GOP Leaders Breach Oath of Office

The GOP rhetoric is pernicious. It advocates the financial destruction of the United States. It is ignorant and stupid because it is based solely on emotional appeal as the dominant factor of GOP/teaparty cheerleading. It reminds me of the Miller Light ads “Tastes Great/Less Filling,” except those ads were not dangerous. What the Republicans are advocating is.

House Representatives Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann suffer delusions of grandeur brought on by having to believe their own pernicious nonsense. Cantor seems to believe that he will succeed John Boehner as Speaker of the House. Bachmann seems to believe that she will succeed Barack Obama as President of the United States. They advocate that the United States should default on its worldwide obligations. That alone should be sufficient to disqualify them from achieving higher office. In fact it should qualify them for recall if not impeachment.

The financial destruction of the nation that these Republicans seek is beyond what any terrorist could hope to achieve.

It is a very serious statement. I do not make it lightly, either. The consequence of not raising the debt ceiling is default on obligations the US has in the world market. Look at Bachmann's website. Never mind the fact that such a plan cannot be done. Even her most ardent of supporters Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, says it’s “irresponsible.” He is being understandably kind and wrong. It’s not irresponsible, it’s negligent and dangerous.

Keep in mind that she has also claimed that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly” to end slavery, but facts don’t interest her. That conjecture is stupidity. Politicizing a function of government to make a headline is something the GOP/teaparty regularly does with flagrant disregard for consequences. It is not alright. It is bad for business and bad for the country. If that is a "negotiating tactic," it is a treacherous one.

What is worse is that the Republican Party leadership is enabling such treachery. Its recent Budget Resolution is an example because to go into effect requires raising the debt ceiling. By the way, the rest of the world is watching and so are world markets. They could not care less about Medicare. They care about the United States making good on its obligations. But the GOP does not care about anything except trashing the economy so they can blame it on the administration.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says that if the ceiling isn’t raised by Aug. 2, the government could begin defaulting on some of its obligations, triggering a financial crisis.

Republicans floated the idea of rewriting the 14th Amendment last year when they were waving the flag over Arizona’s immigration lies. Top Republicans Senator Lindsey Graham (SC), Senator Jon Kyl (AZ), and Senator Mitch McConnell (KY) advocated eliminating the “birthright clause” and demonstrated their antithesis to the Amendment. Senator Graham argued that the 14th Amendment no longer serves the purpose it was designed to address. Senate Minority Whip Kyl supported hearings on repealing the 14th Amendment. Senator McConnell said Congress should “reconsider the Fourteenth Amendment.”

But there isn’t anything to interpret in Section 4: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law . . . shall not be questioned.” These Republicans took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution whether they like it or not. To prevail in their hypocrisy imperils the country and should be sufficient grounds for their impeachment and removal from office for breaching their oath of office.

Article first published as GOP Leaders Breach Oath of Office on Technorati.

Patriot Action: Suspending the 4th Amendment

After the Republican House procedurally failed at their first attempt to have the Patriot Act extended, they succeeded and passed it with little debate. The bill now goes to the Senate and begs a very important question. Where is the oversight on this issue? The answer is, there isn’t any oversight. There is fear mongering, like the claim that our country is facing unprecedented threats both at home and abroad. What threats? Where at home? Where abroad?

The Patriot Act is the post-9/11 law created during the Bush/Cheney administration that violates the 4th Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. Its authorization is so broad that the government does not even have to specify the suspect’s name to get a warrant. It authorizes the following:

1. Examination of library and bookstore records of suspects, along with hard drives, tax documents and gun records, without being required to show probable cause

2. Roving wiretaps on a terror suspect without the government specifying the suspect’s name to get a warrant

3. Surveillance of so-called “lone wolf” suspects, permits secret intelligence surveillance of non-US persons who are not affiliated with a foreign organization. Although it has never been used, the Congress seeks to renew it without debate.

Additionally, National Security Letters (NSLs) permit the government to obtain the communication, financial and credit records of anyone deemed relevant to a terrorism investigation even if that person is not suspected of unlawful behavior.

The ACLU also offers a detailed look at how congress and the public “have yet to receive real information about how these [Patriot Act] powerful tools are being used to collect information on Americans.” The ACLU makes it easy for you to contact your Senator. Reasonable suspicion or probable cause before undertaking an investigation that infringes upon a person's privacy is suspended under the Patriot Act, which needs to expire.

The House vote came in and by a margin of 65, approved the Patriot Act extension. As the NY Times reported, “it is likely that the Senate will approve the House’s bill — putting off a larger debate over the provisions until later in the year.”

Or so we hope.

In the Senate, a bill proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) would extend the provisions for three more years without new safeguards. Another bill by Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) would make the provisions I mentioned permanent. Although Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) offers a bill that would add several safeguards, it also extends the expiring provisions in the Patriot Act through 2013.

Some have argued that it is like the tree falling in the woods with no one around and asking if it makes a sound. The tree’s falling creates a disturbance whether anyone is around to hear it or not. Moreover, the use of such a postulation demonstrates a lack of understanding of the issue, if not ignorance.

If you pardon the reference, the issue is clear cut. First, The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,” which the Patriot Act allows, especially whether or not a person knows it. Second, “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,” which the Patriot Act authorizes.

Of course many English colonists, perhaps even a majority, asked the same question, “Why get worked up over things that only theoretically threaten liberty?” No one asked you to concern yourself about the “right of the people” or civil liberties at all. The Constitution takes care of that, whether or not you know it.

While many writers are concerned with pontificating about Egypt, a subject vastly beyond their understanding, concern about their own liberties go ignored. To keep our eye on the ball, compromising our constitution affects us more than current events abroad in Africa. Egypt now has no constitution. Its military accomplished that. It is our Bill of Rights that is threatened here at home by our Congress that demands our concern.

The reason for concern is as the American Civil Liberties Union motto states, “Because Freedom Can’t Protect Itself.”

Assault on the Fourteenth

The founding idea of “Equal Justice Under Law” is literally carved in stone above the entrance to the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. The Republican Party wants that idea changed. They want exceptions. They want “Equal Justice Under Law Except For Immigrants From Mexico. “ It’s like saying, “Liberty and Justice for Almost All.”

The Republicans won and Congress enacted the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1868. Times have changed. Republicans have changed, too. Now they want to repeal the Fourteenth Amendment. With a midterm election looming, the out-of-power GOP has found its bandwagon in immigration. Its’ bigotry-mongering is aimed directly at Mexican immigrants, somehow segregating them from immigrants of other countries, like Russia or India.

Since its passage in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment is the basis of all Supreme Court decisions having to do with our Civil Rights. Thus, the Republican assault on the Fourteenth Amendment is an assault on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, not to mention the subsequent Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Fair Housing Act of 1968. Their argument to repeal it singles out Hispanic babies as enemies of the country who deserve to be punished for the crime of being born in the United States.

Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment to counter what was at that time called the "black codes," such as depriving citizenship to children born of former slaves. To make sure that the States could not legislate against it, the Fourteenth Amendment requirement is that “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the citizens of the United States... [or] deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, [or] deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The GOP has created an immigration band wagon that harkens back to a time when discrimination and segregation were legal. Ginned by the plight of Arizona and immigration issues peculiar to all four of Mexico’s border states, on board are such prominent Republicans as Senator Lindsey Graham (SC), Senator Jon Kyl (AZ), and Senator Mitch McConnell (KY). Eliminating the so-called “birthright clause” is intentionally aimed at Hispanic children by discriminating against them and not children born of undocumented aliens from countries other than Mexico.

Senator Graham argued that the Fourteenth Amendment no longer serves the purpose it was designed to address and that Congress should reexamine granting citizenship to any child born in the United States. “I'm looking at the laws that exist and see if it makes sense today,” Graham said. “Birthright citizenship doesn't make so much sense when you understand the world as it is.”

Senate Minority Whip Kyl also supports hearings on repealing the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Kyl said that he opposes allowing children of undocumented immigrants to be granted U.S. citizenship and wants Congress to hold hearings on the matter. "The Fourteenth Amendment [has been] interpreted to provide that if you are born in the United States, you are a citizen no matter what," Kyl said. "So the question is, if both parents are here illegally, should there be a reward for their illegal behavior?"

Senator McConnell says Congress should reconsider the Fourteenth Amendment citizenship guarantee and joined the immigration bandwagon. "I think we ought to take a look at it -- hold hearings, listen to the experts on it," McConnell said. "I haven't made a final decision about it, but that's something that we clearly need to look at. Regardless of how you feel about the various aspects of immigration reform, I don't think anybody thinks that's something they're comfortable with."

The Republican immigration bandwagon claims that children of undocumented aliens will overburden a State’s resources cannot be justified and such an argument has already been held by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional. What this Republican assault on the Fourteenth Amendment does is to attack “citizenship” by renaming it the “birthright clause.” It also attacks “due process” and “equal protection.” Its’ cynical purpose is to set the stage to reverse three Supreme Court decisions that Republicans have never liked that are on its to-do list.

· Citizenship: Plyler v. Doe (1982) protecting all children born in the US
· Equal Protection: Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ending “separate but equal”
· Due Process: Roe v. Wade (1973) extending the right of privacy to abortion

Here is what the Supreme Court held in those cases that you will find in the links above.

Plyler v. Doe

A state statute “which withholds from local school districts any state funds for the education of children who were not ‘legally admitted’ into the United States, and which authorizes local school districts to deny enrollment to such children, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

The Court’s ruling says, the statute “imposes a lifetime hardship on a discrete class of children not accountable for their disabling status. These children can neither affect their parents' conduct nor their own undocumented status.”

Furthermore, “Use of the phrase ‘within its jurisdiction’ confirms the understanding that the Fourteenth Amendment's protection extends to anyone, citizen or stranger, who is subject to the laws of a State, and reaches into every corner of a State's territory.”

The immigration band wagon may get many more passengers on board on its way to the midterm elections. A band wagon is a band wagon. It sounds best when it is standing still. But it is going to play hell getting by Plyler, which will make the band wagon moving anywhere after the election a no-go from the git-go. Amendment 14 says so.

Brown v. Board of Education

"We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment."

Under the guise of a “birthright” reward, being deprived of protection by reason of segregation is the effect. The GOP program is not about “separate but equal”; it is all about “equal protection.” Here is the prize.

Roe v. Wade

“State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother's behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy.”

Reversing Roe has been the ultimate objective of anti-abortionists and the GOP since 1973. All previous attempts to reverse the decision have failed because of that pesky Fourteenth Amendment. Now there is one more case to add to the list of decisions that the GOP would like reversed. It is a civil rights case.

· Civil Rights: Perry v. Schwarzenegger overturning the California ban same-sex marriage

Perry v. Schwarzenegger

The appeals are filed on this latest civil rights case that rests on the Fourteenth Amendment. The case overturns California Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage. U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled the measure was "unconstitutional under both the due process and equal protection clauses" of the Fourteenth Amendment. "Because Proposition 8 disadvantages gays and lesbians without any rational justification," Judge Walker ruled the ban bombs.

Both the Proposition 8 gay marriage ban and the Arizona SB 1070 Immigration law have two things in common. First, they seek to segregate a group of people for punitive purposes. Second: they attack the Fourteenth Amendment, which establishes protection of “citizenship” to children, grants “due process of law” to everyone, and “guarantees equal protection of the laws.” Because of that, both Proposition 8 and SB 1070 have been overturned, each measure being held to be unconstitutional.

Let us accept the offer that the Republican immigration band wagon has put forth, that the Fourteenth Amendment needs to be reviewed in context of today’s laws and society. Using that logic, then let us equally review the Second Amendment in the same context. The acclaimed GOP birthright to guns says, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State”, to quote Senator Graham, “doesn't make so much sense when you understand the world as it is.”

The Fourteenth Amendment issue is about the Constitution, not some election show. It is about Equal Justice Under Law.