My appearance on the Larry O'Connor Show...
My column at USA Today....
Kowalski has a license to grow and distribute medical pot to several low-income people who depend on the drug. He grows the plants in a garden area enclosed by a barbed wire fence. But whether or not Kowalski had a legal right to grow mattered little to the state police, who seized his power generator—even though it had nothing to do with his marijuana plants—and some expensive equipment. They also destroyed the plants. ... The police froze his accounts, rendering him unable to make payments on his student loans or other bills. And he could no longer complete the immigration process for his wife, a resident of Africa. ... Thomas Williams, another southwest Michigan resident, suffered a similar ordeal. His medical marijuana activities prompted police to ransack his property while they left him handcuffed for 10 hours. The cops took his car, phone, TV, and cash. Afterward, he had no means of getting to the grocery store or even contacting another human being for days. Like Kowalski, he hasn't been charged with a crime.Fun fact: police officers ransacked Kowalski's house for what we can only assume is evidence of his participation in a high-power midwestern drug cartel---but they didn't confiscate his marijuana license.
An Imperial Presidency A new video released by the GOP on Friday calls out former Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton for her hypocrisy on the issue of executive action. In 2008, Clinton said the George W. Bush administration was transforming the executive branch into an “imperial presidency.” In 2014, Clinton said she supported President Obama’s decision to grant citizenship to more than four million illegal immigrants. Clinton unknowingly provided the narration for the GOP’s newest video. “Unfortunately our current president does not seem to understand the basic character of the office he holds,” Clinton said of Bush in April 2008. “Rather than faithfully execute the laws, he has rewritten them through signing statements, ignored them through secret legal opinions, undermined them by elevating ideology over facts. Rather than defending the constitution, he has defied its principles and traditions.”Check it out:
“This administration’s unbridled ambition to transform the executive into an imperial presidency in an attempt to strengthen the office has weakened our nation.”But that was then. This is now:
I believe the President must come to Congress to begin a war… It must be declared and made valid, or it must be ended. Congress has a duty to act, one way or the other.While it is true that we live in a time that exposes our nation to swift attacks on a grand scale, this reality does not justify the manner in which President Obama is circumventing the constitutional prerogative of Congress. Indeed, 90 days was ample time for the President to situate a small number of forces on the ground, carry out targeted airstrikes, and prepare a request to Congress to authorize military force. Yet no such request has been submitted. Obama is not the first President to engage in this realm of constitutionally questionable behavior, but the implications of his continued insistence on going it alone in nearly every aspect of his Presidency — foreign and domestic — threatens to undermine the very framework of the nation’s structure of governance.
I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.From the same letter:
Dem Congressman: Is Congress Abdicating Its Consitutional War Powers? ‘Absolutely’ Asked this morning by Fox News’s Chris Wallace whether Congress is forfeiting its responsibilities by recessing before voting on whether to authorize a new war in Iraq and Syria, one Democratic congressman was blunt: “Absolutely,” California congressman Adam Schiff said. A member of the House intelligence committee, Schiff argued “the president has said this is a war, this is going to last years, this is quintessentially something that the Constitution empowered only Congress to declare.Here's the video: Last week, Schiff wrote a piece for Time Magazine on the same subject:
When all the facts are known, it may not be a simple case of viewpoint discrimination....
Philadelphia’s automated, machine-like forfeiture scheme is unprecedented in size. From 2002 to 2012, Philadelphia took in over $64 million in forfeiture funds—or almost $6 million per year. In 2011 alone, the city’s prosecutors filed 6,560 forfeiture petitions to take cash, cars, homes and other property. The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office used over $25 million of that $64 million to pay salaries, including the salaries of the very prosecutors who brought the forfeiture actions. This is almost twice as much as what all other Pennsylvania counties spent on salaries combined.This is why the Institute for Justice is helping families in Philadelphia file a class action lawsuit against the city on behalf of all Philadelphians whose property is currently threatened by civil forfeiture. IJ is challenging several aspects of Philadelphia's civil forfeiture law, including:
Presidential Power and the Rise of American Monarchy: Q&A with Author Frank Buckley "America is dropping like a stone in rankings of freedom. As power accumulates in one person, expect that to continue," says Frank Buckley, George Mason University law professor and author of the new book, The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America. Buckley sat down with Reason TV's Tracy Oppenheimer to discuss how the U.S. presidency has evolved into what he calls "something like an elective monarch." He says that this is not what the framers of the Constitution had intended, nor did they conceive of the modern version of the separation of powers. "A parliamentary regime was more or less what the framers wanted...as far as the separation of powers is concerned," says Buckley "instead of a device to constrain a president, it's one which immunizes him from criticism by Congress."Here's the video: With all that in mind, John Daniel Davidson of The Federalist has a recommendation for you and your family this holiday weekend.
And the Bill of Rights, too....
First Amendment upheld against Massachusetts law involving abortion clinic protests...
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday that tenure, seniority and other job protections for teachers have created unequal conditions in public schools and deprive poor children of the best teachers. In a case that could have national implications for the future of teacher tenure, Judge Rolf Treu sided with a Silicon Valley mogul against some of the most powerful labor unions in the country. In a 16-page ruling, in the case of Vergara v. California, Treu struck down three state laws as unconstitutional. The laws grant tenure to teachers after two years, require layoffs by seniority, and call for a complex and lengthy process before a teacher can be fired. David F. Welch, founder of an optical telecommunications manufacturing firm, charged that job protections allow the state’s worst educators to continue teaching and that those ineffective teachers are concentrated in high-poverty, minority schools, amounting to a civil rights violation.The full decision is embedded below. The court stayed its injunction pending appeal, so no changes will take place immediately. The sound of the teachers' union screaming and crying is ringing in my ears and I can't focus:
