Houston Area Liberty Campaign

[Article from Investors Business Daily, links added by HALC.us staff]

Control: The House and Senate climate bills contain a provision giving the president extraordinary powers in the event of a “climate emergency.” As chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

If you thought the House health care bill that nobody read has hidden passages that threaten our freedoms and liberty, take a peak at the “trigger” placed in the byzantine innards of both the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill and the Kerry-Boxer bill just passed by Democrats out of Sen. Barbara Boxer’s Environment and Public Works  Committee.

As Nick Loris of The Heritage Foundation points out, the Kerry-Boxer bill requires the declaration of a “climate emergency” if the concentration of carbon dioxide and other declared greenhouse gases in the atmosphere exceeds 450 parts per million (ppm). It was at about 286 ppm before the Industrial Revolution and now sits at around 368 ppm.

That figure was picked out of a hat because the warm-mongers believe that’s the level at which the polar ice caps will disappear, boats can be moored on the Statue of Liberty’s torch and dead polar bears will wash up on the beaches of Malibu.

The Senate version includes a section that gives the president authority, under this declared “climate emergency,” to “direct all Federal agencies to use existing statutory authority to take appropriate actions … to address shortfalls” in achieving greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions.

[Continue reading here...]

By Ronald D. Rotunda and J. Peter Pham
Friday, October 16, 2009

People can, and undoubtedly will, argue for some time about whether President Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Meanwhile, though, there’s a simpler and more immediate question: Does the Constitution allow him to accept the award?

Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, the emolument clause, clearly stipulates: “And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State.”

The award of the peace prize to a sitting president is not unprecedented. But Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson received the honor for their past actions: Roosevelt’s efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War, and Wilson’s work in establishing the League of Nations. Obama’s award is different. It is intended to affect future action. As a member of the Nobel Committee explained, the prize should encourage Obama to meet his goal of nuclear disarmament. It raises important legal questions for the second time in less than 10 months — questions not discussed, much less adequately addressed anywhere else. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: Campaign for Liberty

Washington D.C., October 13, 2009 – In an unannounced move, the Administration has authorized the deployment of 15,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. This deployment is in addition to the 21,000 troops previously announced by President Obama in March of this year.  The move will bring the total amount of U.S. forces deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq to levels greater than the peak of the Iraq surge.

“Candidate Obama ran a campaign highly critical of Bush administration foreign policy and promised to bring troops home from overseas. But President Obama seems to be working from the same playbook as the Bush Administration, and his campaign promises seem to be ringing empty,” said John Tate, President of Campaign for Liberty. “Instead of winding things down, this president seems intent on increasing our involvement in this and other foreign adventures.”

In following a protocol similar to former President Bush’s Defense department, President Obama did not mention plans to deploy the additional troops during his initial declaration of troop increases.  These increases, as it turns out, are part of a larger plan to reach a 68,000 troop force by the end of the year.  All this comes as the administration continues to weigh whether to deploy the 40,000 troops requested by the U.S. commander in Afghanistan.