Barack Obama has a plan. 

He wants to use the ceasefire talks in Cairo to strengthen Fatah, aka the "Palestinian Authority."  In remarks Wednesday (8/06), Obama said:

"I have no sympathy for Hamas. I have great sympathy for some of the work that has been done in cooperation with Israel and the international community by the Palestinian Authority. And they've shown themselves to be responsible. They have recognized Israel.  They are prepared to move forward to arrive at a two-state solution. I think [PA Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, aka] Abu Mazen is sincere in his desire for peace."

While the administration's new plan sounds nice in theory, it has one basic problem.

Hamas and Fatah are partners. Hamas's demands are Fatah's demands. Hamas's goals are Fatah's goals. Giving Fatah control of the borders means giving Hamas control of the borders.

Abbas said himself in a speech broadcast on the PA's official station in December 2009 , as he was trying to form the sort of Fatah-Hamas unity government that he established in April, "There is no disagreement between us [Fatah and Hamas]: About belief? None! About policy? None! About resistance? None!"

So what is Mr. Obama's Plan of Perfidy trying to accomplish?

Last week's Humor File was Nixon Was A Piker compared to Barrack Milhous Zero.  Like all good humor, it's funny because it's true:  Nixon was no piker in the scandal and mendacity department, but Zero is far worse.

Yet, at this particular conflation of events, as we simultaneously rage at Zero's awfulness and revel in its ongoing exposure, it's useful to step back and regard what's going on in America today in the context of history and economic reality.

We'll start with the case for Nixon being more destructive of our economy and freedoms than Zero, then on to the worse case regarding FDR.  For the lesson is:  it's hard to keep America down.  We go through crises and dangers, and then bounce back.  No matter how much FDR's Reds tried to support the Soviet Union, we thrived in the 1950s - and eventually got rid of the Soviet Union itself.

We can see this happening right before our eyes as we suffer the Curse of Zero.  It's not just that we all have tingles of joy running up our legs over Zero being up to his jug ears in one scandal after another.  It's that, no matter how hard Zero has tried to hamstring and suffocate the American economy, he has failed.  And we can take such advantage of his failure.

One of my fond childhood memories is that whenever we had guests over for dinner, my father would always offer his favorite toast, the famous Spanish one:  Salud, amor, y pesetas - y el tiempo para gozarlas.  (May you have) Health, love, and wealth - and the time in which to enjoy them.

It is appropriate that the most important of this triumvirate comes first - health. 

When we are young, it is easy to take natural good health and vitality for granted - and it becomes progressively less easy as we get old.  Which it is why it is wise to start preserving one's health when young (just as it is wise then to start saving money).

I'm 65 now and as you know, 12 days ago (12/05) underwent serious abdominal surgery.  My doctors are amazed at how rapidly I am recuperating.  One reason for this is that I have taken nutritional supplements in "life extension" amounts for over 30 years.  Another is that I am taking specific nutritional formulas to promote healing and recovery.

Almost exclusively, they are formulas designed by famed life extension scientists Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw - dear friends for 40 years - and produced by our mutual friend Will Block's company Life Enhancement.

I think that such nutrition is the best Christmas present you could give to yourself.

"How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-Semite?" Adolf Hitler asked his party members in 1920. No one thought it an odd question. Anti-Semitism was at that time widely understood to be part of the broader revolutionary movement against markets, property and capital.

The man who coined the term "socialism," the nineteenth-century French revolutionary Pierre Leroux, had told his comrades: "When we speak of the Jews, we mean the Jewish spirit - the spirit of profit, of lucre, of gain, of speculation; in a word, the banker's spirit."

The man who popularized the term "anti-Semitism" had taken a similar line. Wilhelm Marr, a radical nineteenth-century German Leftist, may not have been the first person to use the word, but he certainly - and approvingly - brought it to a wide audience: "Anti-Semitism is a Socialist movement," he pronounced, "only nobler and purer in form than Social Democracy".

It's a measure of the modern Left's cultural dominance that simply to recite these quotations is jarring.

That we have largely edited such facts from our collective memory says a great deal about the assumptions of modern politics. In the puerile formula that seems to dictate our definitions, Left-wing means compassionate and Right-wing means nasty so, since anti-Semitism is nasty, it must be of the Right.

Such reasoning is not confined to self-righteous seventeen-year-olds; it has, bizarrely, taken over a large chunk of our public discourse.

[Note:  this is a Free Access article to enable it to go viral.  Every Republican on Capitol Hill, every talk show host like Limbaugh and Levin, every conservative organization needs to be aware of it.  There is a federal law that can remove the President from office and put him in prison without impeachment.  Here it is.]

Neither the Senate, nor the President, nor the Supreme Court, nor any federal agency secretary or bureaucrat, has the constitutional authority to spend one single dime by themselves, without a majority of the House giving it to them.  This is the "power of the purse."
   
There is, however, a problem - a legal problem, not just a psychological one, such as Congressistas being spendaholics or too cowardly to refuse the begging of various constituencies for handouts.

This problem is epitomized by the Senate Republicans' inability to force Harry Reid to pass an annual budget, even though there is a law requiring the Senate to do so.  Thanks to Reid's blocking all attempts, the Senate hasn't passed a budget since April, 2009, which clearly violates federal law - the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

So how come Reid can't be prosecuted?  Why can't the Senate Pubs take legal action against him?  As Byron York explains, "the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 doesn't have an enforcement mechanism.  Lawmakers are required by law to pass a budget each year by April 15, but there's no provision to punish them, or even slightly inconvenience them, if they don't." 

So we arrive at what may well be the single most important question to ask in America today.

Given that the current President of the United States seems determined to bypass the House's appropriation authority and spend gigantic sums on whatever programs he wants or enforcing whatever Executive Orders he issues, is there an enforcement mechanism for his violating the power of the purse clauses in the Constitution?

The answer is yes.