I hope by now you have seen the jaw-dropping arrogance of the little talked about words of Associate Justice Kagan. While experience tells me she is not likely to pay any price for her bad behavior, much less the oath she took to support the Constitution of the United States, I can only hope that the American people will take this lesson to heart.
Most of us are aware of Double Jeopardy, the right to not be tried for the same crime twice, but the courts have adopted a “dual sovereign” doctrine to get around this pesky little problem. Two Supreme Court cases out of Oklahoma show how good intentions often lead to problems, and how the court makes up the rules as they go along.
Whether you think there should be term limits for justices on the Supreme Court, or federal judges in general, it cannot legally be done by simple legislation. What these Congressmen want to do requires an amendment to the Constitution.
Those who have stoked the fears of America becoming a theocracy have used the misinterpretation of Jefferson’s “separation of church and state” to effectively do what they claim to be avoiding: Establishing a national religion of secularism. This case is one small step for religious freedom in America.
Since 2014 the court replaced the flawed “Lemon Test” with a more constitutionally sound methodology. While, the District and Circuit Courts didn’t recognize this fact, the Supreme Court did. Will this new opinion help the lower courts recognize that a person’s right to freedom of religion isn’t subject to the government’s fear that someone may see it and think it’s an endorsement?
Did you ever imagine that a question about air pollution could end up changing the way governments work? That may be exactly what happened with the Supreme Court’s opinion in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency. What started as a question of whether or not the EPA’s plan to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from the electric grid...
What will the officials in these six states and the District of Columbia do? Will they recognize their mistake, that placing discretionary requirements on the exercise of a constitutionally protect right is both arbitrary and capricious? Will they learn from this opinion and begin to correct their infringements on the rights of the people they purport to serve?
After almost 50 years, a landmark decision of the Supreme Court has been overturned. Will it be remembered with other decisions like Dred Scott or Plessy v. Ferguson? Only time will tell. After all of the furor when a draft of the opinion was leaked, we finally get a chance to review that actual opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health in its final form.
If We the People will pick up the Constitution, read it, and study it, we’ll find that our subjection to Washington, D.C., is not the law, but a result of our own actions. Washington, D.C.’s power is as fake as the emperor’s clothes in the Hans Christian Anderson story. Isn’t it time others join me in pointing out just how naked the government in Washington, D.C. really is?
There are plenty of problems in America today, too many to number most likely. I’m frequently asked what we can do. Too often, it seems everyone is looking to Washington, D.C. for answers. By studying the Constitution, and a couple of Supreme Court opinions, I think we can find some answers a lot closer to home.
Have you ever considered how money relates to speech? The federal government has. One of the issues with federal election law is the limitation on the use of money for a candidate to get their message out. What does the case FEC v Cruz have to do with free speech? More important, what does it show about the state of elections in America?
There’s a saying in many training communities, “The body will not go where the mind has not already been.” Another one you may have heard is the Five “P’s”, Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. The idea is simple; if you do not prepare beforehand for a given situation, you will not be prepared when it happens. But what happens when government preparations move from proper to totalitarian?
What do these two famous, or rather infamous, cases have in common? They denied rights to human beings because of their ancestry. While the precedent set in Scott was overturned by the Fourteenth Amendment, nothing has overturned the opinion in Korematsu. Laws that violated the supreme law of the land were used in both cases, and courts endorsed these travesties of justice.
Since the district court found that infringing on the right of certain people to keep and bear arms somehow did not burden the Second Amendment, they figured they were done. However, in an effort to cover their backside, the court determined that this question should receive intermediate scrutiny. But what is this “scrutiny”?
When is flying a flag government speech? That was the question before the Supreme Court in the case of Shurtleff, et al. V. City Of Boston et al. Could the City of Boston refuse to fly a Christian flag? Was the city required to do so? Or did Harold Shurtleff have the right to fly the flag of his choice on public property?
All this leaves us with the question of what the District Court for the District of Columbia will do? Will they recognize Mr. Quaglin’s right to have his detention reviewed by the court or will they look at the opinions of previous Supreme Courts and waffle? Time will tell.
The CDC, the states and cities that run the airports, the airlines, and everyone else were following a law that did not legally exist. That makes it just like all those who were afraid to say anything when the emperor walked around with no clothes. It’s worse than that though, because they also committed a federal crime.
What can you do when government actors abuse their powers? I’ve talked before about the right to petition the government for a redress of grievance and how the judicial precedent of sovereign immunity violates that right. But what happens when law enforcement or the justice department abuses their prosecutorial powers? How do you seek redress for a malicious prosecution?
The First Amendment prohibits Congress from passing laws that abridge your right to petition the government for a redress of grievance. Yet not only has Congress ignored that restriction on their actions, but the federal courts have piled on as well. Today, I will look at what the right to petition means, how that has been violated, and what the American people can do about it.
Misdirection is the stock and trade of both magicians and politicians. Over the years, the American people have been conditioned to focus on Washington, D.C. as both the source of our problems and their solution. In doing so, we are allowing those in our state and local government to steal our rights and our liberties right out from under our noses.
Imagine your rights are under attack. You seek assistance from those who have sworn to protect you, only to be attacked again. You reach out to what you think is your last hope, only to be rebuffed. Now consider how that must feel: To be abandoned by those who have sworn to protect you.
We all recognize that property can be foreclosed on for failure to pay a tax debt. What happens when the value of the foreclosure is greater than the debt owed? A case out of Michigan, recently appealed to the Sixth Circuit, seeks redress for just such situations. Eight citizens of Oakland County Michigan are suing the county for...
The governor who executes the laws of the Commonwealth work for the people. If they are unwilling to follow the laws created by the representatives of the people, they should be removed. If the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia are unwilling to hold their elected officials accountable, they have no one to blame except themselves.
So if you’re looking for someone to blame for the current state of our border, look no farther than your mirror. Rather than blaming the alien who broke the law, take responsibility for your choices that led to the fact that those laws aren’t being enforced in the first place.
Since We the People formed those state governments and elected those who hold office, then we are derelict in our duty as well. If freedom and liberty fall in America, if despotism and tyranny are allowed to continue, if this experiment in self government has failed and the sacred fire of liberty should go out, it’s because We the People have been derelict in our duties.
I got the idea for the Constitution Study while listening to a podcast reporting on the 2013 State of the First Amendment Survey. While the First Amendment Center has not issued a survey since 2019, based on what I’ve been seeing lately it’s still worth investigating. Let’s roll back the clock a few years, look at the state of the First Amendment...
The Constitution for the United States of America is the oldest national constitution in the world, and second only to the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in age. Two hundred and thirty four years is a good run, but that is no guarantee that it will continue. If we wish to uphold the Constitution and the Republic for which it stands, then it’s up to We the People to work to keep it. Otherwise, our future may look more like Napoleonic France, or worse, the Reign of Terror that proceeded it.
It appears most of the American people are willing to tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. That means this abuse of the Constitution, the experiment in self government, and the consent of the governed is ultimately our fault. The question is, will the American people do anything to stop it before it becomes “law”?
There are a group of people for whom the phrase “Never Again” has special meaning. We were supposed to have learned our lesson from the Nazis. Lessons about the dangers of rhetoric without evidence, of emotion over reason, of treating groups of people as sub-human. We were supposed to have learned the dangers of unrestrained power and a lack of ethics.
