LEGAL DISHONESTY, POLITICAL DECEIT, AND DESPERATE DEMOCRATS

       As the Nation lurches towards a potentially debilitating fall election for Obama and his congressional minions, the Democrats find themselves resorting to sordid legal duplicity and political fraud as their best hope to sustain their anti-constitutional tyranny.

       More Lawlessness to Salvage Obamacare.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently held that the Affordable Care Act ("ACA," commonly called Obamacare) does not authorize the federal government to pay health insurance premium subsidies for persons who obtained their insurance on the federal exchange rather than on one set up and maintained by the state of their residence. The case was Halbig v. Burwell.  The court rejected the Obama administration's argument that, despite plain language to the contrary -- i.e., that subsidies were available only through exchanges "established by a state" -- the ACA implicitly authorized subsidies for policies obtained through federal exchanges in states that had declined to set up their own exchange.

       Most states (36 of them) declined to set up their own Obamacare exchanges, but the Obama administration went ahead and approved subsidies for persons in those states anyway, despite the absence of statutory authorization. Consequently, the D.C. Circuit ruling is disastrous for Obamacare:  If the government can't pay the premium subsidies in that majority of states, the premiums will become intolerably expensive for some 5 million people, and Obamacare will become effectively insupportable and unsustainable.

            It will surprise no one that Obama's lawless government is continuing to pay the unauthorized premium subsidies despite their illegality.  Another federal appeals court, with a politically stacked panel of three liberal judges appointed by Obama  and Clinton, subsequently upheld the federal exchange subsidies even though the plain language of the ACA provides expressly to the contrary.  The bogus rationale for the Fourth Circuit's ruling in favor of unfettered subsidy authority  is that, the ACA's plain language notwithstanding, prohibiting the subsidies is inconsistent with the expansive purposes of the legislation.  

          Needless to say, the Administration and its followers have mocked the D.C. Circuit's decision's adherence to the actual language of the ACA, claiming that to limit subsidies in the manner specified in the statute makes no sense in light of the legislation's broader purposes of expanding and facilitating coverage. As it has time and time again, the Obama Administration scorns the rule of actual law in favor of whatever executive branch "interpretations" best further its policies and political objectives.

            Set aside for the moment that when a statute's plain language is clear, as it is in the ACA's subsidies authorization, there is no need to delve into the murky and contrived gibberish of so-called congressional intent and legislative history.  The fact is that, far from making "no sense," the absence of an authorization for subsidies in states that declined to set up their own exchanges served a very logical purpose of the bill's backers. And, as explained below, that purpose was well understood by constitutional lawyers and by those involved in the bill's enactment.  In short, the background and context of the ACA reinforces, rather than contradicts, its plain language limiting subsidies to policies obtained through state exchanges.

            Under established constitutional law, Congress cannot simply "commandeer" the States' personnel and resources to administer or enforce a federal program like Obamacare.  It can, however, legitimately pressure the States to do such things by offering federal benefits if they comply, or withholding them if they do not.  In short, the ACA could not directly compel states to establish and run Obamacare exchanges, but it could enact highly persuasive "incentives" to encourage them to do so.

            In the case of the Obamacare, the legislation tried to pressure States to set up their own Obamacare exchanges by withholding premium subsidies for their citizens if a State declined to set up a state exchange.  

           Thus, limiting subsidies to persons who got their insurance on State exchanges was no accident, drafting error, or "typo," as Obama's acolytes have dishonestly argued in criticizing the D.C. Circuit ruling. Rather, it was a deliberate legislative strategy designed to comply with a specific rule of constitutional law, the so-called "anti-commandeering doctrine.  The contemporaneous statements of the administration's leading expert on the ACA legislation clearly confirms this inescapable fact.

            All of this is clear to any honest lawyer with a basic grasp of the governing rules of constitutional federalism.  The problem, however, is that many of the judges, and at least four of the justices, who will ultimately decide this issue are not honest lawyers, but ideologically corrupt pettifoggers whose decisions are governed by the leftist imperatives of the Obama administration rather than by the text of the law or the Constitution.  The D.C. Circuit panel's honest and sensible decision in the Halbig case is apt to be overturned if and when, as expected, it is reviewed by the court's full en banc complement of 11 judges -- recently packed by Obama to provide a 7-4 majority of leftist Democratic judges.

            Ultimately, the main hope for a just resolution of this issue is that at least five Justices of the Supreme Court will be willing to stand up for the rule of written law and the integrity of constitutional government, as opposed to the arbitrary political dictates of the Obama administration and the lawless congressional Democrats.

            The Democrats' Insidious "Impeachment" Fundraising Scam.   It is no longer possible to overstate the deranged political depravity of the Democrat Party under Obama's leadership.  

            Angry and desperate due to strong indications that they face a major defeat, and possible loss of control of the Senate, in the coming congressional elections, there is no subterfuge or smear that they will not employ to salvage their prospects.  The Democrats are now frantically waving the bloody shirt of presidential impeachment in the hopes of triggering an angry voter reaction against congressional Republicans -- who would much sooner submit themselves to prolonged waterboarding than initiate that desperate and politically poisonous constitutional procedure.

            Over the past several weeks, a few Republicans and conservatives, the most prominent being Sarah Palin, have opined that Obama's persistent unconstitutional abuses of executive power are so extreme as to warrant impeachment (which, contrary to a common misunderstanding, does not cause removal from office, but merely triggers a trial in the Senate to consider that remedy).  Although these views are quite valid in substance, anyone with the least grasp of contemporary U.S. politics knows that the American electorate has no stomach for an intensely divisive impeachment spectacle -- as proven by the enormous political boost that the lecherous and perjured Clinton presidency received from his actual impeachment.

            Democratic political operatives are acutely aware that they are doomed to defeat in the 2014 congressional elections if they turn on substantive issues such as the disasters of Obamacare, the collapse of the Nation's southern border and resultant Invasion of the Illegals, or the Administration's multi-front foreign policy debacles.  Their only hope to avoid a major election disaster is to create a sensational political red herring that will divert the voters' attention from those real issues and focus it on whatever contrived outrage they can frame to discredit the Republicans and their candidates.

            The red herring they have settled upon for that purpose is the completely fictitious prospect of a movement by congressional Republicans to impeach Obama and have him tried and removed from office by the Senate.

            Needless to say, the prospect of impeaching Obama has been emphatically rejected by the actual Republican leadership in Congress, most recently in a strong statement by Speaker of the House John Boehner  (http://washingtonexaminer.com/why-john-boehner-called-impeachment-talk-a-scam/article/2551395).  As Mr. Boehner stated, "This whole talk about impeachment is coming from the president's own staff -- and coming from Democrats on Capitol Hill. Why? Because they're trying to rally their people to give money and show up in this year's election."  He then underscored the Republican position:  "We have no plans to impeach the president; we have no future plans.  Listen, it's all a scam started by Democrats at the White House."

            Wholly apart from whether Obama's serial malfeasance theoretically warrants impeachment -- and in a sane political environment, it would -- it is obvious that the Republicans' emphatic rejection of that prospect is entirely sincere.  Republican prospects for a successful election in the fall, including gaining control of the Senate, are very strong.  So exposing themselves to charges that they are divisive extremists by resurrecting the deeply unpopular impeachment procedure is the last thing Republicans would want to do.  As a result, neither the Republican congressional  leadership, the party leadership, nor any influential Republican congressional candidates are calling for House consideration of impeachment, let alone advocating it.

            In complete contrast, the Democrat campaign apparatus have pounced on impeachment as their favorite issue.  Their fundraising letters, their speeches, and the programs and articles put forth by their puppets in the media are obsessed with stoking the flames of a Republican impeachment movement which exists only in their deranged and fevered political fantasies.  In short, the purely fictitious prospect of Obama's impeachment is the Democrats' favorite hashtag and flavor-of-the-month, and they cannot talk about it enough.

            It is a depressing commentary on the depths to which the Obama Democrats have descended that the best issue they can generate as the centerpiece for an important national election is the entirely contrived prospect of impeachment that is sustained and stoked by their own propaganda.

THE CAPITAL CANARD OF DEATH PENALTY DISCRIMINATION

               The persistence of falsehood is one of the most frustrating aspects of law, policy, and politics in our distorted and darkening age.  Among the left, the media, and a gullible general public, deceptive canards with no basis in reality are routinely paraded and assumed as fact -- producing grotesquely misconceived and unjust laws, policies, and decisions as a result. 

                Despite the facts that there has been no warming in the global climate for 17 years, the Antarctic icecap has been expanding extensively, and intrepidly honest scientists have stepped forward to dissent against doctrinaire and deceptive alarmists, rabid "climate change" fanatics continue to propound the illusion that the theory of catastrophic man-made global warming is "settled."

                The persistence of widespread illegal discrimination against blacks is taken for granted on the left and in the media and universities, when in fact federal and state governments have been relentlessly engaged, on the contrary, in pervasive and institutionalized discrimination in favor of blacks (under the guise of "affirmative action"), and to the detriment of whites, for over 40 years. 

                The pro-homosexual revolution is suddenly and widely accepted as innocuous in society, even while incontrovertible evidence of the dangerous, disease-plagued consequences of known homosexual behaviors lies ignored in the reports of the Center for Disease Control.  Just as one example, a 2010 CDC Fact sheet reported that "the rate of new HIV diagnoses among MSM in the U.S. is more than 44 times that of other men."  See http://www.latinoaids.org/programs/3mv/docs/FastFacts-MSM-FINAL508COMP.pdf.

                And an entirely fictional and patently illogical "war on women" is blazoned as gospel among large elements of the left and urban millennials, even while legions of female CEO's, Supreme Court justices, Presidential favorites, governors, and entertainment industry mavens obliviously expand their dominant roles in society.  (For more on this canard, see my last post, "The Female Achiever Who Exposed the War on Women over 40 Years Ago," at splashingrocks.blogspot.com).

                But few such canards are as persistently parroted, or as demonstrably false, as the undying, zombie-like fabrication that the death penalty is discriminatorily applied against blacks in the United States.  Unambiguous government statistics have demonstrated for decades that, on the contrary, the death penalty is disproportionately imposed on white murderers, and disproportionately avoided by black murderers.  The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) most recent comprehensive report on U.S. death penalty statistics unambiguously confirms this once again, as the statistics in those reports have done for decades.  See Capital Punishment, 2012 – Statistical Tables (May 2014), http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cp12st.pdf.  But from President Obama to his media echo chamber to the liberal legal establishment, the chorus of racial agitators continues to propound this divisive and dangerous fallacy, against all evidence, for their own political and ideological purposes.

                The claim that the death penalty is discriminatorily applied against blacks goes back decades, but came to a head in the Supreme Court's crucial opinion in the 1987 case of McCleskey v. Kemp (reported at 481 U.S. 279).  In a 5-4 decision, the Court held that statistical evidence purporting to show that murderers of white victims were more likely to receive a death sentence did not establish that the death penalty had been applied in violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution, absent evidence of a discriminatory purpose. Having drafted and submitted a successful brief in that case on behalf of the Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) supporting the State of Georgia's fair administration of the death penalty, I am intimately familiar with the case and the issues it presented.

                Even back when McCleskey was decided in 1987, the anti-death penalty element understood that official statistics simply did not support the claim that the death penalty was discriminatorily applied against black murderers, as compared to white murderers.  As we showed in our WLF amicus brief, BJS statistics showed then (as they do now) that a white killer was about 33% more likely to receive the death penalty than a black murderer.  That is, whereas only 12 blacks were sent to death row for every 1,000 blacks arrested for murder and manslaughter, a much higher ratio of 16 out of 1,000 whites arrested for those same crimes were sent to death row at the time of McCleskey. 

                Faced with these implacable numbers, the race-focused death penalty opponents adroitly shifted their theory.  They argued instead that the "system" discriminated on the basis of the race of the victim, rather than the race of the perpetrator. 

                Fortunately, albeit narrowly, the Supreme Court was not persuaded by this opportunistic sophistry.  Five members of the Court had the minimal sense to recognize that if there was no actual discrimination in the defendant's individual trial and sentencing -- and there was no such evidence in McCleskey's case -- any statistical "imperfections" in the collective outcomes of past capital cases could not alter that decisive fact.  A contrary result would have flown in the face of both logic and simple justice.  If McCleskey's arguments had prevailed, the trial of a capital case involving a white victim would be deemed discriminatory even before it had begun!

                What the Court did not also grasp was that the abolitionists' shifting their argument to base their discrimination claims upon the race of the victim revealed a circular fallacy in their reasoning. 

                In contending that there was unconstitutional discrimination because Georgia disproportionately imposed the death penalty in cases where the victim was white – presumably due to greater concern for such victims -- the abolitionists implicitly acknowledged that a nondiscriminatory system would have imposed the death penalty in greater proportions in cases where the victim was black.  But the vastly overwhelming majority of black-victim murders are committed by blacks.  If the "system" had sentenced a greater proportion of black-victim murderers to death – which the abolitionists' theory in McCleskey would require to negate victim-based discrimination in favor of whites -- it would also substantially increase the percentage of death penalties imposed on black perpetrators.  And then the NAACP, the ACLU, and other race-obsessed death penalty abolitionists would return to their claims that the death penalty discriminates based on the race of the perpetrator.  Heads we win, tails you lose.  Despite this circular flaw in their reasoning, the same race-based arguments that met defeat in the McCleskey case are still pursued today by those who have a vested interest in sustaining the myth that not only the death penalty but our overall system of criminal justice is permeated with anti-black racism.

                DOJ's latest compilation of death penalty statistics, however, refutes this racial canard even more conclusively than ever.  For roughly three decades now, whites have consistently received a disproportionately large number of death sentences in relation to their portion of the relevant population of homicide offenders, whereas the reverse is true with respect to black homicide offenders.

                The critical factor to remember in assessing the racial component of capital punishment in the U.S. is that the relevant population for purposes of proportionality analysis is not the overall population, but the population of those who have committed murder.  Under Supreme Court jurisprudence, and for all practical purposes, only those who have committed murder are eligible for the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishment clause. 

                Thus, the fact that blacks constitute only about 13% of the overall U.S. population does not mean that there is a discriminatory disproportion if significantly more than 13% of those sentenced to death are black.  But if blacks represented only 13% of those convicted of murder, yet represented a far greater percentage of those receiving death sentences, then there would be plausible grounds for claiming a discriminatory disproportion.

                In fact, however, data compiled by BJS shows that for the period 1980-2008, 52.5% of homicides were committed by blacks, whereas 45.3% were committed by whites. See BJS, Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008 , Table 7 (Nov. 20111).  It follows that one would expect at least roughly comparable proportions along racial lines among those sentenced to death and executed.  But one would be wrong.

                BJS's 2012 Capital Punishment Report (Table 11) shows the number of U.S. persons executed by race since 1977.  During that period, 747 whites (56.6%) were executed, compared to only 451 blacks (34.2%).  To place the data in a more current context, the reported data for the 21st century (2000-2012) shows that 413 whites (57.2%) and 240 blacks (33.2%) were executed in the U.S. during that period.  In short, executions of white offenders dwarfed the number of black offender executions.

                The remarkable consistency of this government data strongly reinforces its validity as a comparative measure of how the U.S. criminal justice system applies the death penalty to white and black homicide offenders, respectively.  Whereas whites constituted only about 45% of homicide offenders over a period of roughly three decades, they constituted a far greater percentage, 57%, of those executed.  Blacks, on the other hand, constituted more than 52% of homicide offenders, but only about 34% of those executed.

                This consistent and straightforward data leads to but one conclusion:  Far from being discriminatorily applied against black homicide offenders, the death penalty in the U.S. has been consistently applied with far greater frequency against white homicide offenders.

                In the face of such overwhelming statistical evidence reported by the Obama Administration's own Justice Department, the fraudulence of the claim that capital punishment is discriminatorily imposed on blacks is plain for anyone to see.  Those who continue to perpetuate this canard in the face of such unambiguous data are engaged in the worst kind of racial exploitation, and should be exposed for the shameless agitators that they are.

THE FEMALE ACHIEVER WHO EXPOSED THE "WAR ON WOMEN" OVER 40 YEARS AGO

         A bogus "war on women" has been employed as a political rallying cry of the left and its captive Democratic party for decades.

           The shrill feminist advocates of this canard are oblivious to the fact that this purported nationwide conspiracy to deprive American women of equal opportunity in education, business, and the workplace bears no relationship to current reality -- or to the simple logic of practical necessity in the American economy.

           The women who are supposedly targeted by this invidious discrimination are the wives, daughters, partners, sisters, nieces, and girlfriends of the males who are supposedly perpetrating it.  American families of all stripes are increasingly dependent upon the capacity of women, no less than men, to find, maintain, and succeed at jobs of all varieties.  The notion that the males of America are erecting barriers to the success of the very women on whom their children, and in many cases themselves, are so heavily and mutually dependent borders on the ridiculous.

                          Pioneer Female Drummer Who Didn't "Get" the War on Women

           Regardless, for almost a half century federal, state, and local anti-discrimination laws -- including Equal Pay legislation and Title IX-- have penalized employers, educational institutions, and governments not only for any deliberate discrimination against women, but also for entirely innocent practices that have any incidental discriminatory impact on women.  Having defended companies against such "disparate impact" claims during his years as a  litigator, SR can personally attest to the rigors of the sex discrimination laws and their cogency in forcing American companies to eradicate outdated vestiges of anti-female bias in the workplace and the executive suite.  Although sometimes over expansive in coverage, there is no doubt that these laws have facilitated and accelerated society's inevitable acceptance that artificial barriers against the entry and success of women in the workplace, arts, sciences, and professions simply makes no sense.  Equal rights for women are now an established legal and societal reality.  Far from waging a war against women, our nation's laws and policies have successfully waged a war on behalf of women.

           Perhaps the most striking and definitive refutation of the "war on women" mentality is found in the almost astonishing evidence of how females have surpassed males in gaining the crucial benefits of higher education.  A rather stunning assessment of this phenomenon published in Forbes in 2012 demonstrated that females began to surpass males in college acceptance and attainment in the 1970's and that female superiority in that respect has now reached stunning proportions.  See D. Borzelleca, "The Male-Female Ratio in College," Feb. 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2012/02/16/the-male-female-ratio-in-college/.

          This report showed that females outnumbered males by 56.4% to 43.6% in public universities, and by 59.3% to 40.7% in private universities.

           Those stark figures indicate not only that the benefits of secondary education have favored females, but also that females will have a decided advantage in obtaining adult employment due to their superior educational attainment.  

            Women have also moved forward to a position of essential parity with males in entering such critical professions as medicine and law.  Women now constitute roughly half (about 47%) of those attending both medical school and law school.  In the law schools, moreover, women students are surpassing their male counterparts in attaining highly competitive positions on the elite law reviews, which are a ticket to the most desirable and lucrative positions in that profitable, if disreputable, profession.  The ABA's annual report on Women in the Law shows that 54% of those now selected for law review at the nation's Top 50 law schools are women.

            So much for the so-called "glass ceiling."  Women are doing just fine, and it looks as though it is the young males of America who need a bit of a boost, at least in terms of higher education admissions and attainment.

             But I digress.  Over 40 years ago, a young lady who was then pioneering in her own highly visible profession offered a more straightforward and unpretentious refutation of the more shrill proponents of what was then called the "women's lib" movement, and which now brandishes the false slogan of the "war on women."

             Anyone familiar with rock and pop music knows that, apart from vocalists or "lead singers," the instrumental positions in bands or groups are dominated by guys, and certainly were in the 60's and 70's. And no instrument was more of a male-dominated preserve than the drums.

            But entirely without fanfare or pretense, Karen Carpenter established her chops as a jazz, pop, and rock drummer starting at the age of 16.  She first played jazz drums with her brother and another partner in the group that won the prestigious Battle of the Bands at the Hollywood Bowl in 1966.  She then continued as the drummer in various iterations of the groups that ultimately evolved into the Carpenters, the best-selling American pop or rock group of the 1970's.

                            Lady Drummer in Action:  Karen Carpenter (from YouTube)

           Of course, Ms. Carpenter is primarily known as one of the great female vocalists of the 20th century, but she continued her role as an outstanding drummer for most of her career (which ended prematurely at the age of 32 due to the fatal effects of anorexia nervosa).  To the vocal disgruntlement of some of her male drummer peers, Karen Carpenter was chosen as the top jazz/pop/rock drummer in Playboy magazine's 1975 reader's poll. Popularity and name recognition undoubtedly played a large (and probably decisive) role in Ms.Carpenter's selection, but that is always a factor in such polls.  In any event, the Playboy honor validated Karen Carpenter's status as the undisputed pioneer of women drummers in popular music.

          Unlike many of her pop/rock contemporaries, Ms. Carpenter was not very political.  She was (like her brother Richard) reportedly a moderate Republican, however, and exposed herself to the scorn of many in the leftist/hipster musical coterie when she and the rest of the Carpenters provided the entertainment for President Nixon and West German Chancellor Willy Brandt at a White House dinner when the Watergate scandal was breaking.  She gave a charming little talk after the performance, in which she unabashedly declared what an honor it was to perform at the White House.

                         Carpenter working her Ludwigs at the White House (from YouTube)

        But what Karen Carpenter lacked in political sophistication she more than made up in common sense and personal conviction.  The so-called "women's lib" movement was much the rage in 1973.  With her prominent status as the first woman to achieve super-stardom as a pop/rock drummer, Karen was apparently approached from time to time to lend her voice to the chorus of feminists advancing the doctrine that women were the hapless victims of systemic discrimination in employment and career advancement.

        As evidenced by the following excerpt from a 1973 interview in Star magazine, Karen Carpenter would not take the bait.  Even in the male-dominated and testosterone-driven field of rock, jazz, and pop drummers, Ms. Carpenter was convinced by personal experience that a determined woman could succeed on her own initiative and drive.  As she explained to the interviewer in the disarmingly blunt and unsophisticated language of a self-assured young lady who had achieved enormous success in the harshly competitive environment of the U.S. recording industry:

          NANCY: You find the role for a woman changing> Do you see more opportunities for a girl to do things that she really wants to do?.

          KAREN: Oh yeah! But that's another thing...this bit about Women's Lib.  People always call me because they think that being a chick drummer, I'm a woman's Lib fanatic, and I'm not ! Besides, I don't know that much about what they're fighting for.  For myself, when I decided what I wanted to do, I went ahead and did it. Nobody got in the way. If they did, you had to figure out a way to get around them. I think anybody who has enough self respect and enough brains can do what they want to do and the bit about blaming it on somebody else is just garbage!   There's nobody that's going to stand in the way of somebody if they really want it - male or female!.

          NANCY: Good, I'm with you.

          KAREN: Its stupid you know, just because you're a girl...so what?.

          NANCY: RIGHT ON!.

          KAREN: We've got as much brains as anybody else. You see a lot of dumb guys around too! This bit about me being a successful girl drummer.  I'm not a successful GIRL drummer, I'm just a drummer that happens to be a girl that's happy! I have a ball!.

Quoted from "When I Was Sixteen," telephone interview in "Star" magazine, March,1973.

          Contemporary sophisticates are still locked in abstruse intellectual debates over the purported subtleties and complexities of the strangely illogical and counter-intuitive "war on women."  But over 40 years ago, a straight-shooting young musical pioneer from the suburban backwaters of Downey, California, cut through all the political sophistry to make the simple case that a determined woman could succeed on her own even in a male-dominated profession, thank you -- even while standing firm for the principle of female equality.

           

The Three Fallacies of Obama's Bergdahl Justification

       There has been much discussion lately of the Obama administration's release of five Taliban terrorists in order to free Robert Bergdahl, an apparent military deserter. But SR has yet to see a straightforward presentation of the three simple truths that succinctly refute the regime's unyielding defense of this ill-considered deal.  Let's review them here.

     It all starts with the mantra endlessly repeated by Obama and his minions, as though its mere utterance should silence all objections to this sordid affair:  The United States leaves no soldiers behind in enemy hands. No exceptions, no qualifications.  Full stop. Therefore, insists Obama, it is pointless and obnoxious to critically examine the merits of the Taliban-for-Bergdahl Deal.

     Three elemental considerations demonstrate the utter fallacy and simple dishonesty of the administration's position.  There are other reasons to condemn the Bergdahl Deal -- like its flatly illegal consummation without prior notice to Congress -- but these are the fundamental flaws underlying this disastrous misadventure.

     1.  The "None Left Behind" Maxim is Neither Objectively True nor Unconditional.  First, the "no soldier left behind" maxim (NSLB) is an honorable and demanding aspiration, not an unconditional mandate.  As documented elsewhere, U.S. soldiers have sometimes been reluctantly or inadvertently left behind in captivity.  See, e.g., www.dianawest.net (June 6, 2014).  The peculiar circumstances or inaccessibility of some captives may sometimes make retrieval impracticable or impossible.

     One notable example of the maxim's qualified character is the shadowy case of PFC Robert Garwood, who was captured in the Vietnam War in 1965.  When other U.S. P.O.W.'s were released upon the peace settlement in 1973, Garwood remained behind in Vietnamese hands.  The Defense Department later determined that he collaborated with the enemy.  It was not until 1979 that he departed Vietnam on an Air France aircraft under ambiguous and shady circumstances -- but with no indication that the release resulted from U.S. recovery efforts, let alone any substantial trade-off.  On the contrary, the U.S. military's primary objective in accepting Garwood was to court martial him for collaborating with the enemy.  

     The notion that the NSLB principle applies without any regard for the behavior and circumstances of the soldier in question is insupportable. This principle obviously originated with the object of recovering the brave and patriotic soldiers who have been captured in honorable combat.  It was certainly not designed with the purpose of sacrificing the lives of good troops or the fruits of the battlefielld (e.g., enemy captives) to rescue or retrieve deserters or defectors.

     In short, the "no soldier left behind" slogan invoked by Obama to silence criticism of his woeful deal with the Taliban thugs is not the absolute and unqualified rule that he pretends it to be.  Rather, it is an honorable and compelling aspiration which circumstances and realities may sometimes prevent from being fulfilled.  It does not perforce end all examination and questioning of a grossly disadvantageous prisoner exchange, as Obama would have it, but merely begins it.

                                                  

             Qatar:  Dubious Halfway House for the Taliban Five             

     2.  Limits on the "Price".  The Obamacrats' exploitation of the "no soldier left behind" slogan is designed to bypass the hard reality that cost-benefit analysis must be applied to any prisoner exchange, let alone one as grossly exorbitant as the Bergdahl deal.  Contrary to the administration's twisted arguments, both the price to be paid and the value and circumstances of the particular prisoner should and must be weighed in reaching any such deal with the enemy.

     Even Obama's propagandists would (if pressed) be forced to concede that there are obvious limits on what the government should surrender in exchange for a detained soldier, even one of highest value.  Not even the most deranged administration apologist would argue that the president could defensibly surrender a nuclear weapon, an arsenal of deadly military drones, or similar lethal military assets to an enemy like the Taliban  -- even if they were uncompromisingly demanded as the price for the release of even an honorably captured soldier. 

     Here, the five liberated Taliban commanders were all classified by Obama's own Defense Department as presenting a "high risk" of launching attacks against the U.S. if released.  Yet Obama and his courtiers indignantly bristle at any suggestion that this was too high a price to pay for the release of a self-absorbed soldier who had walked away from his unit, rather than being captured in combat.  

     The release of these malevolent terrorists obviously presents a substantial risk of future attacks against the U.S., its personnel, or its allies; indeed, Obama himself acknowledged that such risk is "absolutely" presented. Moreover, the regime's assurances that the exchange agreement provides adequate safeguards to assure the confinement and non-belligerence of the terrorists are hollow and misleading. No sooner did the Taliban Five arrive in the terrorist-friendly state of Qatar than their freedom to roam at large in that shadowy Arab emirate was revealed. 

     In that regard, it is highly significant that the actual content of the purported "agreement" with Qatar has been cloaked under the inevitable claim of confidentiality.  Indeed, it is not even clear that there is an enforceable written agreement specifying the particulars of the terrorists' detention or the means to be applied to assure that they do not engage in terrorist-support or strategic activity while detained in Qatar.  And of course, after one year, they are evidently free to return to the fray altogether.  

     This deal is outrageously inadequate from a national security standpoint even with what we do know about it, let alone what we do not know because of the administration's concealment.

     Moreover, the administration's demonstration that it will indeed negotiate with and reward terrorists in order to retrieve captured U.S. personnel greatly strengthens the motivation of terrorists to seize Americans as hostages in danger zones all over the world.

     These straightforward considerations refute Obama's perverse insistence that the ill-begotten Bergdahl deal is justified by mere invocation of the NSLB slogan.  Soldiers go to war and fight to defend national security, not to be invoked as justifications for gravely compromising it.  The negotiated release of five deadly Taliban terrorists presents a grave compromise of national security that the government would be hard-pressed to justify by the recovery of even an honorably captured and heroic soldier, let alone an apparent deserter like "Sgt." Bergdahl.

     3.  Value and Circumstances of the Prisoner.  Obama and his minions have also insisted that any consideration of Bergdahl's deserter status or other possible perfidies is irrelevant and indecent, because the obligation to recover a soldier in enemy hands is unconditional.  According to the administration, the military captive's relative merit or value, and the circumstances of his falling into enemy hands, are wholly irrelevant to the retrieval effort.  This is arrant nonsense.

     Initially, the case of a defector -- i.e., a soldier who not only deserts, but transfers allegiance to the cause of the enemy -- is decisively different than that of an honorably captured soldier. Benedict Arnold's desertion and defection to the British cause following his treachery at West Point during the Revolutionary War is a classic illustration.  General Washington was prepared to go to great lengths to recapture Arnold, but hardly for purposes of a joyful reconciliation and welcome home celebration.  On the contrary, Washington's object was to execute the defector.  He commissioned no less a figure than the Marquis de Lafayette to lead an expedition against Arnold's British command.  As related in Dave Palmer's excellent book, George Washington and Benedict Arnold (Regnery Pub. 2006), General Washington instructed Lafayette as follows:

          Should Arnold "fall into your hands," the Virginian
          coldly told Lafayette, you are to execute him "in the
          most summary way."  Id. at p. 377.

     In this regard, there appears to be no reliable evidence that Bergdahl defected to the Taliban cause, although there have been second-hand reports that he might have "declared jihad" during the course of his captivity.  See, e.g., Fox News report of June 6, 2006. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/06/exclusive-bergdahl-declared-jihad-secret-documents-show/.  Whatever the motives of Bergdahl's apparent desertion, they are hardly comparable to Benedict Arnold's treacheries.  

     Yet the critical point remains:  the motives and circumstances under which a soldier falls into enemy hands can and should be weighed in determining the sacrifices or concessions to be made in seeking his recovery.  It is specious to contend that the government should not go to greater lengths to recover a heroic warrior honorably captured in combat than it would pursue seeking to recover a deserter who placed his mates at risk by his desertion.

     In short, a high-cost exchange that might be justified to recover a captured Audie Murphy -- although it is hard to imagine the ultra-heroic Murphy being captured -- might well be considered excessive in the case of a dishonorable deserter.

     Contrary to the insidious distortions of Obama's programmed apologists, none of this is to suggest that the United States was not justified in taking strenuous measures to recover Bergdahl.  Such measures were promptly and vigorously undertaken by the Army, in the form of all-out search-and-recovery operations.  Indeed, the loss of some six fellow soldiers in those and related operations more than lived up to the principle later invoked by Obama to justify the Bergdahl Deal.

     Not only did Obama's government imprudently negotiate with terrorists, they were shamefully out-negotiated by a band of primitive Islamic thugs.


     The case is clear.  Obama's invocation of the NSLB principle cannot obscure the fact that he authorized a dangerous compromise of national security that cannot be justified by a misguided compulsion to pay any price to recover an apparent military deserter.  Least of all when an exorbitant price had already been paid in the loss of good soldiers' lives in connection with the Army's heroic retrieval efforts in the field.

                                              * * * *
    Note:  For those on the left who (ignoring their own pampered millennial lifestyles) enjoy attacking the credibility of anyone who questions Obama's military policies if they have not themselves served in the military, please note that SR served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1964 to 1968 and received, inter alia, the Vietnam Service Medal and Vietnam Campaign Medal.

Update:  Subsequent to publication, the administration asserted in hearings before the House Armed Services Committee that some form of memorandum of agreement was entered into with Qatar by a Defense Department lawyer, purporting to set terms governing the five Taliban terrorists' status in that emirate.  The purported agreement was not produced at the hearing but would supposedly be revealed in a so-called classified session -- i.e., so its terms would not be seen by the public.  In any event, it has already been reported that Qatar, unsurprisingly, is not honoring the agreement.

"B" IS THE WEAKEST LINK IN THE COURTS' LGBT MARRIAGE FIAT

               In American society's sudden lurch to support the oxymoron of same-sex marriage (SSM), the argument is often made that there is no "rational basis" for limiting marriage to one man and one woman.  Indeed, this is the critical foundation for many of the spurious judicial decisions invalidating state laws codifying natural marriage, with the courts perversely distorting the so-called "rational basis" test under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

                These judicial decisions rest on the radical premise that all human civilizations throughout millennial history to the present have been (and remain) patently irrational in their establishment of natural male-female unions as the optimal and exclusive essence of what we call marriage.  The only exceptions to this historical consensus are the coterie of European and Western countries who suddenly discovered in the last 10-15 years that, mirabile dictu, their forefathers were all irrational clods who lacked the sense to ignore the immutable forces of biology and nature.

                Heretofore, however, the millennial and global consensus on the basic nature of mating and marriage has facilitated the unbroken propagation, increase, and advancement of the human race, notwithstanding the epidemics, wars, plagues, and natural disasters that have threatened its survival throughout history.  Surely the burden of proof should fall heavily on those who would suddenly supplant a proven system of sustained survival and growth with an entirely unprecedented and radical lurch into the demographic unknown.  Yet judge after spineless federal judge has simply fallen into step with the prevailing political and academic trend, mechanically adopted the LGBT talking points, and arrogantly dismissed humanity's historical system of civilized self-preservation as "irrational."

                                                                                          gaspee.com
                      Send in the Clowns:  Here Come the Federal Judges to Rule on SSM

                Contrary to this presumptuous judicial sophistry, there are extensive rational grounds for states maintaining the limitation of marriage to male-female unions – for example, the highly reasonable reluctance to institutionalize and encourage dangerous and unsanitary homosexual practices; or simply avoiding the disruptive societal risks of an entirely untried and problematic new paradigm of marriage and family organization.   

                The most compelling rational justification, however, is self-evident to any soberly reasoning individual:  promoting and encouraging same-sex marriage undercuts society's most fundamental function, namely, preserving and perpetuating itself by procreational reproduction.  Simply put, SSM will divert persons capable of fertile procreative unions into sterile same-sex unions. 

                Much of the debate about SSM implicitly presupposes, without expressly stipulating, that homosexual persons constitute but a statistically insignificant percentage of the population.  If only a de minimis percentage of the population is homosexual, it might be argued that enabling or encouraging those persons to enter same-sex marriages (if they marry at all) will not have any meaningful negative effect on the propagation of the nation's population.

                But same-sex marriage is plainly not limited to the marriage of two homosexuals.  In nullifying laws and constitutions limiting marriage to a man and a woman, courts have not simply permitted "gay marriage;" rather, they have opened the door to all kinds and varieties of same-sex marriage.  Thus, there is nothing to prevent a "mixed" marriage between a heterosexual and a homosexual, or, indeed, a marriage of economic convenience between two heterosexuals. Certification as a permanent and exclusive homosexual is certainly not a precondition in the brave new world of same-sex marriage.

                Although same-sex marriages between one or more heterosexuals may prove to be rare – only time will tell – same-sex marriages involving one or more bisexuals is not likely to be rare at all.  And that largely unexplored factor is highly significant.

                By definition, bisexuals are perfectly capable of marrying heterosexuals or other bisexuals of the opposite sex, and producing offspring.  Indeed, there are numerous bisexuals who have parented children either before or after "coming out" with respect to homosexuality.  Acknowledged bisexuals have been especially prominent in the entertainment industry.  David Bowie, Angelina Jolie, Drew Barrymore, and Lady Gaga are only among the more prominent self-proclaimed bi's.  Others, like Elton John, have turned to a seemingly homosexual lifestyle after having previously experienced heterosexual marriages.  Among bisexuals, migration from fertile heterosexual relationships to sterile same-sex relationships has always been a possibility, but it has long been strongly discouraged by both societal norms and the exclusivity of heterosexual marriage.  With the advent of SSM, it will be socially encouraged and approved, and legally endorsed.

                Statistics on this subject are understandably uncertain and varied.  A fairly recent study by the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School purported to find that 1.7% of Americans acknowledged themselves to be homosexual, while 1.8% identified as bisexual.  The 1993 Janus Report on Sexual Behavior, on the other hand, purported to find that 5% of men and 3% of women considered themselves bisexual and 4 percent of men and 2 percent of women considered themselves homosexual.  A 2002 study by National Center for Health Statistics found that 1.8% of men ages 18–44 considered themselves bisexual, 2.3& homosexual, and 3.9% as "something else". The same study found that 2.8% of women ages 18–44 considered themselves bisexual, 1.3% homosexual, and 3.8% as "something else."

                Despite their variations, it is interesting to note that the studies indicate that bisexuality appears to be more prevalent than homosexuality.  Among other things, this significantly undercuts the established LGBT doctrine that same-sex marriage is justified because it offers the sole marital outlet or opportunity for those who presumably will pursue it.  Needless to say, bisexuals are quite capable of entering and fulfilling marriages with persons of the opposite sex.

                There can be no doubt that there have been literally millions of marriages involving homosexual and bisexual persons that have produced offspring throughout history.  Indeed, until relatively recent times in historical terms, neither men nor women (especially the latter) had much choice in the matter of whom, or whether, they would marry, at least in certain social classes and milieus.  In societies across the globe and in all ages, for example, parents did not exempt their daughters from the necessity of entering a suitable marriage if the daughter professed distaste for either the man they chose for her or for men in general.  And the equivalent for sons, albeit probably to a lesser degree.  Given the stigma of homosexuality in most societies, few parents were likely to know whether or not a child had that orientation in any event.  Whether or not the historical tradition of parents requiring or pressuring their children to marry an opposite sex mate, without regard to sexual "orientation," was fair or sound, it was undoubtedly followed across the ages and societies.    In short, history demonstrates that both bisexuals and homosexuals are capable of entering heterosexual marriages and, however reluctantly or indifferently, producing offspring as a result.

                The critical point is this:  the expanding availability of same-sex marriage will probably divert substantial numbers of persons, particularly bisexuals, from normal man-woman marriages that they otherwise might have pursued.  If 2% of the 300 million-plus U.S. population is bisexual, then there would be over 6 million bisexual Americans; if 4%, then there would be over 12 million.  Heretofore, the marriage laws encouraged such persons to follow their heterosexual inclinations and marry a person of the opposite sex, if they were inclined to marry.

                Now, however, the increased availability of same-sex marriage sharply changes the equation, particularly in the case of genuine bisexuals.  Millions of "bi's" who heretofore would have married a person of the opposite sex, and procreated children, may choose instead to enter a necessarily sterile SSM.  As a result, by definition SSM undercuts a society's compelling interest in propagating itself.  Moreover, inasmuch as even marginal reductions in the rate of a nation's population growth adversely affect its economic growth (except in circumstances of substantially overpopulated nations, a circumstance inapplicable to today's United States), SSM also tends to undercut a nation's or a state's powerful interest in maximizing economic growth. 

                Both of these indisputable effects of legalizing SSM provide at least a rational basis – in reality, a compelling basis – for enacting laws limiting marriage to a man and a woman.  Anyone with even a glimmer of common sense could quickly grasp these obvious implications if presented with the basic facts.  But what would be obvious to a reasonably intelligent 12-year-old is a closed book to the obfuscating pettifoggers in black robes who are bent on subverting humanity's most critical social institution. 

SOLUTION TO OKLAHOMA'S LETHAL INJECTION PROBLEM: THE LONG-DROP NOOSE

     While politicians and media recently hyperventilated over the private racial comments of the aged, cancer-riddled white owner of a pro sports team, comparable public outrage is never expressed over the infinitely more despicable inter-racial offenses perpetrated by black criminals against whites on a regular basis.  See, e.g., http://splashingrocks.blogspot.com/2013/08/media-suppression-of-racial-realities.html.  Like aggravated inter-racial murders, for example.  As compared to private race-related conversations.

     A case in point was the horrific Oklahoma murder of Stephanie Neiman, a 19-year old white girl.  The murderer was a black brute named Clayton Lockett.  Coming upon Lockett in the commission of other crimes, Ms. Neiman was hit in the face with a gun, kidnapped, shot repeatedly, and ultimately buried alive at Lockett's direction. A friend of Ms. Neiman's was also raped at the scene by Lockett and his two accomplices.  After the usual procedural delays and jurisprudential atrocities ordained by the U.S.'s warped, criminal-friendly legal system, Lockett was convicted of murder, rape, kidnapping, assault and battery, and robbery.  Like numerous similarly shocking black-on-white crimes, it was largely ignored or minimized by the mainstream media.

     Eventually, however, the media actually did take a break from their obsessive indignation over Donald Sterling's private conversations to turn some attention to the case of Ms. Neiman's horrendous murder.  But it was not to express any anger at the perpetrator, or sympathy for the victim.  On the contrary, the media's sudden interest in the case was triggered solely by what was uniformly reported as Clayton Lockett's "botched" execution. See, e.g., http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/04/30/4-horrible-forms-of-capital-punishment-more-humane-than-oklahomas-botched-execution/.

               Japan avoids "botched" executions using the reliable "long rope"

     Outlet after outlet rushed to outdo each other in shock and indignation that this murderous monster died of a heart attack after his lethal injection procedure was interrupted due to administration irregularities.  Liberal reporters and commentators employed their most maudlin and lugubrious prose to depict Lockett's purported gasps, twitches, and groans in the course of an execution procedure that was aborted only because of the state's fastidious, court-induced efforts to assure the most painless execution possible.  At any rate, the murderer expired only 43 minutes after the first injection.  Compared to Ms. Nieman's prolonged and grievous sufferings, Lockett's antiseptic execution was a relative walk in the park.

     As though on cue, President Obama soon joined the mournful chorus of liberal concern for the justly executed murderer.  He ruefully declared that Lockett's execution was "deeply troubling," and directed his Afro-racist attorney general, the notorious Eric Holder, to investigate alleged problems respecting implementation of the death penalty.

     Think about that deeply warped response.  Obama did not find the inter-racial brutalization, pistol-whipping, murder, and burying alive of an innocent young girl "deeply troubling."  Instead, he directed his concern entirely to the wildly embellished flaws in the brutal murderer's execution.  This tells us all we need to know about Obama's sense of  values and priorities, not to mention his race-based predilections.

     Those who have watched and waited while a virtuous parent or loved one endures days and weeks (or more) of suffering before finally dying of cancer or some other painful disease are not likely to have great sympathy for this relatively swift death of a malicious murderer who inflicted unspeakable and prolonged suffering upon his hapless victim.  

     The grotesque and grossly disproportionate sympathy for Lockett proclaimed by the media and the anti-death penalty element reflects a profoundly distorted understanding of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment -- not to mention a bizarre predilection to empathize more with brutal murderers than with their victims and the victims' survivors.  

     These death penalty opponents persistently argue that the technical gliches that occasionally result in an imperfect lethal execution render that procedure unconstitutional.  The unspoken premise for this argument is that the state is constitutionally obligated to employ the most painless means of execution possible. With the backing of their liberal allies in the courts, they are successfully changing the meaning of the Eight Amendment. Instead of merely prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment -- by which the Framers meant extremely torturous punishments like drawing-and-quartering -- it would guarantee an essentially painless execution.  This, of course, is constitutional nonsense.

     The condemnations of the states' lethal injection procedures are especially absurd and ironic because it was the anti-death penalty movement itself that has caused most of the states to adopt lethal injection in the first place.  In 1985, for example, a lengthy dissent by Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, an extreme death penalty abolitionist, contended that the electric chair was an unconstitutional means of execution and noted that lethal injection would be a more human method.  Mainly due to the relentless attacks on other modes of execution by abolitionist lawyers, the vast majority of the states that retain the death penalty (at least in theory -- most of them never use it at all) use lethal injection.  

     Now, due to the maudlin furor over murderer Lockett's interrupted, but ultimately effective, execution by lethal injection, the Governor of Oklahoma has predictably suspended all executions, pending a review of the state's protocols for lethal injection executions.  

     But it is obvious to anyone who has followed this issue that death penalty opponents will never accept any technique for lethal injection.  The ACLU and other death penalty abolitionists have openly stated that they consider all methods of execution unconstitutional.  So no amount of tinkering with the combination of chemicals or mode of administration used in lethal injection executions will deter or even reduce the relentless barrage of legal challenges brought by the legions of subsidized attorneys who have made this esoteric issue a cause celebre in the legal profession.

     Even when lethal injections reach the point where the condemned murderer expires as peacefully as T.S. Eliot's "patient etherised upon the table," see The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, l.3, the abolitionists will not be satisfied.  They aren't really interested in achieving painless and efficient executions.  They prefer to employ the sordid melodrama of so-called botched executions as a convenient propaganda tool to further their acknowledged goal of abolishing the death penalty altogether -- even for crimes so heinous that merely describing them sickens the soul.

     So Oklahoma and other states are wasting their time seeking to perfect the chemical combinations and delivery techniques used in lethal injection.  There is a better, simpler, and more foolproof mode of execution, presently employed by one of the most civilized and pacifist democracies in the world, that would avoid all the complications, gliches, and medical confusion associated with lethal injection.  The states should follow the example of Japan and, to borrow the title of a vintage Clint Eastwood western, "Hang 'em high." That is, employ Japan's method of long-drop hanging.

     Although Japan's murder rate is only about one-fifth of the United States' rate, it deals firmly and forcefully with its murderers, as it does with other violent criminals.  It retains and enforces the death penalty for aggravated murderers.  With a population of only about one-third of the U.S. population, Japan still executed at least eight persons in 2013.  As of March 2012,there were 135 people awaiting execution in Japan.  In short, the death penalty is a genuine and practical element of Japan's penal system.

     Japan's method of execution is long-drop hanging.  In order to facilitate a quick and certain death, Japan's gallows are structured to assure a long drop, sufficiently long to assure a quick and certain death by fracturing the killer's neck.  

     While Japan's method may not be peaceful and pretty, it is swift and certain.  Nor can it be seriously argued that hanging constitutes cruel and unusual punishment within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment.  Hanging was the accepted, reliable, and "usual" method of execution during the era of the Framers and long afterward.  Indeed, George Washington himself ordered numerous hangings for those convicted of capital court martial offenses during the Revolutionary War.  Perhaps the most famous was the execution of the much-admired British officer, Major Andre, who was convicted of the capital offense of spying in connection with the treason of Benedict Arnold.  If hanging was good enough for Major Andre, who faced the gallows with commendable sang froid, it is certainly good enough for the likes of murderous brutes like Clayton Lockett.

    

THE DUBIOUS UKRAINIAN DISTRACTION

         The United States is staggering under the tyranny of a lawless President, who is shredding constitutional restraints to impose his quasi-socialist, amoral, and racially preferential policies on a divided and confused nation.  This same President has repeatedly usurped the legislative role assigned to Congress by the Constitution, most recently in an effort to salvage his disastrous health care control legislation by arbitrarily repealing and revising its provisions in whatever manner best suits his political purposes.  Even more menacingly, his Administration is abusing federal law enforcement to punish political opponents (like Dinesh D-Souza) and has wielded the enormous power of the IRS to harass and suppress conservative political groups and organizations (like the Tea Party) that dare oppose his oppressive policies. 

            Meanwhile, this same Obama Administration not only tolerates the wholesale violation of the Nation's borders by massive illegal immigration, but actually seeks to facilitate and award such de facto invasion by millions of Mexicans by categorically refusing to enforce the deportation laws -- and then demanding the enactment of amnesty legislation to reward those who participate in the lawless invasion of our country.

                But never mind such ominous domestic misgovernance and oppression.  Put it all aside and under the rug.  There are more convenient scapegoats for opportunistic face-time demagogues to pillory on CNN, Fox News, and the lapdog networks.  Like the President of Russia and the parliament of the Crimea – neither of which is responsible for any of the horrendous problems pressing upon us here at home.

Washington's warning against foreign entanglements may fit the Ukraine Fiasco like a glove.

           The most prominent leaders of the Republican opposition – in lockstep with the liberal media and the Democrats -- have suddenly discovered what they apparently consider a far graver national crisis:  a remote and esoteric Eurasian dispute between a dubious provisional government imposed by rowdy Ukrainian street rebels and pro-Russian forces occupying the longstanding Russian stronghold and naval base on the Crimean peninsula.  

            While the constitutional rights of American Christians and conservatives are crushed and abused at home, bloviating senators and Secretaries of State rush to the microphones to shed crocodile tears over the fate of Ukrainian street factions of uncertain integrity and affiliation – just as these same maudlin poseurs backed the  "democratic" street mobs of Cairo and Tripoli to the great ultimate cost of innocent Christians in Egypt and Libya.

            It is not surprising that duplicitous Democrats are seizing upon the distant distraction of the Ukrainian imbroglio to divert attention from the looming domestic disasters of Obamacare, economic stagnation, an emasculated U.S. military, and the government-led destruction of the institution of marriage.  That is the kind of duplicity that one expects of the Obama sycophants and deranged leftists who control the Federal Government, the major media, and the Democrat Party. 

            But it is exasperating when those who should be leading the resistance to our domestic oppression step forward to serve as "useful idiots" to divert the nation's frustration towards a convenient foreign scapegoat and bogeyman – namely, Russian President Vladimir Putin.  To borrow from Matthew 23:24, Republican leaders who meekly "swallow the camel" of unconstitutional oppression at home race before the cameras to rail furiously against the relative gnat of a remote dispute arising thousands of miles from our borders -- and still further from our genuine national interests.

            The preoccupation of GOP senators like Marco Rubio and John McCain with the vastly exaggerated U.S. interests in the Ukrainian crisis provides them a convenient opportunity for avoiding the far more immediate and pressing crises right here in the United States.  Here at home, Obama, with the assistance of the courts and his leftist minions in the agencies and legislatures, is relentlessly suppressing religious freedom by forcing Catholics and other Christians to subsidize abortions and to celebrate homosexuality and so-called same-sex "marriage."  Yet the likes of McCain, Rubio, and the unctuous Lindsey Graham are far more outraged -- and far more eager to take a stand -- in response to Russia's unsurprising assertion of its national, naval, and security interests in the distant Crimean peninsula.

            But the chorus of condemnation against Putin's surgical intervention in Crimea studiously ignores the fact that there are other contestants in the Ukrainian arena, and none of them are to be confused with the angels.  To put it mildly.  The Ukrainian street rebels of the Maidan include ultra-nationalist fascists and anti-Semites, not to mention a virulently anti-Russian element.  The violent rebels in Kiev that overthrew the corrupt and incompetent – but duly elected – Ukrainian Government are decidely a mixed and motley crew.  But they are surely not to be confused with Jeffersonian democrats, however much American media and politicians promote that impression. 

            Meanwhile, the European Union's intrusive efforts to draw the Ukraine into its economic hegemony, or even into NATO, exacerbated the division that already exists between that nation's pro-European western sector versus its pro-Russian eastern sector.  It is hardly surprising that large segments of the Ukrainian people – mainly those in the East who are members of the conservative Russian Orthodox Church -- are reluctant to be drawn into the embrace of a degenerate Western Europe.  While Putin's Russia at least respects their conservative religious values – such as the preservation of traditional Christian marriage --  those same values would be sharply condemned, if not outlawed outright, in the rigidly secular EU.

            It is evident, therefore, that U.S. politicians and media have grossly oversimplified the complex interests at play in the Ukraine in order to fit a narrative that portrays Putin as a marauding Sauron waging war on the free peoples of the West.  In reality, it is more a matter of merely reconciling the interests of the western-oriented and Russian-oriented elements of the Ukraine, while Russia unsurprisingly insists on protecting its longstanding national interests in the Crimea from falling victim to the turmoil.

            In the latest twist to this fiasco, the Crimean Parliament has voted to join the Russian Federation and scheduled a popular referendum for Crimean citizens to approve or reject such a move.  In what can only be described as an exercise in astonishing audacity, Obama has responded by stating "The proposed referendum on the future of Crimea would violate the Ukrainian constitution and violate international law."  This coming from the would-be Paramount Leader who delights in flouting the restraints of the U.S. Constitution on a regular basis.  But it ill behooves Obama to lecture Russia on the application of Ukrainian constitutional law, when he has blatantly and consistently violated the constitutional rights of his own people, particularly in the areas of religious freedom and the separation of powers.

            The self-righteous Russo-phobic demagoguery from U.S. politicians of all stripes on the Ukrainian situation is a dysfunctional distraction from the more immediate domestic threats to our own constitutional republic.  Especially because actual U.S. interests in the Ukraine are presently negligible, this is yet another case where George Washington's wise admonition to "avoid foreign entanglements" fits like a glove.  If and when Russia moves beyond protecting its historic interests in the Crimea and the stability of the Eastern Ukraine it will be soon enough to sound the alarms.