Barack Obama's latest unconstitutional action is his attempt to make four so-called recess appointments to high-level, well-paying jobs in the federal bureaucracy when the Senate was NOT in recess. He appointed three people to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), plus Richard Cordray to head the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau even though the Senate had declined to confirm his nomination.

Article II gives the President power "by and with the advice and consent of the Senate" to appoint public officials and judges, and also "to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate." That provision was written to cover the long recesses that were common during the horse-and-buggy days, and was certainly not written to enable the President to defy the Senate and appoint persons whom the Senate would not confirm. Read more.

The 17th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 17) held in Durban, South Africa ended at 5 a.m. on December 11th, running two days past the scheduled conclusion, making it the longest climate conference in UN history (16 days). COP 17 President Nkoana-Mashabane could have ended the conference at any time with just the sound of her gavel, but she, along with United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, chose to keep delegates working overtime through Friday and Saturday nights until the desired outcome was achieved. Delegates held hostage, suffering from sleep deprivation and scheduling deadlines (i.e. flights home) will eventually agree to anything.

 Climate change conferences have been deadlocked since COP 15 in 2009. The U.S. has refused to sign onto anything legally binding until all countries are held accountable for their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including so-called "poor" developing countries like China and India, which are now number one and three in worldwide emissions. The U.S., adeveloped country, is number two.

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A trigger provision buried in U.S. laws since 1990 quietly took effect at the end of October. The U.S. taxpayers' annual donation of 22 percent of UNESCO's budget was summarily terminated when UNESCO voted 107 to 14 (with 52 abstentions) to approve full membership for Palestine. 

The cutoff of U.S. handouts includes not only our major annual gift to UNESCO of $80 million but also some extra-budgetary donations of $2 million and $3 million a year for special projects, mostly in Iraq. The Palestinians can now request admission to three other UN agencies and, if accepted, U.S. law will require us to terminate our handouts to those agencies, too. Read more. 

In 1993, pondering the sad plight of the 20 million American children growing up without their fathers in the home, Charles Murray identified "illegitimacy as the single most important social problem of our time . . . because it drives everything else." Last year, the U.S. illegitimacy rate had grown to 41%, and among whites it was 29%. 

Prior to Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, husbands and fathers provided for their families. The 1.7 million out-of-wedlock babies born last year and their unmarried moms now look to Big Brother as their financial provider. The Left is content to let this problem persist because 70% of unmarried women voted for Barack Obama for president. They vote for the party that offers the richer subsidies. 

Means-tested welfare handouts cost federal taxpayers $700 Billion last year (not counting programs into which people pay, such as Social Security and Medicare). Spending by the states raises the annual total to $950 Billion, more than we are spending on national defense, and most of these programs subsidize non-marriage. Read more.

Does Rick Perry want to undermine traditional marriage? This question leaps out from his new 20 percent flat tax plan, which would eliminate all tax advantages for married couples in which one spouse is the primary breadwinner. 

For more than 60 years, the federal income tax has treated the family as an economic unit. A husband and wife have the benefit of pooling their income in a joint tax return which affords larger deductions and lower rates. 

Perry would replace the pooling of husband-wife income with a system in which each individual, regardless of marital status, would owe federal taxes on his or her separate income. Perry's plan offers "generous standard deductions of $12,500 for individuals and their dependents" — which ignores the fact that children are "dependents" of both their parents, even if one earns all or most of the family income. Read more.

Most Americans are unaware that about $700 Billion a year of federal taxpayers' money is handed out to non-taxpayers allegedly below a poverty line (in addition to $250 Billion a year given out by the states). After Barack Obama became President, he increased federal welfare spending by a third because, as he promised during his campaign, he wants to "spread the wealth," knowing that promotes dependence on government and votes for the Democrats. Read more. 

Despite the inordinate quantity of press coverage about next year's presidential election and attention to TV debates, plus the consuming desire of the media to predict who will win in 2012, the polls show that no candidate in either party is reaching 50 percent public support. 

Meanwhile, the NBC News/WallStreetJournal poll, conducted jointly by Democrats and Republicans, reports that 74 percent of Americans think our government is taking us in the wrong direction, and only 17 percent think we are on the right track. Other polls are similar, with Gallup reporting 85 percent dissatisfied with the way our country is headed, and only 13 percent satisfied. Read more. 

It's a problem for U.S. retailers when Communist China makes fake designer handbags and illegal copies of our music CDs, but it's a much bigger problem when the fakes are chips installed in our military weapons. The American people are starting to discover that counterfeit computer components bought from the Chinese are used in our war planes, ships, and communication networks. 

These tiny electronic circuits used in computers can cause breakdowns or malfunctions. Bloomberg Businessweek reported that a confidential Pentagon program issued an alert as long ago as 2005 that fake microchips were causing military equipment malfunctions. Read more.

 Outsourcing is not the only way we are losing American jobs to Communist China. The Chinese have figured out how to capture jobs inside the U.S. by using our EB-5 visas (employment-based, fifth priority).

Most Americans have never heard of this visa, but the Chinese are now planning to use it to build and run a casino labeled Maryland Live! near the Baltimore airport. Boasting 4,750 slot machines, this $440 million casino will be one of the largest in the country. Read More.

We are now beginning to grasp the definition and the scope of the words New World Order, an expression inserted into the U.S. political vocabulary by the first President Bush. He never defined it, leaving that task to his successors, and Barack Obama is only too glad to expand its meaning. 

Before Bush I left the White House, however, he attended the 1992 United Nations meeting in Rio de Janeiro, signed the UN Climate Change Treaty, and rammed it through the Senate for ratification. It's now available for Obama to use as one engine in his plan to "fundamentally transform the United States." Read more.   

 ". . . the best way to prevent 'judicial legislation' [i.e., the injection of Humanist/Reconstructionist values into the Constitution] is not through structural changes in the federal judicial system, but through the appointment of judges who really believe the Constitution really mean what its Framers intended it to mean." So declared Charles Grassley, longtime U.S. Senator (R-IA) and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Although uttered in 1981, Grassley's comment expresses a truth of even greater force today — if possible — as we face the pivotal elections of 2012.

Grassley's correct claim connotes the inestimable importance of judges in contemporary American law and culture. But since 1981, the courts have been flooded with a band of Humanistic/Reconstructionist judges polluting the constitutional atmosphere with their anti-constitutional philosophy. What do we do about these incumbents? One answer widely discussed is to "remove them" — not all of them (an enticing thought but impossible task), but some of the most egregious jurists, eliminating their personal influence and "firing a shot across the bow" to warn other Reconstructionists waging their war against us." Read more.