Private meetings, secret amendments, stuffing legislation, changing door locks, early morning votes, weekend votes, lack of transparency, hiding major bills from the opposition party and public.

Yes, that’s the Banana Republic known as the Democrat Party claiming to have moderates, Blue Dogs, fiscal Conservatives until they can bribe and receive millions of dollars in hush money and vote buying.

Bill Kristol writes at The Weekly Standard:

One friend e-mails, “uncharacteristically, I’m getting calls from relatives who want to talk about all the unseemly deals being cut to get the health bill through…that seems to have hit a nerve, as much as the price-tag.” That’s my sense too. Now combine the unseemly deals with Reid’s pathetic defense of them yesterday. According to Reid, “this legislation is no different than the defense bill we just spent $600 billion on.”

Even Liberal Dana Milbank at The Washington Post ponders Senate credibility:

“That would be the bill with more than 1,700 pet-project earmarks.”

 A key point of order that will be voted on later todayis being sponsored by Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and John Ensign (R-NV), that vote will lay the groundwork for the possible legal dismantling of Obama’s health program and determine if it’s Constitutional.

Sen. Ensign said the bill violates individual freedom of choice by requiring people to purchase health insurance or be subjected to fines and penalties.

“Forcing every American to purchase a product is absolutely inconsistent with our Constitution and the freedoms our Founding Fathers hoped to protect, Senator DeMint said.

“This is not at all like car insurance, you can choose not to drive but Americans will have no choice whether to buy government-approved insurance.”

“I am incredibly concerned that the Democrats’ proposed individual mandate provision takes away too much freedom and choice from Americans across the country,” said Senator Ensign.

“As an American, I felt the obligation to stand up for the individual freedom of every citizen to make their own decision on this issue. I don’t believe Congress has the legal authority to force this mandate on its citizens.”

The Congressional Budget Office once stated:

“A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”

A legal study by scholars at the nonpartisan Heritage Foundation concluded:

“An individual mandate to enter into a contract with or buy a particular product from a private party, with tax penalties to enforce it, is unprecedented– not just in scope but in kind–and unconstitutional as a matter of first principles and under any reasonable reading of judicial precedents.”

The leftist majority in the Senate is likely to vote down the DeMint/Ensign constitutional point of order, but the very objection itself will help build a record that courts will look at when determining whether or not Obamacare is unconstitutional. The Senate is not the final arbiter of whether or not the laws it passes are consistent with the United States Constitution. That question was settled over 200 years ago in Marbury v. Madison.

Further, the US Constitution should not face the Reid/Pelosi/Obama shreading machine.

Enumerated Powers: Article I allocates to Congress “[a]ll legislative powers herein granted,” which means that some legislative powers were intended to remain beyond Congress’s reach. The Supreme Court recognized and affirmed this fundamental principle from the earliest days of the republic, as Chief Justice Marshall famously observed:

“The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written.”

Nowhere in the Constitution is Congress given the power to mandate that an individual enter into a contract with a private party or purchase a good or service. Democrats have pointed to both the general welfare taxing power and the commerce clause as possible justifications for the mandate, but as a recent Heritage Legal Memorandum details, neither justification withstands scrutiny.

5th Amendment: The Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution reads in part: “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Sen. Ensign will argue today: “The Democrats’ health reform bill would require an American citizen to devote a portion of income – his or her private property – to health insurance coverage. … But, Mr. President, if a Nevadan does not want to spend his or her hard-earned income on health insurance coverage and would prefer to spend it on something else, such as rent or a car payment, this new requirement could be a “taking” of private property under the Fifth Amendment.”

Racial Discrimination: On December 10th, the United States Commission on Civil Rights sent a letter to the Senate regarding racially discriminatory provisions in Obama’s health plan. The letter reads:

“No matter how well-intentioned, utilizing racial preferences with hope of alleviating health care disparities is inadvisable both as a matter of policy and as a matter of law. … Ensuring that all Americans, regardless of race, have access to quality health care requires both creativity and hard-nosed attention to data. It also requires staying within the requirements of the Constitution. The current race-based provisions of the Senate Health Care bill display none of these qualities.”

Unequal State Treatment: Speaking to Fox News, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) described Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D-NE) deal to support Obamacare in exchange for a bailout Nebraska’s Medicaid costs as “disappointing, sleazy, unconstitutional.” Graham is not the only one examining Cornhusker Kickback. The Attorneys General of Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas and Washington state are jointly investigating the deal to see if special treatment for only one state in the nation at the expense of the other 49 violates the Constitution.

“We have serious concerns about the constitutionality of this Nebraska compromise as it results in special treatment for only one state in the nation at the expense of the other 49,” Graham and DeMint wrote.

Rush Limbaugh noted:

“This bill will destroy the country as you and I know it. It will destroy the greatest health care system in the world, forever changing the relationship that we have with our doctors because the government’s going to be a very powerful middleman.”

It’s amazing to watch a democratically elected body work undercover, ignoring the Constitution and public to implement a government takeover of individual freedom and liberty. We saw the Honduran government stand up for its Constitution but the US Congress, Senate and team Obama resemble Hugo Chavez and the Castro brother’s.

Wake up America, indeed!