E.O. establishing a Council of Governors

[kckndrgn]

President Obama Signs Executive Order Establishing Council of Governors | The White House

Direct from the white house!!!

President Obama Signs Executive Order Establishing Council of Governors

Executive Order will Strengthen Further Partnership Between the Federal and State and Local Governments to Better Protect Our Nation

The President today signed an Executive Order (attached) establishing a Council of Governors to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State Governments to protect our Nation against all types of hazards. When appointed, the Council will be reviewing such matters as involving the National Guard of the various States; homeland defense; civil support; synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.

The bipartisan Council will be composed of ten State Governors who will be selected by the President to serve two year terms. In selecting the Governors to the Council, the White House will solicit input from Governors and Governors’ associations. Once chosen, the Council will have no more than five members from the same party and represent the Nation as a whole.

Federal members of the Council include the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs, the U.S. Northern Command Commander, the Commandant of the Coast Guard, and the Chief of the National Guard Bureau. The Secretary of Defense will designate an Executive Director for the Council.

The Council of Governors will provide an invaluable Senior Administration forum for exchanging views with State and local officials on strengthening our National resilience and the homeland defense and civil support challenges facing our Nation today and in the future.

The formation of the Council of Governors was required by the Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act which stated, “The President shall establish a bipartisan Council of Governors to advise the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the White House Homeland Security Council on matters related to the National Guard and civil support missions.†(NDAA FY2008, Sec 1822)

Anybody else have any concerns about this?

[Wingshooter]

I am concerned about everything he does because I don't trust him. It sounds like he is trying to downgrade states' rights by putting the governors in his pocket.

[Tim Nunan]

It sounds like he is trying to downgrade states' rights by putting the governors in his pocket.

I concur. Total control from a centralized government.

[Guest KarlS]

I vote for a president. I vote for a governor. I didn't partake in voting for governors in other states.

I understand this was required by the end of fiscal yr 08 but an EO with his signature makes me tremble.

The part on civil support also makes me nervous. The NG may be his foot in the door on his civilian army.

[mikegideon]

If I had to bet my money, it's more about coordinating response to natural disasters and terrorist attacks. The devil is in the details. If he was trying to establish a dictatorship (like some of the media entertainers suggest), he wouldn't be so careful to make sure that the members are equally divided between Repubs and Democrats.

[Guest KarlS]

If I had to bet my money, it's more about coordinating response to natural disasters and terrorist attacks. The devil is in the details. If he was trying to establish a dictatorship (like some of the media entertainers suggest), he wouldn't be so careful to make sure that the members are equally divided between Repubs and Democrats.

That was my first thought when I read it and it's probably true. Somehow though the trust factor hasn't caught hold of me yet.

[towerclimber37]

That was my first thought when I read it and it's probably true. Somehow though the trust factor hasn't caught hold of me yet.

same here.

leopards don't change their spots.

[Guest mosinon]

Oddly, I absolutely trust Obama to do what he thinks best. I absolutely trust Obama to put the good of the nation ahead of his personal gain.

In fact, I absolutely trusted all the presidents I remember to do the same thing. The problem is that what I think is the best thing and what they think is the best thing is rarely similar.

What I think is best for the country and what the guy sitting in office thinks is best haven't crossed paths since 1968. And I'm not sure that they crossed paths then as I was an embryo for the better part of the year.

[towerclimber37]

Oddly, I absolutely trust Obama to do what he thinks best. I absolutely trust Obama to put the good of the nation ahead of his personal gain.

In fact, I absolutely trusted all the presidents I remember to do the same thing. The problem is that what I think is the best thing and what they think is the best thing is rarely similar.

What I think is best for the country and what the guy sitting in office thinks is best haven't crossed paths since 1968. And I'm not sure that they crossed paths then as I was an embryo for the better part of the year.

keep in mind that these guys think they're smarter than the framers of the constitution...the same folks who took 13 years to write the constitution.

These folks think they have the answers that somehow escaped our forefathers.

I don't trust em as far as I can spit. Matter of fact, I think THIS guy had the right idea..

This is a long post but take the time to read the speech. it's worth it.

Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Speech at the Columbus Ohio Tea Party, August 1, 2009

Tenth Amendment Center

August 3, 2009

Keynote speech at the Ohio Rally for State Sovereignty, August 1, 2009.

Let me set down a couple of fervent beliefs that animate everything I do and everything I say.

I believe that God created heaven and earth and every single individual on the planet.

I believe that the God who gave us life gave us liberty and that freedom is our birthright.

I believe that the States created the federal government and not the other way around. And that the power that the States gave to the Federal Government – they can take back.

When we were colonists, and the King and the Parliament needed money from us, and they always seemed to need money, they devised ingenious ways to tax us. One of them was called the Stamp Act. The Parliament decreed that every piece of paper that the Colonists had in their homes; every book, every document, every deed, every lease, every pamphlet, every poster to be nailed to a tree had to have the King’s stamp on it. You think going to a Post Office is bad? You had to go to a British Government office and buy a stamp with the King’s picture.

Question. How did the King know that his picture was on every piece of paper in your house? The Parliament enacted a hateful piece of legislation called the Writs of Assistance Act which let the king’s soldiers write their own search warrants, and bang down any door they chose to look for the stamps or anything else that they were looking for.

It was the last straw.

We fought a revolution. We won the revolution. We wrote the Constitution. The constitution doesn’t grant power, it keeps the government off our backs.

When they were debating the Constitution in the Summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, there were two great arguments – one by the Jefferson and Madison crowd and one by the Adams and Hamilton crowd. Jefferson argued, though he wasn’t physically there in Philly, as he did in the Declaration of Independence that our rights are ours by virtue of our humanity. That as God is perfectly free, and we are created in his image and likeness, we too are perfectly free. The big government crowd – yes they had them even in those days – argued that you can’t have freedom without government, and that government gives us our rights, and therefore, that government can take them away. This is not an academic argument. Jefferson and the natural law argument prevailed because the Constitution was written to keep the government from interfering with our natural rights.

And so, your right to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say, to travel where you want, to worship as you see fit, to keep and bear arms to defend yourself against a tyranny. And, after the right to life, the greatest and most uniquely American of rights – and I say this in front of the seat of the government – is the right to be left alone.

We wrote a Constitution to ensure that the government would never interfere with these rights. Think about it – if rights come from the government, then the government, by ordinary legislation, or presidential decree can take them away. But if the rights come from our humanity, then unless we violate someone else’s natural rights, the government cannot take our rights away.

This is not just a democrat, upper case D, or a republican, upper case R, problem. It’s a problem with government today. There’s a republican version of big government just as assaultive to our liberties as there’s a democrat version of big government.

We fought a revolution because British soldiers could knock on our doors and demand that we house them, and demand that we turn over property to them because they could write their own search warrants. In the Patriot Act, the most hateful piece of legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts, a republican congress and a republican president authorized federal agents to do the unthinkable – to write their own search warrants. And the republican administration didn’t even let members of the House of Representatives read the Patriot Act before they voted on it.

Why should the government be able to spy on us? We should be able to spy on them!

When some judge is rationalizing away our liberty, or some congressman is plotting to take away your freedom or your tax dollars, we should know what they do every minute that they do it.

I was speaking to a group of congressman from a neighboring state – I won’t tell you which state it was, but they don’t play football there – and they came up to me and said “this is the first time we have heard that the Patriot Act allows federal agents to write their own search warrants.†Remember, in the Constitution, we put in the 4th Amendment, the right to be left alone, to make sure that if the government had a target, no matter how guilty the target, no matter how widespread is the belief in the guilt of the target, no matter how dangerous is the target, the government has to go through a neutral judge with a search warrant before it can get to that target. These members of Congress said, “we didn’t know that the Patriot Act allowed the government to bypass the courts and write any search warrant they wanted.†Then I asked them a question I knew the answer to already – did you read the Patriot Act before you voted on it? The answer – no. What were you voting on? A summary we received. Let me guess who wrote the summary – some lawyers in the justice department, right? Of course.

Would you hire anybody to run your business that committed you to a violation of the very reason you’re in business if they didn’t even the document by which they were making that committment? Of course not.

The camera is the new gun. There’s nothing that government dislikes more than the light of day, and cameras recording what the government is doing, whether it’s on a street corner, or in there, or in Washington D.C., we have the right to know everything that they do and why they do it, and when they do it, and how they are taking our freedoms.

I have another one of my basic core beliefs. The individual has an immortal soul. Every individual is greater than any government.

Your government is based on fear and force. You don’t have to take my word on it. The 2nd president on the United States, John Adams, said “Of course the government is based on fear.†And the first president, George Washington, said “Government is not reason, it is force.†I think they knew what they were talking about.

Now fast-forward to modern times. Whenever the government wants something, it scares us. During the civil war, Lincoln tried civilians in this state where no battles occured, by military tribunal. After he died the supreme court invalidated everything the military tribunals did. During the first world war, the Wilson administration locked up 2000 people called anarchists – same thing as enemy combatants. No trial, no charge, just jail for the duration of the war. In world war II, FDR locked up 150,000 Japanese Americans, people born in the United States, who got no trial and had no charges, and when the war was over were given $25 and told to go home.

Today we have federal agents. You know I get in arguments with my friends at Fox News, and one of them, I don’t have to tell you who it is, but is truly the most irascible person there. And he said to me, you know you have a problem with Guantanamo Bay, and you have a problem with the Patriot Act, what will you do if I get sent to Guantanamo Bay, will you visit me? And I say, Bill – no, because they’ll probably keep me there as well.

Government likes to say that it’s taking an oath to uphold the Constitution. In the years that I was on the bench, it seemed that every time government lawyers were in my courtroom, if the government was prosecuting someone who was legitimately guilty or whether it was a mistake, or whether somebody was suing the government because government contractors or government doctors, or government workers made a mistake – the government doesn’t come in to the courtroom to enforce the constitution, it comes into the courtroom to evade and avoid it. That, ladies and gentlemen, must be stopped.

This is a great moment in our history. A crowd of this magnitude on a beautiful day, in the boiling sun, in the most middle-American of great middle-American states…comes together not because the president is a democrat, not because his predecessor was a republican, not because a war is just or unjust, not because the Fed is stealing or printing – you’re here because you believe in human freedom.

It is the essence of our existence that we should be free. But remember this: the government hates freedom. It is an obstacle to every one of their designs. Whenever they write laws, whenever they take your tax dollars, whenever they regulate your private behavior, whenever they tell you how to spend your money, whenever they tell you what medicines to take, whenever they tell you what food to eat, whenever they tell you with who you may or must associate, they are taking away your freedom and they love to get away with it. And they cannot get away with it any longer.

In the long history of the world, very few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger. This is that moment and you are that generation! Now is the time to defend our freedoms.

Jefferson was no saint but he was the greatest of our American presidents. He believed that the individual was greater than the state. He believed that the states were greater than the federal government. And when he wrote that our rights come from our creator, and that our rights are inalienable, he forever wed the notion of natural rights to the American experience and the American experiment. We must be vigilant about every right that the government wants to take away from us.

You’ve heard the president say, present president and his predecessor, “my first job is to keep you safe.†He’s wrong! His first job is to keep us free. It is his only job to keep us free.

Shortly before he died, Jefferson lamented, that in his view of the world that is was in the natural order of things for government to grow and freedom to be diminished; how ardently he wish that that wouldn’t happen. And in order to prevent it from happening he had a very simple remedy, “When the people fear the government, that is tyranny. When the government fears the people, that is liberty!â€

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[Guest mosinon]

Thanks for making the point for me Towerclimber.

While I disagree, fairly strongly, with a lot of what is in the speech I agree with this part:

"You’ve heard the president say, present president and his predecessor, “my first job is to keep you safe.” He’s wrong! His first job is to keep us free. It is his only job to keep us free."

Cause hey, the US is the place it is because of freedom. Not the other way around.

but geeze, you've got to wonder about this:

"In the long history of the world, very few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger. This is that moment and you are that generation! Now is the time to defend our freedoms."

Why now? Why not two years ago? That is the problem with the tea party folks, they whine and complain and pretend everything is brand new when it has been going on for years. Plus, they don't want to pay the damn bills.

Everyone wants to pretend this is the worst time ever, this is the decline of the empire and all. Maybe they are right. It could be that the US is falling down to a second tier country. But if that is the case it has been happening for years..

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Thanks for making the point for me Towerclimber.

While I disagree, fairly strongly, with a lot of what is in the speech I agree with this part:

"You’ve heard the president say, present president and his predecessor, “my first job is to keep you safe.†He’s wrong! His first job is to keep us free. It is his only job to keep us free."

Cause hey, the US is the place it is because of freedom. Not the other way around.

but geeze, you've got to wonder about this:

"In the long history of the world, very few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger. This is that moment and you are that generation! Now is the time to defend our freedoms."

Why now? Why not two years ago? That is the problem with the tea party folks, they whine and complain and pretend everything is brand new when it has been going on for years. Plus, they don't want to pay the damn bills.

Everyone wants to pretend this is the worst time ever, this is the decline of the empire and all. Maybe they are right. It could be that the US is falling down to a second tier country. But if that is the case it has been happening for years..

So, are you saying the time is past and all is lost? The Tea Party movement, which you apparently hate, is a lost cause and don't want to pay the damn bills and whine, is stirring this country in the right direction.

If you don't want to do anything about it, that's your right as an American.

If you would rather see this country go in the right direction, then become an activist. Beats the heck out of sitting back and saying all is lost. I'd rather go down fighting, myself.

The Tea Party movement is the first sign I have seen actively engaged in getting politicians to live up to the Constitution. I doubt I could change your mind and I certainly don't wish to start a fight on here, but you might become less a cynic about the Tea Party if you would start thinking more about possibilities and the truth, because that bunch that don't want to pay the bills, as you mentioned, are the ones that do pay the bills and they are tired of paying the bills of deadbeats and corrupt politicians.

Cynics, and I know my share of them, like to sit around and bitch about everyone else. Please don't be a cynic. Judge Napolitano is probably the best educator of the Constitution I've ever seen, and He is worried about

our country. That's why He is on the stump for the Tea Party movement.

It isn't a political party. It is the majority of this country beginning to stand up because they believe in this country. Do you?

It's about time "We the People" took our country back, that's what he is saying. Too many soldiers have spilled their blood to protect our rights and freedom. It's time we all stood up against tyranny. That's the only way we will survive as a nation, by protecting our Constitution.

Or, sit back and watch it all go away.

[towerclimber37]

Thanks for making the point for me Towerclimber.

While I disagree, fairly strongly, with a lot of what is in the speech I agree with this part:

"You’ve heard the president say, present president and his predecessor, “my first job is to keep you safe.†He’s wrong! His first job is to keep us free. It is his only job to keep us free."

Cause hey, the US is the place it is because of freedom. Not the other way around.

but geeze, you've got to wonder about this:

"In the long history of the world, very few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger. This is that moment and you are that generation! Now is the time to defend our freedoms."

Why now? Why not two years ago? That is the problem with the tea party folks, they whine and complain and pretend everything is brand new when it has been going on for years. Plus, they don't want to pay the damn bills.

Everyone wants to pretend this is the worst time ever, this is the decline of the empire and all. Maybe they are right. It could be that the US is falling down to a second tier country. But if that is the case it has been happening for years..

I have to say that I'm astounded. how can you disagree with that speech?

Those folks that you accuse of whining? they're the ones that pay for government excess. It's not their job to pay for your bills, or mine for that matter. If you don't like bills, stop making so many of them.

You also remark about this happening for years and it sounds like you don't care to stop it. I have to opine "why not??" just because it has been happening is no reason to let it continue.

What kind of cockamamie logic is that?

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Try a peek at The Constitution and Freedom | The FOX Nation .

Judge Napolitano did a wonderful bit of videos. Too bad they aren't required viewing

in grade and high school. He's the kind of judge this country needs more of. He spends a lot of time reminding us what we should already know.