Time For Frank Wolf (R-VA 10th District) To Resign. Otherwise, We Should Recall Him.

Frank Wolf (R-VA) is usually a stalwart Congressman who fights hard for the 10th District. But, his vote of "Yea" on HR 1586, the retroactive taxing of bonuses paid to AIG, shows that he is no longer worthy of our trust or respect.

Here's why he needs to go:

Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 of the Constitution of the United States may very well be on the chopping block. Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to impose a 90% tax on the bonuses given out to AIG employees. Frank Wolf voted "Yea."

Now, the bonuses are not at issue here. Whether they are right or wrong, good or bad is immaterial to what is really going on.

The House passed a bill that is specifically forbidden by Article I, Section 9, Clause 3. “No Bill of Attainder or Ex Post Facto Law shall be passed.” You can pick either one of those and it would cover this 90% bonus tax.

First, a Bill of Attainder, in the context of the Constitution, means a bill that has a negative effect on a single person or group. A punitive tax that specifically targets a certain group (i.e. those who were to receive these bonuses) certainly falls under the definition here. That makes this tax unconstitutional.

Second, when Congress passed the stimulus package and Barack Obama put the Presidential signature on that bill, it became the law of the land. Part of that law is an amendment put in by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) that specifically exempted these bonuses from any regulation. Now, Congress is seeking to implement a law that puts such regulation in place and they want to enforce this law retroactively. That is known as an Ex Post Facto law.

Either way you look at it, this 90% tax Congress wants to retroactively impose on bonus payments that had previously been made perfectly legal by Congress and the President, is wholly, completely and absolutely unconstitutional. It is not the bonuses that matter here. It is the fact that Mr. Wolf voted to allow Congress a power that it never had before and should absolutely never, ever have at all.

I have already written Mr. Wolf asking him to resign. I highly recommend that other residents of Virginia's 10th District do likewise.

Within the next few days, we residents of the 10th District need to get together and begin a recall campaign.

If Mr. Wolf is willing to violate this part of the Constitution, then he is willing to violate other parts of the Constitution as well. The 10th District deserves much better representation than that.

We need to come together and demand that Mr. Wolf step down before he votes to do even more damage to the Constitution's integrity.

Letters To Jim Webb And Mark Warner Concerning Retroactive Taxing Of Bonuses

Here are copies of the letters I emailed to Senators Webb and Warner concerning the retroactive taxes Congress wants to impose on the bonuses to be paid to employees of AIG.

Feel free to copy and paste this message and send it to your own Senators:

[Senator], I am writing you to ask you to vote "Nay" on the upcoming bill that would impose retroactive taxes on bonuses paid out to AIG employees. Whether those bonuses are right or wrong, good or bad, is immaterial to my concern here. I am concerned about the integrity of the Constitution of the United States of America. Specifically, Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 which clearly and unambiguously states: "No Bill of Attander or Ex Post Facto law shall be passed." HR1586 which passed the House yesterday falls, by definition, under that clause in two ways. First, a Bill of Attainder, in the context of the Constitution, means a bill that has a negative effect on a single person or group. A punitive tax that specifically targets a certain group (e.g. those who were to receive these bonuses) certainly falls under the definition here. That makes this tax unconstitutional. Second, when Congress passed the stimulus package and Barack Obama put the Presidential signature on that bill, it became the law of the land. Part of that law is an amendment put in by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) that specifically exempted these bonuses from any regulation. Now, Congress is seeking to implement a law that puts such regulation in place and they want to enforce this law retroactively. That is known as an Ex Post Facto law. This too makes this legislation unconstitutional. Either way you look at it, this 90% tax Congress wants to retroactively impose on bonus payments that had previously been made perfectly legal by Congress and the President, is wholly, completely and absolutely unconstitutional. Anyone who would willingly violate a single provision of the Constitution would most certainly be willing to violate any other provision. Please do not be such a person. Please vote "Nay" on the Senate version of HR1586 and preserve the integrity of the Constitution. Thank you.

As I wrote earlier, if this becomes law and is not struck down by the Supreme Court, the Republic will be in grave danger.

Democrats Delay Bill Release To Conceal Hidden Agenda, Uploaded It In Non-Searchable Format

Whatever happened to the promise of making bills public for at least 48 hours before a vote so that the bill can be reviewed before debate begins? Apparently, the Dems had no intention of keeping that promise. Nor did they want the public to be able to do key-word searches on the porkulus/spendulus package going before a vote today.

From Connie Hair at Human Events:

Democratic staffers released the final version of the stimulus bill at about 11 p.m. last night after delaying the release for hours to put it into a format which people cannot “search” on their home computers. Instead of publishing the bill as a regular internet document -- which people can search by “key words” and otherwise, the Dems took hours to convert the final bill from the regular searchable format into “pdf” files, which can be read but not searched. Three of the four .pdf files had no text embedded, just images of the text, which did not permit text searches of the bill. That move to conceal the bill’s provisions had not been remedied this morning at the time of publication of this article.

Why did the Democrats go to such lengths to conceal what is in this bill? Why are they making it so difficult for people to research and study its contents? It is almost like a little child trying to hide a piece of food that he/she doesn't want to eat while not knowing that Mom and Dad are watching them search for a hiding place.

There is alot the Dems want to hide. The aforementioned Health Care provisions that allow the Federal government to step in and reverse your doctor's decisions are among them. But, there are some more sinister ones that may even be unconstitutional:

We found one provision that may be a good example of why the Democrats are desperate to stop any exposure of what is in this bill. Like this gem: SEC. 1607. (a) CERTIFICATION BY GOVERNOR -- Not later than 45 days after the date of enactment of this Act, for funds provided to any State or agency thereof, the Governor of the State shall certify that: 1) the State request and use funds provided by this Act , and; 2) funds be used to create jobs and promote economic growth. (b) ACCEPTANCE BY STATE LEGISLATURE -- If funds provided to any State in any division of this Act are not accepted for use by the Governor, then acceptance by the State legislature, by means of the adoption of a concurrent resolution, shall be sufficient to provide funding to such State. This provision -- apparently aimed at conservative governors such as South Carolina’s Mark Sanford who does not want the federal money -- would overturn state laws and constitutions, intervening directly in the state’s government to give the legislature the power to overturn a government’s decision. This provision probably violates the U.S. Constitution, a matter which will be of no concern to Congressional Democrats.

That's right. The Constitution of the United States guarantees each state a "Republican form of government" and the 10th Amendment relegates all powers not enumerated in that document to the several states.

Pretty easy to see why the Dems are trying to slip this one past us hoping that we wouldn't notice.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Democrats Delay Bill Release To Conceal Details
Connie Hair
Human Event Online
February 13, 2009