Bob's Blog

President Trump stands by our Constitution and for the American people!

My interview with @HerschelWalker: https://t.co/VM8S77OSIT pic.twitter.com/GK2pQXQbE4

— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) September 3, 2020

Just before the authoritarian state in Poland collapsed there was a rapid movement for the citizens to take to the streets in defiance of state control. I remember watching with great enthusiasm as I saw a very determined pole shout on television:

…”we take to the streets and today we realize, there are more of us than them”…
Fast forward more than thirty years later and those glorious voices are prescient. The power of the government comes from the people; or as we say in the U.S. “from the consent of the governed.” Thus the underlying principle behind our defiance.



...If one person refuses to comply, the government can and as we have witnessed arrest them. However, if tens of thousands rebuke these unconstitutional decrees, there isn’t a damn thing government can do to stop it…. and they know it.

If one barbershop opens, the owner becomes a target. However, if every barbershop and beauty salon in town opens… there is absolutely nothing the government can do about it.

If one restaurant and/or bar opens, the state can target the owner. But if every bar and restaurant in town opens; and if everyone ignores and dispatches the silly dictates of the local, regional or state officials… there isn’t a damned thing they can do about it.

The power of the local, regional or state authority comes from the expressed consent of the people. As soon as the majority of people deny that consent, those officials and state authoritarians lose all of their power. Yes, it really is that simple.

Port of Seattle Police Officer and Special Forces veteran Greg Anderson was reportedly removed from his position after his video about police officers allegedly abusing their power went viral.

In an update video posted Monday to his Instagram, Anderson says he has been terminated from the Port of Seattle Police Department and is allegedly on administrative leave pending an investigation.

The Daily Caller has an excellent video of him telling his story and another excellent video of Dennis Prager explaining the differences between people on the left and right.

NBC News Analyst Claims U.S. Lock-Down Protests Created by Russians…

Oddly enough I thought about this yesterday when Washington State Governor Jay Inslee was complaining about citizen protests being a form of “domestic rebellion.” The modern liberal mindset cannot fathom how removing liberty and freedom, from a nation founded upon freedom and liberty, would start to ignite protests. They need to blame something.

In the Democrat collective worldview big government control of their lives is a utopia to be achieved. Therefore those same Chè T-shirt wearing ideologues cannot understand push-back based on individualism. A justification for visible frustration is needed. What could possibly be causing this anger?… Why yes, the Russians of course. Gottabe.

(Link to tweet – Link to story)

Barb McQuade is an NBC legal analyst and law professor at the University of Michigan. We can only imagine the pretzel logic taught by her during her indoctrination efforts.

All of the various restrictions coming from state governors in response to the COVID-19 do not come from State House and/or State Senate debate and decisions. These are not laws.

The rules restricting liberty, in response to the COVID crisis, have been pronounced without any representative voice supporting them.

All of the rules are arbitrary, and many of these rules will be challenged in court.

However, until those court challenges take place, the only option for a redress of grievance comes in the form of public protest. Currently, there is no way for an citizen to appeal to a representative voice against the decrees from a state governor; other than a public protest.

Boise, Idaho — More than 1,000 protesters gathered at the Idaho Statehouse Friday afternoon in defiance of Gov. Brad Little’s extension of the statewide stay-at-home order.

[…] “I can’t get a haircut, but by golly I was able to walk into Pet Smart this morning and get my dog a grooming appointment. It defies logic,” said Wayne Hoffman, president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation. “The damage that’s being done to the individuals, to businesses and the economy is horrific.”

Hoffman said the governor should allow all businesses to open to give owners a chance to demonstrate that they can take appropriate steps to mitigate the risk.

“I worry that if we don’t adapt our approach that we will continue to battle COVID-19 in incremental ways for weeks, months and years to come,” Hoffman said. “It’s like a lot of other variables that you have to deal with in the world – people with all kinds of ailments come to your doors.”

Most at the protest were standing shoulder-to-shoulder and not wearing masks. Some carried signs claiming the coronavirus is a hoax, while others held signs with slogans like, “All workers are essential” and “Freedom not fear.”

The effect of the coronavirus on the economy has been dire. In Idaho, nearly 96,000 people have filed for unemployment since Little first declared a state of emergency on March 13. That’s far more than the number of claims filed in Idaho during all of 2019.

Similar protests have been held across the country, with groups pushing back against stay-at-home orders in places like Michigan, Texas and Virginia. Dozens circled Oregon’s state Capitol in their vehicles Friday to protest that state’s stay-at-home order. (read more)

Rebellion against unilateral and authoritarian power is America. Rebellion or push-back against non-representative government is the thread connecting the patchwork of our constitutional republic. Protest is so critical to our nation that it is protected within the very first amendment to our constitution.

It just cannot be real that freedom and liberty is the heart of America as NBC legal analyst Barb McQuade thinks about it…

Nope.

Pesky Russians. Gottabe!

Despite the panic over the Wuhan virus, it now appears that the overall U.S. death rate this winter season is at a multi-year low, no worse than 2014, 2016, and 2019, and far better than 2015, 2017, and 2018 (when we were hit with one of the worst flu seasons in years).

The article at the link for one example cites the totals for the first week in April:

On April 5th, the U.S. saw 1,344 COVID-19 deaths, as the number of cases in the U.S. accelerated. The overall number of deaths in the U.S., or the crude death rate did not show a correlated rise.

At the very least, this data shows we need to analyze COVID-19 deaths in the context of the broader U.S. mortality rate from all causes. It appears normal deaths are being attributed to COVID-19 if the patient is COVID-19+, even if another underlying chronic cause is responsible.
It then includes a graph showing the total deaths since 2014, plotted weekly. This year is remarkably ho-hum. The last two years were far worse. Go to the link and look at the graph for yourself if you have doubts.

Nor should anyone have ever been surprised by these numbers, even three months ago. All the evidence on the ground about COVID-19, once it had escaped from China and reliable data could begin to be gathered, suggested strongly that its general attack on humans was similar to the flu. Younger people were hardly bothered by it. Instead, it killed the old and sick. Since those people can’t die twice, it is manifestly obvious that we should have expected the overall numbers to not go up much.

Which is exactly what has happened.

Moreover, the panic over the Wuhan flu caused people to social distance themselves, which certainly acted to cause a drop in all infectious diseases. This might explain this year’s lower numbers, but it must also be noted that the drop in 2020 is not really that significant, illustrating again the pointlessness of all these preventative measures. You really can’t run from infectious diseases. They are going to spread through the population regardless. Only if it appears the disease is attacking the young should extreme measures be taken.

To put it bluntly, our elected leaders in Washington and in statehouses across the country, working in tandem with the incompetent (but well-paid) bureaucrats in Washington and with an overly emotional and partisan press willing to say any lie in order to attack Donald Trump, have caused what might turn out to be another great depression, for absolutely no reason at all.

In the process they have also acted to nullify the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, working as hard as they could to destroy the freest nation in the history of the world, and the most successful because of that freedom.

Are you enraged yet? And are you going to do something about it in November?

We are now on new anti-constitutional grounds, and the United States will probably never return to the constitutional customs and traditions of its first 233 years. The architects of this revolution were not arrayed in sunglasses and epaulets, or in business suits and wingtips, with briefcases. They were hip, cool, and progressive, and they boasted that they did all of this for us, the proverbial people, to cheers from cultural icons, media heavyweights, and those with advanced degrees.

The United States, at least as we knew it, came to an end, not with a loud right-wing bang, but with an insidious progressive whimper.

Consider the recent statements and acts of iconic progressive celebrities.

Jane Fonda is chronically furious. This time she directed her wrath at those who disagree about the urgency of ending the entire fossil fuel industry and ruining the current economy. Her idea is to put climate “deniers” on trial for incorrect speech. So much for the First Amendment. “Now, because of the fossil fuel industry, it’s too late for moderation,” Fonda says. “And given the emergency, it’s those who believe in moderation, in pre-Trump business as usual, who are truly delusional. And those who lie and continue to lie about what they’re doing to the environment should be put on trial.”

Green teenage heartthrob Greta Thunberg has a different solution for those who disagree with her orthodox view on “climate change”: “World leaders are still trying to run away from their responsibilities, but we have to make sure they cannot do that. We will make sure that we put them against the wall, and they will have to do their job to protect our futures.”

If Thunberg is truly worried about past government decisions that have threatened the world, she might study Swedish history and ask why her forefathers sold iron ore to the Nazi war machine—without which it could not have waged the war it did—and often threw in Swedish transport in the bargain.

For those who think the American Civil Liberties Union and other liberal watchdogs ceaselessly monitor our government to ensure our Bill of Rights and laws are not abused to the detriment of citizens, they should be sorely disappointed. The Left has redefined “civil liberties” to mean “correct thinking.” Thus, incorrect thinking is not protected speech or behavior.

It is now clear that the top hierarchy of the FBI under James Comey and Andrew McCabe used the powers of their agency to deceive a federal court with fraudulent evidence in order to surveil a U.S. citizen as part of a larger plan to subvert a political campaign and eventually a presidential transition. It is also likely that both James Clapper and John Brennan trafficked in a fake dossier, a product of opposition research designed to smear a political candidate in a presidential race. Both were also likely involved in the use of overseas informants to surveil Trump campaign aides.

Few on the Left feel that it was either morally or legally wrong for Hillary Clinton to hire a foreign national to spy on her opponent’s campaign, much less for a foreign national Christopher Steele to interfere in a U.S. election. Laws are fluid, to be enforced when they champion the “good,” to be ignored or subverted when they empower the “bad.” That is why both Clapper and Brennan—who in the past alike have admitted to lying to Congress while under oath—were rewarded with paid analyst positions, respectively with CNN and MSNBC.

Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and McCabe are iconic figures to the Left, who were willing to use any means necessary to stop the fiendish Trump. Comey’s idea of “a higher loyalty” proves to be a euphemism for taking the law into one’s own hands to destroy an elected president deemed a threat to status-quo agendas.

J. Edgar Hoover surely would have approved of Comey’s gambit, of privately misleading the president as to the status of an ongoing FBI investigation directed at him, recording in notes a one-sided version of such a confidential conversation, and then leaking such memos to the press to encourage a special counsel appointment to investigate a president.

Few libertarians care that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) was data mining the phone records of the president’s attorney and, by reverse targeting, his colleague Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). Fewer were concerned that he publicized such records, with the clear intent of smearing his enemies. Again, not a civil libertarian said a word—any more than any did during the Obama Administration when Eric Holder monitored the phone and email records of Associated Press journalists, or any more than when Schiff blatantly lied that he and his staff had no contact with the so-called whistleblower.

Civil Liberty Abuse by Liberals? No Problem!
A cynical reductionist with no faith in human nature might conclude that conservatives are less likely to abuse civil liberties because a mainstream press watches their every move, ready to pounce at even the suggestion of any abuse of free speech or expression or due process.

In contrast, liberals seem to have little problems with abusing FISA courts, inserting informants into political campaigns, snooping on congressional colleagues, and hiring opposition research to use foreign sources to defame a political opponent—because they correctly assume that the media either will ignore such abuse or that they will contextualize it in a way to help the “good” people ensure social justice.

Schiff, along with Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), remember, helped redefine the Constitution on impeachment by citing no treason, bribes, or high crimes and misdemeanors, but rather sought as an opposition majority in the Congress to smear with an indictment a first-term president before a scheduled reelection campaign.

We were told for weeks that impeachment must be accelerated to a vote. But when the polls supporting that effort tanked, we were told that such an impeachment vote must not really speedily be sent over to the Senate for trial. The Constitution’s guidance on impeachment is apparently what polls better on any given day—in a larger landscape in which the progressive agenda always would prefer to change the Constitution when it proves inconvenient, whether it be the Electoral College or the Second Amendment.

If and when fascism comes to America, it will not arrive with jackboots, stiff arms, and military uniforms. The attempt to suppress political opposition in anti-constitutional fashion, to regiment the economy by denying constitutionally protected freedoms, and the efforts to change the Constitution to reflect political utility, will come under the auspices of “equality,” “fairness,” “saving the planet,” and “social justice”—as a way to combat “climate change,” “racism,” “homophobia,” and “sexism.”

The old Confederate idea of state nullification of federal law—the great bane of a century of civil rights movements—is now a progressive trademark.

Over 550 sanctuary jurisdictions have announced that federal immigration law simply does not apply in full within their confines. Because there were no federal consequences when states simply ignored federal immigration legislation, why would not local jurisdictions—such as an increasing number of counties in Virginia—simply renounce state laws in matters of gun control?

The university is usually the canary in the mine of bad ideas and worse customs, and their fascistic view of the future has already arrived. Incoming students on many campuses are asked to select the proper racial background of their future roommates; if students can practice such racial segregation, will they soon be free to state which particular ethnic or racial background they do not prefer to associate with? Is there really a difference between preferring a particularly correct racial roommate and not preferring a particularly incorrect racial roommate?

“Safe space” is now the politically correct word for racial segregation. The First Amendment is already curtailed on campus by “hate speech” codes. If a student is accused of sexual harassment or assault, he will quickly learn that the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments do not really apply to the accused at most colleges.

Try giving a lecture in opposition to radical climate change theory, late-term abortion, or affirmative action on a college campus, or wearing a MAGA hat in the campus “free-speech zone.” The point is not that vigilante students would disrupt the lecture or attack the wearer, but that the college administration would contextualize the violence as understandable if not justified given the stress, discomfort, and hurt feelings that such free expression is believed to cause the “good” students.

The modern university, the radical climate change movement, most of the media, and the new progressive party all share the same notion that the U.S. Constitution is an impediment to their agendas. If it can’t easily be changed, then at least it can be ignored when more power is needed to do more of the right things.

...There must be some confusion.

Under the U.S. Constitution, it is the president of the United States who determines foreign policy. How can President Trump be “at odds with foreign policy” when he’s the one who determines it?

President Trump may well have been altering foreign policy on Ukraine. It should be of no surprise that he wasn’t operating “business as usual,” since he ran on that platform and has executed it from day one. It’s clear that Kent and Taylor didn’t like or agree with Trump’s ideas, and believe they know what’s best. Trump rankled, contradicted and “embarrassed” them by operating outside the “regular” chain.

But they seem to miss the fact that their desires are subordinate to the president’s. “Official foreign policy,” as they called it, is not an independent unmovable-force object that exists outside the president’s authority; it is what the president determines it to be. The diplomats must execute the president’s wishes or resign from their posts if they feel they cannot bring themselves to do so.

Kent and Taylor genuinely seem to believe Trump was acting for his own political benefit — though they acknowledged they never had spoken to him or met him. Obviously, President Trump would say he was acting in the national interest. But their testimony makes it pretty clear why President Trump would develop a communications chain that would attempt to minimize career diplomats who do not wish to execute his wishes and may be working to undermine them.

Trump’s enemies may cheer on the idea of diplomats and other officials choosing to oppose or undermine his wishes. But based on our Constitution, the dissenting diplomats are the ones who are at odds with “official foreign policy”— not the other way around. To the extent they are attempting to further policies that oppose or undermine the president’s wishes, they are the ones conducting the “shadow campaign.”

Remember, the Normal Americans who Beto and his pals presume to unleash their forces upon are the same people who show up for jury duty. And a lawyer like me only has to convince some of them that you were wrong to go barging into some guy’s house because you thought he had naughty pew-pews, and you can kiss your life savings good-bye. Oh, and that’s if you are lucky. Pray you don’t hurt someone and get a DA willing to charge you criminally. Because, “Well, I knew what I was doing was unconstitutional but I was too weak to say ‘No’” will not cut it.

“I was just following orders” stopped working at the end of the rope in Nuremberg. Today, you have a bad shoot in a raid on some drug dealer and you get our benefit of the doubt because you’re our knight and it’s a tough job. But if you smoke some 12-year-old for twitching after you break down her daddy’s door because somebody thinks maybe he’s got a scary black rifle somewhere in his condo then you’re the bad guy.

You.

Is saving your pension worth that risk?

Or will you choose the hard road of upholding your oath if ordered to make war on your fellow Americans?

Congressional representative Rashida Tlaib and congressional representative Ilhan Omar are ineligible to serve as congressional representatives, according to American law. But they enjoy the support of every member of Congress, from both sides of the aisle.

No one may hold any public office in America who does not honestly and without reservation swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is the law, which is being ignored by virtually everyone in authority in every branch of government.

Tlaib and Omar openly oppose the Constitution. The evidence of their opposition is made clear by their support and defense of sharia, which is Islamic law that in almost every aspect is diametrically opposed to constitutional law. It is simply not possible simultaneously to support and defend both the Constitution and sharia, since the two are so completely opposed one to the other.

Tlaib and Omar did swear to support and defend the Constitution, but they committed perjury on doing so, as their allegiance is to sharia. They also both support Islamic groups aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, which has declared war against America, and declared the United States to be an enemy state.

I used to do April Fools Day posts, back when April Fools day came but once a year and was fun. Now it seems as if everyday is April Fools Day and it’s decidedly not fun.

Take the judicial system for example. Dropping the charges against Jussie Smollett made being “woke” more important than the law. I trust this will become the new norm in hate crime hoaxes. And then we have all the Federal judges who have been allowed to legislate from the bench for years now. To cite just a few examples:

Ruling by Federal Judge Blocks Immigration Order.

As far as I can see, and I’ve looked, there’s nothing in the constitution that grants non-citizens the right to enter the USA.

Federal Judge Rules Trump's Sanctuary Cities Order Unconstitutional

Again, what section of the constitution cities the right to not comply with federal immigration law?

Judge blocks Trump's asylum rules, opens door for immigrant caravan – in which the President sought to funnel asylum candidates through official points of entry rather than simply stormingand overwhelmingsse and overwhelming the system.

So our system is allowed to be overrun simply because a Federal Judge in California decided to legislate his preferred open borders policy rather than the President’s policy of maintaining law and order.

Border Patrol forced to restart 'catch-and-release' of illegals at border

Border Is Virtually Wide Open. In 90 Days, DHS Looses 100K Illegals ...

And this taste of judicial power is obviously contagious, as we now have judges ignoring the law and imposing their policies in many arenas, such as this:

Trump's Order to Open Arctic Waters to Oil Drilling Was Unlawful
On what grounds? They were “closed” to drilling by means of an Executive Order (Obama) so why can they not be opened by the same mechanism? Because the judge doesn’t like Trump and doesn’t like his environmental policies? You don’t (technically) have that power.



When judges so clearly demonstrate they either don’t know or don’t care about either the constitution or the rule of law they should be impeached. They should not be allowed to legislate as they see fit from the bench and continue to shut down the legal actions taken by a duly elected president.

Allowing this judicial abetted Cloward-Piven strategy to continue to play out makes us the April Fools, and it’s really not a joke.

...When liberals like Kamala Harris refer to “the Constitution,” they don’t mean the actual written document–“that book that you carry”–they mean an unrestricted charter that gives liberals the right to rule over the rest of us, via the judiciary. Which, of course, nullifies the whole point of having a written Constitution.

How much of this Kamala Harris understands I don’t know, but the childish leftism that she embodies, along with many others of her party, is one of the greatest threats to our democracy.

I would also support removing “the press” from the 1st Amendment, and replacing it with “citizen journalists”. The professional ‘press’ has abused their power so thoroughly and completely that nothing less than being completely de-fanged will do.

First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press citizen journalists; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

And I would support clarification, once and for all, of the 2nd Amendment, to explain to every traitor Leftist and globalist the meaning of SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.

And I would support an Amendment protecting the LIFE of the unborn.

And I would support an Amendment outlawing Communism and islam, as both have proven, repeatedly, throughout history, to be ideologies of oppression and death which are antithetical to a Free People.

The arrogant no-nothings over at Time seem to think that changing the paradigm of government -- a paradigm that has resulted in a $20,000,000,000,000 debt and an economic stagnation that has injured the great unwashed in the flyover states -- is an unconscionable attack on our system of government and our way of life. But what they do not understand, in spite of abundant evidence right in front of their smug, latte-sipping faces, is that our system of government is based not on the theoretical knowledge of the elites, but on a formerly robust but now-tattered document called the US Constitution. And any executive action that reduces the influence of our federal government is almost guaranteed to bolster the Constitution: the real law of the land.

By any historical and constitutional standard, "the people" elected Donald Trump and endorsed his program of nation-state populist reform. Yet over the last few weeks America has been in the throes of an unprecedented revolt. Not of the people against the government—that happened last year—but of the government against the people. What this says about the state of American democracy, and what it portends for the future, is incredibly disturbing.

There is, of course, the case of Michael Flynn. He made a lot of enemies inside the government during his career, suffice it to say. And when he exposed himself as vulnerable those enemies pounced. But consider the means: anonymous and possibly illegal leaks of private conversations. Yes, the conversation in question was with a foreign national. And no one doubts we spy on ambassadors. But we aren't supposed to spy on Americans without probable cause. And we most certainly are not supposed to disclose the results of our spying in the pages of the Washington Post because it suits a partisan or personal agenda.

...The last few weeks have confirmed that there are two systems of government in the United States. The first is the system of government outlined in the U.S. Constitution—its checks, its balances, its dispersion of power, its protection of individual rights. Donald Trump was elected to serve four years as the chief executive of this system. Whether you like it or not.

The second system is comprised of those elements not expressly addressed by the Founders. This is the permanent government, the so-called administrative state of bureaucracies, agencies, quasi-public organizations, and regulatory bodies and commissions, of rule-writers and the byzantine network of administrative law courts. This is the government of unelected judges with lifetime appointments who, far from comprising the "least dangerous branch," now presume to think they know more about America's national security interests than the man elected as commander in chief.

Donald Trump did not cause the divergence between government of, by, and for the people and government, of, by, and for the residents of Cleveland Park and Arlington and Montgomery and Fairfax counties. But he did exacerbate it. He forced the winners of the global economy and the members of the D.C. establishment to reckon with the fact that they are resented, envied, opposed, and despised by about half the country. But this recognition did not humble the entrenched incumbents of the administrative state. It radicalized them to the point where they are readily accepting, even cheering on, the existence of a "deep state" beyond the control of the people and elected officials.

Who rules the United States? The simple and terrible answer is we do not know. But we are about to find out.

the Constitution’s mechanisms for reining in or ousting a rogue president are in tatters.

...Among the greatest fears of those who founded our constitutional republic was that the powerful new office they were creating, the President of the United States, could be a path to authoritarianism and eventual tyranny. Much of the deliberation over the drafting and adoption of the new Constitution was dedicated to ensuring adequate safeguards against that possibility.

The Constitution’s aim is to preserve liberty and self-determination. Its prescription for doing so is to constrain government (and thus increase the realm of free, unregulated activity) by limiting and dividing governmental powers. Federal authority was balanced by states that maintained sovereign power. The limited powers delegated to the federal government were divided among three branches, each given sufficient inherent authority that it could not be overwhelmed by the others.

To prevent the president from becoming a monarch, the Framers made Congress supreme over the budget and the enactment of law. With limited inherent authority (albeit significant authority, particularly in the conduct of foreign affairs), the executive would not be permitted to act in the absence of statutory license and funding. Indeed, the president’s primary responsibility is to take care that Congress’s laws are faithfully executed and the Constitution is preserved.

Yet, realizing these grants of legislative power would be insufficient to hem in a determined rogue, the Framers added impeachment – an “indispensable” remedy, as Madison put it. It empowers Congress to remove government officials, up to and including the president, for “high crimes and misdemeanors” – corruption, abuse of power, misleading Congress, collusion with foreign powers against American interests, and other profound violations of the public trust.

...the president can act as a rogue only if Congress allows that to happen.

...If Congress refuses to use its authority to limit or cut off funding, the only remaining limitation is impeachment. If, in addition, Congress takes impeachment off the table, there is nothing left but a rogue president’s subjective sense of what he (or she) can get away with politically. The same, obviously, is true of the president’s subordinates: If, despite their lawlessness or incompetence, Congress maintains (or increases) their budgets and shrinks from impeaching them, then they are limited only by the whims of the rogue president they serve.

This is why our system no longer works. The Congress is AWOL: an increasingly irrelevant institution that: (a) does not see itself (either individually or collectively) as obliged to defend the Constitution; (b) delegates its legislative tasks to the sprawling bureaucracy, over which the president has far more influence; (c) punts tough calls to the judiciary, simultaneously refusing to exploit its constitutional authority over the courts’ jurisdiction in order to prevent or reverse judicial imperialism; and (d) is incompetent to perform basic tasks, such as imposing “regular order” on the appropriations process and compelling presidents to submit international agreements to the Constitution’s treaty process.

We should always be on guard against presentism, but in this instance I do not hesitate to say that the upcoming presidential election is the most alarming in American history. I can make that statement with confidence because I do not believe the most disturbing aspect of the election is the choice of candidates – even though the two major party nominees present the worst choice the American people have faced in my lifetime (Eisenhower was president when I was born), and perhaps ever.

The reason this is such a frightening election is that the Constitution’s mechanisms for reining in or ousting a rogue president are in tatters.

We are not supposed to have transformative elections, contests that will forever change our system of government or enable government to orchestrate cultural upheaval. The Constitution is supposed to be our guarantee against that.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a book called Faithless Execution in an attempt to explain this and campaign, in my own small way, for a restoration. The theory I posited was straightforward. Among the greatest fears of those who founded our constitutional republic was that the powerful new office they were creating, the President of the United States, could be a path to authoritarianism and eventual tyranny. Much of the deliberation over the drafting and adoption of the new Constitution was dedicated to ensuring adequate safeguards against that possibility.

The Constitution’s aim is to preserve liberty and self-determination. Its prescription for doing so is to constrain government (and thus increase the realm of free, unregulated activity) by limiting and dividing governmental powers. Federal authority was balanced by states that maintained sovereign power. The limited powers delegated to the federal government were divided among three branches, each given sufficient inherent authority that it could not be overwhelmed by the others.

To prevent the president from becoming a monarch, the Framers made Congress supreme over the budget and the enactment of law. With limited inherent authority (albeit significant authority, particularly in the conduct of foreign affairs), the executive would not be permitted to act in the absence of statutory license and funding. Indeed, the president’s primary responsibility is to take care that Congress’s laws are faithfully executed and the Constitution is preserved.

Yet, realizing these grants of legislative power would be insufficient to hem in a determined rogue, the Framers added impeachment – an “indispensable” remedy, as Madison put it. It empowers Congress to remove government officials, up to and including the president, for “high crimes and misdemeanors” – corruption, abuse of power, misleading Congress, collusion with foreign powers against American interests, and other profound violations of the public trust.

Thus, besides the ballot box, the most vital limitations on presidential power are Congress’s powers to control spending and impeach. These were thought sufficiently strong checks that, for over 160 years, the president was not even term-limited (i.e., until the 22nd Amendment in 1951). This confidence owed to the principle that members of Congress had a solemn duty to defend their institutional authority and the constitutional framework. In essence, the president can act as a rogue only if Congress allows that to happen.

As I argued in Faithless Execution, while Congress’s powers to thwart abuse of presidential power are dispositive, there are, really, only two of them. If Congress refuses to use its authority to limit or cut off funding, the only remaining limitation is impeachment. If, in addition, Congress takes impeachment off the table, there is nothing left but a rogue president’s subjective sense of what he (or she) can get away with politically. The same, obviously, is true of the president’s subordinates: If, despite their lawlessness or incompetence, Congress maintains (or increases) their budgets and shrinks from impeaching them, then they are limited only by the whims of the rogue president they serve.

This is why our system no longer works. The Congress is AWOL: an increasingly irrelevant institution that: (a) does not see itself (either individually or collectively) as obliged to defend the Constitution; (b) delegates its legislative tasks to the sprawling bureaucracy, over which the president has far more influence; (c) punts tough calls to the judiciary, simultaneously refusing to exploit its constitutional authority over the courts’ jurisdiction in order to prevent or reverse judicial imperialism; and (d) is incompetent to perform basic tasks, such as imposing “regular order” on the appropriations process and compelling presidents to submit international agreements to the Constitution’s treaty process.

The power of the purse is now a toothless check. In the last century, the federal government’s most basic role has been transitioned from national security to social welfare, wealth redistribution, and economic regulation (including transfer payments to industries and research institutions based on political favoritism, not market forces). Congress is paralyzed by fear that any cutting off of funds will be portrayed as a denial of someone’s entitlement or other transfer payments.

Furthermore, with the appropriations process having collapsed, the government operates under huge “omnibus” spending acts and “continuing resolutions.” This transforms budget battles into ludicrously high-stakes affairs, in which attempts to force government to live within its means – means that are far greater than they have ever been – become shutdown showdowns. This itself is an extension of another dysfunction: Congress no longer reads the laws it writes, or even perceives that dereliction as a dereliction. Single $4 trillion budget resolutions of hundreds of inscrutable pages that no one could conceivably read are now standard fare. Lots of critical legislation is now that way.

...Since the start of the Bush 43 administration, the federal deficit has exploded from about $5 trillion to about $20 trillion (doubled under Bush, then that inflated amount doubled again under Obama). During the majority of those 16 years, Republicans controlled one or both houses of Congress.

But then they win … and they agree to pay for everything they campaigned against – Obamacare, immigration lawlessness, a Justice Department that practices racial discrimination in law-enforcement while using extortionate lawsuits to federalize the nation’s police, an IRS used as a weapon against conservative activists, an EPA decreeing economy-strangling regulations Congress has refused to enact, and so on. Moreover, they pass sleight-of-hand legislation to duck confrontations with Obama on the debt ceiling and the Iran deal – pieces of theater designed to dismantle the Constitution’s brakes but to allow them to pose as opposing that which their legislation actually enables.

...Democrats do not tell their supporters, “The president has veto power and Republicans have the numbers to block us, so don’t expect us to accomplish anything.” Democrats know you move public opinion by fighting, even if you lose battles along the way. A movement has to move. And since they and the mainstream media are part of the same movement, they do not doubt their ability ultimately to turn public opinion in their favor.

...That is why the 2016 election is so harrowing. It is not just that the candidates are awful yet one of them will become president. It is that our political class has eviscerated the constitutional weapons that protect us from an awful president. Thus, what the Framers most feared is coming to pass.

Trump won’t go begging for Congress to resume its responsibilities. Congress simply will. Between a GOP that hates him and a Democrat party that hates him more, he will be completely cabin’d, crib’d, confin’d and bound. Hillary will not. Nothing will change Congress’s laziness, and Republicans will be just as cowed by cries of “misogynist” as they were by cries of “racist.” Hillary’s election would put the seal on the imperial presidency.

Q: Did it hurt when she inserted it?
A: Oh, yeah. Bad.
Q: Describe that for me.
A: Just as if somebody would take a burning hot coal and stick it up your penis.—

Deposition of Jamie Lockard, in a lawsuit against police in southeastern Indiana

In the United States there is a wealth of case law pertaining to the Fourth Amendment, with the U.S. Supreme Court and the rest of the judiciary fashioning jurisprudence on what constitutes an unreasonable search or seizure. But the courts have yet to reach any kind of consensus about one particularly cringe-worthy practice, as exemplified by what happened to Jamie Lockard in a small town in southeast Indiana, close to the Ohio border.

In March of 2009, police in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, pulled Lockard over for not stopping at a stop sign. Suspecting he was drunk, the police had him take a breathalyzer test. He blew a .07 percent, just under the legal limit. The police then obtained a search warrant for blood and urine samples and took Lockard to a local hospital. The blood draw — nurse and needle, with no resistance from Lockard — was no problem. The urine was another matter. Unable to get a sample from Lockard the conventional way — hospital personnel said he wouldn’t go, Lockard said he couldn’t go — the police took Lockard to the emergency room and handcuffed him to a bed. A police sergeant held one of Lockard’s ankles while an officer held the other. A nurse inserted a catheter — a tube, typically 16 inches long — up the urethra, through the prostate and into the bladder.

Ultimately, Lockard pleaded guilty to reckless driving and got a suspended sentence. (His blood sample produced a blood-alcohol content of .05 percent.). But he sued the police officers and the city of Lawrenceburg, alleging the forced catheterization had violated his civil rights. In a deposition, Lockard described pain both physical — “felt like something twisting where it ain’t supposed to be twisting” — and emotional: “Like it could happen again. Just makes you think, what’s this world coming to. It was bad, bad.”

In 2011, a federal judge in Indiana threw out the lawsuit, ruling that the police were entitled to qualified immunity. Under the law, police cannot be held liable for “bad guesses in gray areas,” according to the courts. And this case, the federal judge wrote, fell into “nebulous territory.” While the U.S. Supreme Court has drawn lines on extracting blood and even bullets from involuntary suspects for purposes of gathering evidence, the forcible extraction of urine remains an unsettled area of the law. One lower court wrote that forced catheterization is “more intrusive than a needle but less intrusive than a scalpel, making it hard to classify.”

But no, I am not over the Constitution, although apparently many are, because they have thrown in with a man who never mentions it and often runs afoul of it. Donald Trump was born "over" the Constitution and still is. He's never been concerned with it. New York values don’t intersect with the Constitution. No, I am not over the idea of liberty, and thus I'm not quite over the fact that the Republican nominee is a man totally unfamiliar with this concept and a man who never ever looks at increased liberty as the answer for out of control government. Ever.

Please, show me where I am wrong on that.

Nor am I over the related concept of limited government. Nothing, not a single syllable out of Donald Trump's mouth, has uttered a whiff of anything to do with limited government. When Carrier and Ford are forced offshore because of out of control government, what does Donald do? He threatens even more government power as the solution. It never even dawns on the Orange One or his followers to perhaps remove some of the government obstacles in the way of Carrier, Ford and other once free companies. What an idea!

When crony capitalism is destroying our free market, does Donald want to stop government from picking winners and losers? NO! He doubles down on ethanol subsidies. He obfuscates the issue of eminent domain. And he rails against trade, not even considering the obvious conclusion that the big stick of tariffs is centralized planning and government picking winners and losers on steroids.

...the notion that Trump is this great wrecking ball to the establishment would be laughable if it weren't so serious.

Trump is the establishment. His big check to party boss and establishment poster child Mitch McConnell has barely even cleared yet -- a donation he followed up by insulting on Twitter those stupid Kentuckians who were willing to forgo McConnell's crony gravy train to his home state in favor of a principled man like Matt Bevin. Trump brags he has been giving to Republicans lately, but these donations are to establishment Republicans running against outsiders!

So no, I'm not over this kind of House of Cards attitude, and if you are, then you were never really in the fight to begin with. You've been conned.

Alexander Hamilton said “if we must have an enemy at the head of Government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures.” He was right. Many of you have not heeded that lesson. I have, and I am proudly not over the nomination of big government New York liberal Donald J Trump.