Picking Apart One of the Biggest Lies in American Politics: “Free Trade”

In 1992, Ross Perot won almost 20% of the entire presidential vote on the single issue of stopping so-called “free trade.” Today, several presidential candidates are gaining huge traction with similar opposition to NAFTA, CAFTA, and the upcoming Southern Hemisphere Asian Free Trade Agreement (SHAFTA, now called the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP).

Time has proven Perot right, and his arguments were consistent with a long history of American industrial success prior to the “free trade” era of the past 30+ years.

Our radical experiment of so-called “free trade” has clearly failed America, although few Americans know why or how. Here’s the back-story.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/08/picking-apart-one-of-the-biggest-lies-in-american-politics-free-trade.html

United States Ranks 20th on New Human Freedom Index

The Human Freedom Index presents the state of human freedom in the world based on a broad measure that encompasses personal, civil, and economic freedom. Human freedom is a social concept that recognizes the dignity of individuals and is defined here as negative liberty or the absence of coercive constraint. Because freedom is inherently valuable and plays a role in human progress, it is worth measuring carefully. The Human Freedom Index is a resource that can help to more objectively observe relationships between freedom and other social and economic phenomena, as well as the ways in which the various dimensions of freedom interact with one another.

The report is co-published by the Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute, and the Liberales Institut at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.

The index published here presents a broad measure of human freedom, understood as the absence of coercive constraint. It uses 76 distinct indicators of personal and economic freedom in the following areas:

Rule of Law
Security and Safety
Movement
Religion
Association, Assembly, and Civil Society
Expression
Relationships
Size of Government
Legal System and Property Rights
Access to Sound Money
Freedom to Trade Internationally
Regulation of Credit, Labor, and Business

http://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index

GOP Head of Benghazi Probe Complained About ‘Overclassification’ of Documents

Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, wrote to the State Department in July alleging that certain Benghazi-related documents provided to the committee are "unnecessarily" and "improperly" marked as classified.

Gowdy's letter, obtained by National Journal, was sent just weeks before the controversy over Hillary Clinton's emails intensified with fresh questions about the extent and sensitivity of classified information in her private email system. Gowdy, along with many other Republicans, has said the presence of classified information in the private email system Clinton used as secretary of State may have jeopardized national security.

But some experts believe that overclassification by the intelligence community—that is, needless classification of documents that would not harm security if made public—may be occurring with messages in Clinton's system.

Gowdy also believes some documents are unnecessarily labeled as classified. In this case, Gowdy was concerned with documents connected with the outside panel largely selected by the State Department that reviewed the 2012 Benghazi attack.

"There appear to be substantial issues with respect to the April production of documents related to the Benghazi Accountability Review Board," Gowdy wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry on July 8.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/gop-head-of-benghazi-probe-complained-about-over-classification-of-documents-20150821

IMMIGRATION EXCUSES

One of the most lame excuses for doing nothing is that we can’t do everything. Such excuses have been repeated endlessly, even by some conservatives, when it comes to illegal immigration.

We can’t deport millions of illegal immigrants already living in the country, some say, so the wise thing is to just learn to live with them, according to the supposedly sophisticated crowd.

This completely sidesteps the plain, obvious, and galling fact that we are not deporting those illegal immigrants who are arrested by the police for violating other laws — and are then turned loose back into American society. In so-called “sanctuary cities” across the country, local police are under orders not to report illegal immigrants to the federal authorities.

Nobody has a right to obstruct justice when it comes to federal laws — not even the President of the United States, as Richard Nixon discovered when he had to resign after Democrats threatened him with impeachment and Republican Senators told him that they would not defend him.

http://spectator.org/articles/63831/immigration-excuses

Term limits for the Supreme Court?

Term limits are among the reforms being proposed by advocates of curbing federal government abuses through the Constitution’s Article V amendment process.

The idea of congressional term limits has been around for some time.  But more recent discussion centers on term limits for the judiciary, especially for the Supreme Court.

In fact, one application for an amendments convention now making the rounds – the Convention of States Application sponsored by Citizens for Self-Governance – is broad enough to include judicial term limits.  Although a fairly new offering, it already has been approved by the legislatures of four of the necessary 34 states.

Part of what is driving the talk of judicial term limits is the Supreme Court’s continued failure to honor important parts of the U.S. Constitution.  Admittedly, the Court does a pretty good job interpreting some parts of the document.  The Intellectual Property Clause is one example.  Moreover, the current Court is certainly more conscientious in constitutional cases than the rogue justices who dominated the bench throughout much of the 20th century, who re-wrote critical portions of the Constitution to suit themselves.



http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/08/term_limits_for_the_supreme_court.html

House lawsuit against Obama is turning into a real problem for the president

An unprecedented House lawsuit against President Obama that was once derided as a certain loser looks stronger now and may soon deliver an early legal round to Republican lawmakers complaining of executive branch overreach.
A federal judge is expected to decide shortly whether to dismiss the suit, but thanks to an amended complaint and a recent Supreme Court ruling, the Republican-backed case has a much better chance of proceeding, attorneys agree.
At issue is whether the House may sue in court to defend its constitutionally granted "power of the purse" if the president spends money that was not appropriated by Congress.
The lawsuit alleges that Obama's top aides quietly claimed the power to spend $178 billion over the next decade to reimburse health insurers for covering the cost of co-payments for low-income people who buy subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
The administration initially submitted a request for an annual appropriation — about $4 billion last year — but then changed course. Officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, decided the so-called cost-sharing payments to insurers were mandatory and were akin to an entitlement written into law, so there was no need to seek additional approval from Congress.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-obama-lawsuit-20150820-story.html

TSA Spent $160 Mil For Scanners With A 96% Failure Rate

Air Travel: When Congress decided to let the federal government take over airport security in the wake of 9/11, critics said it would only make matters worse. Fourteen years later, it looks like the critics had it exactly right.
On Monday, Politico broke the news that the federally run TSA has spent $160 million — or more than $150,000 per unit — on body scanners meant to prevent fliers from bringing contraband onto planes.
And what did taxpayers get for their money?
A recent security audit found that TSA scanners failed to stop explosives and weapons 96% of the time.
Sen. Ron Johnson said that the scanners "weren't even catching metal." That's worse than the TSA did in 2004-05, when it screening process missed "only" 70% of the time.
This is just the latest in a long string of alarming TSA failures in fielding technology, screening workers and keeping its workers from abusing passengers.

 http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/081715-766913-tsa-has-made-airport-security-worse-than-private-system.htm#ixzz3jAjaAaWK