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By Rev. Ted Pike
10-23-9

The defense authorization bill (with hate bill attached) was passed by the Senate late last night. The President has been speaking today at MIT, and a Senate spokesperson said he isn’t expected to consider these bills until “sometime next week.” There are strong reasons for patriots to continue now to bombard Obama with emails demanding he veto the defense/hate bill.

First, there is rising indignation and outright fear of Obama’s proposal that the UN has power to condemn nations which do not enact federal hate crimes laws. USA Today printed a full-page article by a law professor who criticizes Obama for aligning himself with Islam’s “anti-blasphemy” efforts at the UN. It lists worldwide cases of individuals who criticized other religions and suffered huge fines, facing possible imprisonment, under the very “speech crimes” codes Obama now encourages the UN to promote. This article, written to an audience of over two million, constitutes unprecedented mainstream criticism of hate crime laws in general and Obama’s hate crime agenda in particular.

Second, concern is now exploding over the possibility that Obama will sign away America’s national sovereignty to a nascent global world government at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. Lord Monckton, career expert in international treaties and former advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, has now been seen by 840 thousand on YouTube, delivering a prophetic warning that there is something truly rotten in Denmark coming this December-the actual beginning of an unelected, dictatorial world government. (link)

If Obama signs this treaty, considered by international law to supersede American sovereignty, it will obligate America to atone for an alleged 250 years of atmospheric pollution. All industrialized nations will have to significantly curtail industrial production/emissions and send two percent of their gross national product (even in times of economic hardship) to build nations of the third world to a position of “equality.”

Considering heightening national awareness and concern over Obama’s fast-forward into hate crimes jurisdiction, it is possible that an avalanche of email protest to the White House now may cause Obama to have second thoughts about further alarming the public by signing a US hate bill. I believe he would be well advised to slow down the hate crimes agenda, preventing a severe backlash against his Democrat agenda in midterms a year from now.

Over the past week, I have written and spoken to millions, encouraging them to email the White House. It is difficult to tell how many have actually responded, but I estimate many thousands. If you want to do your best to save freedom for yourself and your children, take two minutes right now to cut and paste the following three messages and email Obama at HYPERLINK “http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/” \t “_blank” www.whitehouse.gov/contact :

1. Mr. President, I will vote out Democrats at mid-terms if you sign the freedom-destroying hate crimes bill.

2. Mr. President, I expect you to keep your promise to veto any military authorization bill that wastes $100 billion of taxpayers’ money on unnecessary F-35 jet engines.

3. Mr. President, I will never forgive or forget if you sign away America’s sovereignty at the Copenhagen conference in December.
Send them repeatedly into next week until the hate bill is vetoed.

With Obama already getting a failing “hate crimes grade” with tens of millions of Americans, let’s let him know Monday morning that yet another outrageous assault on freedom would be the biggest mistake he could make, spelling an end to his career and the Democrat majority in Congress

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It has been recently  HYPERLINK “http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/17/scalia-actual-innocence/” reported that Justice Scalia said “This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.  Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged ‘actual innocence’ is constitutionally cognizable.” In all likelihood, he is right, but that just proves that the Court has never had the establishment of justice as a principal concern even though the Constitution lists it as one of the six goals the nation was meant to achieve. What no Justice has ever been able to claim, however, is that the Court has never issued a bad decision.

The Court’s willingness to deny plaintiffs justice was demonstrated as early as 1803 in Marbury vs Madison in which the Court held that Marbury was entitled to his commission as a Justice of the Peace in the District of Columbia but refused to issue a writ of mandamus on the basis of a legalistic claim that the Court lacked jurisdiction even though the Court had issued such writs twice before Marshall became a Justice. No doubt, Justice Marshall wrote this opinion to keep the Court out of a rancorous political dispute between Republicans and Federalists going on at the time, but the Constitution nowhere instructs the Court to act in that way.

Few know that some people engaged in the ratification process anticipated the possibility that the Court would issue decisions that denied plaintiffs justice. The State of New York, for instance, recommended the adoption of the following amendment.

That persons aggrieved by any Judgment, Sentence or Decree of the Supreme Court of the United States, in any Cause in which that Court has original Jurisdiction, with such exceptions and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make concerning the same, shall upon application, have a Commission to be issued by the President of the United States, to such Men learned in the Law as he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and consent of the Senate appoint, not less than seven, authorizing such Commissioners, or any seven or more of them, to correct the Errors in such Judgment or to review such Sentence and Decree, as the case may be, and to do Justice to the parties in the Premises.

Unfortunately, this attempt to limit the power of the Court lacked sufficient support to become part of the Constitution.

But decisions that deny plaintiffs justice are only one of many kinds of bad decision the Court has issued. Lists of such decisions are ubiquitous. Dred Scott vs Sandford,  Plessy vs Ferguson, Wickard vs Filburn, Korematsu vs United States, and Lochner vs People Of State Of New York are just a few of the most infamous. Some have been overturned. But bad decisions are nevertheless quite common. The question is why they occur?

Consider the implications of any split decision. The most important is that the opinion written for the majority lacks enough cogency to convince the minority. No decision based on an argument that lacks cogency can be good. Such decisions can be likened to using a mathematical procedure based on a theorem with an invalid proof or programming a computer to be used to send a vehicle to the moon with incorrect data. Eventually the result is disastrous. Next, split decisions promote divisiveness. Although a decision ends a specific case, it does not end the controversy; often it increases it. Consider the reaction of both the public and some state legislatures after Palazzolo vs Rhode Island in which the Court’s 5-4 decision, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, said the Constitution permits governments to condemn a person’s property as part of a broader economic redevelopment plan to revitalize a distressed community. But the Constitution lacks a single reference to economic or commercial development. Other divisive decisions are too well known to need mention.

Jerome Frank in Law and the Modern Mind argues that judges decide cases according to their own personal prejudices and foibles, which certainly seems to be true. But is this practice right? Justice Benjamin Curtis, dissenting in Dred Scott vs Sanford writes, “if the theoretical opinions of individuals are allowed to control [the Constitution's] meaning, we have no longer a Constitution; we are under the government of individual men who for the time being have power to declare what the Constitution is, according to their own views of what they think it ought to mean.” And Justice Holmes, dissenting in Lochner vs the People of the State of New York writes, “a Constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the state or of laissez faire.  It is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar, or novel, and even shocking, ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States.”

When justices on the Court discovered that they could decide cases “according to their own personal prejudices and foibles,” the Court became the de facto totalitarian oligarchic government of the nation from which there is no appeal. The Court’s decisions override the Constitution, turn democracy into a mere formal exercise, and betray the people. The Constitution never really had a chance.

The Court has brought this about by employing a number of fallacious practices.

The first is the fallacy of citing English common law. But what does English common law have to do with the United States of America? The only reference to it in the Constitution is in the seventh amendment, where common law suits are restricted in terms of their monetary value. The common law is not enshrined in the Constitution itself. True, the original States, the colonies settled by Englishmen, did make the common law the basis of their State legal systems, but the United States of America did not.

Some have claimed that the federal courts act only as interpreters of statutes and the Constitution by merely elaborating and precisely defining language. But before 1938, the federal courts acted as common law courts, deciding any issue whether the legislature had acted or not, by looking at what courts had done even when there was no authority for doing so in the Constitution. But since 1938, the Court has began to overturn earlier decisions based on common law principles. Still, much common law is embedded in judicial decisions.

First, the essence of the common law is that it is judicial law—legislation from the bench. The common law can be defined as law developed from the rulings of judges rather than from statutes passed by legislatures or from written constitutions. But the Court, as final arbiter of the law, turns all reviewed law into judicial law. When Justice Marshall wrote in Marbury vs Madison, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is” he made a mere claim unsupported by argument that gave the Court the final say. The legislature is relegated to the subordinate position of proposer while the Court assumes the position of disposer, and the Senatorial practice of asking those appointed to seats on the Court about their judicial philosophies is pure cant.

Second, the common law was formulated by circuit judges appointed by English monarchs, and as such, always favored the interests of the monarchy and the aristocracy.

Third, precedent, stare decisis, is a common law principle which the Court continues to utilize. And since no one can deny that the Court often makes bad decisions, stare decisis merely distributes the bad effects of those decisions throughout the legal system. Proponents of stare decisis claim that it is needed to provide consistency in the legal system. But consistency per se is not a virtue. Machiavelli’s The Prince is supremely consistent, but it is irredeemably evil.

Argument by precedent (authority) is a mode of reasoning long discredited. It was used extensively during the Middle Ages mainly by theologians. (Interestingly, the common law arose during the Middle Ages.) It was discredited because authorities are often found to be wrong.

An argument must stand on its own or fall. If a precedent is based on a sound argument, that argument can be reproduced in subsequent opinions almost as easily as the precedent’s citation can. But reproducing a precedent’s argument is almost, perhaps never, done, because often the precedent is itself based on a prior precedent. Often the subject of the precedent is so different from the subject of the current case that the argument in the precedent would be seen to be ridiculous if it were reproduced. Often nothing in the precedent can be identified as an authentic argument. So the Court’s practice is to merely cite the precedent’s finding, and those findings, when bad, become embodied in the legal system, perpetuating errors and their malevolent consequences—not a good way to make the law that governs a society.

The second is the fallacy of cherry picking the Constitution. Justice Marshall cherry picked the Constitution in Marbury vs Madison when he based the decision to not grant Marbury a writ of mandamus on Article III of the Constitution rather on the goals stated in the Preamble, giving a formal rule more importance than the Constitution’s intent even though he also wrote, “a law repugnant to the constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.” But can a law or decision that hinders a Constitutional goal not be repugnant to it?

The third is the fallacy of figurative interpretation. This fallacy is perhaps the most often used to subvert the Constitution’s aims. “Corporation” becomes “person,” “contribution” becomes “speech,” “speech” becomes “property,” and on and on. Instead of precisely defining language, the Court muddles it. Interpretation by means of figures of speech, especially metaphor and analogy, makes any desired finding possible. If the Constitution’s language is not to be interpreted literally, using the common meanings given to its words at the time they were written, it may just as well have been written in gibberish. Try making sense of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales without being fluent in Middle English! So if one wants to know what the framers meant, one must be fluent in the language they spoke. Their intentions cannot be discerned otherwise.

The fourth is the fallacy of ignored qualifiers. For instance, it can easily be argued that the Constitution prohibits corporations from lobbying (which is nothing more than a way of petitioning the government). The first amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” If one reads the Constitution’s language literally, however, the word “people” applies only to human beings; it’s cognates are populous and population. Only human beings are counted in the census. The first edition of Noah Webster’s Dictionary of the American Language, published in 1828, as well as the Oxford English Dictionary both make this quite certain. Webster’s definition is:

PEOPLE, n. [L. populus.] The body of persons who compose a community, town, city or nation. We say, the people of a town; the people of London or Paris; the English people. In this sense, the word is not used in the plural, but it comprehends all classes of inhabitants, considered as a collective body, or any portion of the inhabitants of a city or country.

But even if this definition is ignored, the amendment clearly states what can be petitioned for— only a redress of grievances. When corporations petition the Congress, they are seeking advantages. Had the framers meant to allow petitioning for anything at all, they would not have qualified the amendment by attaching the prepositional phrase. Anyone who reads this amendment differently is delusional.

Some of these arguments have been made previously by many others. Most of the Justices of the Court have paid them scant attention. They have done so because, as the final arbiter of the law from which there is no appeal, they can do whatever they please with complete impunity. That is the definition of tyranny. The Court has not only annulled the Constitution, it has aided and abetted the corporate corrupting of all the government’s branches, the corrupting of the electoral process, and the destruction of the people’s freedoms and protections. The Court will not reform itself.

A Constitutional amendment could be used to limit the Court’s power, but such an amendment would have to be carefully crafted to not only prohibit the Court from using any of the fallacious procedures discussed above but also require the Court to present a discussion of how the consequences of decisions would affect the lives of common people and show how those consequences promote one or more of the goals of the Constitution enumerated in the Preamble. (Congress should be required to include such discussions in all enacted laws too.) The chances of ever having such an amendment proposed and enacted by a government already deeply steeped in corruption is anybody’s guess.

But perhaps there are other non-governmental ways. Theoretical mathematicians world-wide routinely examine published proofs of new theorems to check their validity. Mistakes are often found and theorems are rejected. The amendment mentioned above proposed by the delegates to the New York ratification convention can easily be altered into a proposal for the establishment of a completely voluntary body of learned people, free of political attachments and ideological biases and selected from all intellectual disciplines, who would pledge to analyze all Supreme Court decisions using principles of critical reasoning. These analyses could then be published on the Internet and syndicated widely. If the Justices of the Court can’t be forced, perhaps they can be shamed into fulfilling their obligations to their oath of office.

The nation Americans live in today is vastly different from the nation envisioned by the founders when measured against the goals written into the Constitution’s Preamble.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The union is not only far from perfect, it is becoming less perfect; even voices of secession are once again being heard. Justice, at least for common people, is rare. Violence is epidemic and people are arming themselves in unprecedented numbers. The vast military and industrial complex and the so-called intelligence community have not provided a credible common defense. Poverty and the gap in income between the rich and poor are increasing. And the blessings of liberty and our protections to privacy are being curtailed. The United States of America needs to be taken back from the politicians, lawyers, and their favored special interests who have usurped it.

Perhaps we need to rewrite the Pledge of Allegiance and define all truly patriotic Americans by those who recite it:

“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it once stood, one Nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

The current pledge is a lie.

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who blogs on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on  HYPERLINK “http://www.jkozy.com/” http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site’s homepage.

Source: Global Research

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The United States Supreme Court recently re-wrote the law on search and seizure regarding vehicles. Now, if a police officer pulls you over for a traffic violation and then removes you from your vehicle and handcuffs you, he can not then go back into the car to search for drugs and guns (or any other evidence).

The old law gave the officers the right to always search the passenger compartment of your vehicle after the arrest in order to look for guns or drugs (or other evidence) that could be destroyed. The logic was that the officers need to protect themselves and preserve any evidence that the arrestee might destroy. In the Supreme Court case of Arizona v. Gant (April 2009), Mr. Gant had an outstanding warrant for driving on a suspended license and that his license was suspended. When he was pulled over, he exited his vehicle and was immediately placed in handcuffs and then secured in the back of the officer’s patrol car. The officer then went and searched Gant’s car and found a firearm and cocaine in the passenger compartment.

The Supreme Court held that the drugs and gun found in Gant’s car should be suppressed because the officer did not have a warrant to search Gant’s car. The prosecutors’ argued that they could search Gant’s car after they arrested him under the “search incident to arrest” rule of New York v. Belton. However, the Supreme Court said that, in Gant’s case, he was in handcuffs and secured in the back of the officer’s patrol car, there was no way that Gant could have grabbed a gun or destroyed evidence, so the officer was not allowed to go back into the car to search. Also, since the arrest was for driving on a suspended license, there was no reason to believe that evidence related to that crime would be located in the car. If the arrest would have been for a suspected drug or gun offense, then the search would have been valid as the officers could have searched the car for evidence relevant to the offense for which Gant was arrested. However, the court ruled that the “search incident to arrest” rule does not give officers the right to rummage through a suspects vehicle for every arrest they make.

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Posted on 12 August 2009 Source: Tenth Amendment Center

by Michael Boldin

Introduced in the Michigan House on August 11, 2009, the “Firearms Freedom Act” (HB-5232) seeks “to make certain findings regarding intrastate commerce; to prohibit federal regulation of firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition involved purely in intrastate commerce in [the State of Michigan]; to provide for certain exceptions to federal regulation; and to establish certain manufacturing requirements.”

The bill was authored by Rep. Phillip Pavlov and currently has 44 co-sponsors.

While the HB5232’s title focuses on federal gun regulations, it has far more to do with the 10th Amendment’s limit on the power of the federal government.  It specifically states:

The regulation of intrastate commerce is vested in the states under amendments IX and X of the constitution of the United States, particularly if not expressly preempted by federal law. Congress has not expressly preempted state regulation of intrastate commerce pertaining to the manufacture on an intrastate basis of firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition.

Some supporters of the legislation say that a successful application of such a state-law would set a strong precedent and open the door for states to take their own positions on a wide range of activities that they see as not being authorized to the Federal Government by the Constitution.

Firearms Freedom Acts have already passed in both Montana and Tennessee, and have been introduced in a number of other states around the country. There’s been no lack of controversy surrounding them, either.  The Tenth Amendment Center recently reported on the ATF’s position that such laws don’t matter:

The Federal Government, by way of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms expressed its own view of the Tenth Amendment this week when it issued an open letter to ‘all Tennessee Federal Firearms Licensees’ in which it denounced the opinion of Beavers and the Tennessee legislature.  ATF assistant director Carson W. Carroll wrote that ‘Federal law supersedes the Act’, and thus the ATF considers it meaningless.

Constitutional historian Kevin R.C. Gutzman sees this as something far removed from the founders’ vision of constitutional government:

“Their view is that the states exist for the administrative convenience of the Federal Government, and so of course any conflict between state and federal policy must be resolved in favor of the latter.”

“This is another way of saying that the Tenth Amendment is not binding on the Federal Government. Of course, that amounts to saying that federal officials have decided to ignore the Constitution when it doesn’t suit them.”

Advocates of these efforts say it doesn’t matter if the federal government disagrees, or even threatens states over funding, as they did recently with Oklahoma.  Gary Marbut, author of the Montana Firearms Freedom Act, and founder of http://www.firearmsfreedomact.com/ took this position in a recent interview with the Tenth Amendment Center:

“We’re not depending on permission from federal judges to be able to effectuate our state-made guns bills.  And, we’re working on other strategies to wrest essential and effective power from the federal government and put it where it belongs.“

The principle behind such legislation is nullification, which has a long history in the American tradition. When a state ‘nullifies’ a federal law, it is proclaiming that the law in question is void and inoperative, or ‘non-effective,’ within the boundaries of that state; or, in other words, not a law as far as the state is concerned.

All across the country, activists and state-legislators are pressing for similar legislation, to nullify specific federal laws within their states.

A proposed Constitutional Amendment to effectively ban national health care will go to a vote in Arizona in 2010.  Thirteen states now have some form of medical marijuana laws – in direct contravention to federal laws which state that the plant is illegal in all circumstances.  And, massive state nullification of the 2005 Real ID Act has rendered the law void.

While many advocates concede that a federal court battle has a slim chance of success, they point to the successful nullification of the Real ID Act as a blueprint to resist various federal laws that they see as outside the scope of the Constitution.

Some say that each successful state-level resistance to federal programs will only embolden others to try the same – resulting in an eventual shift of power from the federal government to the States and the People themselves.

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I’m sitting in the back of the classroom on the final day of the YAL National Convention, and I couldn’t wait any longer to get this YouTube video out to you.

Yesterday, YAL Events Director, Trevor Leach, and our top youth activists demonstrated on the Washington, DC, National Mall to collect petitions in opposition of Obama’s government takeover of health-care.

It wasn’t long until a SWAT team in an armored truck threatened Trevor and our youth activists declaring, “There are two options. Disassemble and leave. Or y’all are going to jail.”

“You don’t have free speech,” the sergeant told Trevor.

Fortunately, our youth activists video taped the entire confrontation and stayed up all night to produce this video footage.

Be prepared to be shocked, appalled, and a little an gry at the actions of our public servants who swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution.

After you watch this video, please do me a favor. Click here and donate generously to support these youth activists and advance their continuous efforts.

It is important to me to get this video in your hands immediately. I’ll send a full update on the first-ever YAL National Convention later this week.

Let me say, this weekend has impacted these students in a very large way.

For liberty,

Jeff Frazee
Executive Director, YAL

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Recently many states have been passing resolutions affirming their rights and sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.  With this in mind I thought it important to review the meaning and intent of this amendment and how it has come to be interpreted over time.

The Tenth Amendment guaranties sovereignty to the individual states. It is important o remember each state was a sovereign political entity, which voluntarily entered a compact, the Constitution. By doing so, the states decided to give up some sovereignty in order to achieve certain goals. Uniting as one country allowed the states to collectively negotiate treaties, and “promote” the general welfare, (notice it says promote, not provide) and provide for the common defense. To protect the states from any potential encroachment of federal power, the Tenth Amendment was added. The articles of the Constitution expressly grant specific powers to the branches of government. The first nine amendments specifically prohibit the government from infringing on innate rights held by each citizen. The Tenth Amendment is the coup de gras, stating anything not mentioned previously, is reserved specifically to the states, and their citizens.

The Tenth Amendment is based on an earlier provision of the Articles of Confederation.  After the Constitution was ratified, some wanted to add an amendment limiting the federal government to powers “expressly” delegated, denying so called “implied powers”. The result of these discussions was the Tenth Amendment, making explicit the idea the federal government is limited only to the powers granted in the Constitution. In United States v. Sprague (1931) the Supreme Court reiterated and confirmed the Tenth Amendment’s purpose. The primary implication of the Tenth Amendment is the government of the United States has the power to regulate only those matters delegated to it by the Constitution. Everything else is reserved to the states.

The federal system, and the Tenth Amendment, limit the ability of the federal government to implement national policy through the states.  As such, one way the federal government has tried to get around the tenth amendment is via the Commerce Clause. This clause of Article 1 Section 8, grants the federal government the power to regulate commerce among the states. This has been interpreted to mean if an activity crosses state borders, it falls under interstate commerce.

Another tool the federal government has used is federal funding. Since it is difficult, if not unconstitutional, to implement many federal programs directly, Congress often ties federal funds, such as highway or education funding, to state complicity with federal programs. In this way Congress can encourage states to implement national programs in a system often referred to as cooperative federalism.

The Tenth Amendment is a vital tool to protecting the checks and balances provided in the Constitution.  This is the basis for our system of government. We are free citizens, agreeing to abide by the rules set by our government so long as that government abides by the rules we have set for it to follow. A free people can only remain so for as long as they remain aware of their rights and responsibilities, and hold their government to account, lest we are once again faced with “a long train of abuses and usurpations”.

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Obama Pushes Anti-Gun Treaty / Gun Bans

President Obama supports an international treaty creating sweeping gun control efforts. Click for the full text of this treaty. The below CNN News Story shows the extent to which Obama and the Democrats will go to eliminate the Second Amendment, and this by using a foreign treaty as the process. The second CNN video addresses the Obama’s administration via Eri Holder threatening gun ownership by Americans. Afraid yet?

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Damon W. Root | May 26, 2009

President Barack Obama’s announcement that he wants federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter comes as something less than a shock. For months, Sotomayor’s name has topped most lists of potential candidates. With her compelling personal story, which stretches from a Bronx, New York housing project to Yale Law School to the federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Sotomayor’s likely appointment as the Court’s first Hispanic justice nicely complements Obama’s own “only in America” narrative.

But when it comes to her judicial philosophy, there are some real causes for concern. In particular, on the hot-button issues of affirmative action and Second Amendment rights, her record suggests a decidedly illiberal vision of constitutional law.

Consider affirmative action. Last month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Ricci v. Destefano, which centered on charges of reverse discrimination at the New Haven, Connecticut fire department. In 2003 the department administered a test to fill 15 captain and lieutenant vacancies, but when the results came in, no African Americans made the cut (14 whites and one Hispanic earned the top scores). In response to local pressure, the city then refused to certify the results and decided instead to leave the positions open until a suitable new test was developed. This prompted a lawsuit from a group of white firefighters who had been denied promotion, including lead plaintiff Frank Ricci, a 34-year-old dyslexic who says he spent months preparing for the now-voided test by listening to audiotape study guides as he drove to work.

Ricci’s suit was initially thrown out at the district court level, prompting an appeal to the Second Circuit. At that point Sotomayor joined in an unsigned opinion embracing the district court’s analysis without offering any analysis of its own. This prompted fellow Second Circuit Judge Jose Cabranes—a liberal Democrat appointed by President Bill Clinton—to issue a stern rebuke. “The opinion contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at the core of this case,” Cabranes wrote. “This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal.”

It’s an important point. Ricci gets at the very heart of the debate over whether the Constitution should be interpreted as a colorblind document. As the liberal legal commenter Emily Bazelon noted at Slate, “If Sotomayor and her colleagues were trying to shield the case from Supreme Court review, her punt had the opposite effect. It drew Cabranes’ ire, and he hung a big red flag on the case, which the Supreme Court grabbed.” Given that the Court is likely to side with Ricci and his fellow plaintiffs, Sotomayor’s silent endorsement of New Haven’s reverse discrimination is certain to come back to haunt her during her confirmation hearings.

Equally troubling is Sotomayor’s record on the Second Amendment. This past January, the Second Circuit issued its opinion in Maloney v. Cuomo, which Sotomayor joined, ruling that the Second Amendment does not apply against state and local governments. At issue was a New York ban on various weapons, including nunchucks. After last year’s District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down DC’s handgun ban, attention turned to whether state and local gun control laws might violate the Second Amendment as well.

“It is settled law,” Sotomayor and the Second Circuit held, “that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right.” But contrast that with the Ninth Circuit’s decision last month in Nordyke v. King, which reached a very different conclusion, one that matches the Second Amendment’s text, original meaning, and history:

We therefore conclude that the right to keep and bear arms is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Colonial revolutionaries, the Founders, and a host of commentators and lawmakers living during the first one hundred years of the Republic all insisted on the fundamental nature of the right. It has long been regarded as the “true palladium of liberty.” Colonists relied on it to assert and to win their independence, and the victorious Union sought to prevent a recalcitrant South from abridging it less than a century later. The crucial role this deeply rooted right has played in our birth and history compels us to recognize that it is indeed fundamental, that it is necessary to the Anglo-American conception of ordered liberty that we have inherited. We are therefore persuaded that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment and applies it against the states and local governments.

This split between the two circuits means that the Supreme Court is almost certain to take up the question in the near future. What role might soon-to-be Justice Sotomayor play? As gun rights scholar and Independence Institute Research Director Dave Kopel told me via email, Sotomayor’s opinions “demonstrate a profound hostility to Second Amendment rights. If we follow Senator Obama’s principle that Senators should vote against judges whose views on legal issues are harmful, then it is hard to see how someone who supports Second Amendment rights could vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor.”

As a respected jurist with an impressive legal resume, Sotomayor appears just as qualified to sit on the Supreme Court as any recent nominee. But from the standpoint of individual liberty and limited constitutional government, there are significant reasons to be wary of her nomination.

Damon W. Root is a Reason associate editor.

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This video is another one of those deceptive products of Congress intended to make you think that Congress has far more power than it does. Your brain would have to be flatlining under the influence of Splenda (sucralose) or punched full of holes by Equal (aspartame) to fall for this crap.

As we have reviewed several times before, there are only two ways to change the Constitution. Congress can’t do it. The president can’t do it, either, not even a real president.

And what do we know about legislative acts that violate the Constitution? Hang this on your gun belt:

“[a]n unconstitutional act is not a law; . . . it imposes no duties; it is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed.” Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425, 442 (1886).

“An unconstitutional act is not a law; it binds no one.” Huntington v. Worthen, 120 U.S. 97, 101-02 (1887).

“An unconstitutional law is void, and is as no law. An offence created by it is not a crime.” Ex parte Siebold, 100 U.S. 371, 376 (1880), quoted with approval in Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 408 (1963).

Do we have to wait until a court issues a ruling on the constitutionality of a legislative act? No, we don’t. Each of us is the final arbiter of the Constitution. Dave Champion explains in this 12-minute segment of his show.

Blatant lies about private property rights

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Source: Wired Magazine

You may not know it, but if you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it.

That’s the upshot of the rules the agency has followed for years to monitor licensed television and radio stations, and to crack down on pirate radio broadcasters. And the commission maintains the same policy applies to any licensed or unlicensed radio-frequency device.

“Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,” says FCC spokesman David Fiske. That includes devices like Wi-Fi routers that use unlicensed spectrum, Fiske says.

The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts. That’s largely because the FCC had little to do with average citizens for most of the last 75 years, when home transmitters were largely reserved to ham-radio operators and CB-radio aficionados. But in 2009, nearly every household in the United States has multiple devices that use radio waves and fall under the FCC’s purview, making the commission’s claimed authority ripe for a court challenge.

“It is a major stretch beyond case law to assert that authority with respect to a private home, which is at the heart of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure,” says Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Lee Tien. “When it is a private home and when you are talking about an over-powered Wi-Fi antenna — the idea they could just go in is honestly quite bizarre.”

The rules came to attention this month when an FCC agent investigating a pirate radio station in Boulder, Colorado, left a copy of a 2005 FCC inspection policy on the door of a residence hosting the unlicensed 100-watt transmitter. “Whether you operate an amateur station or any other radio device, your authorization from the Commission comes with the obligation to allow inspection,” the statement says.

The notice spooked those running “Boulder Free Radio,” who thought it was just tough talk intended to scare them into shutting down, according to one of the station’s leaders, who spoke to Wired.com on condition of anonymity. “This is an intimidation thing,” he said. “Most people aren’t that dedicated to the cause. I’m not going to let them into my house.”

But refusing the FCC admittance can carry a harsh financial penalty. In a 2007 case, a Corpus Christi, Texas, man got a visit from the FCC’s direction-finders after rebroadcasting an AM radio station through a CB radio in his home. An FCC agent tracked the signal to his house and asked to see the equipment; Donald Winton refused to let him in, but did turn off the radio. Winton was later fined $7,000 for refusing entry to the officer. The fine was reduced to $225 after he proved he had little income.

Administrative search powers are not rare, at least as directed against businesses — fire-safety, food and workplace-safety regulators generally don’t need warrants to enter a business. And despite the broad power, the FCC agents aren’t cops, says Fiske. “The only right they have is to inspect the equipment,” Fiske says. “If they want to seize, they have to work with the U.S. Attorney’s office.”

But if inspectors should notice evidence of unrelated criminal behavior — say, a marijuana plant or an unregistered gun — a Supreme Court decision suggests the search can be used against the resident. In the 1987 case New York v. Burger, two police officers performed a warrantless, administrative search of one Joseph Burger’s automobile junkyard. When he couldn’t produce the proper paperwork, the officers searched the grounds and found stolen vehicles, which they used to prosecute him. The Supreme Court held the search to be legal.

In the meantime, pirate radio stations are adapting to the FCC’s warrantless search power by dividing up a station’s operations. For instance, Boulder Free Radio consists of an online radio station operated by DJs from a remote studio. Miles away, a small computer streams the online station and feeds it to the transmitter. Once the FCC comes and leaves a notice on the door, the transmitter is moved to another location before the agent returns.

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By – Lee Rogers

As everybody is being distracted by the vastly overhyped swine flu hysteria, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 which will serve as a mechanism to destroy free speech.   This legislation will allow the federal government to provide support for state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies in the prosecution of any crime if it is believed to be motivated by prejudice based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. This bill sets the foundation for the government to impose greater penalties on individuals who have a belief system that might be perceived to be prejudiced against any particular group of people.  Clearly, this bill is designed to setup the building blocks to destroy what’s left of the First Amendment.

Below is the section in the bill that would allow the federal government to build the infrastructure necessary to support state, local or tribal law enforcement agencies to prosecute so called hate crimes.

SEC. 3. SUPPORT FOR CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS BY STATE, LOCAL, AND TRIBAL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS.

(1) IN GENERAL- At the request of a State, local, or tribal law enforcement agency, the Attorney General may provide technical, forensic, prosecutorial, or any other form of assistance in the criminal investigation or prosecution of any crime that–

(A) constitutes a crime of violence;

(B) constitutes a felony under the State, local, or tribal laws; and

(C) is motivated by prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim, or is a violation of the State, local, or tribal hate crime laws.

What’s crazy about this legislation is that what defines a hate crime is based entirely off of subjective reasoning.  So in essence, certain political points of view including particular religious points of view by an individual could potentially implicate them in a hate crime. Undoubtedly, this is an incredibly dangerous bill and unfortunately it will most likely be passed in the U.S. Senate and signed into law by the President.

There simply is no need for a law like this. If you kill someone it is not relevant if the criminal had some sort of issue with the victim’s race, gender or religion. There are already too many laws defining criminal behavior and now this bill seeks to add additional crimes layered in with already existing offenses based upon how a crime might have been perceived to be carried out. This is an obvious attempt to destroy what’s left with the First Amendment and further train people to be forced into a mental box of politically correct thought and speech.

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HOMELAND SECURITY TARGETS
‘ANTI-SEMITIC EXTREMISTS’
By Brother Nathanael Kapner, Copyright 2009

Articles May Be Reproduced Only With Authorship of Br Nathanael Kapner
& Link To Real Jew News (SM)

E-mail: bronathanael@yahoo.com
_________________________

THE JEWISH-CONTROLLED US DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY is now turning against upright American citizens. Directing the Department’s targeting of American citizens is the Zionist Jew, Joseph Lieberman, the Senate Homeland Security Chairman, and Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, an obvious Zionist shill and reputed lesbian.

In an alarming ‘Gestapo-oriented’ Report by US Homeland Security issued on April 7, 2009, entitled, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, the fascist Department of Homeland Security specifies a new ‘threat’ to America’s security, namely, all critics of Jewry’s agenda to destroy America, whom the Department labels: “Anti-Semitic extremists.”

The Report, prepared by the Extremism and Radicalization Branch, Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division and coordinated with the FBI, was approved by Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, a reputed lesbian, who is the Talmudic Jew Michael Chertoff’s successor. View All Napolitano Reputed Lesbian Articles Here.

The alleged lesbian Napolitano, describing a “homegrown threat” to national security, issued a statement on April 20, 2009, defending the Report, saying:

“We must protect the country from homegrown terrorism regardless of the ideology that motivates it. The DHS will continue to work with its state and local partners to prevent and protect against the potential threat to the United States associated with any rise in extremist activity.” View Entire Report Here.

The “ideology” that Zionist-shill and alleged lesbian Napolitano is targeting, has been specified in two entries on page 4 of the Report. And that “ideology” is “Anti-Semitism,” Jewry’s deceptive term to destroy freedom of speech in America:

“(U) Current Economic and Political Climate. A recent example of the potential violence associated with a rise in rightwing extremism may be found in the shooting deaths of three police officers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 4 April 2009. The alleged gunman’s reaction reportedly was influenced by his racist ideology and belief in anti-government conspiracy theories related to gun confiscations, citizen detention camps, and a ‘Jewish-controlled one world government.’”

“(U) Exploiting Economic Downturn. Rightwing extremist chatter on the Internet continues to focus on the economy, the perceived loss of U.S. jobs in the manufacturing and construction sectors, and home foreclosures. Anti-Semitic extremists attribute these losses to a deliberate conspiracy conducted by a cabal of ‘Jewish financial elites.’ These tactics are employed to draw new recruits into rightwing extremist groups and further radicalize those already subscribing to extremist beliefs. The DHS assesses that this trend is likely to accelerate if the economy is perceived to worsen.” View Entire Report Here.

APPARENTLY, THE US DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY IS NOW FUNCTIONING as a branch of the Anti Defamation League (ADL) in combating ‘Anti-Semitism’ – which is a deceptive Jewish term employed by US Jewry to deflect valid criticism of Jewry’s evil designs – one of which is to establish a “Jewish-controlled one world government.” This recent Report by Homeland Security evinces yet another incident of the expansion of Jewish control over the American government.

The ADL has been trying to limit freedom of speech on the Internet for over three years running, and has already infiltrated US police forces throughout the nation, training Gentile police to turn against their own, in order to protect “Zionist Jews,” whom publicists have demonstrated in various articles, have a supremacist attitude toward non-Jews.

The question is, “Is there any good news coming out of this even further Jewish control of American governmental offices?” The answer is, “Yes.”

THE CATHOLIC NATIONAL LAW FIRM, known as, The Thomas More Law Center, has filed a federal complaint against the Zionist shill, Janet Napolitano, and her Jewish-controlled, US Department of Homeland Security.

In a statement issued by the law firm, entitled, Janet Napolitano Is Lying To Americans About Her Department’s Rightwing Extremism Report, the Law Center outlined its complaint against Napolitano, stating that her report “violates the civil liberties of combat veterans as well as American citizens by targeting them for disfavored treatment on account of their political beliefs, labeling them, ‘right-wing extremists.’” View Entire Story Here

Jews just love to use the term, “right-wing extremists,” in order to propagate a fear of Christian conservatism which promotes traditional morality. For “traditional morality” is based on a Christian world-view. Jews fear this more than any other philosophical ideology in today’s world. And that’s why Jewry wants TOTAL control of not only our lives – but now – even our very mouths…

___________________________________
For More See: A Jewish Police State Is Coming Click Here

And: Big Brother Jew Is Watching You @ Homeland Security! Click Here

And: How The Jews Are Destroying America Click Here

And: The ADL Hates Our Freedoms Click Here

And: Jewry’s Scheme For World Domination Click Here

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Please Contact Your State Representative Today!

NRA is working hard to pass House Bill 2474, sponsored by State Representatives John Kavanagh (R-8) and Frank Antenori (R-30), which would permit law abiding citizens to keep a firearm locked in their privately owned vehicle when parked on their employer’s publicly accessible parking lot.

If passed, HB2474 would permit a law-abiding individual to store their firearms in their locked motor vehicle while parked on a publicly accessible parking lot controlled by their employer or a business they frequent. This bill will protect your right to keep a firearm in your car if you choose to hunt or target shoot before or after work. HB2474 would also allow an individual to keep a firearm in their vehicle for self-defense during their commute to and from work.

Corporations are telling lawmakers that they should be able to ban firearms in your privately owned vehicle if it is parked in a parking lot they own or lease. These corporations have even had the audacity to tell legislators that your gun, locked in your private vehicle, can somehow be a threat to children inside a daycare facility at your workplace. All of this is occurring as your lawmakers are trying to balance Arizona’s massive budget deficit. Don’t let these corporations distract lawmakers from their important responsibilities!

Please contact your State Representative TODAY and respectfully urge them to reject the anti-gun propaganda of these massive corporations and ask them to support your Second Amendment rights and HB2474. Contact information for your State Representative can be found by clicking here.

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Following the biggest political firestorm of the 2009 legislative session, a public hearing scheduled for Wednesday on the financial and administrative management of the Catholic Church has been canceled. The bill is dead for the rest of the legislative session.

As soon as word spread about the bill, the Legislative Office Building was flooded with telephone calls and e-mails on Monday. The bill, virtually overnight, became the hottest issue at the state Capitol.

The cancellation came less than 24 hours after Senate Republican John McKinney of Fairfield called for the cancellation, saying that his caucus was unanimously against the bill because they believe it is clearly unconstitutional.

It’s more than a belief.  The First Amendment makes that clear:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

After many people wondered aloud how Lawlor and McDonald managed to graduate their high-school civics class, they finally admitted that their bill to strip Catholic bishops of authority over parishes had, well, overreached — but they blamed Connecticut for their confusion:

For reasons that are unclear, Connecticut has had generations-old laws on the books singling out particular religions and treating them differently from other religions in our statutes.  That doesn’t seem right.

You’re just figuring that out?

In fact, many of our existing corporate laws dealing with particular religious groups appear to us to be unconstitutional under the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. If that is correct, any changes to that law would likely also be unconstitutional.

No kidding!  And your solution was to expand those laws?

With that in mind, it would serve no useful purpose to have a conversation about changing the laws that govern existing Roman Catholic corporations until we know if any of these existing laws are constitutional.

Did it not occur to Lawlor and McDonald that legislating the structure of a religion is not a useful purpose for government at all, and not just when they’ve discovered that they goofed by expanding unenforced and unenforceable laws on their books?  In what way does the state of Connecticut have any “useful purpose” in designing church management structures?

They’re embarrassed, but they still haven’t learned why.  (via David Freddoso at The Corner, who scathingly refers to this as the Henry VIII Bill)  The Anchoress has more.

Update: Some in the comments say that Lawlor and McDonald only have to worry about the state constitution, not the federal Constitution.  I beg to differ — here’s the oath of office, emphasis mine:

You do solemnly swear (or affirm) that you will support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of Connecticut, so long as you continue a citizen thereof; and that you will faithfully discharge, according to law, the duties of the Office of State Representative to the best of your abilities; so help you God.

States cannot infringe on rights enumerated in the Constitution.  That explicitly includes the right to free speech, assembly, redress of grievances, bearing arms, protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and protection against self-incrimination, among others.  Any state law that infringes on these are unconstitutional and invalid.

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