By Jerry Seper–The Washington Times

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Thursday against “America’s toughest sheriff,” Joe Arpaio in Phoenix, accusing him, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the county of refusing to fully cooperate in a federal investigation into allegations that he and his deputies are guilty of racial discrimination.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, is the latest chapter in a bitter feud between Justice and Sheriff Arpaio, who is accused of failing to turn over documents sought since March 2009 that federal prosecutors say comply with its probe of alleged discrimination, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and English-only policies in his jails that discriminate against those with limited English skills.

Sheriff Arpaio, during a press conference in Phoenix, described the lawsuit as “harassment,” saying thousands of pages of documents have already been turned over by his office to federal prosecutors.

“These actions make it abundantly clear that Arizona, including this sheriff, is Washington’s new whipping boy. Now it’s time to take the gloves off,” he said.

“As for today’s lawsuit against my office: These people in Washington met with my attorneys only a few days ago. And in that meeting, Washington got our cooperation; they admitted they already have thousands of pages of the requested documents; and they were given access to interview my staff and get into my jails. They smiled in our faces and then stabbed us in the back with this lawsuit.”

Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, who heads the Civil Rights Division for the Obama administration, said the sheriff’s office declined repeated requests to turn over documents or meet with investigators.

“The actions of the sheriff’s office are unprecedented,” Mr. Perez said. “It is unfortunate that the department was forced to resort to litigation to gain access to public documents and facilities.”

But Sheriff Arpaio’s attorneys, Robert Driscoll and Asheesh Agarwal, both former deputy attorneys general in the Civil Rights Division at Justice during the Bush administration, said federal investigators were politically motivated, citing a news conference in March at which Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was quoted as saying he expected the Justice inquiry to “produce results.”

“While we have no quarrel with the assistant U.S. attorneys handling the investigation, the attorney general’s comments appear to violate federal regulations, departmental policy and state ethical rules designed to ensure the fairness of criminal investigations,” Mr. Agarwal said.

Mr. Driscoll said the DOJ suit speaks loudly by what it does not say.

“It does not allege that Sheriff Arpaio or the MCSO have discriminated against anyone because the DOJ, after 18 months of soliciting allegations against Sheriff Arpaio, has come up empty,” he said.

The lawsuit is the newest twist in a continuing battle involving Arizona officials and the federal government. The Justice Department already has filed a suit challenging a law passed in Arizona giving state and local police the right to arrest anyone reasonably suspected of being an illegal immigrant, claiming the legislation is pre-empted by federal law.

The Justice Department, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, has maintained that immigration laws are a federal responsibility.

In a statement, the Justice Department said Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in programs that receive federal funds and also requires grant recipients to cooperate with investigations of discrimination by providing access to documents, facilities and staff.

The department said the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office signed contractual assurance agreements as a condition of receiving federal funds and promised it would cooperate with investigations of alleged discrimination. It said the lawsuit was filed after the department exhausted all cooperative measures to gain access to the documents and facilities, as part of its investigation.

“Since March 2009, the department has attempted to secure voluntary compliance with the department’s investigation,” it said. “MCSO’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation makes it an extreme outlier, and the department is unaware of any other police department or sheriff’s office that has refused to cooperate in the last 30 years.”

The sheriff, first elected in 1992 and re-elected four times since, said the Obama administration “intended to sue us all along, no matter what we did to try to avert it,” adding that “it’s time Americans everywhere wake up and see this administration for what it really is: calculating, underhanded at times and certainly not looking out for the best interests of the legal citizens residing in this country.”

State Sen. Russell Pearce, the Republican lawmaker who authored the immigration bill, called the Justice Department’s actions a “witch hunt.”

“This is the game that’s played,” he said. “They couldn’t find any violations … that’s why it’s broad, that’s why they’re very vague about what they want. It doesn’t take a very high IQ to figure out what’s going on with these folks.”

The Justice Department investigation has focused on allegations that Sheriff Arpaio and his deputies engaged in “discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures,” along with allegations that his jail discriminated against Hispanic inmates. The inquiry also has targeted allegations that bilingual jail guards were required to speak to inmates only in English.

About $113 million the Maricopa County government received from the federal government last year accounted for about 5 percent of the county’s $2 billion budget. The lawsuit listed $16.5 million of funding provided the sheriff’s office through several programs.

Last year, the federal government stripped Sheriff Arpaio of his special power to enforce federal immigration law, although he continued to conduct law enforcement sweeps through the enforcement of state immigration laws.

The sheriff’s office has said half of the 1,032 people arrested in the sweeps have been illegal immigrants.

The Osborns long ago accepted the risks faced by their son, an Army specialist. But what they can’t accept now are the military rules of engagement, which they contend made it possible for the Taliban to kill him.

“We let the enemy fire first, and they took my son from us,” Beverly Osborn said of the rules, which in most instances require U.S. forces to identify an enemy threat before firing, and to withhold fire if civilians are close by. The rules also place restrictions on close air support and artillery, prompting complaints from some service members that their lives are put at risk against an enemy that fights by no rules at all.

As American combat deaths have reached record levels this summer, public support is eroding for the 9-year-old conflict. Several recent opinion polls found that more than half of those surveyed oppose the war, with the high casualty rate among concerns most often cited. American combat deaths reached 60 in June, 65 in July, and 55 in August, according to icasualties.org. That is by far the highest three-month total of the war.

Criticism is mounting among military families too. An antiwar group of families of service members in Afghanistan and Iraq has called for an end to the Afghanistan war. At the same time, families like the Osborns, who describe themselves as conservative, are questioning the way the war is being waged.

After Bill Osborn publicly criticized the rules of engagement just before his son’s wake, he said, other families of service members killed or serving in Afghanistan contacted him to express similar concerns. They don’t want to end the war, Osborn said, but to change the way it’s being fought.

“Our soldiers are forced to fight with one hand tied behind their backs. They’re not allowed to take care of business — and they know it,” Bill Osborn said in his living room, where his son’s Bronze Star, Purple Heart and campaign ribbons are on display.

Debbie Morris of Arnold, Calif., who lost her son in Afghanistan on June 10, said the rules of engagement protect Afghan civilians at the expense of American troops. She blames the rules, in part, for the death of her son, Marine Lance Cpl. Gavin Brummund, 22, from a roadside bomb.

If the rules prevent troops from aggressively pursuing Afghan militants who plot attacks against them while posing as civilians, “then the rules aren’t working, and why are we even there?” Morris said.

Brummund’s widow, Michaela, said Marines in her husband’s unit told her they were frustrated by the rules. Protecting civilians, many of whom are hostile to U.S. forces, “isn’t worth our guys’ lives,” she said.

On June 27, the Osborns wrote an impassioned e-mail to Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan. They described how Ben, 27, volunteered to man the machine gun on an armored vehicle headed out on a patrol in Kunar province on June 15.

Their son’s unit of 20 men was ambushed by a Taliban force of 70 to 100 fighters, the e-mail said. According to the Osborns, who said they talked with members of their son’s unit, Ben had to wait to return fire until ordered to do so. He got off 10 rounds before he was shot and killed, they said.

The rules of engagement “led to the demise of our son … and other warriors like him,” the e-mail said. The Osborns asked Petraeus to revise the rules and lift restrictions.

“Winning the hearts and minds of the Afghans is not what’s best for America,” they wrote. “We are at war. The rules of engagement must be to empower our soldiers, not to give aid and comfort to the enemy.”

Petraeus responded within minutes, the Osborns said. His e-mail offered condolences, and noted that “commanders have a moral imperative to ensure that we provide every possible element of support to our troopers when they get into a tight spot.”

The general added: “And I will ensure that we meet that imperative.”

Petraeus, who wrote the military’s counter-insurgency doctrine with a focus on minimizing civilian casualties, has said he is reviewing the rules of engagement. Petraeus assumed command July 4 after the ouster of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who had tightened the rules when he took command in June 2009.

Military Families Speak Out, the antiwar group, has long demanded an end to the war in Iraq but for years refrained from demanding an end to the Afghanistan conflict — which many members considered “the good war.” After U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan rose early last year, the group formally called for ending that war and bringing troops home.

More families have joined the group since casualties jumped this summer, said Nancy Lessin, the organization’s co-founder. Military Families Speak Out, founded in 2002, represents 4,000 military families, with 25 to 30 chapters nationwide, Lessin said.

The group has no formal position on the rules of engagement, said Paula Rogovin, whose son is a Marine captain who served in Iraq. But bringing the troops home would eliminate any dangers they face as a result of the restrictions, she said.

By contrast, the Osborns say they believe the war in Afghanistan must be fought — and won. But they want it waged more aggressively.

Soon after Ben deployed in April, he began telling his parents that the rules of engagement were too restrictive and were putting him and his fellow soldiers at risk.

“He said he felt more like a Peace Corps worker than a warrior,” his father said. After Ben’s death, his comrades told his father they had the same concerns.

“I don’t know that if Ben had been able to fire spontaneously, he’d be alive today,” Bill Osborn added. “But I do know that he would have had a much better chance of surviving by being able to defend himself quickly.”

“It almost appears that our civilian leaders and military command think more of the natives than our own troops,” he said. “That’s a disturbing thought, and I don’t want to believe it.”

Ben left behind three brothers, a sister and a widow, Nicole, whom he had married in February.

“It’s too late for us and for Ben,” Bill Osborn said, sitting next to photos of his son in uniform. “But there are other families out there, and if we can help save just one soldier, it’ll be worth it.”

—————————————————

This is exactly the outcome Obama was banking on: if enough of our Soldiers perish, their families will speak out to end the war. Never mind that Obama’s new ROE is killing our Soldiers, he will be heralded for ending the war and bringing what’s left of our troops home.

Enlarge

Bob Uda, Ph.D. (ABD)

• The pretense that this [Afghanistan] war must continue under the current strategy and that we are achieving results…the facts appear each day to refute that.
• A self-destructive and self-defeating strategy of “counter-insurgency” (COIN) doctrine and nation building.
• The COIN principle is not based on winning; it is based on political whims and is not a true tenet of warfare.
• Warfare is, and always should be, about WINNING or do not go to War.
• There is no reason to order massive armies that require large and extensive bases and massive logistical support to fight them on their home turf.
• Protect and secure our American troops before we continue sparing the lives of the Taliban and civilians with bizarre, restrictive rules of engagement (ROE).
• Where are the common sense and rational senior General and Admiral Strategists that we have trained and schooled to be innovative, aggressive and win our nation’s wars quickly and decisively?
• “Victory” in war appears lost in the world of political correctness and appeasement.
• The vast majority of goals can be accomplished through quick, decisive joint strike military operations from selected “Lily Pad” friendly bases.
• This is the driving point: why are we so worried about what others think?
• The U.S. must adopt a national military strategy that heavily leverages the core capability to break enemy states, target and destroy the enemy’s capability to bring harm to America.
• Achieve the success that is necessary; wiping out and neutralizing radical Islamism and nation states that support it.
• The American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan…calls into question the ability of occupying forces to root out terror networks without hitting the sources and sanctuaries that supply them like Iran.
• The only way to stop that threat is to give them what they respect; pure force of arms and will.
• We must stop thinking like westerners and understand the way our enemy thinks.

• Rules of Engagement. In real asymmetrical warfare, there is no such thing as rules of engagement. Asymmetrical warfare is “free-for-all” warfare. Islamo-fascist terrorists are unhampered by morals, ethics, and legalities. Islamo-fascists are amoral. If we are to prevail against them, we must do likewise. We must be unshackled and unhampered by conventional warfare rules of engagement. To triumph over the Isfasts [short for Islamo-fascists], we must use every possible unconventional warfare strategy, tactic, means, technology, weaponry, tools, techniques, and methods.

• Political Correctness. The only language that Isfasts understand pertains to words such as force, power, kill, control, decapitate, humiliate, and pain. Hence, we should apply everything within our power and means to use these tools on them. When we inflict these tools on them, they understand when we have the upper hand. When we apply the “political correctness” tools on them, they see us as weak. Hence, they become emboldened to keep pursuing their main goal in life, which is to achieve world domination and their idea of utopia.

• Fight Fire with Fire. We should use the language they understand. The only language the Isfasts understand is what they do. We need to do the same things that they do. If they kill, we need to kill. If they bomb us, we need to bomb them. We must fight fire with fire. Let us not kid ourselves. They are out to eradicate democracy, freedom, liberty, and the free-enterprise system. It is them or us. It is better to be them.

• Never Negotiate with Terrorists. If they kill a hostage, we go after them with vengeance and wipe them off the map without delay. Teach them lessons they will never forget. That is the only language they understand. Send them to their twisted concept of heaven where they will live with 72 virgins. I am sorry, but that belief will never come to pass.

• Kill or Be Killed? It is either kill or be killed. If given that choice, I would rather kill first than be killed first. Wouldn’t you? General George S. Patton said, “May God have mercy upon my enemies because I won’t.” We must do as General Patton said, “We as attackers have the initiative; we must retain this tremendous advantage by always attacking rapidly, ruthlessly, viciously, and without rest.” If we want to survive, that is what we must do! We must listen to the good general’s words and put it into practice. I am sure that General Patton had read Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu said, “Therefore, the good fighter will be terrible in his onset, and prompt in his decision.”

• All Bets are Off! If the terrorists (i.e., al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas, Taliban, and other Isfasts) will bomb and wantonly kill innocent civilian men, women, children, the aged, the infirm, reporters, UN personnel, and Red Cross personnel, then all of their similar people are fair game for us. “The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs” (Deut. 32:25). All bets are off! What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Thus, we will let the world know that we will not fight with one hand tied behind our backs any longer. We shall fight ruthlessness with ruthlessness. We shall fight fire with fire…only two orders of magnitude more.

• A Tit-for-Tat War. If the terrorists will not adhere to any rules of engagement, then we too will not adhere to any rules of engagement. If the terrorists do not recognize and adhere to the tenets of the Geneva Convention, then we are not bound by the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We will fight a tit-for-tat war. Whatever the terrorists dish out, we will dish back to them an order-of-magnitude greater (even two orders of magnitude greater) retaliatory force and firepower.

• No Such Thing as Collateral Damage. If the Isfasts poison our water supplies, we poison their water supplies. If the Isfasts use germ warfare (anthrax or whatever) on our people, we use germ warfare on their people. If the Isfasts use poison gas, we use poison gas. If the Isfasts blow up our power stations, we retaliate by blowing up their entire infrastructure of power stations, utilities, dams, bridges, highways, farms, airports, military bases, government buildings, and other infrastructure. Forget about collateral damage! There is no such thing as collateral damage when we are fighting for our survival.

• War is not a game. Hence, there is no such thing as “fair play” in war. There is no fairness. There is no “time out.” There are no referees or umpires. You never go into the penalty box. In war, you destroy. You kill. You injure. You maim. You disable. You crush. You annihilate. You wipe out. Those are the rules of the game (if you want to call it a game). Therefore, the Pendleton 8 did nothing wrong as we fight a war against Isfasts. Moreover, remember this: General George S. Patton said, “You’re never beaten until you admit it.” We will never lose because we will never admit it.

Michelle Malkin

An indignant President Obama complained last week, “I can’t spend all of my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead.” Fine. How about plastering a copy of his presidential oath of office there instead?

The commander-in-chief is in dire need of a daily reminder that his job is to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” — not international law or global diktats.

Case in point: Last week, Obama’s State Department handed in America’s first-ever report to the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights in conjunction with something called the “Universal Periodic Review.” In short, the document is a self-aggrandizing report card touting the administration’s far-left domestic-and foreign-policy initiatives for the world’s approval.

The report boasts of racialand gender-bean-counting in the executive branch; Justice Department outreach to Muslim grievance groups opposed to post-9/11 security measures; payoffs to teachers unions in the federal stimulus law; continuing commitment to closing the Gitmo detention facility for enemy combatants, and the illusory life-saving effects of ObamaCare on minorities through “expanding community-health centers” (which have yet to be built, but not that it matters in our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president’s age of post-achievement).

The report also includes a section on “values and immigration” — which essentially singles out Arizona’s immigrationenforcement law as a humanrights deficiency “that is being addressed in a court action.”

In response, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer rightly blasted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration for succumbing to “internationalism run amok.”

Brewer pointed out in a letter to Clinton, “Human rights as guaranteed by the United States and Arizona Constitutions are expressly protected in SB 1070 and defended vigorously by my administration. In fact, the Department of Justice has correctly not included these socalled ‘human rights’ issues in the current litigation against the state of Arizona.”

Somehow, that inconvenient detail escaped the Foggy Bottom bureaucrats’ notice.

No one should be surprised, of course, that the Department of Blame America First is prostrating itself before the likes of repressive UN Human Rights Council members Libya, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and China. Or surprised that Obama’s globalist panderers couldn’t simply keep their mouths shut and refrain from trashing Americans with whom they disagree.

Recall: In May, Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner pre-emptively trashed our country’s human-rights record to Chinese government officials and humiliated Arizonans — and all Americans — who support states’ rights to protect their borders and enhance their security through strict immigration enforcement. Posner called SB 1070 “a troubling trend in our society” in his bow-and-scrape conversations with the ChiComs.

The inclusion of Arizona in a politically correct catalogue of human rights and wrongs is more than “downright offensive,” as Brewer put it. It’s a national travesty. In the very same Obama administration document, the State Department praises the administration for its “robust protections for freedom of expression.”

The report notes sanctimoniously: “As a general matter, the government does not punish or penalize those who peacefully express their views in the public sphere, even when those views are critical of the government. Indeed, dissent is a valuable and valued part of our politics.”

Yeah? Tell that to the Democratic members of Congress leading the punitive economic boycott and political demonization of Arizona. Or to Attorney General Eric Holder, who rushed to attack SB 1070 before he had even read it.

Fresh off this UN mess, Holder’s Social Justice Department has launched yet another vendetta against Arizona. On Monday, DOJ filed suit against Phoenix-area community colleges because they imposed strict citizenship screening of potential employees.

As Obama throws America under the bus for the cause of open borders, the shady UN human-rights police must be laughing their jackboots off.

———————————————

See Also:What American President Would Do That?

By Jeffrey H. Anderson

A few miles up the road from Ground Zero, the Obama administration recently submitted its account of the United States human rights record to the United Nations Human Rights Council.  The administration’s report, the first ever submitted by this nation to that body (whose members include Libya and Cuba), was succinctly summarized by identical Washington Post and CBS News headlines:  “US admits human rights shortcomings in UN report.”

It’s certainly telling that the Obama administration chose to issue condemnations of America’s sins — alleged or otherwise, past or present — and to submit these to the UN. But even more illuminating is what the administration chose to omit in its report. In a 29-page overview of the respect (or lack thereof) for rights shown in America and throughout American history, the administration couldn’t find space for a single meaningful reference to the document that lays out and informs our fundamental conceptions of rights more than any other: the Declaration of Independence. This omission offers further compelling evidence to support an increasingly obvious truth: President Obama doesn’t take seriously the ideals of the American revolutionary period. Or, to state it more exactly, he takes very seriously the project of overcoming or supplanting those ideals.  

To be sure, the report discusses a wide variety of topics.  It conveys that the Obama administration supports Obamacare (surprise!), praises the “economic stimulus” package, opposes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” promotes bilingual ballots, and is committed to the use of “smart power” in foreign affairs (employing “determined diplomacy” and “harnessing the full potential of international institutions”).  It offers self-aggrandizing statements — “Thirty years ago, the idea of having an African-American president would not have seemed possible; today it is our reality” (Did the thought of a black President really seem impossible in 1980?) — false and peculiar statements — “Our recent health care reform bill also lowers costs and offers greater choices for women, and ends insurance company discrimination against them” — and utterly confused statements:  “The recession in the United States was fueled largely by a housing crisis, which coincided with some discriminatory lending practices.”  (That’s right, “discriminatory,” not “indiscriminate.”  But not to worry:  “[T]he federal government has focused resources and efforts to determine whether and where discrimination took place, as well as to ensure greater oversight going forward”).  Yes, the Obama administration found room for all of this — as well as for a nearly 1-page-long ode to Obamacare — but essentially no space for the Declaration.   

Rather, the report declares, “[H]uman rights have not only been part of the United States since the beginning, they were the reason our nation was created.  From its adoption in 1789, the U.S. Constitution has been the central legal instrument of government and the supreme law of the land.” There seems to be something missing here. Reading this, one would assume that the United States was created in 1789, not 1776.  The Revolutionary War, too, seems to have disappeared.  

Even when it seems like it would have been hard to avoid referencing the Declaration, the report skirts it, often preferring non-American references. Immediately under the heading of the United States’s own “commitment to freedom, equality, and dignity,” the report states, “Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that ‘all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’ and that they are ‘endowed with reason and conscience.’”

For those who are unfamiliar with it, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a document that offers statements about “rights and freedoms” like this one: “Everyone has the right to education…. Elementary education shall be compulsory…. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.”  (Who knew that compulsory education in the service of the UN was a right?)

Elsewhere in the report, the administration asserts, “People should be free and should have a say in how they are governed.  Governments have an obligation not to restrict fundamental freedoms unjustifiably….”  People should “have a say” and shouldn’t have their “fundamentally freedoms” restricted “unjustifiably”? This doesn’t quite have the same ring as, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…[t]hat to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” 

Yet the Obama administration mentions the UDHR five times in its report and the Declaration of Independence just once — the same number of times as the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. 

In marked contrast to another lanky president from Illinois, who spoke about the Declaration at nearly every turn, this isn’t the first time that President Obama has implied its irrelevance to the modern day, or has shown how little he takes it, or its claims, seriously.  During his Independence Day remarks in 2009, President Obama mentioned “inadequate schools,” “health care reform,” and “clean energy,” but he failed to mention — or quote from — the Declaration. In his 2010 Independence Day message, he said, “Today we celebrate the 234th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence….”  He released it on July 2. His message reads, “For Immediate Release.”  (The Declaration reads, “In Congress, July 4, 1776.”)

The night he won the presidency, Obama said in his victory speech: “I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years — block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.” In 2008, 221 years dated back to 1787, the year the Constitution was written, not to 1776, the year the nation began. In President Obama’s mind, the nation apparently didn’t come into existence until the government came into existence. 

This is not a trivial oversight. As Hadley Arkes writes,

Obama was pointing his audience to the beginning of our national life, and so he did have to make a judgment on when that beginning was.  Evidently, Obama knows little about the substance of Lincoln’s teaching [as “four score and seven years ago” from when Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg was 1776]; but he surely must recall that Martin Luther King appealed to the Declaration as the moral ground of our constitutional rights. Obama’s choice here could not have been a matter wholly of inadvertence.

Why would Obama eschew, or even dislike, the Declaration?  Because it plainly and powerfully asserts that the sole purpose of all just governments is to secure “certain unalienable Rights,” or rights that we possess by nature. Obama calls these, with some justification, “negative rights.”  Such “negative” rights are possessed by all of humanity (though they are often denied by oppressive governments or individuals) and are granted by nature or nature’s God. The Obama administration’s report to the UN, however, says that language in the UDHR “suggests the kinds of obligations — both positive and negative — that governments have with regard to their citizens” (emphases added).  Such “positive” rights are man-made, are granted by government, and can therefore be taken away by government. Moreover, they always come at the expense of “negative” rights. The Declaration only condones such taking when it’s done in the interest of protecting the natural, “negative” rights to which Obama doesn’t want his reach to be limited.

Further demonstrating this point, the Obama administration’s report explicitly praises Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 “Four Freedoms” speech, in which FDR declared “freedom from want” to be one of “four essential human freedoms” — while undeniably implying a strong governmental role in securing that freedom.  And therein lies the tension between the Declaration (as well as the Founders writ large) and the Progressive agenda: Having government secure your right to “the Pursuit of Happiness” is not at all the same thing as having government secure your “freedom from want.”

In Common Sense, also from 1776, Thomas Paine wrote, “Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.” As if anticipating the likes of Obama, he lamented, “Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them….”

To be fair, the Obama administration did find one occasion to refer to the Declaration of Independence by name in its report. (The report also contains the phrase, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but the phrase is not attributed to its source, and the next line is, “These same rights are encoded in international human rights law and in our own Constitution.”)  Just seven words are directly attributed to the document, and here they are, in context:  “[W]e are committed to principled engagement across borders and with foreign governments and their citizens.  This commitment includes, in the words of our Declaration of Independence, according ‘decent respect to the opinions of mankind,’ and seeking always to preserve and protect the dignity of all persons.”

In that same spirit, the administration writes in the report’s conclusion, “The United States views participation in this UPR [Universal Periodic Review] process as an opportunity to discuss with our citizenry and with fellow members of the Human Rights Council our accomplishments, challenges, and vision for the future on human rights. We welcome observations and recommendations that can help us on that road to a more perfect union.” Many Americans will likely find it insulting that the United States is asking other nations, or international bodies, for recommendations on how we can be better. And President Obama will likely not understand why. 

Most Americans who believe that there is truly something extraordinary, and extraordinarily good, about this country, base much of that belief on our founding documents and the wise and beautiful ideals they express. They mark our nation as unique, as one whose fate is still “in many respects the most interesting in the world” — just as when Alexander Hamilton first penned those words. 

In marked contrast, President Obama was asked last year whether he believes in American exceptionalism. He replied, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” These words, like the U.N. report, are telling:  In his disconnection from the glorious events and ideals of America’s founding, President Obama stands disconnected from America itself.

1. The speech seemed little more than a rehash of old news. Did he really tell us anything new? In some ways it seemed like a public announcement of the checking-off of a campaign promise.

2. Where was the vision for Iraq? For America’s role in the region?

3. He strikingly referred to Iraq as a “partner,” but never as an “ally.” Is that what we want from Baghdad? Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to have a tight relationship with Iraq, especially considering Iran’s destabilizing rise in the region?

4. Unless I missed it, the president never talked of victory — peace crossed his lips, but never victory — not even as an objective of either war. Isn’t peace from victory usually best?

5. His interlude on the economy was a major distraction from what should have been a national-security speech, especially in light of the dearth of Oval Office talks since he took over the White House. 6. How come he never mentions the Taliban when he talks about the enemy in Afghanistan? It’s always al-Qaeda. Not that anyone is disputing al-Qaeda’s status, but he surely knows — and he should tell the American people — that the biggest challenge in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) is the Taliban. Since he regularly fails to mention the “T” word, you have to wonder what his goal is: pursuing peace with the Taliban, or victory over the Taliban?

7. He had some nice words about the troops — we’re blessed to have such fine, brave, young men and women willing to go in harm’s way in our defense. And he’s absolutely right on making sure our veterans — and their families — get the care and support they need.

8. He’s also right that we have the world’s finest fighting force in our service personnel. But they won’t stay that way for long if we don’t give them the equipment they need to fight by modernizing our armed forces.

——————————————————————-

Sure he had some nice words about our troops: It’s called ‘political expediency, but we all know that Obama despises the U.S. military and everything it stands for– especially with our troops in Afghanistan hunting down his Taliban pals.

By Dan Weil

Hans A. von Spakovsky

Why does President Obama persistently misrepresent a particular Supreme Court decision and make misstatements about the law?

Does he do it intentionally for political gain, or are his legal advisors such poor lawyers that they misinform him? Whatever the reason, if he were Pinocchio, the statements he made about campaign finance “reform” in his latest weekly address would give him a nose longer than a Nationals’ baseball bat.

The President essentially repeated some of the same false claims that he made during his last State of the Union address. Back then, he asserted that the Citizens United decision had “reversed a century of law to open the floodgates—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.” Justice Alito seemed to shake his head and mouth the words “not true.”

In fact, the President’s claims weren’t true. The Citizens United decision left the ban on direct campaign contributions to candidates by corporations and unions in place; the Supreme Court overturned only the federal ban on independent political expenditures, which is the equivalent of independent political speech. The 1st Amendment requires no less.

This past weekend, Obama was attacking corporations for supposedly trying to “take over” our elections. He also criticized Republican leaders for stopping the “reform” sponsored by Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the so-called DISCLOSE Act. The Democrats were unable to get a single Republican to vote with them to end cloture just before the recess.

Eight former commissioners of the Federal Election Commission (including myself) have called the DISCLOSE Act “unnecessary, partially duplicative of existing law, and severely burdensome to the right to engage in political speech and advocacy.” But none of these reasons (or the 1st Amendment) was sufficient to convince this president.

In his address, the President claimed that if this new law were in place, foreign corporations “would be restricted from spending money to influence American elections—just as they were in the past.”

The problem with this claim is that current law already prohibits foreign nationals, including foreign corporations, from participating in American elections directly or indirectly—the Citizens United decision didn’t change that at all. Foreign corporations can’t contribute to candidates, nor can they engage in independent political expenditures as American corporations and unions now can.

What Obama and the sponsors of the DISCLOSE Act want to do is expand the current prohibition on foreigners to as many American companies as possible that may have a small percentage of foreign shareholders, even if those shareholders have no control whatsoever over the decisions made by the Americans who run the corporation.

This is just an end-run around the Citizens United decision. Otherwise, why would he make no mention of unions with foreign members or foreign nationals as directors such as the Service Employees International Union? The DISCLOSE Act has nothing to say about such unions.

But that is the theme throughout the DISCLOSE Act, whose merits the President was praising on Saturday—most of its provisions apply to corporations but not unions. This completely abandons the history of past campaign finance reform that has always treated unions and corporations on an equal basis. It gives support to claims that the DISCLOSE Act is just a partisan bill intended to help one particular political party, not reform the election process.

Obama said on Saturday that he was concerned about “the corporate takeover of our democracy.” But the PACs of unions like the International Brotherhood of Electricians, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the SEIU are some of the biggest contributors to federal candidates. The SEIU made the largest amount of independent expenditures so far in the 2010 election cycle of any other organization. But do we hear Obama expressing concern about the “union takeover of our democracy”? Is he perhaps unaware that while corporate PACs generally split their contributions evenly between Democrats and Republicans, union PACs give almost 100% of their contributions to Democrats?

The President even cited Republican Teddy Roosevelt for his supposed opposition to “corporate influence” in our elections. President Roosevelt signed the Tillman Act into law in 1907, which banned direct contributions to federal candidates by corporations. That law is still in place today and was not changed by the Citizens United decision. Contrary to the President’s claim, Roosevelt was concerned with direct contributions to candidates, not with restricting the 1st Amendment rights of corporations, associations or unions to engage in independent political speech.

Obama mistakenly claims that “we don’t know who’s behind these [political] ads, and we don’t know who’s paying for them.” According to him, Republicans oppose the DISCLOSE Act because they want “to keep the public in the dark.” But current law and FEC regulations have extensive and detailed disclosure and reporting requirements for electioneering ads.

Obama seemingly overlooks the fact that the Supreme Court upheld those requirements in Citizens United. Once again, the lawyer and former law professor is wrong on the law.

Obama concluded his address by saying that “this is an issue that goes to whether or not we will have a democracy that works for ordinary Americans—a government of, by and for the people.” He is certainly correct about that—but his solution is to restrict political speech and political advocacy of those he fears will criticize his policies.

It is Obama’s push for an all-powerful central government, running our economy and the lives of everyday Americans, that represents the biggest danger to “a democracy that works for ordinary Americans.”

Bust of  Michael King (Martin Luther King Jr.) has been added to the Oval Office, but there’s no place for Winston Churchill

Story Here

Image by R. Martin