The Republican Club of Sun City Newsletter

July 2014 Everett Schmidt, Editor Sun City Texas

G. O. P. STAFF MEMBER TO DISCUSS RECRUITMENT

OF MINORITIES TO REPUBLICAN CAUSE

David Zapata, staff member from the Republican Party of Texas Headquarters in Austin, will discuss the efforts emanating from the state level to recruit Hispanics and members of other minority groups to the Republican cause during the club’s dinner meeting scheduled for Thursday, July 10 in the ballroom of the Social Center in Sun City. He will also discuss the recent GOP state convention, the strategy of the Democrats to recruit minorities to their party, and what the GOP can do to thwart that strategy which currently is characterized as an effort to make Texas a “battleground state.” As associate from the state office will assist his presentation.

The Social Period, Dinner and Program. A social period will begin at 6:00 PM. The dinner will begin at 6:30 PM and will be followed by the program. The dinner will consists of smoked meatloaf with mushrooms and onions, potatoes au gratin, roasted broccoli and cauliflower, salad and assorted rolls.

Cost. Cost is $16 per person. Checks made out to The Republican Club of Sun City should be mailed to: The Republican Club of Sun City, 1530 Sun City Blvd., Suite 120, Box 227, Georgetown, TX 78633. The deadline for payment or reservations is Thursday, July 3. (Note that the deadline for payment is a day earlier than the usual Friday deadline because of the July 4 holiday.)

Club treasurer John Congdon has set up a special collection box on his front porch at 610 Farm Hill Drive for individuals wishing to hand-deliver payments, this being said with the proviso that the Thursday deadline has been met. For information about reservations, contact John at 512-686-1676 or johnsctx@gmail.com

VISITORS ARE WELCOME!

CONGRESSMAN CARTER TO ADDRESS CLUB IN AUGUST

Congressman John Carter, who represents the citizens of Congressional District 31, will address the club during its dinner meeting scheduled for Tuesday, August 12. (Note: The August meeting is scheduled for a Tuesday night because a Thursday night – the club’s usual meeting night – was not available.

Details of the meeting will be reported in the August newsletter.

OTHER CLUB NEWS

Club treasurer John Congdon reports that the number of attendees at the club’s May 8 meeting was 100, with an additional 3 individuals attending as observers.

Voter registration applications and bumper stickers will be available at club meetings.

NEWS OF THE STATE PARTY

According to state party chairman Steve Munisteri, some significant changes in the way the Republican National Committee (RNC) selects and then promotes their presidential candidates are being considered. He indicates there is support for the idea to “establish a RNC debate commission which, in consultation with the presidential candidates, would establish a set number of presidential debates, a debate schedule, the networks on which the debates would be televised, and most importantly, RNC would have to approve debate moderators.”

With respect to moderators, Munisteri stated, “I personally don’t believe George Stephanopoulos is an appropriate questioner for Republican primary candidates since he is a former member of the Clinton administration and a Democrat operative. Likewise for Chris Wallace who used to work for House Speaker Tim O’Niell. I also personally would not include Candy Crowley, who became the third debater in a debate between Governor Romney and President Obama. . .”

Current rules specify that the presidential primary process would be shortened from a January-July period to a February-May period. A national convention is proposed for either June 28 or July 17, 2016.

G. A. R. W. TO SPONSOR FUND RAISER

The Georgetown Area Republican Women (GARW) is sponsoring a style show on Thursday, July 17 in the Sun City ballroom during the noon hour to raise funds for the Audrey McDonald Scholarship Fund which provides scholarship funds for four young women graduates of area high schools. Emcee for the event is state Representative Tony Dale.

Tickets are $40 each and include lunch, style show and silent auction. For information, see the GARW web site at www.garw.org or contact Carolyn Killebrew at 512-863-6396.

THE AMERICANS WHO RISKED EVERYTHING:
THE SIGNERS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Following are excerpts from an essay written by Rush Limbaugh’s father about the signers of the Declaration of Independence. They are published periodically near the time of the Independence Day celebration.

The Declaration is Adopted. Congress transformed itself into a committee of the whole. The Declaration of Independence was read aloud once more, and debate resumed. A total of 86 alterations were made. Almost 500 words were eliminated, leaving 1,337. At last, after three days of wrangling, the document was put to a vote. Here in this hall Patrick Henry had once thundered: “I am no longer a Virginian, Sir, but an American.” But today the loud, sometimes bitter argument stilled, and without fanfare the vote was taken from north to south by colonies, as was the custom. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

The Signers. What kind of men were the 56 signers who adopted the Declaration of Independence and who, by their signing, committed an act of treason against the Crown? To each of you the names of Franklin, Adams, Hancock, and Jefferson are almost familiar as household words. Most of us, however, know nothing of the other signers. Who were they? What happened to them?

I imagine that many of you are somewhat surprised at the names not there: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry. All were elsewhere.

Ben Franklin was the only really old man. Eighteen were under 40; three were in their 20s. Of the 56, almost half – 24 – were judges and lawyers. Eleven were merchants, 9 were landowners and farmers, and the remaining 12 were doctors, ministers, and politicians.

With only a few exceptions, such as Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, these were men of substantial property. All but two had families. The vast majority were men of education and standing in their communities. They had economic security as few men had in the 18th century. Each had more to lose from revolution than he had to gain by it.

These men knew what they risked. The penalty for treason was death by hanging. And remember: a great British fleet was already at anchor in New York harbor.

Even before the list [of signers] was published, the British marked down every member of Congress suspected of having put his name to treason. All of them became the objects of vicious manhunts. Some were taken. Some, like Jefferson, had narrow escapes. All who had property or families near British strongholds suffered.

Francis Lewis, New York delegate, saw his home plundered and his estates, in what is now Harlem, completely destroyed by British soldiers. Mrs. Lewis was captured and treated with great brutality. Though she was later exchanged for two British prisoners . . .she died from the effects of her abuse.

William Floyd, another New York delegate, was able to escape with his wife and children across Long Island Sound to Connecticut, where they lived as refugees without income for seven years. When they came home, they found a devastated ruin.

Phillip Livingston had all his great holdings in New York confiscated and his family driven out of their home. Livingstone died in 1778 still working in Congress for the cause.

Louis Morris, the fourth New York delegate, saw all his timber, crops, and livestock taken. For seven years, he was barred from his home and family.

John Hart of Trenton, New Jersey, risked his life to return home to see his dying wife. Hessian soldiers rode after him, and he escaped in the woods. While his wife lay on her deathbed, the soldiers ruined his farm and wrecked his homestead. Hart, 65, slept in caves and woods as he was hunted across the countryside. When at long last, emaciated by hardship, he was able to sneak home, he found his wife had already been buried, and his 13 children taken away. He never saw them again. He died a broken man in 1779, without ever finding his family.

Dr. John Witherspoon, signer, was president of the College of New Jersey, later called Princeton. The British occupied the town of Princeton, and billeted troops in the college. They trampled and burned the finest college library in the country.

Judge Richard Stockton, another New Jersey delegate, had rushed to his estate to evacuate his wife and children. The family found refuge with friends, but a sympathizer betrayed them. Judge Stockton was pulled from bed in the night and brutally beaten by arresting soldiers. Thrown into a common jail, he was deliberately starved. Congress finally arranged for Stockton’s parole, but his health was ruined. The judge was released as an invalid when he could no longer harm the British cause. He returned home to find his estate looted and did not live to see the triumph of the revolution. His family was forced to live off charity.

Robert Morris, merchant prince of Philadelphia, delegate and signer, met Washington’s appeals and pleas for money year after year. He made and raised arms and provisions which made it possible for Washington to cross the Delaware at Trenton. In the process he lost 150 ships at sea, bleeding his own fortune and credit almost dry.

Thomas Lynch, Jr., South Carolina delegate, had his family broken from privation and exposures while serving as a company commander in the military. His doctors ordered him to seek cure in the West Indies and on the voyage he and his young bride were drowned at sea.

Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., and the other three South Carolina signers were taken by the British in the siege of Charleston. They were carried as prisoners of war to St. Augustine, Florida, where they were singled out for indignities. They were exchanged at the end of the war, the British in the meantime having completely devastated their large land holdings and estates.

Thomas Nelson, signer of Virginia, was at the front in command of the Virginia military forces. With British General Charles Cornwallis in Yorktown, fire from 70 heavy American guns began to destroy Yorktown piece by piece. Lord Cornwallis and his staff moved their headquarters into Nelson’s palatial home. While American cannonballs were making shambles of the town, the house of Governor Nelson remained untouched. Nelson turned in rage to the American gunners and asked, “Why do you spare my home?” They replied, “Sir, out of respect to you.” Nelson cried, “Give my the cannon” and fired on his magnificent home himself, smashing it to bits. But Nelson’s sacrifice was not quite over. He had raised $2 million for the Revolutionary cause by pledging his own estates. When the loans came due, a newer peacetime Congress refused to honor them, and Nelson’s property was forfeited. He was never reimbursed. He died, impoverished, a few years later at the age of 50.

And, finally, there is the New Jersey signer, Abraham Clark. He gave his town sons to the officer corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured and sent to the infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York harbor known as the hell ship “Jersey” where 11,000 Americans were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with a special brutality because of their father. One was put in solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with the war almost won, no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for acceding to the British request when offered him his son’s lives if he would recant and come out for the King and parliament. The utter despair in this man’s heart, the anguish in his very soul, must reach out to each of us down through 200 years with his answer: “No!”

Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create, is still intact.

The 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence proved by their every deed that they made no idle boast when they composed the most magnificent curtain line in history: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

A COMPARISON OF THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDNT CLINTON

WITH THE CONTEMPLATED IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT OBAMA Foreword. The main purpose of this report is to provide a comparison of the efforts to impeach President Clinton with possible efforts to impeach President Obama. A consideration of the comparison may be worthwhile inasmuch – as will be shown in this report – the political situation in the country, today, is in several respects markedly different from the situation during the early 90s when the effort to impeach President Clinton was made. This report may also be timely inasmuch as one can hear a growing number of citizens advocate the

impeachment of the current president.
This report is based primarily on two books. One, titled Sell Out: The Inside Story of President Clinton’s

Impeachment, was written by David Schippers, the Chief Investigative Counsel of the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment process and a Democrat, who explains what went on behind closed doors, and how the entire impeachment process at that time was a “sell out.”

The other book, Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment was written by Andrew McCarthy who is widely known as a successful prosecutor of a Muslim terrorist and as a writer for National Review.

With respect to the notion of impeachment today, McCarthy contends, “. . . it is not crazy to talk about impeaching President Obama. . . Not only is impeachment the intended constitutional remedy for systematic presidential lawless [as we see today]; it is, practically speaking, the only remedy.”

While the framers armed Congress with the power of the purse as a second power to control a lawless president, that power is no longer viable. Why not? Asserts McCarthy, “With Democrats energized by Obama’s lawbreaking and Republicans paralyzed by the prospect of government shutdowns, there is no realistic prospect that Congress will starve Obama of funding.”

What Are Grounds For Impeachment? McCarthy notes that “High crimes and misdemeanors, “ the Constitutional standard for impeachment, are the misdeeds of high officials . . . [and are] violations of a “political” nature. . . Impeachment is a political remedy, not a legal one.” He continues: “Because impeachment is a political remedy, its most essential component is the popular political will to remove a president from power. The charges against Bill Clinton plainly satisfied the “high crimes and misdemeanors” threshold, and he was clearly guilty of them. But the American people obviously did not want Clinton removed over them . . .The question is how convinced the public is that a president’s continued hold on power profoundly threatens their safety, prosperity, and sense of what kind of country we should be. As things now stand [regarding a possible Obama impeachment], the public is not convinced. There is not political will to remove the president.”

While the political will to impeach my not now be present, care should be exercised to avoid prematurely concluding that a result similar to that of the Clinton impeachment will occur again in the future. As will be explained in the next section, the conviction and subsequent removal of Clinton from office was simply not possible.

Also to be noted is that the driving subject in the Clinton impeachment was his sexual misbehavior, which did not particularly affect his approval ratings, while the driving subject with respect to Obama is his lawlessness and low approval rating, far more weighty subjects.

In view of the nation’s apparent lack of interest in impeaching the president, McCarthy offers the following ominous warning: “Two things, however, are certain. Absent the political will to remove the president, he will remain president no matter how many high crimes and misdemeanors he stacks up. And absent the removal of the president, the United States will be fundamentally transformed.”

THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT CLINTON
In January of 1999 the Senate considered and then declined to convict President Clinton on two articles

of impeachment sent to it by the House. One of the articles was for perjury in a trial involving the sexual harassment of Paula Jones. The other was for evading the House Judiciary Committee’s questions regarding his sexual shenanigans with White House aide Monica Lewinsky.

The failure to convict was entirely predictable as the following discussion will indicate.

One indicator was polling data. Schippers reports that exit polls of the day showed that two out of every three Americans opposed the impeachment of the President. “It was obvious from the outset that the Republican leadership was totally at the mercy of the polls. As long as the president’s approval rating remained high, the Republican leaders were not about to rock the boat.”

Quotes from political leaders also forecast the result. Following is but a sampling.

Henry Hyde, Republican Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee: “We are not going to put a bunch of witnesses on the stand and go over the Lewinsky situation. We don’t need any more sex material before the House Committee. They are already saying Republicans are obsessed with sex. The Democrats will be all over us, and the White House spinmeisters will have a field day.”

When discussing the assault of Juanita Broaddrick, Republican Senator Ted Stevens said to Hyde: “Henry, I don’t care if you proved he raped a woman and then stood up and shot her dead – you are not going to get 67 votes [needed for a conviction].” Schippes then asked, “ . . .are you telling me that the Senators are going to ignore that oath also?” Without hesitation Stevens said, “You’re damn right they are!”

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said to Hyde: “Henry, you’re not going to dump that garbage on us.” Further, the adopted procedures would not permit success as is evidenced by the following:
According to Schippers, “In short, a trial, in the normal sense of the word, never even took place in the

Senate. We were left to present three relatively short and harmless depositions.” There would be no live testimony on evidence, all because the Republicans wanted so badly to look “fair.” “Had there been a real trial [with live witnesses] in the Senate, the American people would have heard all about this [alleged rapes of Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey].”

Schippers continues: “ . . .the whole process was flawed because the prosecutors were not permitted to put on evidence to prove the charges.”

Ken Starr was the only witness allowed, but his testimony was very limited because, first, he was attacked unmercifully by the press and, second, because by law, if a witness lied to the press he couldn’t respond and set the record straight. This was so because to do so would mean revealing grand jury and other confidential materials.

A CONTEMPLATED IMPEACHMENT OF BARACH OBAMA
McCarthy, in his book, makes a presentation of what the Articles of Impeachment would look like when formally and legally stated. Commenting on the substance of those Articles, he contends, “They’d look overwhelming” – a conclusion the reader, upon reflecting on his compilation of instances of lawlessness on the

part of the president, may well agree.
Because of space limitations in this report, only a statement of each of McCarthy’s proposed Articles of

Impeachment followed by a brief, incomplete and informally-stated explanation of each of those Articles is shown.

THE ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT PERTAINING TO BARACH OBAMA

ARTICLE I. The President’s Willful Refusal to Execute the Laws Faithfully and Usurpation of the Legislative Authority of Congress

•   The president’s unilateral amendments of Obamacare legislation
•   The president’s unilateral amendment of the federal law requiring welfare recipients to work
•   The president’s unilateral amendment and maladministration of the Clean Air Act in destructively regulatingcarbon dioxide
•   The president’s defiance of federal law requiring the president to address the impending insolvency of MedicareARTICLE II. Usurping the Constitutional Authority and Prerogatives of Congress

•   The president’s usurpation of Congress’s constitutional war powers in instigating an undeclared, unauthorized,unprovoked, and ultimately disastrous war in Libya
•   The president’s making of “recess appointments” when the Senate was not in recessARTICLE III. Dereliction of Duty as President and Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces

•   The president’s imposition of unconscionable combat rules of engagement that recklessly endanger and cost the lives of American troops
•   The Benghazi massacre: The president’s reckless stationing of American government personnel and provision of grossly inadequate security for them in Benghazi, Libya, resulted in a foreseeable terrorist attack in which the U. S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were murdered, and numerous other Americans were woundedARTICLE IV. Fraud on the American People

•   The Obamacare fraud: The president’s willful misrepresentations that Americans would be able to keep theirhealth insurance and their doctors, and that they would save rather than lose thousands of dollars, in order to secure political support for Obamacare’s enactment and conceal damaging information that would have threatened his reelection bid
•   the president’s fraudulent claims about enforcement efforts against illegal immigrationARTICLE V. Failure to Execute the Immigration Laws Faithfully

•   The president’s unlawful grant of amnesty to categories of illegal immigrants by executive order
•   The president’s unlawful conferral of amnesty on categories of illegal immigrants by executive order,administration regulations, and the invocation of prosecutorial discretion
•   The president’s extortionate pressure – by expensive litigation and the withholding of federal resources – onstates attempting to enforce laws against illegal immigrationARTICLE VI. Failure to Execute the Laws Faithfully: The Department of Justice
  •   The reckless Fast and Furious operation intentionally armed criminals, foreseeably resulted in violent crimes that include the murder of at least one U. S. Border Patrol agent, and has been covered up by the attorney general’s contemptuous obstruction of a congressional investigation and the president’s specious invocationof executive privilege
  •   The willful denial to Americans of equal protection under the law by the Justice Department’s racially discriminatory enforcement of federal civil rights lawbreakingARTICLE VII. Willfully Undermining the Constitutional Rights of the American People That He Is Sworn to Preserve, Protect and Defend

 The president’s selective targeting of political opponents for harassment and abuse by the Internal Revenue

Service, and obstruction and corruption of the resulting investigations

NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE
(Some random observations on this crazy world in which we live)

George Washington’s Challenge. In view of the impending July 4 celebrations, the reader may be interested in reading of certain facts about the father of the nation, George Washington.

When he assumed command of the Continental Army in 1776, George Washington was only 43 years old and, according to historian David McCullogh, “had never led an army in battle, never before commanded anything larger that a regiment.”

Washington also had to contend with a lack of popular support for a war. He never had the backing of more that 1/3 of the colonists. Another third of the population was loyal to the king, and the rest were indifferent.

By the end of the war in 1783, the Continental Army had defeated the most formidable military force on earth.

“More importantly,” asserts a Congressman, “the entirely new and unique concept of a democratic republic was established through Washington’s leadership. When he assumed the presidency in 1879, Washington was the only popularly elected head of state on the planet.”

City Week Writes Profiles on Two Club Members. Two current club members were written about in two recent issues of City Week, the insert included with the Sunday edition of The Sun. The articles are summarized below for those members who have not read them.

In the May 25 issue of that publication, the writer describes an interesting experience then-Captain Pat McCaslin, a past club president and current club member, had in October of 1968 while a navigator on a B-52 flying over North Dakota: he saw on his radar screen an object which was later determined to be an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO).

McCaslin explains that the observance received no publicity, partly because of the Air Force’s policies. But Peter Jennings of ABC News made a documentary about the incident in 2005 and interviewed the B-52’s crew, including McCaslin.

Back in 1969, after receiving training in light attack aircraft, then-Colonel McCaslin was transferred to Thailand where he flew an attack plane and was commander of a group of attack planes responsible for inserting and extracting special operation forces operating in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Once, when on assignment over Laos, a bullet crashed through the cockpit of his plane, impacting his head. “That’s how I got a Purple Heart,” he said.

In addition to his Purple Heart, McCaslin received two Silver Stars and two Distinguished Flying Crosses while flying in Vietnam.

In the June 22 issue of “City Week” appears an article about Howard Konetcy, a current member of the Republican Club. The article begins by pointing out that Konetchy graduated from high school in the 40s at age 16 after already attending a year of college. Thereafter, in late 1944, he joined the Coast Guard.

In the fall of 1944 he was assigned to a Coast Guard observation station in Maine where, on a frigate, his crew was assigned a mission of monitoring weather conditions on seas from South America on up to Greenland.

He describes some of the brutal weather conditions his crew would have to face in the North Atlantic: “We would often be shaken out of bed at 2:00 AM to man the decks and hack ice off with axes,” so the ship would not roll over.

After the war, Konetchy retired from the Coast Guard and attended Boston University on the GI Bill. After joining the naval reserve he was later elevated to the rank of Captain thereafter to move to Detroit where he headed a Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps program in Detroit. Students who completed the required 4 years of training were eligible as a full seaman in the Navy. Konetchy says he still remembers his students and takes satisfaction knowing many of them bettered their lives by entering the service.

Boehner’s Recent Initiative. Shortly after the above news article on a contemplated impeachment of President Obama was completed, news broke that Speaker Boehner will seek a House vote authorizing a lawsuit to curtail the “aggressive unilateralism” of the President. If passed, the lawsuit, according to the Wall Street Journal, would be placed under the direction of the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group.

This effort needs to be watched to be sure that some of the obstructionist tactics successfully used in regard to the Clinton impeachment will not be utilized again.