Prudence Dictates... But...

By Silence Dogood

The Constitution does not grant us rights, it acknowledges rights with which we are born. We can choose not to exercise them, but they cannot be taken away.

There is no provision of the Constitution allowing for the waiving of rights under any condition, but most legislatures are content to sit back and watch this all proceed without their fingerprints anywhere near it.

Our rights cannot simply be waived in the face of anything. From the beginning of the country, government has been trying to do just that. But government is a necessary evil, and that evil has a predictable nature.

It’s the nature of government and those in power to attempt to amass as much of that power as possible.  The only way to have more power, is to have more control of the people, and that is done by force. Our Founding Fathers knew this and wrote the Constitution to guard against it as best it could be done. Yet those same forefathers were guilty of trying to take away the rights of the people and limits on government before the ink was dry on the Bill of Rights, can you say "Alien and Sedition Acts."

If you add a belief in the superiority of the elite to dictate to the masses how they should live, you end up under standing today's Democrats’ basic nature: they know better than you do what you need, they are better than you are, smarter than you. Coronavirus just allowed a peek into their minds. Individuals are irrelevant to the left, as are your rights. The Constitution is an obstacle to be overcome, by any means available, not the restraint on their power it was written to be. Remember that come November…or you soon won’t be allowed to say it.

Govenor rulings mandating stay at home orders are clearly unconstitutional, the fact that the people are tolerating them as well as we have with as few protests, and defiance of those unconstitutional orders, confirms Jefferson's words in the Declaraion of independence. "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.:"

Let's not forget the BUT at the end of that sentence. "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

July 4, 1776

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.


He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. 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.


The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

Democrats Declare Constitution to be Alt-Right

On Friday Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii Doubles Down on her SJW narrative declaring The Constitution is an "Alt-Right" document, saying, “If my colleague, the junior Senator from Nebraska, wants to embrace the alt-right’s position by offering this resolution, that is his business,”

Hirono apparently thinks the concept of religious tests for office being unconstitutional is somehow an alt-right position. I guess the Founders were alt-right characters also. I mean, it’s only printed out in completely unambiguous terms right in the Constitution.

Article VI of the constitution clearly states "... no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

Confirming Link

Bernie Sanders Commits Impeachable Offense

By Tom Rhodes, 6/9/2017

Bernie Sanders violates the Constitution making a religious test a qualification to be confirmed by the Senate.

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

During Wednesday's, confirmation hearing for Russell Vought, President Trump’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Senator Bernie Sanders said a Christian who believes in the bible is unfit for public office.

The Bern is pissed because Vought dared to write a basic tenant of the Christian faith, writing, “Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God who is fully divine (and became fully human).” Vought wrote. “If Christ is not God, he cannot be the necessary substitute on our behalf for the divine retribution that we deserve.”

In Luke 10:16 where Jesus said, “The one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” Based on that Vought noted, "Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned."

Duh!! Christianity is based on the fact that there is only one path to salvation, that path is through Jesus Christ. If you don't believe that you are not a Christian. Whether you believe that or not, whether you are a Christian or not, is totally irrelevant, merely stating a fundamental principle of your faith neither qualifies nor disqualifies anybody from any office or public trust.

The Bern is saying that if you, as a Christian, actually believe in the exclusivity of Christianity, then you are not qualified for office or public trust. Clearly he is adding an unconstitutional religious test to Senate approval. Vought’s words about the exclusivity of his Christianity, was clearly the reason why the Bern found him an unqualified to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, saying “I would simply say, Mr. Chairman, that this nominee is really not someone who is what this country is supposed to be about.”

The Bern has made it clear if you are a Christian, willing to publically affirm basic Christian beliefs, you do not qualify for office or public trust,. Doing so he has put religion as a test for government office a unambiguous violation of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. As such Bernie Sanders has violated his oath of office and should be impeached from the US senate.

Impeach Obama – NOT!

By Tom Rhodes, 8/5/2014

The whole Impeach Obama drive is drivel and a waste of time and effort from productive activities. First to impeach Obama you will have to prove to 2/3rds of the Democrat majority senate he’s guilty of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. At least according to the constitution. Obama is daring congress to try. The reason he is playing that gambit is not just because the senate is controlled by Democrats, but he has clearly Obama has not committed an impeachable offense.

What he has done is violate his oath of office, he is changing laws, and not enforcing laws, or selectively enforcing other laws at his whim. Currently there are no laws nor constitutional method for congress to hold the president accountable, if the president says to congress screw you and acts like a dictator. All congress can do directly is withhold money. That’s it.

Creating and changing laws is a power reserved to Congress, Obama has routinely changed law to suit his whims. Obama’s executive orders and actions may be unconstitutional but they are not illegal. Because Obamas actions are a mere violation of his Oath but not illegal they are not a high crimes or misdemeanors, nor are such actions treasonous, nor can his actions be proven to be bribery. Hence there is no constitutional grounds to impeach him.

It is unconstitutional for congress to pass any law infringing on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It is not illegal for congress to pass unconstitutional laws. Congress as a whole, nor congressmen individually cannot be charged with treason, bribery, or a high crime or misdemeanor for creating unconstitutional laws. The same principle applies to the president, unconstitutional actions by the president are not constitutional grounds for impeachment. Oops that is a giant whole in our constitution. Our forefathers never considered an elected official so devoid of character that he would willfully and purposefully violate his Oath of Office, and abuse his power as Obama has.

There is no constitutional means of dealing with elected officials who violate their oath of office. There are no laws to punish elected officials who violate their oath of office. The presidential oath of office, doesn’t carry any legal nor constitutional ramifications. It can be ignored at will. Congress has passed clearly unconstitutional laws since repeatedly since 1787, many but not all get overturned when/if somebody sues the government.

Refusing to enforce certain laws, selectively enforcing others, and inventing new laws, are clearly violations of his oath of office. His actions clearly show distain for both the rule of law, and equal protection. As much as I hate litigation, the GOP may have accidentally come across the only way to hold a president who violates his oath of office accountable, sue him. If they can prove to the courts that they have standing, then action might be possible, maybe.

The big question is can congress show damages caused by Obama violating his oath. If they can then litigation against the president may succeed. But congress must show both standing and damages or the case will rightly get tossed out. I believe showing they have standing will be relatively easy. In as much as there is no legal requirement nor logical requirement that a president must do what congress dictates, I don’t believe they will be able to show damages.

In any case, there are clearly not grounds for impeachment. Failure to enforce a law is clearly not treason, bribery, nor a crime. Changing the law to suit his whims is also not a crime, unconstitutional and a usurpation of power but not a crime. To hold the president accountable law must be created to make it a high crime for a president to willfully and knowingly change legislation by executive order. Such a law would of course be vetoed, so to create such a law will require 2/3’s of congress to support it. Good luck with that.

I hope the suit succeeds as the alternative is that the Obama presidency has set precedent that we elect a despot with no legislative limits to his authority. I’m just as afraid that extreme republican will abuse that power as Obama has proven an extreme Democrat will.

I Told You So

If you've been reading this blog, you know that "I told you so."

Princeton study concludes: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

Why the Divide in Politics will get Worse!

By Tom Rhodes, 5/14/2014

The reason America seems so divided is because it is. In big ways that polite society doesn’t talk about. That is because the country no longer has a set of shared goals. Specifically the left believes statism and control are more important than liberty, to the point that they would rather everybody universally poor than for there to be free individuals who the state doesn’t monitor and control. The idea that an average person outside of the ruling elite could become more successful and be outside of ruling elites control is not tolerable.

It’s not that they care if any individual is rich or poor, but that the ruling elite are in control. Consider California, where massive numbers of productive citizens are leaving in record numbers, the economy sucks and cannot support itself; 600,000 industrial jobs gone in the last 15 yrs; electricity 50% higher than national average; millionaires in 47 other states pay less income tax than a middle class worker earning $48K does in California; Public employee pentions are bankrupting the entire state; California has 25 billion barrels of oil sitting untapped in the Monterey and Bakersfield shale deposits, yet sends billions of dollars to Texas, Canada and elsewhere to buy natural gas and oil that it could have produced itself; Twitter, Telsa, Toyota, Adobe, eBay, Occidental petroleum, ARCO, Getty Oil, Union Oil, and Oracle, among other major California companies, have moved or announced they will move out of California to another US State. The laws and regulations of California are driving away people and business. Despite the humiliating economic statistics, California Democrats continue the same statist path.

The reason is clear jobs, companies, and individuals living in California are not the goals for those in charge. Prosperity is not important to the left. Power and control are their goals, in fact the worse the economy, the more people receiving government assistance; the greater the number of people receiving government assistance, the more control statists have over those people and more importantly more will vote for whoever promises more stuff from government, Democrats.

Consider guns. The facts are pretty clear, all of the dire predictions have proven to be false. More guns and more people allowed to carry guns rather than result in increased crime as proven to reduce overall violent crime to levels not seen in a century (you wouldn’t know that reading the statist MSM). The hatred over guns is not that you might use them for self-protection, or that they might be used in crime, but that the people might successfully stop the increase in state power. Bundy in Nevada proved exactly what the left fears; that an armed society can and will stand up to an oppressive over controlling government. The second amendment severely restricts the power of the ruling elite, it’s hard to control an armed population.

Consider Freedom of Speech and the entire Bill of Rights. The statist LA Times won’t even allow dissenting opinions on subjects used to control the people to be printed. The left loudly cheered the NFL chastising and forcing Miami Dolphins defensive back Don Jones, who dared tweet offense at the faggot kiss of the first openly gay NFL player, to pay a fine and be forced go to indoctrination camp to learn how to think correctly. Soon the statist gay mafia will declare it illegal to be a Christian and publicly read the bible. Look at how Tebow was treated compared to the new NFL fairy.

Rule of law – statists believe they aren’t subject to the same rules, and can ignore the representatives of the people. Obama changing Obamacare dozens of times without legal authority is proof enough. But claiming that he can execute US citizens without due process means that we know the government no longer plays by the rules so We the People don’t have to either. Article 1 Section 9 of the US Constitution clearly states “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” Because the statists in Washington are not able to control everything and every body, they are openly violationg the constitution; Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is openly and purposefully proposing what he clearly knows to be unconstitutional ex post facto legislation, saying "I don't approach retroactivity in legislation lightly, but corporations must understand that they won't profit from abandoning the US..." Power is more important than the rule of law.

The reason we are seeing such division and strife in American politics is because we the statist left, does not share the American Dream, in fact they want to “fundamentally change” the country to rule by elite oligarchy. It will only get worse prepare for it.

CCF Patriots Ordered Not to Share Constitution

By Tom Rhodes, 10/11/2013

According to a report from Young Americans for Liberty, a group with more than 380 chapters and 125,000 students promoting liberty, tried to give out copies of the US Constitution on Constitution day, The College of Central Florida in Ocala, was stopped because they didn’t have permission. In fact to exercise free speech and talk to others on campus the officer told students they would have to go through his office to get permission “any time you want to approach our students.”.

“We can’t hand out Constitutions?” an incredulous student asked.
“That’s right.”

Citing the need for “proper protocol,” the officer said students could submit a request, and school officials would “check our calendar, make sure it doesn’t conflict with what we’re doing, then we’ll approve it or deny it.”

The Young Americans for Liberty report is supported with this video.



Obviously the First Amendment at The state and federally funded College of Central Florida in Ocala does not apply. I hope they file charges in federal court against CCF and hold the officer and officials at CCF personally liable for infringing on these students rights.

The irony is the athletic teams at CCF are called The Patriots.



This means that CCF has told the Patriots Not to Share the Constitution with fellow Patriots. Irony?

America will Change.

By Tom Rhodes, 10/11/2013

Why do the states of Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, and West Virginia exist? Answer: Succession. That's right these states exist because they succeeded from a larger state that didn't fit the population and their desires. Today in California, Colorado, Michigan, and Maryland there are active movements to form new states. Why? Because once again large urban centers are trying to dictate how to live to small rural parts of their states and tax them to support the urban centers. Once again it comes down to taxation without representation.

Denver/Colorado Springs can and does ignore the rural NE part of the state. Why? Because they don't have enough votes to do anything about what the people in the big city want to do. The big city outlawed common ranch rifles used to chase off and kill coyote and wolves harassing lives stock, because they can be made to look scary, regardless of the need, desires and beliefs of rural Colorado. What could rural NE Colorado do about it? NOTHING.

Garrett, Allegheny, Washington, Frederick and Carroll counties in Western Maryland, want to succeed and or join West Virginia. The people who live in these counties have nothing in common with the citizens of Baltimore and Annapolis. Their views on guns, taxes, marriage, and immigration are consistently ignored by the big city, and they are powerless to do anything. The leader of the Western Maryland Initiative, Scott Strzelczyk, notes that they have no other choice saying, "If you have a long list of grievances, and it's been going on for decades, and you can't get it resolved, ultimately secession is what you have to do."

Northern counties of California want to form the state of Jefferson. Mark Baird of the Jefferson Declaration Committee, notes that, "California is essentially ungovernable in its present size." Rural conservatives in Colorado are powerless and unrepresented in state government, just as the people of Michigan's Upper Peninsula are. Lansing and Detroit look nothing like the UP, don't care what's needed, wanted, or happens in the UP, they can and do ignore the UP because it is powerless to affect them or their actions.

Don't worry if they can the ruling elite in DC won't let any new states form, especially these 4. It would mean 8 more senators and would definitely switch the balance of power away from the urban DC-WallStreet Cabal. The statists who can and do easily buy off and influence urban populations but cannot do so in more self-reliant suburban and rural communities, are not going to allow such a power shift. Like I noted before, It's bad enough that in states like Florida where the 50/50 spit put one Democrat and One Republican in the Senate, and controlling the I4 Corridor and Miami-Dade can win state wide elections, but 2/3rds of the House members from the state are Republican. Not just California, Colorado, Maryland, and Michigan are ripe for secession, but Eastern Washington and Oregon don't look, act, or vote like the population centers on the coasts. The addition of the State of Columbia would better represent Those who live in the Columbia valley east of the Cascades than current traditional borders.

The attitude of statist urbanites, who generally vote Democrat, don't understand flyover America, don't care about it, and want flyover country to shut up and do what their told. The idea that a small number of people who don't have the ability to grasp the superiority of urban culture and ideas and would choose to live in the boonies should actually have representation and influence in government is not tolerable. Hence Obama's famous "bitterly clinging" comment. The cities need the food and goods that flyover country produce, but urban statists are bitter at the fact that those rubes in the hinterland don't understand that the clearly superior culture and ideas urbanites should not be questioned.

Right now there are contiguous groups of people trying to work within the system voluntarily to insure that they have representation and can be a part of government. They want to form states that better represent their communities and beliefs. What happens if we don't allow them to do so? If we don't allow change let people form states in the Union that meet their needs and represent them, then we may leave the people of flyover country little choice but to revolt. We had a revolution that, don't think it couldn't happen again. Consider the following countries that didn't exist 30 years ago, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo, that doesn't include the changes in Africa.

The formation or reinstitution of those countries through both violent and non-violent means in very recent history is a clear indicator that the USA can and will change. The USA has been and is one of the most stable nations on earth, but that doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't change. It will change, if statist urbanites continue to push more tyrannical control over flyover America, it will change faster. The question isn't "is America going to change," but will the changes coming to America be voluntary or violent?

Constitutionality of the Sporting Rifle Ban

By Tom Rhodes, 1/31/2013

The is good reasoning to think that the proposed ban on modern sporting rifles, mis-named "assault weapons," will not meet constitutional muster. Modern sporting rifles, shooting relatively low powered .223 caliber rounds, including Armalite's Model 15 rifle and other manufactures versions are not assault weapons, they do not use high powered rounds, do not shoot automatically, and Homeland Defense considers them to be "personal defense weapons." That said, Feinstein's proposed ban of AR-15 and similar weapons if passed will probably be defeated on constitutional grounds.

The right to arms is a pre-existing right that our constitution declares the government shall not infringe. In the Miller case, the SCOTUS decision justified limitations on some weapons, specifically sawed off shotguns, because the sawed-off shotgun served no military purpose and was not in common use. The SCOTUS declared that the sorts of weapons protected were those "in common use at the time." The AR-15 is in common use by our police departments and the people, and the full automatic version the M16 and its variants are the common weapon of our military at this time.

The Heller decision, the SCOTUS overturned the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, noting that are overwhelmingly chosen by American society for the lawful purpose of self-defense. "The enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home."

In addition to a detachable magazine, the following features are what Feinstein says make a rifle an "assault weapon:" threaded barrel, barrel shroud, folding stock, telescopic stock, thumbhole stock, pistol grip, flash suppressor, etc. None of these features changes the performance or ability of the rifle, all they do is subjectively make the rifle more comfortable for the user. How does any of these features make a rifle more dangerous? What of these features overwhelming chosen by Americans and in common use today grants the government the authority to restrict their ownership? Even the liberal members of the SCOTUS are logical people, the so called assault weapons ban proposed by Senator Feinstein even if passed will not survive legal challenges.

Traditionalists my not like the look of modern sporting weapons, but like the bolt action hunting rifle so popular today was based on military assault weapons of WWI and WWII, the AR-15 style modern sporting rifle is what a modern rifle looks like. The M1 was a popular civilian rifle after WWII. Springfield's M1A civilian variant of the Korean War M14 is popular today. Today shooters use semi-automatic civilian version of the military's M16, for recreation, hunting, and self defense. Civilian rifles do not have the same capabilities that the military versions have, period.

Nearly 5 million modern sporting rifles have been sold in the past 20 years, and current manufactures aren't accepting new orders because they have more than a one year back log. Obviously the modern sporting rifle is in common use at this time. The data is clear AR-15 style weapons meet both the SCOTUS Miller and Heller decisions, they are "overwhelmingly chosen by American society" and "in common use at the time."

All Supreme Court of the United States rulings to date make it clear that banning modern sporting rifles is clearly unconstitutional.

The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. 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.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1

Georgia:

   Button Gwinnett
   Lyman Hall
   George Walton

Column 2

North Carolina:

   William Hooper
   Joseph Hewes
   John Penn

South Carolina:

   Edward Rutledge
   Thomas Heyward, Jr.
   Thomas Lynch, Jr.
   Arthur Middleton

Column 3

Massachusetts:

   

Maryland:

   Samuel Chase
   William Paca
   Thomas Stone
   Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:

   George Wythe
   Richard Henry Lee
   Thomas Jefferson
   Benjamin Harrison
   Thomas Nelson, Jr.
   Francis Lightfoot Lee
   Carter Braxton

Column 4

Pennsylvania:
   Robert Morris
   Benjamin Rush
   Benjamin Franklin
   John Morton
   George Clymer
   James Smith
   George Taylor
   James Wilson
   George Ross

Delaware:

   Caesar Rodney
   George Read
   Thomas McKean

Column 5

New York:

   William Floyd
   Philip Livingston
   Francis Lewis
   Lewis Morris

New Jersey:

   Richard Stockton
   John Witherspoon
   Francis Hopkinson
   John Hart
   Abraham Clark

Column 6

New Hampshire:

   Josiah Bartlett
   William Whipple

Massachusetts:

   Samuel Adams
   John Adams
   Robert Treat Paine
   Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:

   Stephen Hopkins
   William Ellery

Connecticut:

   Roger Sherman
   Samuel Huntington

   William Williams
   Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire:

   Matthew Thornton

Florida Rep. Works with Socialist to Nullify Rights

By Tom Rhodes 4/25/2012

Democrat Rep. Ted Deutch [D-FL19] with Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats, has cosponsored an amendment that would be a drastic and fundamental change to the US Constitution. Last week in Washington, several congressmen and senators held a forum to draw attention to their attempt to nullify constitutional right of entrepreneurs and corporations. The Sanders-Deutch Amendment says the government can ignore constitutional rights.

The Sanders-Deutch Amendment says: "The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations, limited liability companies (LLCs), or other private entities established for business purposes or to promote business interests under the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state."

This means that the Bill of Rights is nullified; if you exercise your First Amendment right of assembly and the government decides that that assembly is for business purposes then your constitutional rights do not extend to you. If you as a private entity form a LLC or sole proprietor corporation, limited partnership, or the like, then you give up your constitutional rights. Basically if you are successful you must give up your right to free speech, etc.

The fact that a Florida Congressman would openly promote such a tyrannical statist change to our Constitution is hard to fathom.

The Sanders-Deutch Amendment also says, "Such corporate and other private entities established under law are subject to regulation by the people through the legislative process so long as such regulations are consistent with the powers of Congress and the States". Since there are virtually no limits to what can be regulated, from what you can eat or serve in your restaurant to what kind of light bulb you can purchase what Florida Rep. Ted Deutch is saying that if you are successful enough to use legal means to protect yourself, LLC's, corporations, etc. you give up your constitutional rights.

If the Sanders-Deutch Amendment passes then for any legal corporation, including individual people successful enough to incorporate, then all their papers, data, and property can be searched or confiscated with no warrant or due process, because this amendment says that constitutional rights are only valid for "natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations." This means that no group, or LLC, or partnership, or corporation has the right to defend itself in court, fight abuse of the government, or even publicly say what the government is doing to them. This applies to internet companies, Doctors, insurance companies, every business; this gives the government the right to have access any and all information that any business has on any individual without needing a warrant. From your purchases at Amazon to the private notes of your shrink, this Amendment makes what little privacy we have a thing of the past.

If you are in business and the government wants your property, you no longer have to be justly compensated; you no longer have the right to sue the government if they take your property. If the Army needs more housing for troops, then put them in the local motel, at the motel's expense, as that outdated Third Amendment "does not extend to for-profit corporations". The government won't even need to tax the rich, they will be allowed to just go to any bank and take what funds they want from any corporate account, as the right against unreasonable searches and seizures "does not extend to for-profit corporations". When a company invents something cool, the government will be able to take it, patent laws will apply to protect companies from other companies, but if abused by the government the "right" to redress grievances "does not extend to for-profit corporations".

Any business could be silenced, deprived of liberty or property, all without due process of law or just compensation because the Sanders-Deutch Amendment removes constitutional protections against these types of abuses. This sounds like, and is, the government wanting subjects with no power to fight the government. Once people assemble and form a group to fight the government, they lose their rights. This is a sick perverted means to justify government tyranny.

Not only does the Sanders-Deutch Amendment negate the free speech of groups of people, including corporations, it indirectly eliminates the rights of all individuals. At the forum where Florida Democrat Deutch and Vermont Socialist Sanders promoted their proposed insanely demented and radical constitutional amendment to nullify the Bill of Rights, Democrat Leader of the House, Nancy Pelosi said that Democrats now have a unambiguous scheme to "amend the Constitution to rid it of this ability for special interests to use secret, unlimited, huge amounts of money flowing to campaigns." That is simply the statist's emotional call to sell the public on the need for an Amendment to eliminate constitutional restrictions on the power of government.

Newsflash: SCOTUS upholds plan language of the Constitution.

By Tom Rhodes, 1/23/2012

In a unanimous decision Monday the Supreme court ruled that the police must obtain a warrant before attaching a GPS tracker to person's vehicle. This is evidence that contrary to all available evidence there are limits to government power and authority. This case tested the boundaries of how far government can go in using new technologies to monitor the whereabouts of the people.

The plain language of the 4th Amendment is clear. It states "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The mere fact that the government would consider adding a device of any kind to a person's private property to monitor anything without probable cause is a clear indication that, on the whole, the government no-longer considers a person's private property to be of consequence. The government didn't argue that placing a GPS device on a person's car wasn't a violation of rights, but argued that attaching the tiny device to a car's undercarriage was too trivial a violation of property rights to matter, and that no one who drove in public streets could expect his movements to go unmonitored. Thus, the technique was "reasonable," meaning that police were free to employ it for any reason without first justifying it to a magistrate, the government said. To the government your rights are "trivial."

Justice Antonin Scalia writing for the majority concluded that the Fourth Amendment's protection of "persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" extends to private property such as an automobile.

Justice Samuel Alito split from fellow conservatives holding that the search violated not just property rights, but also individual's "reasonable expectation of privacy." The same justification the court has used since 1967, when it held that warrants were required before police could wiretap a call made from a public telephone booth because "the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places." He warned that a property-based approach was too narrow to guard against the proliferating threats to personal privacy modern technology posed.

It is nice to see that the SCOTUS in some cases still protects the rights of the people over the government. Too bad the SCOTUS isn't consistent in protecting our property rights from search and seizure, they still accept the idea that any cash you have is the government's unless you can prove that cash didn't commit a crime. Without probable cause nor evidence nor due process, if you carry cash it can be confiscated as drug money. Monday's decision should be celebrated as a good step in the right direction, but we still have too many laws that put the government's "interests" above the rights of the people.

Interesting Distraction

By Tom Rhodes, 1/4/2012

In Georgia, a state law requires “every candidate for federal” office who is certified by the state executive committees of a political party or who files a notice of candidacy “shall meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.”

Obama’s attorney, Michael Jablonski, had argued that the requirements didn’t apply to candidates for a presidential primary, but Judge Michael W. Malihi of the Georgia state Office of State Administrative Hearings, ruled that “Statutory provisions must be read as they are written, and this court finds that the cases cited by [Obama] are not controlling. When the court construes a constitutional or statutory provision, the ‘first step … is to examine the plain statutory language,” the judge wrote. “Section 21-2-1(a) states that ‘every candidate for federal and state office’ must meet the qualifications for holding that particular office, and this court has seen no case law limiting this provision, nor found any language that contains an exception for the office of president or stating that the provision does not apply to the presidential preference primary.”

So let’s take Obama at his word, and we accept his birth certificate, and the fact he was born in Hawaii, his mom was a US Citizen, and his father wasn’t. Those facts are not in dispute. Now we must consider the fact that the constitution says that to be eligible to be president one must be a “natural born citizen.”

Again nobody is arguing that point, but exactly how is a “natural born citizen” defined?

The Constitution doesn’t define “natural born citizen” but lucky for us the US Supreme court did rule on that. In Minor v. Happersett, the U.S. Supreme Court opinion defines “natural-born citizen.” To be exact the SCOTUS Opinion states:

The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.

The SCOTUS is clear, where you’re born doesn’t make you a natural born citizen, but the citizenship of your parents does. An undisputeded fact is that both of Obama’s parents were not citizens at the time of his birth in Hawaii. That would mean that by definition Obama cannot be considered a “natural-born citizen.”

The State of Georgia, is allowing this to proceed, and has dismissed Obama’s attorney’s arguments that Georgia law doesn’t apply. Not all states have election law authorizing any state officials to screen candidate selections from political parties, but in some states it is the law, not the political parties that determine which candidates appear on ballots. Malihi’s ruling said: “The court finds that defendant is a candidate for federal office who has been certified by the state executive committee of a political party, and therefore must, under Code Section 21-2-5, meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.”

Looks like Obama may not be on the ballot in all 50 states. This is an interesting distraction. Taking Obama at his word, and accepting his birth certificate at face value, but using the clear language of Supreme Court precedent will result in the fact that by law Obama may not be a “natural-born citizen.”

The question is are we a country governed by law or by the dictates of some ruling elite?

Constitutional Questions

In a recent Editorial Judge Andrew Nepalitano asks a series of questions, starting with "What if the Constitution no longer applied?"

All Americans should look at our government and look at the questions the good judge asks. Then also ask ourselves, after answering these questions, is this the kind of government we want?

Here are all the questions he asks:

What if the whole purpose of the Constitution was to limit the government? What if Congress' enumerated powers in the Constitution no longer limited Congress, but were actually used as justification to extend Congress' authority over every realm of human life? What if the president, meant to be an equal to Congress, has become a democratically elected, term-limited monarch? What if the president assumed everything he did was legal, just because he's the president? What if he could interrupt your regularly scheduled radio and TV programming for a special message from him? What if he could declare war on his own? What if he could read your emails and texts without a search warrant? What if he could kill you without warning?

What if the rights and principles guaranteed in the Constitution have been so distorted in the past 200 years as to be unrecognizable by the founders? What if the states were mere provinces of a totally nationalized and fully centralized government? What if the Constitution was amended stealthily, not by constitutional amendments duly passed by the states, but by the constant and persistent expansion of the federal government's role in our lives? What if the federal government decided whether its own powers were proper and constitutional?

Don't miss the judge's latest Constitution-defending book, "It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom"

What if you needed a license from the government to speak, to assemble or to protest the government? What if the right to keep and bear arms only applied to the government? What if posse comitatus – the law that prohibits our military from our streets – were no longer in effect? What if the government considered the military an adequate dispenser of domestic law enforcement? What if cops looked and acted like troops and you couldn't distinguish the military from the police? What if federal agents could write their own search warrants in defiance of the Constitution? What if the government could decide when you weren't entitled to a jury trial?

What if the government could take your property whenever it wanted it? What if the government could continue prosecuting you until it got the verdict it wanted? What if the government could force you to testify against yourself simply by labeling you a domestic terrorist? What if the government could torture you until you said what the government wanted to hear? What if people running for president actually supported torture? What if the government tortured your children to get to you? What if the government could send you to your death and your innocence meant nothing so long as the government's procedures were followed? What if America's prison population, the largest in the world, was the result of a cruel and unusual way for a country to be free? What if half the prison population never harmed anyone but themselves?

What if the people had no rights except those the government chose to let them have? What if the states had no rights except to do as the federal government commanded? What if our elected officials didn't really live among us, but all instead had their hearts and their homes in Washington, D.C.? What if the government could strip you of your rights because of where your mother was when you were born? What if the income tax was unconstitutional? What if the states were convinced to give up their representation in Congress? What if the government tried to ban you from using a substance older than the government itself? What if voting didn't mean anything anymore because both political parties stand for Big Government?

What if the government could write any law, regulate any behavior and tax any event, the Constitution be damned? What if the government was the reason we don't have a Constitution anymore? What if you could love your country but hate what the government has done to it? What if sometimes to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best which governs least? What if I'm right? What if the government is wrong? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?

Time Magazine Promotes Tyranny

by Tom Rhodes, 6/28/2011

This Year’s cover for Time Magazine has a picture of the constitution not a famous American as is traditional for the July 4th Issue. In its editorial, Time Magazine’s managing editor Richard Stengel, Asks a question about our Constitution: "Does it still matter?" He concludes that the constitution is irrelevant saying, "If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it certainly doesn't say so."

Either purposefully or of ignorance, Stengel completely misrepresents the plain language of the Constitution. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Those words make it quite clear that the federal government is limited to only the powers specifically granted to it by the people as clearly stated in the Constitution.



Stengel’s editorial makes the same tired claims that have been used to try and justify taking power from the people and giving it back to the elite for well over a century: “When the Constitution was framed there were no Railroads….” or “When the Constitution was framed there were no Telegraphs….” or “When the Constitution was framed there were no Radios….” “When the Constitution was framed there was no Internet….” The constitution was a framework designed to restrain government, and unlike any other government before it, and very few since, gave most of the power to the people not the ruling elite. No technological advances justify taking self-rule away from the people.

It doesn’t take very much reading on Facebook Groups, chat-rooms, or other internet forums, before you will hear some statist claiming the American people are idiots. When somebody loving freedom uses a poll or other data which clearly shows that a vast majority of Americans are in agreement on a topic but that agreement doesn’t meet with statists ideas or desires, then the people aren’t smart enough to know what’s good for them, or have been mis-lead.

Take Obamacare for instance, most Americans do want some kind of health care reform, but the reality of Obamacare and what it will do, is not what a super majority of Americans want. The statists in our country seem to believe that they know what’s best, and the people should accept what they have determined is best.

This Time Magizine editorial demonstrates clearly that we are not divided by left-right views but by the idea that there are elite who should rule and dole out the countries resources, and plebs who accept it. The statists appear to want to have enough people dependent upon the government that they can once again put the genie back into the bottle and determine who is a success and who isn’t. The constitution and insistence by the people that our government uphold the rule of law stands in the way of statists. Statists hate the idea, and that the people expect and consider it necessary that no person, company, and especially politician, is above the same laws the people must follow. Obama during his campaign lamented that constitution made it hard to “get things done.” Even the liberal St. Petersburg Times, notes that just like Bush, “Obama's refusal to follow the strictures of the War Powers Act says that he, too, is willing to manipulate language to ignore inconvenient limits on his power.”

The destruction of what was an experiment in the people taking for themselves the right to self-rule is over. One by one our natural rights are being stripped from us and we are again regressing to rule by the elite. The government now says no warrant is needed to search a person’s home, that you can be forced to purchase services whether you want them or not, that the government can determine what you are allowed to eat, that employment and work laws that apply to people and businesses don’t apply to the government, that accounting and bookkeeping laws that apply to the people and their businesses don’t apply to the government, the list continues to grow daily.

Setup by Bush and completed by Obama, was the destruction of the rule of law. The primary example being when the government was able to force without legislation, judiciary rulings contrary to existing bankruptcy law to reward political favors to unions over secured creditors and take over both GM and Chrysler as a result of their bankruptcies. The breakup of these companies like AMC, Hudson, Studebaker, Stutz, and others before, would not have seen the demise or end of the US auto industry. Consider Jeep, near bankruptcy it was taken over by AMC, it made and still does make a product people want. AMC made bad business decisions and it too folded, but the Jeep name and assets were purchased by Chrysler, and it remained. If Chrysler folded, another company or new investors would have purchased the Jeep brand physical assets and it would have continued. Jeeps are the best selling products Chrysler has.

Statists claim that you can’t run a post modern country the same way and with the same rules as we did when we were an agriculture based country of the early 1800’s. This is only true if you throw out the reasoning for the institution of the USA and accept the premise that the government has a duty and is responsible for the needs of all its citizens. Only if you throw away the idea of self-rule and limited government, can you justify granting the government the unlimited authority to do whatever the elite feel is necessary for the greater good. It is not based on liberal or conservative ideology but on the idea of statism.

Statism is the concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly centralized government often but not necessarily extending to government ownership of industry. The concept of statism, which is seen as synonymous with the concept of nation, and corporatism repudiates individualism and exalts the nation as an organic body headed by the elites and nurtured by unity and force. The militarization of our police forces is prima facie evidence that statists are willing to and will use force to gain compliance by the people; even the Dept. of Education has its own SWAT team(s).

This is tyranny, the goals may be noble, but the implementation of the nanny state is tyrannical. Only with tortured logic can one justify the constitutionality of the federal government having the enumerated power to require people to purchase insurance. That and most other powers are restricted to the States or the People. Statists are doing everything they can to get rid of the pesky notion that the Constitution limits the federal government. Even the editor of Time Magazine, a statist, is willing to lie in order to try and convince the people that that the Constitution wasn’t intended to limit the federal government.

Contrary to what Mr. Stengel says, our founding fathers were quite clear, saying “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The notion that our forefathers didn’t believe in or want or attempt to limit the government is a lie. Our founding fathers created a framework that granted the government enough power to govern, but severely restricted it powers, knowing that men are not inherently good, that power corrupts, and that a limited government with enumerated powers, would protect future generations from the tyranny of an all powerful government.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.” ~ C.S. Lewis

The Police State of Indiana

On Thursday May 12, 2011 the Indiana Supreme court overturned 800 years of jurisprudence and common law. Dating back to the English Magna Carta, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that the subjects of the State of Indiana have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes. The court stated that if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner has no right to do anything about it, and is guilty of a crime if he attempts or to stop the officer’s entry.

"We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David said. "We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest."

It’s hard to believe that here in America, the former citizens of Indiana, now the subjects of Indiana, have less rights than did medieval Englishmen. In Indiana a man’s home is no longer his castle. This decision isn't just incorrect, it is a monstrous insult to the Bill of Rights as stated in the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, to the American Revolution, even to the very idea of America itself. The Indiana court had determined that Indiana is a police state. This ruling is a travesty; it is a mockery of the very inspiration which America was created, to claim that this nation, born in violence against the establishment, does not have a right to resist the illegal actions of the establishment in their own homes.

These are the very form and composition of tyranny that resulted in the American Revolution. It was against this very type of tyranny that resulted in the creation of our Declaration of Independence, and our refusal to accept a constitution without the Bill of Rights. I hope and pray that apparent desire of those in power for a police state and control of the masses doesn’t persist. Americans will not tolerate a police state. The increase in police shootings is proof enough. As the police in the US militarize, they are no longer fellow members of the community, working to protect and serve, but now represent Them, an arbitrary government who would arrest a child on weapons charges for binging a plastic knife in her lunch box, and are no longer to be trusted.

The core and fiber of America, from our formation, is summed in what may be our most retold story, the story of the outsider who defeats the elites. America is a unique nation of outsiders. Just look at the theme of most popular movies, from old classics like Mr. Smith goes to Washington (and the various remakes); most of the entire nior genre of films; or the many retellings of the Robin Hood tale; too many westerns to count; Easy Rider; Rocky; the 1983 Coppola hit “The Outsiders”, which launched the carriers of Howell, Macchio, Dillon, Swayze, Estevez, and Cruise, all of whom have made carriers of playing outsiders; to the latest Disney movie “Lemonade Mouth.” You can even include the themes of our most famous comic book superheroes, including; Spiderman, Wolverine, Batman, Blade, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and The X-Men just for starters. Liberals and Socialists want to minimize the “rugged individualist” attitude of Americans, discounting that it is a spirit that runs deep in our veins. From the moment the Pilgrims, who were religious outcasts from the English religious establishment , set foot on Plymouth Rock, soon to become the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the eventual starting point for the actions of the Boston Tea Party, Lexington, Concord and the "shot heard 'round the world" which started the revolution that became the Great American Experiment, America has been the home of Outsiders.

Most Americans consider themselves outsiders are not impressed, nor pay much deference to the establishment. Most of America see the Establishment as snobbish with nothing to be snobbish about, unimaginative and all too frequently incompetent. As Tony Blair said "there is a "quite elemental" force in America that is instinctively anti-Establishment."

The rebellion against insiders who mandate a health care system that reeks of a European welfare state should be of no surprise. The very model of Obamacare, an elite Insider group of alleged health care experts calling the shots on your health care, is not tenable in American culture, because in the American lexicon it translates into some are more equal than others. The rush to exemptions, and exclusion of the government from being forced to participate, and the rash of special privileges granted to the establishment have alone doomed Obamacare to failure. In essence America will not long tolerate anything but Equality Under the Law. Not that the reality our past didn’t suffer slavery, and other heinous discriminations, our history is a long march towards the goal equal treatment for everybody, regardless of any station or circumstance in life.

Paul Ryan accurately described the “The Progressivist vision is to create a new American person who no longer strives to better oneself but accepts one's station in life -- and looks to government to help cope not only with difficulties but with every important personal decision….The passivity this way of living encourages means that most people abandon the right to govern themselves, leaving bureaucratic experts and political leaders in control of every important aspect of individual and social life. “

This vision is not compatible with America. I pray our republic can be saved, but if rulings like that of The Indiana Supreme Court stand I fear it will not. The Indiana Supreme Court’s ruling, put all Hoosiers in a virtual police state, will must not stand, if it remains as such, we may once again hear the outsiders that embody the great majority of Americans utter these immortal words.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.

Patent law and Constitutional Limits

By Tom Rhodes, 4/26/2011

To bad none of the GOP or newly elected TEA Party legislators actually cares about the constitution. The Senate has passed a bill (S.23) to take away the property rights of American inventors. They held a quick poorly publicized hearing that did not include a single inventor, a small-business person, a venture capital person or a constitutional authority. It’s sister bill in the house is now being pushed without any publicity, H.R. 1249.

This bill is clearly unconstitutional, as rather than acknowledge one of the most valuable individual rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution is the right of "inventors" to own "the exclusive right" to their "discoveries" for "limited times” (see Article I, Section 8 of the US constitution), these bills give the right to an invention to the person who first files. Get that, if a company files the paperwork, they have the right to an invention, not the actual inventor.

The right to one’s own invention has been recognized and reinforced by our system of granting patents to inventors, U.S. patents are awarded to the "first-to-invent" a new and useful product. The U.S. patent system was unique when the Constitution was written and is still unique in the world today. It protects individual property rights, not government filing rights. This is one of, if not the primary, reason why the United States has produced most of the world's great inventions and dominates the world in innovation.

Every other country in the world award patents under a system called "first-to-file," i.e., the first person to file a paper with a government office. The rest of the world would prefer that we changed our system from first-to-invent to first-to-file. Harmonizing as it’s called, would take the system that has produced more innovation than any other and proven successful for centuries, and make it match the proven inferior system the rest of the world uses.

Even if harmonizing were a reasonable idea (it’s not) the bigger problem is that it is clearly unconstitutional. The Constitution, Federalist Papers, and centuries of court cases are very clear, and plainly state that the property right belongs to "inventors," not to someone handing a piece of paper to a government bureaucrat. Not a single scholarly law review article proves or claims otherwise, while many which have examined the issue have concluded that the “first-to-file” concept is unconstitutional.

Where are the TEA Party, and other so-called constitutional defenders on this issue? (I hear crickets chirping over the silence). An “inventor” through all of US history, and the writings of our forefathers has always meant the first-to-invent something, not the first to do paperwork. If you look at the “Patent Acts,” laws created in 1790, 1793, and 1836, you will see that historically we have always considered a patent to go to the first “original and true inventor.” First-to-invent, not first-to-file conforms with our tradition and history and over 200 years of court proceedings. First-to-invent is the standard we have used, and the standard that has proven to best protect innovation, and provide a foundation that has resulted in more innovation than the rest of the world combined. We have over 200 years of settled and successful law. Why are our leaders even considering the un-American notion that we should utilize treaties and foreign laws to reinterpret our Constitution and statutes concerning patent law?

Who benefits from first-to-file? This concept elevates paperwork over true inventions. First-to-file favors foreign inventors and big corporations that have the lawyers and resources to file quickly and redundantly, while taking rights away from independent inventors and small businesses.

First-to-file may make patents more efficient, and international agreements easier, but it destroys individual rights in favor of big business, and violates our Constitution. This is a truly perverse constitutional issue that YOU should be outraged over. Get out of your internet browser, fire up your word processing software (if you’re using word note that MS lost a patent case and is now at the US Supreme court trying to defend its theft of another’s invention) , and type out a letter, and sign it by hand and mail it to your US Representative, and urge him to vote against “harmonizing” US Patent Law.

High Speed Rail - Letter to Nelson & Rubio

CC:Gov. Rick Scott,
Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos
Florida Speaker Dean Cannon
Feb 18, 2011

Dear Senator Nelson:

I am an active member of the Libertarian Party and a voter in Florida. I applaud Gov Scott's decision to reject billions of federal dollars to build a high speed rail in Florida. The governor rightly cited the inevitable cost overruns and over-optimistic ridership projections as factors in his decision to protect Floridian's pocketbooks.

Of the $2.4 billion dollars allocated to Florida for this project, $1.6 billion is "Stimulus" monies. This is money that the United States does not have as our nation is currently running a deficit (spending more money than it takes in) while it carries a debt of over $14 trillion dollars. Each taxpayer's share of this debt is in excess of $127,000! To keep up this level of spending, the government has to either print more money which causes inflation, or borrow from foreign countries like China that come with large interest payments that add to the deficit and debt. Either way these options are unacceptable and very simply the spending has got to stop!

I am deeply concerned, however, that hours after Gov Scott informed Sec of Transportation Ray LaHood of his decision, that you Sen Nelson, called LaHood to tell him that you were consulting lawyers with a plan to circumvent the Governor's decision. This rogue action on your part and others is contrary to the constitutions of the United States and of the State of Florida. Supreme executive power of the State of Florida is vested in the Governor's office, not the Senator's. It is Governor Rick Scott who is the chief administrative officer of Florida, not Bill Nelson. It was Governor Scott who was elected on a platform of reform in November, not Sen Bill Nelson.

Florida citizens passed a constitutional amendment in 2004 to renounce the development of high speed rail by the state. President Obama has a vision for high speed rail in Florida which is in direct conflict with the will of Floridians. We do not want the president's vision of transportation imposed upon us. High speed rail is to transportation as Obamacare is to healthcare. I urge you to stop meddling in this matter, and instead focus on how you are going to stop spending and get our country back in fiscal order. I urge you to reach across the aisle and join the freshmen Senators elected with a mandate in 2010 to stop the wasteful spending and to stop the practice of legislation by regulation and adjudication.

Last November, the People spoke loud and clear that they are tired of the out of control spending. This project is full of pork and will not help create jobs. As a Libertarian Party member, I will remember who fought for the people in November 2012!

Karl Dickey
Director At Large
Libertarian Party of Florida

Senate passes Food Safety Bill unconstitutionally

The senate passed the "Food Safety Bill" with lots of fanfare and hoopla. The problem is the Bill they passed is unconstitutional and the House by constitutional law will not take up that same bill.

You see there is a provision in the constitution referred to as the "origination clause." Article 1, Section 7, Clause 1, of the US Constitution reads, "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills."



The reasoning for revenue generating bills originating from the House is evidenced by the last election, in which the Tax-and-Spend democrats were kicked out. The idea being the House with only 2 year terms could be quickly changed by the people if the House failed do the bidding of the people. The Senate with his longer terms (and original selection by the States not the people) is more insulated does not have to be as responsive to the will of the people. The Origination Clause stems from an English parliamentary requirement that all money bills start from the House of Commons; it was intended to ensure that the "power of the purse" lies with the legislative body closer to the people. The clause was also part of a compromise between small and large states: the latter were unhappy with equal representation in the Senate.

Section 107 of the "Food Safety" bill includes fees that are classified as revenue raisers, hence the Senate originated a bill that raises revenues, clearly unconstitutional. The House Ways and Means Committee will use the "blue slip process" to block completion of the bill in the house. In the House, the blue slip process refers to the rejection slip given to Senate tax and spending bills which have not originated in the House in the first place, per the House's interpretation of the Origination clause.

Nice to see the constitution works as intended.