When a national election is held and a subsequent “congress” is called, it’s fairly remarkable how hard nearly 150 men and women will work to craft and pass a set of “recommendations” to the State and Federal Government.

Continental Congress ’09, an event conceived and executed by noted Constitutional activist Bob Shulz and his “We The People Foundation,” convened one week ago today (November 11) in St. Charles, IL, a suburb of Chicago.

Representatives from 48 of 50 states have assembled under the mission statement “To Defend, Not Amend The Constitution” and are addressing a wide array of subjects, all of which are tied to some form of constitutional abdication or usurpation. The elected delegates are largely conservative and libertarian, and draw mainly from groups such as The 9-12 Project, Tea Party Patriots, Constitution Party and Campaign for Liberty.

“We’ve been working tirelessly,” said CC2009 delegate Darin Stevens of Spokane, WA. “It’s unusual that we’re going to bed prior to 1 or 2 AM. We start at 8:00 every day, earlier if we’re having a committee meeting. Then there’s presentations, debate, more presentations, committee meetings, independent work… it’s consuming.”

In addition to drafting the aforementioned recommendations, tomorrow the body will begin work on what is currently entitled “Articles of Association,” which are modeled after the 1774 “Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress.” This document is described by many delegates as a “Road Map” to take back to individuals and groups as a future action plan for similarly concerned citizens.

Several delegates, including Schaffer Cox from Alaska, have pressed for the utilization of strong language in many of the instructions being considered. “If we go straight from petitioning to fighting, we skip the critical step of ‘saber rattling.’ The tyrants who would impose their will on free people, whether they are foreign or domestic, are human beings with a will. They need to understand the consequences of their actions before they make that choice. We have a moral duty to give them fair warning, and begging doesn’t suffice.”

Other delegates offer a more moderate tone. “While I do support the call for ‘saber rattling,’ I think it is important to choose carefully the words we use, so as to gain as much popular support as possible,” said Kate Vandemoer, delegate from Wyoming. “We’re not just ‘saber rattling’ – we are serious about redressing the injuries to the Constitution and informing Americans with the most serious of intent.”

Former Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate Michael Badnarik, who is also an elected delegate from Texas, has served as parliamentary president of the event after being selected by event participants.

Live video streaming of the event is available at www.cc2009.us

After 11 days of deliberation, the event concludes on Saturday, November 22.

A promotional video and the official press release is listed below: 

Official Press Release: Citizens Rising in Defense of the Constitution

Citizens fed up with constitutional violations causing devastation to the economy and the Nation, are stepping up to join constitutional activist Robert L. Schulz, Chairman of We The People Foundation for Constitutional Education, to prepare for a modern-day Continental Congress to take place starting November 11, 2009 at the Pheasant Run Conference Center in St. Charles, Illinois. Continental Congress 2009 is not political or partisan and seeks to defend, not amend, the current Constitution.

Billed as the “next appropriate step for the free people of America,” planners hope the historic national assembly will inspire the critical mass necessary to restore constitutional governance. 153 citizen-nominated-and-elected Delegates – three from each state and Washington, D.C. -- will convene for two weeks to methodically and factually document constitutional abuses which have taken place over many years, across many administrations, every branch of government and both parties. Delegates will consider specific non-violent, legal civic actions to stop the wrongs.

To help finance the historic event a .999 pure silver CC2009 commemorative round will be given for each donation of $100.00 or more. Planners are also seeking bigger donors they are calling the “patriotic, brave and wealthy” who “understand what Continental Congress can do for America.” Furthermore, a money bomb is also in the works.

The decision to convene CC2009 comes after fourteen years of filing Petitions for Redress with the federal government for repeated violations of the Constitution by We The People Foundation for Constitutional Education, a national 501 c3 non-profit with headquarters in New York. Schulz says The Right to petition was put in the First Amendment by the Founding Fathers, “who did not want Americans to ever again experience a situation where their individual rights or civil liberties were threatened.” To date, this Right has never been recognized by the government nor defined in any court of law. Schulz says it must now be used to hold elected officials accountable to the rest of the Constitution “which will shift the power from the government back to The People where it belongs.”

“Americans are waking up to the urgent need to stand strong for the Founding Principles and our Constitution, as every violation further devastates our economy and our way of life,” says Schulz. “We all desire the same outcome: restoration of our Nation. Continental Congress 2009 is the only strategy we see that is not political or partisan, does not rely on the electoral process, and can bring peaceful and legal solutions to our current situation. We hope this effort can be the catalyst that brings the freedom-loving people of America together at this critical time,” he concludes.

Readers can learn more about CC2009, by going to www.cc2009.us

President Obama traveled all the way to China to praise the free flow of information. It's the only safe place he could do so without getting heckled. With a straight face, Obama lauded political dissent and told Chinese students he welcomed unfettered criticism in America. Fierce opposition, he said, made him "a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear." How do you say "You lie!" in Mandarin?

While the kowtower-in-chief's press shop feeds paeans to free speech into Obama's globetrotting teleprompter, the White House is still waging war on vocal foes at home. Obama has lectured his critics in Washington to stop talking and "get out of the way." He has stacked his carefully staged town halls with partisan stooges and campaign plants throughout the year. The president recently derided limited-government activists in the Tea Party movement with a vulgar sexual term used by left-wing cable host Anderson Cooper on CNN and the MSNBC smear merchants (just Google "teabagging" and you'll see what they mean).

There are now more muzzled watchdogs in the Obama administration than on the sidelines of the Westminster Kennel Club show.

Most recently, two EPA lawyers critical of the "fatally flawed" cap-and-trade system -- peddled by their agency, the White House and the Democratic majority -- were told by their superiors to yank a video they posted to YouTube explaining their views. Despite including a caveat that the opinions expressed were their own and not the agency's, the couple faces possible disciplinary action by the feds. While demanding the video be yanked, the EPA disingenuously claims it tolerates all dissenting views of its employees.

The clampdown follows on the heels of the Obama EPA's stifling of veteran researcher Alan Carlin's dissent. He dared to challenge the agency's reliance on outdated data to support its greenhouse gas "public endangerment" finding. Carlin's report was squelched; his office is now on the chopping block.

In China, O proclaimed himself "a big supporter of non-censorship." But his FCC "diversity" czar, Mark Lloyd, is bent on re-engineering public airwaves by redistributing free speech rights from conservative haves who earned their success to minority have-nots who demand talk radio entitlements in the name of "media justice."

And among Obama's closest advisers is a husband-and-wife duo who specializes in marginalizing and stifling the Democratic Party's most effective enemies. Just days after White House interim communications director Anita Dunn -- the administration's resident Mao cheerleader and Fox News-basher -- stepped down to take a planned role as a "consultant" behind the scenes, her husband, Robert Bauer, stepped up and shoved aside White House counsel Greg Craig.

The problem? Former Clinton lawyer Craig wasn't tough enough for Chicago-on-the-Potomac. Obama needed an intimate ally who will put hardball politics ahead of policy and the law. Bauer fits the bill.

A partner at the prestigious law firm Perkins & Coie, Bauer served as counsel to the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Obama for America. He has served as Obama's personal attorney, navigating the corrupted waters of former Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich's pay-for-play scandals in Illinois. He also served as legal counsel to the George Soros-funded 527 organization America Coming Together during the 2004 campaign.

That get-out-the-vote outfit, helmed by Patrick Gaspard (the former Service Employees International Union heavy turned Obama domestic policy chief), employed convicted felons as canvassers and committed campaign finance violations that led to a $775,000 fine by the Federal Election Commission under Bauer's watch.

During the 2008 campaign, Bauer pooh-poohed GOP complaints about voter fraud. While decrying the Republicans' "fear message," it was Bauer who was on a fear-inducing crusade -- pulling out all legal stops to silence conservative critics of Obama's ties to the radical left.

As I've noted previously, and in light of Obama's self-serving praise for political dissent abroad, I note again: It was Bauer who lobbied the Justice Department unsuccessfully last fall to pursue a criminal probe of American Issues Project (AIP), an independent group that sought to run an ad spotlighting Obama's ties to Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

It was Bauer and his legal goon squad who attempted to sic the DOJ on GOP donor Harold Simmons and sought his prosecution for funding the ad. In a parallel effort launched the same week as Bauer's legal efforts, a nonprofit called "Accountable America," spearheaded by a former operative of the Obama-endorsing MoveOn outfit, began trolling campaign finance databases and targeting conservative donors with "warning letters" in a thuggish attempt to depress Republican fundraising.

It was Bauer who tried to bully television stations across the country into pulling the spot. Team Obama then summoned their troops to bombard stations, many of them owned by conservative-leaning Sinclair Communications, with 93,000 e-mails to squelch the commercial.

With Bob "The Silencer" Bauer now working from the inside and Anita "News Commissar" Dunn working from the outside, Obama has a state media police apparatus the Chinese regime itself could love.

Joseph Stubbs, President of the American College of Physicians -- the second largest doctors' group in the country -- confirms that "the supply of doctors just won't be there" for the 30 million new patients Barack Obama wants to cover. Noting that the doctor shortage is "already a catastrophic crisis," Stubbs said that underserved areas in the U.S. currently need almost 17,000 new primary care physicians even before Obama's proposals are enacted.

In the meantime, according to Bloomberg News, a 2009 survey by Merritt Hawkins and Associates, a recruiting and research firm in Irving, Texas, found that "the average waiting time to see a family-medicine doctor in Boston ... is 63 days, the most among the 15 cities" surveyed. By comparison, in Miami, it was only seven days.

The study noted that Boston's longer wait was "driven in part by the health-care reform initiative" passed in 2006 in Massachusetts upon which the Obama program is modeled. Bloomberg reported that "as many as half of doctors in the state have closed their practices to new patients, forcing many of the newly insured to turn to emergency rooms for care."

Alan Goroll, a professor at Harvard Medical School said that "the primary lesson of health-care reform in Massachusetts is that you can't increase the number of insured unless you have a strong primary-care base in place to receive them. Without that foundation ... Massachusetts has ended up with higher costs and people going to emergency rooms when they can't find a doctor."

And, a study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, part of the federal government's Health and Human Services Department, found that expanding insurance coverage to an estimated 32 million people who now lack it would create a demand for medical services that "could be difficult to meet initially ... and could lead to price-increases, cost-shifting, and-or changes in providers' willingness to treat patients with low-reimbursement health coverage."

Indeed, the report found that the Medicare cuts contained in the House-passed bill are likely to "prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether."

The dynamic of the health care debate is decidedly turning against the administration. As details of the doctor shortage, Medicare cuts, tax increases, penalties for no insurance, shallow subsidies and high costs for the uninsured all leak out, more and more Americans are developing qualms about the bill.

But, within Congress, the momentum is the other way as the bill hurtles toward December passage in the Senate.

But, then it will hit a wall as the houses try to reconcile their different versions so as to satisfy the liberal House and Obama's base on the one hand and the most conservative among the 60 Democratic senators on the other. This debate will focus on such a broad range of issues and will be so contentious that it is going to take a long time to resolve.

Meanwhile, popular angst with the bill will continue to build, and Election Day will approach. More and more members will be anxious about supporting the bill, and both left and right will dig in their heels and resist compromise.

The health care bill may pass both houses, but may not be able to be enacted into law. The tide of public opinion cannot be resisted.

On November 5, I wrote of the statements that Charlie Crist made denying that he ever supported Obama's $787 billion stimulus bill in his role as Florida's Governor. Unfortunately for his obfuscation, though, I noted that he and 17 other governors signed a letter in February of this year announcing support for the Stimulus. Apparently Crist forgot that he signed this letter... conveniently. Yes, he was for the porkulus bill before he was against it.

Well now there is even more proof than that mere signature on a piece of paper showing Charlie's support for the porkulus bill. From Ed Morrissey we find an interview that Rolling Stone hackster Tim Dickinson did with Crist back in the spring. In that piece Dickinson was celebratory that Crist was a stimulus supporter.

Dickinson then noted, "For his part, Crist is weighing a run for the Senate — where, he tells Rolling Stone, he would have given the president a fourth Republican vote on the stimulus bill."

Due to the controversy of whether Crist did or didn't support the Obama Administration's bill, Dickinson recently posted a transcript of the actual exchange:

Rolling Stone: Just a final question: Had you been in the Senate, would you have voted with the other Republicans for the stimulus package?

Crist: Absolutely.

This all adds more to the story I reported on Nov. 5. As I said, Crist has lately been saying that he didn't support the stimulus in particular, but that he did in spirit. Charlie Crist absolutely did, however, support Obama's stimulus directly and in particular. His current spin to the contrary isn't just a subtle re-reading of his actions. His new claim is an outright lie.

It all adds up to an outing of Charlie Crist on porkulus. Sorry Charlie, but you did support the $787 billion pork bill before you tried to claim you didn't.

Unforced confession: Sometimes I am an idiot.

This article was all written up in the post field here, and ready to post, and my damn browser crashed. Then I got caught up in elections work, and things fell by the wayside. That's all wrapped up, and now I can write again. Here we go:

Money's not everything in politics, but in political campaigns it's a necessary evil, especially as the population of your constituency grows. In a massive state like California with more than ten major TV markets and tens of millions of potential voters, you need tons of money to run a credible statewide campaign. $3 million could run an entire two-year Congressional campaign most anywhere else. In Cali it can buy you maybe a week of TV spots, if that. Besides that, a strong fundraising operation scares away potential primary and general election opponents, and draws in quality staff and earned media exposure that will only improve your fundraising operations down the road.

It's that reality that stands in the face of a lot of good press that's come Chuck DeVore's way in the past few weeks. He's become a second-tier candidate for the Tea Party movement that toppled Dede Scozzafava and is now training its nukes down here in Florida on Governor Charlie Crist. Conservative darling Jim DeMint has become Chuck's biggest fan, and former Hewlett Packard exec Carly Fiorina has seen her Senate campaign stutter a bunch out of the gate. Add to that polls showing him running competitively with Fiorina among California primary voters and performing about equally with Fiorina in head to head matchups with SENATOR Barbara Boxer, and Chuck would appear to have a lot to smile about.

And then you look at the Orange County Assemblyman's campaign balance sheet. At the end of September 2009, his Senatorial campaign committee reported just $56,000 in liquid cash after debts. Two of his state campaign committees are still in the red. His campaign is having a terrible time raising money, and is spending it almost as quickly as it's taking it in. For serious US Senate candidates, the year before an election is the 12 months you need to spend banking cash for next year. At the rate DeVore is running through his money, he's barely going to meet payroll, travel expenses and sales taxes (I would hope candidates in Cali budget for y'alls draconian consumption taxes). Not something you want to be doing going up against a candidate who can still spend $15-20 million to finance a campaign, not to mention SENATOR Boxer and her considerable warchest after the primary election is over.

I got no skin in this game and this election, at least no more than I have an interest in seeing SENATOR Boxer become Ms. Boxer come January 3, 2011. But for this to happen, either Assemblyman DeVore or Ms. Fiorina needs to prove that they can challenge Boxer both ideologically and financially. For now, Chuck DeVore at least seems to be the right ideological opponent to face off against SENATOR Boxer next year, but Fiorina certainly can be a capable campaigner with the right support system and message. But the bottom line is that in the race to finance a strong campaign in California, DeVore has failed to prove he can raise money on par with Ms. Fiorina. The most damning evidence of this is Ms. Fiorina's very declaration to run for Senate, in addition to the sad state of his campaign's bank account.

Don't take this as a belief that we should stick a fork in Chuck DeVore's campaign. There is still a ways to go, and as mentioned above, money isn't everything, even in huge states. But I will go ahead and say time is rapidly running out for DeVore to make a compelling case that he is a top tier candidate. He's got the support amongst conservative voters in Cali and from conservative opinion leaders throughout the country. But with six weeks left in the current fundraising reporting period, they need to implore conservatives to open their wallets as well as their mouths. Marco Rubio raised a mere $1 million last quarter and turned his campaign from an afterthought to a real shot at an upset. A $2-3 million haul for DeVore would force pundits to give him respect and give him the resources to actually communicate with voters in his state. Anything less than that, and at best he treads water to 2010 for a loss. At worst, Ms. Fiorina steamrolls him in the primary and goes on to face SENATOR Boxer in the general. If there is a Doomsday Clock for political campaigns, DeVore's clock is reading Six Weeks Till Midnight. Between now and December 31, he can bring home the bacon and make the case that he can raise money with the big boys, or if he'll keep treading water and slip into the red, and into the defeat column.

President Obama took his declining dollar to the Asia-Pacific economic conference, and he added to it a declinist opinion of America’s economy. His big message? Don’t count on American consumers to lead the world from recession to recovery and beyond. His second big message? In the U.S., we must save more and spend less.

Huh? This is the same limits-to-growth, central-planning wisdom we hear so often these days at home. It’s also tone deaf, to say the least. Despite a sinking greenback that is wreaking havoc among the Asian economies, and in the face of repeated currency warnings by Asian officials, Obama brought no King Dollar stabilization message to the conference.

Before getting into the currency question, let me say this: I think more saving (and investment) by U.S. citizens is a great idea. But this need not come at the expense of consumption. In a prosperous free economy, people should be able to save, invest, work, and spend as much as they like. More is better than less in each case. Grow the pie larger.

Of course, if the president and his team want more saving and investment, they should end the multiple taxation of saving and investment. Unfortunately, our system taxes saving as income, capital gains, dividends, and inheritance.

Team Obama also intends to tax wealth more by raising the top personal tax rate from 35 to 40 percent. And they apparently don’t object to Nancy Pelosi’s plan to slap another 5.4 percent tax on the incomes and capital-gains of successful earners in order to finance a government takeover of health care.

Wealth is a crucial form of saving. And the investment that comes from extra saving is used to finance the entrepreneurial start-ups that create the jobs and incomes that allow families to spend. However, by creating a zero-sum game between saving and spending, the Obama planners are falling into an austerity trap -- one that would hand the American economy a second-place finish in the global race for capital and growth.

At the same time, Obama has no plan to stabilize King Dollar, and the Asian economies don’t like it. China’s top banking regulator said the Federal Reserve’s money-creating binge was the main cause of “massive speculation.” Similar sentiments came from top officials in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan.

And while Ben Bernanke tried to calm dollar worries during his recent speech at the New York Economics Club, it was clear that the greenback’s value ranks low on his priority list. Nothing but dollar lip service from the Fed head.

Because of the slumping dollar, U.S. import prices have jumped 10 percent at an annual rate over the past three months, and nearly 6 percent excluding energy. This is a tax hike on consumers and businesses, and it could depress holiday sales. It’s reminiscent of the gigantic energy shock of 2008 that was caused by the dollar’s collapse.

And what’s the current U.S solution to the dollar problem? Blame China, and call for a revaluation of the yuan. But beggar-thy-neighbor protectionism never works, and it causes bad blood between the countries involved.

The powerful Asian economies actually have a better idea. They want to move toward a free-trade currency-cooperation zone -- much like the euro zone, fathered by Nobel economist Robert Mundell. This makes more sense in terms of world price stability and free capital flows. But the U.S. refuses to play.

So Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and others are forced to desperately buy sinking dollars in order to protect their export industries. But this only creates inflationary money expansion. The beleaguered U.S. dollar is in effect exporting U.S. inflation overseas.

President Obama did talk about entering free-trade discussions. But his Commerce secretary, Gary Locke, threw cold water on the idea in a Singapore speech. He said trade agreements have to wait because of a crowded U.S. legislative agenda. (Hat tip: James Pethokoukis.) He may have a point: The South Korean free-trade bill has been languishing for several years in the Democratic Congress.

Then there’s the massive U.S. health-care takeover plan, which is now estimated at $3 trillion. This additional dollar depressant will tax the patience of China, Japan, and other would-be buyers of our massive debt creation.

We cannot spend, tax, or devalue our way into prosperity. Nor can we command the respect of other nations by telling them our economy cannot grow as rapidly in the future as it has in the past.

Ironically, these same Asian countries -- with their accelerated growth rates -- have borrowed a page from American free-market capitalism. Yet Obama makes no defense of our free-market system, and provides no leadership on the leading economic questions.

In terms of global leadership, Ronald Reagan would say, “If not us, who? If not now, when?” It’s a pity that President Obama doesn’t share the Gipper’s commitment to American leadership.