It’s not often I read a post which I believe echoes the sentiments of the majority of Americans.

This, however comes as close as I think I’ll ever get:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

We, the little people want you, our elected leadership to do just that, and only that.

form a more perfect union.
establish Justice.
insure domestic tranquility. *
provide for the common defense.
promote the general welfare.
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves** and our posterity

Those are the things that are charged in the preamble to the constitution, from which you derive your authority to legislate.

We don’t want you wasting your time, or our money making proclamations which do not serve us–for example, things like recognizing “Cuba solidarity day,” Honoring Arnold Palmer for his distinguished career in the sport of golf and his commitment to excellence and sportsmanship, Recognizing the importance of bicycling in transportation and recreation, National Day of the American Cowboy, Congratulating Albania and Croatia on Talks with NATO, et cetera. If you come across a resolution or proclamation that sounds good, but has no real impact on our lives, don’t bother with it.

We, the little people, are paying you for a service. The service you provide as a member of the legislative branch is to work as hard as you can to make our lives just a little bit better, within the bounds of the constitution. We don’t want you to use the money we give to the government to “create” jobs, as a capitalist democracy, we want you to encourage the free market to create jobs.

We, the little people, don’t want anyone in our nation to be denied basic needs of food, water, shelter, and clothing. We would rather donate our monies to charities that can assist those less fortunate, than to an enlarged government bureaucracy that does the same thing, just not as effectively.

There’s more at the link.

No matter your religious preferences, this statement by Mike Huckabee should be enough to make you take a step back and ask if you can support someone who would not be a President to all, but rather to those who have only his Christian beliefs.

Thanks to Rob at Say Anything for providing the video.

He offers these thoughts:

Now, I understand that Christians believe the word of God (as defined by the various denominations) is the ultimate truth. And I understand that Christians want to incorporate that truth as they see it in our laws. But what we need to remember is that while Christianity dominates America’s spiritual landscape not everyone in America is a Christian. We’ve got Jews and Muslims, Buddhists and atheists too. And they may not want the Constitution to reflect the word of God as Mike Huckabee sees it.

This is why our founding fathers put, in the very first amendment of the Constitution, a clause ensuring that our national government would be a secular government. They realized that all Americans should be free to practice the religion of their choice.

Do I believe that Mike Huckabee has a deep and abiding faith? Absolutely. I think the same of President Bush, but as President you must govern all equally.

Your thoughts?

There is a wonderful post up at Hillbilly Politics, explaining why our Constitution is just fine as it is.

Excerpts don’t begin to do this column justice, but I’ll give you the first claim by Larry Sabato and Hillbilly’s answer to it:

The presidential candidates are offering prescriptions for everything from Iraq to healthcare, but listen closely. Their fixes are situational and incremental. Meanwhile, the underlying structural problems in American politics and government are systemic and prevent us from solving our most intractable challenges.

If we really want to make progress and achieve greater fairness as a society, it is time for elemental change. And we should start by looking at the Constitution, with the goal of holding a new Constitutional Convention.

Sound radical? If so, then the founders were radicals. They would be amazed and disappointed that after 220 years, the inheritors of their Constitution had not tried to adapt to new developments that the founders could never have anticipated in Philadelphia in 1787.

Thomas Jefferson, for example, insisted that “no society can make a perpetual Constitution. … The Earth belongs always to the living generation. … Every Constitution … naturally expires at the end of 19 years” (the length of a generation in Jefferson’s time).

The Constitution remains brilliant in its overall design and sound with respect to the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers. But there are numerous archaic provisions that inhibit constructive change and adaptation. These constitutional bits affect the daily life of the republic and every citizen in it. A few examples:

The founding fathers and framers of the Constitution foresaw the need for changes based upon advancing societies. Therefore, they built in to the Constitution a mechanism for making those changes while safeguarding that changes could not be made arbitrarily upon the whims of a select few. It’s called a Constitutional Amendment ,of which the founding fathers made use of, and giving us the Bill of Rights. Before I address the taking of Thomas Jefferson’s statement out of context as the premise for the articles entire argument, I’d like to address the arguments presented.

Please do yourself a favor and read this excellent piece.

One of the things I admire most about Fred Thompson is that he is a clear and precise speaker/writer.

This article entitled “On Federalism” is yet another example of those attributes.

The Framers drew their design for our Constitution from a basic understanding of human nature. From the wisdom of the ages and from fresh experience, they understood the better angels of our nature, and the less admirable qualities of human beings entrusted with power.

The Framers believed in free markets, rights of property and the rule of law, and they set these principles firmly in the Constitution. Above all, the Framers enshrined in our founding documents, and left to our care, the principle that rights come from our Creator and not from our government.

We developed institutions that allowed these principles to take root and flourish: a government of limited powers derived from, and assigned to, first the people, then the states, and finally the national government. A government strong enough to protect us and do its job competently, but modest and humane enough to let the people govern themselves. Centralized government is not the solution to all of our problems and – with too much power – such centralization has a way of compounding our problems. This was among the great insights of 1787, and it is just as vital in 2007.

What a powerful statement from beginning to end and well worth taking the time to read.

HT: Instapundit

The Democratic House of Representatives is hell-bent on confrontations with the president as to what authority belongs to whom.

Now they are set to approve a bill that would fund the troops only until July, a scant two months away.

President Bush would veto a bill drafted by House Democratic leaders that would fund the Iraq war only into the summer months, his spokesman said Wednesday.

The Democrats’ proposal would pay for the war through July, then give Congress the option of cutting off money after that if conditions do not improve. Bush requested more than $90 billion to fund the war through September.

“There are restrictions on funding and there are also some of the spending items that were mentioned in the first veto message that are still in the bill,” White House press secretary Tony Snow said on Air Force One traveling with Bush.

Asked directly if Bush would veto the House bill in its current form, Snow said, “Yes.”

Bush vetoed an earlier bill because it set deadlines for U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq.

The new proposal is aimed at appeasing Democratic lawmakers who want to end the war immediately and are urging leaders not to back down after Bush’s veto. But lacking a firm endorsement by the Senate, the challenge by House Democrats seemed more for political show than a preview of another veto showdown with Bush.

If you know it’s going to be vetoed and you can’t override the veto, why engage in fruitless effort?

Congress has the power of the purse and, as such, can withdraw funding for the war at any time. If they don’t want to compromise to make our troops safe longer than two months then use the constitutional power they have and defund the war.

All this other nonsense is just that.

Big Mo has a wonderful post up at Hang Right Politics, showing us, according to James Madison, one of our founding fathers, why Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria which has been described by Rep. Tom Lantos as “an alternative Democrat foreign policy” is possibly going to get us into a constitutional crisis.

Some quotes:

For proof that what she and her party is doing is so outrageous, I give you none other than the father of the Constitution, James Madison, who explained the necessity for the separation of powers in Federalist #51:

But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

From Federalist #53, speaking on House members:

And although the House of Representatives is not immediately to participate in foreign negotiations and arrangements, yet from the necessary connection between the several branches of public affairs, those particular branches will frequently deserve attention in the ordinary course of legislation, and will sometimes demand particular legislative sanction and co-operation.

And in a speech on June 8, 1789, to the House, proposing the Bill of Rights:

The powers delegated by this constitution, are appropriated to the departments to which they are respectively distributed: so that the legislative department shall never exercise the powers vested in the executive or judicial; nor the executive exercise the powers vested in the legislative or judicial; nor the judicial exercise the powers vested in the legislative or executive departments.

No matter who the president is and no matter if we agree or disagree with his foreign policy it is his turf and his turf alone. Certainly not the turf of the Speaker of the House.