Independent American News

By Robin Stringer

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) — A professor at the diplomatic academy of
Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the U.S. will break into
six parts because of the nation’s financial crisis.

“The dollar isn’t secured by anything,” Igor Panarin said in an
interview transcribed by Russian newspaper Izvestia today. “The
country’s foreign debt has grown like an avalanche; this is a
pyramid, which has to collapse.”

Panarin said in the interview that the financial crisis will worsen,
unemployment will rise and people will lose their savings — factors
that will cause the country’s breakup.

“Dissatisfaction is growing, and it is only being held back at the
moment by the elections, and the hope” that President- elect Barack
Obama “can work miracles,” he said. “But when spring comes, it will
be clear that there are no miracles.”

The U.S. will fracture into six parts: the Pacific coast; the South;
Texas; the Atlantic coast, central states and the northern states.

“Now we will see a change to the regulatory system on a global
financial scale: America will cease to be the world’s regulator,” to
be replaced by China and Russia, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Robin Stringer in New York at
rstringer@bloomberg.net.

By Christopher Hansen

The Constitution of the United States of America states: Section. 8. The Congress shall have Power…To declare War…

They never declared war on Iraq so that means that we are not at war with anyone, including Iraq or Terrorists because Congress is the ONLY authorized body to declare war. And now even the government admits that we have not had a declared war since WWII:

Who Is Entitled To Veterans’ Preference In Employment?

Five-point preference is given to those honorably separated veterans (this means an honorable or general discharge) who served on active duty (not active duty for training) in the Armed Forces:

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during any war (this means a war declared by Congress, the last of which was World War II);

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during the period April 28, 1952, through July 1, 1955;

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for more than 180 consecutive days, any part of which occurred after January 31, 1955, and before October 15, 1976;

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during the Gulf War period beginning August 2, 1990, and ending January 2, 1992; or

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for more than 180 consecutive days, any part of which occurred during the period beginning September 11, 2001, and ending on the date prescribed by Presidential proclamation or by law as the last day of Operation Iraqi Freedom; or

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in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign medal has been authorized, such as El Salvador, Lebanon, Granada, Panama, Southwest Asia, Somalia, and Haiti.

(Proposition) Eight is enough
Same-sex marriage defenders think problem was messaging not substance

By Hendrik Hertzberg
updated 4:45 a.m. PT, Mon., Nov. 24, 2008

Changes California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. Provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

You might think that an organization that for most of the first of its not yet two centuries of existence was the world’s most notorious proponent of startlingly unconventional forms of wedded bliss would be a little reticent about issuing orders to the rest of humanity specifying exactly who should be legally entitled to marry whom. But no. The Mormon Church—as anyone can attest who has ever answered the doorbell to find a pair of polite, persistent, adolescent “elders” standing on the stoop, tracts in hand—does not count reticence among the cardinal virtues. Nor does its own history of matrimonial excess bring a blush to its cheek. The original Latter-day Saint, Joseph Smith, acquired at least twenty-eight and perhaps sixty wives, some of them in their early teens, before he was lynched, in 1844, at age thirty-eight. (IAN Editor’s note Joseph Smith was shot, while awaiting trial, by a mob that included the men that the governor of Illinois sent to “protect” him. He was the first U.S. Presidential candidate to be assassinated. There is evidence that he was assassinated because he was running for president and was doing so good that some people felt he was too dangerous to be allowed to run for president. Obviously the author of this column does not do his research before he writes or he is a liar.) Brigham Young, Smith’s immediate successor, was a bridegroom twenty times over, and his successors, along with much of the male Mormon élite, kept up the mass marrying until the nineteen-thirties—decades after the Church had officially disavowed polygamy, the price of Utah’s admission to the Union, in 1896. As Richard and Joan Ostling write in “Mormon America: The Power and the Promise” (2007), “Smith and his successors in Utah managed American history’s only wide-scale experiment in multiple wives, boldly challenging the nation’s entrenched family structure and the morality of Western Judeo-Christian culture.”

“Mormons Tipped Scale In Ban On Gay Marriage,” the Times headlined the week after Election Day, reflecting the views of proponents and opponents alike. Six and a half million Californians voted for Proposition 8, and six million voted against it—a four-point margin, close enough for a single factor to make the difference. Almost all the early canvassers for the cause were Mormons, but the most important contributions were financial. The normal political pattern is for money to get raised in California and spent elsewhere. This time, Salt Lake City played the role of Hollywood, rural Utah was the new Silicon Valley, and California was cast as flyover country. Of the forty million dollars spent on behalf of Prop. 8, some twenty million came from members or organs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Some conservative commentators, who didn’t have much else to gloat about, dwelt lingeringly on what they evidently regarded as the upside of the huge, Obama-sparked African-American turnout. “It was the black vote that voted down gay marriage,” Bill O’Reilly, of Fox News, insisted triumphantly—and, it turns out, wrongly. If exit polling is to be believed, seventy per cent of California’s African-American voters did indeed vote yes on Prop. 8, as did upward of eighty per cent of Republicans, conservatives, white evangelicals, and weekly churchgoers. But the initiative would have passed, barely, even if not a single African-American had shown up at the polls.

Gay marriage protests continue
Nov. 10: Anger and resentment among gays rights advocates led to a weekend of protests throughout Calif. over voter-approved Proposition 8, banning gay marriage. NBC’s Kristen Dahlgren reports.

Still, this was a fight that should have been won, and after the initial shock—which tempted a few gay and lesbian voices to blame blacks for what O’Reilly credited them with—California’s gay activists and their straight allies, judging from their online postmortems, have begun to direct more criticism at themselves than at their opponents. They were complacent: early polls had shown Prop. 8 losing by double digits. Their television ads were timid and ineffective, focussing on worthy abstractions like equality and fairness, while the other side’s were powerfully emotional. (Also dishonest—they implied that gay marriage would threaten churches’ tax exemptions, force church-affiliated adoption agencies to place children with gay couples, and oblige children to attend gay weddings—but that sort of thing was to be expected.) Barack Obama, like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, had come out against Prop. 8, yet the No-on-8 forces let Obama’s popularity be used against them: a mass mailing suggesting that the Democratic nominee was for it went essentially unanswered.

The defenders of equal access to marriage, in other words, think their problem was tactical—“messaging,” not substance. They are probably right. In the days after the election, tens of thousands of people, gay and straight, took to the streets of cities and towns throughout the country in spontaneously organized protest. But the mood at these gatherings, by all accounts, was seldom angry; it was cheerful, determined, and hopeful. From 1998 to 2006, bans on same-sex marriage were put on the ballot in one state or another thirty times, and twenty-nine times the people voted for them. This year, in addition to California, Florida passed a ban; Arizona, which in 2006 had been the one exception, reversed itself and did the same; more cruelly, Arkansas approved a ballot measure depriving gay men and lesbians of the right to adopt children. But all this has about it the feel of a last stand.

Prop 8 protests
Nov. 10: Ms. Information: Rachel Maddow reports on some stories that didn’t make the front page, including the massive protesting in California against Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage.

Four years ago, Howard Dean’s Presidential campaign worried that its undoing would be the fact that as governor of Vermont Dean had signed a bill allowing gays and lesbians to form civil unions; that turned out to be the least of his troubles. Now large majorities of Americans favor laws under which same-sex couples have all or most of the same rights as couples of opposite sexes, and five states, including California, have enacted them. Gay marriage itself is legal, and not terribly controversial, in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In 1993, most Americans thought that open homosexuals shouldn’t be permitted to serve in the military; now three-quarters think that they should. And the polls show that the younger you are the more likely you are to favor equal treatment of gays and straights in every area of public and private life. The Field Poll, one of California’s most respected, found last month that while the state’s over-sixty-fives oppose gay marriage by a thirty-point margin, the under-thirty-fives favor it by thirteen points—and it’s hard to think of a reason that getting older should change their minds.

Like a polluted swamp, anti-gay bigotry is likely to get thicker and more toxic as it dries up. Viciousness meets viscousness. “Look,” Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, said the other day (on the air, to Bill O’Reilly), “I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence. . . . I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion. And I think if you believe in historic Christianity, you have to confront the fact.” For diversity’s sake, he added that “the historic version of Islam” and “the historic version of Judaism” are likewise menaced—which is natural, given that gay, secular, fascist values are “the opposite of what you’re taught in Sunday school.”

This sort of sludge may or may not prove to be of some slight utility in the 2012 Republican primaries, but it is, increasingly, history. A couple of days before the California vote, the San Francisco Chronicle’s John Wildermuth noticed a “No on Prop 8” sign on a front lawn. The lawn and the sign belonged to Steve Young, the football Hall of Famer and former 49er quarterback, and his wife, Barb. Steve Young is a graduate of Brigham Young University, which is named for his great-great-great-grandfather. The Youngs still belong to the Mormon Church. “We believe all families matter and we do not believe in discrimination,” Barb Young said. “Therefore, our family will vote against Prop 8.” It wasn’t enough this time. But the time is coming.

Kennedy’s Warning

BRENT E. CRUMMEY, Plaintiff - Appellant, v. KLEIN INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT; THOMAS PETREK; DEBORAH H. WEHNER, Defendants - Appellees.
No. 08-20133 Summary Calendar
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 20981
October 2, 2008, Filed

PRIOR HISTORY:  [*1]    Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. 4:07-CV-1685.

COUNSEL: For BRENT E CRUMMEY, Plaintiff - Appellant: Brent E Crummey, Scottsdale, AZ.

For KLEIN INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, THOMAS PETREK, DEBORAH H WEHNER, Defendants - Appellees: David M Feldman, Ellen Huchital Spalding, Adam David Courtin, Feldman, Rogers, Morris & Grover, Houston, TX.

JUDGES: Before DAVIS, GARZA, and PRADO, Circuit Judges.

OPINION PER CURIAM: *

*   Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5THCIR. R. 47.5.4.
Brent E. Crummey brought this lawsuit complaining that the defendants/appellees, Klein Independent School District (”KISD”) and two employees of the KISD tax office, declined to accept Crummey’s fifty-dollar United States American Eagle gold coins for any more than the face value of the coins in Federal Reserve Note dollars as tender in payment for taxes Crummey owed. Crummey, proceeding pro se, sought to assert various federal and state causes of action arising from this incident, including that the appellees violated Crummey’s alleged right under Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution  [*2] to pay a debt in gold coin. 2 The district court, adopting the Memorandum, Recommendation and Order of the Magistrate Judge, dismissed sua sponte Crummey’s federal claims and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Crummey’s remaining state law claims,which were remanded to state court. Crummey appeals.

2   Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution provides, in part: “No State shall . . . make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”
The core of Crummey’s appeal rests on Crummey’s argument that the legal monetary value of fifty dollars in United States American Eagle gold coin is different than (and worth more than) the legal monetary value of fifty dollars in Federal Reserve Notes, or as it is sometimes affectionately called, cash. Regardless of any currency confusion that may have arisen in bygone eras, our present standard is clear: As legal tender, a dollar is a dollar.

Crummey suggests that the United States has a parallel or dual monetary valuation system for the dollar. Crummey relies for support on a statute authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to mint certain coins and to sell them to the public at a price based on the market value of the  [*3] bullion plus production costs. See 31 U.S.C. § 5112(f)(1). According to Crummey, the fact that the United States Mint sells coins into circulation at an amount that is often different than the face value of the coins, supports his theory for the existence of some form of dollar-for-dollar exchange rate between the “coin” dollar and the “FRN” dollar.

Crummey’s argument conflates the market value of such coins as bullion, or as a collectors’ items, with the value of the coins as legal tender. Fittingly, the Supreme Court has explained:

A coin dollar is worth no more for the purposes of tender in payment of an ordinary debt than a note dollar. The law has not made the note a standard of value any more than coin. It is true that in the market, as an article of merchandise, one is of greater value than the other; but as money, that is to say, as a medium of exchange, the law knows no difference between them.

Thompson v. Butler, 95 U.S. 694, 696, 24 L. Ed. 540 (1877). “United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal  [*4] tender for debts.” 31 U.S.C. § 5103; see also Mathes v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 576 F.2d 70, 71 (5th Cir. 1978) (per curiam) (”Congress has delegated the power to establish this national currency which is lawful money to the Federal Reserve System.”); United States v. Wangrud, 533 F.2d 495, 495 (9th Cir. 1976) (per curiam) (”By statute it is established that federal reserve notes, on an equal basis with other coins and currencies of the United States, shall be legal tender for all debts, public and private, including taxes.”).
We reject Crummey’s suggestion that the “dollar” has multiple meanings or values within the United States system of currency. See 31 U.S.C. § 5101 (”United States money is expressed in dollars, dimes or tenths, cents or hundreths, and mills or thousandths. A dime is a tenth of a dollar, a cent is a hundredth of a dollar, and a mill is a thousandth of a dollar.”). As legal tender, a dollar is a dollar, regardless of the physical embodiment of the currency.

The legal monetary value of Crummey’s fifty dollar American Gold Eagle coin is equivalent to that of a fifty dollar Federal Reserve Note. Crummey’s argument to the contrary, on which the bulk of his  [*5] appeal rests, fails.

Having carefully considered all of Crummey’s issues on appeal in light of the record and the applicable law, we find them to be without merit. For these reasons, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

Furthermore, appellees’ motion for sanctions pursuant to Rule 38 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure is DENIED. Crummey’s alternative request for an evidentiary hearing on appellees’ motion for sanctions is DENIED as moot

by Roger Roots

Historians of Soviet Russia occasionally note that the communist workers’ paradise was originally intended to adhere to a written constitution that expressly guaranteed freedoms such as speech, press and assembly. In practice, however, none of the freedoms guaranteed in the Soviet constitution were recognized in the country’s legal system, and millions of dissenters and suspected dissenters were imprisoned or killed for disagreeing with the commissars of the state.

The United States Constitution, by contrast, is thought to be in good standing. Yet there are numerous provisions of the U.S. Constitution that are never enforced. These provisions, analogous to “dead letters” in the U.S. Postal System, are either totally ignored by federal judges or given such a narrow construction that they might as well not exist. As columnist and curmudgeon Joseph Sobran has written, the Supreme Court has, in essence, exercised a “line-item veto” over the document, totally ignoring provisions that interfere with the justices’ national vision or social objectives.

When the Supreme Court switched to discretionary certiorari in 1925 (thus allowing the court to pick and choose its own docket), the Court paved the way for a highly selective treatment of the Constitution. While some constitutional provisions (e.g., the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment) are routinely accorded Supreme Court consideration, many others are almost completely ignored.

It can hardly be a coincidence that all of the dead letters happen to place limitations on the scope and power of government. In contrast, the few provisions of the Constitution granting powers to government have been interpreted expansively. The clause giving Congress power to regulate interstate commerce, for example, has been interpreted by the courts to allow Congress to imprison people for acts that can be linked to either commerce or interstate activities only by a tenuous series of conceptual inferences.

There are even provisions which were included in the Constitution to limit government but which have now been interpreted to empower government. The Takings Clause, which states that no person shall be deprived of property “without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation,” was recently construed by the Supreme Court to give government at all levels near carte blanche power over all property. In a 2005 decision entitled Kelo v. City of New London, the Court reinterpreted the phrase “for public use” to mean for whatever use any government desires – including private use.

Similarly, the Fifth Amendment Grand Jury clause was placed in the Constitution in order to limit government but has now been interpreted in a way that empowers government. As the criminal law grew more complicated during the 1800s, courts began allowing public prosecutors to appear and discuss cases before grand juries (a practice strictly forbidden at the time of the Founding). This became embedded in grand jury practice by the 1900s. Today’s Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure state that prosecutors may be present before grand juries at all times and prohibit grand jurors from issuing independent presentments.

There is nothing new about this insidious trend. The Necessary and Proper clause was originally intended to bind Congress to legislating only in ways that were “necessary” to carry out the few limited powers the national government had been granted. By the early nineteenth century, however, the Supreme Court had already interpreted “necessary and proper” to mean only “proper” – in the eyes of the government. As Jefferson observed, “[t]he natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

Courts have increasingly subjected all rights mentioned in the Constitution to balancing tests, meaning that rights have become mere interests to be balanced against the (always pressing) interests of government. Thus, it is asserted that “no rights are absolute” and that courts may deny the application of a right where “the Government’s regulatory interest in community safety

. . . outweigh[s] an individual’s liberty interest.” However, the Supreme Court has abandoned any pretense of balancing tests with regard to governmental powers (such as those found in the Tax Clause or the Spending Clause), for which the Constitution’

s provisions are described as plenary .

Some rights enshrined in the Constitution are rendered dead by the lack of any remedy to enforce them. For example, in 1974, the Supreme Court held that no taxpayer ever has standing to challenge the secret budget of the CIA (which clearly violates Article 1’s requirement that “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law; and a regular Statement and Account . . . of all public Money shall be published”).

Finally, there are newly invented “maxims” of law that have crept into modern jurisprudence by means of pronouncements that they are long-recognized. One such so-called maxim originated with Justice Stone’s “Footnote Four” in the 1938 case of United States v. Carolene Products Company. Justice Stone proclaimed that most congressional enactments are “presumed constitutional” and will be struck down only if they blatantly contradict explicit constitutional protections. Stone’s “presumption of validity” has been cited in dozens if not hundreds of appellate decisions to turn away constitutional challenges.

As many scholars have pointed out, this “presumption of constitutionality” was enunciated nowhere in the many letters and speeches that punctuated ratification debates in the late 1700s. In fact, Founding-era voices more than occasionally expressed the opposite opinion. A widely-distributed editorial by Alexander White, a member of the First U.S. Congress from Virginia, proclaimed (in opposition to proposals for a bill of rights) that “In America it is the governors not the governed that must produce their Bills of Rights: unless they can shew the charters under which they act, the people will not yield obedience.” Moreover, the Carolene Products presumption of validity can be said to overrule the plain text of the Ninth Amendment (”The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”) as well as the Tenth Amendment (”The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution . . . are reserved to the States . . . or to the people”).

A list of other recently invented “maxims” would include (1) Justice Robert H. Jackson’s proclamation in 1949 that the Constitution is not a “suicide pact” (i.e., it should never be interpreted to mean the government is not always in control), and (2) the doctrine of “harmless error” (invented in 1967 in Chapman v. California) by which an appellate court may concede a constitutional violation but uphold a criminal conviction by proclaiming that the defendant would have been convicted even if the Constitution had been followed. There are also insidious doctrines such as “sovereign immunity” (which allows government agents to escape liability for illegal acts – on the ground that they are with the government) and the “state secrets” doctrine (which deprives citizens of any redress by the assertion that proof of a constitutional violation would expose intelligence sources or methods), which are found nowhere in the text or the original understanding of the Constitution.

Of course, liberty dies incrementally, and the leviathanic government we see today took generations to bring about. It has been largely forgotten that the prohibition of intrastate liquor sales in the early twentieth century required a constitutional amendment (the Eighteenth) because policymakers and judges recognized that Congress had no constitutional authority to regulate intrastate sales of any commodity. The Supreme Court even wrote in a 1932 decision that “sales of [ ] forbidden drugs qua sales” was “a matter entirely beyond the authority of Congress.” The recent Gonzales v. Raich decision (upholding federal drugs laws as trumping California’s medical marijuana protections) highlights the fact that recent generations of Supreme Court justices have amended the Constitution without formal process.

A list of constitutional dead letters follows below. I honestly don’t know what weight to give some of the Bush Administration’s “unitary executive” practices such as its warrantless domestic eavesdropping and treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, which amount to complete abdications of the procedural rights laid out in the 4^th, 5^th, 6^th and 8^th Amendments. (If such matters are considered, it becomes arguable that the entirety of the Bill of Rights is a dead letter even if some of the rights are partially recognized for some people.) The list enumerated below, to paraphrase the dead-lettered Ninth Amendment, should not be considered all-inclusive, and there are, no doubt, other dead-lettered constitutional provisions I have neglected to identify.

• The House origination clause, Art. 1, § 7, requiring that all “Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives,” has been rendered a dead letter by neglect. As Congressman Ron Paul has pointed out, the 2008 bank bailout bill with all its tax implications was deliberately introduced in the Senate after House members rejected it – a plain violation of this clause. Similar practices have gone on for many years.
• The congressional declaration of war clause, Art. 1, § 8. No “war” in the constitutional sense has been declared since 1941, although the executive branch has engaged in numerous undeclared wars and military escapades around the globe.
• The public accounting clause Art. 1, § 10: As already discussed, the secret budget of the CIA is in plain conflict with Article I of the Constitution (”No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time”).
• The Legal Tender Clause, Art. 1, § 10, prohibiting states from making “any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.” The application of the Federal Reserve Act and many other statutes and executive orders are in plain violation of this clause. State and Federal governments demand and provide payment in paper currencies that are unbacked by any precious metals.
• The prohibition against bills of attainder, Art. 1, §10 – which was supposed to ensure that no one could ever be punished by the legislature – has been addressed only four times by the Supreme Court. Congress regularly enacts new laws placing extrajudicial punishments on various groups (felons, convicted sex offenders, disfavored corporations such as Wal-Mart, and even entire industries (e.g., “Big Tobacco”)).
• The Contract Clause, Art. 1, § 10, prohibiting states from impairing contractual obligations. Long dead and buried. Today the federal courts uphold wage, work, production, pricing, licensing and advertising regulations of every manner, irrespective of the Contract Clause.
• The Second Amendment right to bear arms. Despite the recent Heller decision (which issued a “landmark” ruling that the Amendment protects an individual right), there are still thousands of felons and other persons in federal prison for the mere possession of firearms. No defendant has ever been released from prison or cleared of gun charges in federal court on account of judges recognizing the right to bear arms. The gist of the Heller decision is that the Amendment protects a “reasonable” right to bear government-approved arms so long as you are government-approved. Of course, such a limited and conditional reading of the Second Amendment renders it a dead letter. The leaders of the American Revolution were themselves accused (and some convicted) felons, and several were notorious criminals (e.g., John Hancock, an accused tax evader and smuggler; John Paul Jones, a twice-indicted murderer who adopted his name as an alias to avoid arrest).
• The Fifth Amendment Grand Jury clause. While federal grand juries do still exist, they are now wholly subject to the control of federal prosecutors – the very persons the Clause was intended to limit. The grand juries known to the Framers were civilian institutions that acted independently of prosecutors, could investigate prosecutors, and could indict prosecutors. Today, prosecutors dispense all evidence, witnesses and testimony to the grand jurors, who then retire to a deliberation room to vote on whether to approve the prosecutors’ wishes. (A “no” vote will just mean that the prosecutors will coerce another grand jury to vote on the same case.)
• The Fifth Amendment Double Jeopardy clause. Today, the federal government commonly charges defendants who have been previously charged with essentially the same offense in state court (and vice versa). This usually happens after an acquittal or a “light” sentence in the first prosecution. Because Congress has federalized almost every state crime over the past four decades (something the Founders could never have imagined), federal and state prosecutors are able to get two bites at the apple despite the double jeopardy clause.
• The Sixth Amendment right to jury trial in criminal cases. My inclusion of this one may puzzle some readers, because thousands of jury trials take place in American courtrooms annually. But the right to jury trial has been stripped for the vast majority of criminal prosecutions. Supreme Court rulings beginning in the late 1800s confined this right to cases of “serious” rather than “petty” crimes (i.e., punishable by less than six months’ imprisonment). This distinction exists nowhere in constitutional text, which explicitly guarantees a jury trial “[i]n all criminal prosecutions ” and for “all crimes.” The change has allowed government to impose its will on the populace with far greater efficiency. Justices Black and Douglas observed in a 1970 concurrence that their colleagues on the Supreme Court had effectively amended the Constitution by applying a balancing test and that “[t]hose who wrote and adopted our Constitution and Bill of Rights engaged in all the balancing necessary. They decided that the value of a jury trial far outweighed its costs for ” all crimes” and “[i]n all criminal prosecutions.”
• Of course, plea bargains have replaced jury trials in most “serious” cases, allowing government to prosecute and imprison a far higher proportion of the American population than the Framers could have anticipated. And even where defendants take their charges to trial, they are tried before emasculated juries that are ordered to follow the judges’ interpretations of the Constitution and the laws. The Founders would have condemned this wholesale takeover of juries by modern judges.
• The Sixth Amendment vicinage clause (requiring an “impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed”). In practice today, most federal court proceedings have been centralized into the largest urban areas of each federal court district, leaving rural defendants in many cases to face trials before urban juries drawn from jury districts that do not include the scene(s) of the alleged offense(s).
• The Seventh Amendment right to jury trial in civil cases where the amount in controversy exceeds twenty dollars ($20). The eternal drive of government officials at every level to collect petty duties, traffic and parking tickets, fees and other tributes has necessitated that they circumvent the plain language of the Seventh Amendment. Today the Seventh Amendment is one of three articles in the Bill of Rights not incorporated into state court practice by the Fourteenth Amendment. Even in federal courts, the civil remedies mandated by the Seventh Amendment are painted into an extremely narrow corner.
• The Ninth Amendment protection of other “rights retained by the people.” As already discussed, this important provision, insisted upon by the Anti-Federalists in 1791, has been dead-lettered by a combination of judicial doctrines, maxims and sophistries that in essence leave the people with few or no reserved rights.
• The Tenth Amendment. At the heart of the Supreme Court’s dead letter file is the abandonment of federalism in order to create a centralized regime run from Washington. Under the Founders’ intent, of course, each state was to retain its own sovereignty while the federal government was to act as the states’ mutual delegate in matters of foreign and interstate affairs. The absence of this rule in the pre-amendment Constitution precipitated massive resistance across the colonies. Yet today the federal courts regard the Tenth Amendment as a quaint “truism” – a mere statement that the States get to keep whatever jurisdiction is not overtaken by the federal government.
• The Fourteenth Amendment Privileges and Immunities clause, which was intended to require states to recognize legal rights recognized by the federal government and other states, was mostly dead-lettered in 1873 in The Slaughterhouse Cases, in which the Supreme Court held the provision applied primarily to freed slaves. In recent decades, courts have looked to the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process clause to replace the dead-lettered Privileges and Immunities clause.
• The Twenty-Seventh Amendment, which requires that “No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect until an election of Representatives shall have intervened,” has been rendered a dead letter by means of the Supreme Court’s “standing” jurisprudence.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/roots2.html

By Christopher Hansen:

Many American wonder what just happened to their 401Ks, and their stocks. They wonder why the cannot pay their mortgage and why the Federal Reserve Notes, they falsely believe to be dollars, are becoming more and more worth less and less. Thomas Jefferson explained, in the year of our Lord 1819, what was going to occur if the bankers were allowed to do what they have done to us.

“The system of banking we have both equally and ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens.” — Letter to John Taylor (28 May 1816 AD)

Interesting that Jefferson stated that these bankers would sweep away not only the fortunes of our citizens but our morals.

In the words of President George W. Bush: “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!”

By the way, a current silver dollar minted by the U.S. mint since 1986 AD can still buy four gallon of gas and three gallons of milk.

But then no one can say we were not warned by a higher power:

Prov. 20: 10 Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the Lord.

Micah 6: 10 ¶ Are there yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is abominable?

Dear Mr Hansen,

Do you remember me? I am one of the International Visitors who had a meeting with you through video conference at University of Nevada, Reno, while we were at University of Les Vegas sometimes in March this year. It has been a long time. You spoke about the Independent Party, and your party’s stand on wide range of issues.

Currently, I have written a book on my US experience, which will be published in a couple of days from now. Its titled, Portraits of A Trip: A Journalist’s Glimpse of the United States of America. But I realised that, I have to put a little I can have about the Independent Party of America, which I do not know. So, I need your help.

I have entered the google search, but it has not been helpful, that is why I have to contact you.

I need a brief history of the Independent Party, its manifestoes, campaign strategies - ways to convince Americans, its mass appeal among Americans, and possibly future anticipations.

I know you have a tight and busy schedules, but I believe you will help me. In addition, below is the portion of the book about our meeting on that day.

Thanx,

BABANGIDA KAKAKI,

LEADERSHIP NEWSPAPERS,

KADUNA, NIGERIA.

+234 80 260 255 07

Then at quarter to 2:00pm on thursday, February 28, 2008, we again boarded buses to University of Nevada in Reno, where we had a video conference with Mr. Christopher Hansen, the President of Independent Party of America. He spoke very critically of the Bush administration and even the union of the United States of America itself. He criticized the foreign policy of the US since early 50s. In fact, when asked about the so-called war on terror, Hansen admitted that it was Bush administration that masterminded it against its own people and country, in order to justify perpetual war on its perceived foes according to reliable evidences. He denounced the US foreign policy that US blindly support Israel, and even some dictators around the world. Honestly, I was bewildered that, how can Department of State organized this meeting which someone who does not support the US government at all. It’s amazing to many of us. So when I asked one of our English Language Officers, (ELO), he replied that, it was democracy in action. Their people have the right to voice their opinions by First Amendment. So, I wish our political leaders would one day not only tolerate opposition, and constructive criticism, but work with them for the good of our democracy and the nation.

By staxbrix,

Wayne Madsen a Washington based investigative journalist, author, columnist and former U.S. Naval Officer is reporting a document called the “C & R” document is being passed around among senior members of Congress and their staff.

Bush planning martial law

FEMA sources have told Madsen that the Bush administration is putting final touches on a plan that would initiate martial law in the event of continuing economic collapse causing massive social unrest, bank closures resulting in violence against financial institutions and another fraudulent presidential election that would result in rioting in major cities and campuses around the country.

Troops on American streets

In addition to FEMA sources, Army Corps of Engineer sources report that the assignment of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade to NorthCom to augment FEMA and federal law enforcement for the purpose of traffic control, crowd control, curfews, enhanced border and port security, and neighborhood patrols in the event a national emergency being declared.

America may default on it’s loans

The “C & R” document reportedly states that if the United States defaults on loans and debt underwritten from China, Japan and Russia and America unilaterally cancels the debts, America can expect a war that will have disastrous results for the United States and the world.

“Conflict” is the “C word” in the document.

Washington fears a popular Revolution

The other possibility discussed in the document is that the federal government will be forced to drastically raise taxes in order to pay off debts to foreign countries to the point that the American people will react with a popular revolution against the government.

“Revolution” is the document’s “R” word.