State Supreme Court wisely rejects gerrymandering attempts to dilute Republican strongholds, but unwisely embeds “competitiveness” as a valid redistricting criteria in the law.

By Seth Richardson

The purpose of the Republic, and its political division into sovereign states operating under a central government of expressly limited powers was intended to ensure that people are free to choose the social and political atmosphere in which they would like to live. The fundamental constitutional right of freedom of association, and it’s implicit companion, freedom of disassociation, are embodied in the concept that if one does not agree with the policies and politics of a particular state, one is free to travel to another state where the legislative climate is more salubrious to one’s needs and desires.

This was the original intent of the Founders, but it didn’t take long for the federal government to begin interfering in internal state matters to deny voters the right to “vote with their feet.” After more than 30 years of oftentimes-controversial bickering over the morality of Mormon polygamy in the East, Brigham Young and his band of Mormons fled Nauvoo, Illinois for the west, settling in the Salt Lake valley, hoping to found the state of Deseret in what was technically Mexican territory captured by the United States in the Mexican-American War.

Mormons simply wanted to be left alone to practice their religious beliefs in peace, but the government of the United States, for several reasons, including competing religious beliefs that polygamy was “sinful,” refused to abide by the principles the Founders embraced in creating a Constitutional Republic comprised of sovereign states where governance and law would best serve the people of an individual state by remaining close to the source of its power: the People. In 1862 Congress passed the Morrill Act, which outlawed polygamy, and which lead to open rebellion and warfare in Utah as Mormons fought to preserve their First Amendment religious rights in the face of implacable moral opprobrium and physical attack on the part of the federal government, which was intent on suppressing the practice at any cost. Utah and the Mormon church finally capitulated, at least on the surface, in 1890. But polygamy has endured in Utah, and elsewhere, despite the best efforts of state and federal regulators to interfere in religious practice and substitute their own moral and religious beliefs for those of the Mormons.

Since the beginning, the ideals of the Founders regarding political and social freedom through state sovereignty and the right of free association (and disassociation) have been progressively eroded by the ever-expanding usurpation of state sovereignty by the federal government, and the entirely unconstitutional notion that it is within the power of the central government to closely regulate the lives of individuals within the states. Worse, this oppressive notion has trickled down to the state and local level.

This is seen in the present attempts to reapportion the state that has just been rejected by the state Supreme Court. Democrats have been trying to insist that republican strongholds be divided up to create “competitive” districts, which is ProgressiveSpeak for “enhance Progressive inroads on conservative voting blocs.” In other words, court-approved gerrymandering.

Fortunately for us all the Colorado Constitution erects substantial barriers to gerrymandering attempts by either party by specifying that all districts shall be physically “as compact as possible.” Combined with constitutional requirements that “communities of interest, including ethnic, cultural, economic, trade area, geographic, and demographic factors, shall be preserved within a single district wherever possible,” Colorado has long resisted the sort of back-east and down-south gerrymandering that disenfranchises minorities or makes minorities out of geographic majorities in order to dilute their voting power.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that “[a]lthough reapportionment is not without political considerations, these considerations are not among the constitutional criteria, and the commission may not allow them to outweigh the constitutional criteria.” What this means is that “competitiveness” (which is to say the deliberate gerrymandering of districts to prevent or break up voting blocs) is actually an unconstitutional criteria for redistricting.

Or at least it was, until this week, when the liberal Supreme Court ignored the state Constitution and its own prior rulings in holding that “other nonconstitutional considerations, such as the competitiveness of a district are not per se illegal or improper.”

While the Court rejected the redistricting commission’s maps, it did so by holding that the redistricting did not pay proper attention to county boundaries, and it then inserted a knife straight into the heart of representative democracy by opening the door to “competitive” gerrymandering, if it can fit within the other constitutional constraints, which is nothing more than an unconstitutional elevation of minority political power intended to dilute the voting power of members of the public who have “voted with their feet” by moving to, and voting in districts and communities that best represent their political and social interests.

In the time of the Founders, if one did not like the political atmosphere of Virgina, one could move to New York or South Carolina to find communities and people of like mind and interest, and in doing so improve the chances that the majority opinion (within appropriate constitutional boundaries) would prevail and be preserved.

In contemporary Colorado we clearly see this effect at work by examining El Paso and Boulder counties. Boulder County is intensely liberal/progressive, to the point of being socialist or worse, and is so notorious in it’s bloc voting power that it’s a standing joke to refer to it as “The People’s Republic of Boulder.” Liberals and Progressives, granola-heads, Marxists, Communists and idealistic college students move to Boulder to enjoy both the great beauty and satisfying, if micromanaging and intrusive, political climate. As they have every right to do. We should never dream of trying to break up Boulder County to make it more “competitive” because to do so is to disparage the right of free association that brought people of like mind together in political harmony. If you don’t like Boulder’s politics, then move somewhere else. That’s what Thomas Jefferson would say.

On the other hand, people, including this writer, find that sort of liberal/progressive intrusiveness and bureaucratic arrogance and disdain for, in particular, private property rights, to be intolerable and a violation of our right to be free of obsessive and intrusive government bureaucracy, so we vote with our feet and move to places like El Paso County, where our political interests and needs are better respected and served. That is our right, and we should demand that it be respected as well.

This physical migration to find a salubrious political climate is the very essence of the fundamental structure of our nation from the very beginning. If you like liberty and Libertarian values and government, move to Wyoming or Idaho. If you like strict government control and central planning, move to California. It’s your constitutional right to do so.

But what the Democrats have attempted, and will certainly attempt again and again until they succeed, is to divide up El Paso County and other conservative strongholds in ways that marginalize the voting power of the people who moved and live here precisely because they like the conservative values and respect for liberty of their neighbors and wish to consolidate their political power here so that their values and beliefs will prevail, just as liberal/progressive values prevail in Boulder County. We must not allow them to do so, because that defies everything that the Founders, the U.S. Constitution, and our State Constitution stand for.

Given the recent Court ruling, there is now a dire need for a state constitutional amendment expressly prohibiting the use of “competitiveness” as a criteria in redistricting.

© 2011 Altnews

Violence emanating from Occupy Wall Street protests is inevitable and planned.

By Seth Richardson

“This thing has to escalate so people see the violence and who is protecting the interests of corporations, said Dwayne Hudson, an Occupy Wall Street protester in Denver, according to the Associated Press story in Friday’s Denver Post.

“It has to be nonviolent, or else it will just end. We won’t get support. That doesn’t mean you can agitate people. But you can’t also be breaking windows and burning,” said OWS protester Bob Norkus in Boston in the same story.

One is a Marxist agitator and one is a useful idiot. I leave it to you to decide which is which, but here’s a little background from Marx himself:

“The abolition of bourgeois [known today as "corporate"] individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at… you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend… The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, … all capital from the bourgeoisie …. Of course… this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois [today, "corporate"] production.” Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

Protest is an old and honorable right under our system of government. Those who protest “corporate greed” have a right to peaceably assemble and petition their government for redress of grievances. And there are many legitimate grievances that need to be redressed, but they are by and large grievances against the government itself, and specific bad actors in the private sector, not against capitalism generally.

Hudson says that people need to see “who is protecting the interests of corporations,” which is a valid enough demand, but one that doesn’t require violence. It’s society that is protecting the interests of corporations because society, as a whole, and I mean globally, recognizes that corporations are the business form that’s predominately used to create wealth and jobs in a capitalist, free market system. And “corporations” are not, as OWS protesters suggest, some sort of alien being that has infested the planet, they are, in fact, groups of ordinary people banding together in what socialists should laud as a highly democratic form of communal participation.

Corporations are legal entities comprised of shareholders who have voluntarily given “according to their ability” to a collective that is, by law, democratically operated by the shareholders. Corporate law requires that all corporations hold annual meetings at which shareholders may speak and express themselves, and at which they may vote, in person or by proxy, for the Board of Directors who guide the policies of the organization and hire and fire those responsible for the day-to-day operations of creating wealth for the collective.

It’s about as close to Marx’s ideal of the workers “owning the means of production” as you can get, since the shareholders own the corporation and all its assets, collectively.

That some corporations are wildly successful, generating massive wealth and profits for those who own it is a function of capitalism and good business. That successful corporate CEOs make huge salaries is an exercise in highly-socialistic democracy. That shareholders allow such salaries is nothing more than a collective decision to recognize that the purpose of a corporation is not “social justice” it’s to provide to each shareholder in direct proportion to his investment in the company. A successful corporation is not taking anything from anyone that they are not willing to give in return for value exchanged. This includes investors, customers and workers. This is unlike government, particularly socialist government, which inevitably takes from the productive class and gives to the dependent class against the will of those who are being stripped of the fruits of their individual labor.

Both Norkus and Hudson fail to understand that the Marxist dialectical claim that for the wealthy bourgeoisie (corporations and presumably CEOs) to be wealthy, that wealth must be extracted first from the working-class proletarian, and that this is inherently unfair, is utterly false and deceptive. This is what’s known as a “zero-sum fallacy” that claims that there is a limited pool of wealth available, and that the enhancement of one person’s wealth must diminish the wealth of another.

The truth is that wealth, in a capitalist system, is essentially unlimited, and however much wealth one person (like Warren Buffet or George Soros) may have does not negatively affect the ability of anyone else to create wealth of their own, they are in fact limited in their ability to improve their economic and social status only by their own personal limitations and incapacities. And the presence of large corporations, who are enormous consumers of adjunct, support and manufacturing services, actually substantially enhances the opportunity for any individual with a good idea who is willing to work hard to find venture capital investment and create even more wealth.

This is proven by the fact that in the United States, while the rich are indeed getting richer, so are the poor. According to the Macinac Center for Public Policy, citing the Wall Street Journal, “IRS tax return data shows that individuals in the bottom one-fifth back in 1996 experienced income growth of 91 percent by 2005. In contrast, individuals in the highest one-fifth saw their incomes increase just 10 percent over the same period. Incomes of households in the top 5 percent and 1 percent actually declined, by 7 percent and 24 percent, respectively.”

So it’s not that the poor are actually getting poorer, they aren’t. It’s just that the rich are getting richer faster than the poor, and Marxists don’t like this because they think it’s unfair that the rich aren’t being taxed “according to their ability” to absorb the demands for dependent-class support and equality of outcomes that Marxists insist is “fair.” This Marxist canard ignores the fact that it is the rich who provide the companies and the jobs that the poor use to improve their economic status, and that without those corporations, the poor would have no opportunity to share the American dream or prosper.

So when Norkus and Hudson rail against “corporate greed” they are in fact railing against their own inadequacies, incompetence and fears, not any inherent flaw in capitalism. Pogo’s famous declaration “we have met the enemy, and he is us” has never been truer than when applied to the ignorance of OWS protesters, who largely have the leisure to sit in a park somewhere and complain because Mommy and Daddy went about the business of creating wealth for their scion so that they could attend Marxist propaganda-dominated universities and take time off from their studies to protest that which they only dimly understand in an unfocused and ill-defined manner that insults even Karl Marx and the Communists, who at least were open about their intentions and clear in their message.

And they are all useful idiots that the true hard-line Marxists are using as dupes and shills to advance the plan of violent revolutionary overthrow of the United States and capitalism worldwide that has been the agenda of Marxists all along, as Marx himself said.

Fortunately, most hard-working Americans know that capitalism is not to blame for our economic crisis, government overreach and corruption are, and that Marxism and socialism are not viable alternative sociopolitical systems that can, or should replace free-market capitalism. This is why mainstream America is increasingly marginalizing and ignoring the OWS protests and is beginning to insist that if we are going to tolerate the OWS protests, which we certainly should, we should only do so as long as the useful idiots of OWS behave themselves, obey the law, and don’t constitute a public nuisance.

© 2011 Altnews

Finally, a federal agency rises up from the grave of stultified bureaucracy and creates a successful public relations and education campaign

By Seth Richardson

The federal Centers for Disease Control, a bureaucracy not known for having a sense of humor about disease pandemics managed to lighten up and recognize that humor is a powerful tool for public education. As Halloween approaches, people might think that the CDC’s “Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic” is a Halloween spoof, but it’s not. It’s a deadly-serious, and highly innovative attempt by the CDC to convince people that they need to think about things like the Bird Flu or an Anthrax attack now, and learn what to do in the event of a disease pandemic.

Back in May, David Daigle, of the CDC’s preparedness office and communication specialists Cathrine Jamal and Margaret Silver wrote a CDC blog entry about preparing for a disaster and referenced zombies in an attempt to boost the blogs readership, which hovers around one to three thousand hits per day. The effects were astounding. In less than a week the response to the blog crashed the CDC’s blog server and the page got more than 3 million views and more than 500 comments. “Most of our blogs get maybe five,” says Silver.

So, Silver, Daigle and Jamal went to work on creating a CDC-authorized graphic novel, “Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic” in which the protagonists, everypersons Todd and Julie, hear about a viral disease that turns people into violent zombies and they then go to the CDC for advice on what to do to survive. To read the novel, go to www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies_novella.htm#.

What’s so great about this effort is that it cost the CDC all of $87 for a stock photo, and some staff time, rather than the millions spent on public information programs that nobody pays attention to. And it’s proven to be far more effective.

Why is this important? Because when the public is uneducated and unprepared for disasters, people die for real.

For decades, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been recommending that people have preparedness supplies on hand that will allow them to survive on their own for up to three days in the event of a natural or man-made disaster, but few people listen. During hurricane Katrina, many people didn’t know what to do or where to go, and even the incompetents who were elected to deal with such disasters,(former)  New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and (former) Louisana Governor Kathleen Blanco didn’t have a clue what to do, and more than 1800 people died as a result of ignorance and disbelief that they were in danger. Many hundreds of thousands more suffered because they were ill-equipped to survive on their own until help could arrive.

Public education in proper disaster response is critical, but because most people don’t think a disaster will ever happen to them, most people ignore the risks, much less the educational materials the government spends millions creating.

Anything the government can do that effectively educates and stimulates people into thinking about disasters and how to respond to them is a worthy effort. Self-reliance and preparedness are what will get you through a disaster, be it a tornado, an earthquake, a hurricane, or a zombie apocalypse. Ignorance and sticking your head in the sand will get you killed.

So, kudos to the CDC and to Daigle, Silver and Jamal, three federal government employees who have demonstrated all the good things about our government public servants in a time when government is (largely rightfully) under attack for overspending and wasting money. I only wish all our public employees could manage to get as much bang for a buck as these three sterling examples of our federal workforce.

© 2011 Altnews

Almost completely under the radar, unaccountable snoops and government bureaucrats are soon going to be  running their grubby fingers  through your personal, private medical records

By Seth Richardson

Do you care if some private company has state-authorized access to your medical files without your permission? Do you care if people you don’t know and didn’t authorize can find out about your embarrassing genital warts, or your HIV/AIDS status, or the fact that your child has a drug abuse problem? Do you care if some unaccountable employee at a non-governmental organization gets to talk around the water cooler about your erectile dysfunction or your mastectomy? Do you care that people you have no control over and who can conceal everything they do from you might be taking salacious pleasure in reading the details of your private conversations with your psychiatrist? Do you care if this private organization, after raiding your files, sells the information in them to other people in order to fund it’s intrusions on your rights?

I certainly do.

Last week, after attending the Gazette’s and the Independence Institute’s sold-out forum “A Constitutional Guide to Fighting Federal Overreach; A program for the Grassroots” I was invited to schmooze with Independence Institute sponsor Mike Krause and others at the hotel pub. I thought it would be a nice social occasion, but what I heard from Mike literally turned my stomach and made my blood boil. Now I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.

I learned that during the 2010 legislative session, the Colorado General Assembly and former Governor Bill Ritter treacherously betrayed every citizen of Colorado by passing a law authorizing the seizure of our personal medical records by a private, non-governmental organization, the Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC), and almost nobody noticed except the watchdogs of liberty at the Independence Institute.

The “All-Payer Claims Database” is the brainchild of liberal policy wonks like Jenny Nate, a blogoflack for the CIVHC, who are all delighted at the way Obamacare has allowed them to “leverage” state and federal law in order to get the legal authority to pry into your private medical affairs without your permission and with no way to oversee what they do with that information.

In her blog at the CIVHC website, Nate writes, “Just like everybody else, policy wonks have dreams.  Two years ago, it was a big dream of mine that someday Colorado would become one of the leading states in America to increase transparency around what we’re paying for and what we’re getting for our health care dollar through the creation of an all-payer claims database…On May 26, 2010, my wonky dream came true when Governor Ritter signed House Bill 10-1330 authorizing the creation of a statewide all payer claims database (APCD). This legislation extended the Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF) authority to compel insurers to provide claims data for use in an APCD.”

Transparency my fundament. She want’s transparency of your private medical records, but her organization is set up to utterly deny any transparency regarding what they do with that information.

She goes on to crow about the depth of detail the database will contain: “An all-payer claims database (APCD) is a database that typically includes data derived from medical, eligibility, provider, pharmacy, and/or dental files from private and public payers, including insurance companies, third party administrators, Medicaid and Medicare.  These databases include covered services for the population, a unique member identification number, patient demographics, plan and member payments, and some clinical information.” Translation: She is literally drooling at the notion of having access to every detail about your medical visits to your doctor, your pharmacist, your dentist and anybody else who serves your medical needs.

Nate’s wonky dreams aside, just who the hell do these people think they are? Don’t answer that, it was a rhetorical question, we know who they are, they are liberal Progressives who think that their “need” to analyze health care in Colorado trumps your Fourth Amendment right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. People like Nate, and former Governor Bill Ritter, who signed this travesty of government invasion of privacy care nothing about you or your privacy, they care only about advancing the power of the state over your life.

But it gets far, far worse. If the system was part of the state government, run by state employees and subject to oversight by the General Assembly and transparent in its operations and budget as required by the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA), at least we would have the right, and the opportunity to keep track of what’s going on and who is using these records, how, and why. But the CIVHC is not a governmental agency. In fact, it just received it’s approval as a private 501 c3 non-profit from the IRS. This means it’s completely immune from scrutiny by the public under the CORA.

In a letter to the Independence Institute, CIVHC director Phil Kalin wrote: “As you are no doubt aware, CIVHC is no longer an entity of state government, having been spun off as an independent 501(c )(3) in May… [W]e do not intend to distribute a detailed budget publicly…”

Where in the Constitution, state or federal, does the state of Colorado find authority to give a private organization legal access, under threat of state-sanctioned fines, to private medical information and then make that organization exempt from all public scrutiny? Nowhere, that’s where!

It’s time to put a stop to this gross invasion of medical privacy and our constitutional rights. Call your state representatives and demand that they repeal the law. Call your doctor or insurer and tell them that if they release your private information to the CIVHC, you will sue them for invasion of privacy. Call CIVHC and tell them that you will not tolerate them invading your privacy and will sue them as well. Remember, they aren’t a state agency, so they don’t have sovereign immunity like the state does. Don’t be deterred by the state law, file a lawsuit anyway. Bury them in hundreds of thousands of individual lawsuits and sap their funding merely by having to pay lawyers to file answers to the claims. Give them a SLAPP…a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Private Participation” in violating your rights.

And write letters to your local newspapers objecting to this travesty of Progressive arrogance. Get the word out. Make it a news story any way you can.

If we don’t put a stop to it now, your private information will begin flowing into this enormous civil rights violation of a database in December. Thankfully, it was delayed somewhat or it would already be in operation, so there is still time to put a stop to it. Make the calls, make them today, or forfeit your medical privacy forever.

© 2011 Altnews

Muslim students who disrupted a lawful assembly convicted of infringing on Israeli Ambassador’s speech

By Seth Richardson

The United States has a long history of tolerating protest and exercises of free speech, especially by students, but of late, an honorable tradition has been debased by leftists, Progressives, union goons and various flavors of religious zealots who abuse their right of protest by exercising what amounts to a “heckler’s veto” over the equally protected free speech of people they don’t like.

We’ve all seen the videos of conservative speakers on college campuses being shouted down and pied in the face and otherwise heckled and prevented from exercising their right to speak freely at events to which they had been invited by other students and the violent protests of SEIU union goons who physically attack people who don’t agree with their radical leftist agenda.

But the tide may be turning for those who would deliberately disrupt such events. At Ambassador Michael Oren’s speech at the University of California, Irvine in February, 2010, 10 Muslim students were arrested and last week they were convicted by a jury of conspiring to disrupt the speech. They were sentenced to community service and three years of probation by Orange County Superior Court Judge Peter J. Wilson.

Good for the jury, and good for Judge Wilson.

The First Amendment protects free speech and protest, but it doesn’t protect it everywhere and at any time. Like all rights, the government may impose reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on free speech so long as the regulations are intended to keep the peace and are not used to discriminate based on the content of the protest.

If the Muslim students had marched outside the lecture hall with signs and even bullhorns, they would likely have not gotten arrested. But disrupting a lawful assembly of persons who came, and often have paid to hear a speaker, is an abuse of the right of free speech, and an infringement of the rights of the speakers and those who have come to hear them.

The hecklers in this case tried to argue that they had a right to stand and shout out prepared statements like “propagating murder is not an expression of free speech” and cheer so loudly for such statements that the Ambassador could not continue for long periods. They tried to defend their actions by producing pie charts showing how much time they spent disrupting the event versus how long the Ambassador spoke.

But however passionate people are about having their side of the debate heard, while the First Amendment protects their right to express themselves, it does not necessarily guarantee them “equal time” in a venue that someone else has paid for and reserved for the purpose of expressing their message.

The Muslim students would have been welcome to reserve the same hall, at another time, to present their views, and it would have been just as unlawful for Israeli protesters to disrupt their presentation.

Free speech for all requires a degree of civility and respect for the opinions of others, and tolerance for diversity of opinion, not, as the Neo-Marxists, religious radicals and Progressives would prefer, a platform reserved only for radical left-wing or religious propaganda and indoctrination that silences all other opinions.

Those who value our traditions of free speech and protest, in appropriate venues and at appropriate times, should thank this judge and jury for defending everyone’s right to express themselves in a peaceable and lawful manner.

© 2011 Altnews

Make the credit-issuers like PayPal liable for identity-theft fraud

By Seth Richardson

In what’s becoming an annual ritual for me, I have to once again point out that identity theft is a problem for the victims only because of the lax security policies of credit issuers, the uncaring arrogance of credit reporting agencies, and dilatory state and federal legislatures who refuse to place the burden of identity fraud where it belongs: on the merchants who extend credit without carefully checking the actual identity of the person they are giving it to.

In the news today is the story of how five members of the Aurora City Council had their identities stolen, evidently from records improperly kept by the city itself. More than $2000 in fraudulent on-line purchases have been made in the past few weeks by thieves using a PayPal billing service called “Bill me Later.”

This “service” allows anyone, with a minimum amount of information, including only the last 4 digits of one’s Social Security number, to buy products and bill them to the victim. Experts in information securty have said that one does not even need the social security number because most Social Security numbers were, until very recently, issued consecutively by state and region, according to the date and time of birth. This means that with information about where a person was born, along with their birth date, it’s possible to infer the Social Security number and hit on it fairly easily. This makes quite literally everyone born before last year vulnerable.

This sort of cavalier treatment of innocent victims by merchants like PayPal is unconscionable and outrageous and we need laws to put a stop to it.

Is it the fault of the victims that the merchant sold goods to a fraudster? No, it’s the fault of those who issue credit to individuals or companies without properly ensuring that the person or firm they are issuing credit to is who they are supposed to be. In other words, most financially-motivated identity theft is perpetrated by thieves, but it’s aided and abetted by companies that issue credit that are either incompetent or simply do not care if they wrongfully issue credit to a credit thief because current law prevents consumers from suing them for failing to exercise responsibility.

And this disregard for proper business practice and security is abetted and exacerbated by the credit reporting agencies, who enter derogatory information onto a person or firm’s credit rating without first confirming that the debt claimed by the merchant is valid and is not the product of identity theft caused by lax security on the part of the merchant.

This is no small issue, and the effects of identity theft and lax security can be devastating both financially and emotionally. So much so that victims of lax security on the part of credit-issuers ought to have a cause of action to sue the credit-issuer for damages. But today, the law favors the merchants, credit card companies and banks, to the detriment of the consumer.

This disregard for the rights of individuals to not be impugned or maligned regarding their credit rating, which is a valuable and important part of one’s reputation is unacceptable and must be eliminated.

So who should bear the economic burden for issuing credit to an identity thief? The creditor of course. If they extend credit, they should be certain to whom they’re extending it, or they should suffer any losses resulting from their negligence.

The solution is pretty simple. We must pass laws that shift the burden of identity theft from the innocent victim to the abettors, who are the merchants, credit-issuers and the credit reporting agencies.

This is done by first prohibiting anyone from using a Social Security number for the purposes of identification for any reason other than for receiving Social Security benefits. That’s what the federal law authorizing the assignment of the number says anyway, and it’s time to enforce it upon creditors and credit reporting agencies.

Second, the law must require that creditors must provide, on demand by the alleged debtor, documentary proof that the person or firm to which the credit was issued is in fact the actual person or firm that requested the extension of the credit, and that the extension of credit was properly and legally authorized, in the case of a company.

Likewise, a credit reporting company must provide the same proof on demand that the debt claimed by the creditor was actually and validly incurred by the person the debt is claimed against before entering any derogatory information on that persons credit file.

This would require that creditors make absolutely certain that they have verified identification of the person requesting the credit, just as banks and the post office are required to verify a customer’s identification.

Further, the law should require that some representative of the business actually meet the customer face-to-face and personally verify that person’s identity using certified government-issued photo identification. The law would require both parties to sign a form attesting to the personal meeting and verification of identity and detailing the request for credit, and it would require that the verified photo identification of both parties, creditor and customer, be scanned and made a permanent part of the record. This makes the creditor liable and the agent who extended the credit identifiable and responsible.

The credit issuer would be required to retain this form permanently, and no claim by a creditor would be valid or could be reported to any credit reporting agency unless a certified copy of that form is produced on demand. It would become a mandatory part of any credit contract, without which no debt can be claimed or collection attempted.

This would help ensure that no credit is issued to persons using fictitious or false identity information, and that no false debts or reports to credit agencies can easily occur, as is the case today.

In the event of a dispute, the victim of an identity theft would only have to demand a copy of the form and demonstrate that he or she is not the person identified on the form, at which point all claims against the victim would be legally null and void, and the creditor would be left holding the bag.

Such a law would eliminate the vast majority of identity theft overnight, and it would place the risk for failing to properly verifying the identity of a borrower in the proper place; with the company that issues the credit.

Would this slow down and make more complex the process of issuing enforceable lines of credit? Yes, but that’s a good thing. Credit fraud is directly related to the ease with which someone can obtain it.

Merchants would still be allowed to assume the risk of not properly identifying a customer in the interests of expediency, but if the customer denies the debt, and the merchant cannot produce the legally-required form with a photograph of the purported debtor, the merchant would be legally prohibited from trying to collect the debt.

In short, it’s the responsibility of those who issue credit to be absolutely certain of the true identity of anyone they issue credit to, and they should bear the entire risk of lax identification policies.

It’s time to but the burden for preventing identity theft where it belongs, and take it off the shoulders of the innocent victims.

© 2011 Altnews

State troopers kneeling on man’s back when he was handcuffed asphyxiated him to death, and Wyoming must pay half a million dollars in compensation.

By Seth Richardson

In 2002, Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers arrested a Denver man at the scene of an accident, and then killed him by kneeling on his back as he lay handcuffed and hobbled on the ground. Bruce James Weigel was negligently killed by police using an increasingly common tactic they use to deal with obstreperous and unruly arrestees: police wrestle them down, handcuff them, tie their feet together, and then administer a little “street justice” to struggling citizens by kneeling on their backs or necks, ostensibly to keep them under control. The more the face-down suspect struggles, the more pressure and weight the police put on him.

But too often such brutal tactics on persons already adequately restrained result in permanent injuries and with alarming and increasing frequency, death, as in Weigel’s case. Such asphyxiation deaths are not at all uncommon, either in hospitals, care facilities for the mentally disabled, and when people are in police custody.

A 2008 article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal discussing the notorious case of a Polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, who was tasered and then asphyxiated to death in 2007 at Vancouver’s airport, cited a 1998 study of 21 deaths associated with “excited delirium” and positional asphyxia, claims that the study found that 18 of 21 cases “were people in police custody” who all “suddenly lapsed into tranquility shortly after being restrained. In all 21 cases, the victims had been restrained either face-down or through pressure applied to their necks… In 8 cases, the victims suffered chest compression from the weight of 1–5 people.”

The article cites the conclusion of the study as saying that ‘”the possibility that positional asphyxia contributes to unexpected death in people in states of excited delirium cannot be ignored.” Those suffering from excited delirium were in need of more than the usual amount of oxygen, yet the techniques used to restrain them could restrict their ability to breathe.”

In Weigel’s case, the autopsy found that the cause of death was explicitly “mechanical asphyxiation” and after a lawsuit by his family that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court found that troopers John K. Broad and Devan Henderson unlawfully killed Weigel by using excessive force in restraining him after they had arrested, handcuffed and hobbled him and had him lying face-down on the ground.

The U.S. District Court originally ruled that governmental immunity covered the troopers because the state alleged trooper’s conduct was not unreasonable under existing law. But the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling in 2008, saying “…[T]he law was clearly established that applying pressure to Mr. Weigel’s upper back once he was handcuffed and his legs restrained, was constitutionally unreasonable due to the significant risk of positional asphyxiation associated with such actions.” The Supreme Court refused to hear Wyoming’s appeal, so the Circuit Court’s decision stands.

And that’s a good thing, because it puts all police departments and officers nationwide on notice that the courts will not excuse police who kill restrained citizens through carelessness, negligence or out of a misguided perception that they are in significant enough danger from handcuffed, hobbled suspects to justify using deadly force against them by crushing them to death.

The $500,000 settlement with Weigel’s family also included a requirement that Wyoming send a copy of the court ruling to every law-enforcement agency in Wyoming. That is perhaps the best thing to come from the sad death of Mr. Weigel at the hands of overzealous and uncaring Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers.

It would have been more just if troopers Henderson and Broad had been required to personally mail a copy of the decision to every law enforcement officer in the nation, personally, at their own expense, as just punishment for their negligence and disrespect for the civil rights of a Colorado citizen.

It is the unquestioned duty of our police to pay attention and use reasonable care to protect the lives and health of citizens whom they have arrested and taken into custody. We authorize our police to use reasonable and necessary force to take persons suspected of crimes into custody only upon the explicit understanding that when citizens are in their custody, they will be treated properly, with respect, and with due regard for their health and safety at all times. They are, after all, innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law, and police officers are expected to understand and respect this fact.

Allowing police to use untested, unapproved tactics like forcefully kneeling on people’s necks, heads or backs once they have been handcuffed presents a grave danger of permanent injury or death that cannot be justified by any specious claim that officers might receive minor injuries from a handcuffed suspect who continues to struggle. In many cases, it appears as if they are continuing to struggle because they are being asphyxiated to death by the police, and their struggles are perfectly reasonable, rational and necessary.

Our police must expect that wrestling with uncooperative suspects is just part of the job, and that resistance to police does not justify any sort of force that officers decide is appropriate. People should submit peacefully to arrest and take their case before the court, as the law requires. But failing to do so does not and should not justify the use of deadly physical force, even if it’s merely negligently or carelessly applied by poorly-trained and incompetent police officer that asphyxiates or injures the citizen.

If police officers fear injury so much that they feel justified in killing people who are handcuffed, then they have no business being police officers at all.

We must demand more of our police, and this ruling is the first step in establishing new, reasonable and appropriate police policies prohibiting the use of restraint tactics that pose an unreasonable risk of injuring or killing people by positional asphyxia or impact-related head and neck injuries.

© 2011 Altnews

Denver judge recognizes the danger of “overcharging” medical pot defendant with felony child abuse — Arapahoe DA uses common sense

By Seth Richardson

In a stunning departure from the lock-step march towards oppressive government nanny-state tactics, Denver County Court judge Andre Rudolph gave a wrist-slap to Joseph Lightfoot, who had been charged with felony child abuse for growing medical marijuana in his home. Denver police arrested Lightfoot after a nosy neighbor turned him in for arguing with his wife, which triggered an invasion of their home by police concerned about domestic violence.

During a search predicated on a “strong odor of marijuana,” police found a medical marijuana growing operation in the basement and arrested Lightfoot and his wife, Amber Wildstein because police had “numerous concerns” with the safety of their three children. Police and prosecutors alleged that there was no lock on the basement door and found small amounts of processed pot in the house. They also alleged that the growing operation endangered the children because of unspecified “chemicals,” “ventilation problems” and the potential that robbers might invade the home to steal the pot.

Legal scholar and former prosecutor Kris Miccio, of the University of Denver law school is quoted in the Denver Post front-page article as saying of the police allegations, “If a police officer brought that into my office, I would have thrown him out and called his supervisor. It’s crazy. It opens the door to anything.”

Miccio is right. If the police can arrest you on felony child-abuse charges based on potential safety hazards in your home, there is not only no end to the intrusions the police can make into your private home, but no one with children is safe from being arrested on the whims and caprices of a police officer who thinks that your home is “unsafe” for your children.

This is a standardless misinterpretation of a statute that was passed explicitly to protect children from the known and unavoidable hazards of meth-cooking operations to children living in a home-based meth lab.

But the rationale doesn’t apply to less obvious and documented risks. If it does, here are some of the felony crimes parents must avoid:

Handrail on the stairs missing or in poor repair? Felony child abuse.

Wet spot on the kitchen floor that might cause a slip-and-fall? Felony child abuse.

Bleach left out on the washer? Felony child abuse.

Kid riding his bike without a safety helmet? Already a nanny-state crime, but under this interpretation it’s felony child abuse.

Liquor left in an unlocked cabinet? Felony child abuse.

Have nice, expensive silver collection in your house? Might attract robbers, so felony child abuse.

And of course the quintessential nanny-state justification for police abuse: Guns in the home. Felony child abuse.

The list goes on and on of the felony crimes we all face regarding children if police and prosecutors are given such wide discretion by the courts. Thank God that Judge Rudolph did what he could to slap down the prosecution in this case. Unfortunately, he didn’t simply declare Lightfoot not guilty notwithstanding his plea.

Lightfoot pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor child-abuse charges in order to avoid a felony rap-sheet entry, which is a typical plea bargain that innocent people accept when the prosecutor is determined to nail them for something.

Poor people are very often subjected to this Hobson’s choice quite deliberately by the prosecutor, who commonly stack and overcharge, precisely because prosecutors know that poor defendants can’t afford attorneys to vindicate them, and the Public Defender’s office is overworked and understaffed and has little interest in actually pursuing justice for innocent victims of police abuse and nanny-state oppression since they get paid by the very system they are supposed to be fighting for their clients.

And defendants like Lightfoot are the very real victims of such prosecutorial abuse of discretion.

Child abuse laws are necessary, but they are supposed to be applied rationally, when children are actually abused or harmed, or if there is a clear and present danger of injury that is being ignored by an adult. They are not intended to empower nanny-statism or police oppression through standardless, ad hoc discretionary decision-making by police and prosecutors.

It’s a violation of our civil rights when the police and prosecutors execute laws without regard to reason or objective standards of behavior that competent adults of sound mind can be expected to know and understand. When the police have unfettered discretion to declare anything a hazard to children and arrest parents and guardians because it suits the police to do so, we are all in danger of police-state tyranny.

If police and prosecutors cannot be trusted to faithfully execute their duties using reason, prudence and respect for our civil rights, then they need to be turned out of office because they are not fit to serve us.

On the other hand, some prosecutors are rational, reasonable people who understand the limits of their authority.

Such is the case with Arapahoe District Attorney Carol Chambers, who reviewed the case of Denver County Court Judge Mary Celeste, who was under investigation for child abuse for leaving her six-year-old granddaughter in her car while she went shopping at Sam’s Club.

Chambers told the Denver Police that “the conduct involved does not rise to the level of a state criminal law violation” according to the Denver Post story on page 2B.

Good call, Ms. Chambers. Thanks for not pandering to the nanny-state nitwits.

The notion that a six year old girl is at risk while sitting in a car in a parking lot, even on a hot day, is ludicrous and laughable, unless she’s somehow disabled and incapable of opening the doors or windows of the car, which was not alleged.

Leaving a helpless infant unattended in a car on a hot day is a recipe for disaster, although not a guarantee of one by any stretch of the imagination, despite what nanny-state enthusiasts might say.

But a six-year-old? Please, use some common sense and reason, like DA Chambers did.

© 2011 Altnews

National Forests belong to us, so why not let us take advantage of them?

By Seth Richardson

The Forest Service has another in a long list of bureaucratic conundrums, and it’s quite typically constrained its thinking to the narrow box of federal top-down management.

It seems that in Colorado, the government has some 170,000 piles of trees and slashed branches that nobody is willing to buy from them. As a part of their stewardship of the forests, the Forest Service lets government-paid contracts to loggers to cut and stack hundreds of thousands of beetle-killed pine trees. Some $40 million in emergency funds has been allocated to the project by Congress.

The Forest Service didn’t do its homework and assumed wrongly that loggers would be able to sell the trees to lumber mills and a Kremmling pellet factory, but burdensome environmental regulations have decimated the timber industry nationwide and have driven most of the lumber mills in Colorado out of business and competition from Canada has kept lumber prices low, so there are few takers for the wood.

Meanwhile, logging is proceeding apace on the government’s (meaning your) dime and the logs are piling up. So many in fact that they are just burning hundreds of the piles in place because they can’t find buyers.

Problem is that state health regulations require a permit for such large-scale slash burns in order to preserve air quality. Of course this is a bit silly since the alternative is to leave the trees standing and dead, in which case eventually they will all light off at once in one enormous wildfire that will dump exactly as much carbon into the atmosphere as burning the slash piles, but in a much less controlled fashion and with much more devastation of the environment.

Since the desire is for “controlled burns,” and the carbon is going to be released one way or another, either through burning or as ozone-harming methane, a product of decomposition that’s sixteen times more harmful to the ozone layer than carbon monoxide that is produced by burning, let’s think out of the box. Let’s control and disperse the inevitable carbon release even more by requiring the contractors to whack the logs into 15-inch sections and pile them up. Then, put up a website that shows the location of these piles of wood and encourage people to go to any of them and fill their pickup trucks and trailers with…wait for it…free firewood.

Yes, you heard it here. Free federal firewood for the People! Massive amounts of it. As much as you care to load up and take home, absolutely free of charge and without any cost to the government for disposal.

Commercial firewood sellers, you can increase your profits and reduce your costs by getting your stock in one place, ready to be split and sold, at absolutely no (further) charge by the government! Now there’s a small-business stimulus plan that actually works!

Come one, come all and enjoy the bounty of your forest lands without all the red tape and cost of getting a firewood cutting permit from the Forest Service. No driving around or hiking up the hill to find a tree to cut. Less wait for the wood to cure so it can be burned.

Congress has already taxed you to cut and stack the wood, so no need for further government intervention! Come and get it!

While there’s probably far more wood than everyone in Colorado needs for their fireplaces, any amount that is taken for home or commercial firewood use reduced the overload. Everybody wins, nobody loses except the bureaucrats who can’t stand the idea of the People actually using and enjoying the bounty of their national forest lands without their supervision, for free.

Do you suppose anyone at the Department of Agriculture has enough common sense to make it happen?

Call or write to the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region office at 740 Simms Street, Golden, CO, 80401, 303-275-5350. Ask for Cal Wettstein, Commander of the Forest Service’s Bark Beetle Incident Management Organization and demand that the Forest Service put this plan into action immediately.

© 2011 Altnews

Low percentage of those eligible for food stamps who use them demonstrates the pride and self-sufficiency of Coloradoans.

By Seth Richardson

Those who are eligible for public food assistance programs but refuse to participate are to be lauded and respected for refusing to succumb to the entitlement mentality that is bankrupting our nation. Gazette reporter Emily Wilkins writes in her Saturday, July 9th story that less than 43 percent of people who are eligible for food assistance choose to suck at the public teat.

One might more productively say that fifty-eight percent of those who might be eligible for food assistance have the pride and dignity, and the respect for their fellow citizens, not to go on the public dole.

One of the most egregious bits of Progressive propaganda in the article comes from Kathy Underhill, executive director of Hunger Free Colorado, who suggests that public food assistance programs are economically beneficial. “You think about the people hired and it’s job creation,” Wilkins quotes her as saying, “You’re feeding people and creating economic development.”

This of course is utter nonsense because every dollar that flows into government food programs, and from there to private retailers to supply food, is first extracted by force from the taxpayers. Such entitlement programs never produce wealth and are not the product of wealth production. They produce only the illusion of economic development by shifting and concealing the source of the money, which is moved from place to place by the state and federal government in a giant shell game.

What is given to the needy in Colorado comes directly from the pockets of other Americans. It’s not economic development, it’s pure, unadulterated redistribution of wealth by Progressive taxation. Six hundred and eighty-eight million worth of redistribution from taxpayers to the poor in Colorado alone.

This is not to say that food assistance programs are not a good thing, they are. Certainly those among us who are in need and are hungry must be fed. We are not like India or other third-world nations that we allow our citizens to starve to death in the streets. We are a compassionate and caring people whose altruistic instincts and charitable giving worldwide exceed that of any other nation. Americans are the most generous people on earth, not just to our own, but to the needy worldwide.

But do we really need, or want the government fulfilling that need, or is it better to free our charitable nature as Americans and let neighbors help neighbors? Taxation for redistribution of wealth, which includes food assistance programs, is a Progressive and Socialist notion that actually decreases the desire of people to help their fellow citizens.

When the government extracts money through taxation to serve the economic needs of others, we are naturally more reluctant to contribute to those needs on our own, since we’ve already been taxed for that purpose.

And government is never, ever more economically efficient than the free market for charity. When the government collects a “poor tax” for redistribution, it takes a large share of that tax right off the top to fund the enormous federal and state bureaucracy that administers the programs, thereby redistributing wealth not to the poor, but to the affluent bureaucrats whose primary interest is in securing their own economic future by ensuring that their programs remain in high demand.

Thus the pandering to the press by Progressive mouthpieces who insist that redistributive taxation is “economic development” and who call for for bigger, more expensive government entitlement programs.

The poor must be protected and fed, that much we all agree on. But government feeding programs are inherently wasteful and demeaning to the poor, who should look to, and be served by the members of their community, as a matter of charity and love.

Nor should the poor be encouraged to rely upon government assistance. Benjamin Franklin once said, “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”

Perhaps the only good thing about such assistance programs is the bureaucratic nightmare of paperwork that is required before such assistance is granted. It’s so burdensome, intrusive and humiliating to fill out the 26 pages of intensely personal and embarrassing inquisitorial government paperwork that many people simply refuse, preferring to find other ways to support themselves rather than be subject to such scrutiny of their private lives.

Good for them. That’s how it should be. Charity begins at home, and private charitable food assistance programs don’t require reams of paperwork and bureaucratic intrusiveness, they just require some humility and thanks from those who are in need, and the natural altruism and caring of the community.

In the end, if you are so needy, and your community cannot provide you with food using private charitable programs, the public assistance programs are there as an ultimate safety net, but they come with a serious cost by way of humiliation and shame, and that’s as it should be. Government “entitlement” programs should always be programs of last resort that are not pleasant or easy to use.

Contrary to the protestations of Kathy Underhill and Hunger Free Colorado, we need fewer people making use of government-funded public food assistance programs, not more. Ideally, no one should need to resort to government handouts, and private charitable assistance would care adequately for all our truly needy community members.

To make that happen, Underhill and her organization would make better use of their time and money by helping the many private charities in the community to get their message of need across to members of the community who might be willing to help, rather than proselytizing for ever-more Progressive government spending and power.

© 2011 Altnews

Terrorist conversation shows us why an armed citizenry is important

By Seth Richardson

For more than twenty-five years now, both as a police officer and civilian, I’ve carried a concealed handgun against the remote chance that I’ll be called upon to use it to defend the innocent. Doing so on a daily basis is a nuisance and a pain in the butt, literally, but it’s a habit I’ve formed and a grave responsibility I’m proud to accept. Carrying a firearm in public requires careful attention and constant training to remain proficient and safe, but it’s a necessary component of securing our liberty as a nation and our individual freedom and safety.

Aside from the obvious reasons related to self-defense against criminals, two terrorist suspects in Seattle illuminated yet another reason why we as a nation need to take our duty to be armed more seriously, as the citizens of Israel do.

In Israel, it’s perfectly commonplace to see citizens carrying fully-automatic weapons like the famous Uzi submachine gun and other military arms openly in public. As a result of this public policy of an armed and prepared citizenry, Israel has not suffered a major terrorist attack on a school in many years. Parents and volunteers armed with military weapons routinely guard Israeli schools.

And contrary to the hysterical maunderings of hoplophobes and anti-gun zealots, Israelis aren’t gunning one another down randomly in the streets, and the gutters remain tidy and free of blood…except when some terrorist sets off a concealed bomb, which is the weapon of choice for cowards.

If Israel’s example is not sufficient, last week, federal agents arrested Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, AKA Joseph Anthony Davis and another unidentified man in Seattle as they took possession of illegal machine guns provided for them by federal agents in a sting operation. Abdul-Latif, a former sailor in the U.S. Navy, and his cohorts were planning to attack a Seattle military recruiting station to kill as many people as possible. Agents also recorded conversations between Abdul-Latif and an informant where Abdul-Latif lauded the massacre in 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas, where 13 soldiers died and many more were wounded by a traitorous Muslim terrorist mole in our military. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Seattle also released court documents that quoted Abdul-Latif as saying, “It’s a confined space, not a lot of people carrying weapons, and we’d have an advantage.”

Those chilling words vindicate every inconvenience and personal sacrifice I’ve ever made in choosing to be armed in public.

The lesson here is that that no one can defend your life against such sudden attacks but you. The police won’t be there in time and you won’t have six minutes to wait for them to show up. You won’t have sixty seconds. If you’re lucky, you might have six seconds or less to take action to put a stop to the attack and save many lives.

But like the victims at Fort Hood and Virginia Tech and every other mass shooting in U.S. history, the potential victims in this foiled plot, who were disarmed and denied their right to keep and bear arms by their own government, would have been at the mercy of the only people in the room with a gun; the terrorists.

And that’s exactly why terrorists and deranged killers deliberately and carefully seek out “gun-free zones” like colleges and schools and, paradoxically, domestic military bases, where soldiers are denied their right to keep and bear arms except when they are going into combat.

It should be obvious that the fewer “gun-free zones” we allow, and the more law abiding citizens who step up and accept the burden of being armed in defense of themselves, their families and their nation, the fewer targets armed terrorists will have to choose from to ply their trade with impunity, and the greater the chances that when terrorists do attack, and they will, they will not murder innocents unopposed.

© 2011 Altnews

Mayor-elect Bach should open a criminal investigation into the PR scandal.

By Seth Richardson

The degree of cowardice and corruption at City Hall has reached a new zenith with the payoff of Sue Skiffington-Blumberg, former city PR flack who deliberately trashed Colorado Springs in the press rather than doing the job she was hired to do. This week, acting City Manager Steve Cox authorized a $38,800 severance payout to Skiffington-Blumberg, saying “I think 10 years of service warrants that kind of loyalty from the employer” and claimed that she is “a good person.”

She may be a good person, but she’s also a corrupt city employee who deliberately and knowingly betrayed the city and the taxpayers by callously planting negative stories in the national media as the operative of a widespread conspiracy within city government to punish taxpayers for refusing to approve a new tax. And as a desperate last act, Cox is trying to cover up and minimize the potential fallout from this scandal by allowing Skiffington-Blumberg to resign and giving her severance pay, before the new administration of Mayor-elect Bach can take the reins and forbid the payola.

What Skiffington-Blumberg (not to mention Culbreth-Graft) did ought to qualify as criminal fraud, since she was specifically hired to improve, not denigrate the image of Colorado Springs. Not only should she not be getting a severance bonus, she should be being sued by the city for the incalculable economic damage she personally did to the city’s image.

Skiffington-Blumberg insists that she was just following orders, specifically the orders of ex-City Manager Penny Culbreth-Graft, but that’s a lame excuse for such a deliberate betrayal of trust.

Skiffington-Blumbers owed her allegiance and loyalty to the taxpayers, who were her employers, and she should have blown the whistle on the scandal immediately. As Edmund Burke once wrote, “all that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Skiffington-Blumberg was paid more than one hundred thousand dollars a year to look after the best economic interests of the city, and she should punished for betraying that trust, not be rewarded for it.

So why did Cox pay her off?

Probably to shut her up about who knew what, and when. That’s the only explanation of why she wasn’t instantly fired for cause and frog-marched by security from the building after Wayne Laugesen’s bombshell editorial hit the street. The conspiracy to trash Colorado Springs in the national press cannot have been a secret, and it’s simply inconceivable that others besides Skiffington-Blumberg and Culbreth-Graft were not deeply involved.

And that leads to two places: The City Council and the Mayor’s office.

Just a little conspiracy theorizing leads to the inevitable conclusion that the corruption goes much higher than the City Manager, and there’s simply not much room left at the top of the political food chain for plausible deniability.

It’s time to get to the bottom of this conspiracy Mayor-elect Bach. Find out who knew what, and when. Convene an investigation and hire a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute this fraud upon the people of Colorado Springs. Name names publicly. Fire anyone and everyone who had any shred of knowledge of this conspiracy and didn’t come forward immediately, no matter what their lame excuse. Reveal which elected officials were in on the crime so that they can be recalled and turned out of office.

Mayor-elect Bach, if your new administration is to have any credibility at all, you have to clean house and root out any and all corruption without a shred of mercy.

That’s what the people of Colorado Springs deserve. Show them that you will be a strong Mayor in no uncertain terms. Use this prime opportunity to set the new standard for fidelity, honesty, honor, integrity and openness in government by refusing to tolerate corruption of any kind.

This is your chance to achieve greatness, seize it.

© 2011 Altnews

Analysis of the City Charter shows that Skorman’s home-made campaign contribution forms violate municipal election law

By Seth Richardson

The brouhaha over whether candidates for Mayor of Colorado Springs are required to provide the employer and occupation of donors on their campaign finance reports appears to be a cynical dirty-politics attempt to gain political advantage by exploiting an ambiguity in the law by mayoral candidate Richard Skorman that may come back to bite him in the behind.

The fault for the ambigity Skorman and Colorado Ethics Watch are trying to exploit must be laid at the feet of City Clerk Catherine Young, who once again has proven that she’s incompetent to hold her office.

But as for any legal or criminal culpability on the part of candidates for Mayor in Colorado Springs who used the mandated official form provided by Young, which do not provide space for the information Colorado Ethics Watch and the Skorman campaign insist is mandatory, it’s a dead issue.

The reasons are pretty simple, beginning with Colorado’s state constitutional Home Rule provisions, which clearly state that where there is a conflict between state law and home rule city ordinances, the home rule ordinances trump the state law, unless the General Assembly has specifically “occupied the field” by regulating the specific issue.

Despite what Colorado Ethics Watch maintains, the Colorado Fair Campaign Practices Act’s provisions regarding the listing of the occupation and employer of donors do not automatically apply to local political races in home rule cities like Colorado Springs, or so says Deputy City Attorney Wynetta Massey. She wrote in a May 13, 2011 e-mail, “…where inconsistencies occur between the FCPA and the City Code, the City Code will prevail… Since the campaign finance reports do not specifically state that employer and occupation must be reported, it is optional for reporting purposes.”

She’s absolutely correct in her legal analysis, and while CEW executive director Luis Toro is quoted in the Gazette as saying, “Wow, I disagree with that,” and said that “other cities in Colorado regularly require disclosure of donors’ employers and occupations,” that is not a requirement for all home rule cities, who can make their own rules as they see fit. Section 5.2.201 of the City Charter says, “In the case of any inconsistency, this chapter, “Elections”, of the City Code provisions shall prevail.”

Toro goes on to falsely claim, “If you accept that argument, then the clerk could change the election requirements at whim.” This is legal nonsense. The rules for local elections in home rule jurisdictions are set by the Colorado Springs City Council which delegated supervision of elections to the City Clerk. Section 1.2.506 of the City Charter says, “The Clerk shall conduct all City elections and do or cause to be done all things required by the City Charter and related ordinances… The Clerk is the designated election official for purposes of Colorado statutes.”

This doesn’t make the City Clerk an independent ruling body, but it does vest substantial administrative authority in the City Clerk to determine what information is required by the city in the election process. If CEW or Skorman have a dispute, it’s with the City Clerk, not the other candidates, who merely followed her directions to the letter.

And there’s another law that absolves everyone except Skorman from legal liability for following the directives of the City Clerk in this instance. Colorado Revised Statutes 18-1-504 says that a person cannot be held criminally liable for obeying “an official written interpretation of the statute or law relating to the offense, made or issued by a public servant, agency, or body legally charged or empowered with the responsibility of administering, enforcing, or interpreting a statute, ordinance, regulation, order, or law.”

Catherine Young is exactly the sort of public servant anticipated by this law, and candidates in the mayoral race were told explicitly by her that they were to use the city-provided form and no other form. Section 5.2.202 (A) of the City Charter states, “All reports required by the Fair Campaign Practices Act shall be filed with the City Clerk upon forms supplied by the City Clerk.”

And guess who knowingly and deliberately did not file the required reports on the mandatory form supplied by the city? Candidate Richard Skorman.

Skorman cannot claim that he was obeying the dictates of a city official tasked with conducting the election as the other candidates can. Instead he knowingly refused to abide by her instructions, and what’s more, he never openly questioned her interpretation of the campaign laws or asked for a clarification of the conflict between the city election code and the CFCPA prior to filing illegal self-created forms that explicitly violate the city’s election code.

Clearly he knew of the ambiguity between the state law and the city code, and tried to exploit the ambiguity to his political advantage, seemingly with the full cooperation of both Colorado Ethics Watch. But there’s some potential bad news on the horizon for Skorman, if someone wishes to press the issue.

Section 5.2.204 (A) of the City Charter goes on to say, “Any person who knowingly violates any provision of section 5.2.202 of this part… shall be guilty of a violation of the ordinances of the City, punishable as a misdemeanor, and shall upon conviction be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars ($500.00) for each offense. Any candidate shall, in addition, forfeit the right to assume the nomination or to take the oath for the office to which the candidate may have been elected…” (emphasis added)

By knowingly filing illegal home-made campaign finance reporting forms, Skorman has violated municipal law and may be prosecuted for a misdemeanor and, most importantly, has forfeited the right to take the office of Mayor, even if he wins the election.

Oops. Looks like his attempt to get everyone else in hot water backfired on him, perhaps fatally for his candidacy for Mayor. That’s what you get when you play dirty politics and do it poorly.

© 2011 Altnews

The killing of Osama bin Laden won’t end terrorism, but it sure brought out the bleeding-heart nitwit knee-jerk liberals.

By Seth Richardson

Wayne Laugesen in his editorial on the killing of Osama bin Laden, stole my Wizard of Oz metaphor before I got this article written, but I’m going to use it anyway.

Unfortunately for everyone, Osama didn’t melt into a cloud of green smoke after being shot by SEAL Team Six (first rule of SEAL Team Six…you never talk about Seal Team Six…). One shot, one kill. Good work gentlemen.

U.S. forces took custody of Osama’s body to collect forensic evidence for positive identification, then buried the body at sea, after, according to reports, giving the body some minimal degree of respect towards Islam by washing it, wrapping it in a white sheet, and speaking some words (we don’t know now just what words) in Arabic before the body was dumped into the Arabian Sea.

This was a brilliant move on the part of the military because it denies jihadists both a body and a shrine to terrorism.

Wayne’s editorial ignited a firestorm of criticism from panty-waist liberal apologists, quislings and Chamberlainesque appeasers to radical Islamic terrorists when he suggested that Osama’s body was undeserving of Islamic ritual and ought to be cremated and flushed down the White House john.

Liberal nitwits of every stripe flooded out of the woodwork and, as Wayne put it, gave him a “shellacking,” going so far as to call for him to be fired for his insensitivity to Islam and his “barbaric” attitude. They thought we should be “above” suggesting desecration of Osama’s body, and that his “insensitive” editorial would foment a backlash from radical jihadists for his disrespect.

Who cares what radical jihadists think? Not me, and not Wayne, and not any right-thinking American, or right-thinking Muslim.We must never, ever cater to the ire or desires of terrorists, because that is the whole purpose of their terrorism. We must stand strong and speak as it pleases us to speak, and if they attack us for it, so be it, we will kill them in due course too, just as we did Osama, no matter how long it takes.

Once that bullet penetrated his skull, Osama ceased to exist and what was left was merely offal to be disposed of in a sanitary manner in the interests of public health.

So, put me down as a supporter of Wayne Laugesen and what he actually wrote, because far from being insensitive to Islam, he was strongly supporting true Islam and true Muslims.

Here’s why: Osama bin Laden was not a Muslim. He was a disaffected megalomaniacal, narcissistic, murderous, serial mass-murderer whose entire organization was built around his personal antipathy towards the United States.

He misused Islam as a stalking-horse for his personal vendetta because that was the only way he could attract followers willing to die for him, a coward who would not do his own dirty work, but rather recruited mental defectives, women and children to be his suicide bombers. He talked the talk, but was too cowardly to walk the walk.

Why was he so angry at the United States? Because we stationed troops in Saudi Arabia, at the invitation of the Saudi government. That’s it. There is no other complaint he had other than his ire at Saudi Arabia’s Kings for allowing the United States to garrison his “holy land.”

He first tried to attack the Saudi royals and government, but they cut off his money and revoked his passport, and he became a fugitive, so he organized Al Quaida as a way to strike at America to vent his spleen. It had absolutely nothing whatever to do with Islam.

If you ask American Muslims, they decry jihad and terrorism as being illegitimate and a perversion of true Islam. The same is true of most peaceable Muslims. Radicals have a different opinion of course, but we should not care what they think.

Therefore, Osama is at best an apostate Muslim, and properly he’s no Muslim at all, but merely a pretender, an Infidel, and an abuser of true Islam who, by Islamic standards, richly deserved to die.

And Wayne was perfectly correct, if somewhat provocative, in stating that we should not grant his body Islamic rites because to do so is to grant him membership in the religion that he twisted to his own ends and abused.

To do so is an insult to true Muslims, and although we did provide some perfunctory Muslim rites, no one should care how outraged radical jihadists become. If they initiate revenge attacks, we will track them down and kill them too. That’s how we deal with such animals.

As for Osama’s final resting place, it’s perfectly appropriate that he’s fish-food, and that jihadists are denied their martyr’s bones and a shrine to terrorism. Besides, flushing his ashes down the john next to the Oval Office would just make the White House into a jihadist shrine, so it’s just as well that didn’t happen.

And thank SEAL Team Six for their proficiency with firearms, which saved the United States probably a billion dollars in expenses that would have been required to incarcerate, try and execute Osama. Such should be the on-the-field-of-battle fate of all members of Al Quaida. No prisoners. After all, they don’t recognize the Geneva Convention, so neither should we.

Let us all now pause to thank SEAL Team Six and all the support units that made this public sanitation measure possible through their outstanding skill and courage. Thanks guys, you’re the very best we have, and I’m forever grateful that you’re out there in the bush looking after us. If I can ever do anything to help you, anything at all, just let me know.

© 2011 Altnews™

Hyperbole and mendacity are the tactics used by Defenders of Wildlife over wolf delisting

By Seth Richardson

One of the better parts of the budget bill signed into law by President Obama last week is a provision that places wolves in Montana, Idaho and parts of Washington under the management of the states, but still subject to some federal supervision, rather than under the full protection of the Endangered Species Act.

It’s not a complete victory for the states, however. The rider by Sen. Jon Tester, Democrat Senator from Montana and  Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson reinstates a 2009 U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service decision to turn over management of wolves to the states that was thrown out by U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy in 2009 and affirmed in April of this year.

In 2008, the F&WS published a Decision and Final Rule in the Federal Register that wolves in the northern Rockies, including Idaho, Montana and parts of Washington, had recovered sufficiently in numbers to justify removing them from the full protection of the ESA, and it turned over most of the management of wolves, including limited hunting seasons to control wolf populations, to the states. This Decision and Final Rule was immediately appealed in federal court by Defenders of Wildlife and a dozen other conservation groups.

In throwing out the Decision and Rule, Judge Molloy said that the F&WS could not delist wolves in Washington, Montana and Idaho while leaving wolves in Wyoming still under protection because the ESA does not expressly authorize delisting by state, but only by “discrete population segment,” which means a biological/geographical grouping not a legal state boundary.

The Congressional rider, now signed into law, directs the F&WS to reinstate the 2008 Decision and Final Rule, and it also prohibits anyone from challenging the Final Rule in court.

According to Defenders of Wildlife, “This provision sets a dangerous precedent for legislating on Endangered Species Act protections that could leave countless other species vulnerable to attack. And, by blocking any further judicial review of wolf delisting, this provision sends the message that complying with the law doesn’t matter.”

But this is mendacious nonsense, and it is Defenders of Wildlife, along with other so-called conservation groups who are falsely complaining about complying with the rule of law.

You see, the ESA is not intended to be a vehicle for perpetual federal management of state-owned wildlife or an expedient for radical environmentalists to be able to forever interfere with private property rights and frustrate development. It’s intended to protect truly endangered species until they have recovered sufficiently to survive on their own, at which point the law mandates that such species be delisted and management be turned over to the states.

Wolf proponents have been misusing the ESA for years now as a vehicle to, in part, eliminate public-lands ranching, which they and other environmental extremists believe is harmful to the environment. Ranchers in Idaho and Montana have been suffering massive losses of livestock due to wolf predation, and neither the F&WS nor the wolf advocacy organizations have been particularly sympathetic or helpful in dealing with wolf predation.

While Defenders of Wildlife has operated a wolf predation compensation program since 1987, and likes to tout its alleged success, saying, “Defenders’ livestock compensation program has been a resounding success in helping ranchers who live and work in wolf country,” the reality on the ground is much different.

Ranchers in wolf country complain about bureaucratic interference, delays, and outright refusals to compensate for stock losses. Generally, in order to qualify, the livestock kill has to be verified by the F&WS as being caused by wolves. If there is any question, and the F&WS is well-known for questioning every claim in detail, and if there is any excuse at all they can use, the claim is denied.

Because open-range livestock ranching means that a kill might not be discovered for days, or weeks, stockgrowers are denied compensation more often than not because the F&WS requires that the owner prove a wolf actually killed the animal, even if the carcass is surrounded by wolf tracks and covered with wolf hair. Since livestock die and can be killed by other predators, like coyotes and bears, a wolf-kill claim will be denied, practically speaking, unless the owner saw the wolves kill the animal.

Nor, under the ESA, can livestock owners shoot and kill a wolf that is actually attacking a cow or sheep. They must instead call the F&WS, who is supposed to, but often does not, send out someone to hunt down and kill the offending wolf.

So, for all the hoopla about livestock growers being compensated for wolf-caused losses, it’s just propaganda unrelated to the truth on the ground. Just go ask the ranchers themselves.

In 22 years, Defenders of Wildlife has only paid $1.3 million in compensation in 895 instances, which comes to about $1452 per incident. But they list 3,832 instances of predation on their own website. And this number is highly suspect, as they have motive to deny the source of predation.

In some cases the ESA and the F&WS have literally driven stockmen out of business by denying grazing permits and imposing draconian land-use rules that make it impossible for them to survive economically, in order to favor wolf recovery, often as the result of lawsuits filed by groups like Defenders of Wildlife.

What’s particularly galling to ranchers is that when the F&WS did the science as the law requires, and determined scientifically that wolves in Idaho and Montana had recovered sufficiently in numbers to justify removing full ESA protections, Defenders of Wildlife and numerous other organizations immediately filed suit to prevent the delisting. And they succeeded, but only through technical shenanigans involving the letter of the ESA law and the definition of “discreet population segment.”

And the ESA itself ignores the fact that wolves are not an endangered species at all. There are many thousands of wolves in self-sustaining populations roaming freely in Canada and Alaska, not to mention Siberia, so there is factually no danger that wolves will cease to exist as a species, even if they are eliminated from the lower 48 states.

But, live by Congressional law, die by Congressional law. That’s the way it works in the United States.

What the Congress did was to lawfully amend the ESA as regards wolves in the northern population segment of the Rocky Mountains. Contrary to what Defenders of Wildlife and other say, this amendment poses no danger to other species greater than they already face. Congress wrote and passed the ESA, and Congress has always had the plenary power to amend or even repeal the ESA, in part or in whole, at its discretion.

While Defenders of Wildlife and others would like for the ESA to be enshrined as a constitutional Amendment that cannot be changed by Congress alone, that’s not the case, nor will it ever be the case, we should all hope.

Congress did nothing more than examine the scientific evidence, which the F&WS itself says is compelling enough to justify delisting only parts of the population of wolves based on state boundaries, and it amended the law to provide that because that single species has recovered sufficiently to justify delisting within a particular state, it’s appropriate in this case to permit the state, under continuing federal supervision, to take over management of the wolf population.

In other words, Congress simply affirmed the scientific judgment of the F&WS and acted to preserve the intent of the ESA while resolving a legal conundrum created by radical environmental advocacy groups that was interfering with just and reasonable public policy decisions. It’s not, contrary to the assertions of Defenders of Wildlife, any threat to any other species.

Congress did what it is authorized to do, and as Judge Molloy wrote in his final decision in April of this year, “No matter how useful a course of conduct might be to achieve a certain end, no matter how beneficial or noble the end, the limit of power granted to the District Court must abide by the responsibilities that flow from …political decisions made by the Congress.”

Judge Molloy also quoted the United States Supreme Court, which said, “Our individual appraisal of the wisdom or unwisdom of a particular course consciously selected by the Congress is to be put aside in the process of interpreting a statute. Once the meaning of an enactment is discerned and its constitutionality determined, the judicial process comes to an end. We do not sit as a committee of review, nor are we vested with the power of veto.”

Congress has the power to amend the ESA, and that’s exactly what Congress did, and both the courts and everyone else, including Defenders of Wildlife, will just have to live with that decision, just as private landowners and stockgrowers have been forced to live with the consequences, intended and unintended, of the imposition of the Endangered Species Act on them.

What’s sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander.

© 2011 Altnews

The Colorado Hospital Transfer Act directly conflicts with Colorado Springs’ constitutional home rule authority

By Seth Richardson

The wisdom or necessity of the sale of city-owned Memorial Hospital to a private for-profit entity is a local issue subject to local democratic debate and decision making, as is the question of how Colorado Springs can spend the proceeds it might collect from such a sale. Neither are legitimate subjects for regulation or oversight by the state Legislature, according to the Colorado Constitution.

Much of the rhetoric being heard recently about the potential sale is focused on the requirements of the Colorado Hospital Transfer Act (CHTA), a state law enacted in 1998. This law says that the state Attorney General is empowered, among other things, to “ensure that any proceeds of the transaction are dedicated to… charitable purposes,” and he can require that the “proceeds… be set aside in an amount equal to the fair market value of the hospital assets being transferred.” Thus, the CHTA regulates how such money can be spent.

But the CHTA was never intended to interfere with home rule powers of municipalities, says former state Representative and Colorado Springs resident Andy McElhany, who was serving in the Legislature at the time. McElhany says of the CHTA, “Our intent was not to hinder the sale of municipally owned hospitals; the last thing we wanted was to prevent cash-strapped local governments from putting publicly owned assets like Memorial to their best and highest use for their citizen-owners. Rather, the thinking behind the 1998 legislation was to ensure that the sale of any private, nonprofit hospital ­which, in a sense, belongs to no one­ did not betray its charitable mission.”

Because the law fails to distinguish between publicly-owned and privately-owned hospitals in imposing this mandate, the law conflicts with the city’s constitutional home rule powers. Colorado Springs is a home rule city, and the decisions of the City Council on purely local matters are not subject to interference by the Legislature. Article XX, Section 6 of the state Constitution says:

“Such charter and the ordinances made pursuant thereto in such matters shall supersede within the territorial limits and other jurisdiction of said city or town any law of the state in conflict therewith… It is the intention of this article to grant and confirm to the people of all municipalities … the full right of self-government in both local and municipal matters.”

One of the most fundamental powers of a municipality under home rule, one that is inherent and inseparable from the  power to collect revenue, is the power to determine how those revenues are spent, subject only to the rules of the municipality itself. The power to dispose of city assets is solely vested in the City Council or in the residents of the city, and if the voters of the city decide that it is no longer necessary or desirable to have a city-0wned hospital, that decision is final. Likewise, if the City Council chooses to spend the revenues collected from a sale of the hospital on fixing bridges or potholes, that decision too is not subject to interference by the Attorney General or the Legislature.

While the state Legislature certainly has the power to regulate private hospitals and at least arguably the Attorney General, pursuant to the CHTA, can make regulations and set conditions on how private state-licensed hospitals operate that will protect the public interest in affordable health care, both the decision to sell and the allocation of the proceeds of the sale of hospitals owned by home rule cities is beyond its authority to regulate, and squarely conflicts with the city’s constitutional home rule powers.

The state Supreme Court has said that, “the legislature cannot prohibit the exercise of constitutional home rule powers, regardless of the state interests which may be implicated by the exercise of those powers.”

The violation of the sovereign home rule powers of the City of Colorado Springs found in the Colorado Hospital Transfer Act is something entirely aside from the local question of whether Memorial Hospital should be sold to a private for-profit entity. The City Council must challenge the state’s authority to tell Colorado Springs how to spend it’s own money, if for no other reason than in order preserve the city’s sovereign constitutional powers.

© 2011 Altnews

Obama’s unconstitutional war on Libya is a test of Progressive global governance and subornation of the Constitution.

By Seth Richardson

President Obama gave a stirring patriotic and humanitarian speech to the nation on Monday night. The problem is that he gave it to the wrong audience and he gave it far too late. It’s a speech he should have given before Congress, as a part of a constitutionally-mandated process by which this nation goes to war. But he didn’t, he ignored Congress and the Constitution and instead consulted with the United Nations, NATO, and astonishingly, the Arab League.

Why did he abandon the Constitution and illegally levy war on Libya, which was no threat to the United States? Because he’s a Progressive and a Marxist, and to him the Constitution is just so much toilet paper with which he wipes himself. Sure, he pushed all the appropriate emotional buttons, propagandistically invoking genocide and evil and cynically pandering to all the best aspects and instincts of American character and our propensity to come to the rescue of oppressed people around the world.

The problem is that launching more than a hundred cruise missiles, destroying tanks and armored vehicles from the air, and sending soldiers into Libya to mark targets is not a humanitarian act by any sane definition. It’s an act of war, and only the Congress can declare war.

His defiance of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which grants Congress the sole and plenary power to declare war, was deliberate and calculated. Make no mistake, Obama is a constitutional scholar and knew exactly what he was doing. It was a test of the tenor of the public, a probing of the will of the People to accept without comment or objection the plenary exercise of executive power under the guidance of and subject to the approval of global government under circumstances where a plausible argument of necessity and humanitarian concern could be made.

It was a classic exercise of the Rahm Emmanuel maxim “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” After encouraging the youth of the Middle East to rise up in rebellion against brutal dictators and helping to set the Middle East aflame with his rhetoric and his sub-rosa machinations to foment unrest, Obama seized the golden opportunity of open insurrection in Libya to turn on our former “friend,” Moammar Gaddaffi, dictator of Libya, for whom Obama is seeking $1.5 million in “humanitarian” aid in his latest budget.

Why would Obama turn on Gaddafi and support an unknown group of insurrectionists who may end up being far worse for both Libya and the United States if they succeed in deposing Gaddafi? Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, excoriated Obama for the unproved attack and U.S. support of Libyan rebels saying, “Believe me, one day you will wake up and you made a big mistake with supporting these people.” So again, why would Obama risk censure and impeachment by knowingly violating the Constitution and declaring war on Libya?

Because his goal is not to liberate Libya, it’s to test the resolve of the the Congress and the People to see if we have abandoned our fundamental principles and the rule of law. What Obama is hoping is that the Congress has finally become impotent and irrelevant and will not dare to oppose him or repudiate his high crimes, and he believes that the time is right to advance his “fundamental transformation” of the United States into a vassal state of One World Government under the aegis of the United Nations and World Socialism.

This test of public sentiment towards unitary Progressive executive action and resort to international authority to make war rather than obedience to the Constitution is carefully and insidiously intended to strike another very serious blow against the sovereignty of the United States and our foundational documents and laws. Obama believes that the public will blithely accept his platitudes and humanitarian zeal as sufficient justification to excuse his outright, blatant, deliberate, knowing and treasonous violation of the Constitution and the Separation of Powers Doctrine.

If we buy his propaganda, if we ignore his defiance of the Constitution, he will have achieved what Woodrow Wilson could not with his advocacy for the League of Nations, and he will have set a precedent that even George Bush the Younger, Wilson-loving Progressive that he was, dared not attempt in Iraq. Bush at least sought and received Congressional authorization for the Iraq war. Obama has assumed dictatorial executive power by committing an unprovoked and unauthorized act of war against Libya, and doing so in a manner that proves his disdain for Congress and the Constitution, and his fawning obedience to the global power elite and the U.N.

Obama has admitted that he decided to attack Libya more than two weeks ago, while he was in Washington and while the Congress was in session, and while he could have presented the arguments that he presented to us tonight to the Congress for their debate and approval or rejection. Instead, he deliberately waited until Congress was not in session, and he was in South America, precisely so that he could claim urgency and the unavailability of Congress as his excuse for taking unilateral action to levy war on Libya. His consultation with the United Nations and NATO rings hollow as well, since neither organization has any power or control over the United States, much less any constitutional authority to authorize the President of the United States to levy war on a nation that is not a direct or even credible threat to the United States.

His platitudes and excuses after the fact simply do not excuse his defiance of the law and the Constitution. Nor should we allow him to get away with this arrogation of power. If we do, then the Constitution is indeed nothing but a piece of paper that might as well be used to wipe Obama’s rear, and we might as well acknowledge that the United States is no longer a sovereign power and a nation of laws, not men.

We, the People must flood our representatives in Congress with letters and phone calls demanding two things: First, that the Congress immediately defund the unprovoked warlike actions of our military in Libya, and second we must call for impeachment and removal of the President, who has finally violated the Constitution in a way that makes it imperative that we repudiate his “fundamental transformation” of our nation into a vassal of a one-world government.

© 2011 Altnews

Government has no business regulating marriage

By Seth Richardson

In 1992, Amendment 2 to the Colorado Constitution tried to bar the state from granting “minority status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination” to gays. That Amendment was overturned as a violation of the right to equal protection under the law by the Supreme Court in 1996. In 2006, Colorado voters approved Amendment 43, which says “only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Colorado.” Amendment 43, petitioned onto the ballot, won by a 55 to 45 percent margin. This Amendment has not been successfully challenged in the courts, and remains part of the basic law of the land in Colorado. In that same election, voters turned down Referendum I, the Colorado Domestic Partnership Benefits and Responsibilities Act, which provided legal rights to same-sex couples, by a 52 to 48 percent margin.

Today, state Senate Bill 172, which would create a right to a civil union giving any two unmarried adults, regardless of gender, substantially the same legal rights as married persons winds its way through the legislative process. The bill has passed the Senate, but faces an uphill battle against conservative Republicans in the House.

Senate Bill 172 should become law because it resolves the primary infirmity of Referendum I, which was its specific reference to same-sex couples. But this should only be a stepping stone to the ultimate goal, which should be to extract the state from regulating marriage at all.

As early as 1691, marriage laws in America were imposed for blatantly racist reasons. Miscegenation laws barring marriages between whites and blacks and other minorities, and which controlled marriage among minorities were the genesis for modern marriage licensing by the state, and such laws endured until 1967. The Supreme Court overturned them in Loving v. Virginia, where the court resounding rejected the Virginia Supreme Court’s claim in 1965′s Naim v. Naim that the State of Virginia had legitimate purposes “to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens,” and to prevent “the corruption of blood,” “a mongrel breed of citizens,” and “the obliteration of racial pride.” The Supreme Court held:

“These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.”

As a civil institution regulated by the government, it is argued that marriage between one man and one woman, deserves special, exclusive status, preference and privilege in the law because such regulation “strengthens the family” and “provides stability for the individuals, their families, and the broader community.”

Notably absent from such assertions is any critically robust evidence that providing fundamental equality under the law for other forms of domestic partnerships in any way impairs the goals associated with protection of the marriage relationship.

In essence, those who object to civil unions between non-married individuals are falsely claiming that marriage and civil unions are somehow a mutually-exclusive zero-sum game where the rights of heterosexual married persons are disparaged or harmed by the extension of rights to other couples who choose a civil union over marriage. In short, if gays are allowed to enjoy certain legal rights and benefits under a civil union law that are also enjoyed by married heterosexuals, some undefined and vague harm would be perpetrated on society as a whole.

This zero-sum argument is, of course, utter nonsense and factually speaking is based in the same sort of  irrational bigotry, hatred and fear of homosexuality that is manifest in the ruling of the Virginia Supreme Court in Naim v. Naim. Replace the word “race” with “sex” in the Supreme Court’s ruling and the parallels become clear. It’s also important to note that not every intimate personal relationship is about sex, homosexual, heterosexual or otherwise.

Moreover, according to Supreme Court precedent, government has no legal right to pry into the sexual preferences or otherwise-lawful sexual practices of anyone. The assumption that the only possible reason two people might want to form an intimate personal bond is for sex is a prurient, prudish, Puritanical and entirely unconstitutional criterion upon which to base public policy.

Many people choose to live in close relationship with others completely outside the traditional bounds of marriage and procreation and sex, and they deserve to have the right to enjoy legal protections afforded to other familial relationships including rights of survivorship, medical decision making, assumption of debts and filing of claims for wrongful death.

For example, a brother and sister, or two sisters or brothers, or other close relations who cannot marry, like an uncle or aunt, or those who may be divorced or widowed may wish to meld their families together insofar as the legal rights and protections they wish to enjoy for perfectly rational and practical reasons not involving sex.

Or an uncle may wish to take financial and legal responsibility for, and assign legal benefits he is entitled to receive to his brother’s widow and children, or to his widoed sister and her children. Traditional marriage laws do not allow this sort of beneficial, but entirely non-sexual assumption of mutual responsibility and benefit that provides stability for families, children and society as a whole. A civil union law would. There are many reasons why two people who do not wish to, or cannot be “married” to desire to bond themselves and their families together for mutual protection and benefit, particularly in these hard economic times.

Why should a single man who does not wish to, or cannot marry for religious reasons (for example, a Catholic man or woman who is sterile and cannot be married in the Catholic church) be denied all ability to benefit from and contribute to a close family relationship? Suppose such a man wishes to assign benefits like his pension or medical insurance benefits to a widowed female friend or relative who is struggling to support her children. Those rights and benefits, which he has earned and which would automatically accrue to his legal spouse were he married, cannot be likewise assigned to someone he cares deeply for, but does not wish to or cannot marry. Why should the children be deprived of the benefits that he wishes to voluntarily assign for their benefit merely because he’s not married to their mother? Is not the stability of the woman and her children, and society, better served by the State acknowledging and ratifying a contract for a civil union that reduces the burden on the taxpayers that might otherwise have to provide social services benefits and entitlements to the widow and children?

Marriage is, at its core, the melding of two individuals in a spiritual, religious, intimate and loving relationship that is neither amenable to or an appropriate subject for governmental interference or regulation. It is a contract between two individuals, and perhaps their God, if they are believers. It is only marginally the province of government regulation.

Because marriage is fundamentally spiritual and religious in nature, under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, the State must have a “compelling need” to regulate marriage at all, and it must only regulate marriage in ways that both achieve only the legitimate governmental objective and do so with the minimum possible regulatory interference with what is a constitutionally-protected religious practice.

Only when it comes to the protection of the rights of children, and the orderly dissolution of the relationship and distribution of marital assets does the government have any legitimate interest in regulating any intimate domestic relationship. It is not within the proper province of government to regulate religious and spiritual matters like marriage in order to provide “stability for the individuals, their families, and the broader community.” It is up to the individuals to provide their own stability and it is their right to conform their intimate personal relationships however they believe it will best serve their fundamental right to pursue happiness.

The only other legitimate role of government in such relationships, irrespective of the gender of the parties, is as a recorder and enforcer of a written civil contract that details the rights and responsibilities of the parties who have come to a meeting of the minds about how they wish to construct and live their lives. Stability in both relationships and in society and fundamental fairness are indeed better served by requiring that such intimate relationships be carefully constructed as written contracts that specify the nature, duties, rights and duration of the contract that are legally binding on both parties and which may be enforced by the State when a breach of that contract occurs.

Therefore, where our society should be headed is towards the complete withdrawal of the State from the regulation of “marriage” as a personal, intimate, spiritual and/or religious institution, which is best left to the partners or their respective religions.

The Colorado General Assembly should not only pass Senate Bill 172 into law, but it should also amend and/or repeal every mention of the word “marriage” and replace it with the words “civil union” in our statutes.

Marriage then becomes a matter beyond the pale of civil law, as it should be, and squarely the province of religion and personal commitment alone, while at the same time, the legitimate and reasonable regulation of the legal aspects of intimate domestic relationships, which are within the power of the State to regulate, provide equal protection and due process to everyone.

And it also respects the will of the voters by removing from the ambit of government authority the recognition of marriage by the state. Those who wish to be married may be married simply by representing themselves to be married. But that representation would not grant them any legal rights or impose upon them any legal obligations. For that to occur, they must have a civil union contract specifying the rights, duties and obligations of each partner recorded by the County Clerk.

Fairness for all, and the orderly administration of law and justice would be best served by limiting the State’s role in intimate relationships to recording and adjudicating civil contracts.

© 2011 Altnews

Pandering to environmental zealots and slopping at the federal trough is not what we pay the Commissioners to do.

By Seth Richardson

It’s time to face facts about electric cars. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and for every benefit an all-electric car might have, there are environmental and economic problems to match.

“Zero emission” electric vehicles are anything but zero emission, and in a number of ways they are more harmful to the environment than the gasoline-fueled vehicles they seek to replace. Take for example the battery pack required by an electric car. They are massive, heavy, and are filled with toxic materials that have to be disposed of when the battery pack eventually fails, as every battery ever designed by mankind does, and they have to be replaced. The manufacturing of batteries of all types consumes energy and has its own “carbon loading” and pollution coefficient which is rarely factored in when analyzing just how “green” the vehicles actually are. While most automotive batteries can be recycled, there is still an environmental cost to be considered in both the manufacturing and recycling of any battery that’s usually left out of the environmental analysis.

And then there’s the electrical generating capacity improvements that are required to replace the fossil fuels that are supposedly avoided by using all-electric vehicles. Unlike a standard gasoline powered automobile which can be refueled at any of a thousand gas stations in the area at need in a matter of minutes, an electric car must be recharged at a charging station that may require special circuitry and connectors, which limits the locations where they can be recharged, and it can take many hours to recharge them. And the infrastructure for charging stations is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. The price of copper wire, for example, is at an all-time high at the moment. But that’s hardly the only issue with all-electric vehicles. And then there’s the additional air pollution resulting from increases in generating capacity, even with natural-gas fired plants, much less coal-fired ones.

In addition to extremely limited range for electric vehicles, which is usually less than 100 miles, and is often around 40 or so, using an electric vehicle requires a good deal of planning and careful attention to charging if the operator is not to be left stranded somewhere with a dead battery.

In 2000, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, purchased a fleet of 20 electrically-powered Ford Ranger delivery trucks intended to provide clean, efficient movement of materials around the sprawling lab located on the slopes of an ancient volcano high above Santa Fe. Twenty sophisticated charging stations were installed all across the lab’s facilities to recharge the trucks. The intent was laudable, but within a year or so, the entire program had been abandoned, the vehicles disposed of, and the charging stations removed.

According to Steve Sandoval of the Communications Office at LANL, “a determination was made that the maintenance costs were prohibitive. For example, to conduct regular maintenance on the vehicles required that the truck (s) be driven to Albuquerque, 90 miles from Los Alamos each way.”

But according to confidential sources one of the primary reasons for the failure of this well-intentioned program was the confluence of the inherent design flaws of the electric trucks and the human factor.

It seems that employees would just jump in a truck, as they were accustomed to doing with gasoline-powered vehicles, and would take off to make their deliveries without carefully checking the state of charge on the batteries. This lead to frequent occurrences of the trucks stalling out in inconvenient places, which required the truck to be towed to a charging station, where the employee would have to cool his heels for hours, or find another way to transport the materials, while the truck charged up.

Eventually, managers at the facility decided that the cost of towing the vehicles and the delays associated with having to recharge them, combined with the servicing costs, exceeded their value as fuel-saving vehicles, so the program was abandoned.

This points out the inherent flaw in short-range electric vehicles. They only work well when both the route and timing of their use is both consistent and predictable, and there is sufficient time at either end to recharge the vehicle. In other words, an all-electric vehicle might work very well for a daily commuter who lives less than 20 miles or so from his place of work and who drives it to the office in the morning, puts it on a charger while at work, and then drives it home in the evening. But electric cars are not well suited to moving public employees about the city, much less the entirely of El Paso County, on their less-predictable daily travels.

I predict that what happened at the Los Alamos National Laboratory will happen to the County Commissioners if they decide to buy all-electric vehicles, and they will end up abandoning the program for the same reasons; inefficiency and excessive costs caused by the failure of employees to properly manage battery charge necessitating expensive tows and lost productivity.

Perhaps one day, when all-electric cars can swap a discharged battery pack for a charged one as quickly and easily as one can fill up a gas tank, such vehicles will be suitable for more than the limited purpose of commuting to and from work every day. But that day has not yet arrived, and the County Commissioners should steward the public’s money better and resist the urge to slop at the federal trough by participating in a grant program that has to extract the money for the grants from taxpayers to begin with.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, particularly where the federal government is concerned, and like the Los Alamos National Laboratory experience, the Commissioners may spend taxpayer money for a feel-good sop to mindless environmental correctness and end up with an expensive white elephant of a program it’s obligated to support even when the costs involved far exceed what it would cost just to go buy a fuel-efficient subcompact car.

Hybrid vehicles are substantially better when it comes to energy management because they can operate on gasoline alone if their battery runs out, but there is evidence that they are not nearly as cost-effective as some would have you believe. Toyota is touting a few of its Prius hybrids that are said to have more than 200,000 miles on their battery packs, and they claim that some may have close to 400,000 miles on them, but the common consumer experience appears to be far different.

While Toyota warranties their battery packs for between 100,000 and 150,000 miles these days, depending on model and year, it appears that no few battery packs need to be replaced right about the end of the warranty period, and the costs of replacing a battery pack can easily wipe out the savings in fuel costs realized over time. One Prius owner in Santa Fe owns a 2004 Prius and recently had to replace his battery pack at only 120,000 miles, and it cost him nearly $6,000 to do so, which wiped out any cost savings on fuel he had accrued. His story is far from unique.

Greg Thome, manager of Toyota Division Communications, says, “We have not had a complete hybrid vehicle battery replacement due to failure. We have mentioned that in past interviews and perhaps speeches. The hybrid battery is made up of 28 individual modules, and on rare occasions we’ve replaced and individual module for an owner if needed (under our 10-year hybrid powertrain warranty). Only the equivalent of about one percent of the total batteries in operation have been sold as replacements overall, including those damaged in accidents.”

But this statement fails to explain the many complaints about poor battery performance and the high cost of replacing a hybrid battery pack that can be easily found on line, and which literally wipe out any accrued fuel savings with a single battery pack replacement.

Nor has Toyota responded to questions about their dealership qualifications or willingness to diagnose and repair a faulty battery module in a pack. According to the best information available at press time, neither Toyota nor its dealers will offer to repair a faulty module in a pack if the pack is not under warranty, so the owner is compelled to buy an entire new battery, even though only one module may be defective.

Commissioners should strongly resist the urge to pander to eco-correctness or slop at the federal trough, and should buy only vehicles of proven value and durability that will most efficiently serve the public at the lowest possible cost for the longest possible time, and which do not become useless and require expensive battery replacement when an ordinary gasoline powered vehicle can be expected to rack up at least twice as many miles without substantial need for major repairs.

Hybrid vehicles may be a valid option for El Paso County, but the Commissioners should pay for it on their own and resist participating in feel-good federal grant programs which always come with strings attached.

© 2011 Altnews

Only the Congress makes our laws, and only the Court gets to determine their constitutionality

By Seth Richardson

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently announced that, at the direction of President Obama, the United States Department of Justice will no longer perform it’s sworn duty to the Constitution of the United States, the duly-enacted laws of Congress, and the People.

President Obama has decided, all on his own, that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which prohibits the federal government from recognizing gay marriages, is “unconstitutional,” and Attorney General Holder “concurs” in this “determination.”

In his statement, Holder trots out excuses for his dereliction of duty, the primary argument being that:

“…the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a heightened standard of scrutiny.  The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional.”

Holder goes on to state that he is directing the Justice Department not to defend the DOMA in court, which torpedoes several ongoing cases.

The problem is that Holder doesn’t work for or at the bidding of the President. According to the Attorney General’s own website, “The Attorney General represents the United States in legal matters generally and gives advice and opinions to the President and to the heads of the executive departments of the Government when so requested.”

In other words, Holder does not work for the President, as his personal attorney, he works for the People of the United States, and his duty is to represent the nation in legal matters, not pander to popular public opinion or kowtow to the demands of the President. President Obama is his manager, not his employer. We are, and Holder owes his allegiance and his duty to us.

Holder has a higher duty, as an officer of the Court, to vigorously and zealously defend the laws that Congress enacts, whether he likes them or not, and whether or not the President likes them. Likewise, the President is obliged to see that the laws duly enacted by Congress are faithfully executed.

The issue of a President refusing to enforce or defend laws duly enacted by Congress goes far back into our history. Although it never came to a direct confrontation over presidential non-enforcement, in objecting to a Supreme Court ruling by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1832 that invalidated the Indian Removal Act intended to eject the Cherokees from Georgia, President Andrew Jackson famously said, “John Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it now if he can.”

The issue of a President flatly refusing to obey or enforce a law of Congress was squarely faced in the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868 for refusing to obey the Tenure in Office Act, which was passed over his veto as a part of the Reconstruction after the Civil War.

The Act prohibited the President from removing from office anyone who had been confirmed by the Senate. Johnson, over the objection of many in Congress, removed Edwin M. Stanton from his position as Secretary of War, replacing him with General Lorenzo Thomas. The House of Representatives promptly, within days, impeached Johnson. He survived removal from office by a single vote in the Senate. Stanton retired, and Thomas continued to serve for another year, retiring 10 days before Johnson left office.

This seminal event demonstrates the importance of the President’s obedience to his oath and his constitutional obligations and limitations. Since then, the academic debate has raged over the President’s duty to enforce laws that he feels are unconstitutional. But this aspect of executive authority did not gain much traction until the Progressive era began in about 1912, when Progressive Presidents began picking and choosing which laws they would obey and enforce in order to advance the Executive State vision of Woodrow Wilson.

The Progressive agenda set forth by Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and FDR marked the advance of both presidential intransigence to the acts of Congress, and liberal scholarly arguments attempting to justify presidential violations of Article II, Section 3, Clause 4 of the Constitution, which explicitly requires that “[The President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This is not a discretionary matter, it is a mandatory directive and duty of the President.

The arguments over presidential non-enforcement of the law are arcane, highly academic, and convoluted, but they fall into two main camps.

The Progressive version includes those who take a “unitary executive” vision of the Separation of Powers Doctrine and hold that the President is “co-equal” to both the Congress and the Supreme Court in his authority to “interpret” the Constitution according to his best judgment.

There is, however, no express authority for the President to interpret the Constitution at all and decide what he will and will not enforce to be found in the document. The Progressive argument relies on inferences they draw about the tension between the Constitution and laws duly enacted by Congress, which have admittedly not infrequently been ruled to be unconstitutional. However, to make these arguments, a large amount of pettifoggery and obfuscation is required to weasel around the clear pronunciation of the Constitution on Presidential authority and the separation of powers.

Progressives argue that it is the President’s duty to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, or to defend his executive power, which authorizes him to ignore any law he deems is either unconstitutional or an encroachment on his legitimate executive authority merely because he believes it to be so. Thus, the Progressives argue, a President’s duty to uphold the Constitution outweighs his constitutionally-mandated duty that the laws be “faithfully executed.”

The core error in this argument is the presumption that the President has the authority to determine what laws are constitutional and what laws are not, based on his own judgment. While it is true that Presidents have refused to enforce laws that are manifestly unconstitutional in the past, such refusals still constitute a usurpation of legislative or judicial power, no matter how honorable the intent.

The strict constructionist version holds that the President’s authority to participate in legislation is expressly limited by the Constitution only to the power of the veto, and the power of the pardon, and that the President has a mandatory duty to uphold all duly-enacted laws of Congress, even if he believes them to be unconstitutional.

It is the strict construction version that holds the most legal weight, because Article 1, Section 1 says, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” This is an exceedingly clear explication of the situation. The President’s participation in the making of law is limited to his persuasive powers during congressional debates and his veto power, which may be overridden in turn by Congress. The Congressional override of a presidential veto is proof absolute that it is the Congress who is ultimately responsible for making the law, and that the President has no authority to effectively veto a law by refusing to enforce it.

The Progressive notion that the President can exercise a defacto veto by refusing to enforce the law turns the whole structure of the Separation of Powers Doctrine on its head. It’s a usurpation of legislative authority and an act of despotism.

The proper course of action for a President presented with a law he believes to be unconstitutional or a usurpation of his executive authority  is for him to either challenge the law before the Court, or enforce the law and allow those who are wrongfully impacted by the law to do so as such violations occur.

Indeed, the latter is the customary way in which cases and controversies are resolved by the courts. Those with standing to sue because they have been, or will be harmed by the law, do so, and the case winds its way through the system until the Supreme Court rules on the matter with finality.

For the President to simply declare that a law is unconstitutional and then refuse to enforce it usurps not only the legislative authority of Congress, but also the judicial authority of the Court to make such determinations, and in some cases, actually makes it impossible for people who might be impacted by the law to challenge it in court.

Such usurpation of authority is a violation of the Constitution, and therefore is a “high crime or misdemeanor” for which President Obama, like President Johnson, can and should be impeached and removed from office. And it’s not just the sitting President who has committed this violation, former Presidents including Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr. have done the same thing, and should have likewise been impeached.

As for Holder, and the defense of duly-enacted laws in court, he represents the United States, not the President, and his duty as an officer of the court require him to mount a vigorous defense of his client’s and his employer’s interests, who are the People, not the President, regardless of his personal opinions on the propriety or constitutionality of the law. For him to do otherwise is for him to violate the canons of professional ethics for lawyers, for which he should be disbarred.

The President is not the arbiter of law, that authority lies with the Supreme Court, nor is he a legislator, that authority lies with the Congress. He is the enforcer of all of the laws that we, the People direct and authorize our elected representatives to enact, for better or for worse.

His duty is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” and remain obedient to the Constitution that he swore to “preserve, protect and defend.”

© 2011 Altnews

Colorado House of Representatives rule change may violate the Establishment Clause

By Seth Richardson

When it comes to the separation of church and state, moments have meaning. Time and location both are important considerations when deciding whether or not government is impermissibly dabbling in religion. The state House of Representatives just took action that unnecessarily disturbs the status quo and potentially violates the Establishment Clause.

Up until now, the morning prayers in the state House have been conducted prior to calling the legislative body to order. But a rule change approved by a 40 to 25 vote changes that. Now, the House will be called to order by the Speaker of the House, and then a Rabbi, priest or minister will deliver the morning prayer.

This rule change is significant because it is, or at least ought to be the difference between a free exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause and an impermissible governmental action that violates the Establishment Clause.

Just as the recent prayer luncheon at the Air Force Academy, and indeed the National Prayer Breakfast attended by the President are private expressions of religion by public officials, notwithstanding that they occur on government property, a prayer offered before the official business of the state House of Representatives is underway is outside the official functions of government, and is therefore a permissible exercise of religious freedom by those in the House who wish to pray together before getting down to business.

But once the House has been called to order, legislators are no longer completely free to worship as their conscience demands. The instant that the gavel drops and the roll call begins, representatives are “on the clock” for the people of Colorado, and their right to engage in religious activities while on the job is constrained.

Not eliminated, by any means, but merely constrained in ways that ensure that it cannot be argued that officials of the government are establishing religion by favoring religion over irreligion, or by favoring one religion over another.

Nothing in the Constitution prevents any member from praying silently or aloud at any time they choose to do so, provided that doing so does not disrupt the proceedings. But at the moment the gavel drops, the Speaker of the House, Frank McNulty, is no longer empowered to require any person to sit through a religious observance during the conduct of public business. His duty is to attend to public business, and only public business, from gavel to gavel.

According to the U.S. House of Representatives Office of the Parliamentarian, the daily invocation in the House takes place after the gavel has fallen and the House has been called to order. Evidently this poses no concern to the Supreme Court, although perhaps it should.

Few would argue that stopping a legislative session in the middle of debating a bill to pray about it as a body would be constitutional. To say then that the Speaker of the House, either at the state or federal level may stop the proceedings of the House to pray in one instance is to suggest that he can do so whenever it pleases him to do so, which is clearly not what the First Amendment contemplates.

This suggests that there needs to be a bright line drawn between private religious observances and the official functions of government when it comes to legislative opening prayers. That bright line should be the dropping of the gavel and the calling of the public body to order.

The definitive case on legislative prayer so far is Marsh v. Chambers, from 1983, where the Court said:

“In light of the unambiguous and unbroken history of more than 200 years, there can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society. To invoke Divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making the laws is not, in these circumstances, an “establishment” of religion or a step toward establishment; it is simply a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country.

…

We conclude that legislative prayer presents no more potential for establishment than the provision of school transportation , beneficial grants for higher education , or tax exemptions for religious organizations.”

The Court did not address the precise timing of the legislative prayers, but scrupulous attention to detail regarding the timing of such prayers would militate against post-gavel invocations.

In the footnotes of Marsh, the Court points out that during deliberations regarding paying for a Congressional Chaplain, “At one point, Benjamin Franklin suggested that ‘henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business.’”

The word “before” ought to be important to the Colorado General Assembly, even if it is not to the U.S. Congress, in order to reduce controversy and respect the rights of the religious and the irreligious alike.

Moving the morning prayer from the pre-session period during which no public business may be conducted, and which is therefore the private free time of the legislators that they may use in any way they like, to a time after which the business of government has gotten underway, certainly has the appearance of favoring religion. And unnecessarily so.

In another pre-Lemon case, Everson v. Board of Education, the Court made several sweeping statements of First Amendment interpretation that should always guide the General Assembly when it comes to legislative prayers:

“The ‘establishment of religion’ clause of the First Amendment means at least this: neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance.”

By moving the prayer to a time when legislators are compelled to be present to conduct the public’s business, both force and influence are used to compel participation in religious worship.

In Lee v. Weisman, the Court addressed a benediction given at a high school graduation, saying:

“What to most believers may seem nothing more than a reasonable request that the nonbeliever respect their religious practices, in a school context may appear to the nonbeliever or dissenter to be an attempt to employ the machinery of the State to enforce a religious orthodoxy.

…

The principle that government may accommodate the free exercise of religion does not supersede the fundamental limitations imposed by the Establishment Clause. It is beyond dispute that, at a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise, or otherwise act in a way which “establishes a [state] religion or religious faith, or tends to do so.”

The Court also addressed invocations by students at extracurricular activities, in this case a football game, in Santa Fe Independent School District v Doe:

“These invocations are authorized by a government policy and take place on government property at government-sponsored school-related events…Even if we regard every high school student’s decision to attend a home football game as purely voluntary, we are nevertheless persuaded that the delivery of a pregame prayer has the improper effect of coercing those present to participate in an act of religious worship.”

It’s important to note that while the latter cases are specifically aimed at school prayer, and the Court has ruled that schools, like the military, are special exceptions to the general provisions of both clauses of the First Amendment, this does not mean that it’s a constitutional free-for-all when it comes to adults, including legislators.

The controlling case law when it comes to government actions involving religion is is Lemon v. Kurtzman, which established what is known as the “Lemon Test.” This test has three prongs to it, and the failure of any one prong makes the governmental action a violation of the Establishment Clause:

First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose;

Second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion;

Finally, the statute must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.

Whether having a legislative invocation or prayer is itself not repugnant to the Constitution, the rule change itself, as a legislative act, violates the first two prongs of the Lemon Test because there is no secular legislative purpose for changing the rule and also because the principle effect of the change explicitly advances religion.

That there is historical context for legislative prayers does not necessarily answer the charge that this rule change is unconstitutional, particularly when the new rule replaces long-established legislative practice that by it’s original timing neatly avoids the potential for violating the Establishment Clause and also avoids the appearance of impropriety.

The question must be asked, what was the need to change the established practice of carefully separating the practice of religion from the business of the public?

The question of the motivation for the rule change remains unanswered.

But those questions must be answered, and the rule should be returned to the status quo ante, to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

© 2011 Altnews

Abuses of Colorado law by the sovereign Indian Nations deserve the full diplomatic treatment

By Seth Richardson

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers is on the warpath against abuses of Colorado’s payday lending law by companies claiming to be “protected” by the sovereign status of the Indian Nations. In a story in the Sunday, February 11, 2011 edition of the Denver Post, “Hiding behind a tribe,” reporter Alicia Caldwell describes how non-Indian out-of-state payday lenders are hiding behind two Indian tribes to evade Colorado’s new, and strict payday lending laws.

Members of the Santee Sioux and Oklahoma Miami Indian Nations are trying to give legal cover to several payday lending companies by claiming that the non-Indian businesses are “arms” of the “sovereign” Indian Nations.

This is not really anything new, casino gambling corporations have been camping out on Indian lands for decades now. But the payday lending scheme is different because the transactions don’t take place on Indian lands, they take place in cyberspace.

Suthers’ complaint has been wending its way through the courts, and the Colorado Supreme Court returned the matter to the trial court for more proceedings. Suthers is rightfully afraid that if loose associations with Indian tribes is sufficient to endow tribal sovereignty on any commercial business, the tribes will likely become “rent-a-tribes” allowing non-Indian businesses to escape state regulations. That cannot be permitted.

This is no idle threat. Federal law regarding the regulation of the Indian tribes is pretty exclusively vested in the Congress, although the states have won some ability to control Indian activities in places. Indian nations across the US use their state tax exempt status to sell everything from gasoline to cigarettes at prices far under what off-reservation commercial enterprises can.

Fair enough, if the transaction takes place on the reservation.

But the difference here is that the transaction does not take place “on the reservation,” it takes place, essentially, at the consumer’s home, on his computer. What the businesses, and the tribes want is to have their cake and eat it too. They want access to off-reservation markets and consumers without having to comply with off-reservation laws and regulations.

Sorry, not buying any today.

Because the transactions are not taking place solely on the reservation, they shouldn’t be subject to sovereign immunity…unless the Indians want FULL sovereign immunity.

And that would involve reservation border stations, immigration and customs inspection, trade and tariff agreements and other common international diplomatic and legal obstacles to unfettered trade.

It’s illegal, for example, for a payday lender in Mexico to solicit business in Colorado without complying with our laws, so why should Indian Nations be any different?

Short of making the Indian Nations fully sovereign, with all the diplomatic consequences thereof, there’s another way to quash this fraudulent scheme to evade our state laws.

The legislature should pass a law saying that no contract entered into with any Indian, Indian Nation, or company ostensibly owned by or protected by an Indian Nation’s sovereign status, can be legally enforced in any way outside of the boundaries of reservation property. Access to Colorado’s civil courts should be denied for contract disputes with Indian Nation-based businesses.

Colorado is under no obligation to enforce private contracts made with the Indian Tribes, particularly if the tribes are going to use their sovereign status to evade Colorado law.

If the Indian Nations want to enforce contracts they have entered into in violation of our laws, by claiming sovereign status, they will have to induce the parties to come to the reservation in order to serve them with legal process, and they will have to adjudicate the dispute on the reservation. If that means they can’t get a debtor to come to the reservation for trial, and they can’t get the Colorado courts to enforce a judgment, it’s just their tough luck. The same rules should be applied to gambling debts as well.

That’s what it really means to be a “sovereign nation.”

Payday borrowers should borrow whatever they can from tribally-protected payday lenders, and then stiff the lenders and the tribes, while making sure never to enter tribal reservations.

If the lender takes them to civil court anywhere outside the reservation, the borrower should simply claim the sovereign immunity of their status as a non-tribe-member citizen of the United States as justification for repudiating the debt.

If the payday lenders want sovereign tribal protection, they can get by with sovereign tribal enforcement, which should not be valid or enforceable anywhere but on their reservation.

© 2011 Altnews

Religion is what you do, not what you believe

By Seth Richardson

One of the most common canards heard from atheists is the claim “atheism isn’t a religion.” True enough, from the lexicological point of view, but the canard is not intended as a definition of atheism, it’s dragged out as a means of evading criticism of the ideological, and frequently religious actions of Atheists in the real world.

It’s supposed to be a debate-stopper in response to the common theistic canard “atheism is just another religion, so it’s no better than any other religion.”

The cognitive disconnect in both sides of this “is too, is not” byplay is that everybody seems unable to distinguish between religion and theism, particularly Atheists. It’s not really that they cannot distinguish, it’s more that they refuse to do so, and they refuse to acknowledge that in many instances, atheism is expressed as a religious belief every bit as much as belief in God is.

But Atheists hate to be lumped in with religion, in part because they consider themselves to be the intellectual superiors of anyone who holds theistic religious beliefs. It would be demeaning to their reputations, and harmful to their anti-religious rhetoric to be classified as “just another religion.”

Ignoring for the moment the hubris of claiming intellectual superiority over historical religious philosophers like St. Thomas Aquinas, it may be observed that religion is as religion does.

Religion, in fact, is not what you believe (whether you believe in Jehova, Zeus or Thor is irrelevant), it’s how you practice your beliefs, whatever they may be.

How does PZ Myers enter into this discussion? Well, it seems that Myers has seen the light and is not just admitting to his religious anti-theistic, anti-religious beliefs, he’s proselytizing and exhorting his minions and acolytes that they too should acknowledge their status as religious believers.

In a blog entry at his website, “Pharyngula,” Myers writes,

“…nobody becomes an atheist because of an absence of values, and no one becomes an atheist because the dictionary tells them they are. I think we also do a disservice to the movement when we pretend it’s solely a mob of individuals who lack a belief, rather than an organization with positive goals and values.”

Good boy! You get a pat on the head for engaging your reasoning faculties.

Myers is exactly right. Nobody “becomes” an atheist without forming a set of beliefs and associated practices. The trick to understanding this is that there is a difference between “atheism” and “atheist.” Atheism is, in dictionary form, “a lack of belief in gods.” But atheists are more than dictionary definitions. They are, to murder a metaphor, what they eat.

Myers agrees with me and goes on to say,

“Dictionary Atheists. Boy, I really do hate these guys. You’ve got a discussion going, talking about why you’re an atheist, or what atheism should mean to the community, or some such topic that is dealing with our ideas and society, and some smug wanker comes along and announces that “Atheism means you lack a belief in gods. Nothing more. Quit trying to add meaning to the term.” As if atheism can only be some platonic ideal floating in virtual space with no connections to anything else; as if atheists are people who have attained a zen-like ideal, their minds a void, containing nothing but atheism, which itself is nothing. Dumbasses.”

Dumbasses indeed, and the world is chock full of them. Thanks for having the courage to point this out, PZ, it puts you head and shoulders above most other Atheist “philosophers.”

Of course, it’s likely that Myers cribbed this notion from me, since I’ve been expounding this sort of argument for several years now, including at the now-defunct Richard Dawkins discussion forum, and at the “lifeboat” replacement, Rational Skepticism. I wonder if the opprobrium heaped on Myers is anything like the truckloads heaped on me for having the temerity to challenge Atheist dogma. It’s pretty much like calling Mohammed a pederast, without the strap-on bombs.

But I digress.

In philosophy, there are several flavors or varieties of atheists or atheism, which is to say the practice of atheistic beliefs. The most convenient in this context is the distinction between “implict atheism” and “explicit atheism.” As described by Libertarian and atheist author George H. Smith in his book Atheism: The Case Against God,  “Implicit atheism is the absence of theistic belief without a conscious rejection of it”. Explicit atheism is the absence of theistic belief due to a conscious rejection of it.”

Implict atheists are infants and children, the mentally defective, and the exceedingly rare person who has never been exposed in any way to theistic concepts. Explicit atheists are everyone else who have been exposed to theistic concepts and have evaluated those concepts and claims, and have made a decision to reject them as untrue.

Myers has more than a little contempt for those who claim implicit atheism when clearly they are explicitly atheistic,

“If I ask you to explain to me why you are an atheist, reciting the dictionary at me, you are saying nothing: asking why you are a person who does not believe in god is not answered when you reply, “Because I am a person who does not believe in god.” And if you protest when I say that there is more to the practice of atheism than that, insisting that there isn’t just makes you dogmatic and blind.”"

Right on PZ! Myers goes on to do the unthinkable in atheist dogma, he acknowledges that theists are not simply deluded boobs incapable of rational thought,

“You are an atheist — take pride in what you do believe, not what you deny. And also learn to appreciate that the opposition hasn’t arrived at their conclusions in a vacuum. There are actually deeper reasons that they so fervently endorse supernatural authorities, and they aren’t always accounted for by stupidity.

But here’s where Myers goes astray in his otherwise rational examination of the conceits of atheism.

“…there is more to my atheism than simple denial of one claim; it’s actually based on a scientific attitude that values evidence and reason, that rejects claims resting solely on authority, and that encourages deeper exploration of the world. My atheism is not solely a negative claim about gods, but is based on a whole set of positive values that I will emphasize when talking about atheism. That denial of god thing? It’s a consequence, not a cause.”

Here’s what makes Myers’ position an expression of religious belief; The only thing that science can say about the existence or non-existence of God is that there is insufficient critically robust scientific evidence in the record upon which to base any conclusions, pro or con.

This is true because while it is true that theists have not provided science with critically robust scientific evidence for the existence of God, that fact does not infer that God does not or cannot exist.

“The absence of evidence,” goes the aphorism, “is not evidence of absence.” In fact, it may merely be evidence of the primitive state of humanity’s understanding of the physical universe, much less our complete and utter ignorance about the nature of any other universes or dimensions that may exist.

Theoretical physics has many theories, which are actually nothing more than educated speculations, about the possibility of alternate universes and their configuration, from bubble universes to membrane universes, to the “multiverse” theory of ever-expanding forkings of this universe.

Because we have so little actual knowledge of our own universe—we cannot even explain how it came into being with any certainty—and we have less understanding of other universes, no one can say with any credibility that the physical properties of another universe, or even this universe (and it’s many postulated dimensions), preclude the existence of some intelligent entity that has the capacity to manipulate time, space, matter or energy in this universe that might reasonably be defined as “God” by human beings.

Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Or, if I may be so bold, indistinguishable from divine action.

And it is this evident scientific ignorance that makes Myers’ assertions about “scientific attitude(s) that value evidence and reason” and “positive values” into religious beliefs. Value evidence and engage in reason, by all means, St. Thomas Aquinas and a host of other philosophers have done so, so you’re in good company, PZ. But do not succumb to what I’ve coined the “Atheist’s Fallacy.”

This fallacy is a fallacy of circular reasoning in which one of the premises of an argument against the existence of God is drawn from one of many human-created theistic claims, which premise is presumed to be true in reaching the conclusion that God does not exist:

• Premise: Christians claim that God created the earth 6000 years ago.
• Premise: Science has proven that the earth is 4 billion years old.
• Conclusion: Because the first premise is false, God does not exist.

The error in reasoning should be obvious. The premise falsely presumes that the Christian claims about God’s actions are true. If the Christian’s claim is false, or erroneous, the conclusion fails because one cannot base a rational, logical conclusion on false premises.

The circular reasoning is seen in the “God doesn’t exist because what Christians say about God isn’t true.” Whether or not the claims of Christians are true has no effect on whether God actually exists, or doesn’t.

God, it must be recognized, if He exists, is not constrained or created by man’s observations or claims. God must be greater than our dim, fallible view of him, or He would not be God. To constrain God to the boundaries of human understanding or description is plain error.

But how is it that Myers and his ilk can be defined as being “religious” about their atheism merely because they hold “positive views” about theism and religion?

Religion has a number of accepted authoritative definitions, and naturally the primary definitions include references to theistic concepts, but that’s not the only definition of religion, and it is generally acknowledged that a number of “atheistic” religions exist, including Buddhism and Secular Humanism.

As I said before, theism is what you believe, religion is how you go about practicing your beliefs.

The relevant definitions that apply to Myers and innumerable other self-professed (and therefore explicit) atheists include:

“Something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience;”

“A specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects;”

” The body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices.”

Myers and his fellow-travelers indisputably hold beliefs about theism and science, and Myers in particular strongly believes in and devotedly follows his atheistic beliefs as a matter of ethics and conscience.

“I oppose religion because we can see its effects on even otherwise brilliant people: it short-circuits skepticism and leaves them open to dangerous and erroneous ideas.”

He’s so devoted to his beliefs that he’s made something of a pest of himself to legislators and theists, and he regularly proselytizes the faithful at his web site, Pharyngula.

And that’s why PZ Myers, and a whole bunch of other Atheists (and I use the capital “A” to denote those atheists who qualify as members of the Atheist religion deliberately) are in every relevant respect, persons of religion and members of a religious congregation. So are his acolytes, sycophants, minions and worshipers. So are hosts of other Atheists who hold similar beliefs and engage in similar religious practices.

So, next time you encounter an Atheist, go right ahead and tell them that their belief set is “just another religion,” because it’s true. They have no better hotline to the straight skinny on the existence, or non-existence of God than you do, or anybody else does. When they object, refer them to me, I’ll help set them straight about their apostasy and heresy.

© 2011 Altnews

The Military Christian Religious Freedom Suppression Foundation goes over the top, again.

By Seth Richardson

Gadfly Mikey Weinstein loves to stir the pot when it comes to religion and the U.S. military, and he’s carved out a pretty plush living in the process, so it’s really no surprise that he manufactures controversy whenever he’s able. After all, his salary depends on convincing intolerant bigots to send him money.

His Military Religious Freedom Foundation says it is “dedicated to ensuring that all members of the United States Armed Forces fully receive the Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom to which they and all Americans are entitled by virtue of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”

Sounds reasonable enough, but like most platitudes, the devil’s in the details. While Weinstein does some good things, he knowingly and deliberately elides the Free Exercise Clause, which is the actual guarantee of religious freedom, and is what the Establishment Clause is intended to protect. Protections against the government establishing a state religion are meaningless without the superior right to freely practice one’s own religion.

Surely Weinstein knows this, which begs the question of why his organization isn’t also dedicated to protecting the rights of service members under the Free Exercise Clause. By focusing exclusively on the Establishment Clause, it appears that his purpose is not to support religious freedom in the military. Rather, based on his rhetoric it looks like he wants to extirpate free exercise of religion, or at least all “evangelical Christian” religious expression by service members.

His “Military Religious Freedom Foundation” seems more like a “Military Evangelical Christian Religious Suppression Foundation” or perhaps a “Military Freedom From Religion Foundation.”

By interfering with the free exercise of religion by service members, Weinstein turns from constitutional crusader to intolerant anti-religious zealot, in defiance of the core principles and values of the Constitution he purports to uphold.

Here’s a legal note for Weinstein: The Supreme Court says that atheistic irreligion is not “common ground” in this country. The United States is a nation of mandatory religious plurality, where all have an express right to worship freely, and none may be compelled to do so. Tolerance of peaceable expression of religion by all is the law of the land, and that includes the military.

The most recent example of Weinstein’s interference is the MRFF’s objections to the invitation extended to war-hero and motivational speaker Marine Corps Lieutenant Clebe McClary. Along with representatives of several other faiths, including Jews, Buddhists and Catholics, McClary is scheduled to speak at the 2011 National Prayer Luncheon at the Air Force Academy on February 10th.

Weinstein, in a letter to Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen Michael C. Gould, complained that McClary’s “non-inclusive religious ‘message’ of fundamentalist Christian triumphalism, exceptionalism and supremacy which is the gravamen of the truly disgraceful decision by the Academy to honor him as the featured speaker at its National Prayer Luncheon event” is too offensive to be permitted. Then Weinstein “demanded” that the invitation be rescinded.

When General Gould refused to do so, Weinstein began calling for Gould to be removed as Superintendent. Gazette reporter Tom Roeder wrote, “‘We’re done,’ said academy graduate Mikey Weinstein, the foundation’s founder and a frequent foe of religious practices at the school. ‘Gould needs to go.’”

McClary, a many-times decorated, and gravely-wounded hero of the Vietnam War, is a highly sought-after military motivational speaker. But the MRFF has demanded that his invitation be rescinded because Weinstein and his cohorts have decided that McClary is certain to propound a “divisive and highly sectarian fundamentalist Christian message” that offends their sensibilities and that, according to a long list of pundits assembled by Weinstein, offends the Constitution as well.

As I will demonstrate presently, this is utter nonsense and a travesty of constitutional and legal mendacity and misinterpretation.

The first and most obvious rebuttal to Weinstein’s complaint that McClary must not be allowed to speak is that McClary hasn’t given a speech at the Academy yet, and nobody knows what McClary is going to say. He might talk about adopting stray puppies and kitties as a form of motivation and stress relief for all anyone can be certain of.

The MRFF and other objectors are basing their objections on their biased judgment of what McClary is alleged to have said in the past, which they then suggest will inevitably be repeated in the future. There’s a name for this failure in reasoning and logic: it’s called the “slippery slope” fallacy. But Weinstein’s demands are nothing more or less than an exercise in prejudiced, intolerant prior-restraint censorship and a fallacious appeal to emotion and guilt-by-association.

If anything is offensive to the Constitution, it’s Weinstein et al declaring someone persona non grata before the fact because of what some pundits think they might say. It’s customary in this nation to wait till after someone violates the law to demand their head on a pike.

Another note for Weinstein et al: That’s called “due process of law,” and it’s found in the Bill of Rights.

If McClary does violate federal law or the Constitution, then Weinstein is free to file a lawsuit in federal court. But neither he, nor the Superintendent, can suppress McClary’s (or anyone else’s) right to free speech or his right to freedom of religion before the fact.

The other, and perhaps most important rebuttal to the MRFF’s objections is that contrary to their assertions, the event is not an official United States Air Force military function or meeting, and it is neither sponsored nor funded by the U.S. government, so it’s not, as they claim, “government sponsored religious speech.”

It is, in fact, an off-duty, private religious function, funded by the attendees and through voluntary donations, and attendance is not compulsory for anyone. Those facts alone are enough to justify telling Weinstein and his ilk to pound sand. But their mendacity and mischaracterization just go on and on.

Chris Rodda, MRFF Senior Research Director, a virulent opponent of what she characterizes as “Christian nationalist revisionism” arrogantly and rudely dismissed a very reasonable and polite response letter sent out by David K. Cannon, the Academy’s Director of Communication. In her “OpEd News” rebuttal, she called Cannon’s responses to the FFRF’s objections “strawmen,” which indicates a lack of understanding of the term, and the entire tone of her rebuttal was rude, arrogant, disrespectful and abrasive.

In response to Cannon’s statement that “invites were only sent to permanent party members and staff (not cadets)” Rodda writes, “Do permanent party and staff members at the Academy have any less rights regarding religious coercion than cadets?”

Here Rodda erects a genuine strawman of her own, and festoons it with red herrings to boot. No, permanent party and staff members do not have less rights regarding religious coercion than cadets, but that’s irrelevant because insofar as this prayer luncheon is concerned, there is no “religious coercion” occurring. Cannon makes it clear that, “There is absolutely no pressure for anyone to attend.”

Rodda’s rebuttal to this statement is an example not of herrings and straw, but of the ad hominem tu quoque fallacy. In this fallacy, Cannon states explicitly that there is no coercion involved and attendance is not required. In response, Rodda trots out anonymous and therefore dubious letters and emails she purports are from a staff members at the Academy in a vain attempt to show that Cannon’s statement is inconsistent with past actions by the Superintendent, and that therefore Cannon is lying now. Problem is, none of the “evidence” she presents objectively proves that there is any coercion involved. It’s all baseless and unsupported fear, conjecture and speculation, even if true.

The fallacy lies in the fact that even if Cannon’s statements today are inconsistent with factual historical events (though neither Weinstein nor Rodda provide any objective evidence of this), it does not follow that his statements are false on this occasion.

Rodda’s alleged testimony from officers at the Academy may or may not be true, but they are certainly red herring fallacies. They could easily be fabricated, and Weinstein certainly has an economic motive to do so, which is not to say that he did. But because they are anonymous, and therefore unverifiable, they don’t pass the smell test (or a court test, which Weinstein ought to know, since he’s a lawyer) and it’s reasonable to reject them as unsubstantiated hearsay unless and until the true authors have the courage to step forward and own their words. That’s the sort of courage we should expect from our military officers.

But, let’s suppose hypothetically that the statement of the “Methodist officer” who is alleged to have written, “I’ve heard him speak before and I know what he says and what he does to his audience. It made me sick then and will again when he speaks on Feb. 10 at the Falcon Club here at USAFA” is factually true. What import does this hearsay “evidence” have upon the upcoming event?

Well, first of all, since neither this officer nor any other is compelled to attend the event, and neither Rodda nor Weinstein have provided any objective evidence that failing to do so will result in any adverse action by the individual’s superiors (which would be a violation of military law if it happened), any “sickness” he or she may feel is entirely of his or her own making and volition.

Note to the “Methodist officer:” Voluntary consent to participation destroys any legitimate complaint about the content of the meeting, period. If you don’t want to attend, act like a military officer and politely decline the invitation rather than cowering in fear behind Weinstein. Or get another, less demanding job.

On the other hand, if this officer can provide verifiable proof of adverse actions resulting from a refusal to attend, then Weinstein’s got a legitimate legal case and I encourage him to represent the officer pro bono. After all, the organization’s primary tax-exempt purpose is “to provide legal representation to defend the constitutional right of religious freedom…”

Note to Weinstein: In my opinion, taking just less than half of the Foundation’s donations as your personal salary doesn’t exactly make you a selfless moral crusader. Don’t get me wrong, you’re demonstrating the entrepreneurial spirit that made this country great, and if your donors don’t mind, why should you? As the great P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

For the record, according to the Foundation’s IRS tax exemption return, in 2008 (the only year I could find), out of $545,434 in donations, Weinstein took $252,485 as salary, while none of the other officers of the foundation took a dime.

But I digress…

Religious service members attending a private religious luncheon event are not required by any law or constitutional principle to conform their religious practices to allay the irrational fears of those who need not attend and face no adverse consequences if they don’t, Weinstein and Rodda’s unsupported allegations to the contrary notwithstanding.

Neither the free speech of McClary, nor the religious freedom of those who voluntarily choose to attend the event are, or can lawfully be subject to gadfly-initiated government-sponsored prior-restraint censorship. That particular principle of law the Supreme Court is quite firm on.

Those persons have religious freedom and free speech rights too, and that includes the right to attend a private, off-duty event paid for out of their own pockets to hear a motivational speaker of their choosing and engage in religious congregation, even if that congregation includes hearing or speaking what some gadfly calls “divisive and highly sectarian fundamentalist Christian message(s).” One man’s “divisive and highly sectarian fundamentalist Christian message” is another man’s religious affirmation and inspirational message.

Nobody appointed, and nobody can appoint Mikey Weinstein, Chris Rodda, or anybody else in the evangelical-bashing contingent as Arbiters of Religious Messages for the service members of the United States Air Force Academy, or anybody else, for that matter. That’s the law. Weinstein’s entitled to his own opinion, but he’s not entitled to his own legal facts.

In fact, the Constitution and the law expressly prohibits General Gould from doing what Weinstein has demanded, because that would constitute both illegal prior restraint of free speech and infringement of religious liberty against both McClary and those who have paid to attend the event to hear him speak. Neither General Gould, in his official capacity as Superintendent, nor anyone else in the military or the federal government has any power to engage in content-based censorship of a speaker at a non-governmental, private event like this luncheon.

Even if the event was intentionally and overtly evangelical Christian in nature, no laws or military regulations would be violated, because evangelical Christian service members have a constitutional right to meet, worship and evangelize outside the scope of their official duties, and the Air Force Academy has a legal duty to accommodate them.

In an April, 2010 Congressional Research Service report, Legislative Attorneys R. Chuck Mason and Cynthia Brougher outlined the duty and obligation of the military to accommodate religion:

“The Supreme Court has considered a long line of cases involving issues that arise where these two clauses intersect, often referred to as permissive accommodation of religion.

…These situations often arise in the context of religious expression in schools, which is the subject of many of the cases that illustrate the requirements of accommodation.

…the military and schools both have unique characteristics that distinguish them from accommodations offered to society at large.

…the framework of analysis depends on the unique needs of the particular context in which the issue arises.

…In the military context, this means that the Supreme Court has recognized that military decisions are entitled to a higher level of deference so that the military may maintain order and discipline within its ranks.”

The report cites the various Supreme Court cases and the Acts of Congress, like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, that actually determine the law that controls this subject, something Weinstein does not do.

Nor has the Department of Defense (DOD) ignored this sensitive issue. The report summarizes DOD regulations in saying,

“[The] “U.S. Constitution proscribes Congress from enacting any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion” and indicates that the DOD “places a high value on the rights of members of the Military Services to observe the tenets of their respective religions.” Therefore, the established DOD policy is that “requests for accommodation of religious practices should be approved by commanders when accommodation will not have an adverse impact on mission accomplishment, military readiness, unit cohesion, standards, or discipline.”

The CRS report goes on to say,

“Overall, the Court appears generally to regard accommodations as constitutional if they balance the interests of the various parties involved in the controversy and do not benefit individuals with religious objections at the
expense of individuals who are not claiming religious objections. These rules reflect the line that the Court has drawn between permissible and unconstitutional accommodations: the government may only accommodate or facilitate, not favor or promote, religious exercise.”

Thus we see that the claims made by a list of Weinstein-lead objectors that the prayer luncheon and Lt. McClary’s participation is a “direct violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment” is specious nonsense, and that in point of fact, the Air Force Academy has a duty to reasonably accommodate such religious assemblies, which is precisely what it’s doing.

Rodda and Weinstein also accuse General Gould of supporting only one brand of evangelical Christianity. But in fact, the luncheon includes presentations by members of several other faiths. In his letter to the MRFF, Cannon writes,

“This year’s program is very inclusive of many different beliefs. There will be readings by an Islamic Airman, a Jewish Airman, an African-American Christian Airman, a Jewish chaplain (rabbi), a Buddhist sensei (sic) and a Catholic chaplain (priest). By design, this expresses some of the rich religious diversity that makes up America’s Air Force and your United States Air Force Academy.

We asked Lt McClary to speak because he is a highly-decorated Vietnam combat veteran (Silver Star and Bronze Star) and nationally recognized motivational speaker. He presents a tremendously inspirational message as he describes the loss of an eye and arm in combat, and how he overcame tough odds to succeed in his endeavors. His message is one of facing challenges and overcoming adversity and he has the credibility to support that message.

USAFA’s luncheon is not funded by taxpayer dollars. Expenses are covered, in part, by the Chapel Tithes and Offerings Fund (to include Lt McClary’s lodging, travel expenses, or honorarium). Those wishing to attend pay $7 for their meals.”

Despite these assurances, Rodda insultingly dismisses this example of religious diversity by saying:

“Sure, you can say that the event is inclusive because you’ve got your token Muslim, Jew, and Buddhist to read a few words, but do you really think that anyone sees this as equal recognition of all religions when these non-Christian readings are followed by a speaker whose military prayer breakfast and luncheon speeches include statements like: “There are two kinds of fools in this world. A fool for Christ and a fool for others. What kind of fool are you?” Do you not think that McClary’s message will be taken by your Muslim, Jew, and Buddhist readers as being called “fools.”"

Aside from the “token Muslim, Jew and Buddhist” crack that demeans, insults and derides the contributions of those service members and their religious freedom, and can hardly be seen as protecting their rights, we should note the “slippery slope” and “poisoning the well” fallacies Rodda presents.

Rodda is mistaken in her logic where she asks the rhetorical question, “[D]o you really think that anyone sees this as equal recognition of all religions when these non-Christian readings are followed by a speaker whose military prayer breakfast and luncheon speeches include statements like: “There are two kinds of fools in this world. A fool for Christ and a fool for others. What kind of fool are you?”

This claim is an example of the “slippery slope” fallacy because Rodda falsely assumes a priori that McClary will say these things at this meeting merely because he is alleged to have said them elsewhere. This is also a form of the “poisoning the well” fallacy because her negative claims about McClary’s prior alleged statements are intended to impugn his future integrity. Weinstein has used this reprehensible tactic before, and will likely use it again. But that’s another article.

In addition, it’s also the fallacy of “begging the question” because she assumes, again a priori, that there is some obligation on the part of the participants at this private meeting to provide “equal recognition of all religions.” No such duty or obligation exists in this situation, although General Gould has taken steps to see that a reasonable cross-section of religious views are being represented at the meeting on his own initiative.

This inability to distinguish official acts in the performance of some military duty from private religious observances that happen to take place on a military reservation is the essence of the cognitive disconnect that Weinstein, Rodda and all the other gadflies who work with and support the MRFF, including celebrity gadfly and actor Mike Farrell, suffer from. And it’s where Weinstein and his cohorts go badly astray from their legitimate and useful function of being watchdogs against religious oppression in the military.

They all forget that even evangelical Christians in the military have a right to religious freedom, and they have the right to sponsor, pay for, and attend overtly religious “prayer luncheons” and other similar meetings on military bases worldwide.

The Supreme Court and the Congress have stated that the military has an affirmative duty to reasonably accommodate the religious needs of service members because of the unique conditions that apply to them. Because they are confined to their bases, and are often far from their homes and home congregations, their spiritual needs may, and indeed must be reasonably accommodated by their superior officers. Those officers are derelict in their duty, and they violate the religious rights of their subordinates if they do not do so.

And even the Superintendent of the Air Force Academy likewise enjoys the personal right to free expression of his religion, and he’s fully entitled to participate in religious observances, or sponsor them, as a private individual meeting with others outside duty hours, as in this case.

But it is true that General Gould walks a fine line when it comes to religion. Equal to his obligation to accommodate the religious needs of his subordinates is his duty to ensure that none of them step over the line and cross from permissible free expression of their own religious beliefs into impermissible religious discrimination or oppression of subordinates.

It is that line that Weinstein legitimately guards. But that responsibility is ultimately General Gould’s, which is why he’s a General Officer and Superintendent and Weinstein is not.

General Gould must not surrender to this coercion, intolerance, bigotry and prejudice. He has a duty to his subordinates to reasonably accommodate their religious needs, and he has a right to participate along with them.

© 2011 Altnews

Hysteria, insults, denigration and threats of legal action are childish responses to prayers at County Commission meetings

By Seth Richardson

One of the interesting, if predictable things that has occurred as a result of Commissioner Peggy Littleton’s call for prayer at the start of meetings of the Board of County Commissioners has been the visceral and instant reaction of the radical Atheists and secularists to the notion that religion might be seen or heard in the public square.

The outrage was knee-jerk and immediate, with comments like, “Oh for crying out loud. not only an incompetent corrupt right wing Republican, but a religious fanatic to boot,” and “A good leader does not waste their time on the biggest lie in the history of the universe. The commissioners should all immediately removed from office because they are much too stupid to do any good for this city.” (We’ll ignore for a moment the fact that Littleton is an El Paso County Commissioner) And then there’s the ever-so-erudite and rational, “The Nazis had “Mein Kampf,” Chinese Communists had “Mao’s Little Red Book,” The Soviets had “Marx’s Communist Manifesto,” Cubans had the works of Che Guevara’” and American conservatives have “The Bible.”"

I could go on, and on, and on.

What’s mostly missing from this dialog is any attempt on the part of Atheists to respect or even tolerate the religious freedom of others while ensuring that the actions of the Commissioners don’t violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. There’s no attempt at compromise, just radicalism and invective.

Now, it’s true that there is a Supreme Court case explicitly supporting pre-legislative religious invocations, Marsh v. Chambers, in which Justice Berger wrote,

“In light of the unambiguous and unbroken history of more than 200 years, there can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society. To invoke Divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making the laws is not, in these circumstances, an “establishment” of religion or a step toward establishment; it is simply a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country. As Justice Douglas observed, “[w]e are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, (1983)

But as is the case with most law, one case does not always tell the whole story, and there are a number of lower court cases, which may or may not be binding in El Paso County, that narrow the scope of what’s permissible in such invocations. What’s broadly permissible as an invocation of “God” in general becomes impermissible when one particular god, let’s say Zeus, is called out and favored by a public official.

The objections should be obvious, and that is that while elected officials are free to practice religion on their own time, they cannot do so when they are “on the clock.” The Supreme Court has set out three tests that are to be applied to the actions of government agents and agencies in the case Lemon v. Kurtzman:

• Does the government act have a primarily secular purpose?
• Does the government act either advance or inhibit religion?
• Does the government act “excessively entangle” government in religion?

The corollary question that’s of equal importance here, but which goes unasked and unanswered by both Commissioner Littleton and the secularists is when, precisely, is Commissioner Littleton, or any other government employee “on the clock” for the purposes of applying the Lemon Test.

This is actually the most important question, because Commissioner Littleton has said, “I’d like to encourage my colleagues to have, at a minimum, prayer together every Tuesday and expand it to leaders, elected officials and citizens who would like to express their blessing over the board.”

Atheists and secularists are aghast and outraged at the notion, as demonstrated above, and in the comments both on the Gazette’s news article and Wayne Laugesen’s editorial on the subject. They are circling the ACLU and Freedom From Religion Foundation wagons and are preparing to lay siege to the Commissioners, and we can expect their trebuchets to be hurling truckloads of legal papers over the walls at any moment.

But, if I may be so bold, the devil’s in the details, as is so often the case.

First, Littleton merely expressed the wish that the Commissioners “have…prayer together every Tuesday.” She didn’t say when, where or under what circumstances that prayer would occur. The inference taken by the Atheists is that it will be lead by Littleton from the dais, with the power of the County Commission invoked at the same time. That conflation of public office and private religion is what the secularists and Atheists fear, and I must agree that it is neither an unfounded nor an irrational fear.

While there is no actual “wall of separation” between church and State mentioned in the Constitution, the homily presents a visualization of the notion that government can neither favor nor disfavor any particular religion, or irreligion, in its official acts. And it is true that government agents and officials have a duty to remain strictly neutral towards both religion and religious expression in the official performance of their duties.

But it must also be noted that government also has a duty and obligation to engage in positive actions that protect the right to freedom of religion when such rights are infringed upon or threatened. This duty extends to tolerating the peaceable expression of religious freedom by citizens even within the corridors of power and halls of legislation. What a government agent may not do while on duty, a citizen may do when and where it pleases him or her to do so, so long as it’s peaceable and does not disrupt official business.

Thus, in this case, the nuances of exactly how such prayers or invocations are directed, sponsored and held are of the highest importance, and figuring out how to allow the Commissioners, and anyone else who wishes to engage in free religious expression without contravening the Constitution or violating a prong of the Lemon Test is what people of good will and tolerance do, rather than spouting anti-religious bigotry and prejudice and threatening lawsuits.

A couple of other legal principles apply here. The most important one is that private persons are not, and indeed cannot be prohibited from freely exercising their religious beliefs by government officials. The next most important principle is that public officials do not lose their religious rights merely by taking office, but they do, in this case, check them at the dais, when the business of the public gets underway. Prior to that time, however, they are acting as private persons, and they have all the rights of any other citizen to express their religious faith.

With these principles in mind, and with a willingness to find a way to accommodate the reasonable and legitimate rights of members of the public, and public officials acting on their own time, to freely express their religion, while also acknowledging and defending the principles of the Constitution that require public officials to remain officially neutral towards religion, neither advancing nor inhibiting any religious beliefs, I submit the following:

1. Under no circumstances should any Commissioner lead, direct or participate in any prayer while engaged in the official performance of their duties. They must not engage in religious practice while seated on the dais or after a meeting has been called to order. That is when they go “on the clock.”
2. The Commissioners should not pass resolutions or motions calling for or prohibiting public prayer within the Commissioner’s Chambers while the Commission is in session, as this is a clear violation of the Lemon Test.
3. The Commissioners may, and indeed should, provide sufficient time before the meeting is called to order so that members of the public can offer prayers, blessings or curses without disrupting the meeting.
4. The Commissioners may, in accordance with Marsh v. Chambers, permit religious officials of different faiths, and representatives who hold no religious beliefs, to offer an invocation before the session begins, so long as that invocation neither advances nor denigrates any particular religion, and so long as it occurs before the Commission is called to order.
5. The Commissioners, on their own time, prior to convening or after adjourning the Board of County Commissioners as a public body, are free to meet with their fellow citizens at any convenient time and place, including the chambers of the Commission, which is public property, and engage in whatever prayer or other peaceable expression of religion they wish, because at that time they are private citizens and are not acting as public officials.
6. Members of the public, on their own initiative, at any time during a session of the County Commission when general public comment or input is solicited or permitted, are fully entitled to offer prayers, blessings, or curses, so long as they do so according to the general rules for citizen comments and they do not disrupt the lawful business of the Commission.
7. Those who object to public displays of religious freedom are likewise entitled to speak their minds and petition their representatives for redress of grievances at similarly appropriate times in a peaceable and non-disruptive manner.

These suggestions I believe comply with both Marsh v. Chambers and the Lemon Test, and will keep the Commissioners out of trouble while fulfilling the duty of the government to protect the free expression of religion that accrues to everyone, including elected public officials.

And that, in my opinion, is how rational, reasonable people who understand the Constitution and the foundations of our Republic seek to resolve such differences; through tolerance, mutual respect, compromise and careful planning.

© 2011 Altnews