Friday, September 24, 2010

Email about Demint visiting Spartanburg

We wanted to take a moment to personally invite you to join the CEO Round Table of South Carolina and Conservative.SC at our annual “A Greater Freedom” Conference. This exciting event, aimed at bringing together economic and social conservatives across our state, will be Friday, October 1st, at 7pm at First Baptist Church North Spartanburg (get directions).  
We’re excited to announce that U.S. Senator Jim DeMint and SBC Executive Director Dr. Frank Page will be headlining this exciting evening.   
This event is free-of-charge and open to the public, but trust us... you will leave with a wealth of information about the current state of affairs in Columbia and Washington and numerous ways you can get involved in our ongoing efforts to reform the culture and politics here in South Carolina.  
Throughout the conference, you'll have plenty of opportunities to visit with conservative activists from across the state. Check out Senator DeMint’s invitation video and make plans to join us on Friday night, October 1st, in Spartanburg! 

Democrats Put Off Showdown on Bush Cuts Until After November Election

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703384204575509793142421332.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsTop

Trust in Legislative Branch Falls to Record-Low 36%

http://www.gallup.com/poll/143225/Trust-Legislative-Branch-Falls-Record-Low.aspx

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Washington's Farewell Address

http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/farewell/


The above website should help you in with the essay contest question. Start formulating your response. This will be due on October 18.

IN HIS FAREWELL ADDRESS IN PHILADELPHIA IN 1776, GEORGE WASHINGTON WARNED AGAINST THE ADVENT OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN NATIONS WITH POPULACE-ELECTED GOVERNMENTS. DO YOU BELIEVE OUR NATION'S HISTORY SUPPORTS HIS VIEWS? EXPLAIN.

GOP's Pledge to America

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/docs/2010/GOP_pledgetoamerica.pdf

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Voter Registration

The South Carolina State Election Commission has created an easy step by step way to assist us in preparation for Election Day, November 2.
·         Register to vote by October 2. Register in-person at your county voter registration office or online at scvotes.org. Print an application, complete it, and return it to your county voter registration office. All applications must be postmarked by October 2 in order to participate in the November election
·         Check your voter registration at scvotes.org or call you county voter registration office to make sure all your address is current. If not, submit a change of address form by October 2.
·         Bring your voter registration card, driver's license or DMV-issued ID card with you to the polls on Election Day. Polls will be open 7 a.m. - 7 p.m., November 2. 

Monday, September 20, 2010

James Madison: The Father of American Politics

By RICHARD BROOKHISER
James Madison is known as the Father of the Constitution, reflecting his role in planning, writing and ratifying the nation's fundamental law. This should be his month: The Constitutional Convention, where he starred, finished the document in September 1787. And Congress sent the amendments that became the Bill of Rights—which Madison also played a major role in shaping—to the states in September 1789.

But Madison has another claim on our attention. He is the father of American politics as we know it.

Madison helped establish America's first political party, the Republicans. In 1791, as a representative from Virginia, he joined Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson on a trip through upstate New York and New England, supposedly collecting biological specimens for the American Philosophical Society but actually collecting political allies for themselves. The politician they wished to combat, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, already wielded great power through his office, and hence he was somewhat slower to organize a party; when he did, it took the name Federalists.

James Madison, the fourth U.S. president
.Madison and Jefferson built better than Hamilton: the Federalists disappeared as a national party in 1816, while the old Republicans march on today as the Democrats. (The modern GOP is an unrelated organization established in 1854.)

Madison helped found the first party newspaper, the National Gazette. (The Nation, The New Republic and National Review are latter-day reincarnations.) He recruited the paper's first editor, Philip Freneau, a versifier and college chum. Jefferson gave Freneau a nominal job as a translator in the State Department and in his free time Freneau smacked Hamilton in prose.

Madison's interest in newspapers flowed from his interest in the power of public opinion. "Whatever facilitates a general intercourse of sentiments," he wrote in a December, 1791 National Gazette essay,
". . . a circulation of newspapers throughout the entire body of the people . . . is favorable to liberty." Then "every good citizen will be . . . a sentinel over the rights of the people."

Drowning in both media and poll data today, we understand the importance of regularly measuring public opinion. But in the early republic consulting public opinion was a new concept.

The Federalists had little use for it. They thought the people should rule at the polls, then let the victors do their best until the next election. Madison foresaw, and applauded, our world of 24/7 news, comment and pulse-taking before it existed.

Madison belonged to an early form of the political machine, the dynasty. America had revolted against George III and the House of Hanover, but the dynastic temptation lingered on. Federalist John Adams, our second president, saw his eldest son, John Quincy Adams, become the sixth president. But the Adamses were unpopular one-termers. Between them stretched the Virginia Dynasty—two terms of Jefferson, two terms of Madison, two terms of James Monroe—24 years of government by friends and neighbors.

The Adamses—and the Kennedys, Bushes and Clintons in our day—had dynasties of blood and marriage. Jefferson, Madison and Monroe made a dynasty of ideological brotherhood.

Not that Madison ignored the political importance of marriage. After an unhappy courtship in his early 30s, he left romance alone until he was 43, when he married a pretty widow, Dolley Payne Todd. When Madison took office as Secretary of State (in 1801) and as president in 1809, Dolley Madison became more than a hostess. She was a political wife, America's first: half a campaign tag-team, and often the better half. Gregarious and outgoing, she completed her husband's personality, which was shy and stiff except with intimates.

Martha Washington, the first First Lady, was beloved but domestic; Abigail Adams, the second, was political but abrasive. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, was a widower. As one U.S. senator put it, only Madison had "a wife to aid in his pretensions."

Madison succeeded as a political innovator because he was good at politics. He did what came naturally to him: agenda-setting, committee work, parliamentary maneuvering. He grew up in a family as large as an oyster bed—six siblings who survived childhood, numerous nieces, nephews and cousins—good training for a future legislator.

He worked at what didn't come naturally: public speaking and campaigning. His voice was weak; time and again, note-takers at debates he participated in (such as in Virginia's convention to ratify the U.S. Constitution) left blanks in his remarks or simply gave up, because Mr. Madison "could not be distinctly heard." Yet when circumstances required it, he took on the flamboyant Patrick Henry and once tangled with his friend Monroe in the open air of a snow storm so bitter he got frost bite on his nose. He won both debates.

Madison played well with others. He worked with George Washington, profiting from his charisma and judgment, and before they fell out with Hamilton, profiting from his exuberance. (Hamilton tapped Madison to contribute to the Federalist Papers, which was initially Hamilton's project; Madison wrote 29 of the 85 essays.) As president, he learned something about money and the world from his Treasury secretary, Albert Gallatin. He was a great man who was not afraid of assisting or deferring to other great men (another legacy of his tight family life). He also worked with the less-than-great: hatchetmen, gossips, wire-pullers. They do the work of politics too. They are part of the game.

James Madison helped build a republic. He was also an ambitious party activist who counted votes, stumped, spoke, scratched backs and (when necessary) stabbed them. He would not be afraid of the contrast, for his deepest thinking told him that the architects of liberty had to understand and sometimes use the ordinary political materials of ambition and self-advancement to ensure that this republic would endure.

Mr. Brookhiser is the author, most recently, of "Right Time, Right Place: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement" (Basic Books, 2009).

The Case for a "Repeal Amendment"

By RANDY E. BARNETT AND WILLIAM J. HOWELL
On Sept. 17, 1787, the U.S. Constitution was signed. The celebration of Constitution Day this year takes on renewed significance as millions of Americans are objecting to a federal government that has bailed out or taken over banks, car companies and student loans while it prepares to take charge of the practice of medicine. Unfortunately, because there is no single cause for this growth of federal power, there is no single solution.

One cause is political, with elected officials promising solutions to social problems that are beyond their power to deliver. Another is judicial, with federal judges who have allowed the Congress to exceed its enumerated powers for so long that they no longer entertain even the possibility of enforcing the text of the Constitution.

Also responsible are two "progressive" constitutional amendments adopted in 1913. Both dramatically increased the power of the federal government at the expense of the states, creating a constitutional imbalance that needs to be corrected.

The 16th Amendment gave Congress the power to impose an income tax, allowing it to tax and spend to a degree previously unimaginable. This amendment enabled Congress to evade the constitutional limits placed on its own power by effectively bribing states. Once states are "hooked" on receiving federal funds, they can be coerced to obey federal dictates or lose the revenue.

The 17th Amendment provided for the direct election of U.S. senators by the voters of each state. Under the original Constitution they were selected by state legislatures and could be expected to restrain federal power. Whatever that amendment's democratic benefits, the loss of this check on the federal government has been costly.

In its next session beginning in January, the legislature of Virginia will consider proposing a constitutional "Repeal Amendment." The Repeal Amendment would give two-thirds of the states the power to repeal any federal law or regulation. Its text is simple:

"Any provision of law or regulation of the United States may be repealed by the several states, and such repeal shall be effective when the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states approve resolutions for this purpose that particularly describe the same provision or provisions of law or regulation to be repealed."

At present, the only way for states to contest a federal law or regulation is to bring a constitutional challenge in federal court or seek an amendment to the Constitution. A state repeal power provides a targeted way to reverse particular congressional acts and administrative regulations without relying on federal judges or permanently amending the text of the Constitution to correct a specific abuse.

The Repeal Amendment should not be confused with the power to "nullify" unconstitutional laws possessed by federal courts. Unlike nullification, a repeal power allows two-thirds of the states to reject a federal law for policy reasons that are irrelevant to constitutional concerns. In this sense, a state repeal power is more like the president's veto power.

This amendment reflects confidence in the collective wisdom of the men and women from diverse backgrounds, and elected by diverse constituencies, who comprise the modern legislatures of two-thirds of the states. Put another way, it allows thousands of democratically elected representatives outside the Beltway to check the will of 535 elected representatives in Washington, D.C.

Congress could re-enact a repealed measure if it really feels that two-thirds of state legislatures are out of touch with popular sentiment. And congressional re-enactment would require merely a simple majority. In effect, with repeal power the states could force Congress to take a second look at a controversial law.

Americans revere their Constitution but have also acted politically to improve it. The 13th and 14th Amendments limited the original power of states to violate the fundamental rights of their own citizens, while the 15th and 19th Amendments extended the right to vote to blacks and women. The 21st Amendment repealed another "progressive" reform: the 18th Amendment that empowered Congress to prohibit alcohol.

The Repeal Amendment alone will not cure all the current problems with federal power. Getting two-thirds of state legislatures to agree on overturning a federal law will not be easy and will only happen if a law is highly unpopular.


Perhaps its most important effect will be deterring even further expansions of federal power. Suppose, for example, that Congress decides to nationalize private pension investments. Just as it must now contemplate a presidential veto, so too would Congress need to anticipate how states will react.

The Repeal Amendment would help restore the ability of states to protect the powers "reserved to the states" noted in the 10th Amendment. And it would provide citizens another political avenue to protect the "rights . . . retained by the people" to which the Ninth Amendment refers. In short, the amendment provides a new political check on the threat to American liberties posed by a runaway federal government. And checking abuses of power is what the written Constitution is all about.

Mr. Barnett is a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and author of "Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty" (Princeton 2005). Mr. Howell is the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates.

Lost Decade for Family Income

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703440604575495670714069694.html

Friday, September 3, 2010

Outrageous? Really bad laws are getting a blind vote on Capitol Hill.

http://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/thats-outrageous----youre-being-duped/article19205.html

The Government Is Wasting Your Tax Dollars! Image That

http://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/the-government-is-wasting-your-tax-dollars/article50629.html

Strom Thurmond: The Longest Filibuster


http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/on-this-day/July-August-08/On-this-Day--Strom-Thurmond-Ends-Longest-Filibuster-in-Senate-History.html

Political Monopoly Power: Should we increase the number of House members?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/19/political-monopoly-power/?page=1

Should DC have representation in the Senate and House?

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/sep/19/nation/na-dcvote19

How A Bill Becomes Law

http://www.votesmart.org/resource_govt101_02.php

The Most Gerrymandered Districts:Check Out the Slideshow

http://kottke.org/09/01/the-most-gerrymandered-congressional-districts

Congressional Pay : Are They Paid Too Much or Too Little?

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/congresspay.htm?p=1

SC State Senate

Glenn Reese(D)
Lee Bright(R)
Shane Martin(R)

SC State District Map



Harold Mitchell, Jr. [D] Executive Director, Regenesis Dist. No. 31 - Spartanburg Co.

J. Derham Cole, Jr. [R] Attorney Dist. No. 32 - Spartanburg Co.

Lanny F. Littlejohn [R] Retired Businessman Dist. No. 33 - Cherokee & Spartanburg Cos.

P. Michael "Mike" Forrester [R] Economic Development Dist. No. 34 - Spartanburg Co.

R. Keith Kelly [R] Attorney Dist. No. 35 - Spartanburg Co.

Merita A. "Rita" Allison (Mrs. William Ronald) [R] (2002) Director of Communications, Commission on Higher Education Dist. No. 36 - Spartanburg Co.

Steve A. Parker [R] Businessman Dist. No. 37 - Spartanburg Co.

Joseph B. "Joey" Millwood [R] Journalist Dist. No. 38 - Spartanburg Co.

SC Congressional Districts

Check out the above link for the 2010 races. 

* Barrett, J.Gresham, South Carolina, 3rd
* Brown, Henry, South Carolina, 1st
* Clyburn, James E., South Carolina, 6th
* Inglis, Bob, South Carolina, 4th
* Spratt, John, South Carolina, 5th
* Wilson, Joe, South Carolina, 2nd

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Constitution Day:Sept. 14 @ USC Upstate (7-8pm)

Constitution Day is a national effort to increase the public and our students’ knowledge and understanding of the United States Constitution. Dr. Edgar will be giving a presentation entitled “South Carolina and the Constitution” that will discuss the importance of South Carolina in the process that gave shape to our modern nation and society. His talk will be held from 7:00-8:00pm in the Campus Life Center Ballroom at USC Upstate on Tuesday, September 14th and will be open to the public. A selection of his most popular books on South Carolina history will be available at the event for purchase through the courtesy of the Hub City Bookstore and Dr. Edgar will be available for book-signing after his speech