It’s a scandal what Congress has arranged for the public to be taught inside its Capitol Visitor Center, the $621 million underground gateway and “educational experience” that opens Tuesday.[1] In the Visitor Center’s Exhibition Hall, the theme is “E Pluribus Unum — Out of Many, One.” Initially,  words etched in marble called that stirring phrase the nation’s motto. A bad plaster job now covers the reference, someone having noticed that, well, “E Pluribus Unum” is not our national motto. “In God We Trust” is. But so far that’s notably absent, along with other references to faith.

But what bothered me the most as I toured the Visitor Center on Tuesday at the request of Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.)  –  [2] who first sounded the alarm last year on this politically correct outrage — is how the Visitor Center twists and distorts the Constitution.

[3] I thought the Constitution (because it says so) was about powers delegated to government by the people, who possess individual rights. Article I begins: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” A written agreement on the extent (and limits) of those powers is critical to a government deriving its “just powers from the consent of the governed,” as the Declaration of Independence prescribes.

“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare,” James Madison wrote, “the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.”

Wrong, Mr. Madison. Congress’ new Visitor Center decrees the Constitution isn’t a list of powers but rather of “aspirations” Congress is expected to define and realize. The exhibit specifies six:

1. Unity (as in “a more perfect Union” in the Preamble, which grants Congress no power).
2. Freedom (based on the First Amendment, which begins with the words  “Congress shall make no law …”).
3. Common Defense (from Article I, Section 8).
4. Knowledge (authority to promote public education, support arts and sciences, fund extensive research).
5. Exploration (to justify funding “curiosity and boldness” — like 4, this comes from a convoluted reading of the clause granting Congress the power to issue patents).
6. General Welfare (found in Article I, Section 8’s restriction of the taxing power, but taken here to mean “improving transportation, promoting agriculture and industry, protecting health and the environment, and seeking ways to solve social and economic problems”).

See for yourself. [4] The Heritage Foundation has put the full text, including the script of  an orientation film, online.

This exhibit is Congress’ temple to liberals’ “living Constitution,” the eternal font of lawmakers’ evolving mandate to achieve the nation’s ideals. No fixed meanings here, only open-ended “aspirations.” In this distorted view, the Constitution is an empty vessel, to be adapted to the times, as change requires. It means nothing — or anything.

Article printed from The Foundry: http://blog.heritage.org

URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2008/11/27/for-visitors-a-capitol-scandal/

URLs in this post:
[1] In the Visitor Center’s Exhibition Hall,: http://www.visitthecapitol.gov/Exhibitions/

[2] who first sounded the alarm last year on this politically correct outrage: http://demint.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=abe4e5
16-ea13-5c7c-6f5c-90f4c6b081dc&Type=Press%20Release&Month=12&Year=2007

[3] I thought the Constitution (because it says so) was about powers delegated to government by the people, who possess individual rights: http://www.heritage.org/LeadershipForAmerica/first-principles.cfm

[4] The Heritage Foundation has put the full text, including the script of  an orientation film, online.: http://www.heritage.org/leadershipforamerica/upload/CVC.pdf

We've already gone the moderate route -- and lost. One of the most surreal aspects of the post-2008 campaign is listening to moderates pretend that the last eight years never happened.

You say that the GOP can't win as a small government party. Well, we've already tried being a big government party for the last 8 years and it failed. You think running a moderate, pro-amnesty candidate who eschews social issues is the key to winning elections? Well, that's who we ran in 2008 and he received even less votes than George Bush did in 2004.

Basically, we have a lot of moderates in the GOP taking the same attitude that the Left used to take towards communism, "It works, but it just hasn't been tried by the right people yet." It didn't make much sense when the lefties were saying it and it makes even less sense now.

Stephen Hockman QC is proposing a body similar to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to be the supreme legal authority on issues regarding the environment.

The first role of the new body would be to enforce international agreements on cutting greenhouse gas emissions set to be agreed next year.

But the court would also fine countries or companies that fail to protect endangered species or degrade the natural environment and enforce the "right to a healthy environment".

At the end of article a National Security Guard was asked whether they tried to capture the terrorists alive.

"Unko bachana kaun chahega (Who will want to save them)?"

Keeping in touch with the little people

Minnesota Recount: Franken’s Sore Loser Strategy

The setback at the Canvassing Board has forced Al Franken to face the fact that he didn’t get enough valid votes to beat Norm Coleman in Minnesota’s Senate Race.  With the rejection of his bid to get the panel to add in thousands of rejected absentee ballots, there seems little chance that the remaining 15% of ballots left in the recount will produce the kind of change that 85% has not.  What’s a surly, self-absorbed DFL candidate to do?

Going to court was always inevitable.  Gone are the days when the loser of a close election would have the class to accept a tough loss and wish the winner well.  The recount is automatic in this case, and a good idea, but the notion that courts should determine winners and losers is antithetical to democracy.

More worrisome is this statement from Harry Reid:

The board’s decision drew a response from the Senate’s top Democrat, Majority Leader Harry Reid, who called it a “cause for great concern.”

“As the process moves forward, Minnesota authorities must ensure that no voter is disenfranchised,” Reid said in a statement. “A citizen’s right to have his or her vote counted is fundamental in our democracy.”

The Senate does have the authority to determine the winner of any Senate election, as does House for its elections, but they rarely use that power.  Reid’s comment threatens the efforts of Minnesota to provide a non-partisan, fair, and legitimate election.  In fact, it sounds like an extortion attempt to push state officials into a particular decision that would violate the law in order to produce a specific partisan result.

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"How long do you think it will take for the press to turn on Obama?" a friend asked. "Eight years, if he's in that long," I...

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"Either they'll blame Bush or 'circumstances beyond Obama's control' while writing articles about how heroically Obama handles them." It's already started. Take the president-elect's campaign narrative:

(a) Bush/McCain deregulation created our problems.

(b) The policies of President Clinton brought success and shared prosperity.

(c) President Bush's tax cuts unfairly enriched the rich.

(d) Obama intends to end posthaste the Iraq War, which "never should have been authorized and never should have been waged."

(e) Through Guantanamo/unlawful wiretaps/illegal interrogation procedures, Bush "shredded" the Constitution.

Bush wasn't so evil after all. And running for and governing as president are two different things. But don't expect the Obama-loving media to notice . . . or care.

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The CRA coerces banks into making loans based on political correctness, and little else, to people who can't afford them. Enforced like never before by the Clinton administration, the regulation destroyed credit standards across the mortgage industry, created the subprime market, and caused the housing bubble that has now burst and left us with the worst housing and banking crises since the Great Depression.

The CRA should be abolished, along with the government-sponsored enterprises that fueled the secondary market for subprimes — under pressure from Clinton, who ordered HUD to set quotas for "affirmative action" lending at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

But powerful Democrats in Washington want to protect the act — along with Fannie and Freddie — and spin the subprime scandal as the result of too little regulation, not too much.

"Repealing or weakening the CRA would be a mistake," warns Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who argues that the CRA should be strengthened.

Dodd, the top recipient of Fannie donations and himself a beneficiary of a sweetheart mortgage brokered by a subprime lender, recently invited one of Clinton's top enforcers of the CRA to testify.

"The notion that CRA has caused this problem is a pernicious thought," said former Comptroller of the Currency Gene Ludwig. "These are not truthful statements. The CRA has helped to create a better and sounder world for finance, not the opposite."

Dead wrong. But the mainstream media believe it, and have attacked those, including this paper, who dare to tell the truth about the crisis. Already the debacle has erased $13 trillion in wealth, while putting taxpayers on the hook for up to $8 trillion in bailouts.

Yet, somehow, these media-driven myths keep getting in the way of actual facts, such as:

Fact: The 1977 law was only lightly enforced until Clinton added teeth to it in 1994 and launched an anti-redlining campaign against banks, led by Ludwig, Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros (and later Andrew Cuomo) and Attorney General Janet Reno that lasted into this decade.

Minority homeownership rates, which had been flat, began a steep rise in 1995, and home prices soon followed, stoked by easier lending. Numerous bank officials complain that they still feel pressured by CRA regulators to make inner-city loans they know are at great risk of defaulting.

Myth: The CRA could not have led to financial Armageddon, because the overwhelming share of subprime mortgages came from lenders that were not banks and not regulated by the CRA.

Fact: Nearly 4 in 10 subprime loans between 2004 and 2007 were made by CRA-covered banks such as Washington Mutual and IndyMac. And that doesn't include loans made by subprime lenders owned by banks, which were in effect covered by the CRA.

Last year, when the bubble burst, bank subprime loans totaled $142 billion, dwarfing those made by lenders.

What's more, the biggest subprime lender, Countrywide, while not subject to the law, still came under federal pressure to make risky loans in minority communities.

Myth: The CRA did not force anyone to do subprime loans or take excessive risks.

Fact: Subprime loans were the vehicle banks used to satisfy CRA compliance, and Clinton and his regulators encouraged their use. Before Clinton took office, subprimes were virtually unheard of. By the time he left, they made up more than 9% of the market for mortgage originations. Today they're 20%.

"It's instructive to go back to the early stages of the subprime market, which has essentially emerged out of the CRA," ex-Fed chief Alan Greenspan said in recent testimony on the roots of the crisis.

Clinton pushed banks to grant mortgages to minorities with poor credit by using "flexible" underwriting standards — or risk being branded racist. Rules were weakened to the point where welfare and unemployment checks were accepted as qualifying income.

Myth: Greedy investment bankers, who securitized and sold subprime mortgages, drove us to the credit crisis, not government.

Fact: Clinton's regulatory policies led to the creation of this new risk on Wall Street. His CRA amendments created the subprime market, and only after he pressured Fannie and Freddie to socialize the risk and guarantee the profit from the subprime loans did Wall Street get involved in a big way.

The architects of the crisis want to divert attention from their own culpability by blaming the markets rather than their own regulations mandating that banks make high-risk loans based on race.

In fact, regulations had almost everything to do with this mess. And instead of strengthening them to atone for the alleged "sins of capitalism," we should be abolishing them.

During the last severe slump, President Reagan deregulated the economy, saying: "Government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem." He's as right today as he was then.

But he got al Qaeda right.

Do not look for anyone on the Left to admit that they were totally wrong, wrong, wrong these last 7 years. They will a year from now credit Obama for everything that Bush has accomplished.

Dissent may be patriotic but in this case, it has been idiotic.

Pakistani spy chief goes to Mumbai

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Some 200 "psychologists and allies" on Monday sent an open letter to President-elect Obama calling on him to reject his likely appointment of quarter-century CIA veteran Brennan to head the spy agency, citing Brennan's support for what they repeatedly called "dark side" policies — specifically harsh interrogation of terrorist detainees. Brennan was ex-CIA Director George Tenet's chief of staff from 1999 to 2001, deputy executive director from 2001 to 2003, and was with the agency during its implementation of the "black sites" program.

If America starts letting shrinks and guidance counselors determine our intelligence practices, we will never be any match for the bloodthirsty fanatics who will stop at nothing to destroy the Western world's freedoms.

What a perfect example of arrogant "experts" wading out past their depth and beyond their field of knowledge. The business of protecting this country should be left to those who have proved they know how to do it. The CIA terrorist interrogation program and the National Security Agency terrorist surveillance program have been key components of a strategy that has prevented any repeat of the 9/11 terrorist attack.

For a group of psychologists to presume to know what "alienates our allies, strengthens the commitment of our enemies, and puts our own captured soldiers at risk," as the Soldz group claims, is laughable.