Obama and Wall Street

A quick update to the recent posts on Occupy Wall Street:  the Daily Caller again reminds everyone about this interesting fact:

Despite his rhetorical attacks on Wall Street, a study by the Sunlight Foundation’s Influence Project shows that President Barack Obama has received more money from Wall Street than any other politician over the past 20 years, including former President George W. Bush.

In 2008, Wall Street’s largesse accounted for 20 percent of Obama’s total take, according to Reuters.

When asked by The Daily Caller to comment about President Obama’s credibility when it comes to criticizing Wall Street, the White House declined to reply.

 And they also note this aside on Bank of America:

“Banks can make money,” Obama said last week, responding to questions during an interview with ABC News about Bank of America’s decision to levy a $5 monthly fee on debit card users. “They can succeed, the old-fashioned way, by earning it.”

In fact, the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks lobbyist spending and influence in both parties, found that President Obama has received more money from Bank of America than any other candidate dating back to 1991.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with Obama receiving money from Wall Street or Bank of America.  The problem lies when you have a president playing up class warfare at the expense of solving real problems. When will the Occupy the White House demonstrations start?

Prohibition was a Progressive Cause

Ken Burns, the director of many famous documentaries in the past three plus decades (his The Civil War famously drew the ire of Harry Jaffa in 1990), just recently had his three-part Prohibition run on PBS.  While I did not get to to see most of it, the few parts that I did see were good.  I think if I would have heard Burns' recent explanation on the similarities between the Tea Party and Prohibition advocates before I saw the little I did see, it might have colored my viewing a little differently.  Here is Burns on Adam Carolla's podcast:

The real connection about Prohibition, to me the thing that there’s nothing new under the sun, is that this is the story about right-wing, single issue campaigns that metastasize. This is the story about the demonization of immigrants. This is the story about state and local governments complaining about unfunded mandates. This is the story about smear campaigns against Democrats… It’s like a Tea Party thing.

 But, as Christian Schnieder points out at National Review Online, the main advocates of national prohibition were Progressives.  Here is Christian giving some historical background:

Of course, it’s exactly nothing like a Tea Party thing. Following the turn of the century, it was Progressives that pushed for Prohibition, believing they were looking out for the working people of America. The Left also believed banning liquor would help the plight of immigrants — without actually checking with those very immigrants, many of whom enjoyed drinking heavily. Prohibition was also supported by the Klu Klux Klan, who backed former secretary of the treasury William Gibbs McAdoo for the 1924 Democratic presidential nomination against Prohibition opponent Al Smith, governor of New York.

It seems typical to link the enactment of prohibition to a bunch of over-zealous Christians who just want to force their wacky views on everyone else.  But that's not the whole story. 

Prohibition was a progressive cause after the turn of the century.  It is important to delve a little into the political theory behind Progressivism so that a larger connection can be seen.  A dominant strain in Progressivism features the growth of the state and bureaucracy at the loss of the consent of the governed.  The general will replaces enlightened consent as the engine of our politics.  It was the job of politicians to take that will and implement it in light of changing tides of History.  What seems like more democracy is actually just the reverse; that's why the Founders did not establish a democracy but a republic.  Cooler heads did prevail and the 21st Amendment to the Constitution repealed Prohibition in 1933.

The Irony of Occupy Wall Street

I think this picture explains it all:

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Wall Street

This past weekend, something called "Occupy Wall Street" took over the streets of New York City.  This "uprising" actually began around late September in Zucotti Park.  This past weekend, throngs of people numbering in the thousands showed up and shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, some shouting their grievances at the evil corporatists and others who obviously thought the Grateful Dead were having a reunion concert nearby.  Similar protests have quickly formed in L.A., Washington D.C., and Boston.  Van Jones, the former green czar who was booted from the Obama administration for, among other things, dabbling in the 9/11 trutherism, was instrumental in growing this movement as well (that should tell you everything you need to know).

Here is the listing of some of the grievances that I am sure would have even kept George III up at night:

• They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
• They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
• They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
• They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
• They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
• They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
• They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
• They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.

At the end of the list, there is an asterisk that notes that the above charges are not inclusive.

But I hate to point out the obvious to these protestors, at least to the ones who know why they are there in the first place:  even President Obama received millions from the same evil Wall Street thugs they are now protesting against.  I wonder when the Occupy the White House movement will start?  And of course many liberals have hastily declared that this movement is real, authentic, and reasonable.  Even President Obama stated that Occupy Wall Street shows Americans' frustrations on the economy.  Hmmm.  I wonder why the Tea Party movement didn't equally show the frustrations of American people?  No, no, no, I forgot:  that movement is AstroTurf and is full of racists, bigots, and two worst charges of them all in the current day:  old and white.

John Hinderaker at Powerline posted the picture below today.  It's actually pretty clever but still indicative of the type of crowd that clogged the streets of New York City over the weekend.

Justice Stevens: Meet Washington and Jefferson

Retired Justice John Paul Stevens, perhaps, next to William Brennan, the worst justice in the past forty years, just released his new book titled Five Chiefs.  The book is part memoir and part history.  Stevens chronicles the first 12 justices who served on the Supreme Court and the five justice on the court that he personally knew the best during his thirty-five year service.

In an interview with Nina Totenberg on the release of the book, Stevens pushes back at the idea that the politics of Justice Thomas's wife should make Justice Thomas recuse himself in future cases on Obamacare.  Here is Stevens:

While he was on the bench, Stevens was always meticulous about recusing himself from any case in which he might even conceivably be seen to have a conflict. So what does he think about the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas publicly campaigning against the Obama health care law, and the calls from liberal groups for Thomas to recuse himself from challenges to the law?

Stevens says he is sure Mrs. Thomas is "acting in good faith, doing what she thinks is in the public interest." Nor does he think her actions have the "slightest impact" on how Justice Thomas votes. But, he adds, "one might prefer to have her less active."

Justice Stevens, however, veers on to more familiar ground in his discussion of the validity of original intent jurisprudence:

Taking on the much debated idea of original intent, the retired justice disputes the notion that anyone today can, with total clarity, know exactly what the framers intended. Nor, he argues, should that intent be the be-all and end-all of the legal analysis. He points to the First Amendment freedom of religion guarantee as an example, noting that the leaders of the country in 1789 were all Christian, and their concern was to ensure that no particular brand of Christianity got government preference.

The First Amendment's religion clause "wasn't intended to protect the Muslims or the Jewish faith or the atheists," he says. "But once we started to analyze the clause, in case after case, we developed the rules that make it perfectly clear that the principle that was adopted was much broader than the specific purpose of the draftsmen ... at the time. It's a principle that goes beyond the original intent." And that principle, he says, is that there can be no government preference for any religion, Christian or not, and no penalty for any religion or for nonbelievers either.

Unbeknownst to Stevens, the Founders' principle of religious liberty was not extended simply to denominations of Christianity.  It was open to all people of all faiths, because it was grounded upon the right of conscience.  The Founders' conception of religious liberty was built upon the natural rights philosophy that undergirds our politics.  Since all men are equal in certain natural rights by nature, one's religious beliefs do not affect one's natural rights.  Only in this sense is there a separation between church and state.  Over at Powerline, Steven Hayward takes Stevens to task for not knowing the political philosophy of the Founders:

It is hard to be more totally wrong in such a short space, both on history and on the philosophical ground of constitutional originalism.  The founders were well aware that the principle of religious liberty applied to all faiths. Apparently Stevens never read, for example, Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty, which lays out the general ground for the universality of the right of conscience in worship.  But an even better example of how the framers understood their principles and the philosophical ground on which they rested is President Washington’s letter to the Jewish synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, which succinctly explains the ground of why religious liberty extended to Jews as well as Christians. 

This is what happens when justices of the Supreme Court are alienated from the principles of the Founding.

July 14, 1941

Over at No Left Turns, the blog for the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, Peter Schramm, Executive Director of the center, reminices on the life of Harry Jaffa, who will turn 93 on October 7th.  Here is Dr. Schramm on Jaffa:

The Old Man has said that July 14, 1941, was an important day in his life for two reasons. First he "reported for salaried employment for the first time in my life." The second reason is this: "But on that morning at breakfast in the boarding house in which I had become an inmate the night before, I found myself looking into the eyes of the most beautiful and wonderful girl I had ever seen. I made a date for that evening and never looked back." He got the job in Washington because he passed the Civil Service Exam in Public Administration.  He passed that exam because he took public administration classes which he loathed and found infinitely boring. He only stayed with the courses at the recommendation of his professor, Frank Coker. Jaffa writes: "This advice turned out not only to be good advice, but the foundation of every good thing that has happened to me in all the years that have followed. I remain grateful to Coker, but even more alert to the mystery of the ways of Providence, which often proceeds by the most inauspicious indirection to accomplish its ends."

Jaffa's gratefulness to Providence and Professor Coker stems from the fact that he encountered Leo Strauss while he was taking classes to try to pass the Civil Service Exam.  At that time, Strauss taught at the New School for Social Research in New York.  That first encounter lead to many others, and Jaffa's life henceforth would never be the same.

The Constitutionality of the Killing of Al-Awlaki

As you may have heard, Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by CIA-operated Predator drones in Northern Yemen on Friday.  Al-Awlaki, an American-born citizen who became a top leader of Al-Qaeda, was put on a capture or kill list by President Obama in April of 2010.  He became targeted after a growing number of terrorists cited his sermons as an inspiration for their acts.  Major Nidal Malik Hassan, the perpetrator of the Fort Hood Massacre, had a number of email exchanges with Awlaki.  He was also connected to the underwear bomber as well as numerous other successful and unsuccessful terrorist attacks. 

In the wake of Awlaki's killing, a controversy that has been brewing for some time exploded across internet blogs regarding the constitutionality of this and like killings by the U.S. abroad.  Many liberals and libertarians, most notably lead by Reps. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, have condemned the "assassination" of Awlaki.  On Fox News Paul stated the following:

No one likes these kind of people, but I also like the rule of law and I like our Constitution, that you don't just target people, assassinate them, someone who has not been charged and you have no proof of anything.  So if we want to protect American citizens from that type of justice, we have to be more cautious."

 On the other side of the debate, many conservatives have agreed that the killing of Awlaki was necessary and is within the purview of the executive power under Article II of the Constitution.  John Yoo states this case:

An American citizen who makes the mistake of joining the enemy is not legally inoculated from military attack.  What is important is not whether someone is an alien or a citizen, but whether they are a member of an enemy conducting hostilities against the United States.  Here are three historical pieces of authority:

1.The Civil War.  Every confederate soldier was a U.S. citizen, especially under Lincoln's theory that secession was constitutionally impossible.  If one could not kill American citizens who had joined the enemy without some kind of judicial hearing or due process, the Civil War would have been unwinnable.

2. Ex Parte Quirin (1942), where the Supreme Court upheld the detention, trial, and execution of German saboteurs, one of whom was an American citizen.  The Supreme Court said:  “Citizenship in the United States of an enemy belligerent does not relieve him from the consequences.” One of those consequences, of course, is being subject to attack.  In World War II, many Americans returned to Germany, Italy, or Japan to fight on the side of the Axis.  The courts never required some kind of due process for them.

3. Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), where the Supreme Court upheld the military detention of a Saudi Arabian caught fighting during the Afghanistan invasion of 2001.  The Saudi had happened to be born in Louisiana, but left as an infant.  “A citizen, no less than an alien, can be part of or supporting forces hostile to the United States or coalition partners and engaged in an armed conflict against the United States.”

Andrew McCarthy at National Review Online also makes a lengthy case in support of the killing here and here.

I would definitely count myself on the side of Yoo and McCarthy.  Just looking at it from a standpoint of the social contract theory that underlies the Constitution, it seems to be plainly constitutional.  If government is formed by social contract, as most of the Founders agreed that ours was, that contract extends only to those who consent to join in that contract.  Those who do not join that contract are not entitled to the benefits and security that come along.  Those who renounce their citizenship by openly aiding and abetting enemies of those who formed that contract, are clearly no longer granted the security and safety guaranteed by that contract; they are the ones who willfully negated that contract by their act of war.  And as was said before in an earlier post, there has always been a distinction between lawful and unlawful enemy combatants.

As understood by the Founders, the executive has plenary power in foreign policy.  Numerous presidents have committed troops on the ground and deterred attacks without express authorization by Congress first (although many times Congress has later authorized these types of actions).  It has to be remembered that Congress has the power only to declare war, not make war.  They do, however, have the power to defund military operations, and the president can be impeached should he commit a serious enough offense.  Congress has ample oversight and power should they deem the action of the executive to be unconstitutional in a time of war.

Though the Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that aliens detained as enemy combatants have a constitutional habeus corpus right to challenge their detention, what the Supreme Court says about the Constitution should never be confused with the Constitution itself.  The president has both the right and the duty to argue that while he respects the Court's decision in that particular case, it should not be applied as a principle to all other like cases.  Every branch has the duty of interpreting the Constitution as they understand it.  This was the position of Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and the Founders.  It was only in 1958 that the Supreme Court declared themselves the final arbiter of the Constitution; in McCullough v. Maryland, the case often cited as the basis for judicial supremacy, the Court under John Marshall described only the necessary logic of the judicial power itself.   

This all proves, I think, that the killing was both just and constitutional.  An interesting aside is that during the Bush Administration, many future Obama Administration officials and Obama himself declared in numerous speeches the supposed evils of detaining enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay.  If Bush was shredding the Constitution by detaining enemy combatants without due process, then certainly Obama is lighting the Constitution on fire by targeting a U.S. citizen on foreign soil.  This is what happens when the prudence of the executive office forces itself on those at the helm.