[FYI - 1) Tomorrow's Sunday Special is particuularly important. Be sure to check it out. 2) BE SURE YOU ARE REGISTERED TO VOTE; 3) , try to either read the book (you can get it from your library) "Obama's America" or see the movie "2016." I promise you, you will not understand our President's worldview until you do; 4) You might also try to get a copy of the book, "Divider-In-Chief"; go to the follow site to read a lengthy preview of it:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621570118/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1621570118&linkCode=as2&tag=null07-20#reader_1621570118 ]
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"How Is Our Constitution Under Fire?"
http://askheritage.org/how-is-our-constitution-under-fire?utm_source=AH_Weekly&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=2012-09-21&utm_campaign=2012_Brand
So while we face many challenges, the most difficult task ahead—and the most important—is to restore constitutional limits on government. Forty visionaries (http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/constitution-day/signers.html) signed a piece of paper 225 years ago today [9/21] that became one of the most vital documents in the world: the U.S. Constitution. By design, it limited the power of government under the rule of law, created a vigorous framework that expanded economic opportunity, protected national independence and secured liberty and justice for all. But how is that limitation of powers working today?
The Judicial Branch. The rise of unlimited government is most familiar and most prominent in the form of judicial activism. The Founders called the judiciary the “least dangerous branch,” but progressive judges have usurped the functions of the other two branches and transformed the courts into policymaking bodies with wide-ranging power. We need judges who take the Constitution seriously and follow it faithfully.
The Legislative Branch. For its part, Congress has long legislated without regard to limits on its powers. As a result, decisions that were previously the constitutional responsibility of elected legislators are delegated to executive branch administrators. Congress is increasingly an administrative body overseeing a vast array of bureaucratic policymakers and rule-making bodies. Congress should stop delegating to bureaucrats and actively take responsibility for all the laws (and regulations) that govern us.
The Executive Branch. Meanwhile, the President has unique and powerful responsibilities in our constitutional system as chief executive officer, head of state, and commander in chief. But the idea that the president— who is charged with the execution of the laws—doesn’t have to wait for the lawmaking branch to make, amend, or abolish laws, but can and should act on his own is toxic to the rule of law. It violates the spirit, and potentially the letter, of the Constitution’s separation of the legislative and executive powers of Congress and the President.
It won’t be easy to return to the founding principles. We’ll have to move one step at a time, and walk back decades worth of bad decisions by members of all three branches of government. But it can be done, if we use the written Constitution as our guide and we believe that it means what it says and says what it means.
The Founders worked from the premise that government exists to secure God-given rights, and that it derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. And while many people take that for granted today, it was a novel idea in the 18th century and remains all too rare today. Since Americans are equal, self-governing citizens and the United States government is limited, we have the liberty and opportunity to live our lives, control our fate, and pursue our happiness—and the American Dream.
That’s worth celebrating, today and every day. But while our Constitution remains remarkably hale and hearty after all these years (it’s by far the longest-serving constitution in the world), it is under fire from many directions. Let us remember today that we have the opportunity to rededicate this country to the Constitution and to the universal principles of liberty at its core. We can, and must, dedicate ourselves to the hard work of restoring constitutional self-government, and so preserving the American Dream for all.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
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"Celebrating Constitution Day", Rep. Scott Garrett
The story begins with an unlikely hero: a soft-spoken, studious politician from Virginia by the name of James Madison. Madison asked his friend, Thomas Jefferson, to send him hundreds of volumes on politics from France, so that he could begin a research project on ancient and modern confederacies.
Closeted away at Montpelier, his rural home in Virginia, Madison explored the virtues and, even more importantly, the vices of confederacies, both past and present. His purpose was to experiment with ways to improve upon older models, and his investigations bore more fruit than most research projects ever do. The exercise was never meant to create a federal government so powerful that it would stifle state governments or individual initiative. It was about striking a balance between national and state government, all the while ensuring it is always the citizens who are in charge.
When the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, they made two decisions that would be crucial to their success: They elected George Washington as the president of the Convention, and they chose James Madison’s Virginia Plan as the starting point of all their debates.
Madison’s Plan certainly did not receive universal approval. And as these 55 men from twelve states debated how the United States should be governed, Madison’s suggestions would undergo numerous and significant changes. Large states would have to find common ground with small states; free states would have to compromise with slave states; and agricultural interests had to be reconciled to manufacturing interests.
At last, after three and a half months of wrangling, the Convention agreed on a final form of government. And on the last day of the Convention, September 17, 1787, nearly every member in attendance was willing to sign what would become, after its ratification, the Constitution of the United States of America.
When Alexis de Tocqueville wrote his magnificent study of Democracy in America in the 1830s, he admitted that he was not as impressed with America’s Revolutionary War victory as Americans seemed to be. Three thousand miles of ocean had more to do with their triumph over the English, he thought, than military skill or valor.
Instead, what impressed Tocqueville was the Constitution that Americans had framed after the dust cleared. He declared that “it is a novelty in the history of society to see a great people turn a calm and scrutinizing eye upon itself”—to voluntarily adopt a Constitution that would safeguard liberty—“without having wrung a tear or a drop of blood from mankind.” As a Frenchman, Tocqueville would have had in mind other revolutions that had led to far bloodier outcomes. And in our own time, it is a useful lesson to remember as we watch the revolutionary uprisings in other parts of the world: Once an oppressive tyrant has been overthrown, the hard work has only just begun.
Despite the challenges that lay before us, I believe our greatest days can be ahead of us if only we embrace our founding principles, resolve ourselves to go forward, and embody our great American promise.
So this September 17, the 225th since the signing of our great charter of liberty, be sure to celebrate those eminent Americans—such as George Washington and James Madison—who designed a Constitution that would “establish justice … and ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Their accomplishment is worth celebrating.
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