Riverside Press Enterprise
December 26, 2011
Gingrich right on courts
Newt Gingrich was correct in the concerns he raised about the federal judiciary in the Iowa Republican debate. Thomas Jefferson was prophetic when he warned that “the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary … advancing … over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all shall be consolidated into one.”
He added that centralized power “will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
Considering the unabated growth of federal government power, from FDR to LBJ — and now President Obama’s health care mandates, and energy, finance and administrative regulations — Jefferson’s fears are being realized.
Daniel B. Jeffs
Apple Valley
(Original letter)
Gingrich on the judiciary
Newt Gingrich was correct in his Iowa Republican Debate concerns about the federal judiciary. As early as 1821, Thomas Jefferson was prophetic when he warned… 'that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary… advancing over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the states, and the government of all shall be consolidated into one… drawn to Washington as the center of all power…'
Jefferson added that centralized power, '…will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.' Considering the unabated growth and advance of federal government and power, from FDR, to LBJ -- and now President Obama's unconstitutional health care mandates, energy, finance and administrative regulations -- Jefferson's fears, now ours, are clearly being realized.
Indeed, the long-term inundation of attorney-driven, unreasonably complicated local, state and federal laws, and activist courts -- coupled with the predatory legal industry -- have restricted our freedoms and raised the cost of living beyond control.
USA TODAY
July, 23, 2011
Re: Administration, GOP downplay report of deal
USA TODAY Weekend July 22-24, 2011
No balanced budget amendment, no deal
The Senate just tabled the House proposed balanced budget amendment. If sending a balanced budget amendment to the states for ratification is not part of GOP/Democrat deal, there should be no deal on the debt ceiling. The centerpiece of the Republican "Contract with America" was a balanced budget amendment, which lost in the Senate by one vote in 1995. That one NO voter was Republican Senator Mark Hatfield, who was out of office by 1996 election. Indeed, every Senator and Representative who voted against the amendment should have been voted out of office.
Over three fourths of the states have balanced budget amendments, which is what it would take to ratify a federal balanced budget amendment. In fact, nearly the required two thirds of the states have already petitioned Congress for a constitutional convention to propose amendments to the Constitution. President Obama cannot take part in congressional passing of a proposed amendment, with a veto, as it should be. The enormous national debt and economic crash is government malfeasance and a national disgrace.
Former president Bill Clinton's recent statement to circumvent Congress with his view of the 14th Amendment to raise the debt comes as no surprise. His presidency is directly responsible for causing the housing bubble and the economic meltdown. Paul Sperry's book, "The Great American Bank Robbery," tells exactly how. Why is Clinton escaping blame? Maybe because President Obama a Democrat Congress added $4 trillion to the debt, while he, Holder and HUD, Dodd and Frank are doing what Clinton did, again. Government by crisis is what Democrats do, then blame Republicans for their abuse of power. A balanced budget amendment is the only way to control it.
Daniel B. Jeffs
Apple Valley, Calif.
The Washington Examiner
July 8, 2011
Time to declare our independence again
Re: "A day to remind government of the Founders' vision," July 5
America's economic crisis and deepening recession makes it painfully clear that the nation's evolution away from our founding principles has dangerously eroded our freedom and liberties and resulted in excessive taxation, unabated government growth, constitutional circumvention, overregulation, and abuse of power.
Indeed, liberal power politics created a monarchial presidency, a kangaroo Congress, and star-chamber courts that have become nearly as tyrannical as the government from which we separated. Unconstitutional cancers have metastasized throughout most state governments, with the largest tumors in California and New York.
It is clearly time for voters in every state to declare their independence again by calling for a repeal of the 16th Amendment, the enactment of a "fair tax," and a balanced-budget amendment to reduce the size, scope and power of government and restore the limited government intent of our Constitution. Only then can its promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness be fully realized.
Daniel B. Jeffs
Apple Valley, Calif.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/letters-editor/2011/07/letters-editor-july-8-2011#ixzz1RWWo3STp
(Original letter):
Re: A day to remind government of the Founders' vision - editorial
Time to declare independence again
This July 4th Independence Day highlights America's economic crisis and deepening recession, which is making it painfully clear that the nation's liberal/socialist evolution -- away from our founding principles and constitutional security -- has dangerously eroded our freedom and liberties.
The last half of the existence of our United States of America has been wrought with excessive taxation, unabated government growth, constitutional circumvention, over-regulation and the abuse of power.
Indeed, liberal-power-politics produced ideological infections that evolved into a monarchial presidency, a kangaroo Congress, and star-chamber courts, which have become nearly as tyrannical as the government from which we separated.
Surely, the unconstitutional cancers have metastasized throughout most state governments -- particularly the largest tumors such as California and New York -- that will certainly become terminal, along with nationalized monopolies in public education which have indoctrinated our children and sustained the assaults on freedom.
It is clearly time for voters in every state to declare independence again -- call for a repeal of the 16th (income tax) Amendment, the enactment of a "Fair Tax," and a balanced budget amendment -- to reduce the size, scope and power of government -- and restore the limited government intent of our Constitution. Only then can the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness be fully realized.
CONSTITUTIONAL AWARENESS
John Buglar, founder
http://www.constitutionalawareness.org
The Wall Street Journal
May 19, 2010
Oath Compels Empathy Restraint
The May 17 letters share doubts about the absolute prohibition of any role for the personal empathies of Supreme Court justices.
Rather than restraint, President Obama's "trailblazing" Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, represents what is wrong with the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. They have gone far beyond the limits of the Constitution, usurped power from the states and allowed the legislative and executive branches to do the same.
That's why the limited government specified in the Constitution has been turned into a growth industry.
(Unedited letter sent May 17, 2010):
The Constitution does not support judicial empathy, activism, philosophy or anything else but support for what is written in our founding document.
Rather than 'restraint,' President Obama's 'trailblazing' Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan represents what is wrong with the Court and the federal judiciary, which have gone far beyond the limits of the Constitution, usurped power from the states and allowed the legislative and executive branches to do the same.
Legacy-obsessed presidents come and go, however, their Senate-confirmed Supreme Court justice life-appointees can support or break constitutional law. Indeed, that's why limited government has been turned into a socialist growth industry, and that's what brings many judges of the Supreme and inferior courts 'good behavior' into impeachable question.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/14/court-nominees-bound-to-heed-constitution/
The Washington Times
May 14, 2010
Court nominees bound to heed Constitution
President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, has clearly exercised moderation and 'restraint' on her ambitious road to the Court. ("Kagan gets Obama nod as pick for high court," Page 1, Tuesday)
However, once confirmed by the Senate, this 'trailblazing lady' will undoubtedly be on the hunt for new constitutional ground in her ideological quest to push Mr. Obama's brand of socialism into the federal government.
Alas, it is highly disturbing that for a hundred years or more, both liberal and conservative ideologies of Supreme Court justices have usurped power from the states and strayed dangerously from their sworn duty to support the Constitution and the laws pursuant to it, which is the supreme law of the land.
The make-up of the Court may be politically correct, but our Constitution was never supposed to be subjected to the injustice of being a 'living document' to be circumvented, manipulated, altered or ignored by the Supreme Court, the federal and state judiciary, or other branches of government.
The Washington Examiner
April 15, 2010
Supreme Court pick is all about ideology
Re: "Obama emboldened for another Supreme Court pick," April 13
Replacing Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court is all about ideology. President Obama surely intends to replace him with another justice who is infected by the terminal cancer in the federal judiciary that has been eating away the original intent of the Constitution.
It is simply unconscionable that so many judges and elected officials have blatantly betrayed their oaths of office to support, protect and defend the (original intent) of the Constitution of the United States by usurping power from the states, infringing on the rights, liberty and freedom of the people, and concentrating all power in Washington.
Alas, the legal community of law schools and the proliferation of lawyers has grown -- as government has grown -- not only beyond the limitations of what the Constitution prohibits, but beyond control. This was done by the manipulation, circumvention, revision and the reconstruction of our history, our founding documents and what America is all about. This is common sense, and not a matter of ideology, philosophy or interpretation.
Take back America and restore the Constitution
By Daniel B. Jeffs, founder DDC
October 13, 2009
Government meddlers and dependency peddlers don't miss a beat, even in the
worst of times, when it comes to pushing their power agenda of health care
and energy takeovers on the American people, like it or not... while
relaxing our national security. What ever happened to the original law and
meaning of our Constitution?
Indeed, over the past century, social, political and legal power brokers
have circumvented, manipulated and compromised our federal state
constitutions and our freedoms, expanded the power of government executive,
legislative and judicial branches far beyond the intent of limited
government -- with hundreds of thousands of laws, rules, regulations and
court decisions -- establishing the tyrannies of minority selfish interests
over the best interests of the majority of our people with layers upon
layers bureaucratic walls, gates barriers and chains.
Simply put, the hearts have been carved out of our social, economic,
political, legal and moral centers by self-corrupting intrusive, invasive
and repressive government -- which is growing a dependant society of
insidious opportunists, and morally regressive predators and parasites --
bound to the service of the ruling elite.
Certainly, it is time for the collective judgment of the people to wise-up,
free ourselves, and turn it all around with common sense and a real and
unique democratic republic, the way it was intended by our founders. The
American way of limited government, freedom, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness....
James Madison on the General Welfare clause: Health care not included
By Daniel B. Jeffs, founder DDC
October 1, 2009
Before passing more sweeping legislative powers on health care, energy,
finance and education, Congress and the president ought to consider the
original constitutional limitations placed on them by the people of the
United States of America.
When James Madison and others wrote the Constitution, specifically Article
I, Section 8, assigning Congress the "power to lay and collect taxes ... to
pay the debts and provide for the ... general welfare of the United States,"
he and the founders were determined that it not be distorted into assuming
powers not delegated to Congress.
Madison said, "With respect to the words general welfare, I have always
regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To
take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the
Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not
contemplated by its creators."
"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are
the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care
of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State,
county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take
into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner
schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor;
they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in
short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the
most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of
Congress.... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude
contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very
nature of the limited Government established by the people of America."
The Founders also ratified the Constitution's 10th Amendment, affirming,
"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." Thus, the general welfare cannot reasonably be stretched to
allow the national level of government to perform functions and exercise
powers beyond those specifically and explicitly listed in the Constitution.
As James Madison described the limitations on interpretation of the general
welfare clause, "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done
by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer
a limited one...."the general welfare of the nation as a whole.
Now, look what Congress has done in violation of the Constitution since
FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society. They have usurped nearly all power
from the states, nationalized aid to the poor, education, elements of health
care, roads, police power, and repressed religion. Then look at what they
are doing to undermine the Constitution today. It hurts us all, one way or
another, with the combined abuse of the welfare clause and commerce clause
of our founding document.
The question is, how much longer will we allow our elected representatives,
president and judges to violate their oaths of office to support, protect
and defend the Constitution of the United States as the founders intended?
Without the power of our strictly interpreted Constitution to protect us, we
the people are powerless, as we are experiencing more and more as time and
political tyrants continue to erode our liberty.
Contrary to popular belief, the political elite don't know what is best for
us. Only we as individual Americans know what is best for ourselves, and
only the collective wisdom and judgment of the people should decide what is
best for all of us.
Welcome to the Supreme Court
By Daniel B. Jeffs, founder DDC
July 13, 2009
Senate Democrats and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have rolled out the red carpet and the welcome mat for Judge Sonia Sotomayor to join the Court, without objection?
A disturbing message from President Obama
By Daniel B. Jeffs, founder DDC
July 14, 2009
I recently subscribed to receiving information from directly from President Barack Obama via email. I received the following email this morning, July 14, 2009 7:16 AM: (excerpts)
From: THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
"Good Morning,
Yesterday, Judge Sonia Sotomayor made her opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee and moved another step closer to taking a seat on the United States Supreme Court.
John A. Stormer - None Dare Call it Treason
Betrayed by the Bench
None Dare Call it Education
http://www.libertybellpress.com/index.htm
Living Constitution, Dying Faith:
Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence
Author: Bradley C. S. Watson
Publisher: ISI Books
January 2009
Synopsis
In Living Constitution, Dying Faith, political scientist and legal historian Bradley Watson examines how the contemporary embrace of the "living" Constitution has arisen from the radical transformation of American political thought. This transformation, brought about in the late nineteenth century by the philosophies of social Darwinism and pragmatism, explains how and why contemporary jurisprudence is so alien to the constitutionalism of the American Founders. To understand why today's courts rule the way they do, one must start with the ideas exposed by and explained in Watson's timely tome.
Today's view ---rooted in progressivism -- is not simply that we have an interpretable Constitution, but that we have a Constitution which must be interpreted in light of "historically situated," continually evolving notions of the individual, the state, and society. This modern historical approach has been embraced by the judicial appointees of both Democratic and Republican presidents, by both liberals and conservatives, for a century or more. Living Constitution, Dying Faith shows how such an approach has directly undermined Americans' faith in a limited Constitution -- as well as their faith in the eternal verities.
Biography
Bradley C. S. Watson holds the Philip M. McKenna Chair in American and Western Political Thought at Saint Vincent College, where he is also Fellow in Politics and Culture at the Center for Political and Economic Thought. He is, in addition, a Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy and the author or editor of several books, including Civil Rights and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy, Courts and the Culture Wars, Civic Education and Culture (ISI Books, and The West at War. A former civil litigation attorney, Watson writes and speaks frequently on Progressive jurisprudence, liberalism and communitarianism, Western political thought and the American regime, same-sex marriage, and immigration law and policy.
Obama's Idea of Justice
By Patrick J. Buchanan
May 29, 2009
http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-obamas-idea-of-justice-1553
When you think about it, Sonia Sotomayor is the perfect pick for the Supreme Court -- in Barack Obama's America.
Like Obama, himself a beneficiary of affirmative action, she thinks "Latina women," because of their life experience, make better judicial decisions than white men, that discrimination against white men to advance people of color is what America is all about, that appellate courts are "where policy is made" in the United States.
San Diego Union-Tribune
May 28, 2009
Naming Judge Sotomayor to U.S. Supreme Court
Taken together, the California Supreme Court's weak Proposition 8 decision regarding same-sex marriage, and President Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the United States Supreme Court, are glaring examples of a class of people demanding special rights over equal rights and liberals using activist judges to legislate policies, special rights and making laws they cannot get through constitutional legislation. It's simply insidious and a systemic undermining of the rights and protections of our Constitution, limited government and our freedom.
DANIEL B. JEFFS
Apple Valley
Re: President Obama nominates judge with Hispanic success story of humble
beginnings
USA TODAY
May 26, 2009
Judge Sotomayor's success story from humble beginnings does not excuse her sexist and racist statement. That, along with and her support of reverse discrimination were bad enough, but when she said the court of appeals is where policy is made, is was unconstitutional judicial activism per se. She should not be sitting on any court.
Justice Clarence Thomas, on the other hand, is from humble beginnings and a symbol of African American's success. However, he is a conservative and a strict constitutionalist rule of law judge, unacceptable to the activist judiciary and vehemently opposed by liberal ideology. Judges like him should be sitting on every court.
Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty
Author: Randy E. Barnett
Publisher: Princeton University Press
July 2005
Synopsis
The U.S. Constitution found in school textbooks and under glass in Washington is not the one enforced today by the Supreme Court. In Restoring the Lost Constitution, Randy Barnett argues that since the nation's founding, but especially since the 1930s, the courts have been cutting holes in the original Constitution and its amendments to eliminate the parts that protect liberty from the power of government. From the Commerce Clause, to the Necessary and Proper Clause, to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, to the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court has rendered each of these provisions toothless. In the process, the written Constitution has been lost.
Barnett establishes the original meaning of these lost clauses and offers a practical way to restore them to their central role in constraining government: adopting a "presumption of liberty" to give the benefit of the doubt to citizens when laws restrict their rightful exercises of liberty. He also provides a new, realistic and philosophically rigorous theory of constitutional legitimacy that justifies both interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning and, where that meaning is vague or open-ended, construing it so as to better protect the rights retained by the people.
As clearly argued as it is insightful and provocative, Restoring the Lost Constitution forcefully disputes the conventional wisdom, posing a powerful challenge to which others must now respond.
Biography Randy E. Barnett is Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law and Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. He is the author of "The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law".