Tag Archives: Constitution

Another Honest Look at the Constitution

08 Monday Jan 2018

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Eric Peters pulls over from the car business and discusses the predictable failure of America’s sacred document.

It did what it was written to do:

The Constitution is an immoral document. It explicates a litany of conditional privileges, subject to modification at any time. That this is done in an orderly manner, via “constitutionally” prescribed mechanisms, does not make the doing of it morally legitimate.

It merely legalizes it.

Theft remains theft.

Slavery, to whatever degree, remains slavery.

Sounds a bit like Lysander Spooner from 100+ years ago. Harsh but honest.

Of Crime and Punishment and Non-Crime and Punishment

28 Tuesday Nov 2017

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While in Asia the other week, President Trump secured the release of three high value American prisoners. All good and well, but Lawrence Vance ponders if Trump’s amnestying efforts might be better spent at home.

LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill, and Cody Riley, who are now on indefinite suspension from the UCLA Bruins basketball team, were in China with their team for a basketball game against Georgia Tech. The trio was arrested after allegedly shoplifting from a Louis Vuitton store in Hangzhou, China. After being detained for over a week and facing up to ten years in prison, they were released after President Donald Trump intervened on their behalf with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

These are not the only prisoners that Trump should have freed. Far more important are the people imprisoned in the United States for victimless crimes.

The United States is indeed an exceptional nation. It has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. It has over 2 million people behind bars, more than any other nation. And it has the highest per capita prison rate.

A great many of the Americans who are in prison have been incarcerated for victimless crimes, and especially drug crimes. Only violent criminals should be incarcerated, and no one should ever be locked up for committing a victimless crime.

Every crime should have a tangible and identifiable victim with real harm and measurable damages. Rape, robbery, assault, child abuse, battery, burglary, theft, arson, looting, kidnapping, shoplifting, embezzlement, manslaughter, and murder are real crimes. Possessing “illegal” drugs, “illegal” gambling, prostitution, discriminating, price gouging, and ticket scalping are victimless crimes.

Prosecuting Americans for committing victimless crimes turns vices into crimes; unnecessarily makes criminals out of otherwise law-abiding Americans; is an illegitimate function of government; criminalizes voluntary, consensual, peaceful activity; costs far more than any of its supposed benefits; does violence to individual liberty and private property; and is incompatible with a free society.

Committing victimless crimes may be unwise, addictive, unhealthy, risky, immoral, sinful, and/or just plain stupid, but it is not for the government to decide what risks Americans are allowed to take and what kinds of behaviors they are allowed to engage in as long as their actions are peaceful, private, voluntary, and consensual.

According to Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution, the president “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States except in cases of impeachment.” According to the case of Ex parte Garland (1867), the scope of the president’s pardon power is quite broad. And according to United States v. Klein (1871), Congress cannot limit the president’s grant of an amnesty or pardon.

This means that Trump could, today, pardon every American in a federal prison for committing a victimless crime. And like he did for the American basketball players in China, Trump could work to free every American held in a state prison for committing a victimless crime.

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, President Trump followed in the tradition of his predecessors and pardoned a turkey. Better that he ate the turkey and pardoned everyone in a federal prison for a victimless crime and ordered their immediate release. No one should ever be detained by police, arrested, tried, fined, or imprisoned for a victimless crime.

I completely agree with this idea. However, assuming (pointlessly) that we still have a Constitution, all Trump could do with the States would be lobby as he did with China. On the federal front things would be a little easier. Some, most, rather, violent federal inmates would have to freed as well.

That Constitution thing, the parts in, above, and below Article Two, only specifies three crimes. Honestly, if it’s not piracy, counterfeiting, or treason, what business has Washington prosecuting it.

Pardon this interruption…

“Conservatives,” The Second Amendment, and that Constitution Thing

22 Wednesday Nov 2017

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Lawrence Vance looks into the kooky antics of what pass for conservatives in America. As is now utterly obvious, conservatives conserve nothing:

But the strangest reaction did not come from a Democrat, a progressive, or a liberal. It came from a conservative. Bret L. Stephens joined the New York Times as an op-ed columnist in 2017 after a long career with the Wall Street Journal. Stephens, a neoconservative, argues in his book America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder that America should be the world’s policeman.

In an opinion piece for the New York Times, titled “Repeal the Second Amendment,” Stephens declares that he has “never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment.” From a law-and-order standpoint, “more guns means more murder.” From a personal-safety standpoint, “more guns means less safety.” From a national-security standpoint, “the Amendment’s suggestion that a ‘well-regulated militia’ is ‘necessary to the security of a free State,’ is quaint.” From a personal liberty standpoint, “the idea that an armed citizenry is the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power is curious.”

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Only once in American history was a constitutional amendment repealed. The Twenty-first Amendment of 1933 repealed the Eighteenth Amendment of 1920 that instituted Prohibition. What would happen if the Second Amendment were repealed?

Absolutely nothing.

If the Second Amendment didn’t exist, Americans would still have the natural right to keep and bear arms. This is because there is no authority granted to the federal government by the Constitution to ban, regulate, or otherwise infringe upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

The federal government has no authority whatsoever under the Constitution—even if the Second Amendment were repealed—to ban or regulate handguns, high-caliber guns, shotguns, sawed-off shotguns, rifles, assault rifles, extended-capacity magazines, bump sticks, ammunition, automatic weapons, machine guns, grenades, or bazookas.

And neither does the federal government have any authority whatsoever under the Constitution to establish or mandate gun-free zones, background checks, waiting periods, trigger locks, limits on gun purchases, age restrictions on gun purchases, gun-barrel lengths, concealed weapons laws, licensing of gun dealers, gun-owner databases, gun licensing, or gun registration.

If anything should be repealed it is all federal gun laws—even the ones supported by Republicans and conservatives.

How about just repealing the whole Constitution. Replace it with nothing (or the old Articles – Articles of loose, weak, powerless, non-taxing Confederation).

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Carlos Slim’s Blog.

Reality Winner on Not Talking to the Police

29 Friday Sep 2017

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Just don’t do it. Don’t ever answer their questions or give them statements. Just don’t talk. Reality Winner, alleged NSA leaker, could tell you about it.

In the interview [with the FBI], Winner at first denied several times that she leaked any secret documents. She said she had been trying to get an assignment working with U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

First she acknowledged printing a report that “looked like a piece of history.” She told the agents “I thought it would be cool if I had it on my desk for a couple of days.” But she insisted she dropped the report in a bin used for papers that were to be destroyed.

“I mean, I’m trying to deploy,” Winner said. “I’m not trying to be a whistleblower. That’s crazy.”

She changed her story after an agent asked bluntly how she got the document out of the office.

“Folded in half in my pantyhose,” Winner replied.

Winner at one point asked the agents, “This sounds really bad. Am I going to jail tonight?”

One of the agents replied, “I don’t know the answer to that yet.”

An interview (i.e. talking). One story. Another story. On and on. Yes, dear, it sounds bad – because it sounds. Because you’re talking. Period. Half the time they have no evidence other that what you volunteer. Give them anything and, as they WARN YOU, it “can and WILL be used against you in court.” Yes, you’re in jail, now. Judge Epps will probably keep you there after today’s hearing.

Actually, I’m not so sure Winner could put all this together even at this time. She has a history of talking. A lot. Little of it makes sense:

“Yeah, I screwed up royally.”

Saying anything is a bad idea. That one was really bad.

 

“Look, I only say I hate America like 3 times a day. I’m no radical. It’s mostly just about Americans obsession with air conditioning.”

Like, OMG, radicals at least attempt a little coherency.

“I mean yeah I do [America’s] literally the worst thing to happen on the planet. We invented capitalism the downfall of the environment.”

Give an SJW a little rope… Yeah, maybe that’s not fair, here. How about SJI = Social Justice Idiot?

 

“I’ve filed formal complaints about [the NSA] having Fox News on, you know? Uh, just at least, for God’s sake, put Al Jazeera on, or a slideshow with people’s pets.”

She needs to be re-educated for bringing God into this. People’s pets???

I’m starting to see a mental deficiency defense if nothing else. Something lacking in the amygdala or something…

For the rest of you: just don’t talk.

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In causally related news, the other day was the 230 anniversary of the U.S. Constitution. I missed it along with all the “fun”. Shame they didn’t miss it back in 1787. Proof some lies live forever a long time.

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.

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.

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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.