Is Putting Obama in the White House UnConstitutional?

The We the People Foundation has been working for several months on the question of Obama's legitimacy to be President based on the U.S. Constitution's "Natural Born Citizen" clause. This clause requires that a President be a citizen of the United States of America who was born in this country.

The attorney's contention is that President-elect Obama has failed to adequately prove his citizenship and that his failure to appear in several court cases regarding that fact shows that he is unable to do so. Obama's campaign posted a birth cirtificate from Hawaii, but several questions arose as to its legitimacy on several counts. No response has been given there either.

So We the People posted an open letter, paid for as advertising, in the New York Times. That open letter has caused this controversy to become national news, rather than just the suppressed news relegated to the "radical minority" they've pushed it off on up til now.

The Wall Street Journal has covered the story (click link) and others have followed.

A press conference next week, along with a certified, overnight letter that was due to arrive today (Saturday) to Obama to invite him or his representative there, will hopefully air this out and put it in the news before the American public. That's the hope of the We the People Foundation, anyway.

I think it's likely they'll get poo-pooed and blown off in the public as a bunch of yahoos from Tennessee who're using this as a thin cover for their KKK plans. The racial angle, which has little to do with this issue, will be played up as a way of getting most Americans to ignore the issue as another race war. The editor of the Chicago Sun Tribune has already started this tact.

So I guess we'll find out next week when this press conference is held and the main stream media is forced to air the issue, no doubt utilizing whatever slant they can come up with to marginalize it.

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Mr. Mayor as no inside interest in this setup...

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Our Semi-Soviet Surveillance State

by Fred Reed

Oh god. It’s getting worse. Everything. I knew it would. Death and taxes are long shots by comparison.

So I’m in Washington, a federal enclave, as someone said, surrounded on all four sides by reality. This was supposed to be a medical trip to have vital internal organs pawed, sliced, and injected with strange fluids. Kidneys, carburetor, remaining brain, that sort of thing. But this is Washington. Horrors everywhere.

Hillary. I don’t hate Hillary. She’s smart, tough, sane, been around, corrupt, and personally repellent as a fanged garden slug. By today’s standards, that’s a bargain.

But why the hell is she Secretary of State? How many years has she spent abroad? What languages does she speak? What does she know about the street in Karachi, Cairo, Guadalajara? She probably thinks Mumbai is what you eat with a RC Cola.

See, what’s happened is that we are ruled by an incestuous bridge club clucking to itself in what amounts to a thermos bottle. Hillary is SecState because Precedent O’Bama wants to heal rifts within the Democratic Party. It would make more sense to poison the lot, but never mind. Everything is about domestic politics. And these dismal retreads promote each other in circles. Hillary goes from governor’s wife to First Basilisk to senator to SecState. Oh help.

Same with Cuba. The good of the country doesn’t matter. We gotta keep the rubes gurgling with delight. That’s all that counts. The US continues to make itself loathed in Latin America, in substantial part because of that stupid embargo. Why? Because a noisy rabble of pseudo-Cuban losers in Miami votes Republican. But of course it doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks. All those funny little countries around the world really don’t have anything we need, except our economy, and China will give us visas to visit our industry. Perhaps.

And then there’s this business of having a black president. It seemed like a good idea. We’ve had white ones forever and it hasn’t worked, so a black one made sense. We have now established that a black president is exactly like a white one. Next time, maybe a Melanesian or Lao. I hoped O’Bama would stand in the Rose Garden and holler, “You blue-eyed muhfuhs done got it all wrong, and I’m gonna unscrew things.” No. Smart guy, decent guy, guy you could heist a brew with and tell dirty stories, but it’s business as usual. Same tired hacks.

I think I know why. Inexperience. Ponder his relation to the Five-Sided Wind Tunnel on the Potomac. I spent thirty years covering the military and I know all the Pentagon’s songs. O’Bama doesn’t. He missed Vietnam, wasn’t in the military, hasn’t had much to do with generals or soldiers. It’s not his fault and it isn’t a character defect, but there it is.

So in walks Power Point Petraeus, back from bombing weddings in Afghanistan. Power Point is impressive. I’ve never met him, but I’ve met plenty of identical units. Erect posture, firm handshake, carefully deferential enough but you can just tell he’s strong and reliable. And he can sling the lingo (“Ohhhh, I love it when you talk that way.”) with the stern honesty of an overgrown Boy Scout and the guile of a serpent, and he’s patriotic to the gills and he’s got charts.

And O’Bama doesn’t know better. So Afghan brides will continue to need Kevlar dresses.

Meanwhile, things get loonier on the street. I went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore from DC by train and, so help me, they’re doing the same garish security theater on trains that they do at hairports. Cops and German Shepherds everywhere. To buy a freaking commuter-rail ticket, you need a photo ID, and they type heaven knows what into a computer.

Okay, suppose I show up at the Obedience Training window with my suitcase full of Semtex, buy my ticket with my own ID or any ID with a balding ugly mutt on it—they barely look at it—and blow the 9:07 MARC to metallic sawdust. After the fact they assemble my shards, check the computer, and determine that It Must Have Been Fred. This miraculously brings the dead back to life. Bet you didn’t know I had such powers.

None of it makes sense, except as Pavlovian conditioning. Every few minutes a tedious recording plays in stations saying to call some number if you see suspicious behavior. Blah blah blah. No one pays the least attention. No one writes the number down. Has anyone ever called it?

“Uh, I want to report suspicious behavior.”

Voice, annoyed at having the Redskins game interrupted: “Yeah, what?”

“Well, there’s like, this guy, he has a funny looking raincoat and he keeps, you know, looking around, and I think his left hand is twitching.”

“Uh…yeah. Tell him to stop twitching.”

“What if he, you know, blows up or something?”

“What am I, your mother?”

I don’t get it. Something is happening to this country. It still has a lot going for it—friendly people, great diners, good blues, country bands, widespread availability of illegal drugs. But the government is out of control. Everything is illegal and watched. It’s getting so you can’t shoot cats from a car window with a twelve-gauge any more. Who wants to live in that kind of world? We’ll probably be overrun by cats, drown in them.

Today I went to the Hill to see the new Visitors Center. As usual, cops everywhere, squad cars parked on sidewalks, steel stop’em-cars plates rising from streets. People don’t seem frightened, but the government is, or pretends to be.

The Visitors Center turns out to be underground at the Capitol. It is said to have cost $761 temporarily deflated green ones and has the mental fingerprints of Albert Speer all over it: It’s huge, drab, squarish, monumental without even being imposing, with the élan of a K-Street office building.

I don’t get it. This is the country that produced Peggy Lee and Tampa Red and the ’fitty-sedden Chevy, the country that spits techno-whizz golf carts onto Mars just like it was even possible, that brought the hamburger to gorgeous bejuiced perfection and invented most of the modern world. It’s the home of sand-lot baseball and Little Peggy March and BB guns and Tasty Freeze. It is, in a phrase, one fine place.

How did it sink to being a proto-Soviet surveillance state that builds vast awful Visitor Centers in the style of a Hitlerian mauseoleum? You can’t go to the john without a photo ID anymore. Something ain’t right.

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Steve and Paula Runyan: Opression Update

Steve and Paula Runyan: Opression Update

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Ignorance reigns supreme

From: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams120308.php3
by Walter Williams

How about a few civics questions? Name the three branches of government. If you answered the executive, legislative and judicial, you are more informed than 50 percent of Americans. The Delaware-based Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) recently released the results of their national survey titled "Our Fading Heritage: Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History and Institutions." The survey questions were not rocket science.

Only 21 percent of survey respondents knew that the phrase "government of the people, by the people, for the people." comes from President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Almost 40 percent incorrectly believe the Constitution gives the president the power to declare war. Only 27 percent know the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States. Remarkably, close to 25 percent of Americans believe that Congress shares its foreign policy powers with the United Nations.

Among the total of 33 questions asked, others included: "Who is the commander in chief of the U S. military?" "Name two countries that were our enemies during World War II." "Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal government?" Of the 2,508 nationwide samples of Americans taking ISI's civic literacy test, 71 percent failed; the average score on the test was 49 percent.

ISI findings about cultural illiteracy and academic incompetence are nothing new. A 1990 Gallup survey for the National Endowment of the Humanities, given to a representative sample of 700 college seniors, found that 25 percent did not know that Columbus landed in the Western Hemisphere before the year 1500; 42 percent could not place the Civil War in the correct half-century; and 31 percent thought Reconstruction came after World War II.

In 1993, a Department of Education survey found that among college graduates 50 percent of whites and more than 80 percent of blacks couldn't state in writing the argument made in a newspaper column; 56 percent could not calculate the right tip; 57 percent could not figure out how much change they should get back after putting down $3.00 to pay for a 60-cent bowl of soup and a $1.95 sandwich, and over 90 percent could not use a calculator to find the cost of carpeting a room. But not to worry. A 1999 survey taken by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni of seniors at the nation's top 55 liberal-arts colleges and universities found that 98 percent could identify rap artist Snoop Dogg and Beavis and Butt-Head, but only 34 percent knew George Washington was the general at the battle of Yorktown.

With limited thinking abilities and knowledge of our heritage, we Americans set ourselves up as easy prey for charlatans, hustlers and quacks. If we don't know the constitutional limits placed on Congress and the White House, politicians can do just about anything they wish to control our lives, from deciding what kind of light bulbs we can use to whether the government can take over our health care system or bailout failing businesses. We just think Congress can do anything upon which they can get a majority vote.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has one finding that I find both a bit perplexing but encouraging. Roughly 70 percent of Americans, even those who failed the test, agreed that our history, culture and institutions are important and should be taught to our college students. They might even agree with Thomas Jefferson who warned, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

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Creating Liberty One Rifleman at a Time

On The Road With the Appleseed Project: Creating Liberty One Rifleman at a Time
by William Buppert
From: http://www.lewrockwell.com/buppert/buppert14.html

I spent the last weekend at the Phoenix Appleseed Shoot in Arizona with a number of fellow shooters. I came with my wife, five children and my other best friend in tow. We resembled the Beverly Hillbillies pulling into the campground in my F350 crew cab truck and trailer that should require harbor navigation skills (notice that I don’t advocate licensure) on Friday night the day before the shoot. We were exhausted but excited after the four-hour trip from southern Arizona. Almost three-dozen shooters showed up for the training which is a fairly respectable turn-out.

What is an Appleseed Shoot? Fred, the proprietor of Fred’s M14 Stocks and famous for long freedom polemics (in a print size old people can’t read) in Shotgun News, started and built the program. The Revolutionary War Veterans Association is an umbrella organization that was created to bridge the gap between the Founding of the nation and the present day through educational outreach. It started as a venture to bring history alive and revive the principles that animated our divorce from George III (the other George) from whence was born the Appleseed Project whose modest goal is to create one million new Riflemen in America. To wit:

"The Appleseed Program is designed to take you from being a simple rifle owner to being a true rifleman. All throughout American history, the rifleman has been defined as a marksman capable of hitting a man-sized target from 500 yards away – no ifs, ands or buts about it. This 500-yard range is traditionally known as "the rifleman's quarter-mile"; a rifleman can hit just about any target he can see. This skill was particularly evident in the birth of our country, and was the difference in winning the Revolutionary War."

Read the rest: http://www.lewrockwell.com/buppert/buppert14.html

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Freedom = Wealth = Enslavement

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U.S. Supreme Court: State Medical Marijuana Laws Not Preempted by Federal Law

From: http://www.safeaccessnow.org/article.php?id=5614

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review a landmark decision today in which California state courts found that its medical marijuana law was not preempted by federal law. The state appellate court decision from November 28, 2007, ruled that "it is not the job of the local police to enforce the federal drug laws." The case, involving Felix Kha, a medical marijuana patient from Garden Grove, was the result of a wrongful seizure of medical marijuana by local police in June 2005. Medical marijuana advocates hailed today's decision as a huge victory in clarifying law enforcement's obligation to uphold state law. Advocates assert that better adherence to state medical marijuana laws by local police will result in fewer needless arrests and seizures. In turn, this will allow for better implementation of medical marijuana laws not only in California, but in all states that have adopted such laws.

"It's now settled that state law enforcement officers cannot arrest medical marijuana patients or seize their medicine simply because they prefer the contrary federal law," said Joe Elford, Chief Counsel with Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the medical marijuana advocacy organization that represented the defendant Felix Kha in a case that the City of Garden Grove appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. "Perhaps, in the future local government will think twice about expending significant time and resources to defy a law that is overwhelmingly supported by the people of our state."

Read the rest: http://www.safeaccessnow.org/article.php?id=5614

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Abolish Income Tax For a Year Actually Getting Talked About

It's a good start, anyway.

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The Lincoln Gambit

by WN Grigg

While it cares little for customary piety, our ruling Nomenklatura displays the intolerant fervor of Paradise-bound Jihadis in defending the sanctity of the Almighty State and its avatars. In that pantheon there is none holier than the martyred founder of the Second (or People's) American Republic -- Abraham the Almighty, whose sacred likeness sits in stoic majesty in the Imperial Capital's most celebrated pagan cathedral.

Despite the fact that the candidate had a background barren of worthwhile accomplishments and a political vita that could be inscribed on the note inside a fortune cookie, Barack Obama's followers -- most likely in the thrall of a campaign-generated meme -- routinely compared him to Jesus.

Lincoln, by way of contrast, wasn't deified in this fashion until after his assassination. Now that he's scant weeks away from being garlanded with Caesar's crown and swaddled in the Imperial purple, the media's image-makers have joined in the chorus of deification, widely and shamelessly anointing him son and heir to Abraham the Divine.

In fact, Obama is the beneficiary of what could be called an affirmative action apotheosis: He's being sanctified before he's had an opportunity to do anything. Already, even before the Electoral College has assembled to cast its votes, Obama is being treated as the sitting president: He is conducting business with Congress and state governors, and reporters at press conferences convened by the "Office of the President-Elect" are required to stand as one in solemn, chastened reverence as His Holiness strides to the microphone, presumably hovering an appropriate distance above the ground so as not to be soiled by contact with the mundane.

Read the rest: http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2008/12/lincoln-gambit.html

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The Most Expsensive Movie Ever Made

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Farming People

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Iraq War Veteran Trampled by "Hero" Mounted Police

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$8.5 Trillion in Bailouts and Counting: Where's It Going?

Well, it's going to teh fat cats of course. Where'd you think it would go? Washington's cronie politicians aren't gonna give the money to people who NEED it. That doesn't generate larger power bases and more campaign finances. Sheesh. Oh, ya, but vote Demopublican anyway. It's how we "change" things.

Here's a breakdown:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2008/11/26/MNVN14C8QR.DTL&o=0

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Dead Donkey

Old Bluey moved to Dubbo and bought a donkey from a farmer for $100.00. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day. The next day he drove up and said, 'Sorry mate, but I have some bad news, the donkey died.'

Bluey replied, 'Well,then just give me my money back.'
The farmer said, 'Can't do that. I went and spent it already.'
Bluey said, 'Ok, then, just bring me the dead donkey.'
The farmer asked, 'What are ya gonna do with him?
Bluey said, 'I'm going to raffle him off.'
The farmer said, 'You can't raffle off a dead donkey!'
Bluey said, 'Sure I can. Watch me.. I just won't tell anybody he's dead.'

A month later, the farmer met up with Bluey and asked, 'What happened with that dead donkey?'
Bluey said, 'I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars a piece and made a profit of $898.00.'

The farmer said, 'Didn't anyone complain?'
Bluey said, 'Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back.'
Bluey now works for the Government.

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Afraid of the Truth

Here's a liberal blogger writing about Obama and his fake change:
http://liberalpro.blogspot.com/2008/11/afraid-of-truth.html

I think that people in this country are so afraid of realizing the truth about what is happening to this country that citizens are choosing to continue to believe in the rhetoric of the incoming administration rather than see it for exactly what it is, another chapter in America’s slide toward fascism. I do not agree with the people that claim Obama is not getting a fair chance to prove he is any different than the man he is replacing. I understand the fear and frustration that drives these people to continue to hope against hope that he will deliver the change he promised in his campaign. The very idea of admitting that we are facing another four years of corporate socialism, of ignoring the plight of the Middle Class, of unchecked power in the Executive Branch and the prospect of more military adventures by a nation that has squandered its resources on the concept of an open-ended “War on Global Terror” is too much to contemplate for most of us.

Still, hiding from reality will not change the situation we find ourselves in. Denial will not stop this nation from continuing on this path of self destruction. Some may believe that I am exaggerating the problem, I don’t believe I am. There is just no way that we can continue to fund the military at the present rate.

“Of all the enemies to public liberty… war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare”.
— James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

Aside from the loss of freedom that continual war engenders, the economy in its present fragile condition simply can’t continue to fund this warfare. Middle Class Americans have seen their income shrink while the top 10% of American families have increased their wealth. The top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/29tax.html). This does not bode well for the political well-being of our nation. As the disparity of wealth between the rich and poor increases, so does the resentment of the people that cannot afford to enjoy the benefits of living in one the richest economies on the planet. It seems that we are being prepared for civil unrest with reports that are circulating on the web about the closed session of Congress this year that threatened martial law and the rounding up of dissidents The attachment of a brigade of the Army’s 3rd Infantry to NORTHCOM had also raised concerns by Naomi Wolfe and others that see this as a prelude to martial law (Link). The threat of martial law if Congress did not support the bailout was voiced by Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Ca) and can be seen on UTUBE (Link).

Are all of these concerns justified? In a word, Yes. This could be the reason why so many otherwise intelligent Americans could be hoping against hope that Obama will change direction and bring the change he has promised. My primary concern is that most people don’t realize that while Obama promised change, he never specifically revealed what that change would consist of.

We really need to draw a collective breath and figure out what it is that we expect of Obama. We also need to understand that the President is not the only agent for change in this country. The President is a servant of the people. It’s only common sense that unless we speak with a unified voice, the corporations, with their political and economic clout will drown the voices of the people. The Congress needs to understand that this country is not only facing a grave economic crisis not seen since the Great Depression, but a political upheaval that has not been seen since the Civil War.

Our priorities are being revaluated like never before in recent history and I don’t believe that anyone in this nation wants a confrontation between the people, the military and the government. We need to stop believing in hyperbole and conjecture and start dealing in reality. The choices that Obama has made so far for his cabinet don’t bode well for any type of real change and we must take it for what it is worth. On the other hand, we must not overreact either. We are all walking a thin line in America. We are in crises and the only way we are going to stop a collapse is by dealing in reality and making wise decisions. The people must speak out and the government must understand that it will ignore the people at its own peril. These wars must be revaluated as should the corporate bailouts. We can’t do everything for everyone, we just cannot afford it. We must choose our priorities and make our choices known. We can’t operate as if we have a fire hose and start spraying water on thousands of fires individually without a plan to control the source of the fires. Is this simplistic? Yes, but its one analogy that accurately portrays the situation. We need leaders that are not afraid to speak the truth and accurately access our limitations instead of blindly stating that we can continue to operate in the same irresponsible manner while expecting different results.

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IBM's Vision of the Future

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Need Health Care? Go to Mexico

By Robert Higgs

Porfirio Díaz, the Mexican strongman of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, famously described his country’s situation by exclaiming, “¡Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos!” (Poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States!) I cannot say whether Mexico is now any closer to God, but its proximity to the United States is definitely proving to be a godsend for many Americans in need of medical and dental care.

Medical tourism is a rapidly growing industry, estimated to bring in gross revenues now well in excess of $60 billion per year, and Mexico is a convenient destination for many Americans in need of pharmaceutical drugs, dental work, and surgical procedures. Prices may be as much as two-thirds below those in the United States for comparable goods and services. The Los Angeles Times reports, for example, that at Los Algodones, a Mexican town of about 10,000 population on the border with California, “dental offices outnumber restaurants 49 to nine. Add in the 26 pharmacies, 20 optical shops and 14 physicians offices, and you’ve got something of a mecca of medicine.” Similar towns may be found here and there along the entire Mexican border, especially across from Texas.

U.S. hospital firms are now investing in the construction of new care facilities in Mexico, to serve Mexicans, to be sure, but also with an eye toward the norteamericanos who are expected to seek their services.

Read the rest: http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=588

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