Michelle Obama Finds A "Shovel Ready Job" Stuffing Her Mouth

Here she is, America, your First "Lady" and Dietician-in-Chief.  Shoveling faster than she can swallow and with elbows on the table, Moochelle couldn't manage an "oink, oink" for her luncheon partner, the Speaker of the House, just an eye-roll.  And you've got four more years of lectures coming from this swine!  But we're being unfair -- to pigs.

“So Help Me God”—The Second Inaugural of Barack Obama

From The Center for Vision & Values, Grove City College

By Dr. Gary Scott Smith

On Monday the United States will celebrate one of its great festivals of civil religion as Barack Obama is inaugurated for a second time. Although nothing in the Constitution mandates it (the only things the Constitution specifies are the date and the wording of the oath), the ceremony will include an invocation, a benediction, undoubtedly one or more mentions of God in the inaugural address, and the words “so help me God” as part of the oath of office. These words are often attributed to George Washington (he allegedly added them to his oath in 1789, but no extant contemporary evidence proves that he did). The historical record indicates instead that these words were probably first spoken in 1881 by Chester Arthur when he was sworn in following James Garfield’s death. Of the nation’s 56 inaugural addresses, only Washington’s very brief second one (135 words) does not refer to God. All others have invoked His presence, asked for His blessings, and/or celebrated His relationship with the United States.

Signs and Wonders in Week One of the Obama Era

From American Thinker
By J. R. Dunn

Last week I enjoyed the honor of having my essay on "Bush and the Bush Haters" featured on both Democratic Underground and Daily Kos. Glancing over the comments (along with those in a similar vein on RealClearPolitics) I saw that with few exceptions, they were the standard run of viciousness, nastiness, and obscenity that we've grown used to from the left in recent years. But there was another quality too, one that took me a little while to identify. What struck me at last was this: the left are not acting like winners.

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Barack Obama on the Environment

The National Mall on January 21, 2009

"As president, I hope to rally the entire world around the importance of us being good stewards of the land."

Will A Re-Do Make Him Legitimate?

We question whether any ceremonial formula will make "that one" legitimate, but some suggest he may not be President yet!

Did Obama Actually Get Sworn In? New President May Have To Re-Take Oath After 'Flub'

From The Daily Mail

It was the constitutional equivalent of a wardrobe malfunction.

But, minor as it appeared, it may be that the 1.8million spectators in Washington yesterday didn't actually witness Barack Obama being sworn in.

With his hand on the Lincoln Bible, held by his beaming wife, Mr Obama took the presidential oath of office yesterday - and flubbed it.

Flub: Barack Obama takes the oath given by Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. (lower R) - but was it legitimate?

First, he began to repeat the 35-word oath before the Chief Justice reciting it had finished his line.

But the pair recovered safely from that gaffe - only to misquote the oath.

It wasn't Mr Obama's fault - Chief Justice John G. Roberts transposed the words, and Mr Obama merely repeated them.

He should have said he will 'faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States'. Instead, following the Chief Justice's lead, he said he will 'execute the office of the President of the United States faithfully'.

Constitutional law experts speaking to the Washington Post agreed that the gaffe was insignificant.

Even so, it could cause a legal headache. Two previous presidents - Calvin Coolidge and Chester A. Arthur - have had to repeat the oath privately because of similar issues.

Lawyers said Mr Obama need not be worried about the legitimacy of his presidency - but they also said a do-over couldn't hurt, the Post reported.

Charles Cooper, a former Ronald Reagan legal official, said that the incorrect recitation should be fixed - and that he would be surprised if it hadn't already happened.

It was the first time Chief Justice Roberts had administered the oath - and, coincidentally of course, the first time in history that any Chief Justice has administered the oath to a president who voted against his confirmation.

"An American Coronation"

From The Monarchist

America has simply replaced the pomp and ceremony of hereditary monarchy with the pomp and ceremony of elected monarchy.

An American Coronation, writes the Los Angeles Times, and who can disagree with them given the lavish preparations now underway in Washington. Words can be deceiving, but appearances generally are not.

It was a century ago when Theodore Roosevelt explained that an American President is "an elective King", making the implausible point that the United States was essentially a monarchical country within a republican framework. Contrast the power of His Mightiness with the limitations of our own Monarch, and you see increasingly the reverse in Commonwealth countries; that is, republican governments camouflaged within a monarchical framework, to the point where they effectively become "crowned republics" completely sapped of their royalist spirit.

As David Flint points out in President Obama: the elective King inaugurated, "The considerable British jurist, Lord Hailsham explained that the American system centres on ‘an elective monarchy with a king who rules with a splendid court and even...a royal family, but does not reign.’ He contrasted this with the Westminster system which he said involves ‘a republic with an hereditary life president, who being a queen, reigns but does not rule’."

But the important fact here is that both trends run contrary to the conservative impulse, as both are marked by a distinct lack of constitutional deference. American republicans are weary of their countrymen swooning over Princess Obama and becoming a monarchy in all but name, and Commonwealth monarchists are concerned about the increasing emasculation of their own constitutions, with the creeping regicide of Her Majesty.

The BBC's Katty Kay, for her part, is somewhat appalled at "the coronation of King Obama":

So this is why you booted us out a couple of centuries ago. You simply replaced the pomp and ceremony of hereditary monarchy and with the pomp and ceremony of elected monarchy. OK, you didn't opt for the dynastic duo of Bush and Clinton, which really had us scratching our crowned European heads, but the fanfare with which Caroline Kennedy has entered the political picture suggests your infatuation with royal families is still not over.

This week Washington feels like London in the run up to one of our own grand royal events. Hostesses twitter on the phone, or just Twitter, to woo A-list guests to pre- and post-inauguration parties. A-list guests measure their piles of invites in feet, not inches...

Still, there is a more serious problem with treating Barack Obama as an elected monarch; one that affects us journalists, in particular. Put a man on a pedestal and suddenly it's hard for the press to drag him through the political wringer. It happened in 2003 in the run up to the invasion of Iraq and risks happening again.

In Britain, we invest the Queen with our ceremonial hopes which leaves us free to treat our prime minister as exactly what he is—an elected official, paid for by the taxpayers, and serving at the people's will. While George W. Bush was being asked patsy questions by a subdued White House press corps, Tony Blair was being drubbed by un-cowed political hacks. It is far easier to do when you don't stand the moment the man walks into the room.

Certainly it is no secret that the political ambition of the British Left is to abolish the British Monarchy, but how does one square that with the Kennedyesque tendency of the American Left to institute its own national dynasty? Probably because the Left wants untrammeled democracy, equality and "progress", and the Right wants limited democracy, liberty and constitutionalism.

That is why an elective monarchy is intuitively fine for an American Democrat, whereas hereditary monarchy is an insufferable anachronism for the British, Canadian and Anzac lib-laboury. What right does a hereditary monarch have to say no to an elected government they chime - that the individual person might legitimately seek the protection of the Crown against the wishes of the elected, is evidently and ironically lost on the human rights activist, or just not an important enough imperative when weighed against the collectivist agenda of the "Human Rights, Democracy and Global Justice" crowd.

And there is reason to believe that this contradiction at the heart of the American soul, which has in recent years led several congressman, including Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Harry Reid, to introduce legislation to repeal the Twenty-second Amendment, may continue to evolve towards monarchy USA. In each of 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2009, Rep. Jose Serrano introduced a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the 22nd Amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as president. Each resolution, with the exception of the current one, died without ever getting past the committee.

But with Congress going formidably Democrat, and President Obama assuming Office, one has to believe they now have a fighting chance.

A Christian Clergyman ‘Horrified’ by ‘Aggressively Christian’ Prayers?

From The Fox Forum

By Lauren Green

The inauguration invocation is the high profile event for a member of the clergy. It’s only been around since 1937, but it’s grounded in a rich, religious history that’s helped shaped this country.

At President-elect Barak Obama’s inauguration, Pastor Rick Warren will have the honors. Pastor Warren is the senior minister of Saddleback Church in Southern California and the uber-bestselling author of “The Purpose Driven Life.” Liberals objected to Warren because of his conservative views, specifically his support of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that banned gay marriage in California.

What some see as a move to placate the gay and Lesbian community was the selection of the openly-gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson to say the prayer for the star-studded, kick-off of the inaugural week. The Inaugural Committee says it wasn’t about “righting” a perceived “wrong.” They said Bishop Robinson had been on their list for a while and they chose him for his message of inclusive civil rights.

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Tyrants of Tolerance Go After Obama, Rick Warren

From Idaho Values Alliance
By Bryan Fischer

VOICES OF TOLERANCE, DIVERSITY, MULTICULTURALISM COME UNGLUED

Prediction: for the first time in American history, a speaker at a presidential inauguration may be booed unmercifully, and his remarks completely drowned out by angry jeers from an incensed crowd. We may even see shoes tossed at the inauguration platform by the hundreds. It could be a modern day lynching, only this time the victim of a vigilante mob will be proverbially strung up not because of skin color but creed.

Liberals in general and homosexual activists in particular claim to be all about tolerance, diversity, pluralism, multiculturalism and respect for differences.

Well, their commitment to those values has just been challenged by President-elect Barack Obama, and they have failed the test miserably.

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