Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act Passes both House and Senate

Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition?

"people should fight against tyranny for their God-given rights."
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, CPAC

(Conservative Political Action Convention)
The title of this post is from a piece of music dating back to the attack on Pearl Harbor and our last formal declaration of war. The music is from a song by Frank Loesser back in 1942, based on a perhaps apocryphal saying by chaplain Howell Forgy, on the U.S.S. New Orleans during the attack. The song describes a 'sky pilot', a fond slang term for clergy, putting down his Bible and manning a gun turret. I selected this title because it was a popular combination of religion and politics, and history.

This post is not about any one of those, exactly, but like the title, it intertwines religion, politics and government, and history together. Sometime back my most-of-the-time friend and frequent critic, KR, sadly banned from Penigma for failing to follow our rules (including not trying to post while banned) accused me of being an atheist, for not stipulating to the concept that our rights as citizens derive from God, a statement I have heard often from the more extremely religious factions on the political right.

The Nature of Government and the Economy, a Challenge to Assumptions

Two of the most interesting essays I have read in quite awhile.
Refreshing. Enjoy!

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/buchanan/20090924.html

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/buchanan/20100617.html#bio

Coat Hangers: the Symbol for Pro-Choice Protest

"We do not move forward by curtailing people’s liberty because we are afraid of what they may do or say. "
Eleanor Roosevelt

"The line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive."
Aristotle

"And by the way, my belief is that if men were the ones getting pregnant, abortions would be easier to get than food poisoning in Moscow."
Dennis Miller

Selecting singularly vivid iconography - the coat hanger - as in coat hanger abortion, CredoAction launched a campaign to persuade the 20 formerly pro-choice Democratic Congressmen who voted Yes on the Stupak Pitts Amendment to change their minds, by sending coat hangers to those Democratic House members who voted to restrict access to abortion in the healthcare bill along with their petition.

The Stupak Amendment, if it remains a part of the Health Care Reform Bill, would enact greater restrictions on pro-choice than any change we have seen since the 1976 Hyde Amendment.

The Hyde Amendment of 1976, named for Republican Congressman Henry
Hyde, banned Federal funding of abortions through the Department of Health and Human Services appropriations, and led to other Federal legislation banning abortion coverage, including for those in the military and their families, but did allow payment for other health care for those individuals, so long as they paid for an abortion 'out of pocket' / with private funds.

The recently passed Stupak Pitts Amendment would make health care under those provisions unavailable for women who were willing to pay 'out of pocket' or to purchase health care with such reproductive coverage with private funds, a serious erosion of the status quo. This Amendment is anticipated to be particularly punitive to those women in low income demographics.

For every signature to their petition, CredoAction will send a coat hanger to these Congressmen, reminding them of the bad old days before safe, legal abortions were available, the days of coat hanger abortions and back alley butchers that were fatal to so many women. Their aim is to have 100,000 signatures by the end of the week before Thanksgiving, which would extrapolate to sending 2,000,000 coat hangers - 100,000 coat hangers per Congressman. As of their email update on Monday, they were already at 78,280 signatures.

The petition says, simply:

"We know what happens when women are denied access to reproductive health care including abortion. And we can't go back to an era of coat hangers and back alley abortions. Reconsider your vote on the Stupak Amendment. Tell House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that the final health care bill that emerges from the conference committee can't turn the clock back on women's rights."

The Congressmen destined to receive the coat hangers are:

Representative Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania - (District 4);

Representative Joe Baca, California - (District 41);

Representative Sanford Bishop, Georgia - (District 2);

Representative Dennis Cardoza, California - (District 18);

Representative Christopher Carney, Pennsylvania - (District 10);

Representative Albert Chandler, Kentucky - (District 6);

Representative Jim Cooper, Tennessee - (District 5);

Representative Jim Costa, California - (District 20);

Representative Artur Davis, Alabama - (District 7);

Representative Bob Etheridge, North Carolina - (District 2);

Representative Baron Hill, Indiana - (District 9);

Representative Michael Michaud, Maine - (District 2);

Representative Richard Neal, Massachusetts - (District 2);

Representative David Ross Obey, Wisconsin - (District 7);

Representative Earl Pomeroy, North Dakota - ( All );

Representative Silvestre Reyes, Texas - (District 16);

Representative Ciro Rodgriguez, Texas - (District 23);

Representative Victor Snyder, Arkansas - (District 2);

Representative Zachary Space, Ohio - (District 18);

Representative John Spratt, South Carolina - (District 5);

If you wish to sign this petition and send a coat hanger, symbolic of coat hanger abortions, go to http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/send_a_coathanger/?rc=homepage.

If one of these is YOUR representative, I urge you to contact them directly, and express your views on the subject as a constituent, both on provisions denying women the right to use their own PRIVATE FUNDS NOT FEDERAL FUNDS to purchase insurance which includes full coverage for legal reproductive procedures, and on the larger Health Care Reform legislation.

We can only hope that this timely reminder of how making abortion more difficult if not impossible affects women, and that it will be as persuasive as it is intended. There were 64 Democrats who voted with the Republicans for the Stupak Pitts Amendment, this despite the pro-choice plank in the 2008 Democratic Platform.

Personally, I wish the Credo Action group would send coat hangers to Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak of Michicagn, and co-sponsoring Republican Congressman Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, along with their co-sponsoring Congressmen: Republican Brad Ellsworth of Indiana, Democrat Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Democrat Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania, Democrat Dan Lipinski of Illinois, and Republican Chris Smith of New Jersey. Both Stupak and Pitts have ties to / membership in the 'Family', the secretive C-Street Christian cult that gained notoriety over the hypocritical extra-marital misconduct of Governor Sanford of South Carolina, and Senators Coburn and Ensign, and former Congressman Chip Pickering, an organization which espouses 'headship' where men in marriages are in control, and women must obey them.

A More Perfect Union - Part I

"We, the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America." - Preamble to the US Constitution.

The Preamble to the Constitution grants no special powers either to the states, to the federal government, or to the people. Rather, it establishes the general purpose for the establishing a new form of government on the North American continent and gives some of the essential goals in establishing this brilliant plan of government. The Constitution itself is divided into various articles. Each of the articles deals with a particular area. There are seven articles and 27 amendments to the Constitution. This article discusses Article I - The Legislative Branch.

"All legislative powers shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives" Article I, Section 1. Congress has the sole power to legislate or to create new laws, although Congress has, over the years, increasingly allowed executive departments to create regulations which have the force of law. The courts have generally been tolerant of this, and in fact, in only three cases have they invalidated laws based on delegation of congressional authority. Congress, while having been given the authority to legislate, also has the authority to investigate what it can regulate. Congress has evolved the authority to subpoena witnesses and documents to assist it in its investigations. While many of these investigations seem to be political grandstanding, the courts have generally paid great deference to Congress' authority in this area and have rarely intervened. See: Barenblatt vs. US 360 US 109 (1959) "The power of inquiry has been employed by Congress throughout our history, over the whole range of the national interests concerning which Congress might legislate or decide upon due investigation not to legislate; it has similarly been utilized in determining what to appropriate from the national purse, or whether to appropriate"

Congress is composed of two houses: the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate is composed of two senators from every state, elected at large. (Note: Direct election of senators did not occur until the adoption of Amendment XVII in 1912.) The senate was set up to give a balancing to the larger states, whose members would otherwise overshadow the smaller states in the House of Representatives. Each house has the authority to determine its own rules and procedures, and they differ quite distinctly from each other. Debate in the House is much more regimented, with a rule being established prior to every debate that specifies the length of the debate, etc. Debate in the Senate has no time limit, and in fact, the practice of a filibuster is a way for the minority party to stall a bill in the hopes of defeating it, even if they don't have the votes to defeat it outright. While the Senate has two senators from every state, the Constitution directs that the House of Representatives be apportioned based on population, with each state guaranteed at least one member of the House of Representatives. This is especially important as the upcoming census approaches and each party will be trying to affect census data so to allow them to draw the districts for the House and therefore increase election chances for their party members.

Congress is granted certain exclusive powers. These include the power to declare war and make peace, to approve all treaties, to maintain an army and navy, to establish inferior courts to the Supreme Court, to levy taxes, to regulate commerce between the states and between foreign nations, and others. One important clause states that "To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof". Article I, Section 8. This is often called the expansion clause, because it is used as legal justification for doing almost anything.

The commerce clause is often used by Congress to enact a variety of legislation. However, a couple of recent cases indicate that the Supreme Court's willingness to allow Congress do as it pleases under the stretch of the commerce clause may be coming to an end. Specifically, the Court held in United States vs. Lopez 519 US 549 (1995) that Congress could not use the commerce clause to expand federal police powers over areas traditionally governed by the states. The Court, however, in Gonzales vs. Raich 545 US 1(2005) did not continue along this line, and while not expressly overruling its holding in Lopez supra, it did indicate that the Court's opinion on this clause is in flux.

Congress also has some limits. Congress may not pass a bill of attainter, nor may it suspend the writ of habeus corpus (with a few exceptions), and Congress may not grant titles of nobility. It also must only enact a direct tax by doing so based on proportionate taxation of the states. In practice, the income tax amendment of 1916 has superseded this section.

States are also limited in Article I. States may not enter into agreements with each other without the consent of congress, they may not keep armies or troops during times of peace, and they may not go to war unless actually invaded. More importantly, they must tax the imports of each state equally, and may not tax exports except to the point needed to carry out inspection laws. States may not impede the operation of a contract. States may forbid certain clauses in a contract, but not one that is currently operative.

Article I of the Constitution establishes considerable power for Congress, if Congress decides to exercise that power. In Part II of this series, I will discuss the Executive branch, and along with that discussion, the unique relationship that has evolved with Congress, including the limits and expansion of Executive power.