Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor came off as a 2nd Amendment defender when she was being questioned during her confirmation hearings. She voted the other way when a gun rights case came to The Court.

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As the saying goes, this would be funny, if it was not so serious.  As each day of the Obama Administration wears on, the disconnect between reality and the Administration, between America and Washington, just keeps growing.  Consider these examples among many:

The Bank Bill:  Does it bother anyone that the same Congress that is giving us $1.5 trillion deficits as far as the eye can see is writing a 2000 page bill telling banks how to balance their books?  Unfortunately, by almost all accounts but Congress’ – this bill will make lending more difficult, and therefore prolong our recession, at the same time it exposes America to more bailouts for lack of leverage reform.

Russia Spies:  According to a Justice Department official the charges are “’the tip of the iceberg’ of a Russian intelligence conspiracy against the United States.”  Obama knew about the charges prior to a meeting with the Russian President but there is no word on whether he brought it up let alone scolded the Russians.  To the contrary, according to the State Department: “the arrests merely show that the two countries have not yet reached the level of “trust and cooperation” where they can be completely open with one another” and Obama “had no “personal reaction” to the case and that the arrests should not hurt the administration’s attempts to mend fences with Moscow. “I do not believe that this will affect the reset of our relationship with Russia,” according to White House Spokesman Gibbs.  I am certain Putin (and Iran, the Taliban, and anyone else fighting the US) are so very relieved.

The Oil Spill.  Government regulations push oil drilling farther and farther offshore thereby making it a riskier undertaking.  BP takes even more risks and together we get an enormous spill.  Obama says he is in charge of the clean-up – literally – yet day after day after day (70 to be exact) Obama stopped skilled, foreign parties from helping and allowed the damage to increase well and way beyond what should have been the case.  Obama wants BP’s shareholders (they own BP and they are the people paying the price) to pay for it all but shouldn’t BP’s shareholders wonder why the US government made the problem worse and, therefore, demand what lawyers call a finding of comparative fault? – thereby making the US government (you and me) pay for some of the damage?

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The imperial presidency is back and bigger than ever. Over the past few months, President Obama has moved to expand his executive power over the United States;  he has gone around the people, the Congress, and the Judiciary to increase his power. The only real question is will he stop before he becomes “Czar Obama.”

Some of you might already be calling the guys in the white coats to come to my house,  to put me in one of those trench coats with the extra-long sleeves that tie in the back.  But before you make that call, take a look at the facts.

Going around the will of the people? Not only did the president push through the Obamcare bill over the will of the people, but he has ignored American voters demand to cut spending and cut taxes.

Rick Santelli voiced the frustration of the American people for being ignored by the President, when he ranted on CNBC, ‘Mr. President, cut spending.”

While the people have been asking for the President for a real jobs  effort, he has spent his time on issues that US voters do not want, such  as Obamacare, Cap and Trade, Buying GM and Chrysler.

When the president had a real crisis to deal with, the Gulf of Mexico oil  disaster, instead of fixing the problem he has concentrated on using  the disaster to pass his energy legislation.

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A New York Law School study released this month warns that tinkering with the broadband regulatory regime could spell the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and reduce GDP by $80 billion.

The study, authored by Charles Davidson and Bret Swanson, forecasts that the nation would hemorrhage 500,000 jobs in a best-case scenario were broadband reclassified as a Title II telecommunications service. That just so happens to be an objective currently under pursuit by members of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with support from backers of “net neutrality” policy.

The forecasted job losses are likely to make for unpleasant headlines for the FCC at a time when jobs and the economy remain paramount in the minds of most voters and legislators.

“Especially at time when the national economy is attempting to recover from a major and enduring downturn and private sector job creation remains a concern, the destabilizing impacts of the FCC’s proposals place the nation’s economy at even greater risk,” the study reads.

Telecommunications companies have for months now warned that a formal adoption of the FCC’s reclassification proposal could hamper innovation and infrastructure investment, and observers say this study could provide them with fresh ammunition in the fight against reclassification and net neutrality.

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A lot of things have gone wrong in the last 72 days since oil started spilling into the Gulf, and very few things have gone right. Unfortunately, the oil spilling into the Gulf is only one of many, many problems in the Gulf. There are the obvious problems of extremely polluted water, the oil soaked animals, the oil soaked beaches, the loss of tourism, the loss of jobs, and the loss of faith in the process that is supposed to ensure things like this never happen. But, why hasn’t the oil been cleaned up? Why is the leak still spewing oil into the Gulf? BP has their fair share of blame, but so does the federal government.

The government has had a lot of missteps. The EPA would not allow ships to skim oil from the water because they couldn’t get 100% of the oil out. They could only get 99% of the oil out. They failed to get rid of the horribly outdated Jones Act that forbids foreign vessels from helping us clean up the gulf. There have been plenty of problems with the way the Federal Government has reacted to the oil spill, but it’s never too late to start getting it right.

The Heritage Foundation has put together a list of things the Obama administration can do to mitigate the damage that the oil slick can still do. These are steps that can be taken immediately, and more items will be added to the list when appropriate. Simple things like waiving the Jones Act (as the Bush Administration did during Katrina), or accepting international assistance. Or allowing ships like the S.S. A-Whale–that has the capability to skim 500,000 barrels a day– to immediately start assisting efforts. It’s in the Gulf now, but it is still not being used.

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Allan Meltzer dissects Obama’s economic policy in today’s Wall Street Journal:

The administration’s stimulus program has failed. Growth is slow and unemployment remains high. The president, his friends and advisers talk endlessly about the circumstances they inherited as a way of avoiding responsibility for the 18 months for which they are responsible.

But they want new stimulus measures—which is convincing evidence that they too recognize that the earlier measures failed. And so the U.S. was odd-man out at the G-20 meeting over the weekend, continuing to call for more government spending in the face of European resistance.

The contrast with President Reagan’s antirecession and pro-growth measures in 1981 is striking. Reagan reduced marginal and corporate tax rates and slowed the growth of nondefense spending. Recovery began about a year later. After 18 months, the economy grew more than 9% and it continued to expand above trend rates.

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This is a photo of Dave Weigel.

Dave Weigel is holding a “Teabag Them Before They Teabag You” doll.

Dave was hired as the “conservative writer” for The Washington Post despite his leftist leanings.

Dave is also a member of JournoList.

Leftist media hack and WaPo journalist Ezra Klein founded Journolist with far left crank Joe Klein from TIME magazine in February of 2007. Klein admitted that Journolist was an “insulated space where the lure of a smart, ongoing conversation would encourage journalists, policy experts and assorted other observers to share their insights with one another.” But, you had to be a leftist to join this group. It was an exclusive club. And, it grew to include 400 of the most prominent leftist American journalists who shared ideas and helped spin the far left narrative in the state-run media. This is where far left cranks colluded to spit out the DNC’s talking points and to defend President Barack Obama’s radical agenda.

Last week Dave Weigel was outed as a member of Journolist and resigned from his position as “conservative writer” for The Washington Post. The left was hoping this would be the end of the story. They were wrong. Yesterday, Andrew Breitbart announced that he would reward $100,000 to anyone who could provide the full “JournoList” archive, source fully protected.

Of course, this was too enticing a story for the left to ignore. In response to the news of a reward, JournoList member Ben Smith mocked Breitbart on his popular blog at The Politico:

This is a classic case in which secrecy produces wild imaginings. There aren’t many good conspiracies involving 400 people, some of them ideologues, some columnists, some mainstream media types like me who enjoyed access to that conversation, as I sometimes enjoy access to private conservative conversations at venues like New York’s off-record conservative Monday Meeting.

But that’s also a lot of money for a working journalist. I called Breitbart just now with a modest proposal: I’d sell him my own 55 contributions to the list, many of them just copies of blog items, all fairly dull — for a mere $5,000.

Of course, Ben Smith doesn’t want the truth to get out about JournoList, so he deflected the story by using Alinsky tactic #5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon… You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.”

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Tomorrow, July 1st, I have the honor of co-hosting Move America Forward’s 3rd Annual Troopathon to raise money for care packages for our troops. The eight-hour broadcast, which will air live across the World Wide Web, will stream here at Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and Breitbart.TV from 4 p.m. to midnight, EDT. Please join us to show your support for our brave men and women fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere for our safety and for the freedom of people around the world. Here are the details from MAF:

The concept behind Troopathon is not a new idea, put on a Jerry Lewis style telethon to benefit a worthy cause, but a Troopathon is groundbreaking and innovative in that we bring together famous celebrities from radio, television, movie stars, musicians, journalists, and more to create a one-of-a-kind event with one purpose – to support our troops on the front lines in the war on terror and honor their service and sacrifice for our nation. (more…)

This week’s historic Supreme Court case on gun rights has pivotal implications for Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. From now on, the biggest battles over the Second Amendment will be won or lost in the Supreme Court.

In the 2008 case D.C. v. Heller, the Supreme Court held 5−4 that the Second Amendment secures an individual right to own a gun. But because the Bill of Rights only applies directly to federal laws (such as those in D.C.), Heller only made the Second Amendment a right against the federal government.

On June 28 of this year in McDonald v. Chicago, a new 5−4 Supreme Court decision held that the individual right to own a gun from Heller is a fundamental right, and as such extends through the Fourteenth Amendment as a right against state and local governments as well.

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent that Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor joined in full. (Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a separate dissent.) That dissent contains a telling revelation about Barack Obama’s Supreme Court.

When Sotomayor was nominated for the High Court last year, she was asked by Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D−VT) whether after Heller it is now a matter of settled law that the Second Amendment secures an individual right to own a gun. Her answer was clear and direct: “Yes, sir.”

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During the 1996 Illinois Senate race, an aspiring Chicago politician hired skilled attorneys to exploit election rules and challenge his primary opponents’ right to be placed on the ballot. This novice politician was Barack Obama who cut his teeth on Chicago politics and effectively removed his opponents from the ballot.

Not much has changed in Chicago since 1996 – politicians are still looking out for special interests, increasing taxes, and creating hurdles to keep legitimate candidates from the ballot.

I am Cedra Crenshaw and I am running for the Illinois Senate in the 43rd District. Until a few months ago, I was just one mom in a process of political evolution. After a brief career in auditing, my husband and I started a family and thus began the trifecta of marriage, mortgage, and motherhood which catapulted me into the conservative that I am today. I stepped from being reactive to pro-active when I ran for Precinct Committeeman this past February. I wanted to carry the message of conservatism to my neighbors and help influence my local party with my principles and values – but I’m just one mom.  I’m one mom who waited for someone to step forward and challenge incumbent State Senator Arthur Wilhelmi and force him to defend his record, which has helped to decimate this state. But no one came forward and I’m not waiting any longer. I’m going on offense. And today I’m one mom who is taking on the machine of Chicago patronage politics as represented by Senator Arthur Wilhelmi.

When I arrived on the scene as one mom against the Chicago political machine, it didn’t take career politicians and their hired help long to line up a challenge to my candidacy.

The Will County Electoral Board has heard a frivolous objection filed by Joliet resident Robert L. Davis which challenges the signatures on my nominating petitions. My opponent, State Sen. A.J. Wilhelmi is represented by Michael Kasper, who is one of the country’s top election attorneys. Kasper’s client list includes former President Bill Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, U.S. Rep. Michael Madigan, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Congressman Phil Hare and, that once aspiring Chicago politician, President Barack Obama.

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As we head into the July 4th holiday, we are once again reminded of our independence, our freedom, and as Carl Sandburg put it, “the pulse” of the people. Many have heard this song, but not all have seen the journey as documented by Big Government contributors Andrew Marcus and Maura Flynn.

This song should be an anthem for every proud American that has the courage to stand up against the forces that would take – or give – our precious liberties away – Dick Armey

Check out http://www.americanheartmusic.com as the song is helping raise money for wounded troops via the charity Ride2Recovery.

Below is a brief roundup of some of the Progressive-Marxist non-violent rioting that took place over the weekend in Toronto.

Progressive-Marxists hate the G20, and have declared it illegitimate.

The actions started with a raid on the University of Toronto campus, where “street weapons” were found, as were the black ‘uniforms’ of the Anarchy faction of the Progressive movement known as the “Black Bloc”.

More than 600 arrests as G20 protests swell

The day had begun with a raid during which security forces made 70 arrests at the University of Toronto campus in the early-morning hours. The Integrated Security Unit said they seized a “cache of weapons” including bricks and other “street weapons” as well as black clothing.

Here is another account of the University of Toronto’s role in the violence:

Student Union Provides Housing For Out Of Town Anarchists

Toronto Police raided the building and took about 70 people into custody.

“We’ve seized bottles with unknown substances inside, we’ve seized black clothing, bricks, sharpened sticks, items that you definitely do not need to spend any time in Toronto,” Constable Rob MacDonald said.

That’s the same type of weapons and clothing that violent protesters used in the downtown core.

President Bush was a big spender, but President Obama is taking profligacy to the next level. In his first year in office, Obama pushed through a pork-filled “stimulus” that was supposed to increase jobs and prosperity (at least according to the discredited Keynesian theory). Instead, the economy has been weak and unemployment increased. In his second year in office, Obama rammed through a giant new healthcare entitlement, in part based on the absurd claim that bigger government would reduce red ink (the Congressional Budget Office should be abolished for aiding and abetting that fraud). Now we just witnessed the amazing spectacle of Obama actually getting to the left of Europe’s socialist leaders and arguing with them at the G-20 summit that government spending should be even higher.

Unfortunately for taxpayers, government already is too big, and that is true on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. This new Center for Freedom and Prosperity video explains that there is a spending version of the Laffer Curve, and that it shows that government is much larger than the “growth-maximizing” level. As shown in the mini-documentary, academic research reveals that government spending should consume only 20 percent of gross domestic product. Thanks to the Bush-Obama spending spree, however, total government spending in America now amounts to about 40 percent of economic output.

It is quite likely, by the way, that the real growth-maximizing level of government spending is much lower than 20 percent of GDP. As noted in the video, the academic research is constrained by a lack of data for nations with small government. Free-market jurisdictions such as Hong Kong and Singapore enjoy the fastest growth, and they both have public sectors that consume about 20 percent of economic output,  so it should come as no surprise that scholars conclude that growth is maximized when government is about that size.

But what if there were nations with smaller levels of government? Indeed, the video shows that most nations in North America and Western Europe did have very small governments in the 1800s and early 1900s – often amounting to less than 10 percent of GDP. Does anyone actually think that the United States would have grown faster 100 years ago if the burden of government spending was doubled?

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“We had to put the Second Amendment over the First Amendment.” (7:21)

Yes, it’s common sense to credit the NRA for its involvement with the McDonald vs Chicago case and its fight for the Second Amendment, which, I think, would have been infringed upon even greater longer ago without the NRA.

However.

I don’t like what I’m seeing with the NRA on this – and their wish to protect the Second Amendment by way of seeking exemption under DISCLOSE is nullified if they traded exemption for silence on the hearing of an anti-gun Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan as part of of the deal.

You can’t be non-partisan because the Second Amendment, in current society, is not a bipartisan issue.

By silencing yourself, ironically, on an issue for exemption so that you don’t have to be silenced later on is playing with the First Amendment whether you realize it or not.

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I’ve had $100,000 burning in my pocket for the last three months and I’d really like to spend it on a worthy cause. So how about this: in the interests of journalistic transparency, and to offer the American public a unique insight in the workings of the Democrat-Media Complex, I’m offering $100,000 for the full “JournoList” archive, source fully protected. Now there’s an offer somebody can’t refuse.

Yes, the mainstream media that came together to play up the false allegations that the “N-Word” was hurled 15 times by Tea Party participants at the Congressional Black Caucus outside the Capitol the day before the “Obamacare” vote, is the same MSM that colluded to make sure the American public accepted the smear, and refused to show the exculpatory videos that disproved the incendiary charges of Tea Party racism.

Ezra Klein’s “JournoList 400” is the epitome of progressive and liberal collusion that conservatives, Tea Partiers, moderates and many independents have long suspected and feared exists at the heart of contemporary American political journalism. Now that collusion has been exposed when one of the weakest links in that cabal, Dave Weigel, was outed. Weigel was, in all likelihood, exposed because – to whoever the rat was who leaked his emails — he wasn’t liberal enough. (more…)

From today’s Politico:

The Democratic National Committee is seeking “Macaca” moments. The party today is opening a website, www.accountabilityproject.com, designed to recruit and display embarrassing audio and video of Republican candidates, as well as information about their schedules and copies of their mailers.

Campaigns have long made videotapes of each other, using “trackers” who follow the opposition from event to event. It was a young tracker who shot the video footage of then-Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) that wound up sinking his campaign.

The DNC hopes campaigns and journalists will use the footage in ads and news coverage. The site targets both 2010 candidates and 2012 hopefuls.

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The president’s recent disappointing oval office speech elicited a chorus of criticism from across the political spectrum.  For some reason the speech seems to have put a spotlight on the president as a leader, whereas other misjudgments in which he was directly involved in making policy had not.  The oil spill, which was certainly no fault of Mr. Obama, seems to have finally caused the public and many of his cheerleaders among the pundits to focus on the president’s substance and not his style.  That has been the unspoken, elephant-in- the-room, concern throughout his presidency, his aptitude for leadership.  We are reminded of the lead-in lyrics to the signature song Ethel Merman belts out in Gypsy… “Curtain up…light the lights…you either got it…or you ain’t.”

President Obama seems to have the curtain up, light the lights part down pat.  The dramatic campaign and convention stage sets, his world photo-op tours, his big oval-office backdrop to his little oval-office speech, and his ever-masterful use of the teleprompter have all produced a “strike-up-the-band” expectation whenever and wherever he appears. It’s the “you either got it, or you ain’t” part that seems finally to have focused the public on the president’s aptitude for leadership.

The befouling glob that threatens hundreds of miles of coast or, as Peggy Noonan put it recently so aptly in the Wall Street Journal, “the monster from under the sea,” seems to be a metaphor for the president’s inability to shape the world as he wants it to be.  Speeches are not a substitute for coherent policy.  The president, with the entire world watching his prime time speech, essentially punted.  He pulled from the presidential duck-and-cover arsenal the time-tested, yawn producer of presidents bereft of solutions to all manner of problems…the formation of a new blue-ribbon commission.  This was the cornerstone of his “battle plan” to face down the “siege” of big oil’s attack on our Gulf coast.

There is nothing more to be said about the quality of Mr. Obama’s oval-office speech debut.  It seems as if all the commentators from Chris Mathews, Keith Olberman and Jon Stewart on the left, to Mark Steyn, Charles Krauthammer and Karl Rove on the right have already done that.  Besides, there is something much more revealing that is apparent here.  It isn’t about the delivery by the man who gave the speech; it is, rather, about the man who delivered the speech.  The disappointing oval-office moment was more than just a lack of writing skill by some wordsmith presidential speechwriter; it focused the attention of the American people on the man himself and on what they hoped just wasn’t so; an apparent lack of the leadership aptitude which a president must possess if he or she is to succeed.

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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg might want to retool some of his immigration reform initiatives within his new national coalition, the Partnership for a New American Economy, and team up with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to tell the Federal Government to “do their job.”

Why?

Because the Mayor’s idea to give immigrant investors green cards to create jobs for Americans already exists. It’s called the EB-5 category for Immigrant Investors. In fact, the EB-5 has been on the books since 1990—that’s twenty years. The problem is the federal government-run United States Citizenship & Immigration Services’ (USCIS) inability to competently process applications.

It was last week when Mayor Bloomberg said on Fox News that he had suggested to the Obama Administration, “You say to immigrants who have money, and are entrepreneurs from around the world, ‘Come to America. We will give you a Green Card. If you start a business here and employ ten or more Americans, and as long as they are still working– you keep your Green Card.’ It matches our needs with their needs and everyone benefits.”

According to the United States Citizenship & Immigration Services:

The fifth employment based visa preference [EB-5 Immigrant Investor

Category], created by Congress in 1990, is available to immigrants seeking to enter the United States in order to invest in a new commercial enterprise that will benefit the US economy and create at least 10 full-time jobs…

Acquiring lawful permanent residence (“Green Card”) through the EB-5 category is a three step self-petitioning process…

To read more about EB-5 click here.

It’s unfortunate the Obama Administration didn’t have the courtesy to inform Mayor Bloomberg that his great idea was already on the books before he spoke publically about it.

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At long last the 2nd Amendment has been considered a personal right per the Supreme Court of the United States. In McDonald v the City of Chicago the Supreme Court has ruled in a 5 to 4 decision that Chicago’s gun banning laws are not in keeping with the right to self-defense as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. After 200 some years we are finally accorded our rights officially. Further, the Court found that the 2nd Amendment was meant to protect the very people that Mayor Richard Daley and his comrades are trying to forcibly disarm: black Americans.

The decision threw out the Seventh Circuit ruling upholding Chicago’s gun ban and ordered the Seventh to revisit its decision. This new ruling does not specifically strike down Chicago’s gun ban but the opinion leaves little room for the Seventh to up hold Mayor Richard Daley’s gun banning efforts.

One of the main questions before the Court was whether or not the 14th Amendment served to shore up the rights in the 2nd. The Court found that it did, indeed. In fact, it is interesting to note that the ancestors of the very people that the 14th Amendment was meant to specifically protect — newly freed slaves, called freemen — are today those that Mayor Richard Daley and others like him want to disarm. Daley and his ilk want to disempower blacks and other minorities and tie them plantation-like to their government authority.

In the majority opinion in the McDonald decision specifically notes the history of the 14th Amendment and its preceding basis for being the protector of the freemen.

After the Civil War, many of the over 180,000 African Americans who served in the Union Army returned to the States of the old Confederacy, where systematic efforts were made to disarm them and other blacks. The laws of some States formally prohibited African Americans from possessing firearms. For example, a Mississippi law provided that “no freed- man, free negro or mulatto, not in the military service of the United States government, and not licensed so to do by the board of police of his or her county, shall keep or carry fire-arms of any kind, or any ammunition, dirk or bowie knife.” (pg 23)

There was but one reason why freedmen were prohibited from having firearms and that was so that they would be unable to defend themselves against terrorists like the Klan or be able to enjoy the fruits of citizenship. Scalia notes that the Freedman’s Bureau began to add rules to its repertoire to specifically affirm the newly freed black’s right to self defense (pg 27).

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