"Equality" Demands in the State of Georgia

This week, the State of Georgia's Legislature passed a Bill addressing the issue of LGBT persons using the restroom facilities of the opposite sex, according to their birth gender. If signed by Georgia Governor, Nathan Deal, several entertainment companies including Disney and Tyler Perry Productions have stated that if the Bill is indeed signed, that they will pull out of the State, taking their production business elsewhere. Their gripe? Because they are all for "Equality" in all its forms, and against intolerance towards those of various sexual persuasions or identities. In other words, they are basically demanding that anyone of the LGBT ilk be allowed to use the public restroom facilities of their 'chosen' gender identity.
Forget the fact that this poses the traumatizing risk of children being exposed to things they just should be made to see, there is the very real probability that such allowances will pose the risk of pedophiles and other sexual predators to legally enter the bathroom of their potential victims. How is this OK with these companies who demand this so-called "equality?"
The issue is definitely a 'Hot Button' topic, and I immediately sat down and wrote the following comment to a story on today's MSN:

So, in the name of "equality" these companies and various celebrities would infringe on the rights of the vast 99% who don't want themselves or their children exposed to this vast minority of just 1% who seek to dictate to everyone else what is fair and acceptable. How about coming up with a solution that doesn't infringe on the 99% who see this as either a Freedom of Religion issue, or simply what is right, and what is blatantly wrong...or both.

It's because of the vast minority dictating to the vast majority that the Pledge of Allegiance is no longer recited in our public schools; that a student wishing to say a prayer over school lunch is prohibited; that our Freedom of Religion, as guaranteed in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, is on the brink of collapse; that the ACLU wrongly coerces school districts across the nation into banning Christmas references, and other religious activities in our schools; and that public displays of the Ten Commandments are being torn up from city hall's across the country.

Oh! Someone is offended! Now, they are going to make the entire country bend to their will, rather than displaying basic human understanding and compassion and allowing the vast majority to do, say and worship as they expect to be able to. You know...those pesky freedoms included in our Founding documents.

The Obama Administration Misrepresents the Constitution...Again.

With the recent death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a vacancy on the High Court needs to be filled which is the job of the President to Nominate a successor, but the job of the US Senate to Accept or Reject the candidate at all.

US Senator Mike Lee (R), Utah, highlights the misrepresentation of the Obama Administration of the issue to the American people in the text of his weekly address to his constituents as follows:

Chairman's Note: The People Should Determine What Kind of Supreme Court They Wish to Have

The opening words of the Preamble to the United States Constitution are familiar to us all: “We the People.” But what exactly do they mean?

It was by “the People” that the Constitution was written and ratified. It is for “the People” that my colleagues and I, along with every other public official across these United States, now serve. And it was on behalf of “the People” that the Constitution established “one supreme Court,” consisting of judges appointed “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.”

Since the tragic passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, there has been a great deal of debate about this particular provision of the Constitution.

But there should be no controversy. The text of our founding charter is clear: The president has full and complete power to nominate individuals to the Supreme Court, and the Senate has full and complete power to confirm nominees or to withhold consent.
It’s as simple as that. Indeed, the Senate retains complete discretion with respect to whether it should even consider – much less accept or reject – presidential nominees.

This should not be controversial. It is how virtually every student of the Constitution – and nearly every member of Congress – has understood the Senate’s power of “Advice and Consent” for the past 228 years since the Constitution was ratified.

But now, with the presidential election in full swing, President Obama and his allies in Congress and the media claim the opposite is true. As they tell it, the Senate is constitutionally obligated to hold hearings and to vote on the candidate that President Obama eventually nominates to replace Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court.

I respectfully dissent.

"It’s as simple as that. Indeed, the Senate retains complete discretion with respect to whether it should even consider – much less accept or reject – presidential nominees."

If this a-textual and a-historical account of the Constitution were accurate, then prior Senates violated the Constitution when they did not cast up-or-down votes on Supreme Court nominees. Even the Standing Rules of the Senate would be suspect, contemplating as they do that “[n]ominations neither confirmed nor rejected during the session at which they are made shall not be acted upon at any succeeding session without being again made to the Senate by the President...”

Neither does the prospect of a temporary eight-member Court raise concern. For instance, during the Court’s 2010-2011 term, the Court decided over 30 cases with eight or fewer justices, almost entirely as a result of recusals arising from Justice Kagan’s nomination. Similarly, following the retirement of Justice Powell in 1987, the Court acted on 80 cases with eight or fewer justices.

In short, the sky does not fall when the Court comprises only eight justices. As Justice Breyer recently stated, the work of the court “[f]or the most part...will not change.”

With the future of the Supreme Court now at stake, and the election for our next president already well underway, it is the People who should determine what kind of Supreme Court they wish to have. The president is entitled, of course, to discharge his own constitutional authority to nominate. But the Senate is equally entitled to withhold consent and protect the People’s voice.

As James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers, "ambition must counteract ambition. And the People should decide."

President Obama's Latest Attempt to Bypass Congress

The recent FBI order to coerce Apple (inc) to write backdoor software to break into the phones of the San Bernardino shooters as a part of its investigation as been met with wall of resistance by Apple, stating it refuses to unlock the phones due to very real and worrying Governmental intrusion into privacy of its citizens that our Government is sworn to protect. Apple has used the courts to block the injunction served by the FBI, and has publicly stated that it will never unlock the phones.
President Obama, in his ever-present desire to rule as an uncrowned Monarch, has pulled out an antiquated, seldom used law from 1789 called the All Writs Act which compels law enforcement to demand technology from a company in the course of its investigation.

As Written into Law:

"The All Writs Act is a United States federal statute, codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1651, which authorizes the United States federal courts to "issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law."
(a) The Supreme Court and all courts established by Act of Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.
(b) An alternative writ or rule nisi may be issued by a justice or judge of a court which has jurisdiction.

Application of the All Writs Act requires the fulfillment of four conditions:^[3]

• The absence of alternative remedies—the act is only applicable when other judicial tools are not available.
• An independent basis for jurisdiction—the act authorizes writs in aid of jurisdiction, but does not in itself create any federal subject-matter jurisdiction.
• Necessary or appropriate in aid of jurisdiction—the writ must be necessary or appropriate to the particular case.
• Usages and principles of law—the statute requires courts to issue writs "agreeable to the usages and principles of law."

Example:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in United States v. New York Telephone Co. 434 U.S. 159 (1977) that the act provided authority for a U.S. District Court to order a telephone company to assist law enforcement officials in installing a device on a rotary phone in order to track the phone numbers dialed on that phone, which was reasonably believed to be used in furtherance of criminal activity.

Senator Mike Lee (R) Utah, has illustrated the Obama Administration's latest attempt to bypass Congress on this issue in his weekly communication with his (Lee's) constituents. This is another clear violation by Obama of the Founding Documents he has twice sworn to Uphold, Protect and Defend," which he has clearly lied about doing.

"After seven years in office, it is now very clear what President Obama does when Congress refuses to do his bidding: he simply ignores the lawmaking branch and tries to use raw power to change the law by fiat.

He did it on immigration to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. He did on education to force Common Core on the states. And now he is doing it again to try to rewrite our nation’s privacy laws.

In 1994, Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which determines the requirements facing technology companies when law-enforcement agencies want their help with criminal investigations.

Specifically, the law states that it “does not authorize any law enforcement agency or officer to require any specific design of equipment, features [...] or system configurations to be adopted by any [...] manufacturer of telecommunications equipment.”

In other words, a mobile phone manufacturer, like Apple, can’t be forced to create a backdoor key for law-enforcement agencies to use to access any phone they want.

For years President Obama sought to change this law, but Congress disagreed.

So when one of the San Bernardino terrorists failed to destroy one of his three mobile phones, which was owned by the county for which he worked, President Obama saw his chance to rewrite the law through the courts.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is now claiming in federal court that the All Writs Act, passed in 1789, empowers the law-enforcement agency to compel Apple to create new software that will allow to get FBI agents into the terrorist’s phone.

Earlier this week, in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, President Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, testified that there was no link between the president’s failure to change the law in Congress and the FBI’s decision to use the All Writs Act to achieve the same result through the courts.

But a federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, who received a similar All Writs Act request from the FBI exposed President Obama’s tactics. In a February 29 ruling, Magistrate Judge James Orenstein wrote: “It is also clear that the government has made the considered decision that it is better off securing such crypto-legislative authority from the courts (in proceedings that had always been, at the time it filed the instant Application, shielded from public scrutiny) rather than taking the chance that open legislative debate might produce a result less to its liking.”

“Indeed,” Orenstein continued, “on the very same day that the government filed the ex parte Application in this case [...] it made a public announcement that after months of discussion about the need to update CALEA to provide the kind of authority it seeks here, it would not seek such legislation.”

People of good faith can have honest disagreements about what tech companies should or should not be compelled to do by law enforcement. But the proper place for that debate and policymaking process is Congress, not the courts."

When will Congress collectively stand up and demand the President cease his assault on Congress and the Constitution? Frankly, after everything he has done, including his open defiance of Congress, I am surprised they have failed to address the Power Grab he so blatantly uses to get his way.