The Judiciary

The Judiciary

By Leon Howard

One of our ‘checks and balances’ in the Constitution is the Judiciary Branch. It is no longer the ‘check and balance’ our founders envisioned and has become the branch feared by Thomas Jefferson (among others)! With the consistent exception of Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justices are now the bane of our Constitution! They no longer hold to the Original Intent of the Constitution, but rather to ‘case law’ and ‘precedent’ – A very ugly trend we must change if we want to preserve our liberties! Thomas Jefferson offers many warnings and we have not heeded them!

·      “On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed. …Thomas Jefferson, letter to Associate Justice William Johnson, June 12, 1823

·      “At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.” …. Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823

·      “It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression... that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary;... working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped.” … Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821

·      “One single object... [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation.” …Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Livingston, March 25, 1825

·      “The Constitution... is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” …Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819

·      “The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them. …Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, Mar 9, 1821

·      “The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. …Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Ritchie, December 25, 1820

·      “We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. …Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Holmes, Apr 22, 1820

·      “[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch. …Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, September 11, 1804

·      “[The Judicial Branch] may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments. …Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78, 1788

How do we turn our Supreme Court around to the “Interpreter of the Constitution” envisioned by our founders? It will not be easy and may not be attainable with our current political parties, which have the same agenda: Compliant citizens robbed of the liberties and enslaved to an all-powerful central government!

But we must try! We must try for the sake of future generations of Americans and the hope of the world!

It starts with a President who nominates true Constitutionalists, not these leftist jurists with an agenda for one-world government! Then, we need a Senate who will hold to approving only those who promote ‘original intent’ and, then, we need a Senate who will remove jurists from U.S. Courts, by impeachment, for violating original intent in their rulings!

We, the People, must educate ourselves to what our founders actually created and then hold our “representatives’” feet to the fire and, if they don’t do, fire them in the following election! Congress has the power and the obligation to regulate what kinds of cases the Supreme Court hears – For example: Why are we allowing the Supreme Court to decide what constitutes marriage? Marriage wasn’t a creation of man; it was God’s creation and is stated in the Holy Bible, the Torah, and even the Quran!

Our Congress could pass a law forbidding the Court to interpret the Holy Bible – Why haven’t they? It shouldn’t be necessary because of separation of Church and State but that hasn’t stopped the lower U.S. Courts from exerting God-like rulings on this very issue! The Senate should impeach every lower court judge who has offered opinion on this issue and the State should be removed from the marriage business all together! Marriage is sacred in the eyes of God – It is not sacred in the eyes of the State!

This  is but one example of how we, through our “representatives”, have allowed the Judiciary to usurp powers not granted by the Constitution and we, the People, can get this changed if we are persistent!

Tea Party - Good or Bad?

The Tea Party – Good or Bad?

By Leon Howard

On Sunday, October 23^rd, 2011, a professor, Mark Mansperger, wrote a ‘hatchet job’ on the Tea Party movement; being careful to say that the Tri-Cities Tea Party wasn’t like the national movement. I consider that a political move to ward off rebuttal by us.  Wrong!!!

When he attacks the national movement, he attacks us! The independent Tea Parties around the country make up the national movement! There is no ‘national leader’ or one spokesperson, so when he calls the movement being made up of neoconservatives and that we “ … are ‘hijacking’ the nation’s core values: the Constitution, freedom, liberty, Christianity and capitalism.”, he attacks us!

The ‘good’ professor and his leftist minions have ignored our founding documents for 100 years or sought ways around them and we are ‘hijacking’ them? Notice he didn’t claim we ‘hijacked’ the Declaration of Independence – For good reason – The left refuses to link our founding documents because together, they refute his entire premise!

These charges come from a member of academia; someone living in a cocoon and no real life experiences to relate to. He studies, he reads, and he expounds on what others have observed, regardless of source; therefore his ‘conclusions’ are more than ‘suspect’, they are only one side and not the side of Freedom! Beyond that, he quotes no sources for his conclusions but I can see by his conclusions, his ‘news’ is garnered from MSNBC! (I wonder if he gets a shiver up his leg when ‘the chosen one’ speaks?)

Mansperger  wonders “ … where were they during the Bush years?” Again, when you rely on one news source (MSNBC) you don’t know what’s going on! Many of us were screaming at our TV’s, writing letters to our Congress, writing letters to the President, and demanding they stop the madness; the clincher for me was TARP – What stupidity! Mansperger finds it more expedient to say we are xenophobic – Don’t you just love those big $50.00 words? I had to look it up, which is good to learn every day: Xenophobia: An exaggerated or abnormal fear of strangers or foreigners. A strong antipathy or aversion to strangers or foreigners.

I find that term very troubling! Does Mansperger know something we don’t? Are the rumors true that Obama was born in Kenya and, therefore, not eligible to be President? But, again, no explanation to using the term – Maybe he was afraid to call us ‘racists’ because that’s been debunked too many times to count, so he used a term nobody knows in hopes of hanging a new handle to an old shovel.

Most of his article was drivel and off-point; first I was angry that the Herald would publish such a blatant fabrication of mistruths, innuendoes, and ‘balderdash’ but, as I re-read his drivel and started writing this rebuttal, I calmed down – Kinda!

What Mansperger conveniently forgets is Santilli didn’t utter those famous words: “It’s time for a Tea Party!” from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile until February, 2009, after the Obama administration announced they were going to start bailing out folks buried in mortgages! Most Tea Party members had never protested anything in public but this was perfect for us! Another thing Mansperger ignored was to mention that every one of our events is left cleaner than when we arrived, including the 1.2 million who protested in Washington, D.C., on September 12, 2009 – You do not see that kind of respect for public and private property from the union thugs and the Occupy Wall Street crowd!

Then he has the audacity to state “ … goal of the Founding Fathers was to establish a viable federal government and a prosperous Republic in which people have religious, political, and economic freedom.” As quoted here, that is true but then he continues with “ … capitalism is not of our national charter, for it is not mentioned in our Constitution.” If economic freedom isn’t capitalism, what is? One of the founding principles of our Constitution was private property – That certainly isn’t socialism, communism, or any of the other ‘isms’ except capitalism!

And speaking of the other ‘isms’, capitalism is the only ‘ism’ Liberty can exist in! Under the other ‘isms’, your ‘rights’ are granted by the government and therefore, are very limited and can be taken away at any time. Our rights are granted by God, not government and, therefore, cannot be revoked by man!

It would take more pages than I care to write to refute the inane drivel of Mansperger but, being 69, I don’t know if I would have time enough before I leave this earth to write it all.

But I will extend an invitation to the good professor, if he really wants to understand the Tea Party movement, to attend a Tea Party rally, one of our Open Board Meetings, and/or really read our founding documents and the thought going into the creation of our Republic (they are called the Federalist Papers) before you accuse me of ‘hijacking’ the Constitution!

Afterthought: How does a person ‘hijack’ Christianity? Again, very troublesome thought process from someone so learned.

The Electoral College

The Electoral College

By Leon Howard

Federalist No. 68: The Mode of Electing the President
From the New York Packet
Friday, March 14, 1788.

Author: Alexander Hamilton

To the People of the State of New York: (An excerpt)

THE mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents. The most plausible of these, who has appeared in print, has even deigned to admit that the election of the President is pretty well guarded. [1] I venture somewhat further, and hesitate not to affirm, that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent. It unites in an eminent degree all the advantages, the union of which was to be wished for.

Many say the Electoral College is antiquated – out of date – unnecessary and should abolished, going to a popular vote to elect the President. I disagree for many reasons but the biggest reason to disagree with its abolishment, instituting a popular vote is this: 65% of the nation’s population reside in seven (7) states on eastern and western seaboard; they are decidedly liberal, big government folks and I do not want seven states dictating to the other forty-seven (47) what our priorities are! Do you?

The Electoral College protects all the states from the few and is a protection of the Tenth Amendment for that reason! The smaller states voice isn’t lost to the roar of the bully states and I like the way Hamilton explained it: “ … that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent!” And it is not perfect: The first constitutional crisis occurred when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr received the same number of electoral votes. Even though Jefferson was chosen as the Presidential candidate and Burr as the Vice Presidential candidate, it took the House of Representatives 36 successive ballots to finally elect Thomas Jefferson as President. Twenty-four years later, again no candidate received a 131 vote majority of electoral votes needed to become President. In this case, the House of Representatives voted for John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson and William H. Crawford on the first ballot. http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/history.html

The Electoral College is an added protection to the representative republic the founding fathers established; realizing man is not perfect, the representative republic protects against the “mischief” of man. James Madison summed it up best in Federalist No. 10, in part: “The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.”

A more perfect safeguard for Liberty could not have been written and it is up to the People, you and me, to protect it from the elitists, the ‘progressives’, because if they have their way, the very things Madison warns against in the preceding quote will be our childrens’ and grandchildrens’ future!

Not on our watch!

Scream loud and clearly to save the Electoral College to protect States’ rights and the minorities rights from the majority!

The "Blame Game"

The “Blame Game”

This absolutely amazes me! The ‘progressives’ cannot or will not accept their responsibility in Standard & Poor’s downgrading of U.S. government debt! I guess when your thought process is impeded by ‘progressive’ “thinking”, you cannot process what is so obvious to the average American who has to live within his/her budget … In fact, the ‘progressive’ “thinking” won’t even allow them to create a budget, much less live within that budget!

First they blamed Bush for everything – Hell, they’re still blaming Bush for most of the economic woes of the nation! Then it was the Republicans “holding America ‘hostage’” by wanting to cut spending; then it was Mr. Boehner’s fault for not being able to convince his party members to raise the debt ceiling and grandma was gonna die! The ‘progressives’ are very astute using the “fear factor” when they want to do something the People do not want and the “lamestream” media reported the fears but not the truth and many bought into it and agreed to raise the debt ceiling as long as there were significant cuts in spending.

Standard & Poor’s warned Congress and the President that it was going to require at least $4 trillion reduction in debt to retain the AAA credit rating; I don’t know how much clearer Standard & Poor’s could have been – How can you not know the difference between $2 trillion and $4 trillion? Apparently, the ‘progressives’ and neocons couldn’t because they approved less than $2 trillion and when the “smoke & mirrors” was evaluated, it turns out it would be less than $1 trillion in reduction over 10 years! Now that’s the way to save the economy – 10 years! What a joke! And it is not funny!

After the “shock” of Standard & Poor’s action, did the ‘progressives’ say, “Golly, I guess we should have been more serious about reducing the debt.”? Or, “Gee, we didn’t think S&P was really serious, so we have to go back to the table and do it right!”? NO! It was time to kick in the “Blame Game” again, so it was the Tea Party’s fault that S&P took away the AAA rating! Even Sen. DeMint called that pitiful; I call it pathetic! And, apparently, they’re getting flack from others so now who do they blame?

…. This occurred because S&P ‘joined’ the Tea Party and because the S&P used “bad data” in arriving at their conclusion to dropping the rating! The Standard & Poor’s, according to Tim “Turbo-Tax” Geithner, counted $2 trillion twice in their figures. This from the expert practitioner of “funny math” – It’s almost laughable! Almost. But this bad joke isn’t going to hurt the government at all – It is going to impact American families with higher interest rates and, probably, hyper-inflation! Now the ‘progressively’ controlled U.S. Senate is “probing the S&P downgrade”, so expect more of the same “Blame Game”! And get prepared for a very bumpy ride!

And the ‘neocons’ are, by no means, blameless in this debacle! It was a concentrated effort by all Liberty groups and the American People to get the Congress to hold the line and not raise the debt ceiling! Instead, we were all pressing for them to slash spending to avoid even hitting the ceiling! Mr. Boehner and Company are incapable of leading as winners and half of those elected in 2010 as Tea Party candidates folded like a House of Cards when it came down to the vote! Instead of listening to the People, they elected to listen and follow their ‘leadership’ into the abyss like lemmings!

I find the American People blameless in this because we were right when  we demanded they not raise the debt ceiling; we were right when pressured them to slash spending; and we are right demanding they follow the Constitution! What they refuse to accept is the American People are smarter than they are! We know that if we were to go to the bank and ask for a bigger credit line so we could charge 40¢ of every dollar we spend, they would refuse us because that is unsustainable! We are applying household budgeting principles to the federal budget and those in D.C. are incapable of doing simple math; they’d rather use funny math!

I did not blame the 2 major parties because it is pointless to blame them; they are without principles and that would let the offending politicians off the hook for their responsibility of the votes they cast! It is not the Republican Party’s “fault” that Doc Hastings voted for this bad legislation; it is Doc’s fault he voted for it! It is not the Democratic Party’s “fault” Sen. Harry “Bullet-Train” Reid is an idiot and voted for this bad legislation; it’s Harry “Bullet-Train” Reid’s fault he voted for the bad bill! (It might be his parents fault that he’s an idiot!)

Doc Hastings is being taken behind the woodshed for his vote; not the Republican Party!

We must continue to hold the individual politician responsible for his votes and if he’s not doing the job, we must replace him or her! It is the only way we can change “business as usual” in D.C.!