Or so the repugicans think
Repugican
Senator Rand Paul’s son was arrested at Charlotte-Douglas International
Airport on January 5 for assaulting a female flight attendant while on a
flight from Kentucky to North Carolina, and now has been charged.
Meanwhile, Daddy is, rather than addressing the repugican men’s major
malfunction with women, was calling President Obama a king and tyrant.
Paul says if the President enacts any executive orders relating to
gun control, he is guilty of acting like a king, and he doesn’t want a
king, Paul assured the blinkered masses from Jerusalem via the
very un-christian Broadcasting Network:
I’m against having a king. I think having a monarch is
what we fought the American Revolution over and someone who wants to
bypass the Constitution, bypass Congress – that’s someone who wants to
act like a king or a monarch.
That’s a shame, because we just had a king in the shrub, and all
the repugican anti-monarchists seem to have slept through those eight
years. None of them so much as noticed. I won’t hesitate to suggest that
that was because the shrub was a repugican, not that I don’t think even
Bush would get a free pass today, thanks to the extremist state of repugican purity laws.
But Paul barely refers to Congress’ extreme wussiness and wimptitude
during the shrub years: “I’ve been opposed to executive orders, even with repugican pretenders,”
he said. “But one that wants to infringe on the Second Amendment, we will fight tooth and nail.”
Oh, so not the First Amendment, or the Nineteenth or any in between
unless they be numbered Two and I think it’s safe to say, Ten.
“And I promise you,” he continued. “There’ll be no rock left unturned
as far as trying to stop him from usurping the Constitution, running
roughshod over Congress. And you will see one heck of a debate if he
decides to try to do this.”
In other words, we’re gonna impeach the hell out of this icky black guy and take back the White Man’s White House.
What Paul ignores as he sits in front of an Israeli flag is
that there are many things Obama can do that do not impinge the rights
of Congress – nineteen of them in fact –
according to Joe Biden.
And it’s not like Obama is ignoring Congress. Rather, the opposite is
true. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was very clear about the
limits on the President’s powers when he said that “there are limits on
what can be done within existing law” and that some things could not be
done without Congress “because the power to do that is reserved by
Congress and to Congress.” This is exactly what Obama himself previously
said: “Members of Congress, I think, are going to have to have a debate
and examine their own conscience.” Congress must act, he said.
Obama, unlike the repugican House, understands exactly how the Constitution works.
Where is the tyranny to be found then, if not in Congress itself?
And then there is all the crazy Glenn Beck talk (okay, I realize that’s redundant) about “
Obama’s Civil War.”
It is important to observe here that it is not Democrats talking about
Civil War. It’s repugicans. It’s not Democrats building fortified
settlements in the American Redoubt, but repugicans. It is not
Democrats talking about secession, it is repugicans. If there is
another Civil War, it will be all on the repugicans, who are crazy
enough to think they win even when they lose national elections.
In good measure, Beck himself bares blame for this state of affairs.
He has willfully and repeatedly incited the ignoramuses who listen to
him that anything liberal is evil and must be expunged. He has been
aided in this by clowns like Ann Coulter and Faux News.
What has happened is that the repugicans have gotten it into their
heads that if the president deviates even a little from what Congress
wants him to do, he is a dictator, willfully trampling our rights. As a
result, hardly a day goes by without calls for Obama’s impeachment over
even the smallest of perceived signs of independence.
Of course, the Constitution does not establish a country where the
President is only a figurehead for Congress’ will. We call them three
branches of government for a reason, a carefully constructed balance of
powers.
The repugicans need to re-examine the table of organization. Bad
enough that they think they won the election in both 2008 and in 2012,
but to think Congress tells the president what decisions to make as the
head of the executive branch is troubling.
The Founding Fathers, to whom the repugicans repeatedly and
fallaciously appeal, recognized that an elected legislature was as big a
threat to our right as a king. In many ways, the Founding Fathers
anticipated the spirit of the tea party if not the tea party itself, and
that spirit is not patriotism but tyranny of the majority.
That tyranny can be enacted not only through action but inaction and
in this, as in so many other things, the repugican cabal is refusing to
act to do what circumstances – and the responsibilities of their office
– require. President Obama, as has so often happened over the past four
years, is the only adult in the room; the only person willing to stand
up and do what needs to be done to uphold his oath to the Constitution.
The repugican mantra, “You have to do what we say, or else,” is not in the Constitution.
Sorry, repugicans. Failing to listen to you, to refuse to do what
you demand, is not a violation of the Constitution. Not only is it in
obedience to the United States Constitution, but it is simply good
sense.
Some
of the most coveted mushroom species don't grow well in captivity,
which is why people roam the forests to find them. Or maybe it's because
roaming the forest is a beautiful experience in itself. It certainly
seems so when you see the photographs taken by 
A
ski resort in Arizona fought for years for the right to make snow out
of wastewater, and began doing so on Christmas Eve. Since then,
complaints have come in about the yellow snow at the Arizona Snowbowl.
The slope's manager blames rusty pipes; others blame the fact that the
water used to make the snow is from Flagstaff's sewage treatment plant. 
