Sen. Mike Lee, (R-UT)

The Constitution allows the President to make short-term appointments when the Senate is out of session. The Constitution also requires the Senate to stay in session unless the U.S. House has to give its consent to a recess. The Senate, by their own choice, and by the House’s lack of consent, was not on recess when the President made four recent appointments. Now Sen. Reid wants Obama to make 90 more appointments without Senate confirmation.

These appointments expire next January when the next congress takes office, but even short-term violations of the Constitution must be opposed vigorously.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), the Senate’s most vocal critic of the non-recess appointments, has vowed to oppose all nominations until the president submits Richard Cordray and the three new members of the National Labor Relations Board to the Senate to undergo the full advice and consent procedures.

Truth: Contrary to whatPresident Obama has stated several times, the United States was founded as a Christian nation. One of the major problems surrounding this confusion is a misunderstanding of the meaning of “Christian nation.” Justice David Brewer (1837-1910) of the Supreme Court argued that such a term does not imply that 1) as a nation we are primarily Christians, 2) Christianity is the established religion, 3) profession of Christianity is necessary for public office. According to Justice David Brewer, the United States was founded as a Christian nation because Christianity “has so largely shaped and molded it.”[1] John Marshall agreed, arguing that the many references to Christianity within our governing documents and in our political speech would not make sense otherwise.[2]

The evidences for Christianity within our government structure are everywhere. The guarantee of  free exercise and no establishment of religion reflects the Biblical principle of soul liberty. Following the Presidential Oath of Office, George Washington added “so help me God” – something that every other president has followed. Rufus King, a signer of the Constitution, noted:

[B]y the oath which they [the laws] prescribe, we appeal to the Supreme Being so to deal with us hereafter as we observe the obligation of our oaths. The Pagan world were and are without the mighty influence of this principle which is proclaimed in the Christian system – their morals were destitute of its powerful sanction while their oaths neither awakened the hopes nor fears which a belief in Christianity inspires.[3]

For Rufus King, Christianity was necessary to inspire the fear necessary for the keeping of oaths. Christianity’s influence can also be seen in the checks and balances system used by the Founding Fathers to prevent tyranny – Christianity teaches that man is fallen and must be checked lest his wickedness lead him astray. The Founding Fathers rejected the Enlightenment view of man that was held by the leaders of the French Revolution and, consequently, the government they established was much more suited to man’s nature. The Supreme Court opens every session with the prayer “God save the United States and this Honorable Court;” prayers can also be heard in both houses of Congress and each house employs a chaplain.

Many of the attempts to deny the Christian nature of our nation came in court cases during the 1960s. Among the infamous cases are Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington Township v. Schempp (1963) which struck down,  respectively, the constitutionality of using a New York Board of Regent’s written prayer and the Lord’s Prayer in public schools despite the fact that legislatures across the U.S. open with prayer and even hire chaplains (both of which were ruled constitutional in 1983 in Marsh v. Chambers). Two years after the Marsh decision, the court ruled that a moment of silence for private prayer in public schools violated the Establishment Clause (Wallace v. Jaffree); eventually prayers before graduations ceremonies and sports games were also ruled unconstitutional (Lee v. Weisman (1992)) even if requested by the students Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe (2000)).

Arguments can be made about the religious beliefs and motivations of the Founding Fathers. The extent that every-day Americans participated in religion can also be questioned. The history of the United States as a country and the records of its government and politics, however, point incontrovertibly to the fact that the United States was founded as a Christian nation regardless of other considerations. The revisionist and activist attempts to ignore the original intent of the Establishment Clause and deny the Christian nature and history of the United States ignore history and misuse the legal protections put in place by a Biblical interpretation of the role of government. (See links below for more details.)

John Adams and Christianity

Christmas Celebrations

America as a Christian Nation

Jefferson and Religion at the University of Virginia

Founding Fathers on Christianity

Christian Foundations of America

[1] David J. Brewer, The United States: A Christian Nation (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1905), p. 40.

The federal government currently charges a tax on all fuel you buy, sending that money to a “Highway Trust Fund” that is, you guessed it, totally spent every year. In fact, Congress has been spending money out of the general fund, or I guess borrowing it from China and others, to supplement the Highway Trust Fund revenues for ‘stimulus’ road construction. The best answer to this is to get the federal government out of this mess by dropping the federal gas tax and allowing states to handle their own transportation infrastructure as they see fit.

There are good ways and bad ways to spend money though, and there should be reasonable limits on what is spent. The highway bill currently working its way through Congress spends too much, and does it poorly. Sen. Jim DeMint has an OpEd describing the bills here.

The Congressional Budget Office now estimates that our national debt could nearly double over the next 10 years — to an astounding $29.4 trillion from $15 trillion today — so you might think Washington would be looking to stop the fiscal train wreck. You’d be wrong.

Despite all the hyperventilating about a tea party takeover in Congress, the sad truth is that in 2011 Congress increased spending from the year before, raised the debt limit by $2 trillion, and funded ObamaCare.

The highway bill is the latest example of Washington’s bipartisan addiction to big spending. Every six years, Congress passes a spending bill that divvies up the revenues from the federal gas tax and other highway user fees. The money goes into an account called the Highway Trust Fund, and for decades Congress has promised not to spend more on roads and bridges than is available in the trust fund.

But the trust fund has run dry thanks to reckless spending and wasteful earmarks, so Congress bailed out the highway program — to the total tune of about $35 billion — in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Circulating now are two competing highway bills that both increase spending and force new multibillion-dollar bailouts. The Senate bill spends $109 billion over two years and includes a $12 billion bailout of the trust fund. The House bill spends $260 billion over five years and includes a $50 billion bailout. Is this bipartisan spending spree what voters asked for in 2010?

A serious highway bill would at least live within the means of the highway trust fund. But Republicans and Democrats have surrendered to the status quo of unsustainable spending.

The only difference between the House and Senate bills is where the bailout funds come from. The Senate bill pays for the bailout with a bunch of accounting gimmicks that will lead to a larger national debt and higher taxes. The House, for its part, bases its bailout plans on the hope that Democrats will allow us to pursue oil and gas exploration in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), offshore and in the shale of the Midwest.

While expanding our domestic energy resources is vital, it would be unacceptable to use the revenues from new exploration to grow government and not to pay down the national debt. It’s a textbook example of attaching good policy to a bad spending bill so that conservatives will hold their noses and vote for it.

Here’s a radical idea: Why not pay for new spending by actually cutting wasteful spending in other areas? It’s no wonder our country is near fiscal ruin when the option of cutting spending is not even being considered.

It’s also inexcusable that neither bill repeals the wasteful and corrupt Davis-Bacon Act, which forces the government to pay labor-union wages for federal construction projects. Davis-Bacon harms workers who choose not to join unions, and it needlessly raises costs to taxpayers.

According to the Heritage Foundation, Davis-Bacon cost taxpayers nearly $11 billion in 2011 — money that should be going to fix bridges, not line the pockets of union bosses. It’s no wonder Democrats support Davis-Bacon: It’s a congressionally mandated kickback to unions that funnels millions to Democratic campaigns every year. But why do Republicans lack the courage to stand up against wasteful regulations and spending?

Our nation’s fiscal situation is perilous. At $15.3 trillion, our national debt (as measured by the Treasury Department) has already overtaken our national economy, which at the end of 2011 came in at $14.95 trillion (according to the Congressional Budget Office). Bipartisan compromises on spending got us into this mess, and we’ll never get out of it if Republicans don’t offer a fiscally responsible alternative to the out-of-control spending that Democrats endorse.

We should devolve the federal highway program from Washington to the states. We can dramatically cut the federal gas tax to a few pennies, which would be enough to fund the limited number of highway programs that serve a clear national purpose.

In return, states could adjust their state gas taxes and make their own construction and repair decisions without costly Davis-Bacon regulations and without having to funnel the money through Washington’s wasteful bureaucracy and self-serving politicians.

In order to avert a fiscal catastrophe in the near future, we’re going to have to get a lot more serious about curtailing unnecessary federal spending. These highway bills — both Democrat and Republican — are anything but serious.

Contact your U.S. Representative and Senators and tell them what you think of this reckless spending. Please share our website and this article with your friends, and support us if you are able.

“…But how is this legal plunder to be identified?  Quite simply.  See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong.  See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime…. ~Frederic Bastiat, The Law

In this November’s elections we need to win a strong majority in both houses, a veto-proof majority, and we need to win the White house, but are we willing to do what it takes to make that happen?

As important as the economy and employment are, don’t forget that there are three Supreme Court justices over 70 years old who may retire soon. The President’s judicial appointments require consent of the Senate:

Who appoints federal judges?
Supreme Court justices, court of appeals judges, and district court judges are nominated by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate, as stated in the Constitution. The names of potential nominees are often recommended by senators or sometimes by members of the House who are of the President’s political party. The Senate Judiciary Committee typically conducts confirmation hearings for each nominee. Article III of the Constitution states that these judicial officers are appointed for a life term….

Right or wrong, the nine Justices shape the laws that govern us. Justice Ginsburg, like Obama and others, has sworn to uphold a Constitution and then acts to diminish or ignore it. She demonstrates a complete disdain for the purpose of our Constitution which limits government power, prefering one that guarantees government handouts. There is a good explanation of this in this article:

“Justice Ginsburg Should Resign”

Somehow she has missed the whole era of Social Contract theory that occupied the 17th and 18th centuries — Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and all that stuff — which posited that human beings are “created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and that they surrendered these rights only partially and in limited fashion when they contract for the organized protections of the state. To Ginsburg — and to so many others — the Constitution is a Bill of Rights and nothing more. And of course only certain portions of the Bill of Rights. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments? I don’t remember them. Did they teach that at Harvard Law School?

Rather than viewing the Constitution as a whole, the entire impulse of liberal law is focused on the enumerations of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom against Search and Seizure.

When the delegates assembled in Philadelphia in 1787 to attend the Constitutional Convention, there was no question in their minds that they were writing a charter for limited government. The states already had their governments and did not necessarily want another one. The Constitution was a means of bringing these units together on a federal basis. It was a document of enumerated powers. The government could only do those things outlined in the Preamble and the Articles and no more. That’s how the Constitution was understood both by its advocates and its opponents…

You can read the rest of this article here. The Founders’ intent was that courts respect “the consent of the governed.” It is the people’s right and responsibility to elect only those who will uphold the Constitution’s original intent and appoint and confirm judges who will do likewise.

In McDonald v. Chicago, its landmark 2010 decision striking down that city’s handgun ban, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms applies against state and local governments via the 14th Amendment, which declares: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

If you ask most libertarians, they will probably tell you thatMcDonald was a great victory for individual rights. But that view isn’t unanimous. Most notably, the distinguished New York University law professor and libertarian legal icon Richard Epstein will tell you that the Supreme Court got it wrong….

Keep in mind that before the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution, none of the protections in the Bill of Rights were seen as applicable to the states. The First Amendment, which famously begins, “Congress shall make no law,” was quite explicit on that point. So the 14th Amendment altered the federalism component of more than just the Second Amendment. It transformed the entire Bill of Rights into a safeguard against abusive state and federal power….

The U.S. Constitution is too important for us to leave any distortion, from any source, unchallenged. Please read the rest of Root’s article to get some good insights into the history surrounding the 14th Amendment and its intent.

Please sign our 1789 Pledge to support only those candidates who will protect our rights by upholding the original intent of our Constitution, and please support us financially if you can.

One area in which this particular right has been violated is the use of eminent domain to seize private property for private use, under teh justification of increasing tax revenue or cleaning up a “blighted” area. This is a clear violation of the Constitution’s language referencing “public use.” This type of abuse was highlighted by Thomas Sowell in a recent article.

“Although socialism has long claimed to be for the poor, it has probably done more damage, on net balance, to the poor than to the rich. After all, the rich have enough money to leave the country if they think the socialists are going to do them any serious harm….

The rich have learned to adapt socialist policies to their own benefit. For example, the city of Riviera Beach, Florida, is planning to demolish a working class neighborhood under its power of eminent domain, in order to prepare the way for a marina for yachts, luxury condominiums and an upscale shopping district.

What will the city of Riviera Beach get out of all this? More taxes from higher-income people, enabling local politicians to spend more money on programs to attract votes.

Meanwhile the rich get rid of lower-income folks without having to pay them the value of their homes and businesses that will be demolished. As in so many other cases, eminent domain is socialism for the rich.

Theoretically, those whose homes and businesses are demolished will get the “just compensation” to which the Constitution says they are entitled.

In reality, just announcing plans to demolish the homes in an area will immediately demolish part of their market value. Even if homeowners are compensated for whatever value remains when their homes are actually demolished — which can be years later — they have still been had.

For businesses, compensating them for the value of their physical assets — which may or may not include ownership of the place where their businesses are located — does nothing to compensate them for the often much larger value of the clientele they have built up over the years but who are now scattered to the winds by neighborhood demolition….”

Read the rest of Dr. Sowell’s article here, and share this article with others to raise awareness of this threat to our liberty.

Our nation’s founding fathers believed that we have inalienable rights, and that the purpose of government is to protect these rights. Legitimate government is only by the consent of the governed, and the U.S. Constitution only gave the federal government certain enumerated powers, the rest being reserved to the states or the people. One of the key problems we face today is that the Constitution’s limits on federal power made it suitable only for a moral and religious people, which America generally held at that time. Today, we lack much of the self-government that morality and religion provide, causing a need for moral reformation or stronger government; unfortunately the trend has been towards the latter. Help us spread the word that to restore the Constitution and limited government, Americans must return to better self-government.

Sen. Mike Lee, (R-UT)

U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) is an unapologetic Constitutional conservative. He has been one of the strongest supporters of Constitutional principles in the United States Senate, where politicians of both parties prefer the go-along-and-get-along approach. He was one of only three conservatives to vote against the 2012 National Defence Authorization Act that allows indefinite detention of American citizens.

Yesterday he wrote an article in which he explained the importance of the Obama administration’s blatant disregard for the Constitution’s “Advice and Consent” clause. Sen. Lee promises to do everything in his power to correct this Constitutional travesty, and urges all Americans to stand with him in this cause.

As a United States Senator, I have sworn an oath to support, defend, and bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. Complying with this Oath is not always convenient. Sometimes this requires voting against legislation that embodies policies I agree with, other times it requires taking a stand when doing so may not be popular.

The Constitution itself is not a document of convenience. It specifies an onerous process – bicameralism and presentment – with which the government must comply to enact legislation. And it imposes separation of government powers and a system of checks and balances between the different branches.

Among those checks and balances is the requirement that the President’s nominations of federal judges and executive officers receive the Advice and Consent of the Senate before they take office, unless they are nominated during a Senate recess.

Events of the last few weeks show just how inconvenient the Constitution can be for politicians who want to get their way at any cost. On January 4, 2012, President Obama attempted to bypass the Senate and unilaterally “recess appoint” those nominees even though the Senate was not in fact in recess.

These are brazen actions with real consequences. As a duly sworn United States Senator I feel duty bound to resist these actions, regardless of the difficulty.

In taking a stand against the President’s unconstitutional assertion of executive power, I have already been targeted by the President himself. In his weekly radio address, the President singled me out, suggesting that I am playing politics with the judicial nominations process.

The Constitution is not partisan. I will oppose any president, regardless of party, who attempts to ignore constitutional limits on executive power. The Senate has an important role in the appointment of federal judges and officers. All members of Congress should be deeply concerned when the executive encroaches on that constitutional function.

The President’s justifications for his appointments are troublingly hollow. The Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel memorandum on which he relies passes straight over the plain text and original meaning of the Constitution and concludes that the President may determine for himself that the Senate’s pro-forma sessions do not count as sessions for purposes of the Constitution’s Recess Appointments Clause.

It seems as if the President’s response to the inconvenient Constitution is simply to interpret away its restrictions if he doesn’t like them.

I and members of Congress of both parties who care about the Constitution must take a stand.  If, as a political branch, the legislature does not protect the Senate’s constitutional right to advise and consent to nominees, it may lose it forever.  Doing so would have far-reaching implications for Democrats as well as Republicans.

I call on all Americans – Republicans, Democrats, Independents – to stand with me in defense of this blatant and egregious encroachment on our basic constitutional liberties.

“The more I travel, the more I’ve learned, the more convinced I have become that this thing that we call American exceptionalism, which is controversial in the minds of some intellectuals and others, that this thing called American exceptionalism does exist,” he said. “It’s particularly found in one overarching area — in our deep commitment to the rule of law, in our courts. That’s the truly exceptional and distinguishing aspect of American democracy.”

American exceptionalism exists because our freedoms are protected from government infringement by our Constitution. It is this protection of our God-given rights to life, liberty, and property that allows Americans the privilege of making a better life for ourselves and those around us. When government violates these rights by excessive taxes and regulations, they remove our ability to spend our property as we see fit. Millions of individuals, each making countless decisions every day on how best to spend their time and resources, is a far better recipe for economic growth than Washington D.C. bureaucrat/puppeteers trying to control the economy through regulation, taxation, tax credits, and stimulus spending.

The rule of law is violated when individuals or corporations get government handouts or any kind of special treatment. The front of the United States Supreme Court bears the inscription “Equal Justice Under Law.” This is the rule of law: no one, from the President to the poorest citizen, should have any government-forced advantage over another. Yet we see government-favored special classes every day. Some college students can qualify for federally-subsidized student loans, others cannot. Some drug-addicted welfare moms may get subsidized housing when a hard-working young husband who did things the right way can’t afford a house for his family. Perverse incentives and special-interest-lobbyist-won loopholes do more to hurt our society than to help.

The Constitution grants the federal government a very limited list of powers, chiefly: national defense, regulating trade with foreign nations, guaranteeing that all states have a republican form of government, and the enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8. When the government exceeds its Constitutional limits, neither American exceptionalism nor the rule of law is able to exist as it should. Maybe Vice President Biden should request a meeting with his boss and explain some things to him. Spread this message to your friends, and help The 1789 Project elect leaders who will abide by the limits of our United States Constitution

Enjoy the video, and help The 1789 Project get more leaders like Rep. West into office.