(This post is part 9 of a series. Please click here to read all previous posts from earliest to latest.)

If you have read and understood the principles outlined in the previous posts, you will be able to answer all of these questions correctly. Carefully recall the purpose of a republic and the specific function of each of its branches in order to provide the correct answer. Email your answers here.

What is wrong with each of these statements?

1. Out of 73 Supreme Court decisions, 32 were decided by 5-4 votes in the 2006-2007 term.
2. The Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, has asked Congress for the authority to regulate the executives of privately-owned companies.
3. Barack Obama said to a private citizen during his campaign, “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
4. Our inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are endowed upon us directly from God.
5. The California Air Resources Board wants to mandate a “cool paints” initiative to ban automakers from painting their cars black, since black cars absorb light/heat which results in a higher level of fuel consumption/emissions in the effort to maintain a cooler interior.
6. Congress and the President want to tax AIG executives’ bonuses at 90%.
7. On the promo to the first season of “The Sons of Anarchy,” a policeman is shown driving next to a member of this gang. The “Sons of Anarchy” member tells the policeman, “We’re all free men, protected by the Constitution.”
8. Government bailouts, earmarks and welfare programs were not what our Founders intended.
9. In FDR’s “Economic Bill of Rights” at the 1944 State of the Union Address, he tells the Congress that some “economic truths have been accepted as self-evident,” among which are the right of every family to a decent home, the right to adequate medical care and the right to a good education.
10. The first principle of Glenn Beck’s “Nine Principles” is: “America is good.”

A couple of things to understand before I begin writing in this blog is that this work was originally intended to be a book due to the sequential nature of the subject matter. There will be a common, unifying theme throughout the posts on this site that would be more visible if it were written as a book, but I’ve decided it should be a blog due to many reasons:

1) blogs are free, books aren’t

2) blogs are published instantaneously, books aren’t

3) I’m a nobody

4) I’m not a writer, obviously

5) No publisher in their right mind would publish this work (for reasons 3, 4 and because of the subject matter itself – you will understand this shortly)

Because of this, please know that many posts will require back reading to understand what is being discussed. Blogs are posted with the most recent post at the forefront, which might be the cause of much confusion, so I will try my best to let you know which posts reference previous ones.

That being said, hopefully this blog will be able to contribute in some small way toward the better understanding of our society, our nation, our world, and ourselves.