We The People

The partisan fuss surrounding the nomination of a self-described "wise Latina" to the U.S. Supreme Court has obscured a true international crisis and a missed opportunity for the liberals running our government, especially our President.

Remember Miguel Estrada? Probably not. A native of Honduras, Estrada immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 17, learned English, and graduated from Columbia magna cum laude and, later, from Harvard Law School after serving as editor of the Harvard Law Review. He was nominated by President Bush in 2001 to serve on the DC Court of Appeals. Estrada's nomination was tied up by Democrats in the U.S. Senate for more than two years. Finally, this wise Latino asked President Bush to withdraw his nomination. Ironically, had he been confirmed, Estrada could be serving on the U.S. Supreme Court today instead of Samuel Alito, say. So much for liberal support of minorities...

However, my point in bringing up Estrada is not to "dis" Sotomayor or Obama in particular. It is to call your attention to an outstanding column he wrote for the Los Angeles Times (not known for its conservative leanings) about the dust up in his native Honduras that the Obama administration called a "military coup." As of today, it is the stated position of the United States of America that ousted President Zelaya be returned to Honduras and reinstated as President.

Is that a fact!?

Please read Estrada's thoroughly-researched column. In it, among other excellent points, Estrada notes that:
- Zelaya's arrest was legal under Honduran law (though not his exile).
- Zelaya illegally attempted to change the Honduran Constitution (Article 239 specifically states that any president who so much as proposes the permissibility of reelection "shall cease forthwith" in his duties, and Article 4 provides that any "infraction" of the succession rules constitutes treason).
- The Congress of Honduras condemned Zelaya's illegal conduct and overwhelmingly voting (122 to 6) to remove him from office.
- The current president (Micheletti) was lawfully made president by the country's elected Congress.
- The president is a civilian.
- The Honduran Congress and courts continue to function as before.
- The armed forces are under civilian control.
- The elections scheduled for November are still scheduled for November.

Please also read this excellent piece by conservative talk-show host Dennis Prager, who is actually IN HONDURAS in support of the legally functioning democratic government there, and who makes the following cogent observations from the front line for democratic rule in Latin America (unrecognized as such, ironically, by a party named "Democrats"):
- Zelaya was plotting a long-term, possibly lifetime, takeover of the Honduran government by illegally changing the Honduran Constitution.
- Zelaya had personally led a mob attack on a military facility to steal phony "referendum" ballots that had been printed by the Venezuelan government.
- No member of the military has assumed a position of power as a result of the "military coup."
- Zelaya's own party, the Liberal Party, supported his removal from office and deportation from Honduras.
- The Liberal Party still governs Honduras.

Given the above incontrovertible FACTS, We The People are forced to wonder why our own President and government are:
- supporting Zelaya.
- in favor of restoring him to power.
- still advocating (as of yesterday's State Department press briefing) "the restoration of democratic order in Honduras."

Sigh.

Friends, fellow Americans, in my lifetime - and because of our failure to remain focused on our core principles of a limited, representative government and the values found throughout our Declaration of Independence and our own Constitution - we have gone from a country whose President would stand bravely in front of a symbol of oppression and injustice and loudly proclaim for all the world to hear, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" to a country whose President's most meaningful statement on this critical matter of liberty was issued through a press release which said, meekly, "Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference."

I am ashamed of the leadership of my country in this matter. My President does NOT speak for me.

RJM

I must say I know of no more generous, committed and determined people in this world than we Americans.

Our nation endures - and I believe will thrive again - because of our spirit.

A story in today's Wall Street Journal by Karl Rove brought this spirit to life again in me. We all owe a debt to the Krissoff family, who gave one son, whose other son and father followed their lost one into service, and whose mother loved and supported them all - and all of us.

I can do no better than to ask you to read this moving story...

Happy Independence Day.

RJM

Memorial Day came and went, and I was "too busy" to post.

Now the 65th anniversary of D-Day is here, and I am compelled to say something.

Of course, I can't say it better than Stephen Ambrose, who wrote perhaps the best account of D-Day as a professional historian. Yet today I have been especially inspired by an article by Warren Kozak, who tells a story that is not widely known or appreciated, despite the advantage of 20-20 hindsight: the D-Day invasion - as costly as it was in human life - and the battles on European soil that followed D-Day were much less costly thanks to the bravery and sacrifice of the fighters of the US Army Air Force. Some 60,000 lost their lives during the war so that many more fighters could survive on the ground.

Reading of the regimen created by Curtis LeMay that made this force from nearly nothing in an impossibly short time, I can't help but wonder what we could do for ourselves today if we only resolved to do it with the same sense of urgency. Of course, during the war we had an enemy bent on world domination and destroying our way of life to motivate us.

Hmmm. Sounds familiar...

The oath for the President of the United States, as stated in Article II of our Constitution, includes the simple pledge that the President will (emphases mine) "to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

In Article III states that the judicial power, "shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties..." Nothing is said about the role of the courts embracing or pursuing fairness, empathy, righting or undoing wrongs, or "changing" anything. Judicial power only involves "Law and Equity."

In his 1982 book, Equity and the Constitution, Gary McDowell stated that "equity" as used by the founding fathers, "was originally understood as an extraordinary means of offering relief to individuals in cases of fraud, accident, mistake, or trust and as a means of 'confining the operation of unjust and partial laws.'" Equity did not refer to offering relief to broadly defined social classes.

In his column published in today's Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby tackles several statements made by our current President, in his career as a professor of Constitutional law, U.S. Senator, Presidential candidate, and now as the holder of the office he won fair and square by the process defined by the Constitution he swore to "preserve."

The full article is available here.

Jacoby begins by pointing out that, "JUDICIAL dispassion - the ability to decide cases without being influenced by personal feelings or political preferences - is indispensable to the rule of law. So indispensable, in fact, that the one-sentence judicial oath required of every federal judge and justice contains no fewer than three expressions of it: "I . . . do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me..."

He then contrasts this legal requirement by holding it up against the public statements made by citizen, Senator, and President Obama. Without reprinting the entire article, our President has said, at one time or another, that he wants to appoint judges:
- whose "quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles," would be "an essential ingredient" in his jurisprudence.
- are "sympathetic" to those "on the outside, those who are vulnerable, those who are powerless."
- that cases that come before the Supreme Court can be decided only with reference to "the depth and breadth of one's empathy," and that "the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart."

Jacoby reminds us that "Lady Justice is so frequently depicted - as on the sculpted lampposts outside the US Supreme Court - wearing a blindfold and carrying balanced scales." Going by our President's statements, though, I don't believe he sees justice as being "blind." Obama's Lady Justice has all-seeing eyes enhanced by heart-colored glasses that will tip her scales.

Jacoby's bottom line: "If Obama means what he says, he wants judges who will violate their oath of office."

RJM

Elections have consequences.

The voters who handed the Presidency to Barack Obama voted for a man who said in June 2007, well before the election, "Whatever we once were, we're no longer a Christian nation." Newsflash: He's not kidding. He really believes it.

A few months have passed, and now the administration's acolytes (the media) are forcefully bleating that Christianity is on the wane. No one should be surprised.

The media are wrong about Christianity and our President is wrong about our country.

Please read the following excellent opinion piece from USA Today, published April 27:

In it, Stephen Prothero,the chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University, exposed the incomplete story told by Newsweek magazine in its cover story, "The Decline and Fall of Christian America." That story used as its sole major data source the results of the third American Religious Identification Survey, which correctly reported that the portion of American adults who self-identify as Christians has dropped 10 percentage points (from 86% to 76%), while the portion of those who report no religious affiliation (so called 'nones') has almost doubled — from 8% to 15%.

Prothero, not content just to read results, probed deeper. He discussed the study with one of its co-authors and found a very interesting nugget that made neither the report nor the Newsweek story: "when asked about God, 23% of the "nones" said they believed in a higher power and 21% pledged their allegiance to a personal God." Further, citing other recent national studies, Prothero revealed, "almost two-thirds (63%) of Americans who claim no religious affiliation believe in God, and another third (36%) said they prayed at least occasionally. Finally...41% of the religiously unaffiliated nonetheless describe religion as either very important or somewhat important in their lives. "Nones" are by no means non-believers."

Bottom line? Some astounding facts about a so-called post-Christian nation:

1. The United States today has more Christians than any other country in human history.
2. The current U.S. population is more Christian than Israel is Jewish.
3. Christianity remains, for good or for ill, a "vital political force," not just on the right but also on the left.

I do earnestly and prayerfully hope that Christians on both sides prove themselves a vital political force and prevent the degradation of our Constitution and American traditions that defined us when we were, to quote our President, "whatever we were."

My parents and extended family, my church, my teachers, my research and reading, and my life experiences have all helped to define who I am and what I believe.

We can all say that, and I accept that there are different results from different "inputs."

Further, as humans, we all have the God-given rights to do and believe whatever we want. However, all of us must also acknowledge that truth and falsehood and right and wrong exist in our world. We can believe the truth, we can believe lies, and we can be right or wrong. We have the freedom to be wise or foolish.

I want to be right and to believe things that are true.

In this country, the right to say whatever we want about whatever we believe is protected by our Constitution. And our government is based upon not only our right to speak freely, but our further right to be governed by a Government of our own making. We may not always approve of that Government and what it does, but we are always free to state our thoughts about that Government and to work within our laws to make it a better Government.

The purpose of We The People is to exercise those freedoms.

As the blog owner, I have the freedom to choose what gets posted here, but I assure you this blog won't just be about what I think or care about. We The People is a site where all manner of opinions are stated and debated in our search as a people for what is true and what is right.

Thank you for visiting my site, and please post your comments and join in!

-- Russ Moore