Rights vanishing before our eyes.

The framers of the First Amendment would have been astonished to learn that part of its real meaning, according to the Left, is that Americans lose all right to religious freedom the moment they decide to open a business.

The Constitution is accurately described as a parchment barrier. To have any meaning it must be given force and effect by the people.

A vigilant, faithful Supreme Court would have strung an iron fence around our basic rights and liberties but it didn't. Instead, it simply ceased to enforce the Interstate Commerce Clause, signed off on black racial privilege legislation, and mined the Equal Protection Clause for approval of anything that advanced the agenda of the subversive, treasonous left.

President George W. Bush signed off on a massive prescription drug program for which no authorization is to be found in Article I, Sect. 8, and both the President Carter and the Congress collaborated to create the cabinet-level Dept. of Education for which there is likewise no authority in Article I, Sect. 8. A federal legislative responsibility for health care is nowhere to be found in the Constitution, unless it's in the emanations from the penumbra of the amendment establishing Prohibition, which was educational after a fashion.

Congress long ago ceded extraordinary Article I legislative power to the Article II executive. And nothing says constitutional usurpation like the War on Drugs and welfare benefits for foreigners.

Clearly, the three branches of the federal government have decided the Constitution is an antiquated collection of suggestions on how the United States is to be governed. That it's subordinate to the latest neo-communist nostrum or expropriation goes without saying.

The states have long since given up their role as sovereign entities and are now content to serve as servile, administrative subdivisions of the federal government.

Impeachment is a remedy for officials who treat their oath to uphold the Constitution in this manner but it’s a remedy avoided like Superman avoids Kryptonite or, these days, the American flag. Certainly the people do not demand it and cannot bring themselves to face squarely the implications of the fact that Obama is not constitutionally qualified to serve as president and has a forged birth certificate. Ho hum, Dude.

Apparently, the majority of the country is happy to be governed by some diffuse and unidentifiable political elite that is happy to bankrupt the country and surrender it to foreigners. Welcome to a country that has abandoned the rule of law and embraced rule by executive and judicial whim.

"The Triumph of the Counterculture. The triumph of acid, amnesty, and abortion." By George Neumayr, The American Spectator, 3/5/14.