Clause 8: Oath or affirmation of US Constitution
Further information: Oath of office of the President of the United States
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Article Three of the United States Constitution establishes the judicial branch of the federal government. The judicial branch comprises the Supreme Court of the United States and lower courts as created by Congress.
The Judiciary explains and applies the laws. This branch does this by hearing and eventually making decisions on various legal cases.
Overview of the federal judiciary
Article III section I of the Constitution establishes The Supreme Court of the United States and authorizes the United States Congress to establish inferior courts as their need shall arise. Section I also establishes a life time tenure for all federal judges and states that their compensation may not be diminished during their time in office. Article II section II establishes that all federal judges are to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the United States Senate.
The Judiciary Act of 1789 subdivided the nation jurisdictionally into judicial districts and created federal courts for each district. The three tiered structure of this act established the basic structure of the national judiciary: the Supreme Court, 13 courts of appeals, 94 district courts, and two courts of special jurisdiction. Congress, retains the power to re-organize or even abolish federal courts lower than the Supreme Court.
Relationships between state and federal courts
Separate from, but not entirely independent of, this federal court system are the court systems of each state, each dealing with, in addition to federal law when not deemed preempted, a state’s own laws, and having its own court rules and procedures. Although state governments and the federal government are legally dual sovereigns, the Supreme Court of the United States is in many cases the appellate court from the State Supreme Courts (e.g., absent the Court countenancing the applicability of the doctrine of adequate and independent State grounds). The Supreme Courts of each state are by this doctrine the final authority on the interpretation of the applicable state's laws and Constitution. Many state constitution provisions are equal in breadth to those of the U.S. Constitution, but are considered “parallel” (thus, where, for example, the right to privacy pursuant to a state constitution is broader than the federal right to privacy, and the asserted ground is explicitly held to be “independent”, the question can be finally decided in a State Supreme Court—the U.S. Supreme Court will decline to take jurisdiction).
A State Supreme Court, other than of its own accord, is bound only by the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of federal law, but is not bound by interpretation of federal law by the federal court of appeals for the federal circuit in which the state is included, or even the federal district courts located in the state, a result of the dual sovereigns concept. Conversely, a federal district court hearing a matter involving only a question of state law (usually through diversity jurisdiction) must apply the substantive law of the state in which the court sits, a result of the application of the Erie Doctrine; however, at the same time, the case is heard under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and the Federal Rules of Evidence instead of state procedural rules (that is, the application of the Erie Doctrine only extends to a requirement that a federal court asserting diversity jurisdiction apply substantive state law, but not procedural state law, which may be different). Together, the laws of the federal and state governments form U.S. law.
3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
2 Timothy 4:3-4
25 (A)He will speak against the Supreme God and oppress God's people. He will try to change their religious laws and festivals, and God's people will be under his power for three and a half years.
Daniel 7:25
Gingrich's Catholic Journey Began With Third Wife
December 22, 2011
Any discussion of Newt Gingrich's journey to Catholicism begins with his wife.
"I have always been a very spiritual person," Callista Gingrich told the Christian Broadcasting Network this year. "I start each day with a prayer, and pray throughout the day, because I am grateful for the many blessings that God has bestowed upon us." http://www.npr.org/2011/12/22/144080998/gingrichs-catholic-journey-began-with-third-wife
GINGRICH’S BIG LIE
The Big Lie (German: Große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." Newt Gingrich is master of the post-World War II Big Lie.
It galls me hear what would be intelligent people brag about Newt Gingrich as an intellectual with “big ideas,” and even go so far to call him a “Washington Outsider.” The first two are part of the political propaganda methodology that was first introduced in 1928 by Edward L. Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s American nephew, in Propaganda. Bernays wrote that whether in the problem of getting elected to office or in the problem of interpreting and popularizing new issues, or in the problem of making the day-to-day administration of public affairs a vital part of the community life, the use of propaganda, carefully adjusted to the mentality of the masses, is an essential adjunct of political life. (110) As for Gingrich being a Washington Outsider, his formal name is Mr. Speaker. He was the Senator from Georgia as well as the Speaker of the House in Washington, D.C. Afterwards, he worked as an unregistered lobbyist in D.C. The only time he has been outside of Washington is when he came to campaign in Iowa.
As part of his reinventing himself for Iowa political consumption, Newt tells US why he has converted to Catholicism. He gives the lion’s share of credit to the two Popes: John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Gingrich credits John Paul with ending Communism in Poland. However, he did not mention as John Cornwell does in The Pope in Winter (2004) where he tells how with CIA backing and his natural acting ability as an actor, performed and preached like Martin Luther King Jr., Polish Priest Karol Józef WojtyÅ‚a was able to convince the Polish people to support the Solidarity Movement and fight the Occupation. As a reward, and because of his age (hoping he would not live that long), he was made Pope John Paul II.
John Cornwell (born 1940) is an English journalist and author, and a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. He is best known for various books on the papacy, most notably Hitler's Pope; investigative journalism; memoir; and the public understanding of science and philosophy. More recently he has been concerned with the relationship between science, ethics and the humanities. His most recent book, Newman's Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint is a biography of Cardinal Newman.
Pope Benedict XVI, born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, served as Pope John Paul II’s “hit man.” On 25 November 1981, Pope John Paul II named Ratzinger Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the "Sacred Congregaton of the Holy Office," the historical Inquisition. Consequently, he resigned his post at Munich in early 1982. He was promoted within the College of Cardinals to become Cardinal Bishop of Velletri-Segni in 1993, was made the College's vice-dean in 1998 and dean in 2002.
Benedict’s first duty, as was Pius XII’s, is to protect the Roman Catholic Church. In his duty as “protector of the faith,” he ignored the pedophilia that is still bankrupting the American congregations.
Pope's Apology Rings Hollow To Some U.S. Victims
February 18, 2010
The scandal in Ireland is all too familiar: thousands of children abused and neglected as some Irish bishops protected the allegedly predatory priests. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123823423
Simon Baron-Cohen
The challenge is to explain, without resorting to the all-too-easy concept of evil, how people are capable of causing extreme hurt to one another. So let’s substitute the term “evil” with the term “empathy erosion.” Empathy erosion can arise because of corrosive emotions, such as bitter resentment, or desire for revenge, or blind hatred, or a desire to protect. In theory these are transient emotions, the empathy erosion reversible. But empathy erosion can be the result of more permanent psychological characteristics.
Why Mitt Romney's Dog Is Getting A Lot Of Press
December 20, 2011
New York Time columnist Gail Collins has written extensively about the idiosyncrasies of presidential families. But her fascination with Mitt Romney may take the cake. Dozens of her columns have cited the tale of Mitt Romney tying his dog in a crate to the roof of his station wagon and driving the family on vacation.
When our empathy is switched off, we are solely in the “I” mode. In such a state we relate only to things or to people as if they were just things. Most of us are capable of doing this occasionally. We might be quite capable of focusing on our work without sparing a thought for the homeless person [or dog] on the street outside our office [or a family pet strapped to the roof of a moving car]; but whether we are in this state transiently or permanently, there is no “thou” visible—at least, not a thou with different thoughts and feelings. Treating other people [or beings] as if they were just objects is one of the worst things you can do to another human being [or animal], to ignore their subjectivity, their thoughts and feelings. (7-8)
Un-empathic acts are simply the tail end of a bell curve, found in every population on the planet. If we want to replace the term “evil” with the term “empathy,” we have to understand empathy closely. The key idea is that we all lie somewhere on an empathy spectrum from high to low. People said to be evil or cruel are simply at one extreme of the empathy spectrum. We can all be lined up along this spectrum of individual differences based on how much empathy we have.
Measuring Empathy & The empathizing Mechanism
Imagine there is a circuit in the brain—the empathy circuit—that determines how much empathy each of us has. Let’s call it the Empathizing Mechanism. The Empathy Quotient (EQ) which Baron-Cohen says is “arguably not a pure measure of empathy, combined with the Empathizing Mechanism has given him seven likely settings. These are broad bands, and we may move around a little within a band from one day to another due to the transient fluctuations in our empathy. But which band we are in is broadly fixed.
POLITICAL EMPATHY
Baron-Cohn most fascinating empathy levels for me are Level 2, and Level 0. I call them the political levels because this is how I see the Republican candidates running for 2012, especially Newt Gingrich, as well as the Tea Party agenda the Republicans are promoting.
Gingrich Fights Back Against GOP Attack Ads
by Kathy Lohr
December 20, 2011
Listen to the Story
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/20/144000113/gingrich-holds-iowa-town-hall-meeting
GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is accusing his Republican opponents of what he says is reprehensible behavior — running attack ads in Iowa against the former House Speaker. Before a crowd of supporters in Hiawatha, Iowa, Gingrich stressed that the negative GOP attack ads are bad for the party and bad for voters. http://www.npr.org/2011/12/20/144000113/gingrich-holds-iowa-town-hall-meeting
Level 2
At Level 2, a person still has major difficulties with empathy, but they have enough to have a glimmering of how another person would feel for this to inhibit any physical aggression. This may not stop them shouting at others, or saying hurtful things to others, but they have enough empathy to realize they have done something wrong when another person’s feelings are hurt.
However, they typically need the feedback from that person, or from a bystander, to realize that they have over-stepped the mark. Anticipating another person’s feelings in subtle ways just does not come naturally to them. A person at Level 2 therefore blunders through life, saying all the wrong things or doing the wrong thing. They are constantly getting into trouble for these faux pas, at work or at home, perhaps losing their job or their friends because of it, yet are mystified as to what they are doing wrong.
Romney, Gingrich Spar Over Negative Super PAC Ads
by Kathy Lohr
December 21, 2011
Listen to the Story
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/21/144057586/romney-gingrich-spar-over-negative-super-pac-ads
- December 21, 2011
ZERO DEGEE OF EMPATHY
At Level 0, an individual has no empathy at all. At Level 0 some people become capable of committing crimes, including murder, assault, torture, and rape.
The Multimillionaire Helping Republicans Win N.C.
Millionaire James (Art) Pope poured money into helping a Republican strategy called RedMap succeed in North Carolina. The project is aimed at taking over state legislatures and then leveraging those victories to shift the balance of power in Washington.
October 6, 2011
In early 2010, Republican strategists launched a new project called RedMap. The idea was to flip as many statehouses across the country to Republican majorities during the 2010 election cycle — particularly in states where congressional redistricting was pending. http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141078608/the-multimillionaire-helping-republicans-win-n-c
Fortunately, not all people at Level 0 do cruel things to others since others at this level just find relationships very difficult but have no wish to harm others. For others at Level 0, even when it is pointed out to them that they have hurt another person, this means nothing to them. They cannot experience remorse or guilt because they just don’t understand what the other person is feeling. This is the ultimate extreme: zero degrees of empathy. (23)
Pandering to the Republican Base
What is zero degree of empathy like [in the real word]? What does it mean to have no empathy? And does this translate into what some people call “evil?”
Zero degrees of empathy means you have no awareness of how you come across to others, how to interact with others, or how to anticipate their feelings or reactions. Your Empathy Mechanism functions at Level 0. You feel mystified by why relationships don’t work out, and your lack of empathy creates a deep-seated self-centeredness. Others people’s thoughts and feelings are just off your radar. This leaves you doomed to do your own thing, in your own little bubble, not just oblivious to other people’s feelings and thoughts but also oblivious to the idea that there might even be other points of view. The consequence is that you believe 100 percent in the rightness of your own ideas and beliefs, and judge anyone who does not hold your beliefs as wrong or stupid. (43)On a political level this can lead to “the rancid manipulation of populism by elitism.”
The Rancid Manipulation of Populism by Elitism
Paul Street and Anthony DiMaggio
Paul Street along with Anthony DiMaggio writes in Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics (2011) that Newt Gingrich claimed that the rise of the Tea Party movement is a great example of the American people’s courageous tradition of rejecting elitism. Right-wing activist Joseph Farah chimed in with the grandiose claim that “the Tea Party Movement is the most dynamic and powerful grassroots political movement witness by modern-say America. It arose spontaneously—and in the nick of time—to save this country from an advancing, fatal drift away from self-government, liberty and the promise of greater prosperity for future generations.” (6)
The Real Tea Party
The real Tea Party phenomenon, claims Street and DiMaggio, discovered in Crashing the Tea Party is relatively well off and Middle American (not particularly disadvantaged), very predominantly white, significantly racist, militaristic, narcissistically selfish, vicious in its hostility to the poor, deeply undemocratic, profoundly ignorant and deluded, heavily paranoid, wooden-headed, and overly reliant on propagandistic right-wing news and commentary for basic political information. Many of its leaders and members exhibit profound philosophic contempt for collective action; a disturbing and revealing uniformity of rhetoric across groups, cities, and regions; a stunning absence of real and deeply rooted local organizing; and a predominant prioritization of Republican electioneering over grassroots protest of any kind. (9-10)
The Tea Party portrayed in this book is not a social movement, but rather a loose conglomeration of partisan interest groups set on a returning the Republican Party to power. Despite protestations to the contrary, the Tea Party is Astroturf and partisan Republican to the core. We find little evidence that it is manifestation of local populism. It is not an “uprising” against a corrupt political system or against the established social order. Rather, it is a reactionary, top-down manifestation of that [un-empathetic] system, dressed up and sold as an outsider rebellion set on changing the rules in Washington. Far from being anti-establishment, the Tea Party is, we feel, a classic right-wing, and fundamentally Republican epitome of what the formerly left political commentator Christopher Hitchens once called “the essence of American politics”; “the manipulation of populism by elitism.” “That elite is most successful,” Hitchens wrote in a 1999 study of the Bill Clinton presidency…. (10)
RULING UNDER THE POPULIST FLAG
The Republican Party is hardly immune from the desire to wrap corporate plutocratic policy in the fake rebel’s clothing of populist connection to the needs of aspirations of the “the little guy.” The campaigns and presidencies of Richard Nixon, Ronald Ragan, and George W. Bush were highly adept at claiming to represent hard-working ordinary Americans in a struggle with concentrated wealth and power, [the reason given for the massive tax cut to the rich].
The GOP’s more transparently aristocratic and corporate essence has hardly prevented it from working to create popular, grassroots illusions about its regressive agenda. The Republicans require votes from tens of millions of middle-and working-class people to gain elected office, and therefore they also and quite logically seek to manipulate populism—to create the sense that they are of and for “the people” in opposition to the privileged and powerful.
Tea Party Xenophobia and Anti-immigrant Racism
Steel and DiMaggio write that keeping with the Tea Party’s blunt, [un-empathetic] black-and-white, gut-level approach more generally, the Tea Party activists we spoke with and observed were no more interested in the nuances of the immigration issue than they were in the complexities of structural racism. Our efforts to engage them on the role of U.S. trade and foreign policy in creating immigration pressures by fueling Central and Latin American poverty and repression, for example, are met with derision and stone-faced rejection.
Beneath the Tea Partiers’ outwardly race-neutral claim to be interested merely in upholding the “letter of the law” lay a deep indifference to the real-life circumstances faced by Central and Latin American immigrants and their children, [is the fact that the US government has let Hispanic peoples for Latin and South America enter illegally into the United States as a safety valve or hedge against revolution on its southern border]. The Tea Party’s harsh anti-immigrant [un-empathetic] sentiment appears to be the product of an instinctively reactionary mind-set linked to racist and xenophobic worldviews. (91)
Targeting Muslim Americans
Lowes Hammered For Bowing To Ad Pressure
December 13, 2011
Listen to the Story
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/13/143623870/lowes-cancels-ads-on-muslim-reality-show
December 13, 2011
Calls for a boycott against home improvement giant Lowes have been streaming in. The controversy involves Lowes advertising on the reality TV show All-American Muslim, which follows the daily lives of five Arab-American families in Dearborn, Mich. Lowes pulled its ads after a conservative group complained. http://www.npr.org/2011/12/13/143623870/lowes-cancels-ads-on-muslim-reality-show
Tea party racism has often been quite explicit and open when it comes to Muslims. Sharron Angle, the Tea Party Republican senatorial from Nevada in 2010, was asked at a Tea Party rally in the run-up to the midterm election about the danger posed by “Muslims who want . . . to take over the United States.” Angle responded by warning that certain localities in America were facing a “militant terrorist situation” whereby Muslims were seeking to subvert American values: “My thoughts are these; first of all, Dearborn Michigan, and Frankford, Texas, is on American soil, and under Constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don’t know how that happened in the United States…. It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States. The notion that any American local governments were falling under “Sharia law” was paranoid and bizarre. (92)
What Ms. Angle and the other Tea Partiers do not seem to understand is that Newt Gingrich prefers Sharia Law (custom and traditional) in his behavior and in his threats to disobey the US Constitution by putting judges on trial and as president, not follow laws he does not like. Sharia Law also allows a man to have 4 wives, one more to go for Mr. Speaker.
The Republican Agenda Writ Large
BBC WORLD NEWS
http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=tea%20party
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US & Canada / 19 December 2011… but then rank-and-file Republicans united against it. The White House said Mr Boehner had been swayed by a "Tea Party revolt". If Congress cannot…
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Magazine / 16 December 2011… the debate over Muslim ideology has become a political fulcrum in Florida, especially for Tea Party candidates. "I've never seen anything like…
ON POINT RADIO ~All in the American Family Hatred
ON POINT RADIO
TV’s “All-American Muslim” becomes a show under fire as it shows Muslim-Americans living the mainstream life. We’ll ask why.
In this undated image provided by Discovery, Nawal Aoude, a pediatric respiratory therapist, left, and her husband Nader go for a walk in a scene from the TLC series, "All-American Muslim." The series features five families from Dearborn, Mich., a city near Detroit with one of the highest concentrations of Arab descendants in the country. (AP)
Reality TV came to Dearborn, Mich., last month with the TLC cable show “All-American Muslim.” Dearborn is home to lots of Muslim-Americans, and the show depicts them going about all kinds of life in a way that is both frankly Muslim and all-American. Football. Barbeques. Prayer. Pancakes. Weddings.
Now the evangelical Florida Family Association has succeeded in getting home improvement giant Lowe’s to pull it ads from the series. Allegations are flying. Muslims are feeling besieged.
This hour, On Point: how and why “All-American Muslim” became a target.
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests
Zareena Grewal, assistant professor of American Studies and Religious Studies at Yale University.
Ali Dagher, Lawyer at Dagher Goodman and Dagher. A founding member of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce
Alon Ornstein, executive producer of All-American Muslim.
Pamela Geller, is an American blogger, author, political activist, and commentator.
Keith Ellison, Democratic congressman from Minnesota.
From Tom’s Reading List
Time “The TLC reality show All-American Muslim, which follows five families in Dearborn, Michigan, has a lot of points to make about the lives of average Muslim citizens in America, among them the lingering discrimination they face after 9/11. (Here’s my review of the show’s premiere.) Last week, hardware big-box store Lowe’s pulled its advertising from All-American Muslim under pressure–and thereby proved the show’s point.”
Entertainment Weekly “You know how when you’re really mad at your significant other and, even though they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong, they’ll apologize “for hurting your feelings” — but the apology is really more about you being mad than the other person admitting they messed up?”
TPM Muckraker “The Florida Family Association is blaming Anonymous for taking down its website after the social conservative group pressured Lowe’s to pull its advertising from the TV show All-American Muslim.”
OCCUPY FOR THE SAKE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT
Super Pac Has Internet Fun At Gingrich's Expense
by Brian Naylor
December 22, 2011
The Democratic political action committee American Bridge 21st Century has taken over the website newtgingrich.com. Visitors to the site — which is not controlled by Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign — were re-directed to, among other things, the website Tiffany & Co., and to articles critical of the former House speaker. http://www.npr.org/2011/12/22/144111953/super-pac-has-internet-fun-at-gingrichs-expense
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