Second Amendment Archives - Page 21 of 28 - American Constitutional Rights Union

Peter Ferrara: Beware the Balanced Budget Deal

By ACRU Staff|2010-08-02T11:30:58-04:00August 2nd, 2010|

ACRU General Counsel Peter Ferrara wrote this column appearing July 29, 2010, on Wall Street Journal Online.

Washington’s traditional approach to balancing the budget is to negotiate an agreement on a package of benefit cuts and tax increases. President Obama’s deficit commission seems likely to recommend just this strategy in December. The problem is that it never works.

What happens is the tax increases get permanently adopted into law. But the spending cuts are almost never fully adopted and, even if they are, they are soon swept away in the next spendthrift budget. Then–because taxes weaken incentives to produce–the tax increases don’t […]

Ken Klukowski: Three Silver Linings in the Bad Arizona Court Decision

By ACRU Staff|2010-07-30T12:27:21-04:00July 30th, 2010|

ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski wrote this column appearing July 29, 2010, on BigGovernment.com.

Wednesday’s federal court decision on Arizona’s immigration law is being rightly criticized for a number of reasons. But there are three silver linings to this situation, which may result in the rule of law prevailing in the end.

On July 28, Judge Susan Bolton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona issued a preliminary injunction—meaning she stopped from going into effect—most of the key provisions in Arizona’s new law. As I’ve written previously, this law should be held constitutional because it’s not an immigration law; it doesn’t […]

Peter Ferrara: The Timeless Principles of American Prosperity

By ACRU Staff|2010-07-29T11:47:49-04:00July 29th, 2010|

ACRU General Counsel Peter Ferrara wrote this column appearing July 28, 2010 on Spectator.org.

We know, based on economic experience, theory, and logic, how to create another economic boom that will last 25 years, or a generation into the future. We achieved that in America from the end of 1982 to the end of 2007, with only two, short, shallow recessions that barely interrupted sustained, robust, economic growth. But that was not the only instance of success. Several times in the last 100 years, whenever the nation’s economic policies adhered to the timeless principles of economic growth and prosperity, our economy has boomed. When it has […]

Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski: Obamacare Mandate Much Worse than a Tax

By ACRU Staff|2010-07-23T22:22:23-04:00July 23rd, 2010|

ACRU Senior Fellow Ken Blackwell and ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski wrote this column appearing July 22, 2010, on BigGovernment.com.

In the Wall Street Journal today, we discuss why the Obamacare mandate is not a tax, and even if it were, it would still be unconstitutional. But there’s much more to the story, which could forever change the reach of federal power.

The Wall Street Journal piece, and what follows, comes from our intensive research for our new book, The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency. Chapter 4 explains why Obamacare is unconstitutional, and how to defeat it […]

Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski: Why the ObamaCare Tax Penalty Is Unconstitutional

By ACRU Staff|2023-03-10T08:04:52-05:00July 22nd, 2010|

ACRU Senior Fellow Ken Blackwell and ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski wrote this column appearing July 22, 2010, on The Wall Street Journal.

The Justice Department announced last week that it would defend the new federal health-insurance mandate as an exercise of Congress’s “power to lay and collect taxes,” even though Barack Obama had insisted before the bill’s passage that it was “absolutely not a tax increase.” The truth is the mandate is not a tax—and if it were it would be unconstitutional.

A tax is when the government takes money from individuals, puts it in the Treasury, and plans […]

Complaint Filed in North Dakota Supreme Court to Allow Recall of U.S. Senator Kent Conrad

By ACRU Staff|2010-07-21T16:55:44-04:00July 21st, 2010|

On July 14, North Dakota joined New Jersey in an effort to recall a U.S. Senator.

RecallND filed a complaint with the North Dakota Supreme Court claiming that the state’s Secretary of State has unconstitutionally blocked a petition to recall U.S. Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND).

The complaint indicates that on May 13 North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem published an opinion concluding that the North Dakota State Constitution does not allow for the recall of a U.S. Senator. On the same day, the office of the North Dakota Secretary of State claimed to have no authority to approve the circulation of RecallND’s recall petition.

Ken Blackwell: Secretary Vilsack: Re-Hire Shirley Sherrod

By ACRU Staff|2010-07-21T15:48:58-04:00July 21st, 2010|

ACRU Senior Fellow Ken Blackwell wrote this column appearing July 21, 2010, on HuffingtonPost.com.

Mark Twain warned us: Confession is good for the soul, but it’s bad for the reputation.

It’s a good thing for a certain rural Georgia peanut farmer that we didn’t have a 24/7 news cycle when he was coming up. Otherwise, Jimmy Carter’s “lust in his heart” remark would have derailed his political career.

Shirley Sherrod has just become the most famous employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Millions of Americans who have no idea who Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is know who Shirley Sherrod is.

She’s […]

Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski: The president's wooden-headed interpretation of our Constitution

By ACRU Staff|2010-07-20T22:38:38-04:00July 20th, 2010|

ACRU Senior Fellow Ken Blackwell and ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski wrote this column appearing July 19, 2010, on DailyCaller.com.

Sometimes you hate being right.

In chapter 4 of our book, The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency, my coauthor Ken Blackwell and I make the point that Team Obama would try to pull a fast one when it comes to Obamacare’s individual mandate that everyone reading this blog post needs to buy health insurance, or be subject to a penalty payable to your good friends at the IRS.

Ken and I first made this argument in […]

Ken Blackwell: Obama Rips Off "Faux Lifers" Fig Leaves

By ACRU Staff|2010-07-20T22:36:10-04:00July 20th, 2010|

ACRU Senior Fellow Ken Blackwell wrote this column appearing July 17, 2010, on Townhall.com.

Last spring, President Obama managed to corral the votes of a half dozen formerly pro-life Democrats in the House of Representatives for his takeover of health care. Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI) had been a staunch supporter of pro-life initiatives for nearly twenty years in Congress. Tragically for him, and even more tragically for the country, Stupak fell in line behind the White House. For months he had held out, bravely. Then, at the eleventh hour, he caved in. He and his cohorts switched from being pro-lifers to being “faux lifers.”

To […]

Ken Blackwell: It's Not Only About the Economy, Stupid

By ACRU Staff|2020-04-23T21:57:14-04:00July 20th, 2010|

ACRU Senior Fellow Ken Blackwell wrote this column appearing July 15, 2010, on The American Spectator website, Spectator.org.

James Carville, Bill Clinton’s political strategist supposedly coined the now infamous: “It’s the economy, stupid.” This admittedly smart strategy, widely attributed to have won Clinton the Presidency, is now being chanted, mantra-like, by the mainstream media and the Washington political elite as they fundamentally misunderstand the brewing anger and frustration amongst everyday Americans.

They think this is all about dollars and cents. They think that it’s all about a $13-trillion debt and trillion-dollar annual deficits far into the future. Washington, in its arrogance, thinks this is all […]