In the Footsteps of Manuel Zelaya

Similar Paths, Similar Fates?

There is a trend developing in the Obama administration that is troubling in more ways than one. The obvious reason is not the most disturbing, however, since many like me expected it, and that is Obama's disdain for our nation and its Constitution. What is more unsettling than that is the fact that Obama is unabashed about his intentions and increasingly unconcerned about our reaction to his acting upon them.

Obama has half jokingly stated that it would be a lot easier to govern a country like China, where his edict would become law automatically, or how he could get more done if he didn't have to bother with Congress. Oh, how we laughed and laughed at those silly remarks. Funny, they were, because this is America, after all, and that's not how we roll. Or is it?

Just as poor parenting can allow a petulant child to run amok, so have we and our alleged watchdog free press surrendered incremental latitudes to this president. Just as the child tests his parents' limits of allowable transgressions, so has this president. When little Johnny steps over the line set by the parents, and the parents then set another line rather than discipline the child, the road to ruin is begun. Soon there will be no rules for Johnny that can't be broken with impunity. The same may be happening with Barry, but he can prove much more dangerous than one little boy gone awry.

Just last month, Obama told a news station in Colorado, KOAA-TV, that Congress is inconsequential, saying:

"Well, what we’re going to have to do is continue to make progress on the economy over the next several months. And where Congress is not willing to act, we’re going to go ahead and do it ourselves. But it would be nice if we could get a little bit of help from Capitol Hill.”

Here, the president effectively dismisses the constitutional requirement for the advice and consent of Congress and there was hardly a whisper of caution. Yet, on January 20, 2009, Obama was compelled to say these words before the American people and to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Did Obama have his fingers crossed as he was sworn in? It would appear to be so -- Orly Taitz notwithstanding -- since he immediately set about violating the document he swore to uphold.

From the "Patient Affordable Care Act (PACA), otherwise known as "ObamaCare", to the recent illegal non-recess, recess appointments of four people, Obama has thumbed his nose at us and the constitution, using a false sense of urgency and, in some cases, semantics. Congress was not in recess when Richard Cordray, et al, were appointed, but Obama declared that they were. Swell, so now the president makes his own determinations on constitutionality?

Then, while Congress has been haggling over the particulars of the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Obama took it upon himself to sign an international treaty, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

Under the Constitution, presidential nominations for executive and judicial posts take effect only when confirmed by the Senate, and international treaties become effective only when the Senate approves them by a two-thirds vote. Another line to cross, another chance to see if he'll get away with it.

So to where do these incremental steps ultimately lead? We might look back a few years to the country of Honduras. In June of 2009, Honduran president Manuel Zelaya was removed from office by what has been termed a "military coup". While it is true that the Congress and the Supreme Court of Honduras ordered the exile of Zelaya via the military, the description is somewhat misleading.

Zelaya was nearing the end of his eligibility to lead as president, as his second term would end in January of the following year. Seeking to rewrite the constitution, Zelaya sought a referendum on whether the electorate wanted to do so. A lower court ruled the referendum unlawful, and the Supreme Court upheld that ruling. Zelaya, nevertheless, ordered his military to distribute the extra ballot boxes -- interestingly received from Venezuela -- in violation of the courts. His top general refused and was fired by Zelaya.

On June 28th, the country's Supreme Court ordered the detention of Zelaya and he was seized by the military. The Honduran constitutional crisis was underway. The military may have executed the deed, but a military coup, it was not. The military acted at the behest of a unanimous Supreme Court and an equally unanimous Congress. Hugo Chavez was livid, and demanded the immediate return of Zelaya as president.

Soul Mate Handshake?

What was truly odd then was the same demands being made by Barack Hussein Obama. The day after Zelaya's ouster, Obama said, "We are very clear about the fact that President Zelaya is the democratically elected president." Further lamenting what he called an "illegal action" by the government of Honduras, Obama said, "The region has made enormous progress over the last 20 years in establishing democratic traditions in Central America and Latin America. We don't want to go back to a dark past."

One would think that a U.S. President would applaud the obvious application of "democratic traditions" by a Honduran Congress actually defending its constitution. Not so with a president who has demonstrated his loathing of his own constitution.

END22 Screenshot

One more interesting note; there was a group of people who launched a website called END22.com on January 20th, 2009. The site has since disappeared, or been scrubbed, but it is curious that such a website would see its inception on the very same day as Obama's inauguration.

One might ask how such an organization could assume that Obama would even win a second term much less plan for a third. That would be a valid question to ponder, but consider this; Obama, by all standards, shouldn't even be where he is today. It is a feat virtually unprecedented in our history.

How does someone rise so fast from absolute obscurity to the presidency of the most powerful country on Earth? How does this same person enjoy such a level of immunity from the media afforded no other president before him? Is it Providence, or is it master planning? These are questions I'll leave to you, dear reader, to ponder. Mine is just to offer that which is to be pondered. Suffice it to say, there is much to see and hear, much we personally witness each day, and much that will be cavalierly dismissed by those who would seek to gain from deflecting the importance of them. So I leave you with this:

When our eyes are no longer our most trusted instruments, when we rely upon others to tell us a truth contrary to that which we plainly see, we are a lost people. 

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Fracking The Party

The reason for Mitt Romney's general unpopularity has recently been exposed, and in the process, so have a great many operatives working for his rise to the presidency. The sad thing is, this has caused a rift in the political family that may be difficult to work past.

For the past few days, the Drudge Report has been plastered with damning stories of Newt Gingrich's alleged infidelity, but not the marital type. Instead, Drudge has linked to story after story of reports from other conservative darlings coming out to figuratively stone Gingrich into oblivion, thereby paving a smoother path for Romney to the nomination.

Ann Coulter -- a huge Romney gal -- has all but Borked Newt, most recently and most shrilly claiming that a Gingrich nomination will reelect Obama. When our beloved Ann uses the scare tactics usually reserved for the "enemy", it is quite unsettling when she turns them on her fan base. Drudge joining in on the antics hasn't helped, either. It's one of my first online stops of the day, and I've been feeling quite glum in the past few. Even Tom Delay piled on, despite the solidarity he enjoyed from many of us just a few short years ago.

"What could be happening?", many of us thought. Since it seemed so unseemly that our former champions could turn on us in such dramatic fashion, I started to wonder early today if I had misjudged Newt Gingrich; I started to doubt my backing him.

Fortunately Red County.com -- an organization to which I am more proud today than ever to be a contributor -- discovered something that both assuaged my  fears and confirmed my worst suspicions; the Republican Party had been fractured. To make matters worse, the very people and outlets I had counted on for truth had lied to me. Whether these are differences that will prove to be irreconcilable or not remain to be seen. I suppose it depends on the level of contrition of the offenders when the dust settles. Suffice it to say that for now, dear Ms. Coulter, I am very disappointed in you. (You're on my list, too, Matt!)

Red County posted an editorial with a a full response from the Gingrich team enclosed. It's an article from Legal Insurrection, written by former Reagan staffer William A. Jabobson, and it puts to rest the notion being spread all over the web by Romney-ites that Gingrich was less than an enthusiastic supporter of Reagan. This bolstered my spirits instantly, but my anger began to mount in unison with the good news when repeated trips back to Drudge failed to mention the breakthrough. That's when I was sure that Drudge was also in the tank for Romney.

Learning later today that Rush Limbaugh had discussed the strafing of Gingrich by his colleagues and railed against it helped to buoy my mood. Ronald Reagan's son Michael also came out to counter the lies being spread by the cabal against Gingrich, but the icing on the cake was seeing Drudge finally and -- I suspect -- grudgingly post this welcome news up on his aggregate.

Speaking to Newsmax, here's part of what Michael Reagan had to say today:

“I am deeply disturbed that supporters of Mitt Romney are claiming that Newt Gingrich is not a true Reaganite and are even claiming that Newt was a strong critic of my father.
Recently I endorsed Newt Gingrich for president because I believe that Newt is the only Republican candidate who has both consistently backed the conservative policies that my father championed and the only Republican that will continue to implement his vision.
It surprises me that Mitt Romney and his supporters would raise this issue — when Mitt by his own admission voted for Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale who opposed my father, and later supported liberal Democrat Paul Tsongas for president."

“Say what you want about Newt Gingrich but when he was Speaker of the House he surrounded himself with Reagan conservatives and implemented a Ronald Reagan program of low taxes and restrained federal spending.
I would take Newt Gingrich’s record any day over Mitt Romney’s.”

I'm gratified to learn that my allegiance to Newt is not unfounded, but I am deeply disturbed at the depths to which people I have trusted have sunk so as to achieve a goal of promoting a candidate clearly not desired by the choir to whom they preach.

I think the time has come for all of the angry electorate to unite behind the man they would most like to see face Obama in the general election in November. I would also love to see the TEA Party come out in full endorsement of Gingrich. That will teach the haughty among us that they are preferred pundits but not our true representatives.

We can work on the bitter betrayal somewhere down the road.

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At Long Last, the Awakening Masses

And the Scales Fell from Their Eyes

Here we are on the dawn of a new revolution, albeit one a bit tamer than the one of our inception, yet one no less dependent on the extraordinary courage of its participants. After all, this time the stakes just might be higher than 240 years ago, while the combatants include not only ideological enemies but allies gone somewhat awry.

Conservatives have been under attack for the past half century, and have only recently mounted an effective counter-insurgency in perhaps the last decade. Some of the key players in the climb back to respectability have been cult heroes such as Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter, and others of their ilk. And while they deserve much credit for the arousal of the right, something happened to them along the way, something that seems to happen to leaders of all stripes at some point; a sense of self-adorned majesty apparently crept into their minds, one that refused to accept defiance.

We have had our favorite commentators since the Clinton presidency, and we have allowed ourselves to fall comfortably into the warm folds of their embraces, somewhat secure in the notion that they shared our core values. What we have seen in this primary season is not so much a betrayal of those shared values, but a sudden veering off the road to their achievement. We're now sharply at odds with the voices we not long ago cherished over the proper course to our nation's revival, and our alleged leader-pundits are not at all happy over our detour.

Ann Coulter -- who I love dearly -- has become apoplectic over the possibility that Newt Gingrich could become the republican nominee to face Obama. No, she warns, only Mitt Romney can save us! Once upon a time, many of us would have fallen into lockstep with Ann's decrees, but the times, they are a-changin'.

A Crowd of Motivated TEA Partiers

Thanks in part to the TEA Party, we are poised to see a record number of voters turn out for a presidential election. More importantly, however, is the fact that many more people are actually engaging early and making their wishes known, and clearly. Traditionally, perhaps half of the electorate hibernates throughout the primary process, relying on sound bites and campaign ads and emerging on Election Day like Punxsutawney Phil to cast their votes for -- or against -- whomever the eventual nominee may be.

Not so this time around. People are angry, frustrated, fed up with this failed president, and disgusted with the mainstream media for its malfeasance in  reporting accurately on it. To top it all off, we have learned to stand on principle rather than probability, making the voices of our side less crucial to the decision making process.

This is why Newt has done so well; we know of his foibles and frailties, and they are not that important now in the face of the task we must undertake. That is because we also know of Newt's strengths. We are no longer going to meekly offer up a candidate we are told can garner the most votes. We are prepared to put up the candidate we believe will be the most effective, and then we will vote for that candidate en masse.

Timidity is what gave us John McCain in 2008, and that was slightly more palatable than today because we had only a speculative notion of Barack Obama. Now that we have experienced three years of Obama's "leadership", the urgency to be rid of him has aided in our boldness.

It seems we are more than sufficiently motivated to grab the reins of our own destiny in this election year, even if it does cause some past heroes a bit of agita.

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