Gerrymandering has sordid history as old as Constitution

August 12, 2025 — bunkerville

Nothing new with Gerrymandering. It’s been going on since the beginning of our Republic.An interesting piece now at the Washington Times on Gerrymandering and worth a read. My old homestead county in rural Pennsylvania has been essentially Gerrymandering out of existence for any representation with miles outside the county included by any number of Representatives.

One item on the list our Founders should have given some additional thought to perhaps.

Washington Times:

We’ve come a long way from the country’s first gerrymander, which involved two future presidents vying for election to the first Congress.

James Madison, the future No. 4, faced off against James Monroe, the future No. 5, in a district crafted by Patrick Henry specifically to be tough for Madison to win.

 

Henry, a committed anti-federalist, wanted to deny Madison any role in Congress. He hoped to wound the new government system, which he despised.

Madison pulled out a victory and went on to shepherd the Bill of Rights through Congress.

Henry operated at the bluntest level, adding whole counties to Virginia’s 5th Congressional District and deciding which ones to leave out.

 

As technology improves, gerrymandering has gained precision to the point that it has become a dark science, reducing people to their basest political, racial or cultural beings, often in the service of a political party’s power.

Just after the turn of the century, Arizona lawmakers drew a district that tracks the waters of the Colorado River for 40 miles as it flows through the Grand Canyon. It gained no voters but served as an electoral bridge before stretching out to encompass the Hopi reservation.

That district was a nod to centuries-old animosity between the Hopi and the Navajo, whose reservation surrounds the Hopi lands. This animosity forced the mapmakers to get creative to ensure that the two reservations had different representatives in Congress.

For former Rep. Steve Israel, a New Yorker who ran the Democrats’ House campaign committee from 2011 to 2015, the most extreme gerrymander became known as “Goofy kicking Donald Duck.”

Keep reading

The very best of the swamp.

Posted in election. Tags: , , , , . 18 Comments »

America Gone Astray

August 25, 2023 — bunkerville

by Mustang

All members assemble to give their solemn oath of office when Congress convenes.  The pledge reads as follows:

Do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that you take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you are about to enter: So help you, God?

And, as expected, all the congress persons, with their right hand still raised, repeat in unison, “I do.” The only thing solemn about this oath is the use of the word as it appears in the oath.  No one has ever been prosecuted for failing to follow this solemn oath, no one has ever been tossed out of office for breaking the oath.  So, the question is, how solemn is it, really?  The answer is not very.  It is a hollow formality.  It gets no more than a wink and a nod.  After affirming, “I do,” everyone inside the nation’s capital goes back to business as usual — and that usual business involves becoming an enemy of the U.S. Constitution and the people who, through their elected representatives, approved of this covenant.

The cycle is repeated every two years — and it’s been going on for a very long time.  Since 1789, the U.S. Constitution has been shamefully misinterpreted, abused, and intentionally subverted.  Sadly, The result is that America is no longer the land of the free and home of the brave.  And, if we are sincere, maybe it never was.

How do we know this is true?  I submit, in the same way, Patrick Henry knew it was true.  Before the events at Concord and Lexington, Henry pointed to the oppressive government and warned us against complacency.  He told us what would happen if we ever accepted the dictates of a central government whose members intentionally distance themselves from “we the people.”

“It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope.  We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts.  Is this the part of wise men engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty?  Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?  For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst and provide for it.”

 —Patrick Henry

Mr. Henry, as one may recall, served as the first and sixth governor of Virginia in the post-Revolutionary War period.  Today, he is claimed as a partisan by both the political left and right.  When he spoke of temporal salvation, he meant preserving the freedom to work and provide as we see fit — that individuals have both the ability and responsibility to plan their own lives without unnecessary government meddling.  In Mr. Henry’s day, that freedom was already under attack, and conditions have not improved since then.

Enemies — foreign and domestic

The framers of the U.S. Constitution acknowledged that individuals have certain unalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  God gave us these rights; only God can take them away.  So, the purpose of government, as envisioned by the earliest constitutionalists, was to protect these fundamental God-given rights.  Has Congress or any administration since Washington’s presidency done this?  The answer must be no.

The framers of the Constitution understood how and why people behave as they do.  No matter what one might think of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, they understood human nature and realized that human beings are terribly flawed.  And because individuals are flawed, government was necessary on two crucial counts: First, to protect the American people from foreign enemies.  Second, to protect the American people from domestic lawbreakers — people who would use coercion, fraud, or force to deprive others of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Today, some of these “domestic” enemies wear the black robes of state and federal judges, the business suits of members of political parties in Congress and within the bureaucracy, in cabinet positions, inside the Oval Office, and men and women who wear the uniforms of our “protectors,” whether military or law enforcement.  There is no other way to explain corrupt FBI directors, attorney generals, speakers of the house, or presidential wannabes who dream of becoming president one day.

James Madison may not have been one of America’s greatest presidents, but he was no dummy.  He knew that as individuals require a firm hand to keep them on the straight and narrow path in their treatment of fellow citizens, so too did the government require oversight.

“It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.  But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?  If men were angels, no government would be necessary.  If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.  In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

  • James Madison

Unfortunately for us, the government is not so obliged.  Nowhere is this more obvious than observing the current administration’s wide-scale abuses of “we the people” and that myth shaping we see taking place on the stage of partisan debate.

The political manipulation of the American people continues — and this, too, in its attempt, would be fine — if “we the people” had the sense that God gave goats, and we could see how others, seeking power over us, manipulate us to their purposes.  I have no faith in the future of America because I have no faith in my fellow citizens, even to recognize when they are being played as fools.

Bunk adds this video=

Anti-Federalist: Patrick Henry WARNS Big Government is NOT VIRTUOUS in 1788

Mustang also has blogs called  Fix Bayonets and Thoughts From Afar

Posted in Government. Tags: , , , . 18 Comments »

What is this thing called “inalienable rights”?

July 5, 2022 — bunkerville

A Dishonest Tribe 

By Mustang

“Friday was a singular day in our history: the first day in living memory that Americans went to bed with fewer inalienable rights than they had when they woke up.  Not just in living memory.  Ever.”   –Laurence Henry Tribe

Dr. Tribe is an intellectual.  He is degreed in both mathematics and the law, and in the law, a long-acknowledged Constitutional scholar at Harvard Law and one of several responsible for teaching law to such as Barack Obama, Elena Kagan, John Roberts, Merrick Garland, and Ted Cruz.

He is also full of malarky.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the matter of Dobbs v. Mississippi took away no rights at all.  Let us examine carefully what Dr. Tribe said.  “… Americans went to bed with fewer inalienable rights than they had when they woke up.”

What is an inalienable right? 

It is an entitlement incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred.  Some would argue, a right accorded to mankind by God; freedom beyond other men’s power (or right) to strip away.  In Dr. Tribe’s context, one might question his claim that God ever gave human beings the right to kill their unborn child.

Any time someone on the political left argues the merits of inalienable rights, they present themselves with something of a dilemma: since few on the left believe in God, how can a non-entity offer an inalienable right?  And if an inalienable right isn’t one given to us by the Creator, then where did it come from — and what underlying principle makes it sacrosanct?

Perhaps our confusion comes from the use of the word “rights.” There is a vast difference between human behavior and human rights.  A person may offend society — and many do — but that doesn’t make anyone entitled to offend society.  If someone does “offend” the community, that person should anticipate that if outraged, society will punish them for that offense.  Murder, rape, incest, or torture are some things offensive to society.  Murder, as an example, is NOT an inalienable right.  No one is entitled to murder anyone else.  God’s law tells us that.

Competing interests 

Then we enter the world of competing interests.  Given “an entitlement,” our lawyers and judges often struggle with this question: Who among us is more entitled?  One popular refrain is that a woman has the inalienable right to choose what to do or not to do with her own body.  This argument states that if a woman carries a child, she has the inalienable right to dispose of it before full-term delivery.  There are three camps: those who believe this is true, those who don’t, and those who don’t care one way or the other.

We have another point of view, although it isn’t popular.  A woman would not have a child to deliver were it not for a man’s sperm.  No sperm, no child.  Does this give a woman’s male partner a greater say in the unborn child’s rights?  Can the law consign a woman to full-term pregnancy if her male partner demands it?  I now hear angry voices; what is the matter with me?  And yet, if a woman consents to accept a man’s sperm, does she not commit herself to the possibility of pregnancy?  It’s a complex issue — it is why we have jurists and a system of courts to entertain such questions.

baby bentrup“baby bentrup” by paparutzi is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

But Dr. Tribe is wrong to suggest that the Dobb v. Mississippi decision was an assault on anyone’s inalienable rights or that it was the first time in history that such a thing happened.  Both arguments offer a profound stretch — and it’s either political or intellectually dishonest.  I would think that an example of a breach of our inalienable rights might include intentionally infecting unsuspecting black men with syphilis

In any case, Dobbs was not a question of civil rights.  The high court’s decision (6-3) only reaffirmed that the federal government has certain enumerated powers; the high court granting constitutional rights to people where none exist isn’t one of them.

Whether or not there shall be a “lawful murder” of an unborn child isn’t a federal matter; it is an issue that belongs to the states.  This was the challenge in Dobbs v. Mississippi.  And, just because Dr. Tribe didn’t like that decision doesn’t invalidate it.

And by the way, Roe v. Wade is just the tip of that iceberg.  What about the right of Mormons to polygamous marriage?  What about the right to pray in school?  What about the right to keep and bear arms? We might wonder where Dr. Tribes’ objections were when the American left began to argue that there is no right to free speech if it hurts someone’s feelings. What was it that the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union once told us?  Ah, right — The struggle for liberty never stays won.

Laurence Henry Tribe is a progressive/communist hack.  By this, I mean that he is dishonest and un-American — a pox on him.

Mustang also blogs at Fix Bayonets and Thoughts From Afar

Posted in Supreme Court. Tags: , , , , . 20 Comments »

Seizing Russian Property at the Cost of Trashing the Constitution

April 25, 2022 — bunkerville

For those disturbed by the confiscation of property without due process, the Editorial piece written by Judge Andrew Napolitano will hit the mark. 

Napolitano talks about how the seizure frenzy of Russian oligarchs is a terrible violation of restraints placed on the US government under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the Bill of Rights.

We witnessed last week the questionable case Ex-president of Honduras extradited to US on drugs charges

It seems the end justifies the means to get the desired result with this Department of Justice.

This from our “Justice Department.”

To put an exclamation mark on it, the department added this clip without sound so we could enjoy the fruits of their labor:

$90 Million Yacht of Sanctioned Russian Oligarch Viktor Vekselberg Seized by Spain at Request of United States

Some key excerpts from Judge Andrew Napolitano’s column below…

I have argued in this column and elsewhere that the Biden administration sanctions imposed on Russian and American persons and businesses are profoundly unconstitutional because they are imposed by executive fiat rather than by legislation and because the sanctions constitute either the seizure of property without a warrant or the taking of property without due process.

When the feds seize a yacht from a person whom they claim may have financed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, they are doing so in direct violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Similarly, when they freeze Russian assets in American banks, they engage in a seizure, and seizures can only constitutionally be done with a search warrant based on probable cause of crime.

As well, when the feds interfere with contract rights by prohibiting compliance with lawful contracts, that, too, implicates due process and can only be done constitutionally after a jury verdict in the government’s favor, at a trial at which the feds have proved fault…

…As if to run even further away from constitutional norms, a group of legal academics began arguing last week that the property seized from Russians is not really owned by human beings, but by the Russian government. And, this crazy argument goes, since the Russian government is not a person, there is no warrant or due process requirement; therefore, the feds can convert the assets they have seized and frozen to their own use.

To these academics — who reject property ownership as a moral right and exalt government aggression as a moral good — the argument devolves around the meaning of the word “person.” The Fourth and Fifth Amendments protect every “person” and all “people,” not just Americans…

Read the rest of Napolitano’s editorial here.   Well worth the full read.

H/T: Zero Hedge

The best of the swamp today.

Posted in Deep State, Government. Tags: , , , , , . 36 Comments »

America’s Radical Centrism

November 5, 2021 — bunkerville

Simply stated, federalism is a system of government in which two levels of government control the same territory: an overarching national government is responsible for broad governance, while smaller subdivisions of government (states, counties, cities) govern issues of local concern.  Both levels have the power to make laws, and both have certain levels of autonomy from each other.

In the United States, the Constitution established a system of “dual sovereignty,” which means that sovereign states surrendered many of their powers, as sovereigns, to the Federal Government because it is in a better position to exercise control over those powers.

Some examples of this include the so-called enumerated powers, which describe specific powers that belong to the federal government, and the Supremacy Clause, which assigns the power of treaties with foreign governments to the central authority, and which binds the states and judges in every state to the U. S. Constitution.

US Constitution

The Tenth Amendment reserves all powers to the states so long as those powers are not delegated to the federal government — or, in other words, are not among the Enumerated Powers.  The struggle between these two concepts has been ongoing since the beginning of the United States of America.

One of the earliest battles involved the establishment of a national bank.  Chief Justice John Marshal settled this issue when he declared that Congress could establish “all means which are appropriate” to fulfill “the legitimate ends” of the Constitution.  In essence, the Constitution’s enumerated powers include whatever Congress says they are.

The United States has been spiraling ever since.

Radical centrism has been with us for at least the past sixty years.  By radical, we mean the willingness to implement extremist reforms to our long-held institutions; by centrism, we refer to a belief that genuine solutions require progressive thoughts and actions and that these must be imposed on the states, and the people of those states, even over their objections.  Why?  Because progressive-minded people know better than anyone else.  President John F. Kennedy referred to this as “idealism without illusions.”

What the progressives have done, over a long period, is meld ideas from both the political left and right into a pablum that most Americans find easy to swallow.  They do this, they say, in the public interest.  One example of this has been the argument favoring socialist activism, globalism, and “empowerment.”

Although one will rarely hear a progressive-minded person use the term “radical centrism,” it has become the primary process of shaping the way modern Americans think, how they converse, and how they behave.  If one has difficulty identifying examples of radical centrism, try this on for size: the progressive’s demand for open borders.

America’s traditional frontier disappeared long ago, but now we have a new frontier: the United States’ southern border and the radical centrists (led by President Biden) are using it to wrest power away from border states, such as Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.  I’ve not included California because that state is too far gone ever to imagine that it will return to the fold of responsible states.  Leading this charge on behalf of Joe Biden is Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

An attorney by training, Mayorkas has been a DHS insider since 2009.  Cuban born, his family fled Castro’s Cuba and settled in California.  Following law school, Mayorkas served as a US Attorney under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.  Typical of how our government works, Mayorkas left government service at the end of the Obama administration and became a place setter with a Washington-based law firm.

He knew he’d be back in the thick of it sooner or later.  It should be no surprise that Mr. Mayorkas’ pollical supporters are also radical centrists: Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Janet Napolitano, and Jeh Johnson.  Mr. Johnson is on record saying, “Biden could not have found a more qualified person” to serve as DHS Secretary.

Others, including me, will disagree.  Despite hours of video footage showing enormous crowds of illegal aliens pushing their way into the border states, Mayorkas claims that he has absolute control of our southern border.  If this is, in fact, true, then Mayorkas is telling us that enormous crowds of illegal aliens pushing and shoving their way into the United States are “by design.”

If radical centrists intentionally allow such a large-scale invasion of the United States, then we must wonder, to what end?  What do progressives achieve from such activities?  One argument is that if Congress can decide what their enumerated powers are, then administrations can do it too.

Do progressive politicians want strong, independent, sovereign states, or does it better suit them to have extraordinarily strong centralized control of the United States — in the same way, Mexico exercises its authority, and Russia, and the European Union, and Great Britain?

What should we imagine might happen if Texas Governor Greg Abbot begins to employ the Texas National Guard to regain control over the border?  The answer is simple enough: President Biden would nationalize them, and he’d do it with the blessing of our radical centrist Congress.  Would guardsmen object to nationalization?  I don’t know the answer to this question.  I imagine that if the Texas National Guard mutinied, it would open the door for the federal government to exercise its military authority over several states.

Posse Comitatus?  There is no need to worry about that because radical centrists will always find a way to “justify their ends.”  We may have noticed this inside the City of Washington after 6 January 2021.  It didn’t take Biden long to co-opt Lieutenant General Russell L. Honoré after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that the nation’s capital was under attack.  Honoré decided to erect prison wire to curtail Washington residents’ freedom of movement.

The survival of the United States depends on how attuned most voters are to political reality.  We may have supported George W. Bush over Al Gore and John Kerry, but was he materially different from either of those politicians — both of whom are radical centrists?  We must know them by their deeds.

The Patriot Act may have sounded “patriotic,” but was it?  Its effects tell us a different story.  When the progressive party assured us that Joe Biden was a moderate, what did they mean?  I suggest they meant “radical centralist,” a phrase we will seldom hear them use.  For a reason.  God forbid that someone might begin to ask, “What is a radical centralist?”  What would that mean for America?

Mustang also blogs at Fix Bayonets and Thoughts From Afar

Posted in Government. Tags: , , , , . 13 Comments »

FBI Raids Anonymous Safety Deposit Boxes, Requires Identity to Reclaim Stuff

April 5, 2021 — bunkerville

Here is an interesting case that doesn’t quite pass the smell test. I would think that with all the FBI has to do now with investigating Trump and the rest of the Trumpsters in America, a little bit of “avoiding currency reporting requirements” would not be high on the list. But what the heck. The FBI grows stronger every day and isn’t that the point of this? Just how far can and will they go?

In a case that’s already sparked one lawsuit, a Beverly Hills strip mall business which rents private, anonymous safe deposit boxes was raided by the FBI last month – at which time the agency conducted a blanket seizure of hundreds of customers’ belongings.

To retrieve their valuables, customers will need to “identify themselves and subject themselves to an investigation to verify their legal ownership,” according to the Los Angeles Times, which noted that one customer has already gone to court claiming that the government overreached by confiscating the contents of every security box.

The FBI and Drug Enforcement Agency took five days to go through and process all the boxes after the raid began on March 22, according to court documents. US prosecutors argued on Friday that while the original warrant remains under seal, the magistrate judge who approved it thought that the sweeping seizures were appropriate.

“The government seized the nests of safety deposit boxes because there was overwhelming evidence that USPV was a criminal business that conspired with its criminal clients to distribute drugs, launder money, and structure transactions to avoid currency reporting requirements, among other offenses,” prosecutors claimed in papers filed in Los Angeles federal court.

The indictment was unsealed on Friday – just one hour before a court-issued deadline to respond to a lawsuit brought by a US Private Vaults customers who alleged that the blanket seizure was unconstitutional.

The unnamed customer, listed in court papers as John Doe, said the search warrant should not have authorized seizure of the jewelry, currency and bullion that he kept in his three boxes at U.S. Private Vaults, because there was no probable cause to suspect the person committed a crime.

“Just as the tenant of each apartment controls that space and therefore has a reasonable expectation of privacy in it, each of the hundreds of renters of safety deposit boxes … has a separate reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her separately controlled box or boxes,” the person’s attorney, Benjamin N. Gluck, wrote in the complaint. –Los Angeles Times

The customer seeks to stop the FBI from requiring anonymous customers to reveal themselves and undergo an investigation to verify legal ownership of their valuables – with attorney Benjamin Gluck arguing that the government is holding his  client’s goods “hostage” until he identifies himself. Gluck pointed to a statement by assistant US Attorney Andrew Brown describing the procedure for retrieving valuables.

“Though Mr. Brown perhaps deserves credit for his candor, his announced plan is grossly improper and manifestly unconstitutional,” wrote Gluck, noting that Brown had previously conceded in court papers that some US Private Vaults customers were “honest citizens to whom the government wishes to return their property.”

“But the majority of the box holders are criminals who used USPV’s anonymity to hide their ill-gotten wealth,” he wrote. “To distinguish between honest and criminal customers, the government must examine the specific facts of each box and each claim, precisely what the anonymous plaintiff wants to prevent by refusing to disclose not only his identity, but even the specific boxes he claims are his.”

Read more at Zero Hedge

Posted in Government. Tags: , . 32 Comments »

Ruth Bader Ginsberg and her lack of respect for our constitution

September 21, 2020 — bunkerville

For those interested in a postscript to one of the most dangerous times of our Republic, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Obama administration were prepared to sell out America to world government. Her view of our constitution should be a warning of what the coming election could bring us. More Supremes of her persuasion, and a government that has lost its respect for our constitution. From an earlier post:

Recall Justice Ginsburg has fired the latest salvo in the ongoing debate about the Court’s use of foreign and international law sources in constitutional adjudication.   On Friday, she gave a speech to the International Academy of Comparative Law at American University, entitled “A decent respect to the Opinions of [Human]kind”: The Value of a Comparative Perspective in Constitutional Adjudication.  Not surprisingly given her earlier opinions, Justice Ginsburg comes out strongly in favor of the Court’s use of foreign and international law materials to interpret U.S. law, including the Constitution.

She begins with an historical defense:

From the birth of the United States as a nation, foreign and international law influenced legal reasoning and judicial decision making.  Founding fathers, most notably, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, were familiar with leading international law treatises, the law merchant, and English constitutional law.  And they used that learning as advocates in legal contests . . . . The law of nations, Chief Justice Marshall famously said in 1815, is part of the law of our land.  Decisions of the courts of other countries, Marshall explained, show how the law of nations is understood elsewhere, and will be considered in determining the rule which is to prevail here.  Those decisions, he clarified, while not binding authority for U. S. courts, merit respectful attention for their potential persuasive value.

After quoting from Paquete Habana, Ginsburg turns her attention to the hostility to both foreign and international law on display in the U.S. Senate during Elena Kagan’s recent confirmation hearings (e.g., including the Senator who indicated he was “troubled” that Kagan “believes we can turn to foreign law to get good ideas”).  She contrasts these exchanges with The Federalist’s use of the law of nations and both positive and negative examples from abroad to defend the Constitution.

In terms of her own views, Justice Ginsberg did not mince words:

On judicial review for constitutionality, my own view is simply this:  If U.S. experience and decisions may be instructive to systems that have more recently instituted or invigorated judicial review for constitutionality, so too can we learn from others now engaged in measuring ordinary laws and executive actions against fundamental instruments of government and charters securing basic rights. . . . The U.S. judicial system will be the poorer, I have urged, if we do not both share our experience with, and learn from, legal systems with values and a commitment to democracy similar to our own.

And the rest of the speech continues in a similar vein, with Justice Ginsberg raising and then contesting the views of foreign/international law opponents (including Justice Scalia, Judge Richard Posner, and Professors Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule) while citing a series of “examples” of recent cases where the Court reached a decision with the aid of foreign and international law sources (e.g., Atkins v. Virginia, Lawrence v. Texas, Boumediene v. Bush, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, and, of course, Roper v. Simmons).

The most interesting part of the speech was Justice Ginsburg’s list of other sources besides foreign and international law that are appropriate for constitutional adjudication:

Judges in the United States, after all, are free to consult all manner of commentary — Restatements, Treatises, what law professors or even law students write copiously in law reviews, and, in the internet age, any number of legal blogs.  If we can consult those sources, why not the analysis of a question similar to the one we confront contained, for example, in an opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the German Constitutional Court, or the European Court of Human Rights?

Read more

For more see an earlier post as well:

Washington Examiner:

Justice Department attorneys are advancing an argument at the Supreme Court that could allow the government to invoke international treaties as a legal basis for policies such as gun control that conflict with the U.S. Constitution, according to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

“If the administration is right, the treaty power could become a backdoor way for the federal government to do everything from abolishing the death penalty nationwide, to outlawing homeschooling, to dramatically curtailing the states’ rights to regulate abortion,” she told the Washington Examiner.

Their argument is that a law implementing an international treaty signed by the U.S. allows the federal government to prosecute a criminal case that would normally be handled by state or local authorities.

That is a dangerous argument, according to Cruz.

“The Constitution created a limited federal government with only specific enumerated powers,” Cruz told the Washington Examiner prior to giving a speech on the issue today at the Heritage Foundation.

“The Supreme Court should not interpret the treaty power in a manner that undermines this bedrock protection of individual liberty,” Cruz said.

In his speech, Cruz said the Justice Department is arguing “an absurd proposition” that “could be used as a backdoor way to undermine” Second Amendment rights, among other things.

Keep reading…

From an earlier post done in October, 2013

Ted Cruz: DOJ argues that International Treaties can trump Constitution

Other than that all is well in the swamp.

Posted in Supreme Court. Tags: , , , , . 25 Comments »

America: Democratic, or Socialist?

November 6, 2019 — bunkerville

 

America: Democratic, or Socialist?

by Mustang

The plague of socialism is not something recently foisted upon us by the arrival of politicians like Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, or the congresswoman everyone calls AOC.  Americans have struggled with this topic for quite some time, which given socialism’s unhappy impact on the human condition (nation following nation, era following era), one would think that by now, lovers of freedom should have figured it out.

Woodrow Wilson

Maybe we would have figured it all out were it not for people like Woodrow Wilson, a lawyer, a teacher, a politician, and a devout communist, who served as president of the United States (1913-1921), and President of Princeton University (1902-1910).  Wilson’s background makes one wonder, what made voter’s think he was the right man at that time in our history?

Even if we ignore the fact that he was a lawyer, a teacher, and a politician (three strikes, in my opinion), did anyone read what he wrote?  Perhaps not … in the late 19th century, most Americans were illiterate and had little time for reading the inane discourses of committed socialists —which begs the question, who (back then) even knew what socialism was?

As an academic, Wilson had plenty of time to write books and infect the minds of his students.  In 1885 (20 short years after the Civil War), Wilson became a regular contributor to the journal, Political Science Quarterly.  In his first contribution, an essay titled “Congressional Government” suggested that the United States must adopt a parliamentary system.  Why?  Because, according to Wilson, the United States Constitution was radically defective.

How?  Because the US Constitution did not provide a branch of government with conclusive authority to decide what should be done, and how.  Twelve or so years after Wilson’s administration, certain government officials began speaking of “Czars” to run various agencies and departments of the United States government; it began under the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945).

The term supposes absolutism in running various branches of our government —and there’s nothing American about that.  Roosevelt, by the way, was elected to the presidency on an unprecedented four occasions.

Woodrow Wilson’s first book was titled The State.  In it, Wilson suggested that government could legitimately promote the general welfare through authoritarianism.  Of course, it was difficult to argue with him on this issue given the circumstances of child labor and unsanitary industrial conditions of the time, but we should wonder, if the people rule through their elected representatives, why should it be necessary to institute and protect an authoritarian government?

The State was widely used in American colleges through the 1920s, which probably explains political thinking in the United States for the following forty-to-fifty years.  He also laid the groundwork for the modern welfare state by insisting that charitable efforts be removed from the private domain and “made the imperative legal duty of the whole.”

During their respective administrations, Wilson and Roosevelt implemented this concept through taxation.  Henceforth, the government would see to matters of charity “from those according to their ability, to those according to their need”—a hallmark phrase attributed to Karl Marx in 1875.

Wilson’s fourth book, a five-volume work titled History of the American People (1902), no doubt inspired the faux-historian Howard Zinn in the 1960-70’s.  At this point, there should be little doubt about the impact to American society and culture, indeed the entire framework of our nation, of the opinions of academics, lawyers, and politicians.

On the one hand, we encourage the free exchange of ideas; on the other hand, a cautious citizen will always question what they read or hear.  Wilson was better educated than most Americans in his own day, but he certainly had no advantage by the level of his intelligence.  In modern parlance, Wilson was an egghead.

We should also pay closer attention to what the so-called intelligentsia tell us in their oratory.  On 22 August 1887, Woodrow Wilson offered remarks about socialism.  Wilson is somewhat difficult to read because his speaking and writing style reflects a bygone age.

Note: I have had students in high school who were unable to read any cursive writing, which appears to underscore the sign of the times in American education.  But in reading Wilson, one must consider the purpose of his remarks, which appeals to emotion rather than intellect.

In any case, while the full text of his remarks can be read here, a short summary follows: “I point these remarks particularly at current discussions of socialism, and principally of ‘state socialism,’ which is almost the only form of socialism seriously discussed among us, out-side the Anti-Poverty Society.

Is there not a plentiful lack of nerve and purpose in what we read and hear nowadays on this momentous topic. One might be excused for taking and keeping the impression that there can be no great need for the haste in the settlement of the questions mooted in connexion[sic] with it, inasmuch as the debating of them has not yet passed beyond its rhetorical and pulpit stage.

It is easy to make socialism, as theoretically developed by the greater and saner socialistic writers, intelligible not only, but even attractive, as a conception; it is easy also to render it a thing of fear to timorous minds, and to make many signs of the times bear menace of it; the only hard task is to give it validity and strength as a program in practical politics.

Yet the whole interest of socialism for those whose thinking extends beyond the covers of books and the paragraphs of periodicals lies in what it will mean in practice. It is a question of practical politics [emphasis added], or else it is only a thesis for engaging discourse.”

“Roundly described, socialism is a proposition that every community, by means of whatever forms of organization may be most effective for the purpose, see to it for itself that each one of its members finds the employment for which he is best suited and is rewarded according to his diligence and merit, all proper surroundings of moral influence being secured to him by the public authority.

‘State socialism’ is willing to act though state authority as it is at present organized. It proposes that all idea of a limitation of public authority by individual rights be put out of view, and that the State consider itself bound to stop only at what is unwise or futile in its universal superintendence alike of individual and of public interests. The thesis of the states socialist is, that no line can be drawn between private and public affairs which the State may not cross at will; that omnipotence of legislation is the first postulate of all just political theory.”

“Applied in a democratic state, such doctrine sounds radical, but not revolutionary. It is only an acceptance of the extremest[sic] logical conclusions deducible from democratic principles long ago received as respectable. For it is very clear that in fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same [emphasis added].

They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals [emphasis added].  Limits of wisdom and convenience to the public control there may be: limits of principle there are, upon strict analysis, none.

Of course, Wilson was lying.  Democracy and Socialism are as incompatible as a nest of pythons in an infant’s crib.  Democracy is a political ideology; socialism is an economic theory—one that so far in world history, has been proved unworkable in the context of humanitarianism and democratic ideology.

It is possible to modify one to accommodate the other, but in doing so, significant changes are made to the essential tenets.  In order to achieve equal outcomes, it is necessary to take from some in order to give it to another.  This does not appear what our enlightened founding fathers had in mind.  The United States Constitution provides unalienable rights.  To the extent that human society can cooperate with one another, it should … but socialism seeks to impose its will, according to how the politician of the day defines its necessity.  The concept of “cooperation” is thus redefined and, again, not in the way our founders intended.

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson once suggested that an educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.  I believe his exact quote was, “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”  Mr. Jefferson, recently reviled in the pulp-press as a slave owner (which is only about one-third of the story), also told us, “The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history: whether man shall be allowed to govern himself, or be ruled by a small elite.”

If society is unable to decide how our children are educated, then we have lost our control over the future direction of the United States of America.  Our children today are NOT being educated; they are being brainwashed by such men as Karl Marx, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Howard Zinn, every Democrat in the House of Representatives, and every President who ever embraced socialism as the “way forward.”

In conclusion, some additional food for thought:

“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force; socialism by vote.  It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.” —Ayn Rand

“The purpose of socialism is communism.”  —Vladimir Lenin

Mustang also blogs at Fix Bayonets and Thoughts From Afar

For the best in conservative news push the button.

 

Posted in Government. Tags: , , , . 4 Comments »

Supreme Court’s Decision To Duck a Foie Gras Case – End of Food Freedom?

January 19, 2019 — bunkerville

 

First they came for our toilets. Then our shower heads. Then our lightbulbs. Now they implement a foie gras ban. There really isn’t any limit to how much our newly minted legislators and generation Z’s now want to get their hands on our food supply. Oblivious to the cost of of their demands. Apparently the Supremes have little taste for the case as well.

foie gras definition is – the fatted liver of an animal and especially of a goose usually served as a pâté.

Setting aside the debate regarding the method used to develop the fatted liver, when and where will it stop in regulating raising livestock? Free range chickens only? Pork, Beef. How about farm raised fish?

 

 

 

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it would not (yet) hear an appeal in a case challenging California’s unconstitutional and much-reviled foie gras ban. The case will now head back to U.S. District Court.

The Supreme Court’s decision is a temporary setback for foie gras producers, chefs, and others fighting the law. They’ve vowed to continue their efforts.

Michael Tenenbaum, who represents the plaintiffs in the case, told me this week that he and his clients look forward to proceeding with the case and that they’re confident they will prevail.Meanwhile, though, restaurants and others in California that serve foie gras could face fines of $1,000 for any violation of the law.

….

Culinary leaders—from California chefs to French foie gras producers—are aghast.

Those interested in learning more may do so by reading the April column on the amicus brief, the brief itself, and other earlier columns on foie gras over the years.)

“We noted in our brief that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison opposed bans on various types of foods and liquors as ‘lunacy’ and ‘despotic,'” says Manny Klausner, a former editor of Reason, a Reason Foundation co-founder and board member, and attorney who joined me on the Reason/Cato amicus brief. “The Supreme Court’s denial of cert. is a sad occasion for those who support Free Minds and Free Markets.”

In the amicus brief and elsewhere—including this O.C. Register op-ed last year—It was argued that the implications and reverberations of the foie gras case extend well beyond foie gras and could ensnare almost any conceivable animal product, including beef, pork, and chicken.

The concerns expressed then are even more apparent today given that the Supreme Court—also this week—rejected challenges to two separate animal-rights laws in Massachusetts and California that, just like the foie gras ban, serve as unconstitutional impediments to interstate commerce in animal products. (The laws, while different from one another, restrict the ability of farmers to cage egg-laying hens and other livestock.)

Interfering with interstate commerce is exactly what these laws intend and what they do. Consider that a poll (much touted among animal-rights groups) last year found nearly half of respondents want to ban slaughterhouses and so-called “factory farming.” A full one-third of Americans, the poll claims, want to ban all livestock farming. Period. A ban on livestock farming would mean that nearly all animal-derived foods—from prime rib to pork chops, bacon, and chicken McNuggets—would disappear for good.

…

But there’s more. With the foie gras ban and the Massachusetts and California animal-rights laws allowed to stand—for now, at least—there is little doubt that other U.S. states where livestock farming and exports of animal products play a leading economic role will find creative ways to retaliate against California and Massachusetts. Animal rights supports might not like these laws so much.

Lawmakers in a state impacted by California’s animal-rights laws, say, might pass a law that says all eggs sold in their state may come only from caged hens. (Any old justification would do, but let’s go with the food-safety argument that they’re more hygienic than eggs from free-roaming chickens.) Such a law would effectively spell the end of California egg exports to that state. More at Reason

 

Posted in Supreme Court. Tags: , , . 25 Comments »

College allows student handing out the U.S. Constitution after 2-year legal battle

December 20, 2018 — bunkerville

 

Day after day we need to battle the absurd Marxism that is destroying our schools and colleges. It is hard to believe that it took a long drawn out legal battle just to retain this basic right given to us by our founders. What is worse, it is luck. It could have turned out a whole lot differently had they not settled. Luck of the draw apparently.

After a two-year battle, the Los Angeles Community College District has agreed to abolish a policy that limited student expression to “free speech zones,” available only through application.

Pierce College student Kevin Shaw was handing out Spanish-language copies of the U.S. Constitution in November 2016 when an administrator told him that he would have to confine his activity to the school’s “free speech zone.”

 

The school told Shaw that he would have to apply for access to the 616-square foot zone and that his failure to comply would result in his removal from campus.

…..

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Community College District agreed to settle the lawsuit, as well as to revoke the unconstitutional policy that recognized all campuses within the district as “non-public forums,” effectively removing free speech restrictions placed on 150,000 students, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

“I wish it hadn’t taken two years for my school to conclude I had a right to free expression,” Shaw told Campus Reform.

“All the same, I’m thankful to know future students won’t have to worry about being harassed for expressing political opinions.”

Zero Hedge

Posted in Liberal Loonies. Tags: , , . 20 Comments »
« Older posts