Category Archives: Constitution
Obama intent on submitting American citizens to the whims of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
At ThreatsWatch.org, Steve Schippert and Clyde Middleton have dug up the bizarre and unsettling issuance of an executive order recently signed by President Barack Obama. Executive Order — Amending Executive Order 12425, signed December 16 and released a day later, grants the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) rights on American soil that place it beyond the reach of our own law enforcement agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Schippert and Middleton note that Obama’s order removes protections placed upon INTERPOL by President Reagan in 1983. Obama’s order gives the group the authority to avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests — which means this foreign law enforcement organization can operate free of an important safeguard against governmental abuse. “Property and assets,” including the organization’s records, cannot be searched or seized. Their physical locations and records are now immune from U.S. legal or investigative authorities.
***This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States.
Some bloggers covering this story are noting that the law enforcement agency to which Obama has extended such extraordinary powers to has had a dismal past.
INTERPOL’s senior leadership was flush with Nazis from the late 1930s all the way into the 1970s. That fact allowed, going Godwin isn’t necessarily relevant to today’s organization. Khoo Boon Hui of Singapore is the current president of the organization, and the current secretary general is American Ronald Noble. Noble is perhaps best known in America for overseeing the Treasury Department’s review of the disastrous 1993 raid and siege of a Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, that left nearly 80 people dead. Noble had cautioned against the initial raid plan as being too dangerous, but the lack of any significant ramifications for federal officials that approved of the raid and allegations of a cover-up have inspired conspiracy theorists to derisively dub Noble “the Enforcer.”
But INTERPOL’s past isn’t what concerns us at this moment. Its current actions and the actions of our president are those that we question.***
With the flourish of a pen and no warning at all, Barack Obama surrendered American sovereignty to an international force with a checkered past. To what end?
The consensus opinion among those commenting on this development is that the most radical president in American history seems to be intent on submitting American citizens to the whims of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Previous administrations have been very leery of signing onto agreements that would make citizens susceptible to the ICC, due to the possibility that U.S. servicemen could be dragged into show war crimes trials. Such events are obviously heavily politicized, and demands for war crimes arrests can come from any government, even those that sponsor terrorism or genocide themselves.
No finer point can be made about the endemic problems of the INTERPOL/ICC than that made by a recent diplomatic incident that erupted in Great Britain, where an Israeli government official had to cancel travel plans to England because of an arrest warrant issued by an English judge — because of Iranian charges of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. The brief but intense conflict was one Iran helped instigate, as the Persians supplied the terrorists in Gaza with the rockets they used against Israeli civilians, triggering an inevitable Israeli response.If President Obama and his radical allies in the Democratic leadership have their way, American soldiers could presumably be brought up on charges as war criminals by enemy nations and marked for arrest and deportation by an international police force on American soil. They would face charges in a foreign land without the constitutional protections they fought and bled to protect. The White House seems to be on the bewildering path of giving al-Qaeda terrorists who murder innocent women and children more legal protection than the very soldiers that risk their lives trying to bring terrorists to justice. The asinine court-martial charges being brought against three Navy SEALs based upon the word of a terrorist they captured suddenly make a sickening kind of sense.
It also stands to reason that Obama’s seeming willingness to put American soldiers’ lives in the hands of a corrupt international community could also be brought to bear against his political enemies. Foreign investigators of dubious intent, and our own left-wing extremists, have long branded officials of the previous administration “war criminals” for actions they’d taken in the war on terror. It is entirely conceivable — perhaps even likely — that these same organizations and enemy governments that went after 25 Israeli government officials through INTERPOL and the ICC would quickly move to indict a wish list of current and former U.S. government officials for alleged “war crimes.” Former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney would obviously be at the top of such a list of politically motivated suspects, but such a list could just as easily include General David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, congressmen, and senators.
As the Iranian gambit has shown, Obama’s bizarre assault on U.S. sovereignty could have disastrous repercussions. We can only hope that his fetish for weakening this nation can be stopped before American politicians and servicemen are made pawns by our enemies.
Senator Bill Nelson failed his Oath of Office, failing to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States
Senator Bill Nelson failed his Oath of Office, failing to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, failing to cast a vote against S. 2248, the FISA Amendments Act. The FISA Amendments Act makes the misnamed Protect America Act permanent. Even worse, the FISA Amendments Act makes it legal:
- For the federal government to spy on you electronically
- Reading your email
- Listening to your telephone calls
- Watching what web pages you visit
- Following your financial transactions
- Without any explanation of why they’re doing it
- Without anyone outside of the Executive Branch knowing that it’s being done
- Without oversight by Congress
- Letting the government use information it obtains illegally
- Giving telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for helping the government do this, even when it was expressly against the law to do so
When a President of the United States has this kind of power at his disposal, she or he cannot be stopped. The president’s power becomes total and the president becomes a totalitarian. Senator Nelson failed to show up and cast a vote against the FISA Amendments Act. Through inaction, he allowed the country to slouch toward totalitarianism.
The idea that he would be preparing to assume dictatorial powers seems so remote that the mainstream media has not even reported on these initiatives.
Senator Nelson failed to cast a vote against the ironically named Protect America Act. The Protect America Act is a law now passed by both houses of Congress which replaces judicial warrants with executive prerogative and substitutes blank checks for reasons. The Protect America Act gives the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) the power to spy on your emails, your web surfing, your telephone calls and other electronic communications. All this is carried out without a warrant, which is required by the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
There is no supervision of the spy programs put in place by the Attorney General and the DNI, except by these two individuals themselves. No one has the power to stop them any more. They can search your records, sift through your private messages, watch you go from web page to web page, on the pretext of protecting America from terrorists, all without a search warrant. No one has the power to tell them no.
The Attorney General and the DNI, both political appointees of the President, have the power under the Protect America Act to order any American to help them conduct their electronic spying against other Americans. Under the new law, if they order you to take part in their spying operations, and you say no, they can throw you in prison. If you do not keep their spying on other Americans a secret, even from your family, they can throw you in prison.
The Protect America Act institutes Big Brother government in the United States. It betrays American liberty. It is a shame that the Act passed. Shame on Senator Nelson for failing to vote against it.
From the transfer of Total Information Awareness into the National Security Agency under codenames like topsail and basketball, through warrantless wiretape, seizures of massive amounts of cell phone and email records, and even the systematic entry of the DNA of innocent Americans into gigantic government databases, we have seen a dramatic effort by the government to watch over the most personal aspects of our lives. Thanks to these secretive government programs, Americans can no longer assume that their postal mail, email, phone calls, commercial activity, and other kinds of personal activity are at all private.
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Biden: If Bill Nelson loses Senate race, Obama won’t win Florida in 2012. YAY!!! We shake off both of these weasels.
Obama’s Coup to Overthrow the Constitution * Read His Own Words
Obama creating a societal crisis which opens the door for his socialist revolution.
Obama openly complained that his job would be so much easier if he were President of China, able to issue orders without media scrutiny or challenges from other branches of government.
In July, he once again admitted that he found the idea of bypassing congress and the constitutional separation of powers “tempting”.
Only wannabe dictators find the idea of unilaterally implementing once’s will and whims without accountability “tempting”. Obama never talks about the constitutional limits placed on his power but with disgust, as in, “sorry I haven’t been able to implement the utopian agenda as quickly as I want, but that pesky constitution and the other two branches of government have been getting in my way.”
Obama wasn’t the only one expressing such sentiments. During the debt ceiling debate, several Democrats insisted that Obama should raise the debt limit by Executive fiat, falsely claiming that the 14th Amendemnt gives the Executive branch the power to ignore the debt ceiling imposed by congress.
In September, North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue floated the idea of suspending the 2012 elections so congress could make whatever decisions they felt necessary without worrying about accountability to the voters.
Obama’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag echoed the suggestion, saying:
…we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.
Lee DeCovnick warned at American Thinker:
…this was not a mistake, and the mask was purposefully and deliberately allowed to slip. This is classic Alinsky; the forbidden idea enters the public discussion, the liberal experts and analysts seriously debate the horror as if it were a reasonable, the public becomes increasingly insensitive to the outrageous nature of the idea, more experts add their weight to the idea, and suddenly a horror becomes cutting edge, an acceptable option for the elites to foist on the masses.
Though he had abused Executive orders in the past, Obama began seriously setting the stage for going around congress and imposing his agenda by Executive fiat during the “jobs bill” debate in September.
When the bill failed to pass in October, Obama declared that the American people “won’t take ‘no’ for an answer” and began pushing ahead to implement key portions without congressional authorization.
On the 24th, he announced his plan to abuse Executive orders to bypass congress on mortgage refinancing and student loans, calling congress “dysfunctional” and declaring that “we can’t wait.”
One News Now reported that Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government, was offering serious warnings about Obama’s behavior:
“The president now has decided that he can operate through executive order, without Congress…It’s particularly disturbing when you look at the fact that now, for three weeks, his key supporters and backers — including elected officials — have been urging him to basically ignore Congress and rule by decree.”
Wilson concludes by saying that as the president begins his “rule-by-decree tour” around the western United States, it will be important for watchdogs in Congress to ensure that he does not overstep his constitutional authority in a “wild attempt to gain votes.”
Columnist John Rossomando urged congress to grow a spine and “check our out-of-control president,” to no avail.
On October 25th, Obama announced:
…we can’t wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job. Where they won’t act, I will. I’ve told my administration to keep looking every single day for actions we can take without Congress…and we’re going to be announcing these executive actions on a regular basis.
He immediately issued several more Executive orders designed to bypass congress.
Unfortunately, House Speaker John Boehner seemed to view Obama’s abuses as a joke, telling radio talk show host Laura Ingraham:
“This idea that you’re just going to go around the Congress is just, it’s almost laughable.”
It wasn’t laughable. It’s DANGEROUS. When Obama couldn’t get “Card Check” through congress, he used the NLRB to advance the Big Labor agenda. When the people’s representatives rejected “Cap and Trade,” he turned the EPA into a channel for imposing the environmentalist agenda via regulatory fiat. When the DREAM Act failed, Obama began implementing it anyway by Executive order.
It’s becoming frighteningly clear how Obama treats the constitution he considers “flawed” when it gets in the way of all the things he believes that government should provide (at the expense of the rule of law and our liberties).
In November, Obama ramped up his “We Can’t Wait” campaign in earnest, testing a usurpation of the Legislative branch’s role of imposing taxes by trying to issue a tax from the Executive branch (which he later retracted).
Two weeks later, he issued another Executive order to spend $1 Billion dollars on expanding the healthcare workforce.
In December, Obama signed a spending bill and then unilaterally discarded whatever parts of it he didn’t like.
As 2012 began, the Associated Press reported:
Obama’s re-election year will focus almost exclusively on executive action.
…Obama will come out with at least two or three directives per week, continuing the “We Can’t Wait” campaign the administration began this fall, and try to define Republicans in Congress as gridlocked and dysfunctional.
Whatever Obama and his media parrots like to claim, the truth is that Congress was and is not “dysfunctional.” It’s working exactly as our founders designed it to. What Obama calls “gridlock” is actually what is known as “constitutional checks and balances.” Our founders designed the separation of powers in our federal government precisely for such a time as this, for such a tyrant as this, if only the Legislative and Judicial branches had the spine to assert their constitutional authority and hold the Executive branch in check.
Unfortunately, the impotent response Obama has received thus far has only emboldened him.
Barely a week into the new year, Obama defied the constitution to make ‘Recess Appointments’ while that Senate was still in session, including three appointments to the NLRB who are tasked with shoring up union support for Obama in 2012 by any means necessary, such as forced unionization to increase membership and dues which can be put towards campaign contributions.
Americans for Prosperity VP Phil Kerpen warns at PJ Media that Obama’s reelection strategy is to bypass congress and trample the Constitution:
…the Obama election strategy for election 2012 is to act as if election 2010 never happened, disregard the Republicans in Congress, and put the full force of the federal executive apparatus to work towards his reelection.
Eric Holder’s Justice Department is already blocking state voter ID laws from going into effect and preventing voter fraud.
Obama is bypassing congress to relax immigration laws so that ACORN will have as many illegal voters to recruit as possible.
There are rumors that Obama is preparing to bribe middle class voters with a massive mortgage refinancing program – by Executive order, of course. The agenda echos historical predecessors who enticed citizens into more dependency on a benevolent dictator.
Obama is deliberately implementing the Cloward-Piven strategy he learned as a “community organizer” for ACORN: hasten the fall of capitalism by recruiting so many people into government entitlement programs that the overloaded welfare state collapses under a flood of impossible demands, thus creating a societal crisis which opens the door for a socialist revolution.
There will continue to be more blatant constitutional violations, power grabs, bribes and illegal appointments as long as congress does nothing.
Steve McCann warns at American Thinker that Obama’s actions are eerily reminiscent of the World War II’s European despots he lived through:
I had to survive a war that was precipitated by those who were initially elected by the people in a democratic fashion. Yet once in power, they began to systematically usurp and overthrow the rule of law. Their lust for power led them to shred any written constitution or traditions as they systematically imposed new regulations, laws, and executive orders geared primarily to centralize authority in the government as individual rights and liberties were extinguished. In due course, they and their cronies became the government, as the people were powerless to stop them.
The people of Germany, the most advanced society in continental Europe, or Italy in the first four years of the 1930s, would have found it incredible to imagine what became of those countries by 1945. They would not think it even remotely possible.
The history of the United States and its traditions of liberty and individual freedom should be a bulwark against the successful emergence of people like Obama and his cronies. Yet why are the media, or the opposition party, or the members of Congress or the judiciary not shouting from the highest hilltop and taking action to stop these power-grabs? Has this country enjoyed peace and prosperity so long that everyone is jaded and preoccupied with him- or herself, or in a self-induced stupor either ignoring what’s happening or saying that these unconstitutional steps are minor? Is it because Obama happens to have black skin and everyone is too intimidated by political correctness to speak? Or is it as it was in Germany, Italy, and Russia among many — a belief that the worst could never happen here?
I have seen and experienced the worst that man can offer, I am not intimidated, and I will say without reservation that Barack Obama and his cronies have the same mindset in their tactical approach, philosophy, and lust for power that was extant in Benito Mussolini and the Fascists in the early days of their regime.
The Marxist organizers of Occupy Wall Street are already training activists in Alinskyite intimidation tactics in preparation for an all-out class war this spring, including European-style street riots. They can provide Obama with not only a media distraction and platform for Leftist talking points, but also an excuse for more Executive power grabs.
This is not merely a president running for re-election. This is a wannabe dictator abusing the powers of the Executive branch to seize more power, fill every federal department and agency with radical minions who will use their offices to advance his agenda, and bully his opponents into submission.
The Executive Branch is officially being “community organized” into a re-election apparatus for permanently installing a radical Socialist regime. If the military were involved, we would be correctly recognizing this as a coup.
If Obama succeeds in 2012, we could very well find ourselves “fundamentally transformed” into a Banana Republic which holds sham elections only to legitimize the ruling party’s grip on power. The constitutional republic our founders gave us will be gone.
There are four reasons to hope. First, the military is not on Obama’s side. Second, Americans are well-armed, outspoken, and are used to these two crucial freedoms (arms and speech) which they will not give up without a fight.
Third, Obama can’t control the flow of ideas and information. Social media, blogs and conservative news outlets are now beating the corrupt “mainstream” media channels which the Left has come to dominate. If we were facing the same propaganda campaign and power grabs prior to the internet age, the outlook would be far more bleak. But in today’s information age, alternative media sources abound. Is it any wonder that Obama tried to control the message via his infamous “fishy list,” the “Attack Watch” snitch site, and his own ‘Ministry of Truth’?
Fourth, the majority of Americans are now awake and actively opposed to Obama’s agenda. The Left could never have anticipated the emergence of the Tea Party, in which everyday Americans – many of which had never been politically active in their lives – rose spontaneously to confront their government over bailouts and other abuses and assaults against our liberties.
In order to beat such overwhelming opposition, Obama is forced to resort to using ACORN activists, union takeovers, illegal immigrants and the suppression of voter ID laws to steal the election.
Americans must actively engage and make sure he doesn’t succeed. Nothing less than the future of our republic is at stake.
http://www.thoughtsfromaconservativemom.com/ .(by thoughts from a conservative mom)
Dictator-in-Chief: Obama’s Mask is Off
Obama’s Tyrannical Abuse of Power
How Team Obama Plans to Steal the Election of 2012
Will We Retire Obama – or the Constitution?
Congress Needs To Fight Back Against Obama’s Unconstitutional Recess Appointments
A Government Feeding On Its Own Citizens In Order To Keep The Party Going Just A Little Bit Longer
Federal Asset Seizures Rise, Netting Innocent With Guilty.”
Obama Justice Department confiscated property exceeded $2.5 billion in 2010
The Wall Street Journal
published a disturbing article entitled “Federal Asset Seizures Rise, Netting Innocent With Guilty.”
In the United States, there are hundreds of regulations which authorize dozens federal agencies to confiscate private property — homes, cars, bank accounts, gold, company shares, and even personal effects.
Ironically, most Americans still think that they live in a country where you’re innocent until proven guilty. Nothing could be further from the truth, and it’s just another clear example of how the US Constitution has become a worthless piece of toilet paper for the federal government.
The Fifth Amendment states that “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Tell that James Lieto, a New York businessman who was relieved of $392,000 when the armored car company used by his check-cashing firm was taken down by the FBI.
Lieto was innocent and not implicated in any wrongdoing, but the FBI took his money regardless as it just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Last October, another businessman named Raul Stio was suspected of wrongdoing by the Treasury Department. The government seized over $150,000 from his account, yet in the 10-months that followed, Stio has still not been charged with a crime.
US Government Asset Seizures on the Rise
According to Justice Department statistics, the total value of confiscated property exceeded $2.5 billion in 2010, more than double from five years ago. The average take per case? $166,000…and the vast majority of cases were non-criminal.
It’s truly staggering to think about how much can be taken away from you in the blink of an eye, all without any judicial oversight or right to a hearing.
The reason could be anything. Maybe you violated some arcane, meaningless regulation among the hundreds of thousands of pages of US Code (ignorance of the law is NOT an excuse!). Maybe you were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe they had no real reason at all other than mere suspicion.
One minute you have money, the next you’re completely locked out of your wealth and livelihood. They force YOU to prove to them that you aren’t guilty, but they take away any means you had to defend yourself.
This is the new reality in America. The entire country has become a nation of criminals — there isn’t a single man, woman, or child alive who is not in violation of some obscure regulation or cannot be ‘suspected’ of wrongdoing.
This is really just a form of cannibalism — a government feeding on its own citizens in order to keep the party going just a little bit longer. They’ll raise taxes, seize assets, take over pension funds, erode freedoms, start wars and send people to die — whatever it takes to maintain the status quo.
The Daily Reckoning Presents
Simon Black
You’d think the Obama administration is busy enough controlling the banks, insurance companies and automakers, but thanks to whistleblowers at the Department of the Interior, we now learn they’re planning to increase their control over energy-rich land in the West,” DeMint wrote. The measure would have negative effects, DeMint continued, like “halting job- creating activities like ranching, forestry, mining and energy development. Worse, this land grab would dry up tax revenue that’s essential for funding schools, firehouses and community centers.”"Apparently, Washington bureaucrats believe it’s more important to preserve grass and rocks for birdwatchers and backpackers than to keep these local economies thriving,” DeMint charged.
This land-grab tactic is another attempt on the part of President Obama, with Harry Reid’s acquiescence in the Senate, to appease left-wing environmental activists and stifle productive public land

