The First Amendment: Statist's Edition

In the wake of “Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission” and the Obama/Alito kerfuffle, I give you the First Amendment, as seen through the eyes of lefty statists:

"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**; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble†, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances‡."

*Except inconvenient political speech.

**If new forms of communication media are developed in the future (e.g. radio, television, internet), Congress shall be permitted to make laws abridging communication involving those media.

†Exception: Congress shall make laws abridging the right of the people to peaceably to assemble into groups of individuals known as corporations, particularly in cases in which these groups spend large sums of money exercising their "right" to communicate.

‡Unless the attempt to redress grievances involves spending money on political campaigns within the 60 day period preceding an election.

Now, from constitutional novice, some thoughts on the 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; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

1. Take special note of the words "NO LAW"

2. Let those words sink in.

3. The First Amendment is not just about "speech." It's about freedom of communication. It's about freedom of assembly (you can even form an evil corporation if you wish). It's about the freedom to redress grievances (no exceptions).

So a group of people assemble and form a corporation and they communicate their thoughts in print, online, and over the airwaves. What part of the First Amendment provides wiggle room for the Imperial Federal Government to stop that?

There is no wiggle room.

Those who despise the First Amendment have only one option before them: to amend the Constitution.

Alito's Flamboyant Outburst

This is the most flamboyant outburst I have ever seen. Watch carefully; you might miss it:

Wasn't that slick? Obama gave lip service to deference to separation of powers, and then proceeded to lash out at his wayward minions from the tertiary branch.

The visual of the Justices sitting as the crowd (dare I say "mob") of Democrats around them jumped to their feet in exultation of Obama's prevarication was a low point in this already lowly presidency.

Leftists who don't like "conservative" Supreme Court Justices are pretending to be shocked by Alito's dismay:

...the behavior of Justice Alito at last night's State of the Union address...was a serious and substantive breach of protocol that reflects very poorly on Alito and only further undermines the credibility of the Court.

...The Court's credibility...has — justifiably — declined substantially over the past decade, beginning with Bush v. Gore...

...Justice Alito's flamboyantly insinuating himself into a pure political event, in a highly politicized manner, will only hasten that decline.

To say that Alito's sotto voce behavior was flamboyant is utterly ridiculous.

Moreover, if Alito was guilty of any breach of protocol (and this is a very big "if"), it was only in response to Obama's much more serious breach of protocol.

Obama has a right to express his opinion, but to express his opinion the way he did (and in that setting) undermines any perception or reality of a Court that is "separate and detached from partisan wars."

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Should Obama Just Pack the Supreme Court and Get It Over With?

It's cool...FDR bullied the court too!

With All Due Deference to Separation of Powers

With all due respect deference? What does that really mean?

Executive branch attacks judicial branch. Statists cheer.

A deliberate attempt by Obama to intimidate the Court

Exit thoughts from Saul Alinski:

~Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. It also infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

~Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this...

SOTU: Who Cares?

I'm not going to watch Obama's State of the Union Speech. Now more than ever, Obama's speeches don't matter. It's not just that Obama's insufferable speeches are packed with lies (although that is part of the problem).

No, the real problem with Obama is that despite the fact that he is the de facto leader of the free world, what he has to say is of almost no consequence. Obama is probably the least persuasive President in living memory (to wit; ObamaCare, the Massachusetts Senate Race, the New Jersey Governor's Race, the Virgina Governor's Race, the Chicago Olympics bid, the Copenhagen Climate Council, etc.)

Obama is so weak and so stupid, he's now trying to ride the coattails of a freshly-elected Senator who rose from the Massachusetts State Legislature.

Obama, after one year, you're practically a lame duck.

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State of the Union: Obama's Speech (complete transcript)

Bob McDonnell's Speech (full text): Republican State Of The Union Response

The First Amendment ― Statist’s Edition

Beating the Odds, Defeating the Clowns

In a dramatic clip from the Mark Levin Show, Mark talks about the fight for conservatism in 2010...starting with the GOP primaries and culminating in the general elections in November:

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New "Reagan conservatives" will remake the party.

A great communicator! Patrick Hughes For Senate on the Fred Thompson Show

America Rising: An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians

A Closet Democrat

Profile of a closet Democrat:

• Voted for Nancy Pelosi's radical Cap & Tax Bill
• Voted against new oil drilling in ANWR for energy independence
• Has earned an "F" from the NRA for being "a true enemy of gun owners’ rights...and a consistent anti-gun candidate who always opposes gun owners’ rights."
• Voted against the final surge in Iraq.
• As a supporter of partial birth abortion, he gets a 100% rating from NARAL.

For this stellar performance as a liberal RINO, Representative Mark Kirk has earned a score of 48 (out of 100) from the American Conservative Union. Looking at it from another angle, Kirk is 52% liberal.

In a state where conservatives outnumber liberals by 12 percentage points, I struggle to understand why establishment Republicans like John McCain have chosen to put their thumbs on the scale for Mark Kirk's candidacy for U.S. Senate before the GOP primary.

Have they learned nothing from the fine example set by Arlen Specter? Have they learned nothing from the Dede Scozzafava debacle?

...

I don't know who this tough guy is, but Mark Kirk had better watch out:

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Stop Mark Kirk. Support Patrick Hughes.

Cap’n Tax: Mark Kirk

Mark Kirk Voted for cap and trade after he claimed to have read it.

Illinois: 35% Conservative, 23% Liberal

Illinois conservative Republicans are essentially being insulted by their own party’s effete elites.

Tell Mark Kirk to go join the Democratic Party. That's where he really belongs!

Thomas Sowell: Republicans' "Big Tent" Battle

It's a Trap!

via iOwnTheWorld.com

Bonus Image:

Cap'n Tax Kirk, via Brooks Bayne

Illinois RINO Alert

Remember when Nancy Pelosi passed her radical Cap & Trade Bill in the House? With its oppressive new taxes, new mandates, and new regulations, Cap & Trade turned out to be far too radical, and the Senate wouldn't touch it with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole. But with the help of eight traitorous Republicans, Pelosi was able to push the infamous climate change legislation further than ever before.

One of those eight Republicans, Mark Kirk, wants to be the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in Illinois. As recently as 2004, that seat was occupied by a conservative, but the Republican establishment has thrown its support behind Mark "Cap&Trade" Kirk.

As Mark Levin points out, Kirk's support for cap and trade was inexcusable:

Any Republican who votes for Cap and Trade is a complete sellout because Cap and Trade is big government industrial policy that reaches into everybody's home...

Kirk knew that, he was the one of the ones who was getting all these calls. And he defied the people.

Unfortunately, Kirk's record of recklessness is not limited to his support for Cap and Trade. Let's review who Kirk really is, via Free Republic:

• Kirk gets an "F" rating from the NRA
• Kirk voted against the successful Surge in Iraq
• Kirk gets a 100% rating from NARAL
• Kirk voted for Cap and Trade
• Kirk is a John McCain RINO (Kirk's ACU rating = 48, much worse than McCain's rating of 63)

Cap&Trade Kirk must be stopped...but we only have eight days! The GOP senate primary is on February 2nd. Fortunately there's a solid conservative for whom we can rally: Patrick Hughes.

Hughes is the most serious conservative candidate running against Mark Kirk:

If conservatives come out early next week in an organized fashion, throw a pile of targeted money into Illinois, and rapidly drive up Pat Hughes’ name identification, the polling in Illinois suggests Hughes will win.

He is not polling well against Kirk right now, but then he has significantly lower name identification. All the polling suggests Kirk’s support is very weak and once people find out about Hughes, they break overwhelmingly for Hughes.

[emphasis added]

Learn more about Patrick Hughes. Listen to these great interviews with Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin:

Patrick Hughes on the Laura Ingraham Show

Patrick Hughes on the Mark Levin Show

Exit question: When is Hannity going to have this guy on his shows?

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Conservative Wake-Up Call: RINO Mark Kirk eight days away from being Senate nominee.

Donate at Patrick Hughes's Campaign Website

RINO Republican Mark Kirk's Stunning Admission on Cap and Trade Vote

National Republican Senatorial Committee: Stuck on Stupid

Cap and Trade: 44 Democrats vote no, 8 Republicans vote yes, Pelosi wins.

Mark Kirk is using the Martha Coakley playbook: Ducking Debates and Avoiding Appearances.

Republicans Won the Internet?

Conservatives are enjoying great success with social media. The Massachusetts senate race illustrates that fact very vividly.

Liberals are wailing and gnashing their teeth, but they are learning. And eventually they will catch up. In the meantime, we need to accurately acknowledge who has been responsible for winning recent online battles.

I disagree with those who say that in recent elections, the GOP "won the internet." Republicans didn't win the internet. Grassroots conservatives did. Scott Brown's remarkable win in Massachusetts gives the impression that some Republicans have awoken to the power of social media, but the Beltway GOP has no bragging rights.

As evidenced by their surprisingly weak presence in the online world, few Republican leaders understand how much the social media have changed the world.

Twitter has changed the game entirely. William Jacobson takes note:

While Facebook and blogs were important to fundraising and messaging, Twitter is what allowed pro-Brown activists to stay in contact with each other, to feed each other news links, and generally to keep up each other's spirits at a time when the radar was showing that Brown had no chance.

I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that this was the first American Twitter revolution.

Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) told us this was coming:

We could move heaven and earth when the American people understand the power of social media, and everybody is simultaneously, of their own free will, asking their elected representatives to take action. There's not an elected official in the nation who could withstand that. And we the people, we'll take back our government — once people understand how easy this is.

The results of the Twitter revolution have been amazing, but the GOP should not take credit:

January 19 was an amazing day for grass-roots conservatism. But the Beltway GOP should be warned against unjustified triumphalism. They were late to the game. Activists still haven’t, and won’t, forget the massive amounts of money Washington, D.C. Republicans wasted on Dede Scozzafava. And Scott Brown quite noticeably didn’t mention the word “Republican” once during his prepared remarks...

The Brown victory was very clearly a strike against machine politics of all kinds and business as usual in Washington. That includes top-down meddling by tired old GOP operatives. The party bosses have tried to install their preferred Senate candidates in Florida, Colorado, and California. They will use Brown’s win to argue for more “mooooooderation.” As I wrote yesterday in my analysis of how Brown unified a center-right-indie coalition, that is not the lesson of the Massachusetts miracle.

The social media are important tools, but they won't help to get the GOP very far if establishment Republicans don't embrace and hold on to conservative principles. The vast majority of conservative bloggers and social media users are more loyal to their principles than they are to the still-tarnished Republican brand. If the GOP abandons its conservative base, the internet ATM will break down and the online soldiers will log off.

The Tea Party movement has gravitated toward independent candidates who are willing and able to take on the establishment machines (e.g., NY-23, MAsen, Chuck Devore). The strong anti-incumbent sentiment rolling across the land will favor candidates who don't come across as old-school insiders. If the GOP doesn't figure that out pronto, we will soon see the same kind of apathy on the right that we currently see on the left, and the Democrats will hold on to more power than they deserve.

More

Conservatives: Beware of McCain Regression Syndrome

Candidates who would have had no chance before the Internet can now overcome huge odds.

Illinois Senate Race: The Beltway GOP establishment has made another BIG mistake.

Who is Ui2?

There's a new kid on the block: Ui2. You might have noticed their ads on your favorite blogs over the past week or so. What is Ui2 all about?

Editorially, it’s pretty simple: We’re featuring sites we dig, such as RightKlik and The Other McCain. And sometimes we will highlight lesser known blogs to call attention to new voices (check out Amy Proctor). So we have some content that shows up only in our Tag features (check them out – there’s a topical Tag feed on every page), and other content that we feature under the site’s masthead. We’ll rotate some of these features in and out over time.

Ui2 showcases exceptionally good conservative content (e.g., Hot Air, RedState, American Thinker, Instapundit). Naturally, I'm quite pleased to be featured on the site.

What's next for Ui2?

A lot of cool stuff is still in development, so we’ll be changing some things up over the next few months. This weekend we’ll be bringing on a few new feeds, including Legal Insurrection and SCOTUSblog.

The Other McCain featured a post on Ui2 yesterday.

Tired of filtering out the Liberal noise at Memeorandum? Check out Ui2.

Support Patrick Hughes

He's not as pretty as his opponent, Mark Kirk, but he's opposed to Cap & Tax, he's a constitutional conservative and he has the right perspective on national security.

Let's fight to put a Reagan conservative in Barack Obama's old Senate seat. The time to support Hughes is now. The GOP primary is on February 2nd.

Barney Frank and Scott Brown

Barney Frank's initial reaction to Scott Brown's Massachusetts victory was a bit surprising:

I have two reactions to the election in Massachusetts. One, I am disappointed. Two, I feel strongly that the Democratic majority in Congress must respect the process and make no effort to bypass the electoral results.

When did Barney become such a reasonable guy?

I wondered if Scott Brown had carried Barney's district, but I could not find hard data specifically pertaining to Barney's gerrymandered neck of the woods. Just for you, I chased down the data and crunched the numbers.

The results confirmed the stories circulating on the web. Amazingly, Scott Brown did win the majority of the votes in Barney Frank's Congressional District in Tuesday's election.

Here are the raw numbers:

Scott Brown: 116,765

Martha Coakley: 113,831

Joe Kennedy: 2,069

In 2008, Frank won his district with 64.3% of the vote. In 2006, he was uncontested and took 98.48% of the vote.

Perhaps with the results of Tuesday's election in hand, Frank will feel compelled to take his constituents' concerns more seriously. Maybe he'll cut back on insults:

Hey...loopy LaRouchies have feelings too!

Hat tip to the Fall River Board of Election Commissioners for precinct level data from Tuesday's election. Thank you!

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Support GOP challenger Sean Bielat

Barney Frank flip flops on comments about the implications of Scott Brown's victory.

The Other McCain ⇝ Ui2: Schweet Aggregation