Time: 6:30 PM

Location: Valley Ranch Bar B Q; 22548 State Hwy 249; Corner of Spring Cypress and 249

Guest speaker: Tommy Grant. Tommy is on the advisory board of AVIDD, American Veterans In Domestic Defense;

Subjects: Our Constitution, rights, & liberties.
What authority does the United Nations have over American Citizens, why & how.
Two UN resolutions:
Agenda 21. “Agenda 21 outlines, in detail, the UN ‘s vision for a centrally managed global society. This contract binds governments around the world to the United Nation’s plan for controlling the way we live, eat, learn, move and communicate – all under the noble banner of saving the earth. If fully implemented, Agenda 21 would have the government involved in every aspect of life of every human on earth.” According to The Green Agenda (http://www.green-agenda.com/agenda21.html)
UN Biosphere Zones here in Texas and what this means for property rights for Texans. Would it surprise you to learn that the Statue of Liberty, Inde pendence Hall, Monticello, the Great Smoky Mountains, Yellowstone Park, the Grand Canyon and other American landmarks are controlled by the United Nations? It’s amazing but true. Every one of the natural and historic treasures listed above – plus more than a dozen more in America – has been designated an official World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is headquartered in Paris, France.

This 10 minute video is the first of at least 10 other short lectures on the American Constitution. It’s titled: The Non-Consent of the Governed www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7qF0t_2xms&feature=autofb

Questions that will arise:
1. why citizens are not subject to the constitution?
2. why government is NOT created to ‘govern’ the citizens?
3. who is it that governs the ‘government’?

This is a great way to get briefed on the Constitution. The Supreme Law of our Land is for our benefit – not to control us, robb us of our liberty, or money, tranquility, etc. etc.

Please share your comments with us!

The American Red Cross President and CEO Marsha J. Evans salary for the year was $651,957 plus expenses

The United Way President Brian Gallagher receives a $375,000 base salary along with numerous expense benefits. They give to illegal’s I will not give to them.

UNICEF CEO Caryl M. Stern receives $1,200,000 per year (100k per month) plus all expenses including a ROLLS ROYCE . Less than 5 cents of your donated dollar goes to the cause.

The Salvation Army’s Commissioner Todd Bassett receives a salary of only $13,000 per year (plus housing) for managing this $2 billion dollar organization.
96 percent of donated dollars go to the cause.

The American Legion National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary. Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!

No further comment is necessary. Please share this with everyone you can.

Posted courtesy of George Plum

Two distinguished scholars have written an essay that should alarm Americans, but also spur them to action. Ted Cruz served as Solicitor General for the State of Texas—the chief appellate lawyer for the State— from 2003 to 2008. He was the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas, and when appointed, was the youngest Solicitor General in the United States. He was named by Texas Lawyer magazine as one of the “25 Greatest Texas Lawyers of the Past Quarter Century,” by American Lawyer magazine as one of the “50 Best Litigators under 45 in America,” and by National Law Journal as one of the “50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America.” A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, he previously served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court; as Domestic Policy Advisor to President George W. Bush on the 2000 Bush-Cheney Campaign; and as Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Mario Loyola began his career in corporate finance law. Since 2003, he has focused on public policy, dividing his time between government service and research and writing at prominent policy institutes. He served in the Pentagon as a special assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and on Capitol Hill as counsel for foreign and defense affairs to the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee. He has also worked as a state policy advisor for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and written extensively for national and international publications, including features for National Review and The Weekly Standard, and op-eds in The Wall Street Journal.

The two scholars combined research and writing talent in an essay they entitle, “Reclaiming the Constitution: Towards an Agenda for State Action” produced for the Center for Tenth Amendment Studies, part of the Texas Public Policy Foundation—the state’s most influential free-market think tank. Given their previous employ with some notable and long-serving Republicans, their assessment is even more striking because it implicates both political parties. To the extent that both political parties have overseen and been complicit in the massive growth and rise in power of the federal government at the expense of States and individual rights, then both parties are responsible for undermining the Constitution and laying down hard pavement on the road to serfdom.

Indeed, the steady expansion of the federal government since the early 20th century has arrived at a crisis point today. The federal government is pushing further and further into areas of traditional state governance—and intruding deeper into our lives. This threat to liberty—one that James Madison thought the several States would be strong enough to resist—is now apparent to millions of Americans, many of whom are participating in the Tea Party movement. Assaults on the constitutional constraints meant to limit federal power, combined with the relentless expansion of the federal bureaucracy, has led to a steady erosion of the constitutional constraints on federal power—raising the very dangers to self-government and individual liberty that the Framers feared might lead to tyranny. Though the Federalists—advocates of a strong national government—expected that the States would retain more than enough power and scope to enforce the constitutional limitations on the federal government, the dawn of the industrial age, and America’s rise to Great Power status abroad by the start of the 20th century opened the door to an era of steadily expanding federal power.

For more than a hundred years, the federal government has been expanding its power and reach. The steady concentration of power in Washington has been accompanied by a steady intrusion into areas of state authority that the Framers assumed the federal government would never be involved in. In the Framers’ conception of democracy, state based self-government and individual liberty went hand in hand. It was for this reason that they insisted on a federal government of strictly limited powers. They enshrined this ideal in the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution: “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.”

Today the expansion of the federal government proceeds at an unprecedented pace. The last decade has witnessed an expansion of federal power virtually on a par with the trillions of dollars in federal debt added over the same period. The current administration has launched what many Americans see as an inevitable federal takeover of health care. It has undertaken environmental regulatory actions of historic sweep, seeking to regulate manifold areas of traditional state jurisdiction, and smothering less-favored industries in regulatory uncertainty. It has unleashed the greatest explosion in federal spending and borrowing in our history. These policies not only endanger our economic future—they erode the constitutional constraints that were meant to shield local self-government and individual liberty from the dangerous accumulation of power in Washington. That is why the balance between state and federal powers matters. That is why the Tenth Amendment matters.

The Tenth Amendment, however, is much more than a legal construct. It is an expression of the American tradition of self-governance. The propensity to self-organize spontaneously at the local level to solve problems that had been observed by Alexis de Tocqueville—and felt so painfully by the British Army—was essential to American democracy. The Constitution had been designed to protect it, not supplant it. And while a respect and deference to state authority both predated and was implied in the Constitution itself, in the end the Tenth Amendment was deemed necessary to assure that self-governance would never give way to tyranny. In this sense, the Tenth Amendment, coming at the end of the Bill of Rights, was something of a summation of the Framers’ whole notion of American democratic republicanism—and a salutary warning that those powers granted to the federal government needed to be kept strictly limited within the Constitution’s constraints, or else the States and individuals who formed the Union, and the Union itself, would be imperiled. Today it is imperative that States begin to take action, in order to stop federal overreach and to restore the Constitution’s limits on government power. We must, in short, start reclaiming the Constitution quickly, if we would remain a free people.

There is nothing sacred about putting on a uniform. There is nothing sacred about obeying orders. It’s a contractual duty. While our people in uniform get killed in the course of obeying orders, it is rarely a noble thing. There are exceptions, of course, such as the time in Vietnam when Lt. Lee Roy Herrin threw himself on a grenade (which was very possibly thrown into the tent full of officers by an American soldier, himself in uniform!). Lee Roy’s name is on The Wall in D.C. He died that others might live. And I think of him often.

There is the occasional sacrifice of that magnitude, but I find myself wondering about a nation that no longer honors God, yet continues to pursue and even honor War. Since 1963 our nation has made it official government policy that there is no room for God in any government institution. Those who try to express their faith within the confines of government institutions are severely censored, discriminated against, demoted, and even hounded out of their jobs. Chaplains are not allowed to pray in the name of Jesus. (But Muslim chaplains are allowed to pray to Allah! This is an insane situation, and one has to ask the question: “Who controls this nation, and who controls our military?”

The usurpation of powers by the government has gone on for over a century. I am not speaking of any specific president, but of the system itself, when I say that we live today under a regime that is anti-Christian, anti-God. It is a system that has been captured by the Enemy/Enemies of God. This usurped government serves a plethora of gods, chief among them being Mars – the Roman god of War. Tragically, Christian churches all across this land regularly parrot that same false religion.

If we were a Christian nation, we would oppose all wars of aggression. We would oppose interfering in the affairs of other nations. We would bring home all military personnel not engaged in a defensive war that has been declared by Congress, and we would dissolve our standing army, as required by the Constitution. If those actions are unthinkable to you, I propose that you are not a Christian first, and you certainly don’t agree with the Constitution you took an oath to support and defend. I don’t care if you go to church seven days a week, no Christian has a Biblical, or Constitutional leg to stand on by supporting a standing army which invades nations which have not attacked us and occupies them in order to extract their natural resources, or worse, to bring about the New World Order.

America has lost its way. That is because America has abandoned its Faith in God.
Today we cannot encourage any Christian to join the military in any capacity except as a missionary. Nor can we encourage them to work for the government in any institution or agency, except as a missionary. Of course, the Christian who does not think he is a missionary, no matter where he works, is a person who is still short on the concept of what happened to him, and to where his duty lies.

When a man dies for something, it can be a noble thing. When he dies for nothing, that is tragic, and probably involves perfidy, up to and including treason. It is perfidious to send Americans to provoke Islam, to fan them into a world-wide jihad, but that is precisely what the last four American presidents have done. Did they do it knowingly, or are they just following orders themselves? We may never know, but the net result has been disastrous.

These soldiers currently occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and waging illegal war against Libya, are not “defending freedom around the world,”, they are destroying what America stood for, for so many years. The American deaths are sad, and needless. The impact upon the nations we are occupying is worse than just the cost in lives and property – it guarantees that our posterity will wind up fighting their posterity for another century, or more. The deaths of soldiers who have died that the world might become satellites or puppet nations of the American empire are not something we need to memorialize. They didn’t understand it that way, but that’s what they did. We may grieve them, but we need not memorialize them.
This Memorial Day, I mourn the passing of a “free nation under God”. And while I understand why they do it, I cannot respect those military personnel who are aiding and abetting the enemies of freedom by serving an anti-Christian, anti-Freedom revolutionary government, all in the name of the glory of War and Conquest.

Freedom: RIP
© 2011 Daniel D. New

***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***

What: The Come and Take It Rally
Why: To support inclusion of anti-TSA-groping bill to special session call
When: 12:30-1:30 p.m. Saturday, June 4, 2011
Where: Texas Capitol, south steps
Who: Texans for an Accountable Government, other local activist groups
Contact: John Bush, johnbush512@gmail.com or (512)773-6102

Texans call TSA’s bluff on ‘no-fly zone’
Representatives draw line in the sand; but where does Gov. Perry stand?

June 2, 2011

AUSTIN, Texas – Did the federal government really just threaten a “no-fly zone” around Texas? Or is this a high-stakes game of Texas Hold ‘Em?

A group of local activists are calling the bluff of federal agents who threatened to shut-down airports within the Lone Star State if the Legislature takes action to rein-in the pat-down tactics used by the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA).

There was no turbulence as HB 1937, designed to criminalize the “groping” method being used by TSA agents in airports, sailed through the legislative process. The bill, authored by Rep. David Simpson (R-Longview) and co-sponsored by Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston), passed the Texas House by a large margin, and federal critics were nowhere to be found.

But, at the very last minute, the Texas Senate folded, following pressure from the feds. Thirty supporters in the Senate dwindled down to just 10 the evening of May 25. This came after a letter (signed by a federal judge) was circulated by two TSA representatives lobbying in the back hallways of the Senate chamber — and at the last possible minute, too, as May 25 was the deadline for new bills.

Activists at the Texas Capitol that evening to support HB 1937 were shocked to hear that the national government not only warned of a conflict with federal law but threatened to shut down Texas airports if the bill were passed. Surely it was a last-minute scare tactic — but it was one that 20 state senators took seriously.

An energized crowd descended upon the Captiol the next day in hopes that something could be done during the last few days of the 82nd Legislature. Their hopes were boosted by two unexpected events: 1) a filibuster on school finance led to a special session beginning Tuesday, and 2) Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst requested that Gov. Rick Perry include HB 1937 into the special session agenda.

With this possibility now on the legislative radar, a coalition of conservative groups, civil liberties advocates, and libertarians are preparing to rally at the Texas Capitol on Saturday to encourage Governor Perry to include HB 1937 as part of the special session.

“Rick Perry is strong on his states’ rights rhetoric, but where does he really stand?” said John Bush, Executive Director of Texans for Accountable Government (TAG). “For the past couple of years Governor Perry, who recently announced his interest to run for President, has positioned himself as a staunch opponent of overreaching and unconstitutional federal actions.

“We are ‘Fed Up’ with the TSA and are confident that Governor Perry will do the right thing,” Bush continued, referencing the title of Perry’s latest book, which lambastes the increase in federal power in recent decades.

Texans are hoping Governor Perry will stand by his strong states’ rights rhetoric, Bush added.

“All the media coverage about Perry’s possible presidential run makes him out to be the candidate of personal rights and the Texan ideal of rugged individualism,” said Heather Fazio, Legislative Coordinator for TAG. “We believe this is our Governor’s chance to prove — not just to the U.S. but to the world, and with bold, prominent headlines — that he is a friend of freedom, and not a tool of federal bureaucracy.”

Coalition members for the Come and Take It Rally consist of conservative groups, civil liberties advocates, and libertarian organizations. Those groups include: Texans for Accountable Government (TAG), Central Texas Republican Liberty Caucus, Austin Tea Party, Texas 25th Conservatives, New Revolution Now, Texans United for Reform and Freedom (TURF), Texas Republican Freedom Coalition, The Austin Tea Party, Articles of Freedom – TX, We Are Change Austin, Operation Defuse, Liberty Restoration Project, the Tenth Amendment Center, Tyler TEA Party, TSA Tyranny, Texas Campaign for Liberty, and the Libertarian Party of Texas.

For more information on the rally, or to schedule an interview, contact John Bush at JohnBush512@gmail.com or (512)773-6102.

Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes
Are the rule.

Tax his work,
Tax his pay,
He works for
peanuts anyway!

Tax his cow,
Tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.

Tax his ties,
Tax his shirt,
Tax his work,
Tax his dirt.

Tax his pleasure,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he
Tries to think.

Tax his sports,
Tax his cheers,
If he cries
Tax his tears.

Tax his car,
Tax his gas,
Find other ways
To tax his class.

Tax all he has
Then let him know
That you won’t be done
Till he has no dough.

When he screams and hollers;
Then tax him some more,
Tax him till
He’s good and sore.

Then tax his coffin,
Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in
Which he’s laid…

Put these words
Upon his tomb,
‘Taxes drove me
to my doom…’

When he’s gone,
Do not relax,
Its time to apply
The inheritance tax.

Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Sales Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

Still think this is funny? – Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, & our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What in the heck happened? Can you spell ‘politicians?’

I hope this goes around THE USA at least 545 times!!! YOU can help it get there!!!

Go Ahead . . . Be American!!!

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The President does.

You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? John Boehner. He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts — of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red.

If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it’s because they want them in Iraq and Afghanistan …

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation,” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees…

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

A significant segment of our society is having difficulty with our political leadership using the terms democracy and freedom as interchangeable words of the same meaning. The basis of the problem comes from the understanding that America was founded as a “Constitutional Republic.”

Most Americans, as well, think of democracy and freedom as synonymous.

Lets look at the definition of these words. According to Benedict D. La Rosa, historian and author, democracy is derived from the Greek word demos, meaning a government of the people. Republic comes from the Latin word res which means thing, and publica that translates to everybody, Combined these elements have republic meaning everybody’s thing or interest

With these definitions in hand LaRosa goes on to say “In a democracy the majority rules directly, or through elected representatives or appointed officials, without the restraint embodied in a fixed body of law. The law is whatever and official organ of the government determines it is….” Democracy concentrates power in the hands of the few….”

Relative to the Republic, La Rosa remarks “The essence of a republic is the role of the law which is certain and unchangeable. This law is discovered not made.

The author/historian notes: “under this form of government, individual freedom and responsibility are maximized……the very survival of our civilization depend upon knowing the difference between a republic and a democracy.”

A friend weighed in on the discussion with these concepts: Democracy, is a much beloved word that is carelessly cast about to describe the United States of America. But is the USA really a democracy? What is a democracy? Democracy has been referred to as the essence of liberty, allowing each citizen to vote his conscience and take his place in the formation of government policy. But a pure democracy is little more than mob rule. The passions and prejudices of the moment become the law of the land without sober reflection. A democracy has been likened to two wolves and sheep sitting at a table voting on what to have for dinner.

A republic, on the other hand, was designed and incorporated into the Constitution of the United States to insure that personal liberty would be paramount. It is said that America “ is a nation of laws and not of men.” That is the way it was designed, but along the way men have allowed their passions and agenda to rule and ignored the Constitution when it did not suit their purposes of the moment. Thus with varying success our personal liberty has taken a back seat to the agendas of our elected representatives.

Benjamin Franklin was asked, upon leaving the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, ”What kind of government will we have?” His reply was, “A republic if you can keep it!”

Our republic, designed by classically educated men of vision and insight into the foibles and ambitions of tyrants and despots wanted to avoid the pitfalls of democracies such as Greece and Rome and therefore designed a constitutional republic.

This republic would have three branches of government, each with clearly defined responsibilities to serve as checks and balances against the abuses or power grabs of each other.

The value of a republic and the weaknesses of a democracy are discussed in the writings of Aristotle. The Federalist Papers written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to explain and advocate passage of the Constitution also discuss the problems of past democracies.
The Athenian Republic authored by Dr. Alexander Tyler, shortly before American independence developed a cycle that the citizens of democracies tend to follow. The cycle is as follows:

“ From bondage to spiritual faith,

From Spiritual faith to great courage,

From courage to liberty,

From liberty to abundance,

From abundance to selfishness,

From selfishness to apathy,

From apathy to dependence,

Form dependence to bondage”

Richard Mack, county sheriff and author of County Sheriff, America’s Last Hope noted that the characterization of America as a democracy is a lie. He further relates that the “blood sweat and tears” that went into the creation of our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that followed were all part of a new and totally unique experience in governing. They founded a form of government based on the idea that all men were created equal and would therefore capable of governing themselves.

John Adams, second President of the United States, wrote that our Constitution “was made only for a moral and religious people.” He also noted  “ it is wholly inadequate to government of any other.”

Supreme Court Justice John Jay stated “that when we select our national leaders, if we are to preserve our nation, we must select Christians. Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.” Justice Antonin Scalia, has stated “what secret knowledge, one must wonder, is breathed into lawyers that a practice which the text of the Constitution does not clearly prescribe, and which our people have regarded as Constitutional for 200 years is in fact unconstitutional? Day by day, case-by-case, [the Court] is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize. Is he correct in what he is saying?

Abraham Lincoln said, “We the people are the rightful master of both Congress and the Courts – not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Was he correct in what he said? He also said “To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men? Isn’t this true of America today?

If we are operating under the Constitution, with its Bill of Rights, you must be a natural born citizen and 35 years of age to be President of the United States. If we are operating as a democracy, what does it matter? The rules by which we are governed can change every day under a democracy until the leaders are voted out.

As a nation it is time for the people to awake and demand our Constitution be followed and respected. Each of us should read and reread the Constitution until it is familiar. Then like the original minutemen we need to spread the alarm because our country is in great danger from those who would ignore or destroy the Constitution. Not everyone will join us because they are too busy with their jobs or toys or simply don’t care. But many will join us and help vote out the corrupt politicians who have lead this country away from the integrity and morality of our founding fathers.

Samuel Adams, revolutionary patriot and Politian (and cousin of John Adams) was at the forefront of the movement to free the colonies from England. He wrote “ If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; may your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.’’

His words to bring the colonists out of their lethargy and apathy are as appropriate now as they were then. If we do not stand up for our Constitution we will lose to those whose agenda demands they ignore it. Demand that Congress pass no law that does not follow the Constitution. Use your pen, your computer and your voice to let your congressmen know your beliefs.

It is the only way we can save our republic. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I do not want to be part of that last generation who has to explain to their children why they are living in slavery.

Tommy Grant

The American legal system has been corrupted almost beyond recognition, Judge Edith Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, told the Federalist Society of Harvard Law School on February 28.

She said that the question of what is morally right is routinely sacrificed to what is politically expedient. The change has come because legal philosophy has descended to nihilism.

“The integrity of law, its religious roots, its transcendent quality are disappearing. I saw the movie ‘Chicago’ with Richard Gere the other day. That’s the way the public thinks about lawyers,” she told the students.

“The first 100 years of American lawyers were trained on Blackstone, who wrote that: ‘The law of nature . dictated by God himself . is binding . in all counties and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all force and all their authority . from this original.’ The Framers created a government of limited power with this understanding of the rule of law – that it was dependent on transcendent religious obligation,” said Jones.

She said that the business about all of the Founding Fathers being deists is “just wrong,” or “way overblown.” She says they believed in “faith and reason,” and this did not lead to intolerance.

“This is not a prescription for intolerance or narrow sectarianism,” she continued, “for unalienable rights were given by God to all our fellow citizens. Having lost sight of the moral and religious foundations of the rule of law, we are vulnerable to the destruction of our freedom, our equality before the law and our self-respect. It is my fervent hope that this new century will experience a revival of the original understanding of the rule of law and its roots.

“The answer is a recovery of moral principle, the sine qua non of an orderly society. Post 9/11, many events have been clarified. It is hard to remain a moral relativist when your own people are being killed.”

According to the judge, the first contemporary threat to the rule of law comes from within the legal system itself.

Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America and one of the first writers to observe the United States from the outside looking-in, “described lawyers as a natural aristocracy in America,” Jones told the students. “The intellectual basis of their profession and the study of law based on venerable precedents bred in them habits of order and a taste for formalities and predictability.” As Tocqueville saw it, “These qualities enabled attorneys to stand apart from the passions of the majority. Lawyers were respected by the citizens and able to guide them and moderate the public’s whims. Lawyers were essential to tempering the potential tyranny of the majority.

“Some lawyers may still perceive our profession in this flattering light, but to judge from polls and the tenor of lawyer jokes, I doubt the public shares Tocqueville’s view anymore, and it is hard for us to do so.

“The legal aristocracy have shed their professional independence for the temptations and materialism associated with becoming businessmen. Because law has become a self-avowed business, pressure mounts to give clients the advice they want to hear, to pander to the clients’ goal through deft manipulation of the law. . While the business mentality produces certain benefits, like occasional competition to charge clients lower fees, other adverse effects include advertising and shameless self-promotion. The legal system has also been wounded by lawyers who themselves no longer respect the rule of law,”

The judge quoted Kenneth Starr as saying, “It is decidedly unchristian to win at any cost,” and added that most lawyers agree with him.

However, “An increasingly visible and vocal number apparently believe that the strategic use of anger and incivility will achieve their aims. Others seem uninhibited about making misstatements to the court or their opponents or destroying or falsifying evidence,” she claimed. “When lawyers cannot be trusted to observe the fair processes essential to maintaining the rule of law, how can we expect the public to respect the process?”

Lawsuits Do Not Bring ‘Social Justice’

Another pernicious development within the legal system is the misuse of lawsuits, according to her.

“We see lawsuits wielded as weapons of revenge,” she says. “Lawsuits are brought that ultimately line the pockets of lawyers rather than their clients. . The lawsuit is not the best way to achieve social justice, and to think it is, is a seriously flawed hypothesis. There are better ways to achieve social goals than by going into court.”

Jones said that employment litigation is a particularly fertile field for this kind of abuse.

“Seldom are employment discrimination suits in our court supported by direct evidence of race or sex-based animosity. Instead, the courts are asked to revisit petty interoffice disputes and to infer invidious motives from trivial comments or work-performance criticism. Recrimination, second-guessing and suspicion plague the workplace when tenuous discrimination suits are filed . creating an atmosphere in which many corporate defendants are forced into costly settlements because they simply cannot afford to vindicate their positions.

“While the historical purpose of the common law was to compensate for individual injuries, this new litigation instead purports to achieve redistributive social justice. Scratch the surface of the attorneys’ self-serving press releases, however, and one finds how enormously profitable social redistribution is for those lawyers who call themselves ‘agents of change.’”

Jones wonders, “What social goal is achieved by transferring millions of dollars to the lawyers, while their clients obtain coupons or token rebates.”

The judge quoted George Washington who asked in his Farewell Address, “Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths . in courts of justice?”

Similarly, asked Jones, how can a system founded on law survive if the administrators of the law daily display their contempt for it?

“Lawyers’ private morality has definite public consequences,” she said. “Their misbehavior feeds on itself, encouraging disrespect and debasement of the rule of law as the public become encouraged to press their own advantage in a system they perceive as manipulatable.”

The second threat to the rule of law comes from government, which is encumbered with agencies that have made the law so complicated that it is difficult to decipher and often contradicts itself.

“Agencies have an inherent tendency to expand their mandate,” says Jones. “At the same time, their decision-making often becomes parochial and short-sighted. They may be captured by the entities that are ostensibly being regulated, or they may pursue agency self-interest at the expense of the public welfare. Citizens left at the mercy of selective and unpredictable agency action have little recourse.”

Jones recommends three books by Philip Howard: The Death of Common Sense, The Collapse of the Common Good and The Lost Art of Drawing the Line, which further delineate this problem.

The third and most comprehensive threat to the rule of law arises from contemporary legal philosophy.

“Throughout my professional life, American legal education has been ruled by theories like positivism, the residue of legal realism, critical legal studies, post-modernism and other philosophical fashions,” said Jones. “Each of these theories has a lot to say about the ‘is’ of law, but none of them addresses the ‘ought,’ the moral foundation or direction of law.”

Jones quoted Roger C. Cramton, a law professor at Cornell University, who wrote in the 1970s that “the ordinary religion of the law school classroom” is “a moral relativism tending toward nihilism, a pragmatism tending toward an amoral instrumentalism, a realism tending toward cynicism, an individualism tending toward atomism, and a faith in reason and democratic processes tending toward mere credulity and idolatry.”

No ‘Great Awakening’ In Law School Classrooms

The judge said ruefully, “There has been no Great Awakening in the law school classroom since those words were written.” She maintained that now it is even worse because faith and democratic processes are breaking down.

“The problem with legal philosophy today is that it reflects all too well the broader post-Enlightenment problem of philosophy,” Jones said. She quoted Ernest Fortin, who wrote in Crisis magazine: “The whole of modern thought . has been a series of heroic attempts to reconstruct a world of human meaning and value on the basis of . our purely mechanistic understanding of the universe.”

Jones said that all of these threats to the rule of law have a common thread running through them, and she quoted Professor Harold Berman to identify it: “The traditional Western beliefs in the structural integrity of law, its ongoingness, its religious roots, its transcendent qualities, are disappearing not only from the minds of law teachers and law students but also from the consciousness of the vast majority of citizens, the people as a whole; and more than that, they are disappearing from the law itself. The law itself is becoming more fragmented, more subjective, geared more to expediency and less to morality. . The historical soil of the Western legal tradition is being washed away . and the tradition itself is threatened with collapse.”

Judge Jones concluded with another thought from George Washington: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness – these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.”

Upon taking questions from students, Judge Jones recommended Michael Novak’s book, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense.

“Natural law is not a prescriptive way to solve problems,” Jones said. “It is a way to look at life starting with the Ten Commandments.”

Natural law provides “a framework for government that permits human freedom,” Jones said. “If you take that away, what are you left with? Bodily senses? The will of the majority? The communist view? What is it – ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need?’ I don’t even remember it, thank the Lord,” she said to the amusement of the students.

“I am an unabashed patriot – I think the United States is the healthiest society in the world at this point in time,” Jones said, although she did concede that there were other ways to accommodate the rule of law, such as constitutional monarchy.

“Our legal system is way out of kilter,” she said. “The tort litigating system is wreaking havoc. Look at any trials that have been conducted on TV. These lawyers are willing to say anything.”

Potential Nominee to Supreme Court

Judge Edith Jones has been mentioned as a potential nominee to the Supreme Court in the Bush administration, but does not relish the idea.

“Have you looked at what people have to go through who are nominated for federal appointments? They have to answer questions like, ‘Did you pay your nanny taxes?’ ‘Is your yard man illegal?’

“In those circumstances, who is going to go out to be a federal judge?”

Judge Edith H. Jones has a B.A. from Cornell University and a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. She was appointed to the Fifth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. Her office is in the U.S. Courthouse in Houston.

The Federalist Society was founded in 1982 when a group of law students from Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago and Yale organized a symposium on federalism at Yale Law School. These students were unhappy with the academic climate on their campuses for some of the reasons outlined by Judge Jones. The Federalist Society was created to be a forum for a wider range of legal viewpoints than they were hearing in the course of their studies.

From the four schools mentioned above, the Society has grown to include over 150 law school chapters. The Harvard chapter, with over 250 members, is one of the nation’s largest and most active. They seek to contribute to civilized dialogue at the Law School by providing a libertarian and conservative voice on campus and by sponsoring speeches and debates on a wide range of legal and policy issues.

The Federalist Society consists of libertarians and conservatives interested in the current state of the legal profession. It is founded on three principles: 1) the state exists to preserve freedom, 2) the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution and 3) it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to state what the law is, not what it should be.