This Government Agency Offends the Constitution and Needs to Be Eliminated

A little-known federal government agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, imposes enormous costs on consumers and financial service providers through costly and unwarranted command-and-control regulation.
Read more at the Daily Signal Read More......

Obama's Executive Gun Control: No Minimum Threshold Before Private Gun Sales Require Background Checks

On January 4, the White House released a fact sheet which previews the executive gun control Obama will announce Tuesday, and it reveals there is no numerical threshold of sales that a private seller has to cross before being considered “engaged in the business of dealing in firearms.”
Read more at Breitbart.com Read More......

One of Obama's Harvard professors likened the president's climate change policies to 'burning the Constitution'

A Harvard professor who taught U.S. President Barack Obama torched his prized pupil last month on Capitol Hill. ✧ Constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe, who also served in the Justice Department under Obama, testified last month during a House hearing that the president's climate change policies are similar to "burning the Constitution." ✧ The 73-year-old Tribe argued that the Environmental Protection Agency is grossly overstepping its boundaries in respect to enforcing the president's doctrine. One conservative operative called the remarks "dazzling." ✧ "EPA is attempting an unconstitutional trifecta:

Read more at Business Insider Read More......

July 27: Last Day for UN Gun-Banners to Hammer out Small Arms Treaty

A dangerous threat to our Second Amendment right to 'keep and bear arms.'

Pledge Your Opposition to Hillary's Global Agenda

Will Secretary of State Hillary Clinton endorse the end product? Yes.
Will President Obama sign it? Yes.
Will the U.S. Senate ratify it? Uncertain, it may depend on you.
Call your senators today and encourage them to man up and vote against ratification. Our Democrat senators will be under extreme pressure to support ratification.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D) DC (202) 224-3753, Salem (503) 362-8102 | Sen. Ron Wyden (D) - DC (202) 224-5244, Salem (503) 589-4555

Related Article from Pat Dollard: UN Gun Control Treaty Will Kill Second Amendment On July 27 Read More......

Gun Control, the UN & 'Selling U.S. Out….Again'

The Second Amendment is precious to most Americans. The right to bear arms is, however, repulsive to liberals and they have tried all manner of maneuvers to take Americans’ guns from them. ✧ The latest tactic is to ratify a United Nations Treaty to regulate arms trade. The concept of the treaty was introduced in 2006 and was vetoed twice by the Bush Administration. The basis for the veto is the sovereignty of the United States Constitution and the unwillingness to subjugate our Constitution to any international body. [...] Now, Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MO) and Rep. Ben Quayle (R-AZ) have introduced House Bill 5846, “The Second Amendment Sovereignty Act,” to counter the proposed treaty. The Bill would block funding for or the implementation of the treaty.

Quayle said the “U.N. treaty is a direct threat to American sovereignty and the constitutional rights of all Americans. Congress needs to put its foot down, and make clear that it, not the United Nations, is the only body with the constitutional right to impose laws in the United States.”

Read more at GOPUSA (Commentary from The Proud Americans.org)... Read More......

IMPRIMIS: Do We Need the Department of Education?

IMPRIMIS a publication of Hillsdale College
January 2012
Adapted from a speech by Charles Murray, American Enterprise Institute

THE CASE FOR the Department of Education could rest on one or more of three legs: its constitutional appropriateness, the existence of serious problems in education that could be solved only at the federal level, and/or its track record since it came into being. Let us consider these in order.

(1) Is the Department of Education constitutional?

At the time the Constitution was written, education was not even considered a function of local government, let alone the federal government. But the shakiness of the Department of Education’s constitutionality goes beyond that. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution enumerates the things over which Congress has the power to legislate. Not only does the list not include education, there is no plausible rationale for squeezing education in under the commerce clause. I’m sure the Supreme Court found a rationale, but it cannot have been plausible.

On a more philosophical level, the framers of America’s limited government had a broad allegiance to what Catholics call the principle of subsidiarity. In the secular world, the principle of subsidiarity means that local government should do only those things that individuals cannot do for themselves, state government should do only those things that local governments cannot do, and the federal government should do only those things that the individual states cannot do. Education is something that individuals acting alone and cooperatively can do, let alone something local or state governments can do.

I should be explicit about my own animus in this regard. I don’t think the Department of Education is constitutionally legitimate, let alone appropriate. I would favor abolishing it even if, on a pragmatic level, it had improved American education. But I am in a small minority on that point, so let’s move on to the pragmatic questions.

(2) Are there serious problems in education that can be solved only at the federal level?

The first major federal spending on education was triggered by the launch of the first space satellite, Sputnik, in the fall of 1957, which created a perception that the United States had fallen behind the Soviet Union in science and technology. The legislation was specifically designed to encourage more students to go into math and science, and its motivation is indicated by its title: The National Defense Education Act of 1958. But what really ensnared the federal government in education in the 1960s had its origins elsewhere—in civil rights. The Supreme Court declared segregation of the schools unconstitutional in 1954, but—notwithstanding a few highly publicized episodes such as the integration of Central High School in Little Rock and James Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi—the pace of change in the next decade was glacial.

Was it necessary for the federal government to act? There is a strong argument for “yes,” especially in the case of K-12 education. Southern resistance to desegregation proved to be both stubborn and effective in the years following Brown v. Board of Education. Segregation of the schools had been declared unconstitutional, and constitutional rights were being violated on a massive scale. But the question at hand is whether we need a Department of Education now, and we have seen a typical evolution of policy. What could have been justified as a one-time, forceful effort to end violations of constitutional rights, lasting until the constitutional wrongs had been righted, was transmuted into a permanent government establishment. Subsequently, this establishment became more and more deeply involved in American education for purposes that have nothing to do with constitutional rights, but instead with a broader goal of improving education.

The reason this came about is also intimately related to the civil rights movement. Over the same years that school segregation became a national issue, the disparities between black and white educational attainment and test scores came to public attention. When the push for President Johnson’s Great Society programs began in the mid-1960s, it was inevitable that the federal government would attempt to reduce black-white disparities, and it did so in 1965 with the passage of two landmark bills—the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act. The Department of Education didn’t come into being until 1980, but large-scale involvement of the federal government in education dates from 1965.

(3) So what is the federal government’s track record in education?

The most obvious way to look at the track record is the long-term trend data of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Consider, for instance, the results for the math test for students in fourth, eighth and twelfth grades from 1978 through 2004. The good news is that the scores for fourth graders showed significant improvement in both reading and math—although those gains diminished slightly as the children got older. The bad news is that the baseline year of 1978 represents the nadir of the test score decline from the mid-1960s through the 1970s. Probably we are today about where we were in math achievement in the 1960s. For reading, the story is even bleaker. The small gains among fourth graders diminish by eighth grade and vanish by the twelfth grade. And once again, the baseline tests in the 1970s represent a nadir.

From 1942 through the 1990s, the state of Iowa administered a consistent and comprehensive test to all of its public school students in grade school, middle school, and high school—making it, to my knowledge, the only state in the union to have good longitudinal data that go back that far. The Iowa Test of Basic Skills offers not a sample, but an entire state population of students. What can we learn from a single state? Not much, if we are mainly interested in the education of minorities—Iowa from 1942 through 1970 was 97 percent white, and even in the 2010 census was 91 percent white. But, paradoxically, that racial homogeneity is also an advantage, because it sidesteps all the complications associated with changing ethnic populations.

Since retention through high school has changed greatly over the last 70 years, I will consider here only the data for ninth graders. What the data show is that when the federal government decided to get involved on a large scale in K-12 education in 1965, Iowa’s education had been improving substantially since the first test was administered in 1942. There is reason to think that the same thing had been happening throughout the country. As I documented in my book, Real Education, collateral data from other sources are not as detailed, nor do they go back to the 1940s, but they tell a consistent story. American education had been improving since World War II. Then, when the federal government began to get involved, it got worse.

I will not try to make the case that federal involvement caused the downturn. The effort that went into programs associated with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 in the early years was not enough to have changed American education, and the more likely causes for the downturn are the spirit of the 1960s—do your own thing—and the rise of progressive education to dominance over American public education. But this much can certainly be said: The overall data on the performance of American K-12 students give no reason to think that federal involvement, which took the form of the Department of Education after 1979, has been an engine of improvement.

What about the education of the disadvantaged, especially minorities? After all, this was arguably the main reason that the federal government began to get involved in education—to reduce the achievement gap separating poor children and rich children, and especially the gap separating poor black children and the rest of the country.

The most famous part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was Title I, initially authorizing more than a billion dollars annually (equivalent to more than $7 billion today) to upgrade the schools attended by children from low-income families. The program has continued to grow ever since, disposing of about $19 billion in 2010 (No Child Left Behind has also been part of Title I).

Supporters of Title I confidently expected to see progress, and so formal evaluation of Title I was built into the legislation from the beginning. Over the years, the evaluations became progressively more ambitious and more methodologically sophisticated. But while the evaluations have improved, the story they tell has not changed. Despite being conducted by people who wished the program well, no evaluation of Title I from the 1970s onward has found credible evidence of a significant positive impact on student achievement. If one steps back from the formal evaluations and looks at the NAEP test score gap between high-poverty schools (the ones that qualify for Title I support) and low-poverty schools, the implications are worse. A study by the Department of Education published in 2001 revealed that the gap grew rather than diminished from 1986—the earliest year such comparisons have been made—through 1999.

That brings us to No Child Left Behind. Have you noticed that no one talks about No Child Left Behind any more? The explanation is that its one-time advocates are no longer willing to defend it. The nearly-flat NAEP trendlines since 2002 make that much-ballyhooed legislative mandate—a mandate to bring all children to proficiency in math and reading by 2014—too embarrassing to mention.

In summary: the long, intrusive, expensive role of the federal government in K-12 education does not have any credible evidence for a positive effect on American education.

* * *

I have chosen to focus on K-12 because everyone agrees that K-12 education leaves much to be desired in this country and that it is reasonable to hold the government’s feet to the fire when there is no evidence that K-12 education has improved. When we turn to post-secondary education, there is much less agreement on first principles.

The bachelor of arts degree as it has evolved over the last half-century has become the work of the devil. It is now a substantively meaningless piece of paper—genuinely meaningless, if you don’t know where the degree was obtained and what courses were taken. It is expensive, too, as documented by the College Board: Public four-year colleges average about $7,000 per year in tuition, not including transportation, housing, and food. Tuition at the average private four-year college is more than $27,000 per year. And yet the B.A. has become the minimum requirement for getting a job interview for millions of jobs, a cost-free way for employers to screen for a certain amount of IQ and perseverance. Employers seldom even bother to check grades or courses, being able to tell enough about a graduate just by knowing the institution that he or she got into as an 18-year-old.

So what happens when a paper credential is essential for securing a job interview, but that credential can be obtained by taking the easiest courses and doing the minimum amount of work? The result is hundreds of thousands of college students who go to college not to get an education, but to get a piece of paper. When the dean of one East Coast college is asked how many students are in his institution, he likes to answer, “Oh, maybe six or seven.” The situation at his college is not unusual. The degradation of American college education is not a matter of a few parents horrified at stories of silly courses, trivial study requirements, and campus binge drinking. It has been documented in detail, affects a large proportion of the students in colleges, and is a disgrace.

The Department of Education, with decades of student loans and scholarships for university education, has not just been complicit in this evolution of the B.A. It has been its enabler. The size of these programs is immense. In 2010, the federal government issued new loans totaling $125 billion. It handed out more than eight million Pell Grants totaling more than $32 billion dollars. Absent this level of intervention, the last three decades would have seen a much healthier evolution of post-secondary education that focused on concrete job credentials and courses of studies not constricted by the traditional model of the four-year residential college. The absence of this artificial subsidy would also have let market forces hold down costs. Defenders of the Department of Education can unquestionably make the case that its policies have increased the number of people going to four-year residential colleges. But I view that as part of the Department of Education’s indictment, not its defense.

* * *

What other case might be made for federal involvement in education? Its contributions to good educational practice? Think of the good things that have happened to education in the last 30 years—the growth of homeschooling and the invention and spread of charter schools. The Department of Education had nothing to do with either development. Both happened because of the initiatives taken by parents who were disgusted with standard public education and took matters into their own hands. To watch the process by which charter schools are created, against the resistance of school boards and administrators, is to watch the best of American traditions in operation. Government has had nothing to do with it, except as a drag on what citizens are trying to do for their children.

Think of the best books on educational practice, such as Howard Gardner’s many innovative writings and E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Curriculum, developed after his landmark book, Cultural Literacy, was published in 1987. None of this came out of the Department of Education. The Department of Education spends about $200 million a year on research intended to improve educational practice. No evidence exists that these expenditures have done any significant good.

As far as I can determine, the Department of Education has no track record of positive accomplishment—nothing in the national numbers on educational achievement, nothing in the improvement of educational outcomes for the disadvantaged, nothing in the advancement of educational practice. It just spends a lot of money. This brings us to the practical question: If the Department of Education disappeared from next year’s budget, would anyone notice? The only reason that anyone would notice is the money. The nation’s public schools have developed a dependence on the federal infusion of funds. As a practical matter, actually doing away with the Department of Education would involve creating block grants so that school district budgets throughout the nation wouldn’t crater.

Sadly, even that isn’t practical. The education lobby will prevent any serious inroads on the Department of Education for the foreseeable future. But the answer to the question posed in the title of this talk—“Do we need the Department of Education?”—is to me unambiguous: No.

END

Charles Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He received his B.A. in history at Harvard University and his Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has written for numerous newspapers and journals, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, and National Review. His books include Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, What It Means to Be a Libertarian, and Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality. His new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, will be published at the end of January.

Copyright © 2011 Hillsdale College. Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College. Read More......

Congress Must Fight Back Against Obama’s Unconstitutional Recess Appointments

WASHINGTON POST, 1/5/2012 by Edwin Meese III and Todd Gaziano, Obama’s recess appointments are unconstitutional

President Obama’s attempt to unilaterally appoint three people to seats on the National Labor Relations Board and Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (after the Senate blocked action on his nomination) is more than an unconstitutional attempt to circumvent the Senate’s advise-and-consent role. It is a breathtaking violation of the separation of powers and the duty of comity that the executive owes to Congress. [...] If Congress does not resist, the injury is not just to its branch but ultimately to the people. James Madison made clear that the separation of powers was not to protect government officials’ power for their sake but as a vital check on behalf of individual liberty. To prevent future tyrannical usurpations of power, Congress must act to redress this serious threat to our liberty. Read more at Washington Post...

Read More......

Obama’s Coup to Overthrow the Constitution

54°40′ Or Fight! A media watchdog in Oregon, 1/7/2012 by Conservative Mom - The mask is off, and so are the gloves. ✧ Obama and his Leftist supporters see their window of opportunity to finally dispense with our constitutional republic and permanently install a ruling class that will “fundamentally transform” the country we love into their Socialist Utopia. They can almost see the finish line. ✧ We can’t say were weren’t warned.

The week before the 2008 election, Obama promised his supporters that he was “only five days away from fundamentally transforming this nation.”

In his 2011 State of the Union address, Obama bemoaned that our “messy” and “contentious” system makes things “harder because we…argue about everything,” a clear shot at the members of our co-equal branches of government who dared to assert their constitutional authority to represent the American people rather than bend the knee to the Executive branch’s every whim.

He then admiringly observed: Read more at 54°40′ Or Fight!...

You'll find a timeline of Obama's constitutional abuses in this article --bc Read More......

Obama's Tyrannical Abuse of Power

HERITAGE.ORG/THE FOUNDRY/MORNING BELL, 1/5/2012 by Mike Brownfild (Hat tip: Jean Nelson) - Standing behind a podium on a stage just outside Cleveland, President Barack Obama delivered a speech yesterday that will reverberate throughout history. No, its lasting impact will not come because of its soaring rhetoric. Instead, it will make its mark because it was at that moment on a Wednesday afternoon in Ohio that the President announced his plans to act in total and utter disregard of the U.S. Constitution with his illegal appointment of Richard Cordray to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Read more at Heritage.org... Read More......

Knight: Obama tears up the Constitution

WASHINGTON TIMES, 9/16/2011 by Robert Knight (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - The scope of his lawless disregard expands by the day.  [Excerpt]: In his two years and nine months in office, President Obama has compiled a spectacular record of noncompliance with the Constitution. Here are just some of the ways his administration has failed to execute the laws while using raw, unauthorized power: Read more at the Washington Times... Read More......

IBD: No Place for Gov't

IBD EDITORIAL, 9/14/2011 - Health Care: Another federal judge has ruled that ObamaCare's individual mandate is unconstitutional. It's hard to see how a court could possibly decide any other way. ✧ Presiding in Harrisburg, Pa., district court Judge Christopher Conner ruled Tuesday that the law's individual mandate that requires those who don't have health care insurance to buy it "cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny." Read more at Investors Business Daily... Read More......

WND: Obama slips DREAM Act amnesty past Congress

A new enforcement memo handed down by the director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week has some accusing the White House of running around Congress to implement the DREAM Act – and consequent amnesty for some illegal immigrants – by executive fiat. Read more at World Net Daily... Read More......

Federal Judge Declares Obamacare Unconstitutional

1/31/2011 - Florida judge, Roger Vinson, rules that health care law is unconstitutional and says the entire act must be declared void, a decision that will likely rest with the U.S. Supreme Court. Read more at FOX News...

Judge Vinson's decision. Read More......

From Landmark Legal Foundation on ObamaCare

FACEBOOK, 12/13/2010 by Mark Levin - Today Federal District Judge Henry Hudson ruled against the Obama Administration on three essential points involving Obamacare:

1. Individuals who do not actively participate in commerce -- that is, who do not voluntarily purchase health insurance -- cannot be said to be participating in commerce under the United States Constitution's Commerce Clause, and there is no Supreme Court precedent providing otherwise... Continued on Facebook or below

2. The Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution cannot be used as a backdoor means to enforce a statute that is not otherwise constitutional under Congress's enumerated powers;

and 3. There is a difference between a tax and a penalty, there is much Supreme Court precedent in this regard, and the penalty provision in Obamacare is not a tax but a penalty and, therefore, is unconstitutional for it is applied to individuals who choose not to purchase health care.

Judge Hudson's ruling against the Obama Administration and for the Commonwealth of Virginia gives hope that the rule of law and the Constitution itself still having meaning. Landmark Legal Foundation has filed several amicus briefs in this case, at the request of the Commonwealth, and will continue to provide support in the likely event the Commonwealth is required to defend this decision in the Fourth Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court. Landmark would also like to congratulate Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and the excellent lawyers in his office for their superb legal skills.

Landmark President Mark R. Levin declared: "It is a great day for the rule of law and the citizenry. Judge Hudson's ruling is ironclad, and General Cuccinelli deserves an enormous amount of credit for taking on this mater. We look forward to continuing to work with him." Read More......

Don't let government take over all U.S. water!

Senate Bill 787 will change federal jurisdiction over "navigable" water, to give the federal government control over all water everwhere, in municiple reservoirs, and on private lands, and in private wells. This bill ignores state water law authority and the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Learn more at http://sovereignty.net.

Write or call your senators today!

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D) - DC (202) 224-3753, Salem (503) 362-8102
Sen. Ron Wyden (D) - DC (202) 224-5244, Salem (503) 589-4555

(Hat tip: Jerry Jackson - "S-787 - Clean Water Restoration Act - will give the federal government jurisdiction over all water, everywhere, as well as jurisdiction over all activity that affects water wherever it may be. This would give to the federal government effective control over every square inch of land in the United States. It too, must be stopped.") Read More......

The Obama Experts vs. the Rule of Law

HERITAGE FOUNDATION/FOUNDRY/MORNING BELL, 10/4/2010 - Last week President Barack Obama’s most recently minted czar, Special Advisor to the President for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Elizabeth Warren, spoke to 400 bankers at the swanky Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, DC. Her message, according to The Washington Post: “Behave, play nice, and we’ll get along just fine.” Specifically, Warren promised to take a more “principles-based approach” to regulation, rather than clearly articulating “thou shalt not” rules that banks could rely on. For this Progressive White House, an enlightened expert, like Warren, given broad new powers by an unaccountably vague statute is exactly what the federal government needs to enforce order on our complex modern world. For our Founding Fathers, however, everything about Warren, from the way she attained her new powers to the way she plans to use them, is antithetical to our nation’s First Principles and the United States Constitution. Read more at the Foundry... Read More......

Sowell: Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny?

INVESTORS.COM (IBD) News & Analysis, 6/21/2010 by Thomas Sowell (Hat tip: Jean Nelson) - "When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics. ∴ Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions. ∴ "Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union. ∴ Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive. ∴ In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.

The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.

Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.

And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP's oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated.

But our government is supposed to be "a government of laws and not of men."

If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion — or $50 billion or $100 billion — then so be it.

But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without "due process of law."

Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that is a distinction without a difference.

With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.

If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in constitutional government." Read More......

Unlawful health reform?

WASHINGTON POST, 11/19/2009 by George F. Will (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - In 2006, long before there was an Obama administration determined to impose a command-and-control federal health-care system, a young orthopedic surgeon walked into the Goldwater Institute here with an idea. The institute, America's most potent advocate of limited government, embraced Eric Novack's idea for protecting Arizonans from health-care coercion. In 2008, Arizonans voted on Novack's proposed amendment to the state's Constitution:

"No law shall be passed that restricts a person's freedom of choice of private health care systems or private plans of any type. No law shall interfere with a person's or entity's right to pay directly for lawful medical services, nor shall any law impose a penalty or fine, of any type, for choosing to obtain or decline health care coverage or for participation in any particular health care system or plan."

Proponents were outspent five to one by opponents who argued, meretriciously, that it would destroy Arizona's Medicaid program, with which many insurance companies have lucrative contracts. Nevertheless, the proposition lost by only 8,687 votes out of 2.1 million cast, and Arizonans will vote on essentially the same language next November. Read more at the Washington Post...

John says, "Even i[f] something passes, it is not over." Read More......

White House Gag Order: EPA Workers Question Cap and Trade

Read More......

An Unconstitutional Nobel

WASHINGTON POST, 10/16/2009, By Ronald D. Rotunda and J. Peter Pham (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - People can, and undoubtedly will, argue for some time about whether President Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Meanwhile, though, there's a simpler and more immediate question: Does the Constitution allow him to accept the award? ∴ Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, the emolument clause, clearly stipulates: "And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State." ∴ The award of the peace prize to a sitting president is not unprecedented. But Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson received the honor for their past actions: Roosevelt's efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War, and Wilson's work in establishing the League of Nations. Obama's award is different. It is intended to affect future action. As a member of the Nobel Committee explained, the prize should encourage Obama to meet his goal of nuclear disarmament. It raises important legal questions for the second time in less than 10 months -- questions not discussed, much less adequately addressed anywhere else. [Emphasis added] Read more at the Washington Post...

John wrote, "An Emolument? I hope this goes to court." Read More......