NAPOLITANO:
A sorry State of the Union
Obama
has a lot to answer for
By
Andrew P. Napolitano
January
29, 2014
What
if the state of the union is a mess? What if the government spies on
all
of us all of the time and recognizes no limits to its spying? What if
its
appetite for acquiring personal knowledge about all Americans is
insatiable?
What if the government uses the microchips in our cellphones to
follow
us and listen to us as we move about?
What
if the Constitution expressly prohibits the government from doing this?
What
if the government has written laws that are interpreted in secret by
judges
who meet in secret and are applied by federal agents who operate in
secret
and their secret behavior doesn't even resemble what the laws say
they
can do?
What
if the feds have seized the content of every text message, email,
mobile
and landline telephone call, utility bill, credit card bill and bank
statement
of everyone in America for the past four years? What if no law has
authorized
them to capture this?
What
if, when asked by members of Congress, in public and under oath,
high-ranking
officials, at least one with ribbons on his chest and stars on
his
shoulders, lied about what the government is doing?
What
if the government's spies have so insinuated themselves into our
computers
that they can capture every keystroke we press on all of our
computers
before we hit "send"? What if the feds have hacked into the
servers
of every major computer-service provider in the country, and they
know
what we have typed before we even make corrections?
What
if the feds have a copy of what we have deleted? What if our typed
innermost
thoughts and even second thoughts that were never sent in emails
nevertheless
reside in the government's data bank?
What
if the president knows all this and supports what his spies are doing?
What
if he secretly authorized all this, but only admitted to some of it
when
he got caught? What if he uses his spies to tell him what he wants to
know
about those who oppose him?
What
if the president sold Congress and the country a Trojan horse called
Obamacare?
What if he promised that under Obamacare you could keep the
health
insurance you had before Obamacare, and he lied, and he knew it? What
if
he promised that under Obamacare you could keep the same physicians who
treated
you before Obamacare, and he lied, and he knew it?
What
if Obamacare made insurance coverage so expensive that some people lost
their
jobs because their employers could not afford to pay for it? What if
under
Obamacare more than 6 million Americans lost their insurance coverage
overnight
and most haven't gotten it back yet? What if this was the
president's
plan all along so that he could orchestrate a government
takeover
of the health insurance industry?
What
if the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff
told the president one night that our consulate in Benghazi was under
attack
by organized al Qaeda troops while the attack was taking place?
What
if the president did nothing about it? What if the president knew the
truth
about the Benghazi attack, but for three weeks claimed that the attack
was
just an out-of-control political demonstration by fanatics who were
upset
about a cheap, 15-minute, low-grade movie that never made it into
theaters?
What
if our ambassador to Libya died in that attack and the president
covered
up the facts surrounding his death? What if the president dispatched
our
U.N. ambassador to all major TV networks to hide the truth? What if he
tried
to promote the lying U.N. ambassador to secretary of state?
What
if, in five years, the president has borrowed more than $6 trillion and
spent
it all on his favorite industries and risky bailouts and fruitless
wars,
and now has nothing to show for it but the debts that will one day
come
due? What if the government claims the unemployment rate is 6.7
percent,
but so many people have stopped looking for jobs that it is really
10.2
percent?
What
if the president alone has increased the number of people on food
stamps
and increased the amount of money they each receive? What if half of
the
adults in the nation are now receiving material assistance from the
government
in the form of money the government has borrowed? What if
generations
of Americans as yet unborn will be obliged to pay back the money
the
president has borrowed and given away?
What
if nearly two-thirds of Americans simply don't trust the president's
judgment?
What if the president alone raised the minimum wage to be paid to
workers
on federal projects? What if the president has threatened to use his
pen
and his phone to operate the government in ways the Constitution
forbids?
What
if the Constitution makes clear and the courts have underscored the
truism
that the president cannot modify or amend or postpone the effective
dates
of federal laws? What if the president has modified and amended and
postponed
federal laws so as to help his friends and wound his foes?
What
if the president has tried to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to
pay
for contraceptive services that they cannot use and that are prohibited
by
the Roman Catholic Church? What if the Sisters sued the president and
asked
the court to relieve them of the burden of paying for contraception?
What
if the president resisted the Sisters' lawsuit and questioned the
sincerity
of their religious beliefs? What if the Supreme Court stopped the
president
from forcing the nuns to pay for contraception before it even
heard
their case?
What
if the president has discussed none of this in his State of the Union
address?
What if the president thinks that during his second term in office
he
answers to no one? What if the president lives and works surrounded by
those
who reinforce his beliefs? What if he has rejected his oath of
fidelity
to the Constitution? What will he do next? What will we do about
it?
Andrew
P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is
an
analyst for the Fox News Channel. He has written seven books on the U.S.
Constitution.
--------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment