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Thread ID: 18827 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2005-06-25
2005-06-25 09:51 | User Profile
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The Free Congress Commentary The Impotence of Power or the Barking Dog Syndrome By E. Ralph Hostetter
June 24, 2005
Admittedly impotence and power used together represent an oxymoron and more especially when it involves a barking dog.
But first I offer a disclaimer for such a departure from my normal political position.
It all started over half a century ago. The first presidential election I voted in was 1944 and I voted for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, just as my family and friends did.
This was followed by the fact that I was fresh out of Harvard. I, no doubt, was destined to turn left and become an active liberal.
My first real job offer, after serving in World War II, was to become editor of a weekly newspaper with a name, of all things, the Whig, name of the forerunner of the Republican Party. It was the only purely unadulterated Whig newspaper left in North America and, to add to the confusion, I had never set foot in a newspaper office in my life.
The Cecil Whig, my new political and ideological job challenge, was owned by the late conservative Republican State Senator and attorney, James. W. Hughes of Elkton, Maryland.
My days as a Democrat came to an end. Out of respect for my new boss, I registered Republican and since have learned that Republican causes are more in keeping with my developed conservative philosophy.
Deeply instilled by my upbringing, my guiding principle, both morally and politically, always has been never to speak unkindly of the dead or the political party you support.
I don't wish to give the impression that the Republican Party is dead. It is alive and well. The problem is Republicans don't know it.
Throughout my life's experience in observing the Republican Party, it amazes me to this day that when power and political control devolves to Republicans they suddenly act powerless.
It's somewhat like the young dog who, hearing his bark for the first time, is so frightened he heads for the dog box.
This year, Republicans for the third time since 1932, found themselves in control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. After forming the new Congress in January, the Republicans relaxed in a sort of self-congratulatory mode for the first few months of the year.
Finally the time to bark had arrived, inasmuch as Senate Republicans discovered they were in the same situation as before the election. Democrat dogs in the big dog compound of the U.S. Senate were holding Republicans at bay.
Presidential appointments were as remote from Senate approval as before.
Senate Republican dogs finally decided to bark for the first time in their new found majority. It was a loud bark. Sound experts said it sounded like "nuclear option."
The startled Republicans, unable to make what would have been a slam-dunk decision at the time, began to hesitate and debate the large bark they just had heard. Democrats threatened to shut Congress down.
In true form the Republican majority headed for the dog box. The increased growling of the meaner Democrat dogs accelerated their retreat.
Not surprisingly, a spoiler dog of their own party had run ahead and, with other spoiler dogs blocked the entrance, forcing the Republicans to wander about in dog wilderness.
Republican Senator John McCain and 13 Senators from both parties now effectively control the entire Senate and will until the filibuster rule requiring a super majority or 60 votes is eliminated.
Republicans once again demonstrated the impotence of power.
For the past several presidential elections, Republicans and the American public have failed to recognize the nation's single most important challenge - appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court.
America is at the threshold of preserving or losing the U.S. Constitution.
Hard-core extreme left Democrats in the U.S. Senate have vowed to deny President George W. Bush his right to name U.S. Supreme Court justices during his second term. These extremists will use everything within their power to block all nominees who reflect the views of President Bush.
In contrast, President William J. Clinton, with Democrats in control of the Senate, named two Supreme Court justices, with no Senate hearings, with no Senate debate, with no filibuster and with an unrecorded simple majority Senate vote. The Republicans mutely stood by.
One of the nominees, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, stated, in the Rose Garden of the White House, upon the announcement of her nomination to the Supreme Court, that she believed the purpose of the courts in America was to bring about social change. Justice Stephen G. Breyer shares this philosophy. This is frightening. The Supreme Court's sole responsibility is interpretation, not legislation, as social change would imply.
Justice Breyer goes one step further by drawing on foreign constitutions for his citations in interpreting the U.S. Constitution, rather than the traditional sources such as Old English Law and the Magna Carta which formed the foundation of the Constitution. As an example he cited Zimbabwe's Constitution in a recent decision. Zimbabwe is one of the worst abusers of human rights in the world.
If President Bush does not get his Supreme Court appointments to stem the radical shift in court doctrine, the U.S. Constitution faces a grave future.
One must remember that the Supreme Court can overrule the Presidency, the Congress and all the courts in the land.
Adding only three more justices to the Supreme Court who share the same philosophy as Justices Ginsberg and Breyer would be tantamount to creating a sort of politburo which could reduce the U.S. Constitution to nothing more than a social contract.
A social contract as formulated by Thomas Hobbs and John Locke, English philosophers in the 1700s, is a covenant which provides a government whereby the citizens of the nation would surrender their natural liberties for the protection and safety of the state.
Thomas Jefferson saw this fallacy in the social contract, that although establishing a government by those who are governed, the natural rights (life, property and liberty) of all citizens must be guaranteed. Thus was born America's Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution.
Republicans must get their house in order and fight harder than their opposition if they are to uphold the oaths they swore to and for which they were elected, to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies.
Ralph Hostetter, a prominent businessman and agricultural publisher, also is a national and local award-winning columnist.
Interesting commentaryon the Pubbies in Congress, which is mostly true. The pubbies basically act like they are scared to do anything really. They ac, in other words, like a typical colonial legislature, which is scared to do anything lest its bosses back home find out. And so acts as seldomly as possible. It's goals seems to be to do just enough so as to keep from being dissolved as totally irrelevant - Okie