Reflections From a Murky Pond

Recently, the US Attorney General, Jeff Session declared that he and his DoJ would reverse course on the doctrine set forth under Obama and Holder and restart enforcement of federal drug laws as they pertain to marijuana. This, frankly, leaves me feeling ambivalent since one could say that I’m getting conflicting smoke signals… and neither of them have anything directly to do with either medical or recreational use of cannabis.

To me this is an example of federal overreach resulting in the Constitution being in conflict with itself at this time. I find that the entirety of the federal drug laws, except those that cover importation, exportation, or interstate trafficking, to be violations of the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution. However, the Take Care Clause (Section 3, Clause 5) of Article II of the Constitution requires that the Executive shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. In other words, the Constitution requires the Executive branch to enforce the laws set forth by the Legislative branch unless and until the Judicial branch declares said laws to be null and void.

That conflict is what’s making me ambivalent about this whole thing, not my personal opinions of either medical or recreational use of marijuana.

Tags: 10th Amendment | America | Crime | DOJ | Drug Laws | Drugs | Federal Law | Federalism | Law | Marijuana | Politics | Separation of Powers | Sessions | States Rights | The Constitution | Weed

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 10th, 2018 at 12:32 pm and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Adieu Et Bon Débarras, Paris!

Goodby and good riddance, Paris – specifically the The Paris Agreement which was brokered in France during the COP 21 talks. All the signs are present that President Trump will remove America from this Climate Change Agreement. Once again proving he’s a political outsider, strongly looks as if Trump will keep yet another campaign promise.

I’m happy with this and our domestic enemies are livid over it – weeping, wailing, gnashing their teeth, and promising retribution. I will, however give these Liberals and Progressives a small measure of credit this time. This isn’t just another episode of their derangement. President Trump pulling America out of Paris Agreement is apocalyptic for their hopes and dreams of a “greener,” weaker America.

And yes! I’m big enough to admit that I’m petty and mean enough so that a significant part of my happiness with leaving the Paris Agreement is that the Left is so butt-hurt over doing so.

Here, however, is one important point, though not the key point for me: This Paris Agreement isn’t actually that horrific from my point of view. It is and was largely meaningless and without any provisions – or even delusions thereof – of any of its various articles being actually binding or enforceable upon the the 196 signatories. In this it is a lot like NATO.

Is It A Treaty Or Not?

No. My primary reason for being happy about leaving the Paris Agreement is that it really wasn’t legally enacted in the first place or, at least, it was easily arguable that it wasn’t. This is because it’s a treaty or, at least it certainly seems to meet the legal requirement for being one, and Obama just signed it as if he were king without ever sending it to the Senate for ratification, which is constitutionally required. So, if it is a treaty, it is not one that America ever entered into and President Trump would just be correcting an illegal act by Obama.

Then again, some legal experts argue that the Paris Agreement isn’t a treaty, despite it easily meeting the prima facie standard of such under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which states “an international agreement concluded between States in written form and governed by international law” (VCLT art. 2.1(a)) is a treaty. It was, after all, specially and specifically crafted to not be a treaty so that it didn’t need to undergo the required scrutiny by the various states that such things entail. In other words, it was written in a manner that Obama could sign it unilaterally under the auspices of the UNFCCC, instead of sending to the Senate for approval. So it could be argued that this was just an Executive Agreement under the law.

If the latter is held to be true, this is ironic in the extreme since Obama’s signing the Paris Agreement violated the 1992 Executive Agreement with the Senate to submit for their review and ratification any future agreements which contained “targets and timetables” for emissions reductions by the US.

So, there it is. Either it’s a treaty; in which case, it’s null and void due to its unconstitutional and illegal enactment; or it’s simply an Executive Agreement by Obama; in which case, it ceased being binding on January 20th, 2017 and President Trump is well and completely within his rights to either formally rescind our nation’s participation or simply ignore it in whole or in part and to do so for any or no reason whatsoever.

Either way, President Trump would be doing the right thing in my opinion. Whether it was executive overreach on Obama’s part or his simply violating the agreement under which the Senate ratified the UNFCCC in the first place, putting an end to it would the right thing.

Tags: AGW | America | Climatards | Climate Change | Constitution | Constitutional Law | COP 21 | Executive Orders | France | Geopolitics | Global Warming | Law | Liberals | Obama | Paris | Paris Agreement | Progressives | Separation of Powers | Trump | Warmists

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 31st, 2017 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Politics, The Environment. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

The United Nations, the various global economic manipulators, the grifters and opportunists, and the true believers of the Warmists’ doomsday cult of AGW all have one existential problem in common – how to get their agenda past the stalwarts in the US Congress, who have repeatedly refused to support UN measures that would harm America’s economy and negatively impact American lives, livelihoods, and lifestyles.

It’s quite the problem for them since their movement is both predicated and dependent upon savaging America’s economy and industry.

France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius – vastly unsurprisingly a Socialist – thinks he has the answer to their problem. He wants to just bypass the US Congress completely.

BONN, Germany (AP) — The global climate agreement being negotiated this year must be worded in such a way that it doesn’t require approval by the U.S. Congress, the French foreign minister said Monday.

Laurent Fabius told African delegates at U.N. climate talks in Bonn that “we know the politics in the U.S. Whether we like it or not, if it comes to the Congress, they will refuse.”

If negotiators follow his plan, that would exclude an international treaty that has legally-binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions – something some countries still insist on but which would have no chance of being ratified by the Republican-controlled Congress.

“We must find a formula which is valuable for everybody and valuable for the U.S. without going to the Congress,” said Fabius, who will host the U.N. climate summit in Paris in December where the new agreement is supposed to be adopted.

In many ways my thoughts on Fabius’ idea is for them to go for it. Without a treaty there is no binding agreement and their only hope for America’s compliance would be for a POTUS who both places an international agenda over American interests and has little to know respect for the Separation of Powers demanded by the Constitution.

True, they have that now in the person of Obama, but the UN’s Climate Summit isn’t until December and the boy will only be in office for a little over a year beyond that. Hence, unless America elects another to that office who doesn’t places an international agenda over American interests and has little to know respect for the Separation of Powers demanded by the Constitution, whatever the UN wants in the absence of a ratified treaty will be moot.

Je vous remercie, Monsieur Fabius. J’aime votre idée.

Tags: 2016 Elections | AGW | America | Climatards | Climate Change | CO2 | Congress | Geopolitics | Global Warming | Grifters | IPCC | Laurent Fabius | Politics | Separation of Powers | The Constitution | UN

This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2015 at 10:22 am and is filed under Politics, The Environment. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

On Monday, February 16, 2015, a mere one day before Obama’s sweeping executive actions on immigration would have allowed illegal immigrants to begin applying for work permits and legal protection, Judge Andrew S. Hanen, of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Texas, ruled in favor of Texas and 25 other states that had challenged Obama’s unilateral immigration actions and issued an injunction against carrying out these changes to the law.

Obama’s White House will, of course, challenge this ruling and battle it in the federal court system, possibly with it ending up in from of the SCOTUS in the relatively near future. That challenge is to be expected and is largely immaterial in the larger, deeper scope of America’s tribulations. There are bigger issues.

The bigger, deeper, and more fundamentally dangerous issue that this relates to is that almost half of the Democrats don’t believe that Obama should listen to- or abide by federal court rulings.

Should the president have the right to ignore federal court rulings if they are standing in the way of actions he feels are important for the country?

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 26% of Likely U.S. Voters think the president should have the right to ignore federal court rulings if they are standing in the way of actions he feels are important for the country. Sixty percent (60%) disagree and say the president should not have the right to ignore the courts. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

But perhaps more unsettling to supporters of constitutional checks and balances is the finding that 43% of Democrats believe the president should have the right to ignore the courts. Only 35% of voters in President Obama’s party disagree, compared to 81% of Republicans and 67% of voters not affiliated with either major party.

Yes, you read that right. 43% of Democrats believe that Obama shouldn’t be bound or constrained by the federal courts, 22% aren’t sure, and only 35% Democrats think he should be bound by the federal courts’ decisions.

All Hail Barack Obama

So one of the most horrific and potentially destructive problems facing America and Americans is that almost half of the Democrats are not just Statists, not just Anti-Federalist, but in favor of a tyrannical, autocratic presidency which unbound by- and unbeholden to the laws of the land set forth in the check and balances demanded by the Constitution.

If war is politics by other means than politics is just war by other means. These beings within the borders of our nation are not our opponents, they’re our enemies. An the very lawless, tyrannical nature of rule they desire makes them unlawful combatants. We, the People should treat them and such with no restraint and extreme prejudice.

Tags: America | Civil War | Conservatives | Constitution | Democrats | Federal Courts | Illegal Aliens | Immigration | Law | Liberals | Obama | Politics | Progressives | Republicans | Separation of Powers | Tyranny

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2015 at 11:50 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

So the Scofflaw-in-Chief is going to commandeer the American airwaves tonight and jabber about how, through executive overreach, he’s going to countermand and overthrow the laws duly enacted by Congress by granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.

NOTE: Obama’s handlers and overseers, along with many of his remaining followers, object to the word “Amnesty” but not to the meaning of his acts in this matter.

What Obama’s executive amnesty really means is:

• The boy will once again prove himself a liar by not drawing a distinction between conscious and inadvertent violators of America’s immigration laws as he repeatedly claimed we must do.
• He’ll  cause yet another surge of illegals from Central and South American countries, just as his previous suspension of enforcement action against the so-called Dreamers in June of 2012 did.
• The boy’s reported plan would legalize as permanent U.S. residents many tens of thousands of illegal alien criminals – ones that are criminal far beyond merely being violators of immigration law. Like his previous actions, Obama’s amnesty would include: murderers, rapists, kidnappers, and a host of other criminals whose offenses the Obama Regime doesn’t consider “serious.”
• His actions, if allowed to stand, will cost the American taxpayers tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars a year since most the recipients of the boy’s amnesty will be uneducated, unskilled, poverty-stricken individuals who will instantly qualify for any and all means-tested social programs on the books.

Thankfully but not unexpectedly, Congress – with the stereotypical exception of the lame-duck democrats in the Senate – are not taking Obama’s attempt at gross executive overreach and infringement of the constitutionally mandated Separation of Powers lying down. They are already moving to defund those parts of the federal bureaucracy which would be needed to implement Obama’s planned executive amnesty.

This is, in my opinion, a moderately good response but it is difficult to fully realize and contains more form than function due to the bureaucracies in question having a backlog of various supplies and means to implement, in the near-term at least, Obama’s atrocity. I believe that America would be better served if Congress thought less about “No Executive Amnesty” and much more about “No Amnesty For The Executive.”

No Amnesty For The Executive

Instead of merely defunding those portions of the ICE that would allow Obama to legalize these illegal aliens, Congress should also defund all portions of the US Secret Service that do not direct pertain to safeguarding the payment and financial systems of the United States.

Let we, the People, who are the true law of- and keepers of justice in the land, decide whether or not to extend amnesty to Obama. 😉

Tags: America | Amnesty | Congress | Constitution | Crime | Executive Orders | Funding | ICE | Illegal Aliens | Immigration | Law | Obama | Politics | Secret Service | Senate | Separation of Powers | US House of Representives

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2014 at 11:37 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.