Patience of many in Congress is wearing very thin as the criminal referral of Comey, Clinton, et al to DOJ for alleged violations of federal law begins to gain traction

The recent criminal referral by 11 House Republicans of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as several former and serving top FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials is a giant step toward a Constitutional crisis.

Named in the referral to the DOJ for possible violations of federal law are: Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey; former Attorney General Loretta Lynch; former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe; FBI Agent Peter Strzok; FBI Counsel Lisa Page; and those DOJ and FBI personnel “connected to” work on the “Steele Dossier,” including former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente.

With no attention from corporate media, the referral was sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah John Huber.  Sessions appointed Huber months ago to assist DOJ Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz.  By most accounts, Horowitz is doing a thoroughly professional job.  As IG, however, Horowitz lacks the authority to prosecute; he needs a U.S. Attorney for that.  And this has to be disturbing to the alleged perps.

This is no law-school case-study exercise, no arcane disputation over the fine points of this or that law. Rather, as we say in the inner-city, “It has now hit the fan.”  Criminal referrals can lead to serious jail time.  Granted, the upper-crust luminaries criminally “referred” enjoy very powerful support.  And that will come especially from the mainstream media, which will find it hard to retool and switch from Russia-gate to the much more delicate and much less welcome “FBI-gate.”

As of this writing, a full day has gone by since the letter/referral was reported, with total silence so far from The New York Times and The Washington Post and other big media as they grapple with how to spin this major development. News of the criminal referral also slipped by Amy Goodman’s non-mainstream DemocracyNow!, as well as many alternative websites.

The 11 House members chose to include the following egalitarian observation in the first paragraph of the letter conveying the criminal referral: “Because we believe that those in positions of high authority should be treated the same as every other American, we want to be sure that the potential violations of law outlined below are vetted appropriately.” If this uncommon attitude is allowed to prevail at DOJ, it would, in effect, revoke the de facto “David Petraeus exemption” for the be-riboned, be-medaled, and well-heeled.

Stonewalling

Meanwhile, the patience of the chairmen of House committees investigating abuses at DOJ and the FBI is wearing thin at the slow-rolling they are encountering in response to requests for key documents from the FBI.  This in-your-face intransigence is all the more odd, since several committee members have already had access to the documents in question, and are hardly likely to forget the content of those they know about.  (Moreover, there seems to be a good chance that a patriotic whistleblower or two will tip them off to key documents being withheld.)

The DOJ IG, whose purview includes the FBI, has been cooperative in responding to committee requests for information, but those requests can hardly include documents of which the committees are unaware.

Putting aside his partisan motivations, House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) was unusually blunt two months ago in warning of legal consequences for officials who misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to enable surveillance on Trump and his associates. Nunes’s words are likely to have sent chills down the spine of those with lots to hide: “If they need to be put on trial, we will put them on trial,” he said.”The reason Congress exists is to oversee these agencies that we created.”

Whether the House will succeed in overcoming the resistance of those criminally referred and their many accomplices and will prove able to exercise its Constitutional prerogative of oversight is, of course, another matter — a matter that matters greatly.

And Nothing Matters More Than the Media

The media will be key to whether this Constitutional issue is resolved.  Largely because of Trump’s own well earned reputation for lying, most Americans are susceptible to slanted headlines like this recent one — “Trump escalates attacks on FBI …” — from an article in The Washington Post, commiserating with the treatment accorded fired-before-retired prevaricator McCabe and the FBI he (dis)served.

Nor is the Post above issuing transparently clever warnings — like this one in a lead article on March 17: “Some Trump allies say they worry he is playing with fire by taunting the FBI. ‘This is open, all-out war. And guess what? The FBI’s going to win,’ said one ally, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. ‘You can’t fight the FBI. They’re going to torch him.’” [sic]

Mind-Boggling Criminal Activity

What motivated the characters now criminally “referred” is clear enough from a wide variety of sources, including the text messages exchange between Strzok and Page.  Many, however, have been unable to understand how these law enforcement officials thought they could get away with taking such major liberties with the law.

None of the leaking, unmasking, surveillance, “opposition research,” or other activities directed against the Trump campaign can be properly understood, if one does not bear in mind that it was considered a sure thing that Secretary Clinton would become President, at which point illegal and extralegal activities undertaken to help her win would garner praise, not prison.  The activities were hardly considered high-risk, because candidate Clinton was sure to win.

But she lost.

Comey himself gives this away in the embarrassingly puerile book he has been hawking, “A Higher Loyalty” — which amounts to a pre-emptive move motivated mostly by loyalty-to-self, in order to obtain a Stay-Out-of-Jail card.  Hat tip to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone for a key observation, in his recent article, “James Comey, the Would-Be J. Edgar Hoover,” about what Taibbi deems the book’s most damning passage, where Comey discusses his decision to make public the re-opening of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Comey admits, “It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the re-started investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in the polls.”

The key point is not Comey’s tortured reasoning, but rather that Clinton was “sure to be the next president.”  This would, of course, confer automatic immunity on those now criminally referred to the Department of Justice.  Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men — even very tall men.  One wag claimed that the “Higher” in “A Higher Loyalty” refers simply to the very tall body that houses an out-sized ego.

I think it can be said that readers of Consortiumnews.com may be unusually well equipped to understand the anatomy of FBI-gate as well as Russia-gate.  Listed below chronologically are several links that might be viewed as a kind of “whiteboard” to refresh memories.  You may wish to refer them to any friends or acquaintances who may still be confused.

2017

• Russia-gate’s Mythical ‘Heroes’ June 6, 2017
• The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate Oct. 29, 2017
• The Foundering Russia-gate ‘Scandal’ Dec. 13, 2017 
• What Did Hillary Clinton Know? Dec. 25, 2017

2018

• The FBI Hand Behind Russia-gate Jan. 11, 2018
• Will Congress Face Down the Deep State? Jan. 30, 2018
• Nunes Memo Reports Crimes at Top of FBI and DOJ Feb. 2, 2018
• ‘This is Nuts’: Liberals Launch ‘Largest Mobilization in History’ in Defense of Russiagate Probe Feb. 9, 2018
• Nunes: FBI and DOJ Perps Could Be Put on Trial Feb. 19, 2018
• ‘Progressive’ Journalists Jump the Shark on Russia-gate March 7, 2018
• Intel Committee Rejects Basic Underpinning of Russiagate March 14, 2018
• McCabe: A War on (or in) the FBI? March 18, 2018
• Former CIA Chief Brennan Running Scared March 19, 2018

 

[From an article published by CONSORTIUM NEWS]

 

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As always, posted for your edification and enlightenment by

NORM ‘n’ AL, Minneapolis
normal@usa1usa.com
612.239.0970

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Obama’s disastrous administration continues to haunt America

 

 

Obama was the worst president in American history.

He blundered through two terms in office with one disaster after another, but he made one huge mistake that just exploded into an international crisis.

In 2013, Obama laid down his famous “red line” about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons.

When Assad deployed those weapons against his own people, Obama did nothing to follow through.  Instead, he claimed to have negotiated a deal where Russia would remove all of Assad’s chemical weapon stockpiles.

This, of course, was another premeditated Obama lie.

Obama’s failure exploded into a mess that Donald Trump had to clean up.

Trump ordered a missile strike against Syria after Assad was alleged to have deployed chemical weapons that killed up to 40 people in a rebel stronghold.  The strike was praised as a success.

Trump supports an America First foreign policy of limited engagement and intervention in the Middle East, but he was forced to act in this instance because of Obama’s failures and lies.

Obama hired incompetents to negotiate on behalf of America.  And the Obama hacks completely failed to secure a deal that actually stripped Assad of his chemical weapons capabilities.

Obama’s disastrous blunders continue to haunt America.  Innocent civilians died because his administration dropped the ball on removing Assad’s chemical weapons.  Had the Obama administration struck a deal that actually removed Assad’s chemical weapons stockpiles, Trump never would have had to launch this recent strike.

 

[From an article published by GREAT AMERICAN DAILY]

 

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As always, posted for your edification and enlightenment by

NORM ‘n’ AL, Minneapolis
normal@usa1usa.com
612.239.0970

 

 

While the West is obsessed with Russia, it is being devoured from within by Salafist, Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist terror cells which are forming an alliance against democracy with Antifa and Black Lives Matter

The West continues to enjoy playing “Russian Roulette”

 

While the West is busy hunting “Russian witches,” its sworn enemies devour it alive from within.

In 1986, the manager of the largest state company in France, Eurodif Georges Besse, arrived at his office as usual. When he got out of his car, he was shot at point-blank range by unknown people on a motorcycle. Initially the authorities accused the left radical Action Directe, but very soon the intelligence service found the Iranian trace.

The Iranians, who owned shares of Eurodif, demanded Paris pay them the dividends that were frozen after the Islamic revolution. The murder of Besse was a blatant threat and it worked. France not only failed to expel Iranian diplomats, but paid Tehran more than $1.6 billion in 1991.

Politics of the West is determined by the dominant discourse. That is why the murder of Besse remained unnoticed and unpunished, but the case of Skripal (very doubtful in itself) led to a mass hysteria.

Western political consciousness is schematic and one-sided. It forms its own Manichean mythology with ominous forces, martyrs, cunning conspirators and innocent victims. What can be a better illustration of this perception of the world than the blind faith that even now, after the collapse of the Arab world, it is the “Israeli occupation” that remains the source of all troubles in the Middle East and in the world?

I am not a supporter of the current regime in the Kremlin, and in Russia I would choose to vote for Ksenia Sobchak. I’m extremely disgusted by the murderous manipulations in the east of Ukraine. I’m alarmed by the military hysteria and whitewashing of such monstrosities as Stalin and Ivan the Terrible. I am worried that national consciousness is carrying the idea of future tyranny.

However it is also obvious to me that Russia was chosen for the role of the universal villain long before the case of Skripal. Bombing Serbia, provocative expansion of NATO to the East, the missile defense complex in Poland, absurd campaigns for rights of LGBT in Russia, blaming Russia for all failures and misfortunes – from hackers who allegedly changed the course of the elections in the US to “Brexit” – Russia has been demonized on the most trivial pretext.

Putin wouldn’t be able to destroy the West, even if he wanted to. He has no tools for this: neither a radical ideology like the communist one, nor the “Trojan horse” as a bearer of such ideology.

However, such ideology and its bearers exist in other countries that are eager to conquer the West. Alien trans-territorial entities have been formed in its body: nests of hatred, ignorance and fanaticism controlled by Islamists – the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), Salafis and Shiite Hezbollah. All of them are presented by political movements and parties. All of them are financed by Turkey, Iran and Qatar. Like a wasp larva in the body of a living victim, they poison and devour their carrier from inside.

According to Sweden’s Civil Contingencies Agency dated March 2017, MB controls the Muslim community. In December 2017, Chief Prosecutor Lise Tamm compared the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby with the so called “war zones” in Columbia occupied by drug dealers, criminal bands and insurgent groups.

The representative of the Danish “Venstre” party, Preben Bang Henriksen, said that in terms of safety the situation was the worst after WWII.

In August, German BfV claimed that Salafists were preparing local Muslims for disorders that would be accompanied by group and individual terrorism. Muslim bikers and “Sharia police” patrol streets of cities in the name of fighting against islamophobia.

“…We see it (Islamist terrorism) as one of the biggest threats facing the internal security of Germany,” said Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Still, they are afraid of Russian hackers in the Bundestag.

It is not Putin, it is Erdogan who promised Europe “religious wars”, and it is not Russians, Germans and Jews, but Muslims, who will become “cannon fodder” in these wars.

It was not Moscow, it was Tehran and Hezbollah that created the Shia network in Germany with a center in Hamburg and “sleeping cells” in North Rhine-Westphalia.

In France, Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (UOIF) and its mother organization Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE) are branches of MB.

In October 2016, a youth gang besieged the Hélène-Boucher school in Seine-Saint-Denis. They attacked the building with firebombs and beat the director. Yacine, 21 years old, a student at the University of Paris, said: “This is a warning. These young people don’t act spontaneously; they attack institutions, the State itself.” Did anybody listen to her?

It was Qatar, not Russia, that invested 50 million Euro for establishing Sharia in French cities in 2012. Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani subsidizes radical groups all over the world.

“Everyone knows that all mosques in Brussels are in the hands of Salafists”, said former Brussels mayor Yvan Mayeur. In Molenbeek alone, there are 51 organizations connected with terrorism.

The new Muslim party “Be.One” headed by Lebanese founder of the European Arab League Dyab Abou Jahjah is a branch of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party – abbreviated officially AK Parti in Turkish,- a part of MB. The same can be said about Denk Party in Holland.

The Austrian Party Neue Bewegung für die Zukunft (New Movement for the Future) is the “fifth column” of the new Turkish sultan, and he doesn’t even hide it.

Pakistan-born journalist Shams Ul-Haq lived in asylum homes across the country under the guise of a migrant. He said that Salafists invaded minds of migrants and triggered religious hatred by recruiting them into militias.

Sebastian Kurtz is one of the few Western leaders who understands that it is they, not Putin, who represent a strategic threat to his country.

In Spain, which is still called Andalus by Arabs, back in 1985, Saudis opened the Islamic Cultural Center (Madrid), which was the Europe’s second largest mosque after the the Islamic Center of Malaga, and launched a new TV Channel Córdoba TV. The Sheikh of Qatar is planning to buy the famous La Monumental Arena in Barcelona to turn it into the Europe’s biggest mosque. UAE subsidized the building of the Great Mosque of Granada, and Kuwait is funding the construction of mosques in Reus and Torredembarra.

Iran subsidizes the popular left-wing radical party “Podemos.”   Is this also the Kremlin’s hand?

According to a report by the Henry Jackson Society dated July 2017, Middle Eastern countries provide financial support to mosques and Islamic educational institutions in the UK. Tom Brake, a Liberal Democrat and foreign affairs spokesman, said that Saudi Arabia funded hundreds of Wahhabist mosques in the country. A counterinsurgency expert, Tom Collins, warned about the MB danger. He called it a terrorist organization and underlined that Qatar funded the organization. According to the Jenkins Commission report, MB is a dangerous and violence-prone organization threatening the national interests of the country.

Britain is building an alliance against Moscow.

In the US they found out about MB plans back in 1991 after one of their activists had written a memorandum about civilized jihad in America. MB’s activity is still a mystery. “I’ve been studying the Brotherhood for 15 years,” says Lorenzo Vidino, director the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.  “I maybe understand 10 percent of how it works,” adding that “… it is clearly linked to the Brotherhood abroad” .

MB in USA is closely connected to the Holy Land Foundation, which transferred funds to Hamas.  MB is also represented by CAIR, which was declared a terrorist group in UAE. In 2008 FBI Special Agent Lara Burns labeled CAIR a front group for Hamas, and in January 2009 the FBI’s DC cut ties with CAIR.

However MB hasn’t been banned and is forming an alliance against American democracy together with Antifa and Black Life Matters.  At same time Iran and Hezbollah founded a branched network in Latin America and US. “…Hezbollah is determined to give itself a potential homeland option as a critical component of its terrorism playbook,”  said Nicholas Rasmussen, Director of National Counterterrorism Center, after recent arrests of alleged “Hezbollah” operatives in New York and Michigan.

Nevertheless the US continues to be obsessed with “hunting Russian witches”.

Allow me to remind you of something.

Not in Moscow, but in Teheran, homosexuals are hanged on construction cranes.

Not in St. Petersburg, but in Istanbul, journalists, teachers, professors and public figures are rotting alive in jails.

Not in Russia, but in Iran, political prisoners are raped in prisons.

Not Russia, but Turkey, carries out ethnic cleansing of Kurds.

Not in Russia, but in Qatar, they established an institute of badly disguised slavery.

It is not Russia regularly provoking NATO members, it is Turkey doing this to Greece and Cyprus. The West forgives them all of their abominations.

Four centuries ago, the West did everything to undermine Byzantium and achieved its goal. Half a century later, however, the Ottoman Muslim hordes stood right under the gates of Vienna.

It appears”Russian Roulette” will always be a favorite game of the West.

 

[From an article written by Alexander Maistrovoy and published by ISRAEL NATIONAL NEWS]

 

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As always, posted for your edification and enlightenment by

NORM ‘n’ AL, Minneapolis
normal@usa1usa.com
612.239.0970

 

 

 

 

“It’s just simple math…we’re headed for a train wreck.”

Financial writer and gold expert Bill Holter says China has a lot of weapons to use in a trade war with the U.S. China could stop buying Treasury bonds (as it reportedly already has done).  It could sell Treasury bonds.  It could slash the value of the Yuan, or something much simpler could happen such as a failed delivery of physical precious metals.

Holter says, “If what has happened so far in the first three months of the year were to continue for the full year, you would be over three billion ounces (of silver).  That is not deliverable.”What happens when the world figures out that three billion ounces of physical silver cannot and will not be delivered to the buyers?  Holter explains, “That’s called an old fashioned run on the banks.  Here it will be a run on the entire system.  You would have a run on every metals exchange, and you would probably have runs on many physical commodities.  Confidence throughout the whole system would break.  You would basically show the western fractional reserve system is a fraud and has been for many, many years. . . . Can London deliver a billion ounces, or two billion ounces or three billion ounces of silver?  The answer to that is no.”

So, when does this all blow up?  Holter says “I think this whole thing has a very good chance of blowing up this year.”

There are a variety of financial trip wires, according to Bill Holter.  Thousands of sealed criminal indictments that will be unsealed in 2018.  Holter also points to the explosion of global debt.  “It’s now $237 trillion.  The amount of debt grew by $21 trillion globally over the last 12 months. That’s roughly 10 %.  How much did global GDP grow?   2% or 3%, I mean that is totally unsustainable.”

The biggest worry for Holter right now is escalating military action in Syria.  Holter warns, “This is so, so dangerous.  Obviously, you worry about a hot war because with the weapons you have today, you could have WWIII start in a heartbeat.  But look at the market today.  It’s up 400 or 500 points.  You have talk of trade wars.  You have talk of hot wars.  It amazing the markets can hold together and ignore potential annihilation.”

Holter says “This is math, logic, and common sense.  This is no longer opinion.  You could go back to 2006 and 2007, and it could be argued it was opinion at that point.  It’s no longer opinion.  It’s pure math.  The system is unsustainable.  We’re headed for a train wreck.  Do I absolutely know it’s going to be this year?  No, I don’t know that, but you can see the events are piling up so quickly that it certainly looks like it’s going to come to a crescendo very soon.”

 

[From an article published by USA Watchdog]

 

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As always, posted for your edification and enlightenment by

NORM ‘n’ AL, Minneapolis
normal@usa1usa.com
612.239.0970

 

Take control. It’s very easy to do.

Do you remember what it was like to fly before smoking was banned on airplanes? It was horrible. Breathing recycled air was bad enough without having to endure ­second-hand smoke. Of course, the airlines provided a smok­ing “section”: smokers were confined to the back five rows. Unfortunately, the smoke was not. This concept was about as effective as putting a 747 beside a pulpit during a church service and revving the engines, while a sign advises that the noise should be confined just to the front five pews.

Don’t ever be deceived into thinking that you can allow the pollution of the world to enter your home without contaminating your family. You won’t be able to confine it.  Some­one emailed me an article by Jeremy Archer in which he spoke of having allowed some worldly guests to enter his home. While their behavior was questionable and they entertained his family, he justified the friendship and his continued hospitality by saying that Jesus was accused of being a friend of sinners. Some­times the conversations revolved around drinking, vio­lence, drugs, the occult, sex, theft, lying, and other vices. But he said they justified it all because it was discussed in an entertaining manner.

Their guests had a growing in­fluence on his family, and as time passed the behavior grew much worse. People be­gan partying, making obscene gestures, and then started having sex right in front of him and his family. As I read the article I remember thinking, How could he let this happen…in front of his family!  How could he not be taking some kind of decisive action?

Then I read the final words of the ar­ticle. The ultimate control decision was reached: “To­gether we turned off the television.”

 

[From an article by Ray Comfort, writing for LIVING WATERS]

 

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As always, posted for your edification and enlightenment by

NORM ‘n’ AL, Minneapolis
normal@usa1usa.com
612.239.0970

 

 

Upcoming investigation into Hillary Clinton, the FBI, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano broke down the upcoming investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the FBI and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday. He expects subpoenas to start flying.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, will be investigating Clinton along with the FBI and the Department of Justice for their role in spying on then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during the 2016 election.

“The attorney general appoints the chief federal prosecutor for Utah to investigate three things,” Napolitano said.

“The exoneration of Mrs. Clinton before all the evidence was in. The exoneration of President Clinton and Secretary Clinton on Uranium One before all the evidence was in and the abuse of FISA by the FBI and the DOJ.”

See the interview on Fox News below:

Napolitano called Huber a “de facto special counsel” and expects him to convene a grand jury to begin issuing subpoenas.

“So this guy is in Utah. If he comes to Washington, D.C., and gets a half-dozen federal prosecutors assigned to him and a dozen or so FBI agents assigned to you him — He is a de facto special counsel. He’s doing what needs to be done,” Napolitano said.

“He’ll impanel a grand jury. They’ll present evidence to the grand jury. The grand jury will issue subpoenas. If the subpoenas don’t work, he’ll go to a federal judge and get a search warrant.”

Napolitano thinks Huber must make the trip the D.C. to be effective, because his power would be limited if he remains in Utah.  “If he stays in Utah, he cannot impanel a grand jury there to examine something that happened in D.C.”,  Napolitano said.

“All the evidence is in D.C. You’re examining NSA, FBI, DOJ, present and past. The Utah grand jury does not have jurisdiction over events in D.C.  He will be toothless if he stays in Utah,” Napolitano concluded.   “You present evidence to the grand jury, and the grand jury issues subpoenas.  That’s the way it’s supposed to work.”

 

[From an article published by The Western Journal]

 

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As always, posted for your edification and enlightenment by

NORM ‘n’ AL, Minneapolis
normal@usa1usa.com
612.239.0970

 

When the Republic becomes the Empire

We have crossed the boundary that lies between Republic and Empire. If you ask when, the answer is that you cannot make a single stroke between day and night. The precise moment does not matter. There was no painted sign to say, “You now are entering Imperium.” Yet it was a very old road and the voice of history was saying: “Whether you know it or not, the act of crossing may be irreversible.” And now, not far ahead, is a sign that reads: “No U Turns.”

If you say there were no frightening omens, that is true. The political foundations did not quake; the graves of the Fathers did not fly open; the Constitution did not tear itself up. If you say people did not will it, that also is true. But if you say therefore it has not happened, then you have been so long bemused by words that your mind will not believe what the eye can see, even as in the jungle the terrified primitive, on meeting the lion, importunes magic by saying to himself, “He is not there.” That a republic may vanish is an elementary schoolbook fact.

The Roman Republic passed into the Roman Empire, and yet never could a Roman citizen have said, “That was yesterday.” Nor is the historian, with all the advantages of perspective, able to place that momentous event at any exact point on the dial of time. The Republic had a long unhappy twilight. It is agreed that the Empire began with Augustus Caesar. Several before him had played emperor and were destroyed.

The first who might have been called emperor in fact was Julius Caesar, who pretended not to want the crown and once publicly declined it. Whether he feared more the displeasure of the Roman populace or the daggers of the republicans is unknown. In his dreams he may have been seeing a bloodstained toga. His murder soon afterward was a desperate act of the dying republican tradition, and perfectly futile. His heir was Octavian, and it was a very bloody business, yet neither did Octavian call himself emperor.

On the contrary, he was most careful to observe the old legal forms. He restored the Senate. Later he made believe to restore the Republic, and caused coins to be struck in commemoration of that event. Having acquired by universal consent, as he afterward wrote, “complete dominion over everything, both by land and sea,” he made a long and artful speech to the Senate, and ended it by saying: “And now I give back the Republic into your keeping. The laws, the troops, the treasury, the provinces, are all restored to you. May you guard them worthily.”

The response of the Senate was to crown him with oak leaves, plant laurel trees at his gate and name him Augustus. After that he reigned for more than forty years and when he died the bones of the Republic were buried with him. “The personality of a monarch,” says Stobart,

had been thrust almost surreptitiously into the frame of a republican constitution…. The establishment of the Empire was such a delicate and equivocal act that it has been open to various interpretations ever since. Probably in the clever mind of Augustus it was intended to be equivocal from the first.

What Augustus Caesar did was to demonstrate a proposition found in Aristotle’s “Politics,” one that he must have known by heart, namely this:

People do not easily change, but love their own ancient customs; and it is by small degrees only that one thing takes the place of another; so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about a revolution in the state.

Revolution within the form.

There is no comfort in history for those who put their faith in forms; who think there is safeguard in words inscribed on parchment, preserved in a glass case, reproduced in facsimile and hauled to and fro on a Freedom Train.

Let it be current history. How much does the younger half of this generation reflect upon the fact that in its own time a complete revolution has taken place in the relations between government and people? It may be doubted that one college student in a thousand could even state it clearly. The first article of our inherited tradition, implicit in American thought from the beginning until a few years ago, was this: Government is the responsibility of a self-governing people. That doctrine has been swept away; only the elders remember it.

Now, in the name of democracy, it is accepted as a political fact that people are the responsibility of government.The forms of republican government survive; the character of the state has changed. Formerly the people supported government and set limits to it and minded their own lives.

Now they pay for unlimited government, whether they want it or not, and the government minds their lives — looking to how they are fed and clothed and housed; how they provide for their old age; how the national income, which is the product of their own labor, shall be divided among them; how they shall buy and sell; how long and how hard and under what conditions they shall work, and how equity shall be maintained between the buyers of food who dwell in the cities and the producers of food who live on the soil. For the last named purpose it resorts to a system of subsidies, penalties and compulsions, and assumes with medieval wisdom to fix the just price.

This is the Welfare State. It rose suddenly within the form. It is legal because the Supreme Court says it is. The Supreme Court once said no and then changed its mind and said yes, because meanwhile the President who was the architect of the Welfare State had appointed to the Supreme Court bench men who believed in it.

The founders who wrote the Constitution could no more have imagined a Welfare State rising by sanction of its words than they could have imagined a monarchy; and yet the Constitution did not have to be changed. It had only to be reinterpreted in one clause — the clause that reads: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, imposts and excises to pay its debts and provide for common defense and welfare of the United States.”

“We are under a Constitution,” said Chief Justice Hughes, “but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.”

The president names the members of the Supreme Court, with the advice and consent of the Senate. It follows that if the president and a majority of the Senate happen to want a Welfare State, or any other innovation, and if, happily for their design, death and old age create several vacancies on the bench so that they may pack the Court with like-minded men, the Constitution becomes, indeed, a rubberoid instrument.

The extent to which the original precepts and intentions of constitutional, representative, limited government, in the republican form, have been eroded away by argument and dialectic is a separate subject, long and ominous, and belongs to a treatise on political science.

The one fact now to be emphasized is that when the process of erosion has gone on until there is no saying what the supreme law of the land is at a given time, then the Constitution begins to be flouted by Executive will, with something like impunity. The instances may not be crucial at first and all the more dangerous for that reason. As one is condoned, another follows, and they become progressive.

To outsmart the Constitution and to circumvent its restraints became a popular exercise of the art of government in the Roosevelt regime. In defense of his attempt to pack the Supreme Court with social-minded judges after several of his New Deal laws had been declared unconstitutional, President Roosevelt wrote: “The reactionary members of the Court had apparently determined to remain on the bench for as long as life continued-for the sole purpose of blocking any program of reform.”

Among the millions who at the time applauded that statement of contempt there were very few, if there was indeed one, who would not have been frightened by a revelation of the logical sequel. They believed, as everyone else did, that there was one thing a President could never do. There was one sentence of the Constitution that could not fall, so long as the Republic lived.

The Constitution says: “The Congress shall have power to declare war.” That, therefore, was the one thing no president could do. By his own will he could not declare war. Only Congress could declare war, and Congress could be trusted never to do it but by will of the people — or so they believed. No man could make it for them. Even if you think that President Roosevelt got the country into World War II, that was not the same thing. For a declaration of war he went to Congress — after the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. He may have wanted it, he may have planned it; and yet the Constitution forbade him to declare war and he dared not do it. Nine years later a much weaker president did.

President Truman, alone and without either the consent or knowledge of Congress, had declared war on the Korean aggressor, 7000 miles away, Congress condoned his usurpation of its exclusive constitutional power. More than that, his political supporters in Congress argued that in the modern case that sentence in the Constitution conferring upon Congress the sole power to declare war was obsolete.

Mark you, the words had not been erased; they still existed in form. Only they had become obsolete. And why obsolete? Because now war may begin suddenly, with bombs falling out of the sky, and we might perish while waiting for Congress to declare war.

The reasoning is puerile. The Korean war, which made the precedent, did not begin that way; secondly, Congress was in session at the time, so that the delay could not have been more than a few hours, provided Congress had been willing to declare war; and, thirdly, the president as commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the Republic may in a legal manner act defensively before a declaration of war has been made. It is bound to be made if the nation has been attacked.

Mr. Truman’s supporters argued that in the Korean instance his act was defensive and therefore within his powers as commander-in-chief. In that case, to make it constitutional, he was legally obliged to ask Congress for a declaration of war afterward. This he never did. For a week Congress relied upon the papers for news of the country’s entry into war; then the president called a few of its leaders to the White House and told them what he had done.

A year later Congress was still debating whether or not the country was at war, in a legal, constitutional sense. A few months later Mr. Truman sent American troops to Europe to join an international army, and did it not only without a law, without even consulting Congress, but challenged the power of Congress to stop him. Congress made all of the necessary sounds of anger and then poulticed its dignity with a resolution saying the president’s action was all right for that one time, since anyhow it had been taken, but that hereafter Congress would expect to be consulted.

At that time the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate asked the State Department to set forth in writing what might be called the position of executive government. The State Department obligingly responded with a document entitled, “Powers of the President to Send Troops Outside of the United States — Prepared for the use of the joint committee made up of the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Committee on the Armed Forces of the Senate, February 28, 1951.”

This document, in the year circa 2950, will be a precious find for any historian who may be trying then to trace the departing footprints of the vanished American Republic. For the information of the United States Senate it said (Congressional Record, March 20, 1951, p. 2745):

“As this discussion of the respective powers of the President and Congress has made clear, constitutional doctrine has been largely moulded by practical necessities. Use of the Congressional power to declare war, for example, has fallen into abeyance because wars are no longer declared in advance.”

Caesar might have said it to the Roman Senate. If constitutional doctrine is molded by necessity, what is a written Constitution for?

Thus an argument that seemed at first to rest upon puerile reasoning turned out to be deep and cunning. The immediate use of it was to defend the unconstitutional Korean precedent, namely, the resort to war as an act of the president’s own will. Yet it was not invented for that purpose alone. It stands as a forecast of executive intentions, a manifestation of the executive mind, mortal challenge to the parliamentary principle. The simple question is: Whose hand shall control the instrument of war? It is late to ask. It may be too late, for when the hand of the Republic begins to relax another hand is already putting itself forth.

 

[This article by Garet Garrett was originally published as “The Decline of the American Republic” in The Freeman, February 25, 1952.  Garet Garrett (February 19, 1878 – November 6, 1954), born Edward Peter Garrett, was an American journalist and author; he opposed the New Deal and U.S. involvement in World War II.  The article was republished today HERE.]

 

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As always, posted for your edification and enlightenment by

NORM ‘n’  AL, Minneapolis
normal@usa1usa.com
612.239.0970