◼ "You're going to like this," MSNBC host Chuck Todd said this morning on TV. "So, I threw the Lincoln analogy at a close aide to the president last week, and he said, 'You know, with this Republican, with the way politics of Washington are today, there'd still be slavery. Lincoln wouldn't have been able to navigate the polarization between the media between this--' It was an interesting and depressing observation from this very smart White House aide." - Daniel Halper/Weekly Standard
◼ White House Aide: Gosh Darn These Republicans Are Racist - Duane Patterson/HotAir
So a policy decision over the impact of tax rates cannot be dissented against in this country anymore, because it’s morally equivalent to owning slaves. The American left has thrown around the racism charge so freely that the boy hasn’t just cried wolf, he’s run full page ads, recorded infomercials, embedded blogads, and personally visited the residence of every American in the republic to make sure everyone knows there’s a wolf, that the wolf is a Republican, and that he’s racist.
Never mind the fact that the tax rate increases the left, elected Democrats and MSM, want will only raise around eight days of revenue out of a projected trillion and a half dollar deficit, and it will have a smothering effect on the private sector going into the new year. Forget about the fact that the President’s proposal last Thursday actually takes our deficit and makes it worse by increasing federal spending by an additional quarter of a trillion dollars. Having concerns about the executive branch having unilateral control over when and how much money this country can borrow, with no Congressional ability to check it? You’re dreaming. And you might as well submit yourself to thought police reprogramming if you hold the opinion that it’s a moral evil to take from those who have earned it in order to give it away to those who have not.
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
Abolition of Slavery
At the suggestion of President Abraham Lincoln. RNC Chairman Edwin Morgan opened the 1864 Republican National Convention with a brief statement:
“The party of which you, gentlemen, are the delegated and honored representatives, will fall far short of accomplishing its great mission, unless among its other resolves it shall declare for such an amendment of the Constitution as will positively prohibit African slavery in the United States.”Abolishing slavery became part of the platform. Congressional Republicans passed the 13th Amendment unanimously – against nearly unanimous Democrat opposition – and it was ratified within the year.
The 14th Amendment guarantees due process and equal protection of the laws to all citizens. It enshrines in the Constitution provisions of the GOP’s 1866 Civil Rights Act. The original purpose of the 14th Amendment was to defend African-Americans from their Democrat oppressors in the post-Civil War South. (Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) that had held that black people could not be citizens of the United States.)
The principal author of the 14th Amendment was U.S. Rep. John Bingham (R-OH). In Congress, all votes in favor of the 14th Amendment were from Republicans, and all votes against it were from Democrats.
In 1868, the Republican Governor of New Jersey vetoed an attempt by the Democrat-controlled legislature to rescind the state's ratification of the 14th Amendment.
In 1869, the Republican-controlled 40th Congress passed the 15th Amendment, extending to African-Americans the right to vote. Nearly all Republicans in Congress voted in favor, though a few abstained, saying it did not go far enough. Nearly all Democrats in Congress voted against the 15th Amendment.
The 15th Amendment was ratified the following year, but using intimidation, poll taxes, registration fraud, and literacy tests. Democrats prevented most African-Americans from voting for nearly a century.
In 1871, the Republican-controlled 42nd Congress passed a Civil Rights Act aimed at the Ku Klux Klan. Guilty of murdering hundreds of African-Americans, this terrorist organization had also eradicated the Republican Party throughout most of the South.
The law empowered the Republican administration of Ulysses Grant to protect the civil rights of the former slaves in federal court, bypassing the Democrat-controlled state courts.
The 1871 Civil Rights Act, along with the GOP’s 1870 Civil Rights Act, effectively banned the Klan and enabled Republican officials to arrest hundreds of Klansmen. Though the U.S. Supreme Court would eventually strike down most of the 1871 Civil Rights Act, the Ku Klux Klan was crushed. The KKK did not rise again until the Democratic administration of President Woodrow Wilson.
