• Feed RSS
There was an error in this gadget
0
Palin is a no term president!
WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum

* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

0
Palin is a no term president!
WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum

* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

0
USA IS NOT WORRIED ABOUT SHARIA! JUST TEA FAG DIARRHEA!!!!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum

* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

0



BOYCOTT SHARI'A-COMPLIANT IKEA

barenakedislam | September 16, 2011 at 12:36 PM | Categories: Islamization of the West | URL: http://wp.me/peHnV-zGe

Ikea has special Ikea-branded headbags for its muslim staff. But this should come as no surprise as Sweden is already close to becoming an Islamic Republic. Creeping Sharia  IKEA's Edmonton branch contacted TheHijabShop.com to design and produce a 'hijab' – a Muslim headscarf – that would fit in with their current uniform. When IKEA first [...]

Read more of this post

Add a comment to this post



WordPress

WordPress.com | Thanks for flying with WordPress!
Manage Subscriptions | Unsubscribe | Express yourself. Start a blog.

Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://subscribe.wordpress.com


--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.



OUTSTANDING! FBI teaches agents that mainstream Muslims are violent and radical

barenakedislam | September 15, 2011 at 10:45 PM | Categories: EnemyWithin-American | URL: http://wp.me/peHnV-zFl

These are excerpts from dozens of pages of recent FBI training material on Islam. In them, the Constitutionally protected religious faith of millions (actually only 2.6 million) of Muslims in America is portrayed as an indicator of terrorist activity. (This article was posted by a pro-Muslim biased left wing website, thus the snarky, inappropriate commentary. [...]

Read more of this post

Add a comment to this post



WordPress

WordPress.com | Thanks for flying with WordPress!
Manage Subscriptions | Unsubscribe | Reach out to your own subscribers with WordPress.com.

Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://subscribe.wordpress.com


--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.








Now, all we need is someone in Congress with a spine.

http://tinyurl.com/3stoj5f

Here it is Folks…SCOTUS NATURAL BORN CITIZEN PRECEDENCE… Minor vs Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875)

September 15, 2011 by randyedye

 

 

 

 

 

 

5 Votes

Hat Tip to Paul Revere Media

http://paulrevereradio.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=6327028%3ABlogPost%3A140849&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_post

Here it is folks, the precedence everyone in DC says doesn't exist! Established by Minor vs Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875)which specifically defines an Article 2 Section 1 natural-born citizen as a person born in the US

to parents who are citizens.

Therefore, Obama – according to US Supreme Court precedent – is not eligible to be President.

Go to SCOTUS NATURAL BORN CITIZEN PRECEDENCE

This link must be blasted to every Congressman, Senator, SCOTUS justice, and DOJ. If nothing is done as a result, it will be then known that there is no longer any doubt that they are ALL in collusion to subvert the Constitution, therefore all guilty of misprision.

Natural Born Citizen

US SUPREME COURT PRECEDENT STATES THAT OBAMA IS NOT ELIGIBLE TO BE …

The title of this article is correct.  After having completed a more thorough review of the relevant US Supreme Court cases discussing the Constitution's natural-born citizen clause, I have discovered precedentwhich states that a natural-born citizen is a person born in the jurisdiction of the US to parents who are citizens.  Read that again.  I said precedent, not dicta.  The precedent holds that Obama is not eligible to be President of the United States.

Up until the publication of this report today, all discussion of the natural-born citizen issue (from both sides of the argument) agreed there had never been a precedent established by the US Supreme Court, and that the various cases which mentioned the clause did so in "dicta".

Dicta are authoritative statements made by a court which are not binding legal precedent.

Black's Law Dictionary defines "precedent" as a "rule of law established for the first time by a court for a particular type of case and thereafter referred to in deciding similar cases".

Precedent that must be followed is known as binding precedent.  Under the doctrine of stare decisis, a lower court must honor findings of law made by a higher court.  On questions as to the meaning of federal law including the U.S. Constitution, statutes, and regulations, the U.S. Supreme Court's precedents must be followed.

It can no longer be denied that there is controlling US Supreme Court precedent concerning the definition of a natural-born citizen according to Article 2 Section 1 of the US Constitution.  I predict satori will overcome those of you who have labored over this issue.  This is not a remote obscure reading.  It is, when revealed, a clear undeniable holding and binding precedent established by the highest Court of our nation which specifically defines an Article 2 Section 1 natural-born citizen as a person born in the US to parents who are citizens.

Therefore, Obama – according to US Supreme Court precedent – is not eligible to be President.

PRECEDENT ESTABLISHED BY MINOR V. HAPPERSETT

The  direct US Supreme Court precedent is stated in Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875).  Furthermore, the precedent stated in Minor is consistent with other US Supreme Court cases – both before and afterMinor – which discuss the natural born citizen issue.  While that part of the holding in Minor regarding woman's suffrage was superseded by the19th Amendment – which Constitutionally established a woman's right to vote – the rest of the case is good law.  And the remaining precedent stated regarding the definition of "natural-born citizen" – with regard to Article 2 Section 1 of the US Constitution – is still binding upon all lower courts.

Therefore, lower court decisions – such as the holding in Ankeny v. Governor of the State of Indiana – which have misconstrued the US Supreme Court's holding in Minor v. Happersett are wrong.  Below, we will review what the Indiana Court of Appeals had to say and explain why they got it wrong.  But first we must revisit Minor v. Happersett.

THE SUPREME COURT IN MINOR V. HAPPERSETT DIRECTLY CONSTRUED THE US CONSTITUTION'S ARTICLE 2 SECTION 1 NATURAL BORN CITIZEN CLAUSE

Before revisiting Minor, we must revisit Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) to review a clearly erroneous statement made by Justice Gray concerning the prior holding in the Minor case:

"In Minor v. Happersett, Chief Justice Waite, when construing, in behalf of the court, the very provision of the Fourteenth Amendment now in question, said: 'The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that.' "  (Wong Kim Ark at 655.)

This unfortunate remark by Justice Gray contains a clearly erroneous statement.  The Supreme Court in Minor did not construe the 14th Amendment as to the issue of citizenship.  Gray is absolutely wrong.  The Court in Minor construed Article 2 Section 1, not the 14th Amendment.  For over a century, it has been wrongly assumed that the Court in Minor did construe the 14th Amendment, and that the holding of Minor was later superseded by Wong Kim Ark.  This is not correct.

A more careful reading of the Supreme Court's opinion in Minor makes it clear that it did not construe the 14th Amendment with regard to the citizenship of the woman who wished to vote.  The question presented was whether, since the adoption of the 14th Amendment, women had gained the right to vote.  The Supreme Court in Minor held that nowhere in the Constitution, including the 14th Amendment, was anyone, man or woman, granted a right to vote.  And it was only this part of the Minor case which was superseded by the 19th Amendment.

The other issue decided by the Court in Minor required the Supreme Court to determine if the woman was, in fact, a US citizen.  As to this determination, the Court did not construe the 14th Amendment.  In fact, the Court specifically avoided construing the 14th Amendment with regard to her citizenship.  Instead, the Supreme Court in Minor chose to construe Article 2 Section 1:

"There is no doubt that women may be citizens. They are persons, and by the fourteenth amendment 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof ' are expressly declared to be 'citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.' But, in our opinion, it did not need this amendment to give them that position 

"The fourteenth amendment did not affect the citizenship of women any more than it did of men. In this particular, therefore, the rights of Mrs. Minor do not depend upon the amendment. She has always been a citizen from her birth, and entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizenship. The amendment prohibited the State, of which she is a citizen, from abridging any of her privileges and immunities as a citizen of the United States; but it did not confer citizenship on her. That she had before its adoption. If the right of suffrage is one of the necessary privileges of a citizen of the United States, then the constitution and laws of Missouri confining it to men are in violation of the Constitution of the United States, as amended, and consequently void. The direct question is, therefore, presented whether all citizens are necessarily voters.  (Emphasis added.)

There you have it.  The Court stops short of construing the 14th Amendment as to whether the woman in question was a US citizen.  The Court made a certain, direct determination that Mrs. Minor was a US citizen before the adoption of the 14th Amendment and that she did not need the 14th Amendment to be a US citizen.

The Court then, having determined that she was a US citizen, avoided any construction of the 14th Amendment as to her citizenship status.   Therefore, the holding in Minor is in no way superseded by Wong Kim Ark.

The Court in Minor went on to decide the issue of whether citizens are granted a right to vote by the Constitution, holding that it did not.  Again, this part of the holding was superseded by the 19th Amendment, but the determination that Mrs. Minor was a "natural-born citizen" is still controlling precedent.

Since the Court in Minor specifically avoided construing the 14th Amendment as to citizenship, it is clear that Justice Gray's statement – concerning the citizenship passage by Justice Waite in Minor – was clearly erroneous.  The Supreme Court in Minor chose to construe Article 2 Section 1 instead of the 14th Amendment.  As such, Minor is the only US Supreme Court case which has directly construed the Article 2 Section 1 natural-born citizen clause.   Therefore, Minor's construction below creates binding legal precedent:

"Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways: first, by birth, and second, by naturalization. This is apparent from the Constitution itself, for it provides that  'no person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,'and that Congress shall have power 'to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.' Thus new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization.

"The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizenschildren born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens."  (Emphasis added.)

Whether the holding here was influenced by Vattel is not truly important.  Sure, it looks just like Vattel's definition, but Vattel does not make legal precedent – the US Supreme Court does.  All that matters here is what the Supreme court held.  So we must carefully examine the actual words stated by the Supreme Court.  We must not allow ourselves to be guided by what the Supreme Court did not say.  What the Court actually said is what makes law.

In the above passage, the Court noted that Mrs. Minor was born in the US to parents who were citizens.  The Court stated that such persons were "natural-born citizens".  The Court also stated – as to such persons – that their "citizenship" was never in doubt.

By recognizing Mrs. Minor as a member of the class of persons who were natural-born citizens, they established her citizenship.  Establishing her citizenship was required before they could get to the issue of whether she had the right to vote.  In doing so, the Court in Minor directly construed Article 2 Section 1 of the US Constitution.

The Court also noted that some authorities include as "citizens" those born in the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of the parents.  The Court refers to these people as a different "class".  The Court in Minor refused to comment on the "citizenship" of such persons since Mrs. Minor was not in that class.  They didn't need to reach the 14th Amendment to determine if Mrs. Minor was a US citizen since the Court previously established that she was a "natural-born citizen".  Read the following again:

"It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens."

This class is specifically defined as "natural-born citizens" by the Court.  The other class – those born in the US without citizen "parents" – may or may not be "citizens".   But the Minor Court never suggested that this other class might also be natural-born citizens.  

It's quite the opposite.   The Minor Court makes clear that this class arenot Article 2 Section 1 natural-born citizens.  If this other class were natural-born there would be no doubt as to their citizenship.

The Minor Court refrained from making a "citizenship" determination as to that class, but the Court did note that they were a different class.  Later, in 1898, the Court in Wong Kim Ark took the question on directly as to who is a citizen under the 14th Amendment, but that case did not directly construe Article 2 Section 1, whereas Minor did.

In order to avoid construing the 14th Amendment, the Court in Minor had to define those who fit into the class of "natural-born citizens".  Mrs. Minor fit into that class.  Mr. Obama does not.

This is so very evident by the fact that the Minor Court specifically states that the "citizenship" of those who have non-citizen parents was historically subject to doubt.  Whether the 14th Amendment nullified those doubts was irrelevant to the Court in Minor, since Mrs. Minor was a natural-born citizen.

The 14th Amendment specifically confers only "citizenship".  In Minor, the US Supreme Court directly recognized that natural-born citizens were a class of citizens who did not need the 14th Amendment to establish citizenship.  The class of natural-born citizens was perfectly defined in the Minor case.

Therefore, we have a direct determination by the US Supreme Court which defines a natural-born citizen as a person born in the US to parents who are citizens.  The citizenship of this class has never been in doubt.  The citizenship of the other class was in doubt.  But even if that doubt was erased – as to their citizenship – that they are not natural-born citizens was established as precedent by the Supreme Court in Minor.  In order for that precedent to be reversed, one of two things are necessary:

- a Constitutional amendment which specifically defines "natural-born Citizen" more inclusively than Minor did , or;

- a Supreme Court case which overrules the definition of natural-born citizen in the Minor case

We have neither.

Minor was decided seven years after the adoption of the 14th Amendment.  The Supreme Court in Minor did not consider anyone but those born of citizen parents on US soil to be natural-born citizens.  Later, in Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court stated that persons born on US soil to (some) alien parents were "citizens", but that case specifically construed only the 14th Amendment.

Read again Justice Gray's statement as to Minor, "In Minor v. Happersett, Chief Justice Waite, when construing, in behalf of the court, the very provision of the Fourteenth Amendment now in question, said…"  Nope.  Not true.  Gray was wrong in that Justice Waite did not construe the 14th Amendment in the quoted passage.  Chief Justice Waite construed Article 2 Section 1.  Whereas, Justice Gray construed the 14th Amendment.  Therefore, the two cases are not in conflict.

ANKENY V. GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF INDIANA

The Minor case has been severely misconstrued in the Ankeny opinionissued by the Indiana Court of Appeals.  That court quoted Minor's natural-born citizen language, then stated:

"Thus, the Court left open the issue of whether a person who is born within the United States of alien parents is considered a natural born citizen."

False.  The Minor Court did not leave that question open.  Nowhere in the Minor opinion does it state that the class of persons who are natural-born citizens is an open question. The Ankeny Court has it backwards.   

The Supreme Court in Minor stated that the "citizenship" of persons who were not natural born citizens was an open question. 

That is the most important sentence I've ever written at this blog.  So please read it again.

The "citizenship" of those born to non-citizen parents was a question that the Minor Court avoided.   But they avoided that question by directly construing Article 2 Section 1.  In doing so, the Supreme Court in Minor defined the class of persons who were born in the US to citizen parents as "natural-born citizens".

Since Minor, no Amendment has been adopted which changes that definition, and no other Supreme Court case has directly construed Article 2 Section 1.

The Supreme Court in Wong Kim Ark only construed the question of who was a "citizen" under the 14th Amendment, it did not construe Article 2 Section 1.  Therefore, Minor and Wong Kim Ark do not compete with each other at all.  Minor is the standing precedent for construction of the natural-born citizen clause in Article 2 Section 1, and Wong Kim Ark is the standing precedent as to "citizenship" under the 14th Amendment.

WONG KIM ARK SPECIFICALLY DEFERRED TO PRIOR PRECEDENT REGARDING THE DEFINITION OF NATURAL BORN CITIZEN.

That the majority opinion in Wong Kim Ark limited its holding strictly to the issue of 14th Amendment citizenship – and did not make any new determination as to Article 2 Section 1 – is evident from the following statement by Gray regarding the dissent by Justice Curtis in the Supreme Court's earlier ruling in  Dred Scott v. Sandford:

"In Dred Scott v. Sandford, (1857) 19 How. 393, Mr. Justice Curtis said:

'The first section of the second article of the Constitution uses the language, 'a natural-born citizen.' It thus assumes that citizenship may be acquired by birth. Undoubtedly, this language of the Constitution was used in reference to that principle of public law, well understood in this country at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, which referred citizenship to the place of birth.'

19 How. 60 U. S. 576. And, to this extent, no different opinion was expressed or intimated by any of the other judges."

At first glance, Gray's reliance upon the dissent's passage in the Dred Scott case would appear to contradict everything I have written above.  But it doesn't.  It actually confirms my analysis.

Justice Gray chooses his words carefully and so we must examine them carefully.  Note where Gray says, "And, to this extent, no different opinion was expressed or intimated by any of the other judges."  Well, if we are talking only about "citizenship", then – to this extent – Justice Gray is correct.  But if we are talking about the definition of a "natural-born citizen", then Gray is grossly mistaken.

The Dred Scott majority may not have expressed a different opinion as to "citizenship", but the majority's definition of a natural-born citizen is vastly different than that of Justice Curtis in his dissent.  The majority opinion in Dred Scott, citing Vattel directly, stated:

"The citizens are the members of the civil society, bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority; they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or natural-born citizens are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. As society cannot perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their parents, and succeed to all their rights."

Again:

"I say, to be of the country, it is necessary to be born of a person who is a citizen, for if he be born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country. The inhabitants, as distinguished from citizens, are foreigners who are permitted to settle and stay in the country."

Vattel, Book 1, cap. 19, p. 101.

From the views here expressed, and they seem to be unexceptionable…"

Unexceptionable is defined as; " not open to any objection or criticism."  The Supreme Court majority, in the Dred Scott case, clearly states that a natural-born citizen is a person born in the US to parents who are citizens.  Therefore, Justice Gray's reliance upon the dissent in the Dred Scott case is strictly limited to its discussion of "citizenship" by Gray's very choice of the words, "to this extent".

Since Gray stated that none of the other justices in the Dred Scott case expressed a different opinion than Curtis did in his dissent, it is obvious that Gray's statement only applies to general citizenship, and not to the definition of those who fall into the class of natural-born citizens.  The majority in Dred Scott did, in fact, express a completely different opinion than Curtis on the issue of who was an Article 2 Section 1 natural-born citizen.

Gray's use of the words, "to this extent" – with regard to the dissent by Curtis – indicates that the extent to which the holding in Wong Kim Ark applies is to the definition of "citizenship", not to the definition of who is a natural-born citizen eligible to be President.  The precedent stated by the Court in Minor still stands to this day.

THE US SUPREME COURT DEFINITION OF PRECEDENT

In 1996, the US Supreme Court's majority opinion by Justice Breyer inOgilvie Et Al., Minors v. United States, 519 U.S. 79 (1996), stated that when the Court discusses a certain "…reason as an 'independent' ground in support of our decision", then that reasoning is not simply dictum:

"Although we gave other reasons for our holding in Schleier as well, we explicitly labeled this reason an 'independent' ground in support of our decision, id., at 334. We cannot accept petitioners' claim that it was simply a dictum."

The Supreme Court in Minor specifically construed Article 2 Section 1 by defining – as natural-born citizens – those persons born in the US to parents who were citizens.

Again, the Supreme Court specifically avoided the 14th Amendment, by specifically construing Article 2 Section 1.

In order to determine whether Mrs. Minor had the right to vote, the Court first needed to determine if she was a US citizen.  They determined that she was a citizen because she was in the class of "natural-born citizens".  And, in doing so, they made it clear that persons born of non-citizen parents were not natural-born citizens.

The Court left open the question of whether those born of non-citizen parents were "citizens".  But the Court did not leave open their specific construction of Article 2 Section 1.  Their definition of a "natural-born citizen" was the core reason they found Mrs. Minor to be a citizen.   Therefore, the Minor Court established binding precedent as follows:

"…[A]ll children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners..."

Please also note that the Court here makes specific reference to both aliens and foreigners as distinguished from natural-born citizens.  Aliens are just that, aliens.  They are not citizens.  But we have always had many foreigners in this country who were citizens.  Those who came here from foreign lands were foreigners naturalized as citizens.  Some who were born in the US with dual citizenship – like Obama – were also citizens of the nation of their parents.  These are citizens, but also foreigners.  The Court in Minor made the careful distinction that a natural-born citizen is not an alien or a foreigner.

CITIZENS MAY BE BORN OR NATURALIZED

A common misconception of those who argue in favor of Obama's eligibility is that if one is, at the time of their birth, a US citizen, then that person is also a natural-born citizen.  False.  This was unequivocally established by the majority holding in Minor, which states:

"Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways: first, by birth, and second, by naturalization. This is apparent from the Constitution itself, for it providesthat 'no person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,'and that Congress shall have power 'to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.' Thus new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization."

Again, at first glance this appears to provide a neat little soundbite for Obama supporters.  But it doesn't.  The quote above is taken out of context.  The Court's opinion goes on to state:

"Under the power to adopt a uniform system of naturalization Congress, as early as 1790, provided…that the children of citizens of the United States that might be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, should be considered as natural-born citizens.  These provisions thus enacted have, in substance, been retained in all the naturalization laws adopted since."

Here, the Minor Court cites the first naturalization act of 1790 to the effect that persons born of US citizen parents – outside the jurisdiction of the US– are "considered as natural-born citizens".  So, here we can see that while the Minor Court only recognizes two paths to citizenship, birth and naturalization… it is clear that some persons who, at the time of their birth, are US citizens, require naturalization for such status.

So, it's clear that while there are only two paths to US citizenship, birth and naturalization, those two paths sometimes merge.  But naturalized citizens are not eligible to be President.  (The Minor Court failed to mention that the words "natural-born" were repealed from the naturalization act of 1795.)

Additionally, the current US Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual, at "7 FAM 1131.6-2 Eligibility for Presidency", comments on the 1790 act as follows:

"This statute is no longer operative, however, and its formula is not included in modern nationality statutes. In any event, the fact that someone is a natural born citizen pursuant to a statute does not necessarily imply that he or she is such a citizen for Constitutional purposes."

This is most likely because the statute did not actually deem such a person to be a natural-born citizen, the act simply stated that such a person was to be "considered as" a natural-born citizen.

The Minor Court also noted that the "substance" of the 1790 act, which granted US citizenship at birth via naturalization, had remained as law up until 1875 when the Minor case was decided.  So, clearly, while citizens may either be born or naturalized, some born citizens are simultaneously naturalized at birth.  Naturalized citizens are not natural-born citizens.  Therefore, they are not eligible to be President.

I am not arguing that Obama was naturalized.  But Minor does establish that not all "born citizens" are "natural-born".  Minor also gives an unequivocal definition of who fits into the class of natural-born citizens.  Obama does not fit into that class.  Born in the US to a citizen mother and a British/Kenyan father, Obama was born with dual nationality and dual allegiance, part US citizen, part foreigner.  Minor makes a clear distinction between natural-born citizens and aliens or foreigners.

No Constitutional amendment supersedes Minor by defining natural-born citizen in a more inclusive way.  No US Supreme Court case has overruled it.  Justice Gray's statement that the Court in Minor construed the 14th Amendment in the passage quoted is wrong.  The Court in Minor directly construed Article 2 Section 1 while directly avoiding construction of the 14th Amendment.

The Supreme Court in Wong Kim Ark directly construed the 14th Amendment and specifically avoided construction of Article 2 Section 1.  The two cases are not in contradiction.  They are consistent.

Wong Kim Ark is specifically limited to determining who is a citizen under the 14th Amendment.

Minor is specifically limited to determining who is a US citizen, natural-born.

According to the US Supreme Court precedent established by Minor, Obama is not eligible to the office of President of the United States.

Leo C. Donofrio, Esq.

 

 





--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.



He is running so Michelle keeps hers.  Would you want to be within 500 miles of Michelle if Obama loses?

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
0








 

 

Joe Btfsplk rains on the Democrats



 

By Wesley Pruden

Some of the Democrats have come up with a nifty slogan for 2012: "We're really hopeless, but the other guy could be worse."

This is a steal from certain Republicans, who often campaign as if sad-sack losers eager for whatever crumbs fall from the grown-ups' table: "Vote Republican, we're not as bad as you think."

Neither approach has the robust optimism of Ronald Reagan's promise of a new "morning in America," and finally Republicans, with spines stiffened by deep drafts of strong tea, have dispensed with the usual formula. Neither Mitt Romney nor Rick Perry is a nice country-club Episcopalian, and Joe Btfsplk, the little man in the old Li'l Abner comic strip who walked around under a perpetual little rain cloud of his own, is all Barack Obama has to cheer him. Mr. Btfsplk (pronounced like a well-executed Bronx cheer) is a well-meaning little fellow, but all his luck is bad, and he shares it with everybody he brushes up against.

Joe Btfsplk, the little man in the old Li'l Abner comic strip, is all Barack Obama has to cheer him.

Joe_Btfsplk_Excerpt

The Republican sweep of two special elections to fill vacant Democratic-held House sets in New York and Nevada only deepens White House gloom. Despite Pollyanna talk in the Executive Mansion, the president's wise men understand that going into 2012 with an unemployment rate of 9 percent and no relief in sight is not a good way to win a second term.

Spinning results is what Washington wise men do, and this week the shrill grinding noise in the neighborhoods along the Potomac was like unto that of a morning after a blizzard, with everyone spinning his wheels in a forlorn attempt to get his car moving through icy ruts. The White House pretends that losing a seat that had been in Democratic hands since 1920 doesn't mean anything. One White House aide tells Politico, the Capitol Hill daily, that the election of Bob Turner in New York couldn't have been a referendum on Mr. Obama's presidency because both the Republican and the Democrat were running against the president: "So I don't understand how anyone could say this had anything to do with [Mr. Obama.]" Another Democratic operative finds solace where he can: The minute Anthony Weiner, the disgraced Democrat who had to surrender the seat, started taking off his clothes for his Twitter fans the Democrats knew they would lose the seat. So they didn't really try to keep it. Rep. Joe Crowley, the Democratic leader of Queens, turned to political argle-bargle for an explanation. The district straddles the border between Queens and Brooklyn, and Mr. Crowley said, "We won Queens county 52-48," leaving unstated that Democrats lost big in Brooklyn. He means the Democrats lost the Jews.

It's true that the Jews in New York's 9th Congressional District are mostly Orthodox Jews, who hold as tightly to the tenets of Judaism as their forbears did, with no truck for squeamish compromises with modern times. That means, among other things, only one man at a time atop the wedding cake. David Weprin, the Democratic loser on Tuesday night, endorsed the same-sex marriage legislation enacted this summer in New York, and paid heavily for it. Worse, because he's a Democrat, he was badly damaged by the widespread perception that President Obama has to bite his tongue and sometimes hold his nose when he talks about Israel.

The president has been hanging out with the wrong crowd most of his life, and he sounds sincere only on those frequent occasions when he's apologizing to, or flirting with, Muslims. Now the Democrats are terrified that the Jewish vote was permanently fractured by the result in New York. Jewish voters, having seen no thunderbolts striking either Brooklyn or Queens on the day after, might give up worshipping the Democratic Party as the golden calf of American politics. They might see where Mr. Obama's heart really lies.

Mr. Obama had sloppy wet kisses for the Muslims in Cairo last year, apologizing for everything American; he urges Israel to trust the Palestinians who have broken every promise they've ever made; he restrains Jerusalem from answering the vow of Iranians to "wipe Israel off the face of the map." These decisions ought to make it difficult for Jews to trust such a president, particularly without verification.

"This Republican win," says Matt Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition, "is a significant indicator of the problem President Obama has in the Jewish community."

Rep. Jim Moran, a fiercely partisan Democrat in Northern Virginia, agrees it's tough to put a positive spin on election night. He finds it hard to believe that with such a heavy concentration of Orthodox Jewish voters and a Jewish candidate, the Democrats still lost. Joe Btfsplk would understand.

Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

 

 

 



--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
0

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
Posted this morning at Electric Politics, a podcast interview with
Bill Schneider, formerly for twenty years CNN's chief political
analyst. The conversation covers, among other topics, why the
fundamental structure of American politics is dysfunctional, why Bill
thinks that the structure can't be changed, and how religion and
politics have become such a toxic brew.

If you like the show please forward the link.

And thanks for listening!

http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2011/09/the_professional.html

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum

* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/16/israel-tax-evasion-banks_n_965900.html

Datan Dorot, a tax lawyer in Miami who represents U.S. clients of
Israeli banks, said that bankers from an Israeli branch of Bank Leumi
called his clients about six weeks ago to tell them they needed to
close their accounts at the bank's Swiss branches because of scrutiny
by the Justice Department.

Many of his clients, Dorot said, hold dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship
and had opened their Israeli accounts with Israeli passports and not
disclosed their U.S. citizenship -- a factor that makes them U.S.
taxpayers.

Dorot said Bank Leumi's advice that clients close the accounts -- and
presumably open new accounts elsewhere -- could cause problems for the
clients because the U.S. Internal Revenue Service does not consider
merely closing the account to be enough; the U.S. taxpayer must also
report the account to the IRS and pay taxes on it. "The Israeli banks
are suggesting a very bad idea," Dorot said.

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum

* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.


--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
0

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
0



10 Most Expensive States in America

Dr. Eowyn | September 16, 2011 at 5:52 am | Categories: Economy, Health Care, Liberals, Media, Taxes, United States | URL: http://wp.me/pKuKY-9pC

A CNBC study ranks America's 50 states on the ACCRA Cost of Living Index to find which are the most expensive states to live in. The states are ranked using a 50-point scale—the lower the score, the higher the cost of living, and vice versa. ACCRA's data are compiled from the average prices from Q1 2010 through Q1 2011.

Only one of the ten most expensive states ranks among the top ten overall in CNBC's Top States for Business study.

What CNBC doesn't point out is another interesting fact:

9 of the top 10 most expensive states were "blue" states that voted for Obama in 2008.

I also quibble with why CNBC did not include state and local taxes in compiling its list.

And now, here are the top 10 cities in America with the highest cost-of-living:

10. Massachusetts

Most expensive: Framingham-Natick
House: $529,300
Movie ticket: $10.51
Lipitor: $162.56
Doctor visit: $112.24
Gallon of gas: $2.807

9. Vermont

Most expensive: Burlington-Chittenden
House: $405,825
Movie ticket: $8.80
Lipitor: $150.55
Doctor visit: $105
Gallon of gas: $2.892

8. Rhode Island

Most expensive: Providence
House: $361,195
Movie ticket: $10.75
Lipitor: $142
Doctor visit: $149
Gallon of gas: $2.903

7. Maryland

Most expensive: Bethesda-Gaithersburg
House: $535,409
Movie ticket: $10.69
Lipitor: $158.10
Doctor visit: $87.29
Gallon of gas: $2.950

6. New York

Most expensive: New York (Manhattan)
House: $1,140,461
Movie ticket: $12.28
Lipitor: $160.05
Doctor visit: $125.89
Gallon of gas: $3.148

5. New Jersey

Most expensive: Bergen-Passaic
House: $511,212
Movie ticket: $10.58
Lipitor: $159.67
Doctor visit: $83.52
Gallon of gas: $2.758

4. Connecticut

Most expensive: Stamford
House: $606,742
Movie ticket: $10.33
Lipitor: $154.61
Doctor visit: $102.26
Gallon of gas: $3.075

3. California

Most expensive: San Francisco
House: $808,481
Movie ticket: $10.58
Lipitor: $145.98
Doctor visit: $120.83
Gallon of gas: $3.116

2. Alaska

Most expensive: Fairbanks
House: $438,225
Movie ticket: $10.69
Lipitor: $156.99
Doctor visit: $150.05
Gallon of gas: $3.478

1. Hawaii

Most expensive: Honolulu
House: $689,781
Movie ticket: $10.08
Lipitor: $160.96
Doctor visit: $130.15
Gallon of gas: $3.437

H/t Spirit Daily

~Eowyn

Add a comment to this post



WordPress

WordPress.com | Thanks for flying with WordPress!
Manage Subscriptions | Unsubscribe | Publish text, photos, music, and videos by email using our Post by Email feature.

Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://subscribe.wordpress.com


--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
0


Neoconservatism Taken Down
Friday, September 16, 2011
by David Gordon

[ Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea • By C. Bradley Thompson with Yaron Brook • Paradigm Publishers, 2010 • Xii + 305 pages]
 
C. Bradley Thompson argues that neoconservatism stands in fundamental opposition to individual rights and a free economy.

To most of us, neoconservatism is inevitably associated with the Iraq War. A group of neoconservatives, including Robert Kagan and David Frum, played with consummate folly a major role in urging the Bush administration toward initiating that conflict. The movement, on that ground alone, has little to recommend it; but can one nevertheless make a case on its behalf?

After all, neoconservatism was not always associated with reckless foreign-policy initiatives. To the contrary, in its early days in the 1960s, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, and Daniel Moynihan offered in the neoconservative journal The Public Interest cogent criticisms of many aspects of the welfare state. If Kristol could only muster Two Cheers for Capitalism, is this not better than most fashionable intellectuals can do? Perhaps the good elements in neoconservatism can be detached from the recent foreign-policy madness. C. Bradley Thompson emphatically disagrees. He argues that neoconservatism stands in fundamental opposition to individual rights and a free economy.

Although neoconservatives have indeed challenged certain aspects of the welfare state, they have no quarrel with it in principle.

In what may be Irving Kristol's most shocking statement in defense of collectivist redistribution and statism, he has suggested that "the idea of a welfare state is in itself perfectly consistent with a conservative political philosophy ­ as Bismarck knew, a hundred years ago." (p. 29)

If this accurately describes their position, why do the neoconservatives criticize the welfare state at all? Aside from the technical deficiencies of particular programs, what concerns them is the way that some welfare programs encourage unvirtuous behavior. Welfare that rewards giving birth out of wedlock, e.g., arouses their protests.

This sort of criticism reveals a key fact about the neoconservatives. They have a very definite sense of the proper conduct that the state, or as they are likely to term it, the regime, ought to promote. Not for them is the libertarian view that each person, so long as he does not initiate force against others, is free to lead his life as he wishes. To the contrary, the leaders of the state have as one of their prime duties the development of the citizens' characters. Accordingly, freedom of speech most decidedly does not extend to pornography. Further, the government must inculcate patriotic sentiment among the people.

More generally, neoconservatives do not believe in individual rights at all, in the robust sense with which readers of the Mises Daily will be familiar.

On a deeper level, the problem with the [American] Founders' liberalism, according to Kristol, is that it begins with the individual, and a philosophy that begins with the "self" must necessarily promote selfishness, choice, and the pursuit of personal happiness.… A free society grounded on the protection of individual rights leads inexorably to an amiable philistinism, an easygoing nihilism, and, ultimately, to "infinite emptiness." (pp. 28–9)

Thompson mordantly remarks, "Thus the great political lesson that the neocons have successfully taught other conservatives … is to stop worrying and love the State" (p. 29).

Thompson is not content with this devastating verdict. He maintains that existing studies of neoconservatism do not penetrate to the essence: they have not discovered the philosophical roots of the movement. He locates this essence in the thought of Leo Strauss, and much of the book is devoted to a careful exposition and criticism of his views. [1] (Even if one dissents from Thompson's intellectual genealogy of neoconservatism, the discussion of Strauss is of great value for its own sake.)

Thompson appears to have set himself a difficult task. Neoconservatism according to many of its proponents is a tendency rather than a developed body of doctrine.

Those who are willing to call themselves neoconservatives (and not all are) typically describe neoconservatism as an "impulse," a "style of thought," or a "mode of thinking." Its proponents have described neoconservatism as a way of seeing the world, as a state of mind and not as a systematic political philosophy. (p. 4)

If this is right, how can Thompson proceed with his plan to unearth the philosophical foundations of neoconservatism? Will not a view that repudiates system prove impervious to analysis?

Thompson neatly turns this difficulty to his advantage. The rejection of system manifests in this instance a related view that provides the key to understanding neoconservatism. A system is composed of principles that inhere in an ordered structure; but neoconservatives oppose fixed principles of politics.

For all their supposed concern for ideas and philosophy, there is something profoundly antiphilosophical about the neoconservatives. They eschew moral first principles in favor of a technique or a mode of thinking, and they scorn absolute, certain moral principles for what "works." (p. 32)

But in this very rejection of systematic morality lies concealed a philosophical doctrine.

But what has all this to do with Leo Strauss? To make good his case that Strauss's thought lies behind neoconservatism, Thompson must first establish that the neocons knew and studied Strauss. He does so by showing that the acknowledged godfather of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, took Strauss as his philosophical master. Thompson places particular emphasis on a review by Kristol in Commentary (October 1952) of Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing.

Remarkably, this document has never been brought to the attention of the general public until now. Kristol's confrontation with Strauss came as an epiphany. It was, as Kristol has intimated on several occasions, the most important intellectual event of his life. (p. 59)[2]

From Persecution and the Art of Writing, Kristol absorbed the message that philosophers needed to conceal their dangerous doctrines from the masses. Philosophy undermines religious belief and shows also that morality lacks a rational foundation. But without religion and an accepted morality, the social order would be overthrown. Further, if the masses were to become aware of what the philosophers really taught, would they not suppress these dangerous thinkers? Philosophers form an intellectual elite, and they rank far superior to those lacking their wisdom.

The ancient philosophers, mindful of the fate of Socrates, kept always in mind the need to maintain their distance from the masses. The Enlightenment abandoned this antique wisdom.

Whereas Socrates-Plato recognized a wide and unbridgeable chasm between philosophers and nonphilosophers, the engineers of the modern world ­ men such as Bacon, Newton, Locke, and Jefferson ­ thought it possible to make all men reasonable, to bring light to a dark world through reason and science.… The Enlightenment therefore represented for Strauss the democratization and thus the degradation of the Western mind. (pp. 66–7)

Strauss rejected capitalism and individualism, which as he saw them rested on a low view of man. Instead of philosophical wisdom, confined to an elite, as the highest end of the regime, happiness and wealth for the masses became the order of the day.[3]

Strauss argued that the modern liberalism of Locke and Jefferson had distorted the fundamental structure of human existence, that without a summum bonum to guide his life, modern man lacked "completely a star and compass for his life" and was therefore wrenched away from the natural ordering of society. (p. 115)

The Enlightenment taught a further false doctrine: universal human rights. Instead, Strauss believed, there are no unalterably fixed moral standards. The statesman, taught by philosophers, must be guided by prudential judgment about the particular situation he faces. Here precisely is a key point at which Straussian teaching serves to explain neoconservatism. As earlier mentioned, the neocons resolutely reject fixed moral rules and rights.[4]

If Strauss rejected the Enlightenment, he by no means demanded the abolition of individualism and capitalism. To the contrary, the ancient arrangements of the polis could not in our day be restored; and the regime of the American Founding Fathers offered the best available bulwark against relativism and nihilism -- if this regime was suitably controlled behind the scenes by philosophers instructed in Straussian wisdom.

What form would this philosophical guidance take? It is essential that the inferior masses develop virtuous habits, lest their unbridled appetites lead to undue disorder. To inculcate virtue and to weaken the base tendency of people to put their individual well-being ahead of the common good, what better means than a properly conducted war? War teaches self-sacrifice.

The moral component of this is straightforward. As we have seen, the neoconservatives' ethical prescription for ordinary citizens consists in a life of selfless sacrifice to others, in which the individual puts the needs and well-being of others above his own. (p. 180)

Thompson finds in this argument a principal motive for the neocons' support for the Iraq War. The neocons aimed not only to spread democracy as they conceived it to the benighted Iraqis: even more important, they saw the war as a means to discipline and educate the American people.

Thompson and Yaron Brook, the coauthor of the chapter on foreign policy, resolutely reject this approach to foreign policy. To them, wars are justifiable only as a means to avert a genuine threat, and "a real post–September 11 risk assessment of the threat posed by Iraq would not have resulted in finding that Iraq was at the top of the list of potential targets." (p. 179).

Thompson's interpretation of neoconservatism must confront two fundamental challenges. First, does he show that Strauss's view really stand at the base of neoconservatism? A critic might object that what holds true of Irving Kristol might not apply to others in the neoconservative movement. Further, has Thompson correctly interpreted Strauss? Was Strauss an advocate of a particular philosophy in his own right rather than a historian of political thought; and if he did wish to convey a philosophical message, is it the one Thompson attributes to him? I strongly suspect that Thompson can successfully meet these tests. Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea is essential reading for anyone interested in either the neoconservatives or Leo Strauss.




David Gordon covers new books in economics, politics, philosophy, and law for The Mises Review, the quarterly review of literature in the social sciences, published since 1995 by the Mises Institute. He is author of The Essential Rothbard, available in the Mises Store.


Notes

[1] Thompson is an Objectivist, and accordingly believes as a general thesis that ideas determine history. Readers will not fail to recall Leonard Peikoff's endeavor in Ominous Parallels to trace the roots of Nazism to Kant's philosophy. I do not think this effort was entirely successful.

[2] Thompson mentions that Kristol's wife, Gertrude Himmelfarb, also wrote about Strauss. One might also note that his brother-in-law, Milton Himmelfarb, had studied Strauss's works carefully and wrote about Strauss on several occasions. See, e.g., "On Leo Strauss", Commentary (August 1974).

[3] Strauss was influenced in his opposition to capitalism by his friend and academic patron R.H. Tawney, the eminent English socialist. Like Strauss, Tawney deplored what he called the "acquisitive society." See Simon Green, "The Tawney-Strauss Connection: On Historicism and Values in the History of Political Ideas", Journal of Modern History, June 1995.

[4] Ironically, in view of the Objectivist portrayal of Kant as the fons et origo of modern philosophical evil, Straussians such as Harry Jaffa denounce fixed moral rules as Kantian.

http://mises.org/daily/5635/Neoconservatism-Taken-Down
0
"Most people would agree that the sign of an individual's maturity and rationality, not to mention social skills, is her understanding that the cooperation of others must be obtained exclusively through persuasion. If you want something from someone you make an offer or an argument. You don't demand, bully, or terrorize. And yet we tolerate an institution that demands, bullies, and terrorizes as a matter of course across a large and growing range of matters."

The Goal Is Freedom
Government Is Force
A license to aggress.
Sheldon Richman
Posted September 16, 2011

Some pundits really don't understand why libertarians dislike government and therefore want it to do little, if anything at all. Unable to grasp the reason, the pundits assign bad motives to those who disparage government: They don't like poor people, or workers, or the sick, or education.

But what's so hard to understand? Government is significantly different from anything else in society. It is the only institution that can legally threaten and initiate violence; that is, under color of law its officers may use physical force -- not in defense of innocent life but against individuals who have neither threatened nor aggressed against anyone else. "Government is not reason. It is not eloquence," George Washington reportedly said. "Government is force; like fire it is a dangerous servant -- and a fearful master."

That's not a controversial description of the State. Even people enthusiastic about government would agree.

Given this unique feature, why isn't everyone wary about the State? Whether or not one thinks it's necessary, it's dangerous by its very nature, and we ought to assume it will remain so no matter how many paper checks and balances and bills of rights are thought to contain it.

Yet if you talk about government this way, you will be eyed warily and even marginalized. (Observe the current presidential campaign.) This is not confined to one side of the political spectrum only. Progressives and conservatives each have their pet areas where they enthusiastically wish to see the force of government unleashed. Each then regards anyone else's wariness as a defect. So Progressives, who reputedly care about privacy, have no problem, for example, with intrusion into that most personal of matters: medical care. Here they trust power and dismiss rational fears of arbitrary bureaucratic control over health and life. On the other hand, conservatives, who preach freedom and free enterprise, are eager to trust power when the objective is policing the world, hounding unauthorized immigrants, and persecuting manufacturers, merchants, and consumers of unapproved drugs.

We are all raised to believe that using force (except in self-defense) is wrong. We're taught not to hit other people or take their things. This applies to our associations as well. Yet as we grow, we are expected to believe that one institution -- government -- gets to operate by different rules. No one ever explains why.


Tacit Consent

Sure, if you push hard enough, you will hear pseudo explanations. Someone will inevitably invoke tacit consent. You know: You choose to live here and those are the rules -- love it or leave it. But the assertion that we all somehow agreed to be coerced is ludicrous, and Charles Johnson asks if consent is even possible when the withholding of consent is deemed impossible.

Moreover this argument implies that the government owns the country, including your property, which begs a big question.

Push harder, and someone will invoke democracy, but again that really gets us nowhere. In my lifetime the only elections have been to determine who would run the government, not what its powers, if any, would be. (Yes, candidates sometimes promise to reduce  government power, but since one officeholder can't keep such a promise, it's not terribly meaningful.) The fiction of democratic representation is more intended to contain dissent than to describe reality. Let's get real: The average congressional district has more than 600,000 residents. Taxation with real representation has yet to be realized.

Most people would agree that the sign of an individual's maturity and rationality, not to mention social skills, is her understanding that the cooperation of others must be obtained exclusively through persuasion. If you want something from someone you make an offer or an argument. You don't demand, bully, or terrorize. And yet we tolerate an institution that demands, bullies, and terrorizes as a matter of course across a large and growing range of matters. It doesn't demand merely that we not harm others or take their belongings. It bullies us into turning over our money for all kinds of purposes. It demands that we comply with its (ever-changing) rules about what we consume, how we manage our medical care, and in what manner we trade with others. And it increasingly terrorizes us in its brutal crusade against self-medication.


Routinely Hassled

It matters not for my purpose today whether the government's officers think they are looking out for our welfare, indulging their taste for power, or doing the bidding of well-connected and well-heeled interests. The result is the same: We are routinely hassled in our efforts to live, to cooperate, and to mutually benefit one another. We are the economy they presume to manage.

Apologists for power will claim that without expansive government, the weak will be vulnerable to the strong, the masses to the rich. But that appeal falls apart when one reviews the history of government and realizes that, appearances aside, power ultimately sides with the strong and the rich against the rest. Indeed, power -- what Bastiat called "legal plunder" -- is the source of their strength and a good deal of wealth.

Economic and social theory furnish ample reason for wariness about the State. But we mustn't let moral theory take a back seat. Government, even when it appears to do good, diminishes our freedom and humanity. How revoltingly ironic that people who claim to champion goodwill and cooperation regard violence as a legitimate means to their ends.


http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/tgif/government-is-force/
0

Tenth Amendment 'Terrorism'
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. is terrified. He is terrified that the American public has started to believe that they are the masters rather than the servants of their own government. He is terrified that they may have started to think that the old Jeffersonian dictum that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed is not such a bad idea. Most of all, he is terrified that the public will act on these beliefs, organize themselves into political communities at the state level, and oppose socialized healthcare, endless "stimulus" spending by the federal government, and the never-ending expansion of the welfare state.

"I have introduced an Economic Bill of Rights!", he whined, while bemoaning citizen opposition to this hoary socialistic scheme. That's why he is doing what all Democrats seem to do these days – insinuating that anyone who holds such beliefs is either a racist, as he did in a recent speech, or a member of a "hate group" (or both).

There are a lot of black people on welfare, you see, so that in the mind of Jesse Jackson, Jr., (and his friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center and other Democratic Party appendages), is the only conceivable reason why anyone would ever criticize the welfare state is racial hatred. The Obama regime promised a "post-racial America" while working diligently with all of its supporters to create a hyper-racial America instead.

In his recent bloviation Congressman Jackson bemoaned the fact that politicians like Governor Rick Perry of Texas have been talking a lot lately about states' rights and the Tenth Amendment as tools with which ordinary Americans can oppose the corrupt, imperious regime in Washington, D.C. This of course is the very reason why Thomas Jefferson believed that the Tenth Amendment ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people") was the cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution and the key to creating what he called "an empire of liberty." The clearest example of this Jeffersonian states' rights tradition is the first section of Jefferson's famous Kentucky Resolution of 1798 (written by Jefferson at the request of his friend, Senator John Breckenridge of Kentucky) which announced that the citizens of Kentucky would not abide by the unconstitutional Sedition Act that was being enforced by the Adams administration. The Sedition Act essentially outlawed free political speech in America by making it a crime punishable by prison for criticizing the Adams administration. Section 1 of the "Kentucky Resolve" reads as follows:

Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principles of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self Government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force . . . . the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers . . . (emphasis added).

This, along with the Tenth Amendment, is the essence of the Jeffersonian states' rights philosophy. During Jefferson's term as president the New England states used the language of the Kentucky Resolve to nullify the trade embargo that Jefferson attempted to enforce after the British confiscated American ships and conscripted American sailors. (He believed that a trade embargo, as damaging as it was, was a better alternative than another war with Great Britain). All of New England, plus Delaware, nullified the embargo as an unconstitutional usurpation of federal power, and used Jefferson's own language to justify their actions.

New Englanders also refused to participate in the War of 1812 by refusing to send militia troops by citing once again Jefferson's Kentucky Resolve. Many states assisted President Andrew Jackson in is political battle with the Bank of the United States (which he eventually de-funded) by trying to tax branches of the BUS out of existence. Ohio took the lead, with its legislature announcing that "the States have an equal right to interpret the Constitution for themselves" and that Ohio would withdraw "the protection and aid of the laws of the State" from the BUS (see James J. Kilpatrick, The Sovereign States, p. 152). And of course South Carolina famously invoked the Jeffersonian states' rights tradition to nullify the hated 1828 "Tariff of Abominations."

Congressman Jackson sees it all very differently. He views states' rights not through the eyes of a student of American history who is familiar with such facts. Instead, he views states' rights from the viewpoint of what he is, namely, a Chicago political hack who never hesitates to use the "race card" to try to get his way in politics. Like father, like son. Accordingly, he recently proclaimed that Governor Perry – or anyone else who invokes the Tenth Amendment as a political strategy – must be inflicted by the basest of motives. "It was the Tenth Amendment and States' Rights that protected the institution of slavery," he shouted. In fact, the exact opposite is true.

Slavery existed in all states when the federal Constitution was ratified in 1789 and was protected by it until the states ratified the Thirteenth Amendment in 1866. That's seventy-seven years of slavery protection by the federal government. In addition, the federal Fugitive Slave Act (which was very strongly supported by Abraham Lincoln) socialized the cost of enforcing the slave system by forcing the citizens of states where slavery no longer existed to capture runaway slaves and return them to their owners. Congressman Jackson is apparently unaware that this was a federal government program.

More importantly, it was the Jeffersonian states' rights tradition that was invoked to oppose the Fugitive Slave Act in the form of various "personal liberty laws" at the state level. In response to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania all passed state laws that prohibited the use of the state's jails for detaining fugitive slaves. They also provided legal counsel for persons accused of being fugitive slaves; gave fugitive slaves the right of Habeas Corpus and trial by jury; required the identity of the alleged fugitive to be documented by two witnesses; prohibited the states from offering any assistants to the claimants; and imposed heavy fines for attempting to claim that a free black person was in fact a slave.

Another false claim that Congressman Jackson made in his recent anti-Tenth Amendment outburst was that when the Southern states seceded they committed "an act of treason." Once again, he gets it exactly backwards. The U.S. Constitution has a very clear definition of treason in Article 3, Section 3: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them aid and comfort." As in all the founding documents, the words "United States" are always in the plural, signifying that the document is referring to what the Declaration of Independence called "the free and independent states." "Levying war against them" means levying war against the free and independent states, or giving aid and comfort to "their" enemies.

Abraham Lincoln never conceded that secession was legal. He therefore committed treason by levying war upon the Southern states, which never legally left the union as far as he was concerned. It was the Lincoln regime's invasion of the Southern states that was the very definition of treason under the U.S. Constitution. Congressman Jackson follows a long line of conniving statists, beginning with Daniel Webster himself, who have chosen to ignore the actual constitutional definition of treason while redefining the term to mean the opposite – opposition to the unconstitutional usurpations of the federal government.

Government will never be limited unless the citizens take matters into their own hands by resurrecting the states' rights mechanisms of nullification, interposition, and secession.

http://lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo214.html