DEMOCRATS SEEK TO DIVERT ATTENTION FROM KAGAN TO ROBERTS

Pardon us for asking, but was that really Elena Kagan's Supreme Court confirmation hearing this week? We're double checking because Senate Democrats seemed preoccupied with refighting the 2005 nomination of Chief Justice John Roberts.

"There is such a thing as legislating from the bench," declared Al Franken, who is playing the role of Senator from Minnesota. "And it is practiced repeatedly by the Roberts Court, where it has cut in only one direction: in favor of powerful corporate interests, and against the rights of individual Americans." The list of Democrats who devoted a chunk of their camera time to deplore the Chief included Patrick Leahy, Sheldon Whitehouse, Ben Cardin and Chuck Schumer, rather like a political campaign.

Which it is. By decrying the Court's record, Democrats hope to intimidate the Justices away from future decisions that could derail liberal priorities, notably ObamaCare. As one of the most dramatic expansions of federal power since the 1930s or 1960s, the law is already facing challenges from 20 states on the grounds that its individual mandate to buy health insurance is unconstitutional.

Contrary to the imaginings of Messrs. Franken & Co., the Roberts Court is really a centrist Court that swings left and right depending on the subject. It also routinely decides cases on narrow grounds that pull a larger majority. In the 2006 term, some 70% of the Court's cases were decided unanimously, and this term saw 56% of the cases decided either unanimously or by an 8-1 margin. While that number has ebbed and flowed depending on the term, there's no question Justice Roberts has proven to be a pragmatic jurist who is wary of overturning precedents without ample legal and historical justification.

On property rights this term, the Court ruled 8-0 against property owners in a case called Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida. On antitrust law, it ruled unanimously against the National Football League in a case that would have significantly loosened antitrust restrictions. In one of the term's final decisions, Justice Roberts himself voted with the Court's liberal bloc in a case that ruled out life sentences for juvenile criminals in non-murder cases.

The prominent 5-4 exceptions to the rule this term are the ones that now haunt liberal dreams, Citizens United v. FEC and McDonald v. Chicago. In both instances, the court took on pet political causes of the left—campaign finance reform and gun control, respectively—and dispatched them, but neither decision comes within whacking distance of judicial "activism."

In the two guns cases, McDonald and its prequel, 2008's District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court was grappling for the first time since the 19th century with whether the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual right to bear arms. Citizens United likewise restored the First Amendment's guarantee of a right to free speech by overturning some of Congress's most egregious limits on campaign spending. A few months later, the same gang of supposedly marauding ideologues declined to hear a challenge to soft-money limits brought by the Republican National Committee.

Also singled out for Democratic fear and loathing was the Court's record on business cases, including Stoneridge Investment Partners v. Scientific Atlanta. In that decision, the Court declined to open up a vast new avenue for class-action suits against companies under the novel theory of "scheme liability." But in business cases too, the Court often ruled unanimously on narrow grounds, as it did in the recent trio of decisions limiting, but not discarding, the oft-abused statute on "honest services" fraud.

In their pique, Congressional Democrats are following President Obama, who took out his own billy club during this year's State of the Union address, criticizing the Court's decision in Citizens United as the Justices sat in front of him as a captive audience. In nominating Ms. Kagan, Mr. Obama pointedly praised her for defending "the rights of shareholders and ordinary Americans against unscrupulous corporations."

With midterm elections ahead, Democrats want to fire up their liberal base against the Roberts Court while threatening the Justices with more bludgeons if they dare question the Constitutional affront of ObamaCare. It's not the first time lawmakers have tried to work the judicial refs and poison public opinion against them, but with any luck it might backfire. Justices know that criticism goes with their job, but we doubt they take well to being bullied.

RECONFIRMING JOHN ROBERTS

Editorial: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

02 JULY 10

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

BARRY SOETORO aka BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
IS A
USURPER

He is not eligible to be
President of the United States
because he is not a Natural Born Citizen
as required by Article Two, Section One, Clause Five of the United States Constitution.

This is a fact REGARDLESS of
where he was born (Mombassa, Hawaii, Chicago, Mecca or Mars).

He is not eligible
because he was not born of
TWO PARENTS
BOTH OF WHOM WERE UNITED STATES CITIZENS
AT THE TIME OF HIS BIRTH
as required by the Constitution.

Barack Hussein Obama Jr. is not eligible to be President of the United States because – according to public admissions made by him – his “birth status was governed” by the United Kingdom. Obama further admits he was a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at birth.
Since Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was, if born in the state of Hawaii, a dual citizen, who – according to his own State Department – owed allegiance to the Queen of England and United Kingdom at the time of his birth – he cannot therefore be a “natural born” citizen of the US according to Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the US Constitution.
His father, who did not live in the United States for more than a couple of years, was a subject/ciitizen
of Kenya/Great Britain at the time of Barack’s birth and afterwards, AND further, as Barack himself admitted on his website during the 2008 campaign, Barack was therefore born SUBJECT TO THE GOVERNANCE OF GREAT BRITAIN.

Here is a direct quote from Obama's "Fight the Smears/Fact Check" 2008 website:

‘When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children…’ “

The FACT that he was not born of TWO US CITIZEN PARENTS is all that matters. The question of his birth certificate is a distraction (a distraction fostered by Obama’s supporters?) that ought not to occupy our time and resources. BUT if you are really convinced of the value of the COLB (certificate of live birth) that Obama posted on his website, see this:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9830547/Sun-Yatsen-Certification-of-Live-Birth-in-Hawaii

Also, it is possible that he is not a United States
citizen at all through his mother if he was born in Kenya, as three witnesses have testified. The reason is because his mother could not pass her US citizenship on to her son because she did not live continuously in the United States for five full years after her fourteenth birthday as required by the US immigration law in effect during that period of time.

Check it out:
http://www.TheObamaFile.com/ObamaNaturalBorn.htm
Also, an excellent introductory primer on Obama Presiidential Eligibility is to be found at:
http://people.mags.net/tonchen/birthers.htm

His usurpation can only be corrected (1) by Congress through his Impeachment and Removal [something which will never happen in a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid], or (2) it can be
corrected by his resignation, which could happen if the public presssure on him to resign becomes great enough, or (3) by his removal by the United States Supreme Court affirming a Quo Warranto decision of the United States Federal District Court for the District of Columbia [which process Attorney General Eric Holder would never allow to even begin] or (4) by an amendment to the Constitution,
which will never happen because that again would require the agreement of a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid.
_

HERE IS THE QUESTION WHICH EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN SHOULD BE ASKING HIS OR HER CONGRESSMAN AND SENATORS

“During the 2008 election, then Senator Obama published a statement at his website which said that his birth status was ‘governed’ by the British Nationality Act of 1948. Can you please tell me, and the American people, how a person governed - at birth - by British law, can be a natural born citizen of the United States and thus constitutionally eligible to be President of the United States?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FlEbBZLzo0

If you really want to understand the difference between the technical terms natural born citizen, native born citizen, naturalized citizen and just plain citizen, go to:

http://www.greschak.com/essays/natborn/index.htm

And if you really want to understand why it is necessary for a man to be a natural born citizen of the United States in order to be President of the United States, read the essay by Leo Donofrio at:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=134881



And if you did not know that in additional to Obama being ineligible to be president because of his nationality, did you
know that he is a Muslim:


http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tCAffMSWSzY#t=28

LEO RUGIENS

THE FOREIGN POLICY OF OBAMA IS MAKING NUCLEAR WAR INEVITABLE

CONTAINING YOURSELF

by Mark Steyn Steyn on the World

Wednesday, 30 June 2010

HAPPY WARRIOR from National Review The other day, noting Bret Stephens’ analysis in Commentary as to why Iran cannot be contained, Jonah Goldberg made a very shrewd throwaway aside: “Arguments like this tend to get ignored not because they aren’t persuasive, but because they are,” he said. “The political and psychological costs of accepting the premise are too high. So, denial inevitably triumphs.” And thus our Iran “policy”: There will be no US military strike. There will be no international sanctions regime. And so the mullahs will go nuclear, because letting them go nuclear requires least of us – and there will always be scholars and experts ready to justify our inertia as farsighted realpolitik. Thus, the rehabilitation of “containment”: That we can do. Iran, says Zbigniew Brzezinski, “may be dangerous, assertive and duplicitous, but there is nothing in their history to suggest they are suicidal.” Dr Brzezinski is a man who has been reliably wrong about everything that matters for decades and whose decision to route American support for the Afghan resistance through the malign double-act of Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki and Pakistan’s ISI has had consequences we live with to this day. He is the master of unrealpolitik, and so naturally his is now the new conventional wisdom: Iran is not “suicidal”. Therefore, it can be contained. Even a non-suicidal Iran is presumably intending to derive some benefit from its nuclear status. Entirely rational leverage would include: Controlling the supply of Gulf oil, setting the price, and determining the customers; getting vulnerable emirates such as Kuwait and Qatar to close US military bases; and turning American allies in Europe into de facto members of the non-aligned movement. Whatever deterrent effect it might have on first use or proliferation, there is no reason to believe any “containment” strategy would prevent Iran accomplishing its broader strategic goals. Besides, as Bret Stephens points out, Soviet containment was introduced a couple of years after we’d nuked Japan. Iranian “containment” would follow years of inaction, in which the ayatollahs have been allowed to nuclearize in full view of the world and with the acquiescence of many American allies. Unlike 60 years ago, there is a basic credibility issue: Despite President Obama’s line that Iran is “isolated”, it’s just been elected to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and its president in the last year alone has been received in China, Venezuela, Turkey, Denmark, Brazil, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Senegal, The Gambia and various other places most of which are at least nominally American allies. If he were to be any more “isolated”, Ahmadinejad might get the occasional night at home to wash his hair. So “containment” seems unlikely to impede any non-suicidal moves by Iran. But let’s flip Dr Brzezinski’s point around: An American might conclude that Iran isn’t suicidal. But can the Iranians make the same confident claim about America? After all, we’ve just let them go nuclear – not under cover of darkness, as Pakistan did, but in slow motion and in open contempt of the US and its European negotiators. Why would you do that? Iran doesn’t observe even the minimal courtesies of mutually hostile states: It seizes foreign embassies at home, and blows them up on the other side of the world; it kidnaps the sailors of permanent members of the UN Security Council in international waters; it seeds terrorist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, and backs terrorist attacks all over the world. And it pays no price for any of this. If you can’t rouse yourself to prevent a rogue state with a thirty-year consistent pattern of behavior getting nukes, what else won’t you rouse yourself for? On September 10th 2001, America was the preeminent nuclear power in the world. We forget now that the following morning’s attack was aimed not only at the symbols of US military and financial power but also at the heart of government itself. A combination of the vagaries of scheduling and the bravery of Flight 93’s passengers saved us, on a day of horror, from the additional burden of a Robert C Byrd presidency or some such. Osama bin Laden set out to decapitate his enemy - and Mullah Omar, al-Qaeda’s patron in Afghanistan, cheerfully signed off on it. Presumably, he’s not suicidal, either. Yet he made a calculation about the American response that concluded the attack would be worth it. Remember how quickly the objections to retaliating against Afghanistan began? Suppose there was a “nuclear transfer” to Sudan or Hamas, and Iran was most likely responsible: Do you think an Obamafied Washington would take action? Or would they express “grave concern” and go to the UN to get a resolution? I think we know the answer. Now let’s suppose one of those nuclear transfers detonates somewhere or other and kills tens of thousands of people, but the provenance isn’t 100 per cent clear: Bombing raids on Tehran? Or back to the Security Council? You might not be so sure of the answer, but I’ll bet, after the last few years, Iran is. How about the big one? The ayatollahs nuke Tel Aviv and puts Israel out of business. What’s the US going to do? Flatten Iran? Or hit a couple of cities and leave it at that? Iran believes we are a hollow superpower. It concluded from our behavior that it could go nuclear with impunity. And, whatever the unrealpolitik crowd tells itself, it has now concluded it can be nuclear with impunity. In a supposedly unipolar world, the planet’s wealthiest states, from Norway to New Zealand, can project no meaningful force, while moribund basket cases nuke up. That sounds like a transitional phase, don’t you think? <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> BARRY SOETORO aka BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS A USURPER He is not eligible to be President of the United States because he is not a Natural Born Citizen as required by Article Two, Section One, Clause Five of the United States Constitution. This is a fact REGARDLESS of where he was born (Mombassa, Hawaii, Chicago, Mecca or Mars). He is not eligible because he was not born of TWO PARENTS BOTH OF WHOM WERE UNITED STATES CITIZENS AT THE TIME OF HIS BIRTH as required by the Constitution. Barack Hussein Obama Jr. is not eligible to be President of the United States because – according to public admissions made by him – his “birth status was governed” by the United Kingdom. Obama further admits he was a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at birth. Since Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was, if born in the state of Hawaii, a dual citizen, who – according to his own State Department – owed allegiance to the Queen of England and United Kingdom at the time of his birth – he cannot therefore be a “natural born” citizen of the US according to Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the US Constitution. His father, who did not live in the United States for more than a couple of years, was a subject/ciitizen of Kenya/Great Britain at the time of Barack’s birth and afterwards, AND further, as Barack himself admitted on his website during the 2008 campaign, Barack was therefore born SUBJECT TO THE GOVERNANCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. Here is a direct quote from Obama's "Fight the Smears/Fact Check" 2008 website: ‘When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children…’ “ The FACT that he was not born of TWO US CITIZEN PARENTS is all that matters. The question of his birth certificate is a distraction (a distraction fostered by Obama’s supporters?) that ought not to occupy our time and resources. BUT if you are really convinced of the value of the COLB (certificate of live birth) that Obama posted on his website, see this: http://www.scribd.com/doc/9830547/Sun-Yatsen-Certification-of-Live-Birth-in-Hawaii Also, it is possible that he is not a United States citizen at all through his mother if he was born in Kenya, as three witnesses have testified. The reason is because his mother could not pass her US citizenship on to her son because she did not live continuously in the United States for five full years after her fourteenth birthday as required by the US immigration law in effect during that period of time. Check it out: http://www.TheObamaFile.com/ObamaNaturalBorn.htm Also, an excellent introductory primer on Obama Presiidential Eligibility is to be found at: http://people.mags.net/tonchen/birthers.htm His usurpation can only be corrected (1) by Congress through his Impeachment and Removal [something which will never happen in a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid], or (2) it can be corrected by his resignation, which could happen if the public presssure on him to resign becomes great enough, or (3) by his removal by the United States Supreme Court affirming a Quo Warranto decision of the United States Federal District Court for the District of Columbia [which process Attorney General Eric Holder would never allow to even begin] or (4) by an amendment to the Constitution, which will never happen because that again would require the agreement of a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid. _ HERE IS THE QUESTION WHICH EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN SHOULD BE ASKING HIS OR HER CONGRESSMAN AND SENATORS “During the 2008 election, then Senator Obama published a statement at his website which said that his birth status was ‘governed’ by the British Nationality Act of 1948. Can you please tell me, and the American people, how a person governed - at birth - by British law, can be a natural born citizen of the United States and thus constitutionally eligible to be President of the United States?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FlEbBZLzo0 If you really want to understand the difference between the technical terms natural born citizen, native born citizen, naturalized citizen and just plain citizen, go to: http://www.greschak.com/essays/natborn/index.htm And if you really want to understand why it is necessary for a man to be a natural born citizen of the United States in order to be President of the United States, read the essay by Leo Donofrio at: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=134881 And if you did not know that in additional to Obama being ineligible to be president because of his nationality, did you know that he is a Muslim: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tCAffMSWSzY#t=28 LEO RUGIENS

CRAZY IDEA: OBAMA SUES ARIZONA FOR DOING WHAT HE FAILS TO DO, PROTECT AMERICA

Illustration: Immigration by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times

......................................................................

The Obama administration has announced that it intends to sue Arizona over its new law that will allow the state to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration laws. The stated goal of the lawsuit is to block implementation of the popular Arizona law before it takes effect on July 29. The unstated - but perhaps more important - objective of the administration is to intimidate other states where similar legislation is being considered.

The Obama administration's position on immigration policy is clear. The administration's goal is a sweeping amnesty for millions of illegal aliens and the virtual dismantling of all meaningful immigration-related enforcement. Not only is immigration enforcement not a priority for the current administration, but it is a threat to their overall political strategy that must be attacked aggressively.

A lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice is no idle threat. This administration is working in concert with amnesty advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union to try to make Arizona's defense as burdensome and costly as possible. Even if Arizona ultimately prevails - as many legal scholars believe the state will - victory is unlikely to come swiftly or cheaply.

For Arizona, which is saddled with an estimated $2.6 billion a year fiscal burden as a result of the federal government's refusal to enforce immigration laws, the cost of mounting a legal defense may be worth it. The problem of illegal immigration has become so acute in Arizona that residents seem ready to stand behind state leaders even as the costs of a legal defense mount.

In filing suit against Arizona, the administration is delivering an only slightly veiled and deeply troubling message to other states: Enforcing immigration laws locally may be right for your state; it may be popular with the voters; you even may prevail in the end. But we would rather fight you - American citizens - than fight illegal immigration. Upping the ante appears to be the latest strategy not only of the Obama administration, but also of others who want to prevent enforcement of immigration laws. In the case of the illegal-alien advocacy network, the threat is explicit, not implicit. "Local legislation is going to end up costing taxpayers millions of dollars," warned Ali Noorani, who runs the National Immigration Forum, an amnesty advocacy group.

Those threats are playing out in Fremont, Neb., where local voters approved an immigration-enforcement ordinance by a 57 percent to 43 percent margin on June 21 over the objections of the mayor and many on the City Council. Many local officials were not against the ballot measure per se but were concerned about the cost of defending the will of the people against the deep pockets of foundation-supported groups that oppose immigration enforcement.

"I do caution everyone that voted for this that there will be a cost to pay," said one opponent on the Fremont City Council after the vote. "It's going to be very costly for the city while this is litigated," warned another council member. Their concerns are not unfounded. No sooner had the votes been counted than the ACLU announced its intent to sue the city. "Our intention is to make sure the law does not go into effect for even one day," said a spokeswoman for the Nebraska ACLU.

Whether in Arizona or Fremont, whether instigated by the Obama administration or advocacy groups, lawsuits over local immigration-enforcement policies appear to have less to do with the pursuit of justice than with raw intimidation for partisan gain. In the process, justice and protection for ordinary citizens harmed by unenforced immigration laws become collateral damage as political interests are pursued through the courts.

In the end, many local governments will have little choice but to endure the expense of a court battle as the costs of providing basic services to illegal aliens escalate. The decision of the Obama administration to bleed the taxpayers of Arizona signals that before Americans can protect themselves against the harmful effects of mass illegal immigration, they will have to fight a very costly battle with their own government.

..................................................................

OBAMA AIMS PRO-ILLEGAL LAWSUIT AT ARIZONA

Federal leviathan will use tax dollars to intimidate states

By Dan Stein

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Dan Stein is president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

*****************************************

BARRY SOETORO aka BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
IS A
USURPER

He is not eligible to be
President of the United States
because he is not a Natural Born Citizen
as required by Article Two, Section One, Clause Five of the United States Constitution.

This is a fact REGARDLESS of
where he was born (Mombassa, Hawaii, Chicago, Mecca or Mars).

He is not eligible
because he was not born of
TWO PARENTS
BOTH OF WHOM WERE UNITED STATES CITIZENS
AT THE TIME OF HIS BIRTH
as required by the Constitution.

Barack Hussein Obama Jr. is not eligible to be President of the United States because – according to public admissions made by him – his “birth status was governed” by the United Kingdom. Obama further admits he was a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at birth.
Since Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was, if born in the state of Hawaii, a dual citizen, who – according to his own State Department – owed allegiance to the Queen of England and United Kingdom at the time of his birth – he cannot therefore be a “natural born” citizen of the US according to Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the US Constitution.
His father, who did not live in the United States for more than a couple of years, was a subject/ciitizen
of Kenya/Great Britain at the time of Barack’s birth and afterwards, AND further, as Barack himself admitted on his website during the 2008 campaign, Barack was therefore born SUBJECT TO THE GOVERNANCE OF GREAT BRITAIN.

Here is a direct quote from Obama's "Fight the Smears/Fact Check" 2008 website:

‘When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children…’ “

The FACT that he was not born of TWO US CITIZEN PARENTS is all that matters. The question of his birth certificate is a distraction (a distraction fostered by Obama’s supporters?) that ought not to occupy our time and resources. BUT if you are really convinced of the value of the COLB (certificate of live birth) that Obama posted on his website, see this:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9830547/Sun-Yatsen-Certification-of-Live-Birth-in-Hawaii

Also, it is possible that he is not a United States
citizen at all through his mother if he was born in Kenya, as three witnesses have testified. The reason is because his mother could not pass her US citizenship on to her son because she did not live continuously in the United States for five full years after her fourteenth birthday as required by the US immigration law in effect during that period of time.

Check it out:
http://www.TheObamaFile.com/ObamaNaturalBorn.htm
Also, an excellent introductory primer on Obama Presiidential Eligibility is to be found at:
http://people.mags.net/tonchen/birthers.htm

His usurpation can only be corrected (1) by Congress through his Impeachment and Removal [something which will never happen in a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid], or (2) it can be
corrected by his resignation, which could happen if the public presssure on him to resign becomes great enough, or (3) by his removal by the United States Supreme Court affirming a Quo Warranto decision of the United States Federal District Court for the District of Columbia [which process Attorney General Eric Holder would never allow to even begin] or (4) by an amendment to the Constitution,
which will never happen because that again would require the agreement of a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid.
_

HERE IS THE QUESTION WHICH EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN SHOULD BE ASKING HIS OR HER CONGRESSMAN AND SENATORS

“During the 2008 election, then Senator Obama published a statement at his website which said that his birth status was ‘governed’ by the British Nationality Act of 1948. Can you please tell me, and the American people, how a person governed - at birth - by British law, can be a natural born citizen of the United States and thus constitutionally eligible to be President of the United States?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FlEbBZLzo0

If you really want to understand the difference between the technical terms natural born citizen, native born citizen, naturalized citizen and just plain citizen, go to:

http://www.greschak.com/essays/natborn/index.htm

And if you really want to understand why it is necessary for a man to be a natural born citizen of the United States in order to be President of the United States, read the essay by Leo Donofrio at:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=134881



And if you did not know that in additional to Obama being ineligible to be president because of his nationality, did you
know that he is a Muslim:


http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tCAffMSWSzY#t=28

LEO RUGIENS

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

AMERICA IS ABOUT TO DROWN IN THE MAINSTREAM

ELENA KAGAN IN THE 'MAINSTREAM'
BY ALEXANDER HUNTER

...............................................................................................

There seems to be one thing on which everyone can agree. From archconservative pundits to archliberal White House staffers responsible for Solicitor General Elena Kagan's confirmation to the Supreme Court, all agree that the test is whether she is in the "mainstream of current legal thought."
But it would seem to me that such a standard only makes sense if you approve of where the mainstream currently is. For instance, left-wing statists - who believe in almost unlimited powers of government, who heartily approve of the Supreme Court's ruling in Kelo v. New London (which authorized a city to take non-blighted private property from its lawful owner and give it to someone else solely so the city can make more money), who believe that the Interstate Commerce Clause authorizes Congress to regulate every action or inaction of everyone living south of Canada and north of Mexico - would like all current and future court nominees to enjoy wading in the current mainstream.
But wouldn't it make sense for those of us who believe in original intent (and in this instance "us" would seem to include almost all Republican senators, based on their public statements) to support only nominees who hold to the standard of the mainstream of legal thought as of Sept. 17, 1787, when the writing of the Constitution was completed (or perhaps as of March 4, 1789, when the Constitution went into effect)?
After all, James Madison, who largely wrote the Constitution, obviously would be unqualified to interpret it today because it is a mathematical certainty that he would be appalled at the "mainstream of current legal thought."
For instance, consider a leering Democratic senator grilling Madison in 2010 on his views concerning the current mainstream theory of "a living Constitution," which requires that the Constitution be viewed in the context of today's events. Being an honest man, Madison would have to repeat what he said whilst he was alive: "Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government."
Oh dear, that puts Madison dangerously outside the current mainstream.
Or what if a sensible, moderate Republican senator were to inquire helpfully of Madison whether he sees any constitutional problem with Congress authorizing bureaucrats to promulgate hundreds of thousands of complex detailed requirements to enforce a universal health law. Again, citing his statements back in his living days, the honorable Madison would be compelled to testify: "It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood."
The notional senator doubtless would turn to the cameras and say: "My, my, what a Neanderthal backwoodsman this Madison character is - so out of the current mainstream of legal thought. How in the world could our federal government provide all the current and future 'services and benefits' to the citizens, if such thinking were permitted on the Supreme Court?"
That notional question is, of course, at the heart of what is quickening the countless millions in the Tea Party movement. If the Supreme Court would follow the dictates of the Constitution, much of the vast deficit-creating, individual-freedom-crushing current laws of the land would be unconstitutional.
Thus, Republican senators need to understand that, notwithstanding all their fine statements over the years about looking for justices who believe in "original intent" and don't believe in "creating law from the bench" will be for naught when the Tea Party voters measure those Googled words against the senator's Googled vote for Ms. Kagan because she is in the "mainstream of current legal thought." Changing the mainstream of current legal thought is a big part of what the November election is about.
Not just Tea partiers, either. According to Gallup's most recent poll in 2009, 59 percent of Democrats like the ideology of the Supreme Court, but 58 percent of Republicans are not satisfied with its current ideology. Just 9 percent of Democrats think the court is too liberal, while 49 percent of Republicans think it is too liberal.
So when a Republican senator considers the appropriate standard for judging Ms. Kagan's fitness for the high court, he should not be fooled by the responsible-sounding phrase "in the mainstream of current legal thought."
Rather, he or she should fall back on his own often-repeated original-intent, conservative standard and filibuster the brilliant Ms. Kagan's confirmation vote precisely because she is in the current mainstream - a location that has been deeply dredged by Franklin D. Roosevelt and his progeny for the past 75 years.
This November's voters look forward to the day when Madison once again would be found in the mainstream of current legal thought - as he was when he formed the original stream.

STAY OUT OF THE MAINSTREAM, IT HAS TAKEN A LEFT TURN
SINCE THE DAYS OF MADISON

By Tony BlankleyMonday,

THE WASHINGTON TIMES
June 28, 2010

Tony Blankley is the author of "American Grit: What It Will Take to Survive and Win in the 21st Century" (Regnery, 2009) and vice president of the Edelman public relations firm.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>




BARRY SOETORO aka BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
IS A
USURPER

He is not eligible to be
President of the United States
because he is not a Natural Born Citizen
as required by Article Two, Section One, Clause Five of the United States Constitution.

This is a fact REGARDLESS of
where he was born (Mombassa, Hawaii, Chicago, Mecca or Mars).

He is not eligible
because he was not born of
TWO PARENTS
BOTH OF WHOM WERE UNITED STATES CITIZENS
AT THE TIME OF HIS BIRTH
as required by the Constitution.

Barack Hussein Obama Jr. is not eligible to be President of the United States because – according to public admissions made by him – his “birth status was governed” by the United Kingdom. Obama further admits he was a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at birth.
Since Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was, if born in the state of Hawaii, a dual citizen, who – according to his own State Department – owed allegiance to the Queen of England and United Kingdom at the time of his birth – he cannot therefore be a “natural born” citizen of the US according to Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the US Constitution.
His father, who did not live in the United States for more than a couple of years, was a subject/ciitizen
of Kenya/Great Britain at the time of Barack’s birth and afterwards, AND further, as Barack himself admitted on his website during the 2008 campaign, Barack was therefore born SUBJECT TO THE GOVERNANCE OF GREAT BRITAIN.

Here is a direct quote from Obama's "Fight the Smears/Fact Check" 2008 website:

‘When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children…’ “

The FACT that he was not born of TWO US CITIZEN PARENTS is all that matters. The question of his birth certificate is a distraction (a distraction fostered by Obama’s supporters?) that ought not to occupy our time and resources. BUT if you are really convinced of the value of the COLB (certificate of live birth) that Obama posted on his website, see this:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9830547/Sun-Yatsen-Certification-of-Live-Birth-in-Hawaii

Also, it is possible that he is not a United States
citizen at all through his mother if he was born in Kenya, as three witnesses have testified. The reason is because his mother could not pass her US citizenship on to her son because she did not live continuously in the United States for five full years after her fourteenth birthday as required by the US immigration law in effect during that period of time.

Check it out:
http://www.TheObamaFile.com/ObamaNaturalBorn.htm
Also, an excellent introductory primer on Obama Presiidential Eligibility is to be found at:
http://people.mags.net/tonchen/birthers.htm

His usurpation can only be corrected (1) by Congress through his Impeachment and Removal [something which will never happen in a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid], or (2) it can be
corrected by his resignation, which could happen if the public presssure on him to resign becomes great enough, or (3) by his removal by the United States Supreme Court affirming a Quo Warranto decision of the United States Federal District Court for the District of Columbia [which process Attorney General Eric Holder would never allow to even begin] or (4) by an amendment to the Constitution,
which will never happen because that again would require the agreement of a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid.
_

HERE IS THE QUESTION WHICH EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN SHOULD BE ASKING HIS OR HER CONGRESSMAN AND SENATORS

“During the 2008 election, then Senator Obama published a statement at his website which said that his birth status was ‘governed’ by the British Nationality Act of 1948. Can you please tell me, and the American people, how a person governed - at birth - by British law, can be a natural born citizen of the United States and thus constitutionally eligible to be President of the United States?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FlEbBZLzo0

If you really want to understand the difference between the technical terms natural born citizen, native born citizen, naturalized citizen and just plain citizen, go to:

http://www.greschak.com/essays/natborn/index.htm

And if you really want to understand why it is necessary for a man to be a natural born citizen of the United States in order to be President of the United States, read the essay by Leo Donofrio at:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=134881



And if you did not know that in additional to Obama being ineligible to be president because of his nationality, did you
know that he is a Muslim:


http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tCAffMSWSzY#t=28

LEO RUGIENS

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

THIS IS TRULY AN OUTRAGE: UNEQUAL JUSTICE BASED ON RACE, THE REVERSE OF PRE-1964 AMERICA

On the day President Obama was elected, armed men wearing the black berets and jackboots
of the New Black Panther Party were stationed at the entrance
to a polling place in Philadelphia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neGbKHyGuHU&feature=pyv&ad=3265020430&kw=black%20panthers

They brandished a weapon and intimidated voters and poll watchers.
After the election, the Justice Department brought a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and those armed thugs.

I and other Justice attorneys diligently pursued the case and obtained an entry of default after the defendants ignored the charges. Before a final judgment could be entered in May 2009, our superiors ordered us to dismiss the case.

The New Black Panther case was the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career. Because of the corrupt nature of the dismissal, statements falsely characterizing the case and, most of all, indefensible orders for the career attorneys not to comply with lawful subpoenas investigating the dismissal, this month I resigned my position as a Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney.

The federal voter-intimidation statutes we used against the New Black Panthers were enacted because America never realized genuine racial equality in elections. Threats of violence characterized elections from the end of the Civil War until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Before the Voting Rights Act, blacks seeking the right to vote, and those aiding them, were victims of violence and intimidation. But unlike the Southern legal system, Southern violence did not discriminate. Black voters were slain, as were the white champions of their cause. Some of the bodies were tossed into bogs and in one case in Philadelphia, Miss., they were buried together in an earthen dam.

Based on my firsthand experiences, I believe the dismissal of the Black Panther case was motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law. Others still within the department share my assessment. The department abetted wrongdoers and abandoned law-abiding citizens victimized by the New Black Panthers. The dismissal raises serious questions about the department's enforcement neutrality in upcoming midterm elections and the subsequent 2012 presidential election.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has opened an investigation into the dismissal and the DOJ's skewed enforcement priorities. Attorneys who brought the case are under subpoena to testify, but the department ordered us to ignore the subpoena, lawlessly placing us in an unacceptable legal limbo.

The assistant attorney general for civil rights, Tom Perez, has testified repeatedly that the "facts and law" did not support this case. That claim is false. If the actions in Philadelphia do not constitute voter intimidation, it is hard to imagine what would, short of an actual outbreak of violence at the polls. Let's all hope this administration has not invited that outcome through the corrupt dismissal.

Most corrupt of all, the lawyers who ordered the dismissal - Loretta King, the Obama-appointed acting head of the Civil Rights Division, and Steve Rosenbaum - did not even read the internal Justice Department memorandums supporting the case and investigation. Just as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. admitted that he did not read the Arizona immigration law before he condemned it, Mr. Rosenbaum admitted that he had not bothered to read the most important department documents detailing the investigative facts and applicable law in the New Black Panther case. Christopher Coates, the former Voting Section chief, was so outraged at this dereliction of responsibility that he actually threw the memos at Mr. Rosenbaum in the meeting where they were discussing the dismissal of the case. The department subsequently removed all of Mr. Coates' responsibilities and sent him to South Carolina.

Mr. Perez also inaccurately testified to the House Judiciary Committee that federal "Rule 11" required the dismissal of the lawsuit. Lawyers know that Rule 11 is an ethical obligation to bring only meritorious claims, and such a charge by Mr. Perez effectively challenges the ethics and professionalism of the five attorneys who commenced the case. Yet the attorneys who brought the case were voting rights experts and would never pursue a frivolous matter. Their experience in election law far surpassed the experience of the officials who ordered the dismissal.

Some have called the actions in Philadelphia an isolated incident, not worthy of federal attention. To the contrary, the Black Panthers in October 2008 announced a nationwide deployment for the election. We had indications that polling-place thugs were deployed elsewhere, not only in November 2008, but also during the Democratic primaries, where they targeted white Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters. In any event, the law clearly prohibits even isolated incidents of voter intimidation.

Others have falsely claimed that no voters were affected. Not only did the evidence rebut this claim, but the law does not require a successful effort to intimidate; it punishes even the attempt.

Most disturbing, the dismissal is part of a creeping lawlessness infusing our government institutions. Citizens would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims. Equal enforcement of justice is not a priority of this administration. Open contempt is voiced for these types of cases.
Some of my co-workers argued that the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation. Less charitable individuals called it "payback time." Incredibly, after the case was dismissed, instructions were given that no more cases against racial minorities like the Black Panther case would be brought by the Voting Section.
Refusing to enforce the law equally means some citizens are protected by the law while others are left to be victimized, depending on their race. Core American principles of equality before the law and freedom from racial discrimination are at risk. Hopefully, equal enforcement of the law is still a point of bipartisan, if not universal, agreement. However, after my experience with the New Black Panther dismissal and the attitudes held by officials in the Civil Rights Division, I am beginning to fear the era of agreement over these core American principles has passed.

J. Christian Adams is a lawyer based in Virginia who served as a voting rights attorney at the Justice Department until this month. He blogs at http://electionlawcenter.com/

Inside the Black Panther case
Anger, ignorance and lies

By J. Christian Adams

Friday, June 25, 2010

**********************************************




BARRY SOETORO aka BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
IS A
USURPER

He is not eligible to be
President of the United States
because he is not a Natural Born Citizen
as required by Article Two, Section One, Clause Five of the United States Constitution.

This is a fact REGARDLESS of
where he was born (Mombassa, Hawaii, Chicago, Mecca or Mars).

He is not eligible
because he was not born of
TWO PARENTS
BOTH OF WHOM WERE UNITED STATES CITIZENS
AT THE TIME OF HIS BIRTH
as required by the Constitution.

Barack Hussein Obama Jr. is not eligible to be President of the United States because – according to public admissions made by him – his “birth status was governed” by the United Kingdom. Obama further admits he was a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at birth.
Since Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was, if born in the state of Hawaii, a dual citizen, who – according to his own State Department – owed allegiance to the Queen of England and United Kingdom at the time of his birth – he cannot therefore be a “natural born” citizen of the US according to Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the US Constitution.
His father, who did not live in the United States for more than a couple of years, was a subject/ciitizen
of Kenya/Great Britain at the time of Barack’s birth and afterwards, AND further, as Barack himself admitted on his website during the 2008 campaign, Barack was therefore born SUBJECT TO THE GOVERNANCE OF GREAT BRITAIN.

Here is a direct quote from Obama's "Fight the Smears/Fact Check" 2008 website:

‘When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children…’ “

The FACT that he was not born of TWO US CITIZEN PARENTS is all that matters. The question of his birth certificate is a distraction (a distraction fostered by Obama’s supporters?) that ought not to occupy our time and resources. BUT if you are really convinced of the value of the COLB (certificate of live birth) that Obama posted on his website, see this:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9830547/Sun-Yatsen-Certification-of-Live-Birth-in-Hawaii

Also, it is possible that he is not a United States
citizen at all through his mother if he was born in Kenya, as three witnesses have testified. The reason is because his mother could not pass her US citizenship on to her son because she did not live continuously in the United States for five full years after her fourteenth birthday as required by the US immigration law in effect during that period of time.

Check it out:
http://www.TheObamaFile.com/ObamaNaturalBorn.htm
Also, an excellent introductory primer on Obama Presiidential Eligibility is to be found at:
http://people.mags.net/tonchen/birthers.htm

His usurpation can only be corrected (1) by Congress through his Impeachment and Removal [something which will never happen in a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid], or (2) it can be
corrected by his resignation, which could happen if the public presssure on him to resign becomes great enough, or (3) by his removal by the United States Supreme Court affirming a Quo Warranto decision of the United States Federal District Court for the District of Columbia [which process Attorney General Eric Holder would never allow to even begin] or (4) by an amendment to the Constitution,
which will never happen because that again would require the agreement of a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid.
_

HERE IS THE QUESTION WHICH EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN SHOULD BE ASKING HIS OR HER CONGRESSMAN AND SENATORS

“During the 2008 election, then Senator Obama published a statement at his website which said that his birth status was ‘governed’ by the British Nationality Act of 1948. Can you please tell me, and the American people, how a person governed - at birth - by British law, can be a natural born citizen of the United States and thus constitutionally eligible to be President of the United States?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FlEbBZLzo0

If you really want to understand the difference between the technical terms natural born citizen, native born citizen, naturalized citizen and just plain citizen, go to:

http://www.greschak.com/essays/natborn/index.htm

And if you really want to understand why it is necessary for a man to be a natural born citizen of the United States in order to be President of the United States, read the essay by Leo Donofrio at:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=134881



And if you did not know that in additional to Obama being ineligible to be president because of his nationality, did you
know that he is a Muslim:


http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tCAffMSWSzY#t=28

LEO RUGIENS

IT IS HARD TO SAY WHO IS MORE FLAWED: THE PRESIDENT OR THE VOTERS WHO ELECTED HIM

Insecurity is characteristic of adolescence.
Those formative years are a time of figuring out how the self relates to others,
moving from self-absorption to self-awareness.
There are those who live a lifelong adolescence, whose narcissism,
like an orchid living off air, lives off the approval of others.
Their desire for self-esteem smothers a mature desire for eternal salvation.
Instead of “Have mercy on me a sinner,” the perpetual adolescent says, “I want to feel good about myself.”
Inevitably, that “feel good” approach enslaves the self to the opinions of others.
It is the opposite of the glorious maturity of St. Paul, who spoke “not as trying to please men, but rather God, who judges our hearts” (1 Thess. 4).


There is a proper human respect, which is a reverence for others. The immature kind of human respect is a dependency on approval by others. “For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10).

Some of the most popular cultural figures are those who exploit people’s insecurities and make them “feel good” about themselves. Demagogues know how to flatter the spiritually immature into submission, but their intoxicating charisma is a deadly illusion: “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets” (Luke 6:26).

The simmering danger in our political culture is not the deeply flawed people who often get elected, but the immaturity of the people who elect them. “They pursued emptiness, and themselves became empty through copying the nations round them” (2 Kings 17:15).

Pope Benedict XVI recently told ordinands: “He who wants above all to realize an ambition of his own, to achieve a personal success, will always be a slave to himself and public opinion. To be considered, he will have to flatter; he must say what the people want to hear, he must adapt himself to changing fashions and opinions and, thus, he will deprive himself of the vital relationship with the truth, reducing himself to condemning tomorrow what he praises today. A man who plans his life like this, a priest who sees his ministry in these terms, does not truly love God and others, but only himself and, paradoxically, ends up losing himself.”

As the Pope practices what he preaches, he is so secure in his service to God, that he does not rely on newspaper editorials or talk-show pundits to craft the Gospel he preaches. What he said to those new priests applies to everyone who seeks spiritual maturity. Self-absorption eventually leads to self-annihilation, but eternal life begins with feeling good about God instead of ourselves. “To know (God’s) power is the root of immortality” (Wisdom 15:3).

by Fr. George W. Rutler
June 27, 2010
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Obama zones out
Search for president’s core uncovers – nothing
By Mark Steyn
Friday, June 25, 2010
What do Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and BP have in common? Aside from the fact that they’re both Democratic Party supporters.
Or they were. Gen. McChrystal is a liberal who voted for President Obama and banned Fox News from his headquarters TV. That may at least partly explain how he became the first U.S. general to be lost in combat while giving an interview to Rolling Stone. They’ll be studying that one in war colleges around the world for decades. The managers of BP were unable to vote for Mr. Obama, being, as we now know, the most sinister, duplicitous bunch of shifty Brits to pitch up offshore since the War of 1812. But, in their “Beyond Petroleum” marketing and beyond, they signed on to every modish nostrum of the eco-left. Their recently retired chairman, Lord John Browne, was one of the most prominent promoters of “cap-and-trade.” BP was the Democrats’ favorite oil company. It was to Mr. Obama what TotalFinaElf was to Saddam Hussein.
But what do Gen. McChrystal’s and BP’s defenestrations tell us about the president of the United States? Mr. Obama is a thin-skinned man and, according to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, White House aides indicated that what angered the president most about the Rolling Stone piece was “a McChrystal aide saying that McChrystal had thought that Obama was not engaged when they first met last year.” If finding Mr. Obama “not engaged” is now a firing offense, who among us is safe?
Only the other day, Sen. George LeMieux of Florida attempted to rouse the president to jump-start America’s overpaid, overmanned and oversleeping federal bureaucracy and get it to do something about the oil debacle. There are 2,000 oil skimmers in the United States; weeks after the spill, only 20 of them are off the coast of Florida. Seventeen friendly nations with great expertise in the field have offered their own skimmers; the Dutch volunteered their “superskimmers.” Mr. Obama turned them all down. Raising the problem, Mr. LeMieux found the president unengaged and uninformed. “He doesn’t seem to know the situation about foreign skimmers and domestic skimmers,” the senator reported.
He doesn’t seem to know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t care. “It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama’s foreign policy is no heart at all,” Richard Cohen wrote in The Washington Post last week. “For instance, it’s not clear that Obama is appalled by China’s appalling human rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia. … The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much.
“This, of course, is the Obama enigma: Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs?”
Gee, if only your newspaper had thought to ask those fascinating questions oh, say, a month before the Iowa caucuses.
And even today, Mr. Cohen is still giving President Whoisthisguy a pass. After all, whatever he feels about “China’s appalling human rights record” or “continued repression in Russia,” Mr. Obama is not directly responsible for it. Whereas U.S. and allied deaths in Afghanistan are happening on his watch – and the border villagers killed by unmanned drones are being killed at his behest. Mr. Cohen calls the president “above all, a pragmatist,” but with the best will in the world, you can’t stretch the definition of “pragmatism” to mean “lack of interest.”
“The ugly truth,” wrote Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, “is that no one in the Obama White House wanted this Afghan surge. The only reason they proceeded was because no one knew how to get out of it.”
Well, that’s certainly ugly, but is it the truth? Afghanistan, you’ll recall, was supposed to be the Democrats’ war, the one they supposedly supported, the one from which the neocons’ Iraq adventure was an unnecessary distraction. Granted the Dems’ usual shell game – to avoid looking soft on national security, it helps to be in favor of some war other than the one you’re opposing – candidate Obama was an especially ripe promoter. In one of the livelier moments of his campaign, he chugged down half a bottle of Geopolitical Viagra and claimed he was hot for invading Pakistan.
Then he found himself in the Oval Office, and the dime-store opportunism was no longer helpful. But, as Mr. Friedman puts it, “no one knew how to get out of it.” The “pragmatist” settled for “nuance.” He announced a semisurge plus a date for withdrawal of troops to begin. It’s not “victory,” it’s not “defeat,” but rather a more sophisticated melange of these two outmoded absolutes: If you need a word, “quagmire” would seem to cover it.
Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, the Taliban and the Pakistanis on the one hand and Britain and the other American allies heading for the checkout on the other all seem to have grasped the essentials of the message, even if Mr. Friedman and the other media Obammyboppers never quite did. Mr. Karzai is now talking to Islamabad about an accommodation that would see the most viscerally anti-American elements of the Taliban back in Kabul as part of a power-sharing regime. At the height of the shrillest shrieking about the Iraqi “quagmire,” was there ever any talk of hard-core Saddamite Baathists returning to government in Baghdad?
To return to Mr. Cohen’s question: “Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs?” Well, he’s a guy who was wafted ever upward from the Harvard Law Review to the state legislature to the U.S. Senate without ever lingering long enough to accomplish anything. “Who is this guy?” Well, when a guy becomes a credible presidential candidate by his mid-40s with no accomplishments other than a couple of memoirs, he evidently has an extraordinary talent for self-promotion, if nothing else. “What are his core beliefs?” It would seem likely that his core belief is in himself. It’s the “nothing else” that the likes of Mr. Cohen are belatedly noticing.
Wasn’t he kind of unengaged by the health care debate? That’s why, for all his speeches, he could never quite articulate a rationale for it. In the end, he was happy to leave it to the Democratic Congress and, when his powers of persuasion failed, let them ram it down the throats of the American people through sheer parliamentary muscle.
Likewise, on Afghanistan, his attitude seems to be “I don’t want to hear about it.” Unmanned drones take care of a lot of that, for a while. So do his courtiers in the media. Did all those hopey-changers realize that Mr. Obama’s war would be run by George W. Bush’s defense secretary and general? Hey, never mind: Moveon.org has quietly disappeared its celebrated “General Betray-us” ad from its website. Cindy Sheehan, the supposed conscience of the nation when she was railing against Mr. Bush from the front pages, is an irrelevant kook unworthy of coverage when she protests Mr. Obama. Why, a cynic might almost think the “antiwar” movement was really an anti-Bush movement and the protesters really don’t care about dead foreigners, after all. The more things “change you can believe in,” the more they stay the same.
Except in one respect. There is a big hole where our strategy should be. It’s hard to fight a war without war aims, and in the end, they can only come from the top. It took the oil spill to alert Americans to the unengaged president. From Moscow to Tehran to the caves of Waziristan, our enemies got the message a lot earlier – and long ago figured out the rules of unengagement.
Mark Steyn is author of the New York Times best-seller “America Alone” (Regnery, 2006).

GENERAL STANLEY A. McCHRYSTAL IS PERHAPS ANOTHER LEONIDAS I

A smiling General Stanley A. McChrystal meets an unsmiling
President Barack Hussein Obama aboard Air Force One on the
tarmac in London Heathrow Airport for a 20 minute scolding.
.............................................................................................................

I AM NOT REALLY A CONSPIRACY NUT!

Although, since I am convinced that there has been (and continues to be) a cover-up of immense proportions by the left/liberal media of the fact that Barack Hussein Obama is not a Natural Born Citizen as that term is found in the US Constitution and as understood by our Founding Fathers and is therefore ineligible to be President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces, that probably qualifies me a conspiracy nut.

It is true that my favorite novel is a spy story or a murder mystery. Romantic novels have never interested me. But, give me a good spy story or a murder mystery and I cannot put it down until I finish the book.

Perhaps that is why I am intrigued by the mystery of why General Stanley A. McChrystal WITH HIS STAFF would grant an interview to a reporter with a known anti-war bias working for a journal, Rolling Stone, that has a well established reputation for being anti-war. Common sense would tell any intelligent person with even a little common sense that there was a possibility of the reporter and the magazine doing a ‘hatchet-job’ on the General and on the war in Afghanistan.

Now I trust that everyone will agree that Stanley A. McChrystal is a man of above average intelligence and possessed of above average common sense. His whole career has been a brilliant demonstration that he knows how to make the right decision even in the face of enemy fire.

So why did he do it?

Let’s just suppose that he had come to the reluctant conclusion that the war in Afghanistan is not winnable UNDER PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA as
Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the United States. Let’s suppose that he accepted the position as General in the field in Afghanistan confident that he could bring the President into an understanding of what would be necessary to win the ward. But what happened?

What happened was that he had virtually no access to the President. On the contrary, that 20 minute interview with the President in Air Force One sitting on the tarmac in England that was primarily a scolding, not a war planning meeting, revealed to him that he would never have access to the President and hence would never have the opportunity to bring the President around to a more realistic view of what would be necessary to win the war in Afghanistan.

The result: a growing realization that somehow he had to opt out of what he was now convinced was going to be a disaster for the U.S. and in doing so precipitate a national discussion about Afghanistan. But how to accomplish that, how to opt out?

As a career general officer he could never bring himself to quit. He is a fighter, not a quitter. So how to bring about a situation where his resignation would be seen not as a dereliction of duty, or, even worse, cowardice, but rather as necessitated by conditions not fully under his control.

So, he does what appears to all to be a stupid thing, he grants an interview to the Rolling Stone Magazine. But Stanley A. McChrystal is not stupid. He knows that if he and his staff members reveal their true feelings about some of the men surrounding the President as his chief advisors the reporter will report them. Whereas an interview with a more responsible reporter for a more responsible magazine might not quote them in order to protect them. And so he choses Rolling Stone Magazine, and its reporter does not hesitate to quote verbatim all of the explosive statements made in the interview, he is an experienced journalist..

There, the General has baited the trap: the President now has no choice but to ask for his resignation. And so he resigns, not because of publicly expressed disagreement with the President, as General McArthur did with President Harry Truman, but rather by saying what everyone knows:
the Vice-President, the Ambassador and the Military Advisor to President Barack Hussein Obama are fools.

So, General McChrystal is summoned to meet with the President and he goes to the meeting with his resignation letter in hand. There is no argument. The President asks for the resignation and the General hands him the letter. Mission accomplished.

The common wisdom is that General McChrystal made a foolish mistake. But I say it was not a mistake but rather a brilliantly conceived plan to retire with honor while at the same time causing the nation to reexamine its commitment to fighting another losing war.

Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is not even Vietnam. It has never been a unified nation with a central government. It has always been an incredibly diverse collection of tribal groups ruled by many warlords. As a boy I remember watching in fascination the attempts of the British raj to conquer the region. Later we witnessed the failure of the Soviet Union which put 6,000,000 soldiers in the field in Afghanistan yet failed. The United States, along with a handful of token troops from NATO will never have more than 100,000 or so troops in Afghanistan. It is probably not a winnable war under Barack Hussein Obama as Commander-in-Chief, and it is probably not a winnable war under any President given the growing impatience of the American people.

I am confident that history will praise General Stanley A. McChrystal for sacrificing himself in order to bring about a reassessment of what the goals of the United States are in Afghanistan. I for one am willing to rank him with Leonidas I.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

UPDATE ON FRIDAY, 26 JUNE 10:

• JUNE 25, 2010

McChrystal Forces Us to Focus

Now Petraeus owes us a candid assessment of the Afghan effort.

• By PEGGY NOONAN

Gen. Stanley McChrystal's greatest contribution to the war in Afghanistan may turn out to be forcing everyone to focus on it. The real news there this week was not Gen. McChrystal's epic faux pas and dismissal but that 12 soldiers were killed on June 7-8, including five Americans by a roadside bomb, making that "the deadliest 24 hour period this year," as The Economist noted. Insurgency-related violence was up by 87% in the six months prior to March. Agence France-Presse reported Thursday that NATO forces are experiencing their deadliest month ever.

There have been signal moments in this war since its inception, and we are in the middle of one now.

It has gone on almost nine years. It began rightly, legitimately. On 9/11 we had been attacked, essentially, from Afghanistan, harborer of terrorists. We invaded and toppled the Taliban with dispatch, courage and even, for all our woundedness, brio. We all have unforgettable pictures in our minds. One of mine is the grainy footage of a U.S. cavalry charge, with local tribesman, against a Taliban stronghold. It left me cheering. You too, I bet.

But Washington soon took its eye off the ball, turning its focus and fervor to invading Iraq. Over the years, the problems in Afghanistan mounted. In 2009, amid a growing air of crisis, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates sacked the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan—institutional Army, maybe a little old-style. He was replaced by Gen. McChrystal—specials forces background, black ops, an agile and resourceful snake eater. "Politicians love the mystique of these guys," said a general this week. Snake eaters know it, and wind up being even more colorful, reveling in their ethos of bucking the system.

Associated Press

U.S. Central Commander Gen. David Petraeus

Last August, Gen. McChrystal produced, and someone leaked, a 66-page report warning of "mission failure." More troops and new strategy were needed. The strategy, counterinsurgency, was adopted. That was a signal moment within a signal moment, for at the same time the president committed 30,000 more troops and set a deadline for departure, July 2011. The mission on the ground was expanded—counterinsurgency, also known as COIN, is nation building, and nation building is time- and troop-intensive—but the timeline for success was truncated.

COIN is a humane strategy not lacking in shrewdness: Don't treat the people of a sovereign nation as if they just wandered across your battlefield. Instead, befriend them, consult them, build schools, give them an investment in peace. Only America, and God bless it, would try to take the hell out of war. But the new strategy involved lawyering up, requiring troops to receive permission before they hit targets. Some now-famous cases make clear this has endangered soldiers and damaged morale.

The Afghan government, on which COIN's success hinges, is corrupt and unstable. That is their political context. But are we fully appreciating the political context of the war at home, in America?

The left doesn't like this war and will only grow more opposed to it. The center sees that it has gone on longer than Vietnam, and "we've seen that movie before." We're in an economic crisis; can we afford this war? The right is probably going to start to peel off, not Washington policy intellectuals but people on the ground in America. There are many reasons for this. Their sons and nephew have come back from repeat tours full of doubts as to the possibility of victory, "whatever that is," as we all now say. There is the brute political fact that the war is now President Obama's. The blindly partisan will be only too happy to let him stew in it.

Republican leaders such as John McCain are stalwart: This war can be won. But there's a sense when you watch Mr. McCain that he's very much speaking for Mr. McCain, and McCainism. Republicans respect this attitude: "Never give in." But people can respect what they choose not to follow. The other day Sen. Lindsey Graham, in ostensibly supportive remarks, said that Gen. David Petraeus, Gen. McChrystal's replacement, "is our only hope." If he can't pull it out, "nobody can." That's not all that optimistic a statement.

The U.S. military is overstretched in every way, including emotionally and psychologically. The biggest takeaway from a week at U.S. Army War College in 2008 was the exhaustion of the officers. They are tired from repeat deployments, and their families are stretched to the limit, with children reaching 12 and 13 without a father at home.

The president himself is in parlous position with regard to support, which means with regard to his ability to persuade, to be believed, to be followed. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows more people disapprove of Mr. Obama's job performance than approve.

When he ran for president, Mr. Obama blasted Iraq but called Afghanistan the "good war." This was in line with public opinion, and as a young Democratic progressive who hadn't served in the military, he had to kick away from the old tie-dyed-hippie-lefty-peacenik hangover that dogs the Democratic Party to this day, even as heartless-warlike-bigot-in-plaid-golf-shorts dogs the Republicans. In 2009 he ordered a top-to-bottom review of Afghanistan. In his valuable and deeply reported book "The Promise," Jonathan Alter offers new information on the review. A reader gets the sense it is meant to be reassuring—they're doing a lot of thinking over there!—but for me it was not. The president seems to have thought government experts had answers, or rather reliable and comprehensive information that could be weighed and fully understood. But in Washington, agency analysts and experts don't have answers, really. They have product. They have factoids. They have free-floating data. They have dots in a pointillist picture, but they're not artists, they're dot-makers.

More crucially, the president asked policy makers, in Mr. Alter's words, "If the Taliban took Kabul and controlled Afghanistan, could it link up with Pakistan's Taliban and threaten command and control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons?" The answer: Quite possibly yes. Mr. Alter: "Early on, the President eliminated withdrawal (from Afghanistan) as an option, in part because of a new classified study on what would happen to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the Islamabad government fell to the Taliban."

That is always the heart-stopper in any conversation about Afghanistan, terrorists and Pakistan's nukes. But the ins and outs of this question—what we know, for instance, about the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, and its connections to terrorists—are not fully discussed. Which means a primary argument in the president's arsenal is denied him.

It is within the context of all this mess that—well, Gen. Petraeus a week and a half ago, in giving Senate testimony on Afghanistan, appeared to faint. And Gen. McChrystal suicide-bombed his career. One of Gen. McChrystal's aides, in the Rolling Stone interview, said that if Americans "started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular."

Maybe we should find out. Gen. Petraeus's confirmation hearings are set for next week. He is a careful man, but this is no time for discretion. What is needed now is a deep, even startling, even brute candor. The country can take it. It's taken two wars. So can Gen. Petraeus. He can't be fired because both his predecessors were, and because he's Petraeus. In that sense he's fireproof. Which is not what he'll care about. He cares about doing what he can to make America safer in the world. That means being frank about a war that can be prosecuted only if the American people support it. They have focused. They're ready to hear.

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UPDATE, SUNDAY, 27 JUNE 2010


Sunday Jun 27, 2010
Brits: McChrystal warned progress in Afghanistan could take years not months
Presented by Microsoft.
POLITICO.COM

By: MIKE ALLEN
Jun 27, 2010 08:03 AM EST

McCHRYSTAL's LAST BRIEFING TO NATO GAVE BLEAK OUTLOOK -- Years, not months -- The (British) Independent on Sunday: '[T]he 'runaway general' briefed defence ministers from Nato and the International Security Assistance Force earlier this month, and warned them not to expect any progress in the next six months. During his presentation, he raised serious concerns over levels of security, violence, and corruption within the Afghan administration. ... [T]he 'campaign overview' left behind by General McChrystal ... warned that ... a 'divergence of coalition expectations and campaign timelines' are among the key challenges faced ... [A] senior military source [said] that General McChrystal ... had been told by White House aides his 'time-frame was all wrong,' with the general thinking in years while the President was thinking more in months [to show progress] ... The general's departure is a sign of politicians 'taking charge of this war,' a senior [British] official said.'

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BARRY SOETORO aka BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS A USURPER
He is not eligible to be President of the United States
because he is not a Natural Born Citizen as required by Article Two, Section One, Clause Five of the United States Constitution.
This is a fact REGARDLESS of where he was born (Mombassa, Hawaii, Chicago, Mecca or Mars).
He is not eligible because he was not born of TWO PARENTS BOTH OF WHOM WERE UNITED STATES CITIZENS AT THE TIME OF HIS BIRTH as required by the Constitution. Barack Hussein Obama Jr. is not eligible to be President of the United States because – according to public admissions made by him – his “birth status was governed” by the United Kingdom. Obama further admits he was a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at birth. Since Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was, if born in the state of Hawaii, a dual citizen, who – according to his own State Department – owed allegiance to the Queen of England and United Kingdom at the time of his birth – he cannot therefore be a “natural born” citizen of the US according to Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the US Constitution. His father, who did not live in the United States for more than a couple of years, was a subject/ciitizen of Kenya/Great Britain at the time of Barack’s birth and afterwards, AND further, as Barack himself admitted on his website during the 2008 campaign, Barack was therefore born SUBJECT TO THE GOVERNANCE OF GREAT BRITAIN. Here is a direct quote from Obama's "Fight the Smears/Fact Check" 2008 website: ‘When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children…’ “ The FACT that he was not born of TWO US CITIZEN PARENTS is all that matters. The question of his birth certificate is a distraction (a distraction fostered by Obama’s supporters?) that ought not to occupy our time and resources. BUT if you are really convinced of the value of the COLB (certificate of live birth) that Obama posted on his website, see this: http://www.scribd.com/doc/9830547/Sun-Yatsen-Certification-of-Live-Birth-in-Hawaii Also, it is possible that he is not a United States citizen at all through his mother if he was born in Kenya, as three witnesses have testified. The reason is because his mother could not pass her US citizenship on to her son because she did not live continuously in the United States for five full years after her fourteenth birthday as required by the US immigration law in effect during that period of time. Check it out: http://www.TheObamaFile.com/ObamaNaturalBorn.htm Also, an excellent introductory primer on Obama Presiidential Eligibility is to be found at: http://people.mags.net/tonchen/birthers.htm His usurpation can only be corrected (1) by Congress through his Impeachment and Removal [something which will never happen in a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid], or (2) it can be corrected by his resignation, which could happen if the public presssure on him to resign becomes great enough, or (3) by his removal by the United States Supreme Court affirming a Quo Warranto decision of the United States Federal District Court for the District of Columbia [which process Attorney General Eric Holder would never allow to even begin] or (4) by an amendment to the Constitution, which will never happen because that again would require the agreement of a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid. _ HERE IS THE QUESTION WHICH EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN SHOULD BE ASKING HIS OR HER CONGRESSMAN AND SENATORS “During the 2008 election, then Senator Obama published a statement at his website which said that his birth status was ‘governed’ by the British Nationality Act of 1948. Can you please tell me, and the American people, how a person governed - at birth - by British law, can be a natural born citizen of the United States and thus constitutionally eligible to be President of the United States?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FlEbBZLzo0

If you really want to understand the difference between the technical terms natural born citizen, native born citizen, naturalized citizen and just plain citizen, go to:

http://www.greschak.com/essays/natborn/index.htm

And if you really want to understand why it is necessary for a man to be a natural born citizen of the United States in order to be President of the United States, read the essay by Leo Donofrio at:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=134881



And if you did not know that in additional to Obama being ineligible to be president because of his nationality, did you
know that he is a Muslim:


http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tCAffMSWSzY#t=28

LEO RUGIENS

BARACK CHOSE KAGAN BECAUSE OF BARAK

ISRAELI SUPREME COURT JUSTICE
AHARON BARAK, IDOLIZED BY
U.S. SUPREME COURT NOMINEE
ELENA KAGAN
........................................................

Robert Bork: With Elena Kagan, U.S. Moves Closer to Rule by “Committee of Ideologues”

By Peter J. Smith

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 23, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Former U.S. Supreme Court nominee and conservative jurist Robert Bork warned Wednesday that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan should be opposed. He also said that the nomination of liberal activists to the Supreme Court showed the United States was drifting closer to rule by a “committee of ideologues.”

Bork was nominated by President Ronald Reagan for the Supreme Court in 1987, but violent opposition in the Senate to his strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and opposition to Roe v. Wade led to the demise of his confirmation hopes. In a conference call with reporters hosted by Americans United for Life, Bork said that Kagan’s vision of judicial power and its role can be seen in her adulation of former Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak, whom Kagan once called her “judicial hero.”

“It’s typical of young lawyers going into constitutional law that they have inflated dreams of what constitutional law can do, of what courts can do, and that usually wears off when times passes and they gain experience,” Bork told reporters. “But Miss Kagan has not yet had time to develop a mature philosophy of judging. I would say that her admiration for Barak, the Israeli Supreme Court Justice, is a prime example of that.”

“Barak may be the worst judge on the planet – one of the most activist judges,” continued Bork. The conservative jurist said that Barak used the court to create widespread and intrusive constitutional law in Israel “without having a constitution.”

“Mr. Barak is quite clear about whose values he is importing in the name of Democracy,” explained Bork. “He says that when fundamental values come in conflict with the views and values of the enlightened (and the enlightened turn out to be professors, journalists, and so forth – all of whom live in one area of Israel with the same postal code) he is quite dismissive of other views.”

Bork mentioned how Barak grabbed hold of the Basic Law of Human Dignity passed by the Israeli Knesset in 1992 “in middle of night, without quorum, and without any recognition of its constitutional nature” – meaning it should have had no legal force. But Barak treated it as a binding legal document, and inaugurated a constitutional revolution in Israel.

Bork explained that under Barak’s philosophy the court can judge any issue and can reorder Israel’s life in any way it sees fit. Barak’s philosophy says the courts authority only ends when issues are “non-justiciable.”

“Barack does not address the question of when all issues are held ‘justiciable’ – when the wielder of power becomes the court,” observed Bork. “We know now that when the wielder of power becomes the court, there is no one to say that the court should not do whatever it wants.”

That case, said Bork, was illustrated by Barak’s Supreme Court’s takeover of the Israeli attorney general’s office – a move Bork said robbed the Knesset and the government of the right to appeal and advance arguments the court did not like.

“I think if people understood it, that an American supreme court nominee was going to follow the example of Barak, they would have grave misgivings and probably refusal to confirm.”

LifeSiteNews.com asked Bork if he thought the intense battles over judicial nominees were healthy for constitutional government, or if it showed that the United States was moving away from rule by law to rule by “a committee of experts.”

“It is not healthy,” remarked Bork. “I don’t know that we are drifting toward a committee of experts, but we’re drifting toward a committee of ideologues if anything.”

Charmaine Yoest, President of AUL, said that Americans need to know of Kagan’s “agenda-driven approach to legal interpretation,” which in terms of the life issues is “undemocratic, a threat to our system, and really out of step with the mainstream of the American public.”

Bill Sanders, AUL’s Senior Vice President of Legal Affairs, also noted in the call that Kagan’s legal opinion on abortion should be asked. Kagan herself criticized the nomination hearings of Steven Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsberg because they were not asked enough questions, especially on abortion.

“We feel that it is completely fair play - it’s something she agreed to – that she should be questioned under oath, before the American people, on television on this issue,” said Sanders.

“One issue is that she opposes just the simple choice by Congress to favor child-bearing over abortion. She is very critical of a case called Russ v. Sullivan in which the Supreme Court upheld the right of Congress to do that,” explained Sanders.

Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings in the Senate are scheduled for June 28.

See additional coverage on Kagan by LifeSiteNews.com:

Memos Show Kagan’s Hand in Clinton-Era Abortion, Assisted Suicide Policy Decisions
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10060707.html

Memo Shows Kagan Helped Clinton-Era Defeat of Partial Birth Abortion Ban
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/may/10051211.html

Kagan Calls Extreme Activist Liberal Judge 'My Judicial Hero'
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/may/10052708.html

Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan Hearings Set for June 28
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/may/10052101.html

THE LIBERAL LOVE AFFAIR WITH COMMUNISM WILL NEVER END

José Saramago: "People used to say about me, 'He's good but he's a communist.' Now they say, 'He's a communist but he's good.'"

IF JOSÉ SARAMAGO, the Portuguese writer who died on Friday at 87, had been an unrepentant Nazi for the last four decades, he would never have won international acclaim or received the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. Leading publishers would never have brought out his books, his works would not have been translated into more than 20 languages, and the head of Portugal's government would never have said on his death -- as Prime Minister José Sócrates did say last week -- that he was "one of our great cultural figures and his disappearance has left our culture poorer."

But Saramago wasn't a Nazi, he was a Communist. And not just a nominal Communist, as his obituaries pointed out, but an "unabashed" (Washington Post), "unflinching" (AP), "unfaltering" (New York Times) true believer. A member since 1969 of Portugal's hardline Communist Party, Saramago called himself a "hormonal Communist" who in all the years since joining the party had "found nothing better." Yet far from rendering him a pariah, Saramago's Communist loyalties have been treated as little more than a roguish idiosyncrasy. Without a hint of irony, AP's obituary quoted a comment Saramago made in 1998: "People used to say about me, 'He's good but he's a Communist.' Now they say, 'He's a Communist but he's good.'"

But the idea that good people can be devoted Communists is grotesque. The two categories are mutually exclusive. There was a time, perhaps, when dedication to Communism could be absolved as misplaced idealism or naiveté, but that day is long past. After Auschwitz and Babi Yar, only a moral cripple could be a committed Nazi. By the same token, there are no good and decent Communists -- not after the Gulag Archipelago and the Cambodian killing fields and Mao's "Great Leap Forward." Not after the testimonies of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Armando Valladares and Dith Pran.

In the decades since 1917, Communism has led to more slaughter and suffering than any other cause in human history. Communist regimes on four continents sent an estimated 100 million men, women, and children to their deaths -- not out of misplaced zeal in pursuit of a fundamentally beautiful theory, but out of utopian fanaticism and an unquenchable lust for power.

Mass murder and terror have always been intrinsic to Communism. "Many archives and witnesses prove conclusively," wrote Stéphane Courtois in his introduction to The Black Book of Communism, a magisterial compendium of Communist crimes first published in France in 1997, "that terror has always been one of the basic ingredients of modern Communism." The uniqueness of the Holocaust notwithstanding, the savageries of Communism and of Nazism are morally interchangeable -- except that the former began much earlier than the latter, lasted much longer, and shed far more blood.

In the decades since 1917, Communist regimes worldwide murdered an estimated 100 million people

At this late date, there is no excuse for regarding Communism and its defenders with one whit less revulsion than we regard neo-Nazis or white supremacists. Saramago's Communism should not have been indulged, it should have been despised. It should have been as great a blot on his reputation as if he had spent the last 41 years as an advocate of murderous repression and cruelty. For that, in a nutshell, is what it means to be an "unabashed" and "hormonal" Communist.

Anyone who imagines that the horrors of Communist rule is a thing of the past ought to spend a few minutes with, say, the State Department's latest human rights report on North Korea. (Sample passage: "Methods of torture . . . included severe beatings, electric shock, prolonged periods of exposure to the elements, humiliations such as public nakedness, confinement for up to several weeks in small 'punishment cells' in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down . . . and forcing mothers recently repatriated from China to watch the infanticide of their newborn infants.") Communism is not, as its champions like to claim, an appealing doctrine that has been perverted by monstrous regimes. It is a monstrous doctrine that hides behind appealing rhetoric. It is mass crime embodied in government. Nothing devised by human beings has caused more misery or proven more brutal.

José Saramago may have been a fine writer, but he was no exemplar of goodness. Good people do not embrace Communism, and Communists are not good.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).