The Foundation

"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions." --James Madison

Editorial Exegesis

2013-05-29-chronicleObama loves Gibson?

"On Aug. 24, 2011, federal agents executed four search warrants on Gibson Guitar Corp. facilities in Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., and seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. One of the top makers of acoustic and electric guitars, including the iconic Les Paul introduced in 1952, Gibson was accused of using wood illegally obtained in violation of the century-old Lacey Act, which outlaws trafficking in flora and fauna the harvesting of which had broken foreign laws. ... Interestingly, one of Gibson's leading competitors is C.F. Martin & Co. According to C.F. Martin's catalog, several of their guitars contain 'East Indian Rosewood,' which is the exact same wood in at least 10 of Gibson's guitars. So why were they not also raided and their inventory of foreign wood seized? Grossly underreported at the time was the fact that Gibson's chief executive, Henry Juszkiewicz, contributed to Republican politicians. ... By contrast, Chris Martin IV, the Martin & Co. CEO, is a long-time Democratic supporter, with $35,400 in contributions to Democratic candidates and the Democratic National Committee over the past couple of election cycles. ... Juszkiewicz' claim that his company was 'inappropriately targeted' is eerily similar to the claims by Tea Party, conservative, pro-life and religious groups that they were targeted by the IRS for special scrutiny because they sought to exercise their First Amendment rights to band together in vocal opposition to the administration's policies and the out-of-control growth of government and its power. The Gibson Guitar raid, the IRS intimidation of Tea Party groups and the fraudulently obtained warrant naming Fox News reporter James Rosen as an 'aider, abettor, co-conspirator' in stealing government secrets are but a few examples of the abuse of power by the Obama administration to intimidate those on its enemies list." --Investor's Business Daily

Upright

"Our Founding Fathers feared the emergence of an agency such as the IRS and its potential for abuse. That's why they gave us Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which reads: 'No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.' A capitation is a tax placed directly on an individual. That's what an income tax is. The founders feared the abuse and the government power inherent in a direct tax. In Section 8 of Article 1, they added, 'But all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.' These protections the founders gave us were undone by the Progressive era's 16th Amendment, which reads, 'The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.' ... The bottom line is that members of Congress need such a ruthless tax collection agency as the IRS because of the charge we Americans have given them." --economist Walter E. Williams

"[A] Fox poll asked people which of the recent scandals concerned them the most. IRS topped the list with 32%; followed by Benghazi with 27%; the monitoring of AP reporters scored 21%; and 10% went for none of the above, claiming that all of them were of grave concern. ... [T]he truly shocking number was 8%. That represented the percentage of Americans who were not the least bit concerned about any of these matters. And I will remind you that these ignoramuses are allowed, even encouraged, to go out and vote every Election Day." --columnist Burt Prelutsky

"From around 1630 to 1966, immigrants sank or swam. About a third of them couldn't make it in America and went home -- and those are the ones who weren't rejected right off the boat for being sick, crippled or idiots. That's why corny stories of someone's ancestors coming here a half-century ago are completely irrelevant. If their ancestors hadn't succeeded, their great-grandchildren wouldn't be here to tell the story because no one was given food stamps, free medical care and housing to stay. (And vote Democrat.) Now we're scraping the bottom of the barrel by holding ourselves out as the welfare ward of the world and specifically rejecting skilled immigrants. As Milton Friedman said, you cannot have open borders and a welfare state. The reason a country's average immigrant matters is that the losers never go home -- they go on welfare. (Maybe if they had to work, immigrants wouldn't have as much time to build bombs.)" --columnist Ann Coulter

Insight

"The only liberty that is valuable is a liberty connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle." --British statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

"I should like to adopt political doctrines that would live longer than my dog." --President James Garfield (1831-1881)