “we need to see linked” to “our problems here.”

His more recent advocacy for green jobs fits perfectly into Jones’ racial/Marxist worldview. In a 2008 interview Jones said: “The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color’s communities because they don’t have a racial justice frame.”

So how did someone with views as radical and inflammatory as Jones’ get into a position where he would control one of the “five pillars” of President Obama’s plan to rebuild the entire economy? The short answer is that Jones was never vetted. Jones was never asked to fill out the exhaustive 7 page 63 question form White House officials require of every Cabinet-level secretary and deputy-secretary position. And why did he not fill out the questionnaire? He did not have to. His official “czar” job, Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, does not require Senate confirmation. To be fair, President Obama did not create the first Executive branch czar, but his administration has authored of them. In fact, President Obama just appointed another czar, former steelworkers union official Ron Bloom, to oversee his manufacturing and automotive policy yesterday.

According to Politico there are, not counting Jones or Bloom, 30 other Obama administration officials with czar-like duties and powers, including: Afghanistan Czar Richard Holbrooke, AIDS Czar Jeffrey Crowley, Auto recovery Czar Ed Montgomery, Border Czar Alan Bersin, California Water Czar David Hayes, Central Region Czar Dennis Ross, Domestic Violence Czar Lynn Rosenthal, Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, Economic Czar Paul Volcker, Energy and Environment Czar Carol Brower, Faith-Based Czar Joshua DuBois, Great Lakes Czar Cameron Davis, Guantanamo Closure Czar Daniel Fried, Health Czar Nancy-Ann DeParle, Information Czar Vivek Kundra, International Climate Czar Todd Stern, Intelligence Czar Dennis Blair, Mideast Peace Czar George Mitchell, Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg, Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein, Science Czar John Holdren, Stimulus Accountability Czar Earl Devaney, Sudan Czar J. Scott Gration, TARP Czar Herb Allison, Terrorism Czar John Brennan, Technology Czar Aneesh Chopra, Urban Affairs Czar Adolfo Carrion Jr., Weapons Czar Ashton Carter, and WMD Policy Czar Gary Samore.

The proliferation of czars is a direct consequence of both the ever expanding power of the federal government and Congress’ willingness to cede ever more legislative and judicial functions to the Executive branch. Our Founding Fathers specifically created a Constitution dividing the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government into three branches so that the separation of these powers would limit the size and scope of the federal government.

Since the dawning of the Progressive Movement, the left has correctly identified the Constitution’s separation of powers framework as an obstacle to their remaking of American society. If our republic is to survive in the 21st century, our Congress must begin to reassert itself and rein in Obama’s czar state.

UN-AMERICAN & UNLAWFUL WHITE HOUSE PROJECTS

Our constitution was written with definitive checks and balances, which are being stepped on by this administration. The Founding Fathers knew from their past experiences that power in the hands of a few breeds tyranny. And we are getting closer to that with each passing day.

Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum explains:


Un-American and Unlawful White House Projects
By Phyllis Schlafly, September 4, 2009

The Obama Administration brags that Cash for Clunkers was a success because it revived the suffering auto industry. But who really benefited from this $3 billion program?
The majority of cars bought with taxpayer-paid incentives of $3,500 to $4,500 each were foreign cars. Toyota and Honda were the big winners.

For years, Americans have been pursuing the goal of self-sufficiency in oil, a natural resource essential to our standard of living. But the effort to get our government to revoke its ban on drilling for oil in American waters off of our shores has been consistently checkmated by the liberals and radical environmentalists.

Now we hear that the Obama Administration is letting the U.S. Export-Import Bank lend $2 billion to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to drill for oil in the ocean near Rio de Janeiro. Why Brazil, and why not "drill, baby, drill" in U.S. waters?

We know there is an abundance of oil and natural gas right off of U.S. shores, and that drilling would produce good-paying jobs without any need for Stimulus handouts. Does the Obama Administration oppose this because it's an issue Sarah Palin can run with?

The Obama Administration doesn't like criticism, so maybe that's why it is pushing Congress to hurry up and pass the so-called Hate Crimes Act (H.R. 1913). Being squeamish about criticism is also why the Obama Administration launched an un-American project on August 4 as part of what the White House called its "rapid response" Health Insurance Reform Reality Check.

The plan was "to collect and maintain information" on people who criticized the Democrats' health care bill. Obama's friends were instructed to report to the White House email address, flag@whitehouse.gov, any information that they considered "fishy," which everybody understood is a code word to build an Obama political enemies list.

That anti-First Amendment totalitarian project was partly withdrawn as a lawsuit was filed against it by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) and the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE). They charged that the White House project was to "unlawfully" collect information on protected political speech.

The long list of Obama's czars, accountable to no one except Obama himself, is one of his most worrisome and expensive notions. The czars may be substitutes for the nearly half of Obama Administration's executive-branch positions that remain unfilled.

The czars' salaries are paid by the U.S. taxpayers but they are not confirmed by the Senate, yet they appear to have the authority to override those who are confirmed. Lack of Senate confirmation means we must rely on Glenn Beck to discover that the Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, is or was a communist and a self-described "rowdy black nationalist."

So far, Obama has appointed 34 czars. Just listing them is enough to scare anyone who believes in constitutional and representative government: Afghanistan Czar, AIDS Czar, Border Czar, Car Czar, Climate Czar, Copyright Czar, Cyberspace Czar, Drug Czar, Economic Czar, Education Czar, Energy Czar, Executive Pay Czar, Faith-Based Czar, Great Lakes Czar, Green Jobs Czar, Guantanamo Closure Czar, Health Reform Czar, Infotech Czar, Intelligence Czar, Iran Czar, Middle East Peace Czar, Non-Proliferation Czar, Persian Gulf/SE Asia Czar, Regulatory Czar, Science Czar, Stimulus Accountability Czar, Sudan Czar, TARP Czar, Terrorism Czar, Urban Czar, War Czar, and WMD and Terrorism Czar.

At least one Obama pal is functioning in a similar capacity without the awesome Russian title of czar. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who publicly withdrew from the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services because of non-payment of income taxes, is providing "outside advice" to the President inside the Oval Office and to top White House officials, while continuing as a highly paid policy adviser to hospital and pharmaceutical clients of a law and lobbying firm.

Daschle is not registered as a lobbyist; he identifies himself as a "resource" to government and industry. It looks like Daschle has the best of all worlds, both for influence and remuneration.

The senior Senate Democrat, Robert Byrd of West Virginia (who is third in line for the U.S. presidency after Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi), wrote Obama in February saying that these czar appointments are a power grab by the executive branch and violate both the constitutional system of checks and balances and the constitutional separation of powers. He said they are a clear attempt to evade congressional oversight.

The President is entitled to have his own advisers, but these czars are directly dictating policy, and nobody really knows the extent of their powers. Whatever happened to Obama's campaign promise of transparency?

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) has introduced the Czar Accountability and Reform Act (H.R. 3226) to cut off the salaries of these czars (estimated at $172,000 plus their staffs of 10+ people). It's unlikely that the Democratic Congress will let this bill see the light of day.


Further reading:

• Obama’s Czars
• Health Care Reform
• Town Hall Meetings