You did it. Thank you to those of you who heeded the call to contact U.S. Senators to encourage them to oppose the nomination of Goodwin Liu to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Senate refused to end debate (or end the conservative-led filibuster) by a vote of 52-43.

Not only did liberals fall eight votes short, but the final tally suggests that Democrat-controlled Senate would be unable to confirm the Obama nominee even if Liu did get an up-or-down vote. Liu was one of Obama’s most radical and inexperienced judicial nominees. Our members (and thousands of other grassroots conservatives) mobilized, and we stopped this judicial disaster in the making. After the vote, Prof. Liu asked President Obama to withdraw his nomination. Victory achieved!

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Even if you agree that Congress should have the right to order a citizen to purchase health care insurance on the basis of the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, you need to consider how this will expand the powers of the federal government to mandate other actions that you, your children and future generations may have to comply with.  Consider a party in power that disagrees with your ideology and imposes mandates on you to take actions opposite of your beliefs.  Can you visualize how allowing this mandate to stand is simply an abdication of individual liberty?

As the 4^th District Court of Appeals deliberates the issue as the next step in a journey that both sides agree will end up at the Supreme Court, we are reminded that part of the genius of our Constitution is in how it defined a government of enumerated powers.  Those powers, specifically granted to the government by the people, clearly subjugate the government to the people regardless of the political agenda of those in power at any point in time.  Previous interpretations of the commerce clause, and the general welfare clause, broadened the powers of the federal government but only to increase the reach of its power to tax.  While those interpretations are still discussed in some circles, the mandate for a citizen who chooses not to participate in commerce to purchase a service to benefit commerce is a significant increase in the power of the federal government.  It will reverse the balance of power in favor of the federal government, subjugating the people to the will of the particular party in power at any given time.

This slope is indeed a slippery one.  If a party comes to power and passes legislation to mandate citizens to pursue education and careers based on the overall benefit to the nation’s commerce, rather than individual choice, it will be able to have that legislation upheld based on the precedent this current mandate will establish.  It will be argued that if the nation needs engineers and chemists, citizens should be tested and those with aptitudes in those disciplines should be mandated to direct their lives accordingly.  The argument will be strengthened by suggesting that these citizens are going to pursue careers anyway and the nation’s commerce would be benefited by mandating the direction of their careers.  If citizens fail to comply, the government would impose financial penalties.

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It’s been revealed that the Obama White House is trying to beat Marco Rubio to keep Hispanic-Americans from having a choice when it comes to political parties. This is the second time Democrats have done this, and the fact that they’re willing to take down another minority candidate to do so shows that it’s the Democrats, not Republicans, who are trying to keep minorities down in America today.

With the White House’s approval, President Bill Clinton tried to convince Congressman Kendrick Meek—an African-American Democrat—to drop out of the U.S. Senate race in Florida, and support independent (and former liberal Republican) Charlie Crist.

They did this for one reason: They want to deny minorities a choice, deceiving them into thinking that only the Democratic Party cares about minorities. They are happy to take down minority candidates—even Democratic candidates—to perpetuate this falsehood.

This is the second time Democrats have done this to a Hispanic. In 2001, Miguel Estrada was nominated to a seat on the nation’s second-highest federal court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Estrada was an American success story, a child immigrant from Honduras who didn’t speak English, who went on to be a top graduate from Columbia, then Harvard Law School, later clerking for the Supreme Court and serving under the U.S. solicitor general in both Democratic and Republican administrations. He’s a partner at Gibson Dunn, one of America’s top law firms.

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) acknowledged Thursday it would launch a tough internet regulatory campaign aimed at reclassifying broadband lines under decades-old rules crafted for traditional phone networks, signaling a stark departure from the trial balloon some commissioners floated the same week that federal regulators would administer the Internet through the existing framework.

The suggestion, first reported Sunday by the Washington Post, that the Commission might forgo President Barack Obama’s goal of adopting so-called network neutrality rules triggered a firestorm among progressives and liberal special interests, who complained the Administration had caved in the face of broad public skepticism and intense business opposition.

In the wake of an appeals court ruling last month that demonstrated that the scope of the FCC’s regulatory control with regard to internet services was much more limited than the agency has argued, proponents of net neutrality demanded the FCC reclassify broadband as a Title II telecommunications service–a framework developed in the 1930s to regulate phone service–so that it fall within the preview of federal regulators.

In a memo to clients, Stanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffet wrote Wednesday the move to reclassify promises to have a “profoundly negative impact on capital investment.”

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In the wake of the Court of Appeals judgment last week that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lacks sufficient authority to regulate broadband services, senior congressional Democrats are reaffirming their support for alternative methods of executing what some critics charge would be a de facto government takeover of the internet.

Rep. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and co-author of the House’s Internet Freedom Preservation Act, said the FCC should “take any actions necessary to ensure that consumers and competition are protected on the internet,” and offered to “continue to work with my colleagues in Congress to provide the Commission any additional authority it may need to ensure the openness of the Internet for consumers, innovators and investors.”

Markey, like FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, is a backer of net neutrality, a policy that would inadvertently be instituted were the FCC to reclassify broadband services under existing rules relating to telephone services, and directly instituted were his bill passed and signed into law.

Fellow Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John Kerry, meanwhile, insisted that while it is within the authority of the FCC to reclassify broadband he is not advocating such aggressive action.

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