Tag Archives: Constitution

War, War, Forever More

13 Wednesday Sep 2017

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Were my debt-trimental plan from the previous post enacted and followed, there would theoretically be money for everything under the sun: Universal Healthcare; universal income; welfare unending; chickens on pot; a starship to get me to a saner planet, and; funding for wars the world over.

As is the wars (and all that other spending) are bankrupting the country. There are also funny, lingering Constitutional issues, holdovers from when the Old Parchment meant something.

Rand Paul is about the only man left in D.C. who still throws around the “C” word, the dirtiest 12 letters in the English language. Today he again pushed the antiquated idea of Congress, not the White House, declaring war:

The Senate on Wednesday rejected a bipartisan push for a new war authorization against the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, electing to let the White House rely on a 16-year-old law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks as the legal basis to send U.S. troops into combat.

Senators voted 61-36 scuttle an amendment to the annual defense policy bill by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would have allowed war authorizations, created in the wake of al-Qaida’s 9/11 strikes, to lapse after six months. Paul, a leader of the GOP’s noninterventionist wing, said Congress would use the time to debate an updated war authority for operations in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere before the old ones expired.

Paul criticized his colleagues ahead of the vote, urging them to embrace their war-making responsibility instead of surrendering their power to the White House. He and senators who backed his amendment said former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump have used the war authorizations from 2001 and 2002 for military operations in countries that Congress never voted to support.

“We are supposed to be a voice that debates and says, ‘Should we go to war?’ It’s part of doing our job,” Paul said. “It’s about grabbing power back and saying this is a Senate prerogative.”

Debates? Doing their job? The Constitution? Such craziness.

All know that the purpose of the Senate is to collude with assist the House with cobbling together “budgets” for the spending of money we don’t have. The wise executive apparatchiks handle the details – “healthcare” for the kiddies, billion$ for banks, and wars without end.

And the wars are really going so well. Rand is in an irrational dizzy about Afghanistan. Why? We’re having so much fun there, we’ve made it a multi-decade party.

Then, there’s the … whatever kind of meddling it is … in Syria. A Christian Bishop from Syria (yes Alabama, there are and have been Christians in the Middle East) explains the sheer brilliance of U.S. policy in his country:

acma2000/YouTube.

The man seems a little distressed about something. Calm down, Padre. They’re raising the debt ceiling!

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And, you. You keep a votin’ for all this. Doing such a swell job.

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More on the Former Fourth Amendment in America

06 Wednesday Sep 2017

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The esteemed John Whitehead correctly comments on the demise of law and order in Neo-America:

“The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official.”—Herman Schwartz, The Nation

Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—are being choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, shoot, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans are being forced to accept that we have no control over our bodies, our lives and our property, especially when it comes to interactions with the government.

Worse, on a daily basis, Americans are being made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States: we are now guilty until proven innocent.

The new police state, your Constitution be damned (or responsible).

Read John’s examples – from across America. These are things that anyone could expect to encounter in everyday life.

The kids, almost all of them – some 900, at Worth County (government) High School in Sylvester, Worth County, Georgia found out about the tyranny the hard way. One bright day they were ALL summoned into the hallways and strip-searched, many sexually assaulted. This warrantless and baseless intrusion was the work of Sheriff Jeff Hobby whose hobby seems to be violating civil rights.

The illegal search, unannounced to school officials, was loosely based on the unsubstantiated suspicion that three (3) of the 900 students MAY have been involved with narcotics. So, rather than investigate those three, Hobby and his gang of statist enforcers attacked all the children. No drugs or other problems were found.

You see, dear low-IQ, overweight morons of America, these young people did nothing wrong, yet they definitely had something to worry about. Something akin to rape in some cases.

The busybody idiots still fighting the “Civil” War could take up this incident as a cause. Statistically, some third of the students, maybe more, had to be black. However, it must be more important to yank down 140-year-old statutes and assorted road signs. Progress.

Some are fighting back. In a more genteel age, Hobby may have had a date with a local tree and/or some gasoline. Today, he finds himself the first defendant in a 1983 action in federal court, courtesy of the Southern Center for Human Rights. Read the Complaint.

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Serving and protecting the children by molesting them…

Read it and weep. I look for an insurance or bond settlement in that case. But there will be no end, no reversal, in the trend against personal liberty. The state is just getting started. Most seem a-okay with it.

You?

There is a Case Out There…

27 Thursday Apr 2017

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Bob Owens at Bearing Arms is excited about a case in federal court in Kansas, U.S. v. Cox, No. 6:15-cr-10150-JTM-01, 02 (D. Kan. 2016), that sort of threatens the imperial lock on firearms. Bob thinks this case could (possibly) undue all federal gun control laws.

The federal trial of a Kansas man for manufacturing and selling firearms and silencers without a federal license could very well turn out to be the pivotal case that not only challenges the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act of 1934, but also every federal firearms law ever passed in a battle that will determine whether it is the states or the federal government that has the constitutional right to pass gun laws.

Put bluntly, this could be huge.

Or it could not be huge. In fact, I am confident it will fail entirely. Cox’s Motion to Dismiss, stating all his Constitutional overreach claims, has been denied. In fact, Cox and his co-defendant have already been convicted. Their hope now, what little there is, rests either in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court. In order words, they have no chance.

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NRA-ILA.

This case would be important for several reasons if we still had a Constitutional Republic. We don’t. Every single federal gun control is undoubtedly unconstitutional. But the Constitution and the rule of law are now things of the ancient past.

The government simply does as it pleases, lawful or otherwise, and the people accept it  – or go to prison. Rights are now illusory unless they are non-rights asserted by non-citizens or terrorist invaders or banking corporations.

I may or may not look further into this matter. For now, just abide by the edicts of Washington or suffer as Cox does. Your state is no protection at all against Mordor.

Happy Thursday. I’m semi-lie today from Five Points Cigars in Athens. Nice place.

Yeah, About that Constitution Thing…

05 Wednesday Apr 2017

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Butler Shaffer explains the painfully obvious about the “rule of law” and the Constitution in America:

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops – no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

In case any reader still clings to the platitude that the American political system is based on the proposition that ours is “a society of laws, and not of men,” I urge you to pay close attention to the events of recent years. Political behavior does not exist in abstractions, such as the “state,” or the “government,” or a “constitution,” but is activity engaged in by such men and women who find the machinery of state power a useful device for accomplishing ends that they value. Those who desire to control others through access to the tools of violence that define the state, have rationales to convince their intended victims of the “rightness” of their rule. From explanations such as “God’s will” to the “divine right of kings,” the authority of some to enjoy coercive power over others – along with their subjects’ duty of obedience – is so engrained into the minds of people as to seem as self-evident as the forces of gravity.

…

The Constitution, itself, should remind us that “laws” do not exist in a vacuum, but are the products of human action which, in turn, is behavior driven by people pursuing their self-interests. With legislation created by a political system that enjoys a monopoly on the legal use of force, it is clear that laws are but the means by which some people pursue their ends at the expense of others.

From the very creation of the national government, to how its different branches would act, there has always been a fuzziness as to the meaning of words used in the Constitution. This is due to the fundamental nature of all words. Being abstractions, their application to real-world events inherently depends upon their interpretation. When the Supreme Court tells us that it will have such authority, it is telling us that the government thus created by this document will be the interpreter of its own supposed “limited powers.”

…

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Tommy Kaye.

Some lament that “we should just get back to ” the system as originally established by the Constitution. I agree that would be preferable to the way things are now. However, it was that Constitution, that stronger central government model, that set in motion what we currently endure. It was a monster designed to grow and concur. And it did.

Spooner observed, long ago: “But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”

Sad but true. And, at this time, it’s all a moot point.

 

It’s Not Just the CIA Spying Everywhere

12 Sunday Mar 2017

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There’s nothing like a Big Box in bed with the police state.

Recently unsealed records reveal a much more extensive secret relationship than previously known between the FBI and Best Buy’s Geek Squad, including evidence the agency trained company technicians on law-enforcement operational tactics, shared lists of targeted citizens and, to covertly increase surveillance of the public, encouraged searches of computers even when unrelated to a customer’s request for repairs.

To sidestep the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against warrantless invasions of private property, federal prosecutors and FBI officials have argued that Geek Squad employees accidentally find and report, for example, potential child pornography on customers’ computers without any prodding by the government. Assistant United States Attorney M. Anthony Brown last year labeled allegations of a hidden partnership as “wild speculation.” But more than a dozen summaries of FBI memoranda filed inside Orange County’s Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse this month in USA v. Mark Rettenmaier contradict the official line.

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But evidence demonstrates company employees routinely snooped for the agency, contemplated “writing a software program” specifically to aid the FBI in rifling through its customers’ computers without probable cause for any crime that had been committed, and were “under the direction and control of the FBI.”

A $500 incentive to rifle through customer files. No PC. No warrant. No suspicion of a crime. Probably no need to look at data files either in most cases.

Given the cash promised, and the abandonment of the Constitution and the rule of law, who’s to say Geek Squad didn’t plant some evidence where and when they couldn’t find it.

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US Backlash.

Under no circumstances should one take a device to these Stasi hacks. Probably best not to do business with Best Buy at all. The Big Box of Entrapment.

The Border of the Fourth Amendment

02 Thursday Mar 2017

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“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

-U.S. Constitution, Amend. IV

Persons, their papers and effects, safe from search and seizure. Warrants. Freedom. America. Civility. Constitution. Rights.

Ancient. History. Gone, my friends. Read on: the “border” of the 4th Amendment:

Over the last decade, tens of thousands of visitors to the US – plus US citizens and residents returning home – have been subjected to warrantless border searches of their electronic devices.

Border officials may seize, search, and copy the contents of any such device. There’s no arrest, warrant, or even probable cause required – just “gimme.” And activists claim that since the inauguration of President Trump, this practice is becoming increasingly common.

While the majority of searches seem to occur when entering the US, border officials also have the authority to search electronic devices before you leave the country. In some cases, you may even be asked to log into your social media and email accounts and allow border officials to peruse their contents.

And that’s not all. In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it would apply these rules not just at the “border,” but also within 100 miles of any border crossing. In other words, many of America’s largest cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and San Francisco are also effectively “constitution-free zones.” So is any city with an international airport.

While I haven’t heard of warrantless electronic device searches outside actual entry points into the US, between October 2008 and June 2010, 6,500 persons had their electronic devices searched along the US border, according to the DHS records.

In most legal challenges to this practice, federal courts have essentially rubber-stamped these policies. Even if you take the precaution of encrypting the contents of your electronic devices (highly recommended), border officials may demand the password.

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The border and incoming arrivals I can kind of see. Don’t like it, but I can see it. It’s the 100-mile radius and the interior aspects that call up my inner Lexington and Concord here. While I have not heard of DHS (to protect us from CIA-bred terrorists, remember) searching phones or laptops in the interior, I have heard of their checkpoints, random places on the highway and nowhere near any border.

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These aren’t the civil rights you’re looking for. Lucas Film / 20th Century Fox / YouTube.

Please read Nestmann’s full article. He gives some great tips for surviving these ordeals. He mostly recommends encryption and throw-away devices. Sage wisdom. And, as he notes, you may forget legal challenges. Constitutional protections are only afforded terrorist “refugees” now. You. Don’t. Count. Anymore. Pay your taxes and shut up!

Mr. Trump really has precious short time to Make America Great Again, if he can. Nestmann’s digital dodges work fine for now. There’s always a temporary and relatively easy way around tyranny when it starts. The rifles come out a little later.

Sanctioning Invasion and Domestic Violence

10 Friday Feb 2017

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Here follows a link to the Ninth Circuit’s ridiculous immigration order:

CLICK HERE

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At issue in this emergency proceeding is Executive
Order 13769, “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist
Entry Into the United States,” which, among other changes
to immigration policies and procedures, bans for 90 days the
entry into the United States of individuals from seven
countries. Two States challenged the Executive Order as
unconstitutional and violative of federal law, and a federal
district court preliminarily ruled in their favor and
temporarily enjoined enforcement of the Executive Order.

The Government now moves for an emergency stay of the
district court’s temporary restraining order while its appeal
of that order proceeds.

To rule on the Government’s motion, we must consider
several factors, including whether the Government has
shown that it is likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal,
the degree of hardship caused by a stay or its denial, and the
public interest in granting or denying a stay. We assess those
factors in light of the limited evidence put forward by both
parties at this very preliminary stage and are mindful that our
analysis of the hardships and public interest in this case
involves particularly sensitive and weighty concerns on both
sides. Nevertheless, we hold that the Government has not
shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its appeal, nor
has it shown that failure to enter a stay would cause
irreparable injury, and we therefore deny its emergency
motion for a stay.

Background

On January 27, 2017, the President issued Executive
Order 13769, “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist
Entry Into the United States” (the “Executive Order”).
82 Fed. Reg. 8,977. Citing the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001, and stating that “numerous foreign-born
individuals have been convicted or implicated in terrorismrelated
crimes” since then, the Executive Order declares that
“the United States must ensure that those admitted to this
country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its
founding principles.” Id. It asserts, “Deteriorating
conditions in certain countries due to war, strife, disaster,
and civil unrest increase the likelihood that terrorists will use
any means possible to enter the United States. The United
States must be vigilant during the visa-issuance process to
ensure that those approved for admission do not intend to
harm Americans and that they have no ties to terrorism.” Id.

…

This is one of the most insane, anti-American court orders I have ever read. And that’s saying something. Look for this to be overturned and soon. These fools write about the need for foreigners to teach in schools and perform research?! They fail to mention the stabbings, the shootings, and the bombings. On what planet convenes the Ninth Circuit?

The President has every authority needed under current law and the Constitution to order the reforms as he did. That the Ninth completely set aside the argument of national security, given the state of the nation, is unconscionable. The Constitution, Article IV, Section Four, makes clear the federal government has to protect the several States from invasion and domestic violence. This court [SIC] just sanctioned those things.

Developing…

Back to Reality: An Alarm Bell

21 Saturday Jan 2017

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I’m the last one for practical politics. That said, even I enjoyed yesterday’s festivities. An old feeling of nostalgia crept over me. Refreshing like a pleasant anesthetic. But I fear it is wearing off.

I saw this story a day before Trump swore the oath of office as the 45th President.

 

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of the treasury, Steve Mnuchin, said at his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday he would like to increase the size of the IRS.

Mnuchin said that while some have questioned, including himself, the number of employees at the IRS, he would consider increasing the size of the labor force.

“The IRS headcount has gone down quite dramatically, almost 30 percent over the last number of years. I don’t think there is any another government agency that has gone down 30 percent. Especially for an agency that collects revenues, this is something that I’m concerned about,” Mnuchin said.

“Perhaps the IRS just started with way too many people. I am concerned about the staffing of the IRS,” Mnuchin told the Senate panel.

I think it’s in the Constitution somewhere that any executive at the IRS, The Treasury, and the Fed has to have worked previously at Goldman Sachs, as Mnuchin has. Maybe in Article 69… Or 666…

nyt-trump-is-set-to-name-ex-goldman-sachs-banker-steven-mnuchin-treasury-secretary

Business Insider.

I’ve previously expressed a theory about Trump and the banksters, that he’s trying to keep his enemies closer, so to speak. If not, then it appears that Hillary’s faction won anyway, sans the old bag.

Despite the personnel reductions the IRS has collected record “revenues” in the past few years. And that’s not even it’s intended purpose. Maybe that’s efficiency in government? A good way to do a terrible thing?

A larger IRS would compliment the true mission of the agency – a hammer against the people. That would fly directly in the face of Trump’s incredible inaugural speech yesterday.

Maybe I’m prematurely over-reacting here. But I do not love or trust the IRS nor anyone from the Satanic House of Sachs. Developing…

Selective “Justice”: Chelsea Manning’s Sentence Commuted

17 Tuesday Jan 2017

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Bradley Chelsea Manning had his her sentence pardoned commuted by the outgoing President Sotoro Obama. (Damn Darn).

President Obama on Tuesday commuted all but four months of the remaining prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the army intelligence analyst convicted of a 2010 leak that revealed American military and diplomatic activities across the world, disrupted his administration and brought global prominence to WikiLeaks, the recipient of those disclosures.

The decision by Mr. Obama rescued Ms. Manning, who twice tried to kill herself last year, from an uncertain future as a transgender woman incarcerated at the men’s military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. She has been jailed for nearly seven years, and her 35-year sentence was by far the longest punishment ever imposed in the United States for a leak conviction.

At the same time that Mr. Obama commuted the sentence of Ms. Manning, a low-ranking enlisted soldier at the time of her leaks, he also pardoned Gen. James E. Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who pleaded guilty to lying about his conversations with reporters to F.B.I. agents investigating a leak of classified information about cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear program.

Make of this what you will. I have a head neck ache…

Obama also pardon some drug dealers.

No pardon, yet, for the still-male Edward Snowden. Carlos Slim’s blog seems to think he should face “justice” in U.S. courts first. Of course, Snowden has offered to return from Russia if the government will only guarantee him a fair trial. That, they will not do as fair trials went out of fashion in 1945. It’s either a pardon or life in Russia (which apparently ain’t so bad).

Some get relief. Some do not.

The treasonous rats of D.C. scurry about the Congressional sewer, almost panicked, in their frenzy to grant amnesty to illegal aliens, welfarians, and terrorists. Fitting.

Meanwhile, eight million decent American citizens are in trouble with the IRS: either behind on their taxes, accused of owing taxes they don’t owe, in tax repayment plans, in court, under audit, or under investigation. Their crime was producing a little wealth. Absolutely no relief for them (us) whatsoever.

taxdebt1

When the IRS says you owe something you have two options. One, you can fight it out in Tax Court. This is a show trial and the whole time penalties, interest, and possible indictment simmer. Then you lose and have to pay. Or, you can pay what they tell you and then sue them in District Court. There you get a show trial and lose, having to pay your attorney in addition to the earlier extortion tax payment.

This is not what Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin had in mind. Hamilton, maybe. Political prisoners have their fates decided politically. Dead-to-rights guilty criminals get away Scott-free with a hug and a welfare check. Hardworking, innocent Americans get treated like slaves.

We can do better than this. Therefore,

I hereby call on and beseech President Trump,

(as of Friday, noonish) to do the following:

  • Pardon all federal convicts, not convicted of Piracy, Counterfeiting, or Treason;
  • Carefully look into those three or four Americans actually convicted of those Constitutional crimes for political motivation;
  • If said motivation is found, then pardon them too;
  • Round up and deport all aliens and immigrants, ship them out, and halt all incoming immigration;
  • Abolish the Immigration Act of 1965;
  • Deport Congress;
  • Abolish the 16th Amendment and the Income Tax;
  • Abolish the Federal Reserve;
  • Abolish the IRS;
  • Declare all senior staff at the Fed, the Treasury, and the IRS enemy combatants; and
  • Appoint me to deal with the enemy combatants.

That will do for starters. Now, I have a neck back ache to attend to…

NOW The Constitution Matters

07 Wednesday Dec 2016

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Wow. Since November I’ve noticed a radical upswing in leftists praising the Constitution, along with the idea of State’s Rights, and even secession. I wonder what precipitated that?

These are the very same people who until very recently laughed off the Old Parchment as an arcane novelty. Republicans are and were fond of ignoring it, but Democrats outright cackled and howled whenever the Constitution was mentioned. No more.

Democrats, some of them, now want a Constitutional  Convention:

On Tuesday, disgruntled Democrats held a forum to discuss the possibility of replacing the Electoral College.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) conceded that Democrats could not get rid of the Electoral College due to the way the United States Constitution is written.

“I don’t think we can sustain our American democracy by having the majority ruled by the minority. And so the question is how to fix this since the Constitution is written in such a way that it’s almost impossible to amend,” Lofgren said.

Lofgren went on to say she is open to a Constitutional Convention, “We are three states away from calling for a Constitutional Convention. It’s something I’ve always been opposed to, …. But I’ll say because, for the second time in sixteen years, people the American voters elected did not become president. Rational people, not the fringe, are now talking about whether states could be separated from the U.S., whether we should have a Constitutional Convention. And I think as time goes on that is apt to become more the case unless we here can figure an answer to preventing the majority from being ruled by the minority.

It’s serious now. Before, before last month, only the crazies talked about the Constitution with straight faces. Now the “rational people”, meaning the all-knowing liberals, are on board. Amazing.

And I’m sure they wouldn’t stop merely with instituting direct democracy if given their way. They would surely bid the Second Amendment farewell while welcoming a host of hardened welfare “rights” – a national “living wage”, mandatory abortion, a 110% income tax (maybe higher?), etc. Fun, fun, fun.

Many of my libertarian and conservative friends have called for a Con Con over the past few years. Of this I have always been a little leery. The Founding Fathers are long since gone and their kind are really not to be found these days.

In fact, there’s really no telling who would show up for such a meeting nor what they might do. Imagine Ron Paul in an auditorium squared off against 300 angry blue-haired SJWs and some BLM thugs. That might be a best case scenario. Otherwise, just imagine the foregoing, minus Ron Paul.

If a Convention of the States were convened, the very best thing that could come out of it would be to deep six the Union – entirely and with no other matters addressed. Second best would be reversion to the Articles of Confederation. Neither are possible today and never will be again (via Convention or systemic legalities).

Fortunately for real Americans, the plans of Herr Lofgren and the blue hair brigade won’t happen either.

liberal-poop-750

A.F. Branco.

Instead we will continue to see a new variation or two of more of the same. If Trump can actually make good on his stated goal to MAGA, to reverse some – even just a little – of the decline, then things will improve dramatically.

If not, there is still great hope. In an anti-MAGA scenario, more of the same won’t go on for much longer. The same has pretty much run its course. That will mean likely Balkanization. Perhaps it will just happen. Or it could go through the 1861 route if necessary. People outside of D.C. and New York have been gearing up for the latter for a while now. Then after the dust settles, all those new little states can, if they like, form a new federation of sorts. Or not.

However it works out, I’m betting Lofgren and the Rationals won’t ever be happy. Happiness, like freedom, is simply not in their nature. That is unless they can successfully navigate California out of the U.S.

Towards that end, and regardless of whatever else might happen, I wish them all the best. And I encourage them to think big! Make sure to load CA up with ALL of the liberals, criminals, communists, “refugees”, and illegals that can be found before disembarking. And then, why not navigate it clean off the planet?