The dream of freedom, liberty and justice for all belongs to everyone

By Seth Richardson

We have a dream. It’s the dream of our forefathers and the Founders of this nation, that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. But dreams are not reality. Reality is created by the hard work of making the dream manifest. And that has been the hard work and sacrifice of generations. In no place on earth, in the history of mankind, has this dream come closer to reality than here. In that accomplishment we may all take great pride.

The labor is not ended though, and there remains much to do to truly realize the dream that we share. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of this dream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Glenn Beck spoke of this dream in the same place in 2010. More than 700,000 people came to honor this dream on August 28, 2010 in that quintessential place for redress of grievances. Of every race, religion and creed, these people came from every corner of this nation to show their support for this dream, to stand up and be counted, just as those who went before them did. They came, they tell me, because it’s important to show the world that the dream of equality and justice remains strong, and that honor is still the guiding principle of this nation.

This dream belongs exclusively to neither Rev. King nor Glenn Beck nor to any man, woman or child on the face of the earth. It belongs equally to all who crave liberty and justice, regardless of their race, creed or religion. It is not to be withheld from anyone on the basis of their skin color or their economic condition.

Some seek to misappropriate this dream to themselves and they debase and dishonor it in a petulant attempt to claim moral superiority over others, or worse, to gain political or economic advantage. But the dream so brilliantly articulated by the Rev. King in 1963, and by Abraham Lincoln a hundred years before, and by the Founders themselves more than a hundred years before that, and by Glenn Beck two days ago, is the universal dream of all honorable people, each of whom may claim it as their own.

Just as the Civil War was the sacrifice of more than 600,000 Americans towards the dream of liberty and equality for all that our Declaration of Independence made part of our national honor, the civil rights movement was not just marches and speeches by one race or another. It was the honor of the People of this great nation shining through and made manifest. It was the rejection of the racism and bigotry of the minority of dishonorable, heartless and evil people who enslaved their fellow men, who stood in the doorways of public schools to prevent black children from getting an education, who drove blacks from lunch counters and buses, who murdered and terrorized blacks and whites alike during the civil rights era, who as base cowards without any honor gathered together in hooded disguise, afraid to show their faces lest they be held accountable for their crimes.

It was not the oppressed alone who enacted civil rights laws. It was we, the People who heard the cries of the oppressed, who were moved by the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King and many others of many races. It was we, the People who looked into our own hearts and saw the gross injustice and demanded that the oppression end.

The cry for succor and relief came from the oppressed, to be sure, and those men and women of honor and courage, of many races, who stood up against the dogs and the police and the fire hoses to march on Washington and demand justice were the soldiers in the field, but for every soldier on the field of the battle there were hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands who demanded justice.

We are justified in rejecting the pernicious notion of ancestral guilt espoused by those who would pervert the dream of liberty, equality and justice. We rightfully reject the notion that those of us who have never oppressed anyone must bear a burden of guilt for the acts of discrimination, racism and bigotry of others. Our honor remains intact and we are resolute in our intentions of fully manifesting the dream of liberty and justice for all.

Dreams, you see, are not finite. They have no quota and no limit. The dream of one may be the dream of all and remain undiminished and untarnished so long as one man, or six billion hold it.

Glenn Beck is correct in calling for a restoration of our national honor because it is we, the People who heard the pleas of the oppressed to honor the dreams of our forefathers, who said so long ago that all men are created equal, and who pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to achieving that dream.

© 2010 Altnews

Resignation of Denver’s Public Safety Manager, Dan Perea, is appropriate, but more is needed

By Seth Richardson

After three months on the job, Denver Manager of Public Safety Dan Perea has resigned his position in the face of growing criticism about his handling of police discipline. Perea rightfully acknowledged to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper that it would be difficult to rebuild trust with the community after the public outcry, particularly in the minority community, over his light punishment of officers Devin Sparks and Randy Murr, who brutally and without cause beat Michael DeHerrera and then lied about it in their reports, and his equally off-hand and dismissive discipline of police officer Eric Sellers, who assaulted a citizen who criticized him. If the citizen had done to Sellers what Sellers did to him, the citizen would have been facing charges of felony assault on a police officer. Sellers should be facing felony criminal assault charges right now, as should Sparks and Murr.

The problem highlighted by this debacle is that of the “brotherhood” of police officers and the tendency of law enforcement officers, including former law enforcement officers now in supervisory positions, to cover up or minimize the misconduct of fellow officers.

In this case, it appears that Perea, a former police officer and Secret Service agent, stood behind the “thin blue line” and went far beyond giving the benefit of the doubt to the officers involved and descended into ignoring obvious and egregious criminal violations of the civil rights of citizens in favor of protecting the career goals of abusive police officers and kowtowing to the police union.

In a Denver Post article on Tuesday, August 24, 2010, David Bruno, a lawyer for the Denver Police Protective Association objected to the re-opening of both cases. “My fear,” said Bruno, “is that either a citizen or an officer will now be hurt if an officer hesitates in the slightest degree to do what he believes is appropriate in the circumstances without the cloud of fear that behind him is the monitor dictating what the monitor, as an armchair quarterback, believes 20 months later is appropriate conduct.”

It’s unsurprising that a mouthpiece for the police union would decry oversight and review of police misconduct, but the covert sentiment, which is that the police can do no wrong and should be immune from critical scrutiny and review, much less discipline, is so beyond the pale of acceptability that it boggles the mind.

Of course the police should be concerned about the potential that their actions will be scrutinized and disciplined after the fact. They should be sweating bullets that their career will be conclusively and completely over if they breach the boundaries of lawful, appropriate conduct, particularly in the use of physical force, to the slightest degree, ever. The fear of discipline is specifically intended to constrain the conduct of police officers to the maximum possible degree consistent with their actual, objective need to use physical force as a last resort.

The problem we face today with most large metropolitan police departments is the immunity from the consequences of misconduct and abusive use of force fostered and encouraged by police unions and their mouthpieces, and fostered by the use of disciplinary review boards comprised of “fellow officers,” rather than the citizens of the community.

The Denver Police Department is notorious for it’s frequent unconstrained brutality, particularly among minority populations, and it’s long past time to raise the bar for policing in Denver, and everywhere else, by weeding out every officer who crosses the line between legitimate and authorized use of reasonable and appropriate force and deliberate abuse of authority and misuse of force to administer street justice.

When those in charge of reviewing allegations of police misconduct are themselves police officers, it cannot be said that they can objectively view the events in the context of civil and criminal law. This is because the standards by which police officers judge their own conduct frequently varies widely from that conduct that is acceptable and appropriate to their employers, the People.

Sir Robert Peel, the founder of the London Metropolitan Police, the model for modern law enforcement today, espoused nine principles of modern law enforcement in 1829, to which most police departments still subscribe:

1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.
2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.
3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.
4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.
5. Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.
6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient.
7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.
9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

Principles numbers six and seven are pertinent here. The use of physical force is to be a last resort, not the first, and police must understand at all times that they are not the parents, supervisors, managers or rulers of the citizens they serve, they are their guardians and servants, and their authority to act flows directly from the very people they come into contact with, and from nowhere else. As public servants, they owe the People respect and proper behavior, but too many police officers believe that they have a mandate to do whatever they think they should, or can do to manage the citizenry. But that’s not what we authorize them to do. Unless we are committing crimes, the police should leave us alone entirely, and keep their opinions about our public behavior to themselves, along with their hands. They must also accept without comment or complaint any degree of surveillance, videotaping or other documentation of their activities that any of their employers choose to engage in, because their actions are indisputably matters of public interest and record.

Because we, the People, are the masters of the police, we must refuse to tolerate any police officer who forgets, even for a moment, his duty of obedience to the law or his duty of respect for the rights of citizens. There is no room for error here, and like military discipline, police discipline must be harsh and uncompromising and those who are unfit for such service must be removed, for the protection of society.

What this means is that under no circumstances should current or former law enforcement personnel be in charge of reviewing and issuing discipline to police officers. The duty of the police is to the public, and objective review of allegations of police misconduct should be performed by ordinary citizens, because it is their liberty and their rights that are at risk.

Service as a law enforcement officer is a privilege, not a right, in spite of what the police unions might believe, and police must be subject to the standards of the community, not their own standards, particularly when misconduct occurs. And when a police officer deliberately violates the civil rights of a citizen, as happened in the two cases illustrated, those officers must be drummed out of the profession permanently and irrevocably, for they have demonstrated that they are not worthy of our trust or the authority we grant them.

Only a fully-independent citizen review commission empaneled to review allegations of police misconduct and dispense discipline, including terminating officers at will, will suffice to adequately protect the average citizen against police abuse. Such decisions should be sovereign to the People and immune to being overturned by either the courts or the city administration because it is the citizenry who grant authority and trust to their public servants, and it is the citizenry who must be permitted to fire them at will when they no longer trust them to serve the public faithfully and properly.

© 2010 Altnews

“Such a bill of rights, Hamilton argued, “would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colourable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?””

Thank goodness that the antifederalists prevailed! As we now know, Progressivism simply rejects the fundamental premise of limited federal government entirely. It does not do so by challenging the constraints of the Constitution, it simply IGNORES the Constitution entirely, calling it irrelevant. Progressives do as they please on the premise that if they can pack the Supreme Court with amenable Justices, constitutionally limited government can become unlimited tyranny with great ease, when combined with a large, and ever-growing dependent class who will never question or object to greater regulation if in the process they believe their safety is being secured.

While it is true that the Bill of Rights has become a constraint on the states, which is not a bad thing, it is effectively our only remaining constraint on Progressivism. The positive constraints on the federal government remain strongly enough stated that the Supreme Court has at least some difficulty in bypassing the explicit language in forwarding the agenda of Progressivism.

As we see with the Commerce Clause, where the power granted is general and not precisely constrained, Progressivism acts like a cancer and eats away at individual liberty slowly and insidiously, which is why it’s taken a hundred years to reach the desperate state of affairs we face now.

Compare the creeping socialism and bloating of government under the general powers granted by the Commerce Clause to the freedom we are enjoying at this very moment in discussing the matter. It is the First Amendment alone that preserves our ability to discuss and object to the machinations of government. Without that express constraint on government, we would have already been silenced by the Progressives, long ago, as both Woodrow Wilson and FDR tried to do.

And look at the matter of firearms. It’s alarming to note that our most important right, the one that ultimately protects all other rights against tyranny, hangs on the opinion of ONE PERSON, and the institutional reluctance of the Court to reverse itself.

If one reads the McDonald decision, particularly the dissents, one sees how debased and progressive the thinking of the liberal justices has become. Those who dissented simply disregarded the plain meaning and intent of the 2nd Amendment in favor of utilitarian arguments about the wisdom of government to decide what rights we really need to enjoy. While McDonald, and Heller before it, were great victories for individual liberty, they amply demonstrate the razor’s edge upon which our nation treads.

The way of liberty is narrow and hard, and the abyss of tyranny lies on either side.

© 2010 Altnews

Excluding evidence because it’s illegally obtained is not the right solution

By Seth Richardson

In criminal prosecutions, when the police obtain evidence illegally, in violation of the 4th or 5th Amendments, the courts will exclude the evidence from the trial on the premise that the courts should not be party to illegal acts by the police.

The presumption is that by excluding such tainted evidence, police and prosecutors will be encouraged to act in a lawful manner, lest they lose their case in court. This sounds like a good idea at first blush, but in the reality of modern law enforcement, it’s not nearly as effective as we might wish to believe.

The problem is that many police officers know full well that the charges they lay will never stick if challenged, as any review of a huge number of arrests seen on TV programs like “Cops” will demonstrate to anyone familiar with search and seizure law. Many police officers rely upon the ignorance and poverty of the people they arrest, and the inherent conflict of interest and corruption in the Public Defender’s office, and they ignore civil rights violations in hopes that the people they arrest don’t understand and will never assert their rights, and will plead guilty.

And if that doesn’t happen, many police officers are satisfied with the “punishment” of merely starting the criminal prosecution process, which can cost defendants thousands even if the charges are eventually dismissed. It’s about making life hell for suspects, whether they are guilty or not.

The exclusionary rule does nothing to prevent miscarriages of justice or dissuade law enforcement from engaging in illegal searches and seizures. As a former police officer, I worked with officers who showed positive disdain for 4th and 5th Amendment rights. They knew that prosecution was not their problem, and their purpose and intent was to make the arrest no matter what.

Merely arresting the “perp” is felt, by many police, to be all the “justice” they are ever going to get anyway, because these same police officers have deep disdain for the courts, seeing them as ineffective and incompetent and far too liberal with “scumbags.” So, the police often engage in “street justice” vigilantism, skating on the boundaries of civil rights and hoping they don’t get caught. Making the arrest adds to their “stats” and their reputation, regardless of the outcome.

In Denver, an example of this is currently causing a huge outcry in the community. Two police officers were videotaped by the police’s own video surveillance cameras brutally assaulting a citizen who was talking on a cell phone to his father (a deputy sheriff in another jurisdiction) about how the police were going about arresting his friend, who had been thrown out of a nightclub for using the women’s bathroom. One of the officers, on hearing the young man complaining about the arrest, attacked the man, threw him to the ground and beat him about the head with a lead-filled sap, injuring him seriously. All this was captured on the video, but the police commissioner refused to fire the cops for brutality and lying on their reports, despite recommendations by the civilian review board that they be fired for lying and assault.

Denver cops are notoriously brutal, and they are as brutal to innocent citizens who might presume to photograph them during their activities as they are to the people they are arresting, and several cases of police attacking bystanders using cell phone cameras or video cameras to film arrests are under review.

The exclusionary rule does no good because it just excludes evidence, which might let the criminal off, but it does not PUNISH police who violate civil rights during their investigations.

The obvious solution is to admit the evidence, which is, after all, either inculpatory or exculpatory, and then rigorously punish the POLICE OFFICERS who obtained the evidence illegally, using both criminal sanctions and personal civil sanctions for each and every violation of the 4th or 5th Amendments. Egregious violations should result in criminal prosecution and incarceration and dismissal from the police force. In this way we WEED OUT those officers who disrespect the Constitution, the civil rights of citizens and the limits on their authority.

There is absolutely no excuse for employing anyone who does not rigorously adhere to the requirements of the Constitution, both in their letter and their spirit, in the performance of their duties as a law enforcement officer or prosecutor.

Only removing such stains on the reputation of law enforcement by removing from employment any police officer or prosecutor who willfully violates the laws will serve to adequately serve and protect the public and cleanse the reputation of our law enforcement, which should be at all times above reproach.

As for the evidence, evidence is evidence and no criminal defendant should be allowed to escape justice through the suppression of evidence. Punishing those who obtain it illegally is a far better way to prevent such violations than suppressing the evidence.

© 2010 Altnews

Join the debate at Constituting America

By Seth Richardson

Federalist No. 78 discusses the judiciary and the Supreme Court. One of the grave problems we face is “judicial activism” and a shift away from the original intent of the Framers. When the Supreme Court presumes to dictate social policy, whether it be approving unconstitutional acts of Congress or creating “new rights” like the right to abortion out of whole cloth, tragedy and tyranny follow.

But at the same time it is the duty of the Supreme Court and all inferior courts to preserve, protect and defend the integrity of the Constitution and the principles upon which it is founded against intrusions into personal liberty by Congress or others not authorized by the People.

In Marbury v. Madison, Justice Marshall says, “Those, then, who controvert the principle that the Constitution is to be considered in court as a paramount law are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the Constitution, and see only the law. This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written constitutions.”

The error of the case is the establishment of the idea in our legal system that judges are to say “what the law is.”

What Marshall should have said is that the Court has a natural duty to say what the law IS NOT.

What I mean by this is that the proper tension between the power of Congress to make law and the power of the Court to nullify that law requires that the Court test any contested law against the Constitution, AND ONLY THE CONSTITUTION, and determine if the law comports with the plain language of the Constitution and the ideals of limited government it expounds.

The Constitution is a document of negative liberties and constraints upon GOVERNMENT, not an explication of a list of rights and liberties that the PEOPLE enjoy. This is a very, very important concept that the Court has forgotten and replaced with the notion that it is the duty of judges at all levels to say what the law (which is to say what the rights of the citizens) is, rather than saying what the law FORBIDS TO THE GOVERNMENT.

In short, all power, rights and liberties are possessed by and retained by the People except those rights and liberties that are constrained by settling upon the government power to regulate them by the People with their consent. Thus, a court should never ask “do the People have a right to do X or Y” because this reverses the presumption of our entire system of government. The answer is always “Yes, the People have the right to do X and Y, and anything else that they wish to do, absent an express grant to Congress of the authority for Congress to regulate that particular liberty.”

Thus, the only proper question for the Court to ask is whether the People have granted to Congress the power to regulate that thing. If the answer is no, then the law must be overturned as being unconstitutional because there is no grant of power for government to exercise control over the liberty in question, REGARDLESS OF THE CONSEQUENCES of doing so.

The courts have all abandoned “originalism” in favor of precedent and Stare Decisis. Worse, the SCOTUS has resorted to judicial activism since about 1900 in order to uphold Progressive social engineering goals it deems worthy. For example, most legal scholars acknowledge that the power to create the Social Security system has no foundation whatever in the Constitution, and that the Court’s upholding of it is plain error, but the Court sees it as a “good thing” and has subverted the Constitution by abandoning it’s duty to do what constrains government the most, in conformance with our Republican principles. (continued)

On the other hand, if the Court finds that the People have authorized the Congress to legislate in a particular area, its duty goes no further than again testing the law against the provisions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights for compliance, and if the law does not contravene the letter of the law in either case, it is NOT within the authority of the Court to determine that it does not like a particular law and for that reason substitute its own judgment for that of the duly elected legislature.

If we look at the case in California over Prop 8 in this light, we see that the judge came to the wrong decision by deciding that the State of California has “no rational basis” for discriminating between heterosexual and homosexual couples in it’s laws regarding marriage. But that’s not the proper question. The question before the judge was whether the People of California, through a democratic majority vote, have a right to determine for themselves what powers they will confer upon government to regulate marriage. Clearly the People have this power, and it is plenary power.

That is what the California Supreme Court held in its rulings upholding Prop 8. The CASC explicitly said that all power derives from the People, and that it is absolutely within the purview of the People of the state to determine what authority its government may wield regarding the institution of marriage, and that therefore Prop 8 was a lawful act under California’s Constitution. The CASC went on to say that the issue before it had NOTHING TO DO with the civil rights of gays regarding their intimate personal relationships BECAUSE California had ALREADY enacted state laws providing for registering “domestic partnerships” that provided essentially identical legal rights and protections to gay couples as those extended to married heterosexual couples insofar as state law was concerned.

Thus, the actual legal and practical effect of Prop 8 was the reservation of the word “marriage,” and ONLY that, for the exclusive use of heterosexual couples in California law. Gays have precisely the same legal rights (with five minor differences that were evidently inadvertently overlooked in the law) as married heterosexuals in California, it’s just that the People of California ordered their government to use one word when referring to heterosexual unions acknowledged by state law, and another phrase to describe homosexual unions. That’s it.

But what we saw in the federal trial was the essence of judicial activism where a federal judge ignored reams of law and case law that empowers governments everywhere to “discriminate” or rather distinguish between groups of people for ministerial reasons that still provides substantive and procedural due process of law to both distinct groups. Nowhere in the law is it stated that all persons must be treated precisely equally in all circumstances.

It is commonplace for government to “discriminate” or draw distinctions between groups of people and individuals based on various criteria that the legislature feels are appropriate. Wealthy people are discriminated against in the provision of federal welfare benefits, for example, while poor people are advantaged by virtue of their economic condition. There are many, many other examples of such “discrimination” that is essential to the functions of government. We “discriminate” against pedophiles by forbidding them to satisfy their perverted desires, and no claim of “equal justice” or “due process” violation will change that.

In California, the People “discriminated” in how they authorized their government to label intimate domestic relationships, reserving “marriage” for one group and “domestic partnership” for another. But the substantive rights granted to each group were functionally identical, and thus there was no violation of anyone’s right to equal justice or due process.

But the federal judge did not look to the law, he looked to the social engineering aspects of the case in ruling that those who advocated Prop 8 did so with an improper intent, ie: an intent to discriminate against gays regarding marriage, without a “rational basis” for doing so.

Thing is, the People do not need a “rational basis” for amending their state Constitution, they have plenary power to do so, as the CASC stated, provided only that their act of amendment does not violate some superior civil right expounded in the federal Constitution and Bill of Rights.

And while the right to form an intimate personal relationship with another person in a manner that will be recognized by one’s State in it’s ministerial duties and acts (like pensions and suchlike) ought clearly to be respected by the state on an equal basis for all persons (including single people and non-homosexual same-sex relationships…one does not have to be homosexual in order to desire to assign government benefits to a non-family friend or companion), the right to have the government label one’s relationship a “marriage” is found nowhere in the federal Constitution or Bill of Rights, unless I’m gravely mistaken.

In sum, what we saw in this case was clearly judicial activism, with the judge deciding the case based on his preferences for social engineering goals and not upon the principles of limited government and respect for the right and will of the People to constitute their form of government in the manner which best serves to secure their liberty and happiness.

And THAT is the problem that Marshall’s language in Marbury v. Madison has lead to.

Joerg writes: “For courts to overturn very long-accepted statutes by suddenly finding new constitutional rights against the considered judgment of the American people violates popular sovereignty and the means for constitutional change placed in the Constitution itself.”

The courts have no business “finding new constitutional rights” at all, because the very foundation of our system is that we, the People, enjoy unlimited, absolute, plenary rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, among other “unenumerated” rights. As free individuals we are at absolute liberty to do anything that pleases us that does not export harm to others. This is our “natural state” of being.

Thus, ALL “rights” belong to us as a function of our inherent nature as human beings, and the ONLY CONSTRAINTS on our liberty are those which we agree to impose upon ourselves by creating a government. We grant to that government limited powers to regulate and control our exercise of ultimate liberty in the interests of civilization and to secure the fruits of liberty while suppressing the many evils that accompany absolute freedom of choice.

It is this concept of plenary rights of the People subject only to LIMITED constraint by governance according to the consent of the governed that has been lost in our current fevered battle against the cancer of Progressivism.

It can be simply stated by alluding to the maxim that in the system of civilization envisioned by our Founders, all that is not expressly forbidden is permitted, whereas in the Progressive/collectivist vision of civilization, all that is not expressly permitted is forbidden.

Our courts have lost their way into the mire of Progressive thought by assuming that the courts must “protect” the rights of people by “finding new rights” in the “penumbra” of rights that attends the Constitution. Precisely the opposite is true. The courts duty is not to “find” new rights, it’s to test a law against the very limited authority to INFRINGE UPON or REGULATE those unlimited, unenumerated rights that we, the People enjoy.

In short, unless a court can find an express grant of authority by the People to regulate some particular activity or liberty, the court MUST rule any law infringing upon that liberty to be “non-constitutional.” I use the term “non-constitutional” because this is a much better description of what the court should be seeking. “Un-constitutional” implies that the law goes “against” the Constitution, while “non-constitutional” implies that the authority to so regulate cannot be found within the four corners of the Constitution, which to me is a more accurate description of the duty of the court.

Conversely, the sovereign right of the People to submit to that regulation, using the appointed representative legislative process, is absolute and not subject to judicial review. For the courts to assume that a judge can dictate to the People what their proper role and rights are is to turn the notion of the sovereignty of the People on it’s head and forward the Progressive notion that the People are simply too stupid to know what’s best for them and therefore they must be ruled by those who are smarter and wiser. The inevitable result of this course, which we are on today with Progressive Barack Obama and his ilk in office, is tyranny and totalitarianism.

© 2010 Altnews

The problem with the treaty-making power as described is that while it is true that sovereign nations must be able to place their trust in the strength of an obligation made by one sovereign’s government to another, the treaty-making power, whether it resides wholly in Congress, wholly in the President, or in some combination of the two, factually draws it’s authority, legitimacy and validity from the only true source of authority, legislative, executive, or judicial, which is the People themselves.

In no other part of the Constitution are the People constrained as they are in the enunciation of the plenary power of treaties. While power may be vested in the Congress or the President or the Supreme Court to do one thing or another, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself is a contract between the People and their government that may be modified or extinguished by the People themselves, as it pleases them to do so.

But the treaty-making power, it is said, “shall be the law of the land,” which vests a factual legislative role in the President, despite claims to the contrary.

The statement, “But the power to negotiate a treaty, Hamilton argues, does not involve enacting a new law or enforcing an old one. Treaties are not laws, they are contracts. They enjoy “the force of law” derived from “the obligation of good faith,” but they are not laws as between a sovereign and its subject, or rules which must be obeyed” is simply not true.

There is no rational distinction to be made between a treaty enjoying “the force of law” derived from “the obligation of good faith,” and a statute enacted by the Congress that compels citizens to do or not do one thing or another. To maintain that a treaty is a “contract” may be a convenient fiction as between sovereign nations, but it is absolutely an obligation of law as between the federal government and the People.

As such, the treaty-making power is a dangerous power to vest in the President because it factually comprises a legislative authority that, due to the 17th Amendment’s refocus of the interests of the Senate away from the interests of the states as a whole and towards the popular reelection of individual Senators, places us today in the position of potentially subjugating the United States to the will and dominance of a global government “democratically” controlled by the very people who are the enemies of our entire system of government, or worse, to an unelected oligarchy made up of international financiers and power-brokers who control the economy of the planet but are immune from both scrutiny and effective control.

The only saving grace is that so far the treaty-making power has not been interpreted by the Supreme Court to mean that the fundamental, unalienable rights of citizens of the United States can be made subject to and subservient to the sovereign power of another nation, or to a global government.

So far…

But we’re just one SCOTUS decision away from global governance.

© 2010 Altnews

Choosing a new family is a civil right, not an attack on marriage

By Seth Richardson

With the overturning of California’s Proposition 8 by federal Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, the issue of gay marriage has come again to the forefront of the news. Along with fundamental right to marry endowed by Judge Walker comes more questions about the nature of civil marriage and what it means. In March 2009, I penned the following column in response to a letter to the editor by a state representative on the issue of gay marriage. My arguments remain the same, and now they have a stronger legal basis thanks to Judge Walker, so it’s appropriate to update the arguments.

In his guest commentary, State Rep. Bob Gardner (R), District 21, says he is concerned about allowing people to designate their legal beneficiaries for things like worker’s compensation, public pensions, standing for wrongful death lawsuits and estate issues. He claims that the provisions of House Bill 1260 are “fraught with both fiscal and legal implications that were glossed over by the bill’s proponents and by The Gazette.”

Significantly, he fails to mention what any of those “implication” might be, and why we would be “fraught” with them. Such obfuscation is typical of politicians, and we, the people, should not allow them to get away with it. So tell us please, Rep. Gardner, exactly what “implications” are we to be “fraught” with if the bill passes? Please be extremely specific. Write to me and I’ll post it here in my column. We can even debate it if you like.

But before you do that, please take this into consideration: These rights are recognized for spouses and blood relations already, and there is little debate about their propriety. So what exactly, Rep. Gardner, is wrong with allowing people who do not have spouses or blood relations to designate another person or persons to benefit from the pensions and awards that they have earned? It’s their pension, it’s their worker’s compensation award, it’s their estate and their life. By what right does the State of Colorado disenfranchise single persons from the benefits that accrue to married persons? That does not seem like equal protection of the law to me.

A single man or woman with no immediate family, like myself, ought to have a right to designate whomever he or she chooses to receive benefits we have earned and are entitled to enjoy. We have a right to have someone stand for us and sue for damages if we are wrongfully killed, and we have a right to designate someone to receive our estate when we die. Dying intestate means that distant relatives we may have no relationship with could overrule our intent and instructions and wrongfully seize our estates that we might wish to be distributed to close friends whom we consider our “family by choice.”

This has nothing to do with homosexuality, Rep. Gardner. There are many millions of single people who have no blood relations they care to acknowledge or give legal authority over their lives, but who have families that they have adopted, or have been adopted into, informally, as a matter of love and companionship. I have a “family by choice” who have accepted me as an uncle to their children and a brother to the parents. This family is far more loving, supportive and real than any of my blood relations ever were. Why should I not have a right to designate them as the beneficiaries of my estate and grant to them the right to make decisions about my life, should I be incapacitated? I would like to be able to assign any benefits I may have coming for the benefit of their children. Why should I be denied this right?

Not only should people like us be legally entitled to assign our earned benefits to whomever we choose, we should be allowed to announce and record our new voluntary familial relationship and effectively divorce ourselves from our blood relatives if we choose to do so.

It’s not all about gay rights you see, Rep. Gardner. It’s about ordinary people who don’t necessarily live the nuclear family dream wanting to find some happiness and love in life. Not everyone has a happy family and those of us who are lucky enough to find a new family that we can be part of, with whom we can share the relationships, intimacy and love that we have either been denied or have excluded ourselves from for good and justifiable reasons, in all justice and equity ought to be permitted to make the bond with our new relations official and legal, just as if we were blood relations.

With the rejection of California’s Proposition 8 in the federal courts, the proper place of the government in regulating domestic relationships between consenting adults is brought into focus, not just as it applies to gays, but as it applies to any adults who wish to form a legally-recognized domestic relationship.

What’s needed is for the government, at all levels, to get out of the marriage business entirely, striking the word “marriage” from all statutes and replacing it with the phrase “domestic partnership contract.” Further, the government, at all levels, should cease to regulate such relationships and should become nothing more than the public recorder for any and all contracts of domestic partnership that any competent, consenting adults wish to enter into.

If “marriage” is, as Judge Walker says, a “fundamental right” based on due process and equal justice precepts because it is an essential element of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then it should be beyond the authority of any government agent to interfere in such relationships in any way.

©2010 Altnews

Vote for the “Right to Health Care Choice” initiative in November, it’s not futile, it’s the first step in amending the Constitution.

By Seth Richardson

Jon Caldera of the Independence Institute believes that Coloradoans ought to have the right to opt out of the mandatory health care insurance purchase provisions of Obama’s progressive/socialist health care plan and pay for their own health care if they choose to do so, and he’s put his money where his mouth is by funding a state constitutional amendment petition drive to that effect. Caldera’s “Right to Health Care Choice” initiative appears to have gotten sufficient signatures to be placed on the November ballot.

This is great news for Coloradoans, even while political and legal pundits pooh-pooh it’s ability to achieve its intended purpose. Professor Bob Loevy, a political science professor at Colorado College is quoted in the Gazette as saying, “The U.S. Constitution contains an supremacy clause. The chance that you can use an initiated state law or constitutional amendment to reverse a law of Congress is highly unlikely.”

He’s perfectly correct that a state constitutional amendment cannot in and of itself trump a federal law, but that’s not the point of Caldera’s effort. Caldera’s plan is much more subtle and effective.

What such a state constitutional amendment does is to state with crystal clarity what the will of the People of Colorado is in the matter, which sets up a conflict with both this, and any future federal law on the subject that will make it politically unpopular for Congress, particularly our state-elected congresspersons, to support, vote for, or fail to oppose such laws in the future.

While a state congressional representative may be able to plausibly argue that it’s his or her “best judgment” to vote for such a law where the people who elected him or her to office have not spoken on the matter at the state level, defying the will of the People by voting for a federal law that stands squarely in conflict with the Colorado Constitution is another matter entirely. Our elected federal representatives have a duty to honor and respect the laws of Colorado in their exercise of federal power, and for them to vote for something that stands in direct opposition to Colorado law or our Constitution is an abuse of the office they hold.

Indeed, doing so is very probably an offense so grave that it could (and should) trigger a recall election for that official, something that most Coloradoans don’t understand they have the right to do.

Article XXI, Section 1 of the Colorado Constitution says, “Every elective public officer of the state of Colorado may be recalled from office at any time by the registered electors entitled to vote for a successor of such incumbent through the procedure and in the manner herein provided for, which procedure shall be known as the recall, and shall be in addition to and without excluding any other method of removal provided by law.” (emphasis added)

That includes Congressional Representatives and Senators.

But even more important is that what’s being done is to set the stage not necessarily for a court challenge over a Colorado constitutional amendment or a recall of a Senator or Representative, but rather its to set the stage for a federal constitutional amendment that will repeal Obamacare and forever forbid Congress from meddling in such things again in the future. “It’s not about fighting Obamacare today but about fighting government control in the future,” says Caldera.

So far some 13 states have shown interest in enacting state laws and constitutional amendments to oppose the egregious excesses of the Progressive Obamacare attempts to socialize medicine in the U.S., and more will likely join with us, and it takes only 38 states to call a Constitutional Convention. This is so unsettling to Congress that every time the states get close to calling a Constitutional Convention, the Congress capitulates and passes an acceptable Amendment it brings forward, thus forestalling the threat of a “runaway” Constitutional Convention that might limit Congress even further. So, the mere threat of the states calling a convention is generally sufficient to induce Congress to do the right thing.

Why would the states join us in this declaration of opposition to oppressive federal power grabs? Well, for one thing, the Progressives never give up on their agenda of imposing totalitarianism on us. The ink on the bill that Nitwit Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass so we could find out what’s in it was barely dry when Democrats and Progressives started re-warming the “public option” plan, which is nothing less than the destruction of the best health care system on the planet, to be replaced with the British model. You know, the one that’s driven the U.K. to the brink of economic collapse and that they are now abandoning.

Look for this next step in Obama Socialism to be rammed through by Progressives during the coming lame-duck session of Congress after the November elections, as the outgoing Progressives, like zombies who will not die even with stakes through their hearts, will attempt to pass every Progressive wish-list bit of socialism they’ve had in the last 100 years on their way out the door, in spite of the fact that it’s perfectly clear that the People want none of it.

They’ll do it, and they’ll do it unapologetically because Progressives like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Barack Obama and the rest of their ilk infesting Congress have no honor, no dignity, no respect for the United States or its history. They have positive disrespect for the Constitution, which they see as an impediment to their tyrannical totalitarian socialist pretensions, and no respect for you whatsoever. They think you are simply too stupid and ignorant to know what’s good for you, so they are going to do what they want, if we let them.

They are traitors to the Constitution and they are are intent on ramming through their progressive version of socialism at any cost, because to them the ends justify the means, and they care nothing for what you think or for your liberty. Remember this next time you vote for a Senator or Representative, and choose more carefully in the future.

But the battle to oppose this sort of egregious abuse of power starts with the likes of Jon Caldera and the Independence Institute, and his initiative to enshrine in our state Constitution the policies of limited government that made this nation great, as a warning to our congressional representatives that they defy the will of the people at their peril.

So, vote for Caldera’s “Right to Health Care Choice” amendment when you see it on the ballot, and stand against the excesses and abuses of power of the federal government by showing our fellow citizens in other states that we will stand with them in amending the U.S. Constitution to rectify and prevent such tyranny.

© 2010 Altnews

Bleeding-heart federal judges need to quit pandering to inmates

By Seth Richardson

Oklahoma City bombing  conspirator Terry Nichols is suing the the officials of the federal SuperMax prison in Florence, Colo. because they aren’t providing him with “whole grains and unpeeled fruits” in his diet. He thinks prison food amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Nichols has been force-fed on several occasions when he went on hunger strikes over the quality of his life in prison. He filed the hand-written lawsuit in March of 2009 and some idiot federal judge refused to simply toss his complaint in the trash, which is what should happen to almost all prisoner lawsuits, and certainly any lawsuit alleging complaints about the food served in prison.

Anyway, to save a bunch of money, I suggest that prison authorities capitulate to Nichols… sort of.

He wants organic foods in his diet? Fine by me, but it’s a case of “be careful what you wish for.” My recommended menu for the rest of Nichols’ worthless waste of oxygen of a life is as follows: Organic, whole-grain bread and distilled water.

If he won’t eat, liquify the bread using the water and pump it into his stomach three times a day, whether he likes it or not. Or, just let him starve himself to death, which would save the taxpayers even more money.

© 2010 Altnews

Again in the Federalist No. 71 we face the conundrum of perfection versus practicality with Hamilton’s arguments regarding the proper length of tenure of the President. He is perfectly correct in asserting that either too long or too short a presidency will lead to unfortunate consequences, but that’s equally true of “just right” tenure if the chief executive of the nation has parochial or political interests as his or her primary motivation, rather than the essence of the oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution and the Republic. When a President is intent on dismantling the Republic and instituting a global socialist government, no tenure in office is too short, and any tenure in office is too long.

This is why we have the 22nd Amendment, which is the happiest medium we’ve been able to come up with. After 12 years of misrule by FDR, the nation positively stampeded to amend the Constitution to limit presidents to 2 terms. FDR’s tenure in office proved out Hamilton’s concerns at one end of the spectrum.

The delicate balance between executive power and legislative power is a conundrum that all democratic societies face, and there is no perfect solution to the problem of political or individual bias or corruption in either body. The best we can do is to limit the potential for damage by any one president or any particular congressional cabal, and the complex network of checks and balances erected by the Founders has proven to be the most effective, although imperfect, system yet devised, even as some of it’s foundational precepts have been eroded by Progressivism.

The duty of the People is, of course, to be educated, perceptive, principled, ethical and participatory in their government and their selection of representatives, including the President. It’s our own fault if we submit to propaganda and ignore politics, thereby allowing those unfit for office to achieve power. In my view, I’d rather “draft” a President by random lottery than grant the seat of power to any man who is willing to spend the amount of money that is required today to achieve the office. The fact that Obama spent nearly a BILLION dollars to gain the presidency is proof enough that corruption, on both sides of the aisle, rules our government.

All the solutions to this problem have their problems, and the only real solution is for the People to be more wise about whom they authorize to represent them, and to hold their representatives to the highest moral and ethical standard every second they are in office. The “swamp” of corruption in Congress right now caused by lack of term limits such as those applied to the President, as exemplified by Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters, is proof enough that long tenure in Congress is every bit as dangerous as long tenure in a President.

© 2010 Altnews

We know that the current President approves of this usurpation of power by the EPA, but what happens if the political power shifts? Will the EPA continue to enforce the regulatory structure put in place by Obama even when a new President opposed to those regulatory rules says not to?

This is an interesting unintended consequence of Wilsonian Progressivism activated by FDR that we haven’t had to squarely face just yet. Wilsonian Progressivism maintains that the administrative state, operated by “experts” in the scientific management of political and social engineering, is the path towards the “perfection” of the political state. But even the pretentious and arrogant Woodrow Wilson maintained that the administrative state be under the iron-fisted control of a strong national leader, the President, whom Wilson assumed would best represent the “unified will” of the people, even though in Wilson’s estimation, the people are actually too ignorant and stupid to have either a unified will or to know what’s good for them.

The prospect of an administrative state NOT subject to the duly elected (for better or worse) chief executive officer of the nation is far more frightening than anything Obama or any other President might do as a unitary executive. This is true because at least with a unitary executive, eight years of mismanagement is the worst that can happen (although much evil can happen in eight years) before the executive must step down and a new one is elected to “clean house.”

The creation of the Civil Service by Wilson, and vastly expanded by FDR, and the laws that make it difficult or impossible to fire civil servants make it easy for Progressives to infiltrate and ensconce sleeper agents and spies in the Civil Service that are terribly difficult to root out, even when they become deliberately obstructive, as witnessed by the debacle with the firing of a number of US attorneys by the Bush administration, that ignited a firestorm of partisan allegations and lawsuits.

The Civil Service was created ostensibly in order to reduce the companion evil of government: patronage, whereby political favor and cronyism was the order of the day. But while political patronage is dangerous, as we can see from the appointment of an incompetent horse breeder as the head of FEMA immediately before hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the notion of an administrative state that answers to no one, neither the Congress nor the President, would be far, far worse, and would cause incalculable damage to individual liberty, far beyond that which could be wrought by any President in eight years.

© 2010 Altnews