WOOOOOOO HOOOOOO

Maine's new Governor, Paul LePage, makes New Jersey's Chris Christie look and sound timid. He is not afraid to say what he thinks and every time his polling popularity rises.

 

He brought down the house at his inauguration when he shook his fist to the media box saying, "You're on notice! I've inherited a financially troubled State to run. Observe and cover what we do, but don't whine if I don't waste time responding to your every whim just for your amusement.”

 

During his campaign for Governor, he talked with commercial fishermen, struggling with federal fisheries rules. They complained that 0bama brought his family to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park for a long Labor Day holiday and found time to meet with union leaders, but wouldn't talk to the fishermen. LePage replied, "I'd tell him to go to Hell and get out of my State."  The major media crucified LePage, but he jumped six points in a pre-election poll.

 

The Martin Luther King incident was a political sandbag, which brought him national exposure. The main stream media raked him, but the word on the street was very positive.

 

The NAACP asked LePage to spend MLK Day visiting black inmates at Maine State Prison. He told them that he would meet with all inmates, regardless of race, if he were to visit the prison. The NAACP balked and then put out a news release claiming falsely that he refused to participate in any MLK events. He read it in the paper the next morning while he was driven to an event and could only note none of the reporters had called him for comment before running the NAACP release-based piece.

 

He arrived at that event and said to a TV camera, "If they want to play the race card on me they can kiss my ass," and reminded all he has an adopted black son from Jamaica and he attended the local MLK Breakfast every year he was mayor of Waterville.

 

He noted there are right and wrong ways to meet with the Governor, and put all special interests on notice that press releases, media leaks, and demonstrations would be the wrong way. He said any other group, which acted like the NAACP could expect to be at the bottom of the Governor's priority list.

 

The State employees union complained because he waited until 3 P.M. before closing State offices and facilities and sent non-emergency personnel home during the last blizzard. The former Governor would close offices for the day on a forecast before any snow. When the State closes for snow, it costs about $1 million in wages for no work.

 

Governor LePage was CEO of Marden's (a family bargain discount retail store chain) before the election.  He noted State employees getting off work early could still find lots of retail stores open to shop. So, he put the State employees on notice by announcing: "If Marden's is open, Maine is open!”

 

He told State employees: "We live in Maine in the winter, for heaven's sake, and should know how to drive in it. Otherwise, apply for a State job in Florida!”

 

Governor LePage's attitudes on laws is refreshing.

 

"The law is the law," said Governor LePage, "So if the US government determines it is against the law for the words ‘Under God’ to be on our money, then, so be it.  And, if the same government decides the ‘Ten Commandments’ are not to be used in or on a government installation, then, so be it.”

 

I say, "so be it, because I would like to be a law abiding US citizen.”

 

I say, "so be it, because I would like to think smarter people than I are in positions to make good decisions.”

 

“I would like to think that those people have the American public's best interests at heart.”

 

"But, you know what else I'd like?" asked he. "Since we can't pray to God, can't trust in God and cannot post Gods Commandments in Government buildings, I don't believe Government (Federal, State and Local) and its employees should participate in ‘Easter’ and ‘Christmas’ celebrations which honor the God that our government is eliminating from many facets of American life.”

 

”I'd like my mail delivered on ‘Christmas,’ ‘Good Friday,’ ‘Thanksgiving,’ and ‘Easter.’ After all, it's just another day.  I'd like the US Supreme Court to be in session on ‘Christmas,’ Good Friday,’ ‘Thanksgiving,’ and ‘Easter,’ as well as Sundays. After all, it's just another day.”

 

“I'd like the Senate and the House of Representatives to not have to worry about getting home for the ‘Christmas Break.’ After all it's just another day.”

 

“I'm thinking a lot of my taxpayer Dollars could be saved, if all government offices and services would work on ‘Christmas,’ ‘Good Friday,’ and ‘Easter.’ It shouldn't cost any overtime since those days are just like any other day of the week to a government that is trying to be ‘politically correct.’”

 

“In fact....I think our government should work on Sundays. After all it was set aside for worshipping God and our government says it should be just another day."

Contributed by John Dusak, Edited by Adrian Vance (“The Two Minute Conservative")

TJOC: Taken from "The Two Minute Conservative" and edited by me.

Contrasting Leaders

TJOC: Thanks to Adrian - "The Two Minute Conservative" and thepeoplescube.com

Putin vs. Obama

It's Past time - Congress Needs To Do Their Job.

The political philosopher Edmund Burke once remarked that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good folks to do nothing. A glaring example of the impending triumph of a constitutional evil that could be stopped by folks who have been largely silent is the tyranny coming from the White House. And the folks who can stop this and are doing nothing about it are our elected representatives in Congress.

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It established the three branches of government, and it delegated “all legislative powers” to Congress. American law rarely uses the word “all.” Yet the Framers chose that word precisely to confine law writing to Congress and to prevent a president from altering federal law by the selective manner of his enforcement of it and thereby effectively rewriting it.

The same Framers sought to guard against the same evils by compelling the president to swear at the commencement of his terms in office that he will “faithfully” enforce the laws.

These are dangerous times because this is a lawless presidency and a pliant Congress.

The use of the word “faithfully,” like the use of the word “all,” is intended to assure voters that they can count on a president who will do the job they hired him to do by enforcing federal laws, not evading them, and by enforcing them as Congress has written them, not as the president might wish them to be.

To be fair, many presidents, from the sainted Thomas Jefferson to the tyrannical FDR, put their own spin on federal law. Jefferson pardoned all those convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts because he hated a statute that punished free speech and he boasted that he would not enforce that part of the acts (they expired under his watch). And FDR when barely two weeks in office issued an executive order criminalizing the possession of gold because he foolishly thought it would stabilize the banks, until an adviser reminded him that only Congress can write criminal laws (which he then persuaded Congress to do). Yet in President Obama we have a president whose personal interferences in the enforcement of federal laws reveal his view that he can rewrite them and even nullify them.

Presidential law writing violates the presidential oath of office, steals power from Congress, disrespects an equal branch of the government and, when unchecked, accumulates such power in the executive branch that it effectively transforms the president into a menacing tyrant who rejects his constitutional obligations and limitations.

Obama bombed Libya without a declaration of war from Congress. This arguably brought down the Gadhafi government, which led to the current state of lawlessness there, which produced the environment in which our ambassador was murdered in Benghazi in 2012 and established a dangerous precedent because Congress remained officially silent.

He has told the 11 million illegal immigrants who are here and subject to deportation that if they comply with a new set of rules they will not be deported. The constitutional problem is that the president wrote those rules. Only Congress can craft such rules, and by the president's doing so, he has schooled immigrants in how to avoid compliance with federal law.

The president has used drones to kill Americans, but claims he has done so lawfully because he complied with secret rules that he crafted. Under the Constitution, if the president wants someone dead, he must afford the person due process or ask Congress to declare war on the country housing the person. No worries, he says -- he has followed the secret rules that he wrote to govern himself when deciding whom to kill.

The president’s agents now acknowledge that they spy on all of us all the time, including members of the judiciary and Congress. This, too, was done pursuant to a secret presidential directive, secretly approved by judges acting as clerks and not under the Constitution, and by a dozen members of Congress sworn to secrecy. No law authorized this, and the president won’t discuss it meaningfully, except to condemn its revelation.

And in a series of salvos that hit home, the president has modified the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) 29 times, by changing its various dates of effectiveness for some but not for others, by changing the meanings of terms for some but not for others, and even by diluting the signature obligation we all have to obtain the platinum insurance policies it commands for some and not for others. He has done all of this on his own, with no input from Congress. He has even threatened to veto any congressional effort to enact into law the very changes he alone has made.

His latest assault on the Constitution consists of a plan by the Department of Homeland Security, revealed earlier this week, effectively to follow us as we drive on public roads by photographing the license plate of all motor vehicles. This, too, was formulated without congressional approval or constitutional authority.

And while all of this is going on, Congress largely sits as a potted plant. In the Senate, Sens. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have complained long and loud, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will not permit legislation to address presidential lawlessness to reach the Senate floor. A few dozen Republicans in the House have complained, but Speaker John Boehner will not permit the House to address corrective legislation. Institutionally and officially, Congress is sleeping.

Can you imagine how a Democratic Congress would have reacted if Ronald Reagan had instructed the IRS to cease collecting capital gains taxes so as to spur economic activity; or how a Republican Congress would have reacted if Bill Clinton had instructed the IRS to add a 1-percent rate increase to the tax bills of billionaires so as to close a budget gap?

These are dangerous times because this is a lawless presidency and a pliant Congress. The president's willingness to violate the Constitution publicly calls into question his fitness for office. And that deafening silence from Capitol Hill manifests a spineless refusal to preserve constitutional government.

The whole purpose of dividing and separating governmental powers is the preservation of personal liberty by preventing the accumulation of too much power in one branch or, heaven forbid, in one person. Whoever permits this to take place lacks fidelity to the Constitution, is unworthy of holding governmental power in a free society and should be removed from office.

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

The Real Truth About Sarah Palin --

By Dewie Whetsell, "Alaskan Fisherman"

(As posted in comments on Greta's article referencing the MOVEON ad about Sarah Palin.)

The last 45 of my 66 years I've spent in a commercial fishing town in Alaska. I understand Alaska politics but never understood national politics well until this last year. Here's the breaking point: Neither side of the Palin controversy gets it.  It's not about persona, style, rhetoric, it's about doing things. Even Palin supporters never mention the things that I'm about to mention here.

1. Democrats forget when Palin was the Darling of the Democrats, because as soon as Palin took the Governor's office away from a fellow Republican and tough SOB, Frank Murkowski, she tore into the Republican's "Corrupt Bastards Club" (CBC) and sent them packing. Many of them are now residing in State housing and wearing orange jump suits The Democrats reacted by skipping around the yard, throwing confetti and singing, "la la la la" (well, you know how they are). Name another governor in this country that has ever done anything similar.

2. Now with the CBC gone, there were fewer Alaskan politicians to protect the huge, giant oil companies here. So she constructed and enacted a new system of splitting the oil profits called "ACES." Exxon (the biggest corporation in the world) protested and Sarah told them, "don't let the door hit you in the stern on your way out." They stayed, and Alaska residents went from being merely wealthy to being filthy rich. Of course, the other huge international oil companies meekly fell in line. Again, give me the name of any other governor in the country that has done anything similar.

3. The other thing she did when she walked into the governor's office is she got the list of State requests for federal funding for projects, known as "pork." She went through the list, took 85% of them and placed them in the "when-hell-freezes-over" stack. She let locals know that if we need something built, we'll pay for it ourselves. Maybe she figured she could use the money she got from selling the previous governor's jet because it was extravagant. Maybe she could use the money she saved by dismissing the governor's cook (remarking that she could cook for her own family), giving back the State vehicle issued to her, maintaining that she already had a car, and dismissing her State-provided security force (never mentioning - I imagine - that she's packing heat herself). I'm still waiting to hear the names of those other governors.

4. Now, even with her much-ridiculed "gosh and golly" mannerism, she also managed to put together a totally new approach to getting a natural gas pipeline built which will be the biggest private construction project in the history of North America. No one else could do it although they tried. If that doesn't impress you, then you're trying too hard to be unimpressed while watching her do things like this while baking up a batch of brownies with her other hand.

5. For 30 years, Exxon held a lease to do exploratory drilling at a location called Point Thompson. They made excuses the entire time why they couldn't start drilling. In truth they were holding it as an investment. No governor for 30 years could make them get started. Then, she told them she was revoking their lease and kicking them out. They protested and threatened court action. She shrugged and reminded them that she knew the way to the court house. They relented and Alaska won again.

6. President Obama wants the nation to be on 25% renewable resources for electricity by 2025 Sarah went to the legislature and submitted her plan for Alaska to be at 50% renewable by 2025. We are already at 25%. I can give you more specifics about things done, as opposed to style and persona. Everybody wants to be cool, sound cool, and look cool. But that's just a cover-up. I'm still waiting to hear from liberals the names of other governors who can match what mine did in two and a half years. I won't be holding my breath.

By the way, she was content to return to Alaska after the national election and go to work, but the haters wouldn't let her. Now these adolescent screechers are obviously not scuba divers. And no one ever told them what happens when you continually jab and pester a barracuda. Without warning, it will spin around and tear your face off. Should have known better.

The truth about Sarah Palin sends the media, along with the Democrat party, into a wild uncontrolled frenzy to discredit her.

On the other hand....

First Lady Michelle Obama's Servant List and Pay Scale….

1.  $172,200 - Sher, Susan (Chief Of Staff)

2.  $140,000 - Frye, Jocelyn C. (Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Policy and Projects For The First Lady)

3.  $113,000 - Rogers, Desiree G. (Special Assistant to the President and White House Social Secretary)

4.  $102,000 - Johnston, Camille Y. (Special Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the First Lady)

5.  $100,000 - Winter, Melissa E. (Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)

6.   $90,000 - Medina , David S. (Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)

7.   $84,000 - Lelyveld, Catherine M (Director and Press Secretary to the First Lady)

8.   $75,000 - Starkey, Frances M. (Director of Scheduling and Advance for the First Lady)

9.   $70,000 - Sanders, Trooper (Deputy Director of Policy and Projects for the First Lady)

10. $65,000 - Burnough, Erinn J. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)

11. $64,000 - Reinstein, Joseph B. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary)

12. $62,000 - Goodman, Jennifer R. (Deputy Director of Scheduling and Events Coordinator for The First Lady)

13. $60,000 - Fitts, Alan O. (Deputy Director of Advance and Trip Director for the First Lady) 

14. $57,500 - Lewis, Dana M. (Special Assistant and Personal Aide to the First Lady)

15. $52,500 - Mustaphi, Semonti M. (Associate Director and Deputy Press Secretary to the First Lady)

16. $50,000 - Jarvis, Kristen E. (Special-2Assistant for Scheduling and Traveling Aide to the First Lady)

17. $45,000 - Lechtenberg, Tyler A. (Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady)

18. $43,000 - Tubman, Samantha (Deputy Associate Director, Social Office)

19. $40,000 - Boswell, Joseph J. (Executive Assistant to the Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)

20. $36,000 - Armbruster, Sally M. (Staff Assistant to the Social Secretary)

21. $35,000 - Bookey, Natalie (Staff Assistant)

22. $35,000 - Jackson, Deilia A. (Deputy Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady) (This is community organizing at its finest.)

Michelle Obama requires more than twenty attendants? (Why is that?)

There has NEVER been anyone in the White House at any time who has created such an army of staffers whose sole duties are the facilitation of the First Lady's social life. One wonders why she needs so much help, at taxpayer expense, even Hillary, only had three; Jackie Kennedy one; Laura Bush one; and before Mamie Eisenhower social help came from the President's own pocket.

Note: This does not include makeup artist Ingrid Grimes-Miles, 49, and "First Hairstylist" Johnny Wright, 31, both of whom traveled aboard Air Force One to Europe.

These salaries add up to SIX MILLION, THREE HUNDRED SIXTY FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS ($6,364,000) FOR THE 4 YEARS OF OFFICE – are we or are we not in a recession? 

Apparently IT'S OK TO SPEND WILDLY WHEN IT'S NOT YOUR OWN MONEY.

CanadaFreePress.com

Contributed by John Dusak, Edited by Adrian Vance, from “The Two Minute Conservative”

You Are What — and How — You Read

by Rosaria Butterfield

I just returned from a well-known (and well-heeled) Christian college, where roughly 100 demonstrators gathered on the chapel steps to protest my address on the grounds that my testimony was dangerous. Later that day, I sat down with these beloved students, to listen, to learn, and to grieve. Homosexuality is a sin, but so is homophobia; the snarled composition of our own sin and the sin of others weighs heavily on us all. I came away from that meeting realizing—again—how decisively our reading practices shape our worldview. This may seem a quirky observation, but I know too well the world these students inhabit. I recall its contours and crevices, risks and perils, reading lists and hermeneutical allegiances. You see, I'm culpable. The blood is on my hands. The world of LGBTQ activism on college campuses is the world that I helped create. I was unfaltering in fidelity: the umbrella of equality stretching to embrace my lesbian identity, and the world that emerged from it held salvific potential. I bet my life on it, and I lost.

When I started to read the Bible it was to critique it, embarking on a research project on the Religious Right and their hatred against queers, or, at the time, people like me. A neighbor and pastor, Ken Smith, became my friend. He executed the art of dying: turning over the pages of your heart in the shadow of Scripture, giving me a living testimony of the fruit of repentance. He was a good reader—thorough, broad, and committed. Ken taught me that repentance was done unto life, and that abandoning the religion of self-righteousness was step number one. The Holy Spirit equipped me to practice what Ken preached, and one day, my heart started to beat to the tempo of my Lord's heart. A supernatural imposition, to be sure, but it didn't stop there.

I'd believed gender and sexuality were socially constructed and that I was the mistress of my own destiny and desire. Through the lens of experience, this was self-evident. I'd built my whole house on the foundation of "gender trouble" (the title of Judith Butler's book), and then stood by, helpless, as it burned to the ground. But the Bible was getting under my skin. Hours each day I poured over this text, arguing at first, then contemplating, and eventually surrendering. Three principles became insurmountable on my own terms: the trinitarian God's goodness, the trinitarian God's holiness, and the authority of Scripture. And then, Romans 1 nailed me to the cross: "claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man. . . . Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts . . . because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie. . . . For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions" (Rom. 1:22-26).

Homosexuality, then, is not the unpardonable sin, I noticed. It is not the worst of all sins, not for God. It's listed here in the middle of the passage, as one of many parts of this journey that departs from recognizing God as our author. Homosexuality isn't causal, it's consequential. From God's point of view, homosexuality is an identity-rooted ethical outworking of a worldview transgression inherited by all through original sin. It's so original to the identity of she who bears it that it feels like it precedes you; and as a vestige of original sin, it does. We are born this way. But the bottom line hit me between the eyes: homosexuality, whether it feels natural or not, is a sin. God's challenge was clear: do I accept his verdict of my sin at the cross of Christ, or do I argue with him? Do I repent, even of a sin that doesn't feel like a sin but normal, not-bothering-another-soul kind of life, or do I take up Satan's question to Eve ("Did God really say?") and hurl it back in the face of God?

I had taught, studied, read, and lived a different notion of homosexuality, and for the first time in my life, I wondered if I was wrong.

Three Unbiblical Points

As I write and speak today, 14 years have elapsed since my queer activist days. I'm a new creature in Christ, and my testimony is still like iodine on starch. I'm sensitive to three unbiblical points of view Christian communities harbor when they address the issue of Christianity and homosexuality. Everywhere I go, I confront all three.

1. The Freudian position. This position states same-sex attraction is a morally neutral and fixed part of the personal makeup and identity of some, which some are "gay Christians" and others are not. It's true that temptation isn't sin (though what you do with it may be); but that doesn't give us biblical license to create an identity out of a temptation pattern. To do so is a recipe for disaster. This position comes directly from Sigmund Freud, who effectually replaced the soul with sexual identity as the singular defining characteristic of humanity. God wants our whole identities, not partitioned ones.

2. The revisionist heresy. This position declares that the Bible's witness against homosexuality, replete throughout the Old and New Testaments, results from misreading’s, mistranslations, and misapplications, and that Scripture doesn't prohibit monogamous homosexual sexual relations, thereby embracing antinomianism and affirming gay marriage.

3. The reparative therapy heresy. This position contends a primary goal of Christianity is to resolve homosexuality through heterosexuality, thus failing to see that repentance and victory over sin are God's gifts and failing to remember that sons and daughters of the King can be full members of Christ's body and still struggle with sexual temptation. This heresy is a modern version of the prosperity gospel. Name it. Claim it. Pray the gay away.

Indeed, if you only read modern (post 19th-century) texts, it would rightly seem these are three viable options, not heresies. But I beg to differ.

Worldview matters. And if we don't reach back before the 19th century, back to the Bible itself, the Westminster divines, and the Puritans, we will limp along, defeated. Yes, the Holy Spirit gives you a heart of flesh and the mind to understand and love the Lord and his Word. But without good reading practices even this redeemed heart grows flabby, weak, shaky, and ill. You cannot lose your salvation, but you can lose everything else.

Enter John Owen. Thomas Watson. Richard Baxter. Thomas Brooks. Jeremiah Burroughs. William Gurnall. The Puritans. They didn't live in a world more pure than ours, but they helped create one that valued biblical literacy. Owen's work on indwelling sin is the most liberating balm to someone who feels owned by sexual sin. You are what (and how) you read. J. C. Ryle said it takes the whole Bible to make a whole Christian. Why does sin lurk in the minds of believers as a law, demanding to be obeyed? How do we have victory if sin's tentacles go so deep, if Satan knows our names and addresses? We stand on the ordinary means of grace: Scripture reading, prayer, worship, and the sacraments. We embrace the covenant of church membership for real accountability and community, knowing that left to our own devices we'll either be led astray or become a danger to those we love most. We read our Bibles daily and in great chunks. We surround ourselves with a great cloud of witnesses who don't fall prey to the same worldview snares we and our post-19th century cohorts do.

In short, we honor God with our reading diligence. We honor God with our reading sacrifice. If you watch two hours of TV and surf the internet for three, what would happen if you abandoned these habits for reading the Bible and the Puritans? For real. Could the best solution to the sin that enslaves us be just that simple and difficult all at the same time? We create Christian communities that are safe places to struggle because we know sin is also "lurking at [our] door." God tells us that sin's "desire is for you, but you shall have mastery over it" (Gen. 4:7). Sin isn't a matter of knowing better, it isn't (only) a series of bad choices—and if it were, we wouldn't need a Savior, just need a new app on our iPhone.

We also take heart, remembering the identity of our soul and thus rejecting the Freudian ideal that sexual identity competes with the soul. And we encourage other image-bearers to reflect the Original in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, not in the vapid reductionism that claims image-of-God theology means he loves you just way you are, just the way your sin manifests itself. Long hours traveling the road paved by Bible reading, theological study, and a solid grasp on hermeneutical fallacies gets you to a place where as sons and daughters of the King, people tempted in all manner of sin, we echo Owen: "The law grace writes in our hearts must answer to the law written in God's Word." We also take heart, remembering that God faithfully walks this journey with us, that victory over sin comes in two forms: liberty from it and humility regarding its stronghold. But it comes, truly, just as he will.

* * * * *

Note from Manhattan Declaration: During The Gospel Coalition Women's Conference, June 27 to 29 in Orlando, Rosaria Butterfield will lead two workshops: "You Are What You Read" and "Homosexuality and the Christian Faith." Visit TGC.org/2014 to find more information on the conference and register.

Obama Abandoning the Rule of Law

"That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want." - President Obama at Monticello, February 10, 2014

The administration’s catastrophic incompetence implementing Obamacare has done far worse than simply cripple our health system. It is undermining the very foundation of our society, too. It’s eroding the rule of law.

We are a nation that was founded on the rule of law. The king’s violation of the rule of law, in fact, was one of the chief justifications for the American Revolution. And for most of our history, we understood that clear rules applied predictably are what stand between freedom and an arbitrary government that protects its friends and punishes its enemies.

This commitment to limited government under the rule of law was a big part of what made America the leading nation in the world. We provided the freest, most stable place on the planet for innovators to innovate, a fair playing field with fair rules. As a result we saw the greatest leap in quality of life and economic growth in history.

The Obama administration, however, has led the way in dismantling one of America’s greatest strengths. After passing unworkable health care legislation, it is slowly replacing the rule of law with capricious rule by bureaucrats. Evidently it views this institutional damage as preferable to the political damage that would result from admitting its policies have failed.

So untethered from legal authority, the administration has made change after change to Obamacare without returning to Congress for approval. The President and his appointed staff are simply making up key provisions of the law as they go along.

The most recent example came this week, when the administration announced it would again delay the employer mandate. Now businesses with 50 to 99 employees will not have to comply with the law until 2016, and larger companies, too, will be getting an extralegal break for another year. The mandate applies to the employers of 72 percent of the country, so this is not a minor change. It’s a rewrite of a fundamental component of the law.

This is hardly the first time President Obama has modified its signature policy initiative illegally, however. In addition to its decision last year to postpone the employer mandate for all of 2014, the administration extended the individual mandate until the end of March. And without any legal authority, it gave exemptions to individuals whose plans had been cancelled. It delayed the exchange for small businesses by a full year, as well, and postponed the cap on out-of-pocket costs for consumers until 2015. And most cynical of all, it pushed off the 2014 enrollment period for the Obamacare exchanges until after the midterm elections this fall.

Many Americans might be inclined to give the Obama administration a break as it struggles to implement a complex policy. We cannot ignore, however, that the administration is making many of these illegal modifications for nakedly political reasons. President Obama is trying to delay the most painful effects of the law until after election day. But make no mistake: he still intends to inflict the pain--he just prefers to do it after it’s too late for voters to register their disapproval at the polls.

Using executive orders to get around working with Congress is also extremely unpopular with voters. A recent Fox News poll found 74 percent of Americans oppose Obama circumventing Congress this way.

The President’s improvisational rulemaking for political purposes sets a terrible precedent. Democrats would never tolerate this behavior from a Republican chief executive, and they’d be right to object. They shouldn’t accept it from a president of their own party, either. It does real and lasting damage.

As Americans, most of us work hard and play by the rules. It’s only fair for the government class to do the same.

Your Friend,
Newt

TJOC: Another one from Newt. When will Congress make Obama follow the rule of law?

Corruption - Coruption - Corruption

The Constitution provides that the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors.” In other words, no ambassador can take up his or her post without first winning the approval of the Senate.

The corruption of the nomination of ambassadors under President Obama is now so bad that the Senate must act. No Senator from either party can in good conscience consent to appointing ambassadors who are ignorant and unqualified.

The decline of America’s representatives abroad takes place in a much larger context of the Obama administration.

President Obama first ran for his office with a foreign policy platform rooted, essentially, in himself. He assured Americans that his ascension to the presidency alone would transform the United States’ image abroad.

In a way, he was right. Although initially rewarded for his election with a Nobel Peace Prize, the President quickly found his naïveté thrown back in his face.

To his video offering the Iranian regime a “new beginning,” the dictatorship responded with a shrug and five more years developing nuclear weapons.

The same year, the Olympic Committee spurned Obama’s in-person pitch to host the 2016 summer games in Chicago.

And the Russian “reset” has only emboldened Vladimir Putin, who seems to take particular pleasure in sticking his thumb in America’s eye. Between his Syria op-ed in the New York Times, granting asylum to Edward Snowden, and, most recently, intercepting and publicly posting the private phone call of a senior State Department official, Putin has had plenty of opportunities, and he’s perfecting the art.

It turns out that the world is far too complicated for one personality to manage. But more than five years into the Obama administration, the President still isn’t approaching foreign policy seriously.

The attitude was obvious recently at the confirmation hearings for several of the President’s nominees to be ambassadors. The group was so unqualified and ignorant of the countries to which they’d been appointed envoys that video of their testimony went viral on YouTube.

Do you know how bad it has to be for ambassadors’ confirmation hearings to go viral on YouTube?

Here’s how bad: The President’s nominee to be ambassador to Norway said he’d never been there, referred to the country as having a president (it doesn’t--it has a prime minister), and said the government had been “quick to denounce” a faction that is in fact part of its own coalition. (Perhaps the Norwegians are now rethinking that Nobel Peace Prize, if they weren’t already.)

Obama’s pick as ambassador to Hungary was apparently incapable of giving a coherent answer when Senator John McCain asked her, ““What are our strategic interests in Hungary?”

And in the same hearing, the President’s nominee as ambassador to Argentina conceded he’d never been there, either. “I haven’t had the opportunity yet to be there,” the man said. “I’ve traveled pretty extensively around the world. But I haven’t yet had a chance.”

Obama's choice for ambassador to Iceland was in the same situation. He'd never been to his post country either.

How did such obviously unqualified people get themselves appointed ambassadors? It’s no great shock: they donated and bundled lots of money for Obama and the Democrats. About $1.3 million in the case of our next ambassador to Norway, $1.6 million for Iceland, and at least half a million each for Hungary and Argentina.

America’s new ambassador to China, on the other hand, former Senator Max Baucus, didn’t get his post as a fundraiser--he got it for resigning his seat to clear the way for Montana’s Democratic governor to appoint his replacement and give the Dems a better chance of holding onto the Senate this fall. In Senator Baucus’s confirmation hearing, he responded to a question about an important matter of national security with the confession, “I’m no real expert on China...”

This is a dangerous level of corruption. Certainly other presidents have made appointments for less-than-altruistic reasons, but none in recent history has done it so frequently as President Obama.

And more importantly, these are major countries. The President isn’t selling the ambassadorship to Barbados. He’s selling the ambassadorships to NATO allies and to one of the largest countries in the western hemisphere. And he’s picking an ambassador to China--the largest country in the world--out of domestic political calculation.

That’s a terrifyingly frivolous attitude to take with our foreign relations, one that deserves to be mocked around the world. And it’s being mocked here at home as well: Jon Stewart excoriated the Democrats on the Daily Show this week for the corruption. So did the Washington Post and L.A. Times editorial boards.

The Senate has an absolute constitutional obligation to advise and consent on ambassadorial appointments, and Americans should demand that their senators use that authority now. The Senate must repudiate every one of the nominees who showed themselves unfit to represent the United States.

Your Friend,
Newt

TJOC: The House and the Senate Must Stop Obama's Diplomatic Corruption. I believe they won't impeach him because of the racist back lash from our Black Community.