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BETRAYED BY THE BENCH


By Larry Pratt

January 13, 2006 
NewsWithViews.com

John Stormer is an amazing author. He has sold over 11 million books. One, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, sold 7 million. That was in 1964 when there was no internet, no faxes, no talk shows for conservatives. Stormer may have been the first to put a coupon in the back of the book for additional orders.

So, a new book by John Stormer means we can assume that he has something else to say. Indeed he does.

In Betrayed by the Bench, Stormer traces the lawlessness of so many of today�s rulings to the revolt against the common law that is Christian through and through. The revolt was led from the Harvard Law School by professors such as its Dean, Roscoe Pound. The replacement was the tyranny of case law.

The case law preferred by Pound and his followers allowed them to slip out from under the constraints of the timeless and universal precepts foundational to the Common Law. Case law allows judges to �make law.� One of Pound�s followers, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, made this amazing statement: �We are under a constitution, but the constitution is what we say it is.�

Equally as amazing as Hughes� assertion was the failure to impeach him for violating his oath of office. But as Stormer points out, the idea of absolutes binding men died in the pulpits before it died in the civil realm.

Stormer calls the result of judicial lawmaking �an on-going Constitutional Convention.� I would call it a coup d�etat. This coup has been hard to spot because the judges did not have a bunch of colonels circling the seat of government with tanks. We have witnessed a coup by increments � something that is much harder to detect.

There has been a concerted effort to exclude the Declaration of Independence from the corpus of binding law. This is a legal impossibility in view of the nature of the Declaration � it is a contract much the same as Articles of Incorporation are. No one is at liberty to unilaterally change the terms of a contract.

Our fourth president, John Quincy Adams, had this to say about the foundational role of the Declaration for the Constitution and laws made pursuant to it:

The virtue which had been infused into the Constitution of the United States�was no other than�those abstract principles which had been first proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence � namely the self-evident truths of the natural and unalienable rights of man�and the sovereignt`y of the people, always subordinate to the rule of right and wrong, and always responsible to the Supreme Ruler of the universe for the rightful exercise of that power. This was the platform upon which the Constitution of the United States had been erected.

The boldness of the Court�s usurpation is somewhat like the old line of the crook who is caught in the act exclaiming, �Who do you believe, me or your lying eyes?� To give but one example, consider the 14th Amendment. The 39th Congress expressly stipulated that the Amendment was not designed to control schools, voting and elections. Indeed, that was so well understood that the 15th Amendment was enacted in order to deal with voting.

The record of the clear intent of the framers of the 14th Amendment has not stopped the Supreme Court from inventing the doctrine of incorporation out of thin air. This has allowed the Supremes to increase consolidation of power in their own hands (and in the hands of their willing accomplices in the legislative and the executive branches) in Washington. This has been done at the expense of the Constitutional reservation of most governmental powers to the states and to the people.

Incorporation might be best understood by thinking of it as incorporating stolen powers. The lack of jurisdiction for many of the Court�s decisions is comparable to the city of Paris levying a tax to be paid by citizens of the United States in the U.S.

Incorporation is now being expanded by a majority (six of the nine justices) of the Supremes to allow for foreign law as a guide to their judicial lawmaking. When the Court recently overturned capital punishment for an 18-year old who had cold-bloodedly murdered a neighbor when he was just a �child� of 17, Justice Breyer claimed the support of the murder law in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe! The country run by a thug who has proclaimed himself a black Hitler!

Gun owners should not be surprised when the gun control laws of some other thugocracy such as Cuba form the basis of a Supreme rape of the 2nd Amendment. Americans generally should not be surprised at any unconstitutional notion the Supremes may take into their heads.

One challenge we face in freeing ourselves from this judicial tyranny is that they have the benefit of a mind fake that has us believing that anything, no matter how outrageous, that comes out of the mouth of a judge is law. Hence we see other government officials � who have all taken the same oath of office to uphold the Constitution � violating their oaths by obeying unconstitutional edicts of the Supreme Court. This is otherwise known as �upholding the rule of law.� Of course, it is anything but.

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Until �We the People� remember that we only gave the crowd in Washington a very limited amount of power to do only a very few things, we will continue to be ruled by unelected and unaccountable politicians wrapped in black robes.

(My Live Fire interview with John Stormer can be heard at http://gunowners.org/radio.htm. Stormer�s Betrayed by the Bench can be ordered from Liberty Bell Press at http://libertybellpress.com.)

� 2006 Larry Pratt - All Rights Reserved

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Larry Pratt has been Executive Director of Gun Owners of America for 27 years. GOA is a national membership organization of 300,000 Americans dedicated to promoting their second amendment freedom to keep and bear arms.

GOA lobbies for the pro-gun position in Washington and is involved in firearm issues in the states. GOA's work includes providing legal assistance to those involved in lawsuits with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the federal firearms law enforcement agency.

Pratt has appeared on numerous national radio and TV programs such as NBC's Today Show, CBS' Good Morning America, CNN's Crossfire and Larry King Live, Fox's Hannity & Colmes, MSNBC's Phil Donahue show and many others. He has debated Congressmen James Traficant, Jr. (D-OH), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and Vice President Al Gore, among others. His columns have appeared in newspapers across the country.

He published a book, Armed People Victorious, in 1990 and was editor of a book, Safeguarding Liberty: The Constitution & Militias, 1995. His latest book, On the Firing Line: Essays in the Defense of Liberty was published in 2001.

Pratt has held elective office in the state legislature of Virginia, serving in the House of Delegates. Pratt directs a number of other public interest organizations and serves as the Vice-Chairman of the American Institute for Cancer Research.

The GOA web site is:  gunowners.org. Pratt's weekly talk show Live Fire is archived there at: www.gunowners.org/radio.htm  

E-Mail: ldpratt@gunowners.org

Either Pratt or another GOA spokesman is available for press interviews.


 

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One challenge we face in freeing ourselves from this judicial tyranny is that they have the benefit of a mind fake that has us believing that anything, no matter how outrageous, that comes out of the mouth of a judge is law.