Category Archives: Constitution

Crime And No Punishment

Constitution, Liberty, States' Rights, Taxation

More proof that the Constitution is worse than useless: John Boehner is “taking the president to court,” for “amassing power at the expense of the legislative branch.” This infraction, pronounces a Washington-Post liberal, correctly, has been a trend “not just for the past five years but for a generation or more. The Prince of Orange is mostly right about the problem, if not the time frame.”

Equally futile for our liberties is the grandstanding against the d-cks from the agency whose job description is to oppress and steal: The Internal Revenue Service. You abolish such a den of iniquity and vice, you don’t tweak it.

But what makes Boehner’s “long-shot litigation” meaningless is that, other than impeachment, which seldom happens, and the chocking off of finances (also a rarity)—the marvel that is the US Constitution offers no serious remedies for punishing officialdom.

Mark Levin talks-up the idea of a state convention. Yeah right. As I countered in “Secession, Not Convention, Offers Salvation,”

To reclaim the republic, Levin and his listeners hold out hope for the atrophied states and their unexercised role in the amendment process, as stipulated in Article V of the Constitution. Never mind that the states, contrary to the mistaken predictions and hopes of the Constitution makers, have never initiated a constitutional amendment; and never mind that even in the event that the states demand a constitutional convention, there is no mechanism to compel Congress to act.

The great constitutional scholar James McClellan was no “neo-confederate.” Yet even an ardent defender of the Constitution as was McClellan conceded that, sadly, “the Framers relied on the good faith of Congress for the observance of the requirement” and that, when it came to a constitutional convention, “there was no way to force Congress to act.” (“Liberty, Order, And Justice: An Introduction to the Constitutional Principles of American Government,” p. 310.)

Ultimately, the legislatures of two-thirds of the states have to unite to call on Congress to hold a national constitutional convention for the purpose of amending the dead-letter Constitution. Levin and his listeners are deluded if they think that the states, which are hardly bastions of freedom, will unite for this purpose; salvation is more likely to come from dissolving dysfunctional political bonds.

Again: ‘Thank You For Your Service, Mr. Snowden’

Constitution, Criminal Injustice, Homeland Security, Technology, Terrorism

“I think patriot is a word that’s — that’s thrown around so much that it can be devalued nowadays. But being a patriot doesn’t mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen from the — the violations of an — and encroachments of adversaries.” So said Edward Snowden to “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams, to whom he spoke in a hotel in Moscow.

And:

“… there have been times throughout history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing, you have to break a law.”

The guy is the real deal. Again: “‘Thank You For Your Service, Mr. Snowden'”

Origination-Clause Argument Against Zero-Care

Constitution, Healthcare, Law

If—or rather when—a new constitutional challenge to Obamacare fails, this won’t be because Sissel v. United States Department of Health & Human Services lacks merit, but because we are governed by a tripartite tyranny of colluding quislings and their armies of extra-constitutional commissions and agencies, in whose legislation The People have no say.

Indeed, on May 8, 2014, an interesting and rather original oral argument is scheduled to be heard by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, in the case launched against United States Department of Health & Human Services. The Plaintiff is the Pacific Legal Foundation. Here is a Summary of the PLF’s case:

Pacific Legal Foundation has launched a new constitutional cause of action against the federal Affordable Care Act. The ACA imposes a charge on Americans who fail to buy health insurance — a charge that the U.S. Supreme Court recently characterized as a federal tax. PLF’s amended complaint alleges that this purported tax is illegal because it was introduced in the Senate rather than the House, as required by the Constitution’s Origination Clause for new revenue-raising bills (Article I, Section 7).

The Origination Clause argument is part of an amended complaint filed in PLF’s existing lawsuit against the ACA, Sissel v. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, pending before Judge Beryl A. Howell, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

PLF’s Sissel lawsuit was on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court considered the challenge to the ACA from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and 26 states, in NFIB v. Sebelius. As initially filed, PLF’s Sissel lawsuit targeted the ACA’s individual mandate to buy health insurance as a violation of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8).

MORE.

Morality And Religion

Constitution, Founding Fathers, History, Law, Morality, Religion

On this Good Friday and Passover, it is worth remembering George Washington’s message on morality and religion, in his 1796 Farewell Address.

“Washington—in light of the dreadful events which had occurred in Revolutionary France—wished to dispel for good any notion that America was a secular state. It was a government of laws but also of morals,” writes historian Paul Johnson, in The History of the American People. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,’ he insisted, ‘religion and morality are indispensable supports.’ Anyone who tried to undermine these ‘great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens,’ was the very opposite of a patriot.” (P. 229)

There can be no “security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice.” Nor can morality be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

What Washington was saying, explains Johnson, is that America, “being a free republic, dependent for its order on the good behavior of its citizens, cannot survive without religion. And that was in the nature of things.” (P. 229)

It’s hard to reconcile modern-day USA with the America the Founding Fathers bequeathed and envisaged. The law, a branch in what has become a tripartite tyranny, has plunged Americans into a struggle to express their faith outside their homes and places of worship.

Forgotten in all this is that religion is also a proxy for morality. (And I say this as an irreligious individual.)