Free Republic

Freedom and popular government in Britain and America became possible because over the course of many years the English House of Commons, and later the American colonial legislatures, were willing to exert the power of the purse to discipline an overreaching executive. In Britain, the House of Commons—Parliament’s lower chamber—sometimes defunded the executive in order to curb it. The House was willing do this despite threats from the Crown and “bad press” from the English establishment. In America, the colonial assemblies were willing to defund the king’s governors to check their power. Freedom likely would have been impossible without the...

From the standpoint of one familiar with our constitutional history, the spectacle of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives making pre-emptive tax concessions to the President is unnerving. Over a period of centuries, the lower house of the English Parliament, the House of Commons, fought for and won the “power of the purse”—that is, the right to initiate, as well as approve, all revenue measures. Based on English success, we adopted the same system. Until now, apparently. Fundamental to the rights of Englishman was (and is) the right not to be taxed without consent. That required approval by...

Speaker John Boehner has proposed allowing tax rates to rise for the wealthiest Americans if President Barack Obama agrees to major entitlement cuts, according to several sources close to the talks. It is the first time Boehner has offered any boost in marginal tax rates for any income group, and it would represent a major concession for the Ohio Republican. Boehner suggested hiking the Bush-era tax rates for top wage earners, including those with annual incomes of $1 million or more annually, beginning Jan. 1, two sources said.

House Speaker John Boehner and GOP leadership have removed several conservative House members from their respective powerful committee positions, Breitbart News has learned. Effective next Congress, leadership pulled Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp, Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash and Arizona Republican Rep. David Schweikert off committees from which they could exert conservative pressure on fiscal matters. Amash and Huelskamp were pulled from the Budget Committee and Schweikert from the Financial Services Committee. Huelskamp, a freshman elected during the 2010 tea party wave, thinks the leadership move to pull him from the powerful committee is revenge for him standing up for...

Are the detainment provisions of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act serious? Yes they are. This is a complicated area, and there has been a lot of word-fudging in spinning this subject. So bear with me as we take things step by step. **snip** When you look at sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act objectively, they become scary in their potential. If the administration does try to use it to lock up American citizens without habeas corpus, the Supreme Court probably will void the incarceration and require a civilian trial. But in the normal course of...

Like most Americans, I began thinking about presidential candidates by determining their views on the issues that I cared about the most. Due to my immigrant Muslim-American identity, I was chiefly concerned with social values and foreign policy. But I found it increasingly difficult to choose between the Republicans and the Democrats. Insofar as the Republicans championed conservative social values, I was attracted to their leadership, and, insofar as the Democrats challenged a hawkish foreign policy, I gravitated towards them. However, when I thought primarily as an American, rather than a Muslim or a humanitarian, I turned Republican because the...

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul picked up an endorsement from popular South Carolina State Senator Tom Davis (R-Beaufort) Sunday. Mr. Davis is a popular Tea Party Republican in South Carolina, and he has been critical of front running Republican candidate Mitt Romney also, so his vote could sway some last minute undecided voters towards Mr. Paul in the upcoming South Carolina Republican primary election. According to the Public Polling Policy poll of South Carolina voters released Friday shows 30 percent of the voters identify themselves as members of the Tea Party. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich did the best among...

II is submitting not merely one, but two separate brief to the U.S. Supreme Court opposing Obamacare. One will show why the mandate that individuals buy government-approved insurance is unconstitutional. The other shows that Obamacare’s Medicaid mandates imposed on states also are unconstitutional. The Medicaid brief, to be filed in just a few days, addresses a part of Obamacare overshadowed by the individual mandate—but just as damaging to our federal republic, and just as clearly unconstitutional. Obamacare requires all states to greatly expand government health care within their states or lose ALL Medicaid funding—or at least a portion thereof to...

Mitt Romney leads the GOP presidential field in South Carolina, but his rivals are closing in fast. Newt Gingrich is close behind the former Massachusetts governor, while Ron Paul and Rick Perry have posted impressive gains over the past week, according to an American Research Group poll released on Friday. Romney came in at 29 percent, followed by Gingrich at 25 percent, Paul at 20 percent, Perry at 9 percent, Rick Santorum at 7 percent and Jon Huntsman at 1 percent. Paul has climbed 11 percent in the last week and Perry has gained 7 percent. Santorum, who was tied...

Wednesday the United States Supreme Court delivered a knockout blow to the White House in the cause of religious liberty. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a unanimous court swatted away the government’s claim that the Lutheran Church did not have the right to fire a “minister of religion” who, after six years of Lutheran religious training had been commissioned as a minister, upon election by her congregation. The fired minister -- who also taught secular subjects -- claimed discrimination in employment. The Obama administration, always looking for opportunities to undermine the bedrock of First Amendment religious liberty, eagerly agreed....

Interviews with New Hampshire voters on Tuesday gave a glimpse into the issues that drew these newcomers to a campaign that has been trying to gain mainstream support for its message since Paul first ran for president in 1988. Most said they were initially drawn to one element of Paul's platform, but came to support the rest of it later. 'Painfully, Very Slowly' One voter, James Kelley, said he supported Paul at first because he seemed like the only candidate who was serious about cutting taxes and spending. But as he researched Paul's platform, he found himself reconsidering his hawkish...

Between 1764 and the Declaration of Independence in 1776 Americans produced a rich series of pamphlets and resolutions listing their grievances against the central government of the British Empire. As I have pointed out before, reading those pamphlets is very helpful in understanding what the Constitution really means. And ignorance of them contributes to common constitutional mistakes. These pamphlets are particularly useful in comprehending the Founders’ version of federalism. This is because the constitutional balance between states and federal government partly reflected what the Founders had wanted the balance to be between colonies and imperial government. One of the most...

President Obama yesterday announced a plan that will ensure students are able to commit to higher levels of federally backed student loans. By limiting student obligations to repay, and by passing more of the repayment burden onto taxpayers, colleges and universities will be able to continue to raise tuitions at a rate that outpaces nearly every other cost center in the American economy. The move will come as a great relief to an education establishment increasingly concerned that students might no longer be able to afford skyrocketing tuition rates.

A section located deep in President Obama’s proposed “American Jobs Act” would suspend part of the U.S. Constitution. The proposed law would violate not only the Constitution’s actual meaning, but even the watered-down version of the Constitution now applied by the U.S. Supreme Court. You might be surprised to learn that the Obama bill seeks to “create jobs” partly by punishing anyone who seeks to create them. Specifically, the bill would impose a new mandate on employers: prohibiting them from favoring applicants who already have jobs. ***snip*** But the bill’s biggest problem is its bald claim to suspend the Eleventh...

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens." "Lenin was certainly right," John Maynard Keynes continued in his 1919 classic, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace." "There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which...

On August 12, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit struck down Obamacare’s mandate that individuals buy insurance, but upheld the Medicaid mandates imposed on states. As I already have explained, the Medicaid ruling was wrong under the Constitution’s original meaning. In this post, I explain why the ruling also is incorrect even under the modern Supreme Court’s cases. Those cases date to the 1930s, when the Court began to pretend that Article I, Section 8, Clause 1—which grants the power to tax for the general welfare—also grants the power to spend for the general welfare. Today, therefore,...

Medicaid—part the 1960s “Great Society” mishmash now so widely understood to be a failure—originated as a program by which the federal government gives grants-in-aid to states for health care for the poor. Over the years, the program has been expanded to include many people who are not really poor. It has been a major force for the bureaucratization of health care. By driving up medical costs crazily, Medicaid had made health care less accessible for almost everyone. It also has proved to be a budget-buster both for the federal government and the states. If you read the Constitution, you will...

The latest debt deal illustrates Congress’s utter inability to deal with the mess it has gotten itself into. As more and more Americans realize this, pressure will build for an interstate “convention for proposing amendments” to solve the problem. (The Constitution authorizes the state legislatures to force an interstate convention for this purpose.) Here’s where the deal falls short: * Cuts of $2.4 trillion over ten years—even if they actually materialize—will not substantially reduce the national debt. Best case scenario is that in 2021 the debt will be around $22 trillion instead of $24 trillion. * Only $900 billion of...

When you write a constitutional amendment, the devil is in the details. “Cut, Cap, and Balance” prescribed some details for a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA). But those details were poorly thought-out, and might have given America a devil of a problem. Fortunately, Senate liberals—too short-term greedy to recognize their own long-term political interest—defeated Cut, Cap, and Balance. As a result, we dodged a bullet we had unwittingly fired at ourselves. Let me make it clear that I believe in balanced budgets, and would like to see a balanced budget requirement in the U.S. Constitution. And I’ve proved my bona fides:...

Some people are claiming that if Congress fails to raise the debt limit, the President can raise it himself unilaterally. The claim is not only wrong, but far scarier for America’s future than a default would be. ...ctnd at link