You Can’t Spell “Progressive” without an “S.S.”

By Tim Dunkin

Sinclair Lewis was wrong—when fascism came to America, it was actually wrapped in a rainbow flag and wearing an ascot.

How else can one describe the ongoing left-wing commitment to the stamping out of free speech, whenever that speech contradicts the gay agenda, as well as other parts of the “progressive” platform? With the resignation of newly minted Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, the “progressive” Left, especially its social wing, has once again shown itself to be the enforcers a political correctness in speech and thought that ought to be chilling to any person who actually cares about individual liberty.

It’s time to come right out and say it—the gay “rights” movement is the biggest threat to American freedom in existence today. Bigger than Islamic terrorism. Bigger than Russian revanchism. Bigger even than ObamaCare and our continuing out-of-control spending.

Yet, this is only one small part of the “progressive” movement in America which is quickly taking on shades of 1933. Under Barack Obama, the radical Left has apparently felt that its time has come, and its movement toward open totalitarianism has accelerated. The recent displays of homofascism are but the tip of the iceberg in the Left’s attempts to create an all encompassing control of your lives, your words, and even your thoughts. There is not a single area in your lives or mine that the Left would not like to domineer so as to force compliance. Indeed, anyone who has been paying any attention knows that the left-wing agenda is characterized by this. There is not a single aspect of their agenda that cannot be accurately described by one of the following terms: coerce, regulate, control, punish, socially engineer, mandate, confiscate, or dominate.

This is doubly ironic because the Left has spent decades trying to convince Americans that “the Religious Right” and other bogeymen are the ones who really want to control your lives. Despite the overwhelming lack of actual evidence for this proposition, the Left has nevertheless managed to convince a sizeable share of mind-numbed drones in this country of it. So, while half a country full of useful idiots is running around worrying that the “Republicans” or “Tea Partiers” are going to take away their condoms or something, the movers and shakers in the leftist movement are busy worming their way into every facet of our lives with a view to forcing us to live by their dictates.

It’s easy to understand the Left once you start understanding them through the lens of fascism. How else do you explain their drive for gun control? It certainly isn’t from any evidence that gun control “cuts crime”—in fact, just the opposite is the case as we see looser and looser regulations on firearms ownership and use leading to less crime. But, see, fascists don’t believe private individuals should have guns, but only the police and the military should, so you and I should have them taken away from us regardless.

How do you explain the left-wing obsession with global warming, despite the fact that every major prediction they have made to date has failed to come to pass, and that we are in fact in the midst of a 17-year-long pause in warming? Yet, you have wacko left-wingers who want to imprison people for being “climate deniers.” Why? Because, when you get to the root of it, “global warming” serves as an excellent cover story for taking control of and destroying the industries, and therefore the high standard of living that has allowed Americans and other Westerners to live lives free from “needing” to be provided for by all-encompassing government.

The left-wing hatred for free speech I’ve covered previously.  What’s funny is that, without a trace of irony, you had people writing in the comments about that article trying to defend the notion that people ought to “pay” for saying things that liberals disagree with, and were apparently doing so with a straight face.

Even the freedom-unfriendly aspects of the so-called “War on Terror” put into place during Bush’s administration, such as TSA harassment at airports, warrantless wiretapping of innocent Americans’ communications, and laws that allow citizens to be “indefinitely detained” for “suspicion of terrorism” have all been continued and expanded under the Obama administration, and are now defended by those on the Left.

In fact, you can go right down the line and compare the radical Left in America today with totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany, the Stalinist Soviet Union, and (just to make it fun) the dystopic nation of Oceania depicted in George Orwell’s 1984:

The American Left	Totalitarian Regimes
Oppose private gun ownership, only police and the military should have guns	Outlawed private gun ownership, only police and the military had guns
Oppose homeschooling and other alternatives to public skoolz	Outlawed any form of alternative education systems not completely controlled by the state
Encourage children to inform on their parents about guns in the home, lack of support for gay and environmentalist agendas	Recruited children to turn their parents in for unapproved opinions or opposition to government policies
Enforce political correctness and other social and political efforts to discourage wrong opinions	Employed propaganda and punishment to discourage “thought crime” that consisted of holding to wrong opinions
Support the breakdown of the nuclear family because it reinforces anti-progressive values	Tried to break down the nuclear family because it was a source of “heterodox” loyalties (i.e. to something other than the state)
Support abortion and do not recognize the right to life of all individuals, especially those with congenital disorders	Employed abortion (and post-birth murder) to “weed out” dysgenic individuals or those who were “unwanted”
Oppose economic freedom for businesses by mandating executive wages, directing production, and denying the right to hire or fire who they will	Business was either state-run or else was forced into “corporatistic” public-private partnerships that mandates executive pay, production, and employment practices
Support welfare and other give-away programs that work to encourage individual dependence on government	Used government to coerce citizens into dependence upon state support for daily necessities

And the list could go on and on.

The problem is that once the Left realizes that there is a limit to how far they can get with their agenda merely by lying to people and using smokescreens, they’re going to have to try to get the rest of the way there through outright violence and open intimidation. That’s when things will get really ugly. That’s when the progressive “S.S.” will go from mere rhetoric to being a reality.

So, what can we do about all of this?

Well, for the time being, we need to do everything within our power to oppose the further advancement of their agenda at a demotic level. This means directly disobeying everything the Left wants to push through. They don’t want us to own guns? Go out and buy as many guns with as much ammunition, as you can reasonably afford, learn how to use them, and have the resolve to use them against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. And under no circumstances should we ever register these guns. Ever. The Left tries to shut us up? Just get louder and louder. Vent your opinions on every blog, comments section, and forum you can find. Overwhelm them with free speech. Hound them across the internet until they finally shut the thing down, and then hound them with pamphlets in the streets and soapboxes on the corners if we have to. They want to force us to put our kids in public skools where they can get at them with propa-gay-nda and Common Core nonsense? Pull your kids out of the system and homeschool or put them into private or religious schools. Starve the beast. Start educational coops to help each other out. Long story short—double down on opposing everything they’re trying to do. 

Don’t continue to let them do what they want unhindered while ducking your head down and “minding your own business.” If there ever was a time for conservatives and liberty-lovers to relearn the virtue of public-spiritedness (which is not the same thing as socialism, by the way, reread your Tocqueville), it is now.

May come a time when opposing the Left’s cultural and political coup in America may involve more than just words

But also—and let’s be very serious here—understand that there may come a time when opposing the Left’s cultural and political coup in America may involve more than just words. The Left will not be content until they control us all completely. If they can’t do it by deceit and guile and dependency, they will try it by other means. There may well come a day when the left-wingers actually do try to put “climate deniers” in prison for opposing the party line. When that happens, be prepared to shoot back. If they try to come and take our guns away, be prepared to make them pay a high price for each one. If they come to take our children away, be prepared to show them what being a “Papa Bear” is really all about. And know that if this type of situation ever does come to pass, it is WE, not they, who are in the right. It is WE who have inalienable rights that no government and no social cadre can ever rightly or justly infringe. Shooting back will not be an act of rebellion, but an act of preservation of our constitutional government from terroristic interlopers seeking to overturn it by revolution. THEY are the revolutionaries, the traitors, the terrorists.

I know this all sounds “radical,” but is it really? Our country was born through the fire and blood of men who felt the exact same way as I’ve expressed above, men who were actually engaging in the defense of their rights and liberties as Englishmen, predicated upon the natural law foundation that was as old as our civilization, and even before. They actually went to war for far fewer offences than we have endured—we’ve been remarkably long-suffering in putting up with the antics of the Left for as long as we have. Nobody wants to see our society reach the point where actual shooting is involved—which is why we need to take every step we can to stop those who hate our Constitution and our society NOW, rather than continuing to let the situation grow worse unimpeded. The line in the sand must be drawn now.

Canada Free Press

Teach Common Sense not Common Core

By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh 

“Common Core will be raising good little socialists, who are in tune with their feelings, not so much their critical thinking skills.”  - Author unknown

I have seen many educational fads come and go, trying to replace teaching methodology in our public schools with something so revolutionary and never tried before that would make teaching a “science” instead of an art and to place all children into a national standardized one mold fits all in spite of the human variability in intelligence, talent, aptitude, ability, and the desire to learn. All these fads were driven by the Department of Education’s intention to fund new research that justified its existence and the college professors of education who were under the threat of “publish or perish” when it came to obtaining the very sought-after tenure - life employment without dismissal for cause. Education grew more and more liberal, infusing non-science subjects with Chavezism, Castroism, Maoism, Stalinism, feminism, racism, socialism, and communism.

Why are we then sending our kids to college, borrowing the money we don’t have, knowing that the kids won’t be able to pay it back when they can’t find a job because the jobs don’t exist, the economy is in shambles? Why are we allowing these degenerate college professors many of whom hate America and what it stands for to destroy the minds of our children and reshape them in the vision of their professors’ ideology?

Common Core, the brainchild and work of 30 individuals under the aegis of the Governors’ Association and the almost $200 million sponsorship of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is something else. It is the tool to achieve the “fundamental transformation” of our society as promised in 2008. It is nationalized education “standards” that require students to find another way to reach an answer, particularly in math, even if the answer is wrong, justifying the incorrect answer as the path to help students learn to think critically. This would probably happen right after the student is turned off to math or he/she reaches the right developmental age to think analytically and critically.

A simple addition, 17+25=42, elicited the following response from a second grader in San Jose who was using the GO Math! Curriculum of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, aligned with the Common Core standards, “I got the assignment by talking in my brain and I agreed of the answer that my brain got.”

Here is another simple math problem that a third grader should be able to solve immediately, 26+17=43. In the Common Core new, perplexing, and convoluted way of thinking, the problem is resolved this way

:

“Add 26+17 by breaking apart numbers to make a 10.
Use a number that adds with the 6 in 26 to make a 10.
Since 6+4=10, use 4.
Think: 17=4+13
Add 26+4=30
Add 30+13=43
So, 26+17= 43”

If you are dumbfounded by this kind of stressful and irrational logic, you are not alone.

A simple subtraction, 243-87=156 done quickly “the old fashioned way,” turns into a complicated solution that requires strange logic and drawing a graph such as the one illustrated below:

Can we imagine now studying calculus and differential equations under such contorted thinking? But it gets much worse in reading, writing, government, and history.

A Common Core kindergarten problem instructs, “In each cube stick, color some cubes blue and the rest of the cubes red. Draw the cubes you colored in the number bond. Show the hidden partners on your fingers to an adult. Color the fingers you showed.” Aside from the fact that the problem is almost impossible for an adult to comprehend, it involves “cube sticks,” “number bonds” and “hidden partners.” The worksheet further urges children to impose this math concept on an adult.

Another example from the Go Math! Common Core aligned math curriculum involves Mina Boyd’s kindergarten child who was given the worksheet to Count and Write 20, presumably 20 apples that looked curiously like bombs. There were actually only 19. Was it a printing mistake or were the publishers having difficulty with this “transformational” math? One reader described the assignment beyond brainwashing - a form of Pavlov’s dog conditioned response, “neuro-linguistic programming, and otherwise known as hypnosis.”

A fourth grade reading assignment asks students to describe adultery, a highly inappropriate topic for elementary school.

Sixth grade students in Arkansas were given in 2013 the assignment to “revise” the “outdated” Bill of Rights, “suggesting that the government can grant and remove inalienable rights.” Middle School students were also told that the Second Amendment requires gun registration.

According to the workbook, “This amendment states that people have the right to certain weapons, providing that they register them and they have not been in prison.”

It gets even more interesting. The USDA is now in the business of nudging grandparents to use ChooseMyPlate.gov to help their grandkids eat healthier, and giving instructions to offer their grandchildren “hugs” instead of treats and to “read government bedtime stories.”

People like Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee have constantly pushed the Common Core standards. If implemented, they are “designed to make the United States more competitive with the rest of the world.” How exactly would a dumbed down curriculum make children more competitive? Were we not competitive enough before Common Core? Was American higher education not the envy of the world? Why must we now destroy it?

Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education is running Common Core ads non-stop. Parents are waking up and garnering the support of some teachers. But there are powerful groups who are pushing Common Core because there is a lot of money at stake. Common Core standards are not a grass-roots, nor state-led initiative.  It is the Obama administration Race to the Top competition bribing schools with billions of dollars if they adopt Common Core. It is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, it is Pearson, the billion dollar educational publishing and testing conglomerate, the Center for American Progress, the National Governors Association (NGA), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and recipients of Bill Gates Foundation money who continue to propagandize Common Core.

U.S. News and World Report quoted Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (1.5 million members), who stated that the Common Core implementation is ‘far worse’ than ObamaCare.

Money is no object when it comes to sending school administrators to a luxurious hotel and spa ($38,000) in order to discuss strategies for implementing Common Core standards at schools in the Inglewood, California impoverished school district that had to be bailed out in 2012 to the tune of $55 million.

The Daily Caller assembled a list of complicated, dreadful math problems and worksheets that are glaring evidence that Common Core standards are not really trying to improve our children’s education, but are hurting their education.

Common Core math standards are based on the theory of Constructivism. This theory rejects the drilling of children on basic arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication). Instead, children are taught to “construct” their own way of figuring out an answer. An incorrect answer is acceptable as long as the child explains how he/she got the wrong answer.

The reading found in the English literature selections is not chosen for the joy of reading and learning, but instead, they are to be “analyzed and discussed by students using leftwing norms” of morality and behavior. This unproven theory of education is called New Criticism Literary Analysis.

Moral ambiguity, acceptance of perverse and aberrant behavior presented as courage, overt sexuality, adultery, and even pornography are some of the themes chosen for young and older students. For example, schools in North Carolina who adopted the Common Core standards are requiring the reading of the sexually explicit book, The House of Spirits.

Middle school readings include the complete United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child and the complete United Nations Millennium Declaration with the main theme being global diversity and global citizenship. Stories include head scarves of Muslims in France, an American teenager punished in Singapore, an arranged marriage in India, learning Japanese, an African novel, and articles promoting global warming as settled science. The readings indicate the progressives’ love affair with third world societies which they deem superior to our own.

Centuries of European and American civilization and culture are glossed over. The few stories devoted to American culture include a kid who tries to avoid parental punishment for breaking curfew, Halloween, and a controversy over sea lions in Oregon.

The Eagle Forum described some of the reading materials aligned with Common Core. The common denominators are anti-Americanism, sexuality, porn, and global warming:

• Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia (10th grade reading, anti-American and sexually explicit)
• Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (9th grade, a 13-year old boy describing his father’s genitals and a sex act)
• Wind Power (k-1, telling children their electricity comes from wind mills)
• Ted the Fly Guy (k-1, cartoon characters with large eyes)
• Where Do Polar Bears Live? by Sarah Thomson (2nd and 3rd graders, global warming, climate change, carbon foot print)
• Sorry, Wrong Number by Lucille Fletcher (4th and 5th graders, woman learns of her own murder plot when phone wires get crossed; is this the kind of reading appropriate for 9 and 10 year olds?)
• English language arts lesson plans for 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders based on the book, Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope, portray President Obama as a “messianic figure,” clearly a propaganda effort to align ideology with Common Core
• Common Core Anti-American teaching guides produced by Zaner-Bloser company

1. Two-week lesson for 4th graders using the book The Jacket indoctrinates children into the concept of racism and white privilege; the left-wing concept that the values of
2. American society are designed to benefit white people to the exclusion of black people
Another Zaner-Bloser guide uses the book Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez, to indoctrinate 2nd graders into the founder of the United Farm Workers union and “equality.” The conditions of the farmers and the landowners are presented on opposite pages, instructing teachers to say, “Fairness and equality exist when the scales are balanced” and “unfairness and inequality exist when the scales are weighted heavily on one side and are out of balance.” Do 7 year olds understand economics and property rights? Do they understand that first generation Americans came to this country with the clothes on their backs to escape poverty and religious persecution, worked very hard and made a better life for themselves and their children? (EAGNews.org, 10-17-13 and 10-21-13)

“These lesson plans will indoctrinate students against the same American opportunities that allowed millions of immigrants to arrive here penniless, work hard, and achieve the American dream.”

Phyllis Schlafly explained that parents also object to Common Core for its massive data collection on every student in the United States, in-depth longitudinal studies from birth to college, an invasion of privacy, and the mark of a totalitarian state.

To make the Common Core more acceptable, some states are changing the name. Iowa calls it the Iowa Core. Florida found a more euphemistic name, Next Generation Sunshine State Standards. Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed an executive order to erase the name Common Core.

“Even under a different name, the Common Core Standards are still mediocre, at best, and continue to put American students at a significant disadvantage to their international peers,” Glyn Wright, executive director of the Eagle Forum.”

Should parents question the Common Core standards that are unproven and untested, they might experience what happened to the father who showed up at a school board meeting in Towson, Maryland, asking questions the board had not picked – he was forcibly escorted out of the meeting by a hired security guard and arrested.

The latest Common Core outrage comes from California. The Mark Twain School in Sacramento has suspended Katherine Duran, the mother of a 12-year old student, for 14 days in her home for “disrupting the school.” Duran’s son, Christopher, distributed Common Core opt-out forms to other students to take home to their parents. The principal confiscated the forms. Mrs. Duran visited the school and confronted the principal who then called the police. She was served with the two-week suspension order. According to the Blaze, the principal “sent police with a chilling note that contained notice of the two-week ‘Withdrawal of Consent’ as well as a threat of arrest should she violate the order,” including the legalese, “The District will seek reimbursement for attorney costs the courts may impose.”

In light of the recent developments in Scotland where a bill was passed that appoints a health worker to act as a “named person” for every child until the age of five, then to a council with teachers until the child reaches 18, parents should be concerned.  Conservatives tried to argue that such measures should have been taken only when the well-being or safety of a child was at stake. A Christian charity promised to take court action to overturn the law because it violates parental rights. The law was passed under the guise of identifying children with developmental difficulties and potential cases of abuse.

Michael Ramey, of ParentalRights.org, writing to his supporters, pointed out that “the legislation was specifically aimed at compliance with the radical U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.” Where are the rights of the parents vis-à-vis excessive government intrusion?

American parents should better wise up before it is too late and they too will lose their parental rights because the government deems that it is better positioned to be mommy and daddy.

Note:  Michelle Malkin is informing parents that there is a Common Core opt-out form, courtesy of Truth in American Education. “You can exercise your parental rights to protect your children from the nationalized Common Core.”

Watch the recently released documentary on Common Core by Ian A. Reid, Building the Machine.

Canada Free Press

Prove it: Court rules states can make voters prove citizenship

By Stephen Dinan

A U.S. District Court judge ruled Wednesday that Arizona and Kansas can require anyone registering to vote to prove their citizenship and the federal Election Assistance Commission cannot block them.

The ruling is a boost for states’ rights and marks a setback for President Obama and other liberals who fought stiffer voter ID checks with an argument that they reduce voter turnout.

“This is a huge victory for me, personally, for the states of Kansas and Arizona, and for the whole cause of states’ rights,” said Kansas Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach, who led the challenge. “We’ve seen so many defeats recently in areas where the federal government has been encroaching on states’ authorities, and this time the good guys won.”

In his ruling, Judge Eric F. Melgren said the EAC, which Congress created after the 2000 Florida voting fiasco, must accede to states’ requests for people to provide proof of citizenship when they register to vote.

The judge said the Constitution gives states the power to determine voter qualifications, and if states want to insist on proof of citizenship, the election commission cannot overrule them.

“The EAC’s nondiscretionary duty is to perform the ministerial function of updating the instructions to reflect each state’s laws,” Judge Melgren ruled in a decision out of Kansas. “The court orders the EAC to add the language requested by Arizona and Kansas to the state-specific instructions of the federal mail voter registration form immediately.”

A spokesman for the EAC said the commission was reviewing the decision. The Justice Department, which
argued the case before Judge Melgren, didn’t return a message seeking comment.

The ruling comes at a time when both Democrats and Republicans are paying increasing interest to the rules governing campaigns and voting. With the country ideologically split, each side is looking for an advantage at the ballot box.

Democrats say identification checks could prevent some eligible voters from casting ballots. Republicans generally argue for stiffer checks to prevent fraud.

Kansas and Arizona enacted requirements that voters prove their citizenship when they register. State registration forms were changed to add the requirement.

But the federal government, which also distributes voter registration forms in states under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, or motor-voter law, refused to add the requirement.
Arizona then said it would refuse to process federal forms and ended up in court. Last year, in a case known as Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, the Supreme Court ruled that Arizona couldn’t reject the federal forms.

But the Supreme Court ruling also hinted that if states asked the EAC to include proof of citizenship on forms distributed within their borders, the commission couldn’t refuse.
Arizona and Kansas requested that the EAC change the forms distributed in those states, but the commission refused.

Judge Melgren said he saw clear signs in last year’s Supreme Court ruling that the justices intended for the EAC to follow the wishes of the states.

“On one hand, the ITCA decision acknowledges the broad scope of Congress‘ power under the Elections Clause, which includes the authority of the NVRA to preempt state law regarding voter registration,” the judge wrote. “But the ITCA opinion also emphasizes the states’ exclusive constitutional authority to set voter qualifications — which Congress may not preempt — and appears to tie that authority with the power of the states to enforce their qualifications.”

Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett said the ruling will help clean up voter rolls. About 2,000 people have submitted federal forms in the state but haven’t proved their citizenship, he said.
“With this filing and with this ruling, we have accomplished what we felt was the desire of Arizona voters all along,” Mr. Bennett said.

Wednesday’s ruling was focused on election law, but it comes in the middle of a thorny national debate about U.S. immigration laws. A number of states have pushed for stricter enforcement from the Obama administration and the right to help enforce federal immigration principles.
Mr. Kobach has been at the forefront of those efforts.

The Washington Times

Sarah Palin Full Speech • CPAC • 2014

Sarah Palin puts a Conservative bent on Green Eggs And Ham At Cpac 2014.

Exclusive - Benghazi Victims' Families Demand Boehner Haul CIA Official Before Select Committee

by Matthew Boyle  
5 Mar 2014

 A coalition of military community leaders, conservative movement leaders, and the Benghazi victims’ families are demanding that Speaker John Boehner take “immediate” action against a former acting CIA Director accused of misleading Congress on the Benghazi scandal. Citing recent reporting from Fox News’ Catherine Herridge, investigative work from conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch and the findings of a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report, they wrote to Boehner on Wednesday morning that, “We now know that there is compelling evidence that former Acting Central Intelligence Director Michael Morell has made false and misleading statements to Congress.”

Writing about the Senate report, Herridge published a series of articles over the course of February that detailed how Morell allegedly misled lawmakers. Morell told Congress that the now-infamous misleading talking points that claimed a protest resulting from a YouTube video led to the attack—not Islamic terrorism—had been shared with the White House ahead of Susan Rice using them, but were not asking for White House input. Emails later released by the Obama administration “showed otherwise,” Herridge wrote in one such report.

“This issue demands your immediate personal attention,” the signers of the letter, including Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith’s mother Pat Smith and uncle Michael Ingmire, and security officer Tyrone Woods’ father Charles Woods, wrote to Boehner.

Woods and Smith, along with security officer Glen Doherty and America’s ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, were killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. This Wednesday letter to Boehner represents the second such letter Smith’s family members and Woods’ family members have signed on to with conservative and military leaders in recent months. In early January, they called on Boehner to install a select committee. A bill to establish a select committee introduced by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) has been cosponsored by more than 75 percent of the House GOP conference.

Although Boehner has not established a select committee, top House officials have signaled they are focusing on the investigation since the letter was sent, the authors write.

“We were pleased to see that our letter of January 6, 2014 may have persuaded you and your various committee chairs investigating the Benghazi attacks to make some limited efforts to promote information gathered through the uncoordinated work of the House,” they wrote. “But the establishment of the Internet website, ‘The House Republican Investigation of Benghazi’ only highlights the inadequacies of House efforts to date. Most Americans, in addition to a large majority of your party’s caucus, demand a full and complete investigation of this terror attack. Mr. Morell’s statements and conduct appear to have materially contributed to confusing and misleading the Congress and the American people. Susan Rice’s latest rounds of lies about Benghazi on the February 23, 2014 edition of Meet the Press illustrate the contempt that this Administration has for your committees’ investigation to date.”

Boehner has resisted efforts to install a select committee to investigate Benghazi. Instead, he says the five House committees currently investigating—Oversight, Judiciary, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Armed Services—are doing enough.

In response to that first early January letter, Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said that the concerns that the ongoing House investigations are ineffective are unfounded.
“House Republicans are committed to finding the truth about what happened in Benghazi and why the White House failed to level with the American people,” Steel said then.

But the families are now renewing their call to Boehner to create a select committee “now,” one that is “fully resourced with staff and subpoena powers – to conduct a thorough, coordinated investigation.”

One of that committee’s actions, once Boehner installs it if he does, they say, should be to compel Morell to testify before it. “Mr. Morell must be compelled to appear before Congress and explain his statements and conduct,” they wrote. “Even if he invokes his right not to testify under the Fifth Amendment, then the Congress must pursue, through a Select Committee, the many unanswered questions and apparent Obama administration cover-up of the terror attacks that cost the lives of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and Security Officers Glen Doherty and Ty Woods.”

They added in their letter that there are many “other Benghazi-related questions that remain unanswered,” as well and called on Boehner to “act now” because “the public trust is now before” him in the face of “gravely disturbing evidence of possible criminality and abuse of public office.”

In addition to the victims' family members, other letter signers include retired Navy Admiral James Lyons, retired Navy Admiral Jerome Johnson, retired Army General Frederick Kroesen, retired Air Force Lt. General Tom McInerney, retired Army Lt. General Jerry Boykin, former Rep. Allen West (R-FL), Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly, Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton, Special Operations Speaks’ Col. Dick Brauer, Veterans for a Strong America’s Joel Arends, Secure America Now’s Allen Roth, Ginni Thomas of Liberty Consulting, David Horowitz of the Freedom Center, and a whole host of other leaders from the conservative movement and military community.

Big Government

The Final Constitutional Option

February 9, 2014 
By Robert Berry

Having been dormant for centuries, a potent section in the U.S. Constitution is now in the minds and on the lips of a new generation of reformers who are determined to keep the nation out of an abyss.  As America stares hard at the darkness ahead, the new reformers have begun to popularize this forgotten constitutional provision that might well become Official Washington's undoing.

The problem, which hardly needs stating, is that the federal government has become the very monster the founders anticipated.  Quite likely, the beast we face is far beyond anything that could have been imagined by the founding generation.  Even today it is hard to adequately comprehend the omnipresent and, thanks to the NSA, omniscient federal menace that overhangs every aspect of life in 21^st-century America.

The founders' concern that power would be consolidated at the federal level is dealt with in Article V of the U.S. Constitution. 

Author Mark Levin, in his blockbuster best-seller, The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic, based his ideas for reform on this less well-known means by which amendments may be proposed -- a process that entirely outflanks Washington's fixed fortifications.  Levin cogently argues that attempts at reform from within Washington are futile. 

Obviously, what is needed is a way to trump the Beltway ruling class from without. 

Enter Article V, which prescribes the amendment process.  Article V establishes the amendment process as a two-phase affair: proposal, followed by ratification of three fourths of the states.  The states have no way to ratify that which has not first been proposed.  From the beginning, the states have relied on congressional super-majorities to do the proposing.

But the founders knew that Congress would be loath to propose anything that would limit federal power, so they included a way for the states to propose amendments in an ad hoc assembly Article V styles as "A Convention for Proposing Amendments." 

The idea of using the amendments convention assembly has surfaced from time to time in U.S. history -- most recently in the 1980s, with the movement to propose a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA).  The effort peaked with 33 states passing resolutions -- just one shy of the required two-thirds of state legislatures, which would have compelled Congress to issue a call for the amendments convention.

That's when the effort took a bizarre detour -- into oblivion.

The BBA advocates of the 1980s, including then-President Reagan, were decidedly of the political right.  The last thing anyone in the movement expected was for "friendlies" from elsewhere on the right to object to the idea in near hysterics as a plot to render the Constitution null and void.  The unlikely opponents, while not necessarily opposed to a BBA, condemned in no uncertain terms the use of the amendments convention to propose it.  It quickly became evident, from the critics' rhetoric, that they had conflated the Convention for Proposing Amendments assembly with a so-called plenary (full authority) Constitutional Convention. 

BBA advocates attempted to clarify the difference between the types of conventions by pointing out that, as sovereigns, the states have never needed permission from the Constitution to call an actual Constitutional Convention.  Indeed, the only reason to invoke Article V would be to self-limit the convention's authority to "proposing amendments," as the assembly's name indicates. 

Even more restrictive was the scope of the states' resolutions, which sought to limit discussion to the consideration of a single amendment -- a BBA.  The argument was that, during the amendments convention, if a majority of the states, each represented by a delegation of state legislators, voted for a BBA, the proposal would be transmitted to Congress and then to the states for ratification -- just as every other amendment proposal in U.S. history. 

The BBA advocates argued that if the delegates were to propose anything other than a Balanced Budget Amendment, Congress would be barred from forwarding the proposal to the states. 

The critics would have none of it.

In appeals to the public, the critics insidiously left out any mention of the ratification process by three fourths of the states -- the implication being that once the proceedings began, there was nothing that could be done to hold it back when, inevitably, extreme elements moved to dissolve the Constitution.  When challenged on this, the foes weaved the assertion into their conspiracy theory, adding that the out-of-control assembly would simply declare its own sovereignty and dispense with the ratification process altogether! 

As preposterous as this notion was, the accompanying slogan was more effective: "We don't need a new Constitution!"  Gobsmacked, the BBA proponents could only look on as state legislators made for the tall grass.  One by one, states began rescinding BBA resolutions. 

As a postscript to this sad chapter, it should be noted that by the late 1980s, the national debt had just topped $2 trillion.  An effective BBA at that time could have stopped the bleeding that, by any objective measure, has become an existential threat. 


The Professor


In 2009, an academic from the University of Montana was surveying opportunities for research.  Of particular interest to Professor Robert G. Natelson were areas of constitutional scholarship characterized by a scarcity of research, poor research, or, optimally, both.  

Intrigued by the vestigial Convention for Proposing Amendments mentioned in Article V, Natelson was 
struck by the paucity of modern-day scholarship on the topic despite an abundance of original source material.

Quietly, he set to work.

Before long, Natelson had acquired nearly all of the journals of founding-era conventions.  This was added to his existing collection of material from each state's ratification convention as each considered whether or not to approve the proposed 1787 constitution.  A picture of early American convention tradition began to emerge. 

Casting a wider net, he pulled in over 40 generally neglected Article V court decisions, some of which had been argued before the Supreme Court.  In a series of publications, Natelson churned out his findings (here, here, and here), which surprised many -- including himself. 

The research quickly became the gold standard of scholarship about the process, known formally as the "State-Application-and-Convention" method of amending the Constitution. 

Natelson held that, far from being a self-destruct mechanism, the founders meant for the process to be used in parallel to the congressional method as yet another "check and balance" within the framework of the newly constituted federal government.

Most importantly, Natelson drew a strong distinction between the assembly mentioned in Article V and the oft-mentioned Constitutional Convention.  For this reason, he is quick to correct anyone mistakenly referring to the Convention for Proposing Amendments as a "Constitutional Convention." 

Natelson's research trove smashed the conspiracy theories of the 1980s and has become the intellectual base of the resurgent Article V movement that has been joined by Levin and other prominent reformers.  When the history is written, it will record that this was the moment the Article V movement achieved critical mass. 

The new reformers would do well to press on with the case for state-initiated amendments and ignore the tired conspiracy theories of the past.  Having been marginalized to an almost comic degree, the foes of yesterday have been effectively dispatched.

When a battle is won, it is wise to move to the next battle, for the waiting opponent is formidable and lives on Capitol Hill.


Robert Berry writes about economic and constitutional matters and is the author of Amendments Without Congress: A Timely Gift from the Founders and Constitutional Coup: America's New Lease on Liberty.  Bitcoin address can be found here.

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