political_talk

John Adams on His Election to the House of Representatives

In a letter to Benjamin Rush,  Adams wrote of having been chosen to become a member of the House of Representatives.

When I went home to my family in May, 1770, from the town meeting in Boston, which was the first I had ever attended, and where I had been chosen in my absence, without any solicitation, one of their representatives, I said to my wife, "I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning, that you may prepare your mind for your fate." She burst into tears, but instantly cried out in a transport of magnanimity, "Well, I am willing in this cause to run all risks with you, and be ruined with you, if you are ruined." These were times, my friend, in Boston, which tried women's souls as well as men's.

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Source

Thomas Jefferson on the Role of the Judiciary

From a letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823, by Thomas Jefferson:

At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.

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Image Source: Wikimedia Commons - Painting of Thomas Jefferson in 1805 by Rembrandt Peale

President Obama: With all due deference to the separation of powers.......

On January 27, 2010, in his first State of the Union address to Congress and the American people, President Barack Obama leveled a strong recrimination at the Supreme Court for the controversial ruling made in the Citizens United case, decided on January 21, 2010.View the video excerpt below. The full transcript, along with the full video of the SOTU is here.

With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that's why I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that corrects some of these problems

Sen. Dick Durbin to Samuel Alito: Your record raises troubling questions about whether you appreciate the checks and balances in our Constitution...

Sen. Durbin's [D-ILL] prophetic comment to Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito during Alito's 2006 confirmation hearings.

Your record raises troubling questions about whether you appreciate the checks and balances in our Constitution -- the careful efforts of our Founding Fathers to protect us from a government or a president determined to seize too much power over our lives,

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Source: Associated Press

FULL TEXT: Column by John L. Perry Suggesting the Possibility of a Military Coup in the U.S.

The original column was published earlier today by Newsmax, a conservative site where Perry is a columnist.

It remained on the site for a short time (whereby Political Talk saved it as a pdf file), and was then removed by Newsmax, which has since attempted to distance itself¹ from Perry. 

Obama Risks a Domestic Military Intervention

By: John L. Perry

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America's military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the "Obama problem." Don't dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn't the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn't mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it. So, view the following through military eyes:

Whenever the people are well informed.....

Thomas Jefferson | Democratic-Republican Party¹

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

¹The Democratic-Republican Party was the dominant political party in the United States from 1800-1824; it then split in to two factions, one of which became the modern day Democratic Party.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
Quotation: Letter to Richard Price (8 January 1789)

Thomas Jefferson Quotation on Freedom of the Press

Thomas Jefferson | Democratic-Republican Party¹

 Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

¹The Democratic-Republican Party was the dominant political party in the United States from 1800-1824; it then split in to two factions, one of which became the modern day Democratic Party.

Quotation: Letter to Dr. James Currie (28 January 1786) Lipscomb & Bergh 18:ii

Thomas Jefferson Quotation on Judicial Review

Thomas Jefferson | Democrat-Republican Party¹

Jefferson strongly opposed judicial review, and in a letter to William Jarvis in 1820, he had this to say:

 To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.

¹The Democratic-Republican Party was the dominant political party in the United States from 1800-1824; it then split in to two factions, one of which became the modern day Democratic Party.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons, Jefferson on Mount Rushmore
Quotation: Letter to William C. Jarvis, 1820

John Boehner calls President Obama's Actions Socialist

Well, the stimulus, the omnibus, the budget — it’s all one big

down payment on a new American socialist experiment. … All of these bills seek to replace our economic freedom with the whims and mandates of politicians and bureaucrats.

House Minority Leader, John A. Boehner, Republican, 1949-

Source: Video of Boehner's speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2009:

Tom DeLay Calls the EPA the Gestapo

Tom DeLay | Republican

In 1995, DeLay had this to say about the Enviromental Protection Agency:

 The EPA, the Gestapo of government, pure and simply has been one of the major clawhooks that the government has maintained on the backs of our constituents.

Source (with audio): CNN 
Image source: MSNBC

VIDEO: SARAH PALIN FAREWELL TO ALASKA SPEECH JULY 26 - 2009

Sarah Palin (R) resigns as the Governor of Alaska after serving for less than half her term.

Click to read the full transcript of Palin's Farewell Speech.