The Thoughts and Writings of Nancy Salvato
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The Time For Repealing JASTA Is Now!

11/26/2016

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When people think of the Declaration of Independence, the following words come to mind.

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.

But the words that immediately follow are equally important. 

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

This idea that government gets power from the consent of the governed should not be taken lightly.  Our country fought a revolutionary war over this understanding and the US Constitution was designed to protect the sovereignty of our citizens as well as the states in which they live.  The idea that a King could try our people in a foreign court of law didn’t set well with the founders. It was one in a thorough list of grievances submitted as justification for our separation from England.

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.

In fact, most of the grievances listed stem from this idea that the colonists were not represented in the legal system under which they were ruled. So, when we established our own system of government it was a pretty big deal that those who rule are the same as those who are ruled.  Those who represent the people when holding political office are less inclined to pass unjust laws because they are subject to the same system of laws. 

Recently, on September 28, the United States Congress passed JASTA, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, but I think that was a mistake. The United States is a sovereign state on the world stage meaning it sets its own foreign policy and decides how things will operate inside its boundaries.

“JASTA reduces foreign sovereign immunity by allowing U.S. courts to hear cases involving claims against a foreign state for injuries, death, or damages that occur inside the United States as a result of a tort, including an act of terrorism, committed anywhere by a foreign state or official.” Washington Post

JASTA permits private parties to sue foreign governments for damages resulting from terrorist acts.  The plaintiffs would have to prove that government officials were complicit, but it doesn’t take much to start a lawsuit.  Soon, other nations will do the same and then our government or its officials could be sued in foreign courts that don’t give us the same sort of rights that defendants have in our courts.
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It is imperative JASTA be repealed.  JASTA erodes the principle of sovereignty…that all states are considered equal to each other, and no state may interfere in the affairs of another state. If you feel that JASTA is not in the best interest of our country, you can exercise your civic responsibility -and express your concern by contacting your states senators http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/ or representatives http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ and letting them know that JASTA is contrary to the founders’ vision for our country and that they have sworn an oath of office to uphold the laws of our constitution, therefore, it is their responsibility to repeal this law.
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What If They Just Stop Watching?

2/27/2016

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In the beginning, what excited people most about traveling to the new world was freedom to practice their religion without persecution or being treated differently for not adhering to a state mandated religion.  As time passed, people were compelled by the idea that they could grab a piece of land and create their own wealth.  These two ideas best characterize the American dream, the freedom to have a set of beliefs and not be compelled to follow the group and the freedom to build wealth from a wing and a prayer.  Our governing system evolved from these two important rights. 

Our country suffered 25,000 casualties, not to mention as many wounded in the revolution to gain our freedom from England.  Once we had tasted freedom, it was hard to imagine allowing ourselves to be ruled by a king and a parliament determined to wield their authority over colonies that had been essentially governing themselves independently for years.  To be told where goods could be sold and where they could trade, to be taxed indiscriminately, to be tried in courts without a jury of peers…these ideas were recognized as unjust and intolerable. 

With freedom came wealth and power.  This is because in our country there was no built in ruling class or proletariat class.  In America, people were not seen as belonging to any particular class and it was a given that anyone could make it.  Andrew Jackson was the first president who exemplified that idea, having beat enormous odds.  He was not born of wealth and despite having lost both parents before he was fifteen, survived fighting (under age) in the American Revolution, being imprisoned, and smallpox.  Yet he managed to become a school teacher, and later a lawyer, before running for and being elected to the highest office in the land. 

What characterized the people who immigrated to America was that they wanted to become part of a country where people were free to pursue their happiness.  There was no expectation that the government would take care of them.  What drove settlers and foreigners to populate our country was the idea that with hard work and faith they could make something of themselves.  When did this change?

Historically, there are some landmark events that we can look at as contributing to the downfall of our country.  The passing of the 17th Amendment is one.  Senators no longer represent the state; the senate is not the state’s house.  It is just an extension of the people’s house.  This has eroded state’s rights and upset the balance necessary to prevent any part of the government from gaining too much power or forgetting that they are there to serve the people.  Another is Marbury v Madison, in which the judiciary branch of government could determine whether a law is to be followed, not whether a law is being applied fairly. Every time a president uses executive power to create law through regulation, instead of the congress, the balance is being eroded. 

In the past eight years, we’ve witnessed the decimation of the middle class.  With the economy tanking and the result of a government manufactured housing crisis, people who’d invested years of their savings into homes, found themselves in foreclosure. Forced to move and rent because of bad credit, their homes were often purchased by the wealthy and redistributed to people who qualified for section 8 and received government supplemented housing. Demographics of entire neighborhoods changed, bringing in people whose interests and values did not coincide with the established culture, changing political voting blocks. 

At issue this election are several concerns.  We are at war with political factions of a religion that calls itself peaceful.  We need to determine how this war is to be fought and eliminate this threat.  Will it be fought like Vietnam or will we eradicate the problem completely?  Domestically, our government is in debt because of all the entitlement programs that were passed by preceding congresses and foisted onto generation after generation to fund.   The economy has not recovered, despite the rhetoric.  The reality is that many people can no longer apply for unemployment because the timeline for when they can receive benefits expired.  Others have found jobs but they are not full time and they do not qualify for employee benefits.  Those who take advantage of Affordable Health Care policies are funded by taxpayers, as with any entitlement program.  They are not free. 

This election is the last gasp for the middle class.  Those running for office on the left have openly voiced that they would usher in socialism. Those feeling the bern or backing a progressive truly believe in the idea that the government knows best how to spend our hard earned wealth.  This is an election to determine whether we still believe in equality of opportunity or if we now believe in the idea of equality of outcome. 
It’s ironic that the sector that continues to show growth is the service industry.  As we watch our class structure fall, an entire servant class is being created. It reminds me of the world before America was settled, a world where there were upper classes and lower classes who served them. 

I used to enjoy following the election. For me, it was like following baseball or football.  Now, when I listen to the media interview the candidates, I feel like I’m watching the show in the Hunger Games hosted by Caesar Flickerman.  The media is whoring the candidates out for ratings.  I wonder why these are called debates? The candidates are coached to say what will get them ratings.  As Gale from the Hunger Games remarked to Katniss, “What if they just stop watching?” Unfortunately, Katniss was right when she replied, “But they won’t, Gale. They won’t.” We’re gawkers at the scene of an accident, compelled to watch the election process going down in flames. 
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These Dead Shall Not Have Died In Vain

11/22/2015

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It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. –Abraham Lincoln

Last evening, we shared a table with a young group of marines en route to SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) training in Maine.  I woke up this morning feeling especially thankful to those who put themselves in harm’s way to protect our nation and yet I kept thinking about the Gettysburg Address. This is because I worry whether our soldiers (and their families) deployed after 9/11, many injured or in coffins, sacrificed in vain. Did the soldiers who liberated our country from England, as well die in vain? Did the 620,000 casualties of the Civil War die in vain?

At 10 years of age, I became aware of terrorism. I watched it play out during the television broadcast of the 1972 Olympics when a terrorist group, identifying itself as “Black September”, killed 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team.  Why were these athletes arbitrarily murdered on a world stage? I truly didn’t understand the catalyst until I was much older. Black September was a movement to avenge Palestinians' losses in Jordan. This was one battle in a continuum of battles and part of a larger war.  

Based out of Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, the PLO and the PFLP had been fighting a “War of Attrition” against Israel, but were not necessarily supported by King Hussein in this quest to win back territory lost during the 6 Day War and their refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Jordan’s King tried to, “balance his interests in preserving a peace with Israel,” (Arab terrorists take Israeli hostages at the Olympics) by looking the other way, however, he eventually had to make a stand. The “Palestinians had run a state-within-a-state in Jordan headquartered in Amman. Their militias ruled the streets and imposed brutal and arbitrary discipline with impunity.” (Arab terrorists take Israeli hostages at the Olympics) Displeased with his stance, they were trying to assassinate him and control all of Jordon.  King Hussein ended the Palestinians' reign with a blood bath. It was only by instituting a blood bath that he made his Palestinian problem go away.

Arafat and the PLO went to Lebanon and created a similar state-within-a-state, destabilizing the Lebanese government.  Eventually, the PLO was expelled from Lebanon following Israel's 1982 invasion. Between Neville Chamberlain’s failed policy of appeasing the Nazi’s in WWII and the increasing displays of terror in the Middle East and throughout the world, we should know by now that remaining neutral and hoping others will take care of a problem are never options. One has to either eliminate the problem or make it clear not to mess with the giant. It was President Theodore Roosevelt, an environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, who best understood how to maintain US sovereignty, summing it up with the words, “Walk softly and carry a big stick.” Since this country’s inception, our leaders have understood that to maintain a balance of power, nations like the United States must lead from a position of strength. 

In high school, one of my history teacher’s was convinced we would see acts of terrorism played out on our soil, not unlike that which fomented in the Middle East all those years ago.  I was very distraught over that possibility.  Though I learned to balance living my life with such existential threats, I never turned a blind eye to this reality. As predicted, in my lifetime, acts of terror have taken place on US soil, the largest being 9/11. Like it or not, we are being called upon to fight a non-conventional war against a group of people who do not believe we have a right to exist. There is no co-existence in their world view. It is our freedom and our lives that are at stake. Civilians are targets and the population needs to prepare for this reality.  Our leaders need to admit this truth and take all precautions to maximize freedom and limit casualties.

This Thanksgiving I am thankful to have been born in the United States.  I am thankful for the opportunities I’ve been given.  And I am thankful to those who put themselves in harm’s way so that I can enjoy these blessings. I am thankful to those who I shared dinner with; en route to SERE during this holiday season. Please let their sacrifices not be in vain. 
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Social Engineering is a lot like Socialism

7/20/2015

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Recently, two articles gave me pause. The first by Alana Semuels, “How Chicago is Trying to Integrate its Suburbs” caught my attention because I spent many formative years in Glenview, the suburb highlighted in the article. Reading about the new low income housing there, a collaboration between the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and Regional Housing Initiative (RHI), I recalled a conversation with a long term resident and respected member of the community (prior to the shut-down of the naval air base and subsequent redevelopment), one in which she explained that Glenview, a Chicago suburb, got around a previous Section 8 requirement by building low income senior housing. She had no qualms about the community’s position in this matter. Many middle class communities felt this way about Section 8 moving into their neighborhoods.  In a SPOA article called The Great Housing Experiment That Failed, the author writes:

Starting back in 1977, families living in housing projects began to be relocated to middle-class suburban neighborhoods with good public schools. If these families could see a different way of life, the middle-class way of life, they could learn to live like the middle class – or so everyone thought…But then the crime rate started to go up in suburbia where they moved. As one former housing project tenant said: “You move from one place to another and you bring the element with you. You got some [people] trying to make it just like the projects.”

Landlords in more affluent suburbs did not want to rent to Section 8 tenants.  Erin Eberlin writes in, “Disadvantages of Renting to Section 8 Tenants”

There is a stigma that Section 8 tenants are very destructive. There have been horror stories about floors being destroyed, cabinets being pulled off the walls, toilets being cracked, garbage and filth everywhere and many more people living in the unit than are listed on the lease… Tenants who do not collect rental assistance may be turned off by the fact that you allow Section 8 tenants in your property. They may believe that you are a “slumlord,” that the property will be dirty or that the tenants will be disrespectful and noisy.

In “Let’s End Housing Vouchers” Howard Husock provides insight into why Section 8 vouchers have failed in integrating classes of people.

Better neighborhoods are not better because of something in the water but because people have built and sustained them by their efforts, their values, and their commitments. Voucher appropriations are based not only on the mistaken belief that it is necessary to award, at public expense, a better home to all who can demonstrate "need," but also that it is uplifting to do so, when in fact it is the effort to achieve the good home, rather than the good home in itself, that is the real engine of uplift.

What he is saying is that the effort and goal to achieve a better life for one self is a major factor in the ability to contribute to and better a community. Those residents who achieve the American dream by saving their hard earned money and purchasing and maintaining their homes in a neighborhood of their choosing understand the sacrifice involved in making that happen.  They want a return on their investment.  They have made a decision to become a part of something larger and want to belong. 

Husock explains how the voucher program ends up segregating classes of people and “accelerate neighborhood decline.” 

For properties in precariously respectable neighborhoods, the government-paid rent is more than the market rent. Reason: the Section 8 program allows voucher holders to pay up to the average rent in their entire metropolitan area, and landlords in working-class or lower-middle-class neighborhoods, where rents are below average, simply charge voucher holders exactly that average rent. Assured payment and a more-than-generous risk premium: no wonder some landlords in neighborhoods teetering on the brink of respectability gladly welcome voucher tenants over working-class families offering lower rents and so accelerate neighborhood decline. South Philadelphia state representative William Keller tells of local property owners who "couldn't rent their place for $500, but they can get $900 from Section 8." The result is a familiar government-subsidized racket: landlords who specialize in Section 8s—who advertise for them and know the bureaucratic rules about what it takes to get paid. 

Homeowners pay more to live in affluent neighborhoods to ensure safety and opportunities for their families.  Residents of these communities are expected to maintain their homes and want to participate in events sponsored by their communities.  Shared values are what makes people come together as a community.  Section 8 disrupts this.

In the Chicago suburb of Riverdale, here is how it went.

EMT crews respond to emergency calls to find callers, accustomed to city emergency rooms, simply saying they're "feeling ill." Riverdale's Potter elementary school, once boasting a top academic reputation, now has the state's highest student turnover. Student achievement has dropped—putting paid to the idea that shipping poor families to good schools in the suburbs will cause an education ethic to rub off. Instead, the concentration of disorganized families has undermined a once good school. School funds, says the mayor, must now be diverted to the legions of "special needs" students. Crime is up, too—"we have real legitimate gang issues now," the mayor says—and the city has had to increase its police force by 35 percent, from 26 to 35. That's pushing the tax rate up, which the mayor fears will discourage new home buyers, pushing the small city into a cycle of decline. A lack of local buying power—a function of the voucher program's preference for very low-income renters—has already left storefronts abandoned on Riverdale's main street.

It’s no wonder that higher socioeconomic neighborhoods fear Section 8.  But it is not about race. As Husock points out, “Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson famously argued that class, not race, is the most powerful divide that separates Americans today.” So, why then does the current administration want to make socio-economic inequities about race?

In “Obama Collecting Personal Data for a Secret Race Data Base” Paul Sperry writes that the fed is collecting sensitive data on Americans by race… to make “disparate impact” cases against: banks that don’t make enough prime loans to minorities; schools that suspend too many blacks; cities that don’t offer enough Section 8 and other low-income housing for minorities; and employers who turn down African-Americans for jobs due to criminal backgrounds.”

In its justification for social and economic engineering, this administration is saying that inequities are a result of prejudice, not the values and work ethics displayed by different classes of people. Yet, social and economic engineering is a means to redistribute wealth, not integrate and diversify communities of people. Probably the biggest redistribution of wealth came during the mortgage crisis when thousands upon thousands of middle class people had to walk away from their homes, which were then repossessed by banks and re-purchased by the very rich or rented to Section 8 voucher holders, creating greater class divisions.  In American Spectator’s, “The True Origin of this Economic Crisis,” this crisis came about in part because of a “1992 Boston Federal Reserve Bank study of discrimination in home mortgage lending,” which concluded,

While there was no overt discrimination in banks’ allocation of mortgage funds, loan officers gave whites preferential treatment. The methodology of the study has since been questioned, but at the time it was highly influential with regulators and members of the incoming Clinton administration; in 1993, bank regulators initiated a major effort to reform the CRA regulations.

Clearly, the Obama administration is pursuing a policy of social and economic engineering and saying it is about race.

Federally funded cities deemed overly segregated will be pressured to change their zoning laws to allow construction of more subsidized housing in affluent areas in the suburbs, and relocate inner-city minorities to those predominantly white areas. HUD’s maps, which use dots to show the racial distribution or density in residential areas, will be used to select affordable-housing sites.

In a Crain’s Chicago Business article, Why one suburban development soared, and the other staggered, Dennis Rodkin writes,

Because the Glen is a tax increment financing district, all property taxes go into the pot; after the TIF expires in 2018, tax collections will stream into the city's general fund. Planners behind the Glen expect the previous 23 years will have generated $820 million, according to Messrs. Owen and Brady. That figure includes $250 million in land sales, $20 million in federal grants and $500 million in property and sales taxes, Mr. Owen says.

The Glen received $20 million in federal land grants. Therefore, Glenview is a federally funded city. Thus, it is susceptible to the Obama administration’s social and economic engineering plans. 

It has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that money has allowed federal overreach to influence local and state decisions about schools, housing, churches, and other services that fall under the states’ purview in our federalist system of government.  This division of power is failing.  Strongholds put in place in our Constitution to prevent centralized government are surely toppling. Our Constitutional Republic, which generates great wealth and allows for social mobility is being replaced by social and economic engineering, i.e., socialism. I am moved to wonder how this will affect voter demographics. 
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A Pirate's Life For Me

6/30/2015

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I spent my whole life running around, Still let the wind kinda blow me around
…And I traded it in for a whole 'nother world, A pirate flag and an island girl
–Kenny Chesney

Do you like Pirates?  I know I do.  I could watch Pirates of the Caribbean over and over again.  Many people who live on the coast have pirate bumper stickers that say Salt Life.  But Pirates have bad reputations because they pillaged innocent people, even though we don’t normally associate them in that way. Usually, we associate them with island vacations where people let go of their worries and play instead of worrying about work. Still, maybe we ought to ban pirates because they didn’t respect the rights of those they pillaged? On second thought, that might make some people very sad.  Pirate aficionados derive joy in thinking about living by their own rules and leaving behind their responsibilities. Pirates are so popular among some groups of people that there are toys, flags, clothing, and even a Talk Like A Pirate Day. Besides, just because some people find pirates offensive, the First Amendment protects free speech, so long as it isn’t inciting people to violence. 

Many people like to buy Confederate Flags and clothing with the Confederate flag logos.  Those who appreciate the flag logo most often associate this emblem with the idea of states’ rights.  The flag was first flown by the Confederacy in the Civil War, a war in which many slave holding states asserted their right to secede from the union, rather than change their economy, which relied on slave labor.  In the beginning, this “war between the states” was about preserving the union.  After fighting for two years, however, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which declared that all slaves in states rebelling against the Union were free, leaving slavery intact in the Border States. Freeing the slaves in the Confederate States became a Union war objective. Although the Confederate States of America wanted to maintain a way of life which included the subjugation of a group of people based on their color, today, many people would agree that not unlike the Pirate Flag, the Confederate Flag has come to symbolize states’ rights, not the subjugation of a group of people. 

Recently, in Charleston, South Carolina, Dylann Storm Roof was charged with shooting nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.  Prior to the shooting, the suspect had been photographed “waving Confederate flags and wearing symbols of racist white regimes, and reportedly wrote of fomenting racial violence.” (The Washington Times) Because he was seen in this manner, many groups are demanding that the Confederate flag be removed from the public square because it is associated with white supremacy and incites people to racial violence.  This is particularly interesting because in many acts of terror, law enforcement agencies are told not to profile, i.e., associate certain clothing or associations as increasing the likelihood of violence.  If a person had committed this shooting wearing a pirate shirt, would there be screams to remove pirate paraphernalia from merchandisers and consider those displaying such emblems as inciting violence?

After the Boston Massacre, when John Adams defended the Red Coats in a Massachusetts Court of law, he explained that because we are a nation of laws and not of men, everyone is entitled to a fair trial.  He and the soldiers he defended, recognized that an unruly mob which was angry about British subjugation of the colonies might not be able to look at the specific events objectively.  They would merge their experiences and punish the soldiers, regardless of the reality.  John Adams was a brilliant lawyer and was able to save the soldiers from what at first seemed to be a certain fate.   In his summation he stated,
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

We would be wise to heed the words of John Adams before the wishes, inclinations, or dictates of passions force the removal of the Confederate Flag from the public square, erasing a symbol of states’ rights at a time when the Tenth Amendment has been completely ignored by the Supreme Court in recent rulings on Obamacare.  Freedom of speech is one of the first freedoms.  There is no freedom not to be offended.  And the meaning behind symbols and of words cannot be changed just to fit a political agenda. 

When you think about it, both flags could represent subjugation or freedom.  Yo ho, yo ho, A Pirate’s life for me.
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A Supreme Violation of Church and State

6/29/2015

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Now that the Supreme Court has redefined what marriage means, what exactly was gained by those who may now participate in same-sex marriages?  According to the Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, by participating in civil marriage rather than a civil union, same sex couples are afforded many more legal protections.  To begin, marriages are respected across the 50 United States.  As in heterosexual marriages, partners can also file for divorce.  Because of federalism, same sex partners can now benefit from joint federal /state programs and receive tax and public benefits for their families.  They will find it easier to fill out their status of married or single on official documents.  Finally, they will achieve equal, not separate but equal status in our society.

As citizens in this country, certainly same sex couples are entitled to these rights which are available only with a certificate of marriage. Wouldn’t the logical thing to do be to differentiate between a traditional marriage and a civil marriage? Civil marriages by a judge or civil servant are recognized by all 50 states and afforded the same tax and public benefits as a religious ceremony. And both require marital licenses.  Many heterosexual couples choose not to be married in a church because none are in accordance with their beliefs so this is not a new precedent. 

So the question I have to ask is, “Why did the Supreme Court feel compelled to redefine the word marriage, as understood by non-secularists, instead of simply saying civil marriages should be accessible by same sex partners across the 50 states?  Had they simply cited precedent to affirm the idea that all citizens should have access to a license permitting a civil marriage, those practicing a particular religion and abiding by a particular system of beliefs would not now be compelled to practice their religion as dictated by the U.S. government.  Clearly, by telling churches who they must marry or worshippers what they must believe, the Supreme Court has violated the separation of church and state.  The repercussions of this ruling have far reaching consequences; there will now be government interference in parenting, in non-secular institutions of learning, and in private organizations run by people in accordance with their religious beliefs. This ruling is in violation of the 1st Amendment.  Whether you are for or against same sex marriage is not at question here. The goal of marriage could have been achieved without the government elevating one set of beliefs over another.

How can this be resolved?  If the Legislative Branch of government had the stomach for it, they would begin impeachment against the Supreme Court judges who showed such contempt for the rule of law in this country.  Meanwhile, Jonathan Merritt writes in, “If the Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage in 2015, how will evangelicals respond?”

If the court were to “redefine marriage,” Moore [Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention] said Christians should “be ready to offer an alternative vision of marriage and family” that doesn’t include same-sex unions. Interestingly, his vision would be promoted primarily within the church rather than changing laws through political action.

As I pointed out in Majority Rules in Judicial Activism,

An easy way around this is to leave religion and marriages to the churches.  We simply must stop expecting government to legislate morality. Morality begins in the home. As the 1st Amendment is written,  

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

This first freedom is a fundamental right, one which is to be protected by our government. If the judges who committed this violation of this fundamental right are not themselves brought to justice, state legislatures need to start exercising the powers reserved to the states.  Following the example of Alabama, Alabama Senate Passes Bill to Effectively Nullify All Sides on Marriage, whose legislature introduced Senate Bill 377,

SB377 would end state issued marriage licenses, while providing marriage contracts as an alternative. It passed through the Alabama state Senate by a 22-3 margin on May 19;

The intent or motives behind this bill are a moot point. By removing the state from the equation, no one can force another to accept their marriage, nor can they force another to reject that person’s own beliefs regarding an institution older than government.

“Licenses are used as a way to stop people from doing things,” said Michael Boldin of the Tenth Amendment Center. “My personal relationship should not be subject to government permission.”

Michael Suede explains in, “Marriage Licenses Are A Racist Crime Against Humanity,”

Historically, all the states in America had laws outlawing the marriage of blacks and whites. In the mid-1800’s, certain states began allowing interracial marriages or miscegenation as long as those marrying received a license from the state. In other words they had to receive permission to do an act which without such permission would have been illegal.

With the 14th Amendment, no states should have even had the authority to outlaw such marriages, let alone license them. At the very least, such a practice would have gone the way of separate but equal during the civil rights movement.  Instead, federal government expanded this power to license, over all marriages. The government took this power in 1923.  Michael Suede continues,

In 1923, the Federal Government established the Uniform Marriage and Marriage License Act (they later established the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act). By 1929, every state in the Union had adopted marriage license laws.

Michael Suede has a very strong opinion about this practice.

Being granted permission to marry someone by a gang of criminal thieves is the lowest form of submission to State authority a plebe could ever engage in.

He suggests his readers follow his lead and, “reject the notion that the State has the authority to sanction [my] marriage.

I am inclined to agree.


AL Update
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Majority Rules in Judicial Activism

6/26/2015

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The Supreme Court has been in the news this week for two different decisions, both of which thrust Justice John Roberts into the conservative spotlight.  In King v. Burwell, Roberts upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, i.e. Obamacare, and in Obergefell  v. Hodges, Roberts voted against same sex marriage.  His opinions are important to examine because in both, it would appear that, he was more concerned with appeasing the popular majority instead of upholding the rule of law, which he is sworn to defend.   Let’s first look at King v Burwell.

Peter Suderman writes in, ”In Upholding Obamacare’s Subsidies, Justice Roberts Rewrites the Law—Again” about how Roberts goes beyond interpreting the law in the majority decision.

"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," he writes. "If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter."

And so Roberts decided that a law which explicitly and repeatedly states that subsidies are limited to exchanges "established by a State," and which defines "State" as one of the 50 states or the District of Columbia, actually allows subsidies in exchanges established by a State or the federal government. Roberts’ decision does not interpret Obamacare; it adds to it and reworks it, and in the process transforms it into something that it is not.

Or as John Podhoretz explains, even more succinctly in his article, “The twisted logic of John Roberts’ ObamaCare ruling,”

The language is plain, as even Roberts acknowledges: “An individual [is eligible] to receive tax credits only if the individual enrolls in an insurance plan through ‘an Exchange established by the State.’”

Should any state decide not to establish exchanges, that is the state’s right.  After all, this is how federalism works.  Citizens can vote with their feet, as it were.    

Suderman then paraphrases Justice Scalia’s dissent for his readers. 

If Roberts had truly wanted to defer to Congress, he could have ruled that the law means what says rather than what it does not, and effectively handed the issue back to the legislature, letting Congress decide whether and how to update the law in accordance with its own wishes. Instead, Roberts made the choice for Congress—taking its power to craft law for itself. As Scalia writes, "the Court’s insistence on making a choice that should be made by Congress both aggrandizes judicial power and encourages congressional lassitude."

Our Legislative Branch abdicated its responsibility by carelessly crafting Obamacare and passing it hastily. The Legislative Branch of government did not perform its duties in the best interest of the people by, using then House House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s  words, passing the bill before knowing what’s in it. One of the reasons why the law passing process is so cumbersome is because the Framers understood how important it is to think through the repercussions of laws and not to act hastily.  By abdicating its responsibility, it left the law -not only open to judicial interpretation- but to actual revision by activist judges on a Supreme Court.

Judicial Activism by judges is not a new development.

Cato Institute’s Ilya Shapiro writes in, “Justice John Roberts’s Obamacare Decision Is an Orwellian Mess,”

Activism, typified by the four Democratic-appointed justices, finds in the Constitution no judicially administrable limits on federal power.

The law in question forces citizens to purchase health insurance or pay a tax.  The insurance in question is overpriced and citizens who qualify will receive subsidies to make it more affordable.  How does this protect the individual liberty of some people against the concentrated power of a majority? It doesn’t and the precedent has now been established that majority rules.  This is frightening because we are not a democracy; we are a constitutional-republic.  The constitution should not be transgressed because we are a rule of law, not of men. Mob rule has no respect for minority rights.  The founders intended the citizens to elect representatives who could take into account a variety of interests and prevent extremist positions.  State legislatures were supposed to choose senators to represent state’s rights. Yet most citizens in this country think the words democracy and republic are interchangeable. The Framers agreed with Aristotle who equated democracy with mob rule and considered it a perversion of constitutional government.

Just as bad as judicial activism is judicial passivism.  As Shapiro explains,

Pacifism, a knee-jerk reaction to the activism of the 1960s and ’70s, argues that unelected judges shouldn’t overturn the people’s laws. Neither approach considers that the Constitution’s structural provisions, as well as the standard canons of statutory interpretation, aren’t dry exercises in political or linguistic theory, but a means to protect individual liberty against the concentrated power of popular majorities.

In, “9 Need-to-Know Quotes From the Obergefell v. Hodges Opinions,” Justice Roberts writes in his dissent,

"Many people will rejoice at this decision, and I begrudge none their celebration. But for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men, the majority’s approach is deeply disheartening. ... Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law. Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept."

In this case, Justice Roberts reminds us that we are a government of laws, not of men, in other words, we are a constitutional republic.  Our constitution is supposed to defend minority and majority rights.  Again, this is a state’s rights issue, except for the fact that the 14th Amendment led to the incorporation of the 1st Amendment and federal law now trumps state law around religion. 

Steven Waldman writes in, “Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America,”

Once the Fourteenth Amendment applied the Bill of Rights to the states, judges were left to figure out what the Founders would have done about things like prayer in school, when in fact such issues were far from the Founders’ minds.

An easy way around this is to leave religion and marriages to the churches.  We simply must stop expecting government to legislate morality. Morality begins in the home. As the 1st Amendment is written,

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

In this case, Justice Roberts’ opinion would seem to reflect judicial pacifism, in that he understands that the states’ laws on religion respect the codified non-secular definition of the church, which it is between a man and a woman for the purposes of procreation.

For all intents and purposes, marriage should be left to the church and the state should stay out of defining it. 

James Madison would have argued,

The “multiplicity of sects” would therefore protect religious liberty. In that sense, each faith owes its power and freedom to the vitality of other faiths. Those seeking the one True Way must tolerate the vibrancy of “false” faiths.

In essence, the Supreme Court traded one definition for another. Perhaps in this case, instead of practicing pacifism, the court should have explained that government only recognizes unions, for the purposes of wills, taxes, etc. and that marriage, as an institution, is regulated by each church as it sees fit.  What this ruling and new definition will mean for those who believe marriage is between a man and a woman remains to be seen.

In both court cases, we see the 10th Amendment being disregarded by the federal government. In both, the Supreme Court is not interpreting the law but crafting language for the law and the Legislative Branch seems to be yielding its power to the Judicial Branch. However, the people are still sovereign in this nation.  For the long term, we must elect representatives to office who understand and uphold the rule of law. To do so, we must understand it ourselves. In the short term, those we’ve already elected must consider their options for removing judges who are not exhibiting good behavior, i.e. legislating from the bench.  If they are unwilling to do their job, this must become an election issue so that the will of the majority does not disregard the will of the minority. Our freedom is at stake. 

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Why are TPA and TPP being referred to as Obamatrade?

6/11/2015

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In an article by Connor Wolf called This Is The Difference Between TPP And TPA (Hint: They Are Not The Same Thing), he explains that these two bills are linked together because Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) is a means to fast track passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).  I am confused by this line of reasoning because as a stand-alone bill, TPA is intended to provide transparency to all trade negotiations by soliciting public and congressional input throughout the process, however, TPP as a stand -alone bill, is behemoth and most of the information to which the public has access has been leaked.  Furthermore, it was negotiated behind closed doors.  According to the verbiage of TPA, if TPP is not negotiated using TPA guidelines, the fast track option is negated. So why do news outlets and a wide range of legislators portray these two bills disingenuously? Bundling the TPA and TPP as one idea called Obamatrade is no different than bundling immigration reform and border security, which are two separate issues.  One is about drug cartels and terrorism and the other is about how we manage people who want to immigrate to the United States. 

Challenges TPA hopes to remedy throughout the negotiating process and in resulting trade agreements have parallels to challenges facing the US and its allies when agreeing to make war on the foreign stage.  While one president may assure allies that US troops will assist in gaining and maintaining freedom, i.e., Iraq, a  new administration or congress may change the terms, leaving a foreign country abandoned, with the understanding that the US cannot be relied upon to meet its agreed upon obligations.  When negotiating foreign trade agreements, this same realization comes into play when negotiations that took place in good faith are undermined by a new administration or congress that change the terms.  TPA hopes to create a set of consistent negotiating objectives when hammering out trade agreements, allowing agreements to transcend administrations and congresses.

The following excerpts from a letter written to President Obama from Sen. Jeff Sessions  (R, AL) would alarm any person who understands the division of powers and checks and balances built into our rule of law.  Posted in Exclusive–Sessions to Obama: Why Are You Keeping Obama Trade’s New Global Governance Secret? Sessions explains,

“Under fast-track, Congress transfers its authority to the executive and agrees to give up several of its most basic powers.”

“These concessions include: the power to write legislation, the power to amend legislation, the power to fully consider legislation on the floor, the power to keep debate open until Senate cloture is invoked, and the constitutional requirement that treaties receive a two-thirds vote.”

Understanding that Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Representative Paul Ryan have gotten behind TPA, it would be short sited and irresponsible not to probe further into why they aren’t exposing these violations of our rule of law.

According to The Hill’s Daniel Horowitz in TPA's 'Whoa, if true' moment , Cruz and Ryan have explained, “most of the content of the bill is actually requirements on the executive branch to disclose information to Congress and consult with Congress on the negotiations.”  Congress would be informed on the front end, as opposed to debating and making changes to what was already negotiated.  This is important because as Cato Institute’s  Scott Lincicome and K. William Watson explain in Don’t Drink the Obamatrade Snake Oil ,

Although trade agreements provide a mechanism for overcoming political opposition to free trade, they also create new political problems of their own, most of which stem from the inherent conflict in the U.S. Constitution between the power granted to Congress to “regulate commerce with foreign nations” (Article I, Section 8) and that granted to the president to negotiate treaties (Article II, Section 2) and otherwise act as the “face” of U.S. international relations. In short, the executive branch is authorized to negotiate trade agreements that escape much of the legislative sausage-making that goes in Washington, but, consistent with the Constitution, any such deals still require congressional approval—a process that could alter the agreement’s terms via congressional amendments intended to appease influential constituents. The possibility that, after years of negotiations, an unfettered Congress could add last-minute demands to an FTA (or eliminate its biggest benefits) discourages all but the most eager U.S. trading partners to sign on to any such deal.

TPA, also known as “fast track,” was designed to fix this problem. TPA is an arrangement between the U.S. executive and legislative branches, under which Congress agrees to hold a timely, up-or-down vote (i.e., no amendments) on future trade agreements in exchange for the president agreeing to follow certain negotiating objectives set by Congress and to consult with the legislative branch before, during, and after FTA negotiations. In essence, Congress agrees to streamline the approval process as long as the president negotiates agreements that it likes.

For a really good argument for fast tracking, watch the video that can be found here:

Here's why the TPP is such a big deal 03:24

K. William Watson explains in What’s Really in the New Trade Promotion Authority Bill? TPA will actually bring more transparency to the negotiating process.

The current bill would require the administration to provide public summaries of its negotiating positions.  This will give the public something concrete to debate without having to resort to conspiracy claims or wild theories.  It will also help everyone see more clearly how negotiators intend to implement the negotiating objectives of TPA.

It will also require that every member of Congress has access to the full text of the negotiations from beginning to end.

If TPA actually does what it is intended, a bill like TPP could not possibly be held to an up or down vote because it would not have been negotiated using the processes as outlined.  Or could it?  This administration passed Obamacare, which is a tax; they wanted comprehensive immigration reform and secure borders yet they openly courted Latin American countries to bring their kids to the border; they said they’d be the most transparent administration but there has been a dramatic lack of transparency, one must pass the bill before knowing what’s in it.

Perhaps what it all boils down to is what Rick Helfenbein writes about in Trade promotion authority, a Washington drama

There are other conservatives like Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) who remain adamantly opposed to giving the president (presumed) additional authority. Jones said of Obama and TPA: "Given his record, I am astonished that some of my colleagues are so eager to fork over even more of their constitutional authority to the [p]resident for him to abuse."

While this article addresses the issue of TPA, it doesn’t begin to address the arguments against TPP, for example  The Guardian’s C Robert Gibson and Taylor Channing’s conclusion that, “Fast-tracking the TPP, meaning its passage through Congress without having its contents available for debate or amendments, was only possible after lots of corporate money exchanged hands with senators.” That is an article for another day. 

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On upcoming vote
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An Underhanded Usurpation of Popular Sovereignty

6/5/2015

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Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. Thomas Jefferson Declaration of Independence

Under the Articles of Confederation, the 13 states that made up the United States thought of themselves more as nation states loosely banding together as one country, for the purpose of defending their fragile sovereignty against foreign interests. Soon, a crisis later deemed Shay’s Rebellion, emerged.  Men who put themselves in harm’s way fighting in the American Revolution had their farms confiscated and were thrown into debtor prisons for being unable to pay taxes issued by their government (ironically to pay for the long war). Farmers organized a “resistance in ways similar to the American Revolutionary struggle.” Coined, “Shaysites” (named after their military leader), they were seen by some “as heroes in the direct tradition of the American Revolution, while many others saw them as dangerous rebels whose actions might topple the young experiment in republican government.” This emergency contributed to the determination that our country needed a national government with authority to enforce its power to raise money and defend itself against foreign and domestic threats.  

Ensuing debate, however, made it clear that the states would not yield large amounts of control to a single executive who might abuse this privilege.  Instead of creating a strong national government, the US Constitution establishes a federal system of government in which power is to be shared with the states.  Furthermore, instead of having one executive with the power to legislate, enforce, and adjudicate, three branches of government with separated and shared powers were established to check and balance each other. Indeed, the Framers decided to divide the legislative branch into two chambers, the House and the Senate.  Those elected to the Senate were intended to balance state against national interests. Members elected to the House of Representatives were supposed to represent the people on whose popular sovereignty our government’s power rests -- thus the nomenclature “people’s house.” The origination clause provides that all money bills are to begin in the House. This is based on the long established practice that there should be “no taxation without representation.” 

Sadly, due to the 17th Amendment, the Senate chamber no longer represents state interests due to the election of its members directly by the people rather than being chosen by individual state legislatures.  Additionally, the House has abdicated its responsibility to the people by allowing the Senate to use smoke and mirrors to originate a money bill in its chamber. According to National Review’s George Will,

In October 2009, the House passed a bill that would have modified a tax credit for members of the armed forces and some other federal employees who were first-time home buyers — a bill that had nothing to do with health care. Two months later the Senate “amended” this bill by obliterating it. The Senate renamed it and completely erased its contents, replacing them with the ACA’s contents. 

Because of Congress’ lack of public debate on the bill (another abdication of responsibility), the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed before members of either house, let alone the people, actually knew what was in it.  In 2012, the court held that the “shared responsibility payment“, deemed a penalty by the ACA, is “a tax on the activity — actually, the nonactivity — of not purchasing insurance.” 

While many await the court’s decision in King v Burwell, as to “whether federal-tax subsidies are available to people who purchase health insurance from exchanges operated by the federal government or instead whether such subsidies are available only from exchanges established by the states,” the question that begs to be heard is why a bill that doesn’t pass the smell test was passed by our congress in the first place. 

To recap, in order to pass this landmark legislation, true debate was avoided, the exact legislation was unclear, and it originated in the Senate as an entirely different piece of legislation.  Only an apathetic, uneducated citizenry would allow those elected to the highest offices in the land, to either abdicate their responsibilities to uphold the rule of law or nefariously pursue the ends to justify these means in order to achieve universal health coverage.   During the genesis of our nation, such hubris would have been met with outrage, perhaps even armed resistance. Today, we no longer recognize what would have been deemed tyranny by the founding generations. We idly watch as our popular sovereignty is surreptitiously destroyed.

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First Amendment Freedoms Losing Ground

4/2/2015

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According to the discussion around the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act”, the bill is intended to reaffirm religious freedom guaranteed by the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution. The law’s main objective is to prohibit the passage of any state or local laws that "substantially burden" the religious beliefs of an individual, business or religious institution. If the general public actually understood what the 1st Amendment truly says – that the government cannot prohibit the free exercise of religion, not only would there be an understanding of the redundancy of such a law (hence the word “restoration”), there would be a realization that a law reaffirming our commitment to the 1st Amendment should be unnecessary. To this date, there haven’t been any amendments to the Constitution which are contrary to this extremely important 1st freedom.

Once again, Conservatives, i.e. Republicans, look like clumsy bigots because the message – the argument – is framed wrong. Pundits should be saying, "While we may not like it and are perhaps offended by it, businesses that are not publicly funded have the prerogative to allow religious beliefs to influence their profit making decisions.

In Johnson v. Texas, it was determined that,

“...the Government may not prohibit the verbal or nonverbal expression of an idea merely because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable.”

In this case, the ruling was a response to flag burning; however, the act itself is protected because we value free thinking. Free thinking goes both ways. Gay people have the right to be who they are, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone and straight people have the right to be who they are, as long as they are not hurting anyone.

Okay, so anyone with knowledge of precedent will now ask about Brown V Board of Education and how this decision influences the public’s response to “RFRA”. The key ideas in the majority opinion are tempered by the words “public” and the role of the “state” or local government in providing a right:

“Where a State has undertaken to provide an opportunity for an education in its public schools, such an opportunity is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms. P. 493.(d) Segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprives children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities, even though the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may be equal. Pp. 493-494.(e) The ‘separate but equal’ doctrine adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, has no place in the field of public education.”

Having pizza catered by a particular business establishment is not a right. The ability to exercise our rights and responsibilities as citizens is not dependent on eating a particular slice of pizza nor is government funding involved in bringing this particular service to a community.

If government gets involved, now we are socially engineering. Would I, a potential business purveyor, personally have an issue with who I serve as long as I make a profit? No. However, the government is restricted by the 1st Amendment from telling a business operator who follows a religious belief system to ignore these beliefs – especially if that person is in the minority. That said, what is the difference between serving a gay person who walks into your place of business and catering a private event? Are you going to ask every customer who comes in what his or her sexual preferences are? As a capitalist, any conductor of business will risk going out of business by such “discretionary” practices.

All around our nation, one can find all boy schools, all girl schools, all black colleges, and religious institutions...and no government entity is forcing these private institutions to service those not targeted by their mission. The question one should be asking is this. How does this compare with forcing people to buy health insurance (especially insurance that meets certain criteria)? By compelling people to be insured, the government is forcing a transaction. It is not a transaction of free will. Is anyone thinking about the long term repercussions of such government intervention?

We are a nation founded on the ideas of liberty. Yet, encouraging such government practices is eroding our free will. Such government intervention results in our being told how we must spend our money and with whom we must conduct our business. Capitalism is supposed to guide business decisions. Factions (special interest groups) are supposed to be so numerous that none can seriously gain the power to violate minority rights. And just in case, we have a Bill of Rights. We are a government of laws, not of men.

This misplaced outrage and manipulation of the media would make any teacher fear having a class discussion on this topic because of how it might be misconstrued. And more to the point, this is precisely why children are graduating without higher thinking skills...the thought police might find how this fits into the 1st Amendment too offensive to discuss. This affirms why the Liberal Arts (logic) are important, not just STEM curriculum.

In our political correctness and effort to delegitimize our Founders and Framers for compromising and seeking a more perfect union instead of holding out for utopia, and for not being perfect themselves, we seem to forget that these white men with an agenda were actually looking out for us. They repeatedly stated how a well-educated citizenry was necessary to maintain and guard against those who would take away the freedoms for which they’d spent a significant portion of their lives working toward. It’s sad commentary on our society that the whole point of the 1st Amendment freedoms is lost on multiple generations of the populace. That’s the real story.
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The Dismantling of Federalism

1/12/2015

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It wouldn't be surprising, if polled, that many United States citizens would feel disenfranchised when it comes to politics. Though the right to vote and petition the government is supposed to make sure the people's interests are considered, we the people are not given standing to question the constitutionality of laws, i.e. The Affordable Care Act. Political parties are no longer able to moderate the positions of the most extreme members of our society, who feel compelled to take law into their own hands, i.e. exhibiting anarchy against the rule of law in response to the Grand Jury's decision not to indict in the events surrounding Ferguson. Extremism, lack of understanding, apathy, an agenda driven 4th Estate, all work against the citizenry in exercising their rights and responsibilities with fidelity in today's society. How did it come to this?

One of the earliest Supreme Court cases to set precedent (A decided case which is cited or used as an example to justify a judgment in a subsequent case--ninja words) for our rule of law was Marbury v Madison. What happened is this. Before leaving office at the end of his term, 2nd President John Adams appointed a slew of judges to the federal courts to maintain an ongoing Federalist Party influence during upcoming Democratic-Republican President Thomas Jefferson's tenure in office. John Marshall was unable to deliver all the commissions before our 3rd President began his term of office and Jefferson refused to have the remainder of the commissions delivered. William Marbury, who was to receive a commission, was not pleased with this turn of events and applied to the Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus, to force delivery of the commissions.

Angered by the appointment of the "midnight judges" Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party controlled congress attacked the Federalist controlled courts, removing many of the appointees by repealing the Judiciary Act of 1801, under which authority many of the appointments were made. To prevent an appeal on the subject, they determined the Supreme Court would not reconvene until 1803. By doing so, the executive and legislative branches appeared to be cementing their authority over the judicial branch.

The newly appointed Chief Justice John Marshall was in a bind. He did not want to further anger the Democratic-Republicans, fearing the administration would go as far as to simply ignore any decision made by the Supreme Court, if it appeared to further a Federalist agenda. Yet, he truly believed that Marbury's commission was legally binding and should have been delivered. He resolved this conundrum, at the same time elevating the judiciary branch as co-equal to the other branches, by determining that the power to issue a writ of mandamus –given to the Supreme Court as part of the Judiciary Act of 1789, was actually "unconstitutional." Therefore, he could not issue a mandate regarding the commission, satisfying Jefferson. At the same time, Marshall established the power of judicial review, ensuring the other branches abide by the Constitution, as interpreted by the Judicial Branch. In doing so, this elevated the status of the Judicial Branch, giving it the sole power to determine the constitutionality of law –a power for which it was never intended, but is now associated with this branch.

Influenced by Baron de Montesquieu, the Framers intended to prevent tyranny by dividing the powers delegated to the federal government into three branches of government, which could check and balance each other. In addition, according to the 10th Amendment, powers not delegated to the federal government were to remain with the states and the people. If the constitutionality of a law is in question, this determination is presumably up to the states and the people to decide. The precedent for this is called nullification.

"If the feds pass a law that a state deems to be outside the boundaries of its proper constitutional authority, the state will simply ignore the law and refuse to comply with it." — The New American

This idea, that the states could declare a federal law null and void because it violates the compact between the states and the federal government, eventually leads to the secession of the southern states from the union.

Because most people associate the Civil War with making good on a promissory note to those who were not treated equally under the law, the precedent for nullification is lost on the majority of citizens. This is problematic because citizens have no standing to bring questions of constitutionality before the Supreme Court and states have lost the main check and balance intended to ensure their interests were defined and respected by the federal government with passage of the 17th Amendment—which eliminated the choosing of senators by the state legislatures and having them directly elected by the people. There is currently a movement to remove the last check and balance of the states with the elimination of the Electoral College.

There are currently a number of issues against which the states and people seem to be rendered powerless.

1) Immigration: By not enforcing the laws that Congress has passed on securing the border and immigration, the Executive Branch is marginalizing the Legislative Branch.

2) Obamacare: By unilaterally changing the text of the Affordable Care Act without seeking the changes legislatively, the Executive Branch is manipulating written law by decree, marginalizing the Legislative Branch.

3) Gitmo: Mr. Obama is "transferring" enemy combatant prisoners from Guantanamo Bay in an effort to empty the prison, in effect forcing a "closing" of the facility, something that Congress has passed legislation to prevent.

4) EPA: Using Executive Branch decreed regulations instead of seeking legislation from Congress, Mr. Obama is effectively legislating by regulating, and affecting many pieces of legislation Congress has passed to affect pro-economic growth.

Now that the new Congress has been seated, the President Obama has promised to veto any legislation that doesn't further his agenda. It would seem that more than ever, the states and the people must reassert the powers which were never given to the federal government in order to prevent the tyrannical practices taking place at the federal level.

James Madison, in Federalist 51, writes,

"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."

It seems that the fail-safe measures which were put in place to oblige the government to control itself have been breached. It is up to the states and the people to restore the natural order once again.
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Philadelphia Freedoms

1/10/2015

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The founding documents, which include the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, capture the philosophy and political thinking that drove the Founders and Framers of our country. Afraid of losing the freedom we gained from a tyrannical government, the Federalists wanted a stronger (albeit "limited") federal government to ensure our country's sovereignty and ability to "keep our republic." Afraid that a strengthened federal government would abuse its power, as those with governing authority are prone to do, the Antifederalists wanted not only to limit the authority we ceded to a federal government, but to add a Bill of Rights, to guarantee our rights against encroachment by a government which didn't understand or respect the sovereignty of the people.

Alexander Hamilton argued vehemently against the need for a Bill of Rights. Because the federal government's powers were enumerated, there was no concern of over-reach. We were only yielding a specified amount of authority and what we didn't hand over was ours to keep. The Antifederalists, looking to history, were fervent in their arguments that our rights needed to be specified on paper, so that there would be no question about what belonged to us. John Adams, though a Federalist, captures this sentiment so well when he says, "We are a nation of laws, not men." By writing down our laws, we can prevent men from impulsively reacting to public demagoguery or from despotic tendencies. It is no surprise then that the Framers capitulated on these demands and made good the promise of a Bill of Rights.

There is a difference between the power to require of people certain behaviors and rights to behave without fear of reprisal. This is the balance the Framers sought and the balance which must be maintained in order to provide a climate of freedom and security. Though we are mostly familiar with the 1st amendment freedoms of speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition, the 2nd amendment right to bear arms, and the 5th amendment right to a jury and to remain silent, the people, who are the ruled and the rulers alike, should understand what compelled the Framers to include the 9th and 10th amendments.

Amendment IX states,

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Amendment X states,

"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."

Surely, the Framers hoped to assuage the fears of a populace intimately familiar with tyrannical practices such as illegal searches and seizures, unreasonable punishments, and other abuses (many listed in the Declaration of Independence). However, two concerns were not evident in any of the first source materials left behind from our founding, perhaps they weren't even considered, but they should be. The first being preciseness of language. If we go back to Hamilton's belief that the powers not specifically enumerated in the Constitution belong to the people, we wouldn't be having any discussion over what specifically is meant or not meant by the rights listed in the first ten amendments. The second is that there is no right "not to be offended." When we bow to political correctness and prevent certain forms of free speech in certain venues, we hobble the very freedoms for which we fought to maintain. It's that simple.

The Framers were concerned that we respect minority rights and this includes minority views or views that may offend some. It is in this way that we honor our first amendment freedoms. It is power that is limited, specifically that which is granted to our intentionally limited government.
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21st Century Sentinels Desperate to Change the Narrative

11/26/2014

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In light of the number of commentaries which attempt to justify our presidents use of executive order to defer indefinitely the deportation of illegals until our congress passes a comprehensive immigration reform law, or which seek to blame our congress for current law which could be argued is too broad, leaving it to bureaucrats to write or the other branches to interpret and enforce-or not enforce, one must consider the administrative policies which led to the massive influx of undocumented children and adults in the first place.

In December, 2013, Judson Berger writes in Judge claims DHS delivering smuggled children to illegal immigrant parents, according to US District Judge Andrew S. Hanen, "in more than one case before his court, immigration officials are arresting human traffickers smuggling children into the US - and then "delivering the minors to the custody of the parent illegally living in the United States." This is verified by "Chris Crane, president of the National ICE Council union."

In an article written by Michele Hickford in June 2014, Feds advertised for escort services for unaccompanied alien children in January, she brings the readers' attention to an opportunity posted on FedBizOpps.gov which reads, "help wanted" in which "the feds were looking for vendors to help escort unaccompanied alien children (UAC) in JANUARY of this year."

In two separate Breitbart articles written this past summer, Feds Dole Out Healthcare and Child Support Payments for Foreign Minors and Collect More Than $7,000 Per Month for 'Fostering' Adult Illegal Aliens, Kristin Tate writes about how illegals have been incentivized by the Obama administration to come to this country. She explains that in advertisements looking for foster parents to house illegals, many of which are already adults, prospective parents will be paid thousands of dollars to house illegals who receive taxpayer subsidized legal counsel, food, education, healthcare, transportation, and an "allowance."

The idea that the numbers of illegals are so vast that we cannot enforce the law as it is written brings to mind The Cloward-Piven Strategy, as explained by Richard Poe and published in 2005 at DiscoverTheNetworks.org. In this article, Poe writes, "the Cloward-Piven Strategy seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse."

In an article published by The Washington Times, Obamacare offers firms $3,000 incentive to hire illegals over native-born workers Stephen Dinan alerts us to this important development. "President Obama's temporary amnesty, which lasts three years, declares up to 5 million illegal immigrants to be lawfully in the country and eligible for work permits, but it still deems them ineligible for public benefits such as buying insurance on Obamacare's health exchanges," thus incentivizing employers to hire those who came here illegally.

I know it's hard to imagine that there might be nefarious forces at work, conspiring to bring down the United States of America, but think for a moment about the Cold War and the vast human and other resources it took for the Soviet Union to strategically place spies posing as average American families raising their children in DC and Virginia. No one could have believed it if evidence wasn't available to prove such acts of war against our country.

There is no secret about Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, that Hillary Clinton herself wrote a term paper on his strategies to promote progressivism by fomenting revolution or that Cloward Pliven supporters were influenced by his tactics. Our president himself was a former "community organizer" advocate/activist for the breakdown of the status quo.

Before legitimizing our president's actions, one must look at motive. Let's not forget Michele Obama's famous words, "For the First Time in My Adult Lifetime, I'm Really Proud of My Country...because I think people are hungry for change" and that President Obama himself promised to fundamentally transform America. Van Jones, the president's former Green Jobs Czar said to affect change, there needed to be pressure which he described as, "top down, bottom up, inside out." It is imperative that we not forget that it is the ideas and rule of law written in our founding documents which unites us as Americans. At some point, citizens must stop disbelieving the sentinels who are trying to bring attention to information not covered by the mainstream media as conspiratorial and open their minds to the idea that perhaps all is not right with their world, after all.
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Are We Ready for the Fundamental Transformation?

7/11/2014

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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. – Preamble, U.S. Constitution

9/11 was a clarion call to many Americans who were shocked to find themselves brutally attacked on their own soil that beautiful September morning. Seemingly out of nowhere this offensive made no sense to the average thirty something man or woman, who might best be described as a soccer mom or weekend warrior concerned with working hard to raise a family and live out the American dream.  This was a tear in the veil through which we viewed our world.  Where was this coming from? All eyes focused on our president who slowly began to explain what had happened and how we would deal with this seemingly new threat to our comfortable existence.

Over the next decade and a half, many in our society awakened out of their lethargy and began to pay greater attention to world and domestic affairs. This meant that our elected leaders would face greater scrutiny in what was to become known as “New Media”.  Dissatisfaction with status quo wheeling and dealing led to the “tea party” movement.  This is a response to the “progressive movement” which exerts powerful influence on the republican and democratic parties, our education system, our fundamental institutions and our culture. 

Today, within American society, an ideological war is being fought on three fronts: 1) between those who believe in big government (government knows best) and those who believe in limited government (less government means more freedom), 2) those who want the United States to become more isolationist vs. those who want our country to remain involved in world affairs, and 3) those who believe national sovereignty backed with capable power will protect our interests and those who believe in a world government and redistribution of wealth, power, and influence. 

We are at a pivotal moment in time, not unlike the decade immediately following our independence from England.  In the next decade, we could irreversibly change our political system (which many take for granted) to one in which we yield our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence) to the ascendance of a political oligarchy made up of entrenched politicians and unelected bureaucrats who are above the law. The better alternative would be to ensure that our citizenry understands the rationale behind our rule of law and the overarching importance of maintaining the integrity of the U.S. Constitution in order to preserve our position as a world power and continue to facilitate a domestic environment conducive to economic and social mobility. Only with this awareness can each generation ordain it as stated in the preamble. 

In The Origins of our Constitution, Gordon Wood writes, “Given the Americans' loyalty to their states and their deep-rooted fears of centralized governmental authority, explaining the Constitution of 1787 is not as easy as it looks.” (p. 2) Most students of American History are superficially familiar with the reasons leading to the Philadelphia Convention.  In Shay’s Rebellion and the Making of a Nation,  a collaboration among Springfield Technical Community College (STCC), the Springfield Armory, and the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association (PVMA), teachers are taught to explain that consideration for creating a stronger national government was directly influenced by Shays’ Rebellion and “what many delegates perceived as state-sanctioned assaults on liberties and property. What isn’t discussed in our nation’s classrooms are the details.  Delegates attending the convention were largely motivated by rumors  that Shay and his men planned to “march on Boston, loot the Bank of Massachusetts, recruit additional rebels in New Hampshire and Rhode Island, and then march southward with the intention of redistributing all property.” (Novus Ordo Seclorum, McDonald, p. 177)

On a national level, “The Continental Congress, despite a lack of formal powers, engineered a massive expropriation of private property through a calculated policy of inflation”.  They had financed the war with unsecured paper money called bills of credit, which eventually depreciated to zero. (McDonald, pp.’s, 154-155) “Alexander Hamilton tried in 1781, and again in 1783, to draft an amendment that granted Congress the right to levy and collect an impost.” (The Articles of Confederation 1781-1789) which required unanimous approval of all the states. “Rogues Island…killed the amendment to the Articles of Confederation that would have given Congress a source of revenue from import duties.” (McDonald, p. 175)

Within the states, currency, “issued in North Carolina and Rhode Island depreciated significantly.” (McDonald, p. 156) “Rhode Island established criminal penalties for refusing to accept its currency and removed the right to trial-by-jury in cases related to debt-collection.” (The Articles of Confederation 1781-1789)  There was seemingly no recourse. In Connecticut, “many public creditors suffered the absurd experience of having their farms sold for nonpayment of taxes that had been levied to pay them interest on their public securities.” (McDonald, pp.’s 173-174) There were tax revolts occurring throughout the New England region because the cost of government and the revolutionary war was being foisted on a citizenry that did not have the means to pay and were unwilling to give up their property to satisfy this debt.

There was a rise of demagogues holding office, driven by their passion for popular favor, not reason.  (McDonald, p 164) Anti-Tory statutes were enacted which were unconstitutional yet reflected the sentiment of the citizenry.  (McDonald, pp.’s, 155-156) The thirteen sovereign states had “vested virtually unlimited powers in popularly elected legislatures,” (McDonald, p. 160) and Americans were discovering they were less “secure in their property rights between 1776 and 1787 as they had been during the colonial period.” (McDonald, p. 154)

“Attacks upon property rights were, in the eyes of many, symptomatic of the excesses that were inherent in democracy.” (McDonald p. 157) The prophet Micah (Micah 4:4) wrote, “But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.”  Many of those later known as the Framers of our current rule of law became convinced that, “The function of government, in bringing about such a condition, was to protect the people against themselves.”  (McDonald p. 160) The total of their experiences of living in sovereign states, loosely united under our country’s first constitution The Articles of Confederation led them to this conclusion. Yet, Americans were for the most part disinclined to yield any portion of their regained liberties back to a centralized authority and, as famously written in the Declaration of Independence, they were “more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.” (McDonald p 161)

In our current political society, federal policy is clearly behind a massive redistribution of wealth and property.  In Free fall: How government policies brought down the housing market, Peter J. Wallison and Edward J. Pinto of the American Enterprise Institute provide a litany of reasons to explain the government role in the mortgage crisis. 

The affordable housing goals imposed on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 1992 were the major contributors to both the deterioration in underwriting standards between 1992 and 2008 and the growth of an unprecedented ten-year housing bubble that suppressed delinquencies and stimulated the growth of a private securitization market for subprime loans. But other government policies are also to blame for the deterioration in the US housing market, including the thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage, the mortgage interest tax deduction, the right to refinance without penalty, and the Community Reinvestment Act.

What isn’t addressed in this comprehensive, yet easy to understand article, is the subsequent redistribution of property that has occurred since the crisis. Many foreclosed homes have been taken from the largely middle class and are either rented out, often to Section 8 recipients, changing the makeup of neighborhoods and displacing many families who had believed in the investment value of their homes.  In other instances, extremely wealthy people or corporations have been able to purchase these homes on the cheap and stand to make great profit on them should the market recover. 

In Summary of Kelo v. New London (2005) , author Tom Head writes, In Kelo vs. New London, the Supreme Court determined that, “a city may claim private property under the Fifth Amendment so long as it does so as part of a clear economic development plan intended to benefit the community as a whole.”

In a scathing dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas) condemned the ruling as a fundamental attack on property rights. "To reason," she wrote, "that ... incidental public benefits ... render economic development takings 'for public use' is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property--and thereby effectively to delete the words 'for public use' from ... the Fifth Amendment."

Since this 2005 decision, property owners have become less secure in their property rights.  There is a movie coming out, Little Pink House about this case, soon.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 51,

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

According to Forrest McDonald, in 1787, the Constitutional Convention could have gone in one of three ways. 

One could give up on republicanism and restore a more authoritarian form of government, monarchical or otherwise. Or one could attempt to create a more virtuous public by means of education, by setting good examples, or by making it to the interest of individuals to strive for the public good.  Or one could try to establish republican government upon principles other than virtue, upon the assumption that most men, most of the time, would act out of motives of self-interest rather than of the public interest.  Advocates of each position would be present in the Constitutional Convention. (McDonald, p. 179)

Forrest McDonald cites Adams Smith’s, Theory of Moral Sentiments to explain, “In Times of civil discontent and disorder, there are two kinds of leaders.” One “seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society…as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chessboard.” (McDonald, p. 292) The other kind of leader will “respect the established powers and privileges even of individuals, and still more those of the great orders and societies into which the state is divided.” He will accommodate “his public arrangements to the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people.” At the convention, it was the second type of leader who prevailed.  (McDonald, p. 293)

At this juncture in our history as a constitutional republic, let us remember some words from David Hume, one of the most influential political theorists of the colonial period, and often quoted by the Framers during the convention. "Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature."

Are we prepared to accept a fundamental transformation of our country? Or would we be better served by studying our founding documents to better understand how our rule of law was designed to protect our inalienable rights and allow us to thrive as a sovereign nation? Many Americans who have made the effort to read and understand the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights would agree that it is because of the great thought that went into their construction that our country is often called the shining city on the hill. 
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Our Nation Under Mob Rules

7/17/2013

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How many Americans remember learning about the Boston Massacre when they were school children? I wonder, does anyone truly understand why we are required to learn about incidents like this in our school’s curriculum? In the aftermath of the Boston Massacre, John Adams agreed to represent the British soldiers who were forced to defend themselves against an unruly mob. This was not a popular position to take; yet John Adams was not one who would concern himself with such things.  He took on the challenge because of his understanding of and respect for the law.

Below, is an excerpt from John Adams’ speech at the Boston Massacre Trial.

-Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence: nor is the law less stable than the fact; if an assault was made to endanger their lives, the law is clear, they had a right to kill in their own defence; if it was not so severe as to endanger their lives, yet if they were assaulted at all, struck and abused by blows of any sort, by snow-balls, oyster-shells, cinders, clubs, or sticks of any kind; this was a provocation, for which the law reduces the offence of killing, down to manslaughter, in consideration of those passions in our nature, which cannot be eradicated.

As explained in John Adams and the Massachusetts Constitution ,

Adams contended,

Because the evidence was unclear as to which soldiers had fired, it was better for the jury to acquit all eight defendants than mistakenly to convict one innocent man. "The reason is, because it's of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished." He believed that the soldiers had a right to a fair trial. 

John Adams won the acquittal of six British soldiers and two defendants received convictions for the lesser charge of manslaughter, for their role in the deaths of five colonists.

Few people understand the legal origins from which our rule of law is derived, beginning with the Magna Carta which established the principle that no one, including the king or a lawmaker, is above the law. Nor are people cognizant of the subsequent history and philosophy influencing the framers of our U.S. and many state constitutions. Sadly, this lack of understanding is what allows so many people to disregard system a system of justice intended to be impartial and to afford each citizen equal protection under the law. It is this disregard which propels mobs to demand social justice and influences politicians to entertain the passion of the people.  The founders and framers were afraid of mob rule.  They understood that emotion impairs judgment.  John Adams so eloquently explained during the trial:

The law, in all vicissitudes of government, fluctuations of the passions, or
flights of enthusiasm, will preserve a steady undeviating course; it will not bend to the uncertain wishes, imaginations, and wanton tempers of men.


Whether or not Stand Your Ground laws should be repealed is up to the legislating bodies in charge of implementing and repealing legislation in their consecutive states.  Perhaps Stand Your Ground violates a historic perspective on manslaughter, perhaps not.  But historical precedence does constrain our ruling bodies from double jeopardy or from holding a person accountable for violating a law which did not exist at the time it was broken.

The study of our state and U.S. constitutions does not receive nearly enough attention in our nation’s schools.  While reading, writing, and arithmetic are critical to an educated citizenry, understanding how our rule of law is designed to limit government and maximize freedom is critical to the liberties for which our forebears fought so hard. To allow a witch-hunt in the form of our own government asking our citizenry to report incidences of possible malfeasance by the recently acquitted George Zimmerman in order to prosecute him a second time for his role in Trayvon Martin’s death would be a travesty and antithetical to our system of justice. 

We live in a constitutional republic.  The founders and framers understood that we needed written law under which everyone is treated equally.  They also recognized that a representative government in which there was a people’s house and a senate, as well as a judiciary that practiced good behavior, would constrain the passions of the mob and allow those holding office to impassively legislate, enforce, or adjudicate.  Allowing the media and special interest groups to demand the government take additional legal action against George Zimmerman establishes very dangerous precedent.  The people and their representatives need to rethink this course of action before we irrevocably damage the rule of law under which we are afforded our equal protection and under which our rights are guaranteed.
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    Nancy Salvato’s education career includes teaching students from pre-k to graduate school.  She has also worked as an administrator in higher education. Her private sector efforts focus on the advancement of constitutional literacy. She attended the National Endowment for the Humanity’s National Academy for Civics & Government, and is the author of “Keeping a Republic: An Argument for Sovereignty.” 

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