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Can you pass the U.S. citizenship exam?
Every year, the United States welcomes nearly 1 million new citizens through naturalization ceremonies, all of whom must pass the American citizenship exam by answering 6 out of 10 questions correctly.
While 90% of legal immigrant applicants pass the exam, only 30% of U.S. adults and just 3% of public high school students in America can pass it!
PragerU is determined to educate millions of young people about American history, civics, and the values that have made this country great. If you've watched enough PragerU videos, passing the exam should be a breeze.
There have been many depictions of the debate in Philadelphia at Independence Hall of both the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the meetings to hammer out and pass a federal framework for the colonies, which eventually became the United States Constitution. Most, I imagine, have been by American citizens who felt a connection to our founding document and were able to project a passion for this nation's beginning.
Yet none of them stand a chance or hold a candle to the portrayal of William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise and his explanation of the piece of paper that starts off with WE THE PEOPLE.
Shatner, who is Canadian by birth, became a legend for his portrayal of the fictional Captain in Star Trek: The Orginal Series, and in the clip below he tipped the Shatner Ham O' Meter at full blast.
The Enterprise crew discovers a parallel world where the United States lost a nuclear war to Communist China. Centuries later, the descendants of the Americans cherish the documents of their ancient heritage but have forgotten their meaning. Kirk explains it to them.
A functioning justice system is a citizen’s best peaceful defense of his liberty, assuring him that his lawful exercise of freedoms will be protected. There’s a reason four of the 10 original amendments the founders affixed to their newly minted Constitution regard the rights attendant to a fair trial. When the justice system forfeits citizens’ trust, trust in the integrity of the republic itself goes with it.
We don’t have real elections if candidates are jailed — or chilled by the threat of jail — to keep them from running. We don’t have real legal recourse if DAs indict lawyers until other lawyers become afraid to defend an ostracized client. For all Democrats’ pontificating about the rule of law, it doesn’t exist if it’s only applied and misapplied to half the country. If we no longer uphold equal justice under the law, we still have a country, but not the one we thought we had.
As my colleague Joy Pullmann wrote a year ago, “A country that harshly prosecutes people or lets them off Scot-free based on their political affiliation is a banana republic. A two-tier justice system is not a justice system. … Its purpose is not justice but population control.”
A fair justice system isn’t the first thing to crumble in a dying republic — there are plenty of warning signs — but it might be the hardest loss to come back from. After all, the law is supposed to be the authority to which Americans appeal when their rights are abused and trampled. What are they supposed to do when the law and its enforcers are doling out the abuse?
Words should have meaning; at least they did until Harry Blackmun decided abortion was health care, Anthony Kennedy found homosexuality to be in a “realm of personal liberty,” and John Roberts declared Obamacare was not a tax.
The Supreme Court should take this as an opportunity to reiterate two precedents that backstop the black-letter words of the Constitution and the English language. Taxing people on money they haven’t made is obscene. Opening the door to the government confiscating wealth is a betrayal of the country because that is where this concept leads. //
anon-onh5
9 hours ago
Roberts is a legalist not a justice. We're hosed. //
bk
12 hours ago
Next up: Increasing property values start affecting income taxes, not just property taxes. //
A-Nony-Mouse
3 minutes ago
taxing income at all is "obscene", IMO. The entire 16th Amendment should be repealed. While we are repealing Amendments, repeal the 17th as well and go back to the senators being appointed by the state legislatures.
One of the things that is really starting to annoy me is the whinging from the children that the Senate “Doesn’t represent the population”, “Gives outsize control to smaller States”, and the like.
Statements like this, and others, display an appalling lack of knowledge of what the Senate of the United States was created to do. Or it displays a contempt in that the speaker actually does know the purpose of the Senate and is lying through his, or her, snaggle teeth in a bold-faced attempt to subvert the Constitution.
The agency opposes an amendment that prevents it from using data brokers.
The Supreme Court’s Thursday decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College dealt an overdue blow to race-based college admissions, and some of the best punches were thrown by Justice Clarence Thomas in his concurrence. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
The court ruled that so-called “affirmative action” at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were in violation of the 14th Amendment and its application via the Civil Rights Act. Policies that discriminate based on race without demonstrating a compelling public interest, the six justices in the majority agreed, are not compatible with our founding principles of equal rights under the law for every American.
In addition to signing on to the majority opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, Thomas wrote a nearly 60-page concurrence to express his horror at the idea of institutionalized racial discrimination in 21st-century America. Here are 15 of his best lines.
- The best way to fix discrimination is not more discrimination.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rebuffed a legal theory that argued that state legislatures have the authority to set election rules with little oversight from state courts, a major decision that turns away a conservative push to empower state legislatures.
By a 6-3 vote, the court rejected the “independent state legislature” theory in a case about North Carolina’s congressional map. The once-fringe legal theory broadly argued that state courts have little — or no — authority to question state legislatures on election laws for federal contests.
The court’s decision in Moore v. Harper closes the path to what could have been a radical overhaul of America’s election laws.
A particularly robust reading of the theory — which the court turned aside — would have empowered state legislatures to make decisions on all aspects of elections, from congressional lines to how people register to vote and cast a ballot, without any opportunity for challengers to contest those decisions in state courts under state laws or constitutions. Opponents of the theory argued that it could have led to unchecked partisan gerrymandering, and laws that would make it harder for people to vote.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court’s opinion, joined by the three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, along with two conservatives, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
While Justice Kavanaugh’s majority opinion only runs 17 pages, Justice Alito’s dissent clocks in at 28 pages. He opens with his sharp disagreement with the majority, noting:
The Court holds Texas lacks standing to challenge a federal policy that inflicts substantial harm on the State and its residents by releasing illegal aliens with criminal convictions for serious crimes. In order to reach this conclusion, the Court brushes aside a major precedent that directly controls the standing question, refuses to apply our established test for standing, disregards factual findings made by the District Court after a trial, and holds that the only limit on the power of a President to disobey a law like the important provision at issue is Congress’s power to employ the weapons of inter-branch warfare—withholding funds, impeachment and removal, etc. I would not blaze this unfortunate trail. I would simply apply settled law, which leads ineluctably to the conclusion that Texas has standing. //
Alito concludes by cautioning against the continued expansion of executive power and chiding the majority for shirking its duty:
This sweeping Executive Power endorsed by today’s decision may at first be warmly received by champions of a strong Presidential power, but if Presidents can expand their powers as far as they can manage in a test of strength with Congress, presumably Congress can cut executive power as much as it can manage by wielding the formidable weapons at its disposal. That is not what the Constitution envisions.
I end with one final observation. The majority suggests that its decision rebuffs an effort to convince us to “‘usurp’” the authority of the other branches, but that is not true. Ante, at 3. We exercise the power conferred by Article III of the Constitution, and we must be vigilant not to exceed the limits of our constitutional role. But when we have jurisdiction, we have a “virtually unflagging obligation” to exercise that authority. Colorado River Water Conservation Dist. v. United States, 424 U. S. 800, 817 (1976). Because the majority shuns that duty, I must respectfully dissent.
Not Raising the Debt Limit Just Means Balancing the Budget
The debt limit is a law restricting how much the federal government may borrow. The current law says $34.4 trillion. If Congress refuses to change the law, it will remain at $34.4 trillion. Borrowing more than that is illegal. So the government will have to pay its debt obligations out of current revenue.
Could the federal government do that? Sure.
Current revenue is about eight times current interest payments. (In other words, debt service is about 13 percent of revenue.) Obviously, there’s enough money coming in to pay existing debt while retaining most government services. Of course, the feds would have to trim other parts of the budget. I’m sure readers have many suggestions on that score.
These facts are no secret. Moreover, they’re buttressed by experience: We have reached earlier debt limits on many occasions, but there has been no default. Mostly what happens is a few federal facilities close. (When that happened last time, the feds closed Rocky Mountain National Park. No problem: Colorado state government took over the job.)
Still, every time we approach a new debt limit, unscrupulous politicians and their media propagandists claim we’re at risk of default. This is so patently false that we can only conclude that what concerns them isn’t default but something else.
What is that “something else?” That people might learn they really don’t need all that exorbitant federal spending. That they might decide they like the budget being balanced.
Monday’s special counsel report detailed extensive evidence of Department of Justice and FBI misconduct concerning the launch and handling of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, and equally overwhelming proof of partisan motives and double standards. While the facts are critical of both the bureau and the DOJ, more scandalous is John Durham’s conclusion that the inexcusable targeting of a political opponent cannot be prevented absent a curing of the corrupted hearts and minds of law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Durham’s 306-page report opened with an executive summary capsulizing the results of the special counsel’s four-year investigation into the intelligence activities and investigations arising out of the 2016 presidential campaigns. While calling the findings “sobering,” and previewing the widespread misconduct on which the body of the report elaborated, Durham’s introductory comments emphasized he “does not recommend any wholesale changes in the guidelines and policies.”
It is here that Durham made his damning indictment of the DOJ and the FBI when he stressed that “the answer is not the creation of new rules but a renewed fidelity to the old.” Ultimately, he continued, justice “comes down to the integrity of the people who take an oath to follow the guidelines.” And “the promulgation of additional rules and regulations to be learned in yet more training sessions would likely prove to be a fruitless exercise if the FBI’s guiding principles of ‘Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity’ are not engrained in the hearts and minds of those sworn to meet the FBI’ s mission of ‘Protect[ing] the American People and Uphold[ing] the Constitution of the United States.’” //
For all the misconduct the special counsel exposed, it was [Pres. Gerald Ford's Attorney General] Levi’s warning that Durham left us. And that, I fear, is the most significant revelation to come from the investigation: that after four years of inspecting the underbelly of the FBI, Durham saw a creature reminiscent of the one running wild under Nixon.
Yesterday in these pages Margot Cleveland rightly noted that the most damning finding in the 306-page report from Special Counsel John Durham is not necessarily the FBI’s scandalous Crossfire Hurricane investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016, but that the egregious abuses of power detailed in the report cannot be remedied “absent a curing of the corrupted hearts and minds of law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”
For all the FBI’s blatant partisanship, its disregard of exculpatory evidence, and its outright deception to secure FISA warrants on Trump campaign associates, writes Cleveland, “what should terrify the country is not the catalog of malfeasance the special counsel recited — for mistakes and even gross failures can be corrected — but that Durham warned of corrupted hearts and minds, unfaithful to the people and their Constitution.”
For his part, Durham didn’t recommend any changes to FBI guidelines or policies, because no amount of reform will be sufficient if the people in charge feel free to disregard guidelines and policies whenever they see fit to do so. As such, wrote Durham, “the answer is not the creation of new rules but a renewed fidelity to the old. The promulgation of additional rules and regulations to be learned in yet more training sessions would likely prove to be a fruitless exercise if the FBI’s guiding principles of ‘Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity’ are not engrained in the hearts and minds of those sworn to meet the FBI’s mission of ‘Protect[ing] the American People and uphold[ing] the Constitution of the United States.’” //
That people like former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, along with the entire cast of villains and liars in the Durham report, rose to positions of such power, and then proceeded to abuse that power by arrogating to themselves the right to decide who should be president — a right that belongs solely to the American people — says something about the state of our republic.
What it says is this: We have produced, and are still producing, a totally corrupt elite bereft of any sense of “Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity,” to say nothing of moral virtue or the common good.
Put bluntly, an elite like that makes self-government in a republic of free citizens impossible. It also means that the elite will work to corrupt ordinary Americans, eroding their respect for the rule of law and fidelity to the Constitution. As the elites go, so eventually the entire country goes.
Seen in this light, the Durham report should be understood as a dire warning about the fate of our country. John Adams issued a similar warning when he penned his famous line, that “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” George Washington did the same in his farewell address when he said, “’Tis substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” //
The founders knew what we seem to have forgotten: Without a virtuous people, without citizens and leaders who believe in objective moral truth and understand themselves to be bound by it, we cannot be a free people, and we cannot sustain a republic. Laws alone, to say nothing of guidelines and policies, are not enough to support and sustain self-government. You need citizens who will respect and uphold the law, and leaders who actually believe in the principle of self-government — something our current crop of leaders clearly rejects.
Without a morally virtuous citizenry, the founders also knew we would eventually become a society not of free men and women, but of slaves to a tyrannical regime. That’s the real warning embedded in the Durham report. The corruption of the FBI, the CIA, and the entire federal intelligence community, which led to the Russia-collusion hoax and almost took down Trump’s campaign, and then his presidency, cannot be fixed with new rules and policies. It’s a moral failing, moral corruption, and it can only be fixed by a spiritual renewal in America, by a return to — let’s be honest — a civic culture shaped and guided by Christian moral virtue.
Fought Law, Law 1
2 hours ago edited
The US Constitution has fewer words than the role of Juliet in Shakespeare's play. She can't remember the gist of what teen girls can memorize verbatim?
But then she will only have the power to incarcerate people for up to the rest of their lives.
Is no one prepping them? Kennedy has been embarrassing them for years.
Supreme Court may finally end rule of bureaucrats with ‘tragic’ Chevron case
By John Fund
May 2, 2023 8:29pm
The Supreme Court made a tragic mistake almost 40 years ago.
In the 1984 case of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, it ruled federal judges must defer to a regulatory agency’s interpretations of federal laws, so long as Congress has not addressed the issue in question and the agency’s view can be construed as “reasonable.”
Since then, the power of the unelected administrative state has ballooned so that it now dictates much of our economy and daily lives.
The court announced Monday it will revisit that precedent, raising hopes that this enormous federal power might be reined in.
The Constitution set up a system of separated powers in which Congress would pass the laws, the president would administer them and the courts would interpret them.
Since the New Deal, Congress has shirked its accountability by increasingly giving unelected agencies the power to make decisions of vast economic and political significance. //
In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, a 6 to 3 court majority ruled that from now on Congress must explicitly grant regulatory agencies the power they wield.
That infuriated the activist left.
Since the spectacular collapse of President Barack Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme to rein in carbon emissions, which failed to even get a Senate floor vote in 2010, environmentalists have become experts at twisting and distorting old laws to accomplish by the back door what they could never do using legitimate constitutional approaches.
From regulations aimed at climate change to the overriding of local zoning laws in New York, activists have used that approach to lobby federal agencies to implement an agenda Congress would never approve on its own. //
One former federal regulator, appalled at left-wing efforts to ban gas stoves, told me: “They go through federal agencies like burglars who try every door in a neighborhood in the belief one of them will be unlocked.”
The court may not overturn the case in full, but the fact that at least four justices have agreed to reexamine the decision indicates Chevron deference is likely to be curbed.
Jonathan Turley
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Today the Supreme Court granted review in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which involves a challenge to the Chevron doctrine and its heavy agency deference. Notably, the Court granted only on one of the questions concerning Chevron...
Jonathan Turley
@JonathanTurley
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...Here is the question: “whether the Court should overrule Chevron or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.” Show more
10:27 AM · May 1, 2023 //
The federal government has been completely out of control for decades, and the Chevron Doctrine has been at the heart of many of the abuses.
Now, the Supreme Court is poised to overturn the doctrine at some major level. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is already recused from the case, meaning that the conservative wing would only need to muster four votes. On that front, most of the conservatives on the court have already signaled a willingness to curb the power of the bureaucratic state by rolling back the Chevron Doctrine.
Kevin Kiley @KevinKileyCA
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I'm introducing a Constitutional Amendment providing that U.S. Senators, like Members of the House, must always be elected rather than appointed.
5:42 PM · Apr 17, 2023
“Section 1. No person shall be a Senator from a state unless such person has been elected by the people thereof. When vacancies happen in the representation of any state in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies.
“Section 2. This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as a part of the Constitution.” //
Aiken_Bob mdavt
12 days ago
The repealing of the the 17th would make a whole lot of things better. The great Neal Borts use to say who represents your state in congress -- the answer was No one. //
Romeg mdavt
11 days ago
And the 16th, while we are at it, concomitant with the adoption of The Fair Tax to be administered by the states and leaving the Federal government to collect taxes from the States rather than from the Citizens, obviating any need, whatsoever, for the IRS and the tax code that IT enforces. //
anon-qnbr
12 days ago edited
NO! We need an amendment to repeal the 17th amendment and return state representation to DC, not one to push us further away from the founders intent. State legislators select them. //
BDMcgee
12 days ago
The exact opposite of what we need. Repeal the 17th! Take the 16th out with it //
The Left only destroys
12 days ago
Get rid of the 17th Amendment, but modify the selection process for Senators. The reason the 17th Amendment was passed was because state legislatures couldn't agree on a Senator if the upper chamber and lower chamber were held by different parties. So, stipulate that each chamber appoints one Senator. If a vacancy occurs, the chamber in question can assemble to appoint a replacement. One six-year term and out.
While I am at it...I'm not a Warren Buffett fanboy, but he did have an idea that I would like to modify as follows. Since the House is responsible for initiating revenue bills, require that the House produce a balanced biennial budget on time (such that no continuing resolutions are needed). Failure to do so means that all current members of the House are ineligible to stand for re-election (in my world, that ineligibility would be permanent).
One last thing. Get rid of income withholding. Make people pay in quarterly. You'll see the biggest contraction of government in world history (idea courtesy of Rush Limbaugh). //
TK421 The Left only destroys
11 days ago
I like everything except disqualifying House members. Budget bills should be passed for each cabinet department individually (no omnibus bills), before the first day of the fiscal year. If not, the budget for the new year is automatically frozen at last year's level.
Cafeblue32
5 hours ago
The ones violating the Constitution are the ones making all the infringements. Well regulated never meant government controlled. It meant well equipped with a regular, or standard kit necessary for fighting an enemy. Rifle, pistol, shot, wadding, powder, a decent knife and or hatchet, and clothing for the weather. To regulate something back when people spoke English and words meant things, it meant to make them standardized. ///
"Gifts" from the creator may give a better sense of the concept the founders and authors intended, rather than what rights have come to mean today.
Milhouse | March 1, 2023 at 10:45 pm
“Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign aggression, is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any government, and a government that cannot fulfill that purpose is one that cannot long command the loyalty of its citizens. History shows us – demonstrates that nothing – nothing prepares the way for tyranny more than the failure of public officials to keep the streets from bullies and marauders.
“Now, we Republicans see all this as more, much more, than the rest: of mere political differences or mere political mistakes. We see this as the result of a fundamentally and absolutely wrong view of man, his nature and his destiny. Those who seek to live your lives for you, to take your liberties in return for relieving you of yours, those who elevate the state and downgrade the citizen must see ultimately a world in which earthly power can be substituted for divine will, and this Nation was founded upon the rejection of that notion and upon the acceptance of God as the author of freedom.”
— Barry Goldwater
What’s the problem here? “Money for businesses” (like the PPP loans) was passed in Congress, so that was following the Constitution. It was not a unilateral decision by Joe Biden without Constitutional authority, like the student debt move. Weingarten knows that she’s just being dishonest. If this was truly important to the Democrats, why didn’t they try to get it passed in Congress when they controlled both chambers? //
those protesters may owe a lot on their educations — which debt they voluntarily incurred — but they apparently didn’t learn that the SCOTUS isn’t supposed to be influenced by their protest. Indeed, their protest to try to influence the Court raises again the question of 18 U.S.C. § 1507, the provision that says you shouldn’t have “pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States” to try to influence any judge in the course of his/her duty. The Court is supposed to decide, based solely on the Constitution, not be pressured by screaming mobs. //
In final nutty remarks on the subject, I give you Democratic Socialist Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) as he inveighs the Court to “follow the law.” SCOTUS is following the law — the Constitution. There is no law supporting what Joe Biden did here. The government has no obligation to use our tax dollars to pay off your debt.
Joe Biden’s Dec. 29 signing of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 was invalid because the House never actually passed the omnibus spending bill the president purportedly signed into law. At least, that’s what Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claims in a little-noticed lawsuit he filed last week against the Biden administration. If a court agrees, the taxpayer-funded $1.7 trillion federal spending spree — and every other aspect of that bill — could be rendered void.
While the “if” in that sentence does some heavy lifting, it is not because Paxton’s lawsuit is weak on either the facts or the law. On the contrary, his complaint in Paxton v. Department of Justice makes a seemingly unassailable case that the House of Representatives lacked the constitutionally mandated quorum to pass the appropriations act. Nonetheless, the enormity of a court striking an omnibus spending bill may leave the judicial branch shrinking from its constitutional duty. //
When the House met on Dec. 23, 2022, to vote on the Consolidated Appropriations Act, it lacked a quorum to conduct business. Only 201 of the representatives were present. Nonetheless, the House proceeded with the vote. But it didn’t just count the votes of the present members. It added to the tally an extra 226 votes, cast by present House lawmakers on behalf of absent ones who had appointed them “proxies.”