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Archive for the ‘Constitution’ Category

Nullification

July 18, 2010 | Constitution, Founders, Founding Documents, History

Where do we go when the federal government abandons all pretense of adhering to the limits placed upon it by the States, and ratified in the Constitution? Obviously we can't depend upon the Supreme Court, which picks and chooses the cases it will hear, and then legislates from the bench. We can no longer depend upon those we send to congress to abide their oath of office. They are just paid-off pawns in what appears to be an agenda designed to eliminate liberty. Author, and historian Tom Woods talks about Nullification and the importance it played when forming this nation in this interview at Press TV.

‘Kill Them All, for God Will Know His Own’

May 26, 2010 | Civil Liberties, Judicial

I have become an avid reader of Mr. Grigg’s column on the Lew Rockwell site. I recently wrote to Mr. Grigg because I particularly enjoyed this column, and I asked for permission to post it here. http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w148.html As a note here, Mr. Grigg uses the original quote from the 12th Century Crusade that gave us “Kill them all. Let God sort them out.” by William Norman Grigg Recently by William Norman Grigg: The Death of Aiyana Jones: 'Showtime Syndrome' Claims a Child Kevin Weeks was a career criminal employed as a Mob hitman, but even he possessed sufficient good judgment and self-restraint to avoid risking the life of a seven-year-old girl. In Brutal, his aptly titled memoir of the years he spent working for Boston Mob boss – and protected FBI asset – James "Whitey" Bulger, Weeks describes how he was given an order to assassinate Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr, who relentlessly tormented Bulger in print. Weeks set up a sniper nest near Carr's home. He had the target set up for the kill, but didn't pull the trigger because Carr's daughter, "a little girl, like seven-years-old or so," was walking hand-in-hand with her father. "I couldn't take a chance of the bullet fragmenting and ricocheting or hitting her or just killing her father in front of her," recounts Weeks. This episode, admittedly, is retold from the self-serving perspective of a convicted murderer. Ironically, Carr himself, in his valuable book The Brothers Bulger, relates a somewhat similar story of a proposed contract hit that was vetoed by former Boston Mob boss Raymond Patriarca. Joe Barboza, a hitman employed by Patriarca, pointed out that the hoodlum targeted by the contract lived in a three-story house in Boston. Barboza suggested that he could "break into the basement and pour gasoline all around and torch the place, after which I either get him with the smoke inhalation or I pick him off when he's climbing out the window." "Barboza had worked out a plan for every contingency," notes Carr. "He would bring three shooters with him, to watch each side of the house. They would cut the telephone lines to the houses, so that the victim couldn't call the fire department. And just in case one of the neighbors called, before setting the house on fire Barboza planned to phone in false alarms across the city to tie up every fire company." Patriarca, who had few compunctions about killing when it suited him, wasn't keen on Barboza's plan, in large measure because of the potential harm to non-combatants. "Patriarca asked Barboza if anyone else lived in [the targeted hoodlum's] house, and Barboza mentioned the victim's mother," continues Carr. "You're gonna kill his mother too?" asked Patriarca. "It ain't my fault she lives there," the hitman snorted by way of reply. "Patriarca canceled the contract," Carr tersely summarizes. Barboza, not surprisingly, proved to be too ruthless and deranged for the Mob, and ended up – like Bulger – as another of the FBI's protected assets. It is a monumental pity that the Detroit Special Response Team, or the decision-makers above them in the Detroit PD, didn't have the sense of proportionality displayed by Mob figures like Kevin Weeks and Raymond Patriarca. If they had, the murder suspect they sought – 34-year-old Chauncey Owens – could have been taken into custody without the midnight paramilitary raid that resulted in the burning and shooting death of seven-year-old Aiyana Jones. Shortly after midnight on May 16, while Aiyana – a radiant little girl who might have grown up to resemble Zoe Saldana – was sleeping on the downstairs living room sofa where she would be killed just a few minutes later, the raid team gathered for a "safety briefing." As described by police sources to the Detroit Free Press, that briefing dealt entirely with considerations of "officer safety," which – as any honest observer will admit – is the highest and most important consideration in any law enforcement operation. The raid team "was told there was information that the suspect might be armed, possibly with an assault rifle and a handgun," reports the Free Press. "Someone said there also might be dangerous dogs and that the house was believed to be a possible dope den." Another intelligence source speculated that the unprepossesing duplex might actually be the location of the missing Iraqi WMDs, which had been stored in a basement vault guarded by a basilisk. No, not really. But in its anxiety over officer safety, and its eagerness to stage a properly impressive raid for the benefit of the embedded A&E camera crew, the SRT did not take into account "the possibility of any children being present," despite the fact that the front yard was littered with toys – a clue that even a police officer should be able to recognize – and warnings to that effect offered by neighbors as the raid unfolded. Street officers and homicide detectives were already on the scene when the SRT's armored personnel carrier rolled up in front of the duplex. The APC was driven by Officer Joseph Weekley, who was also the first through the door after a flash-bang grenade had been thrown through the window. Weekley went barreling into the living room armed with a machine gun and protected by a ballistic shield. Meanwhile, Aiyana – according to at least one eyewitness – was being severely burned by the incendiary grenade that had been thrown into her bed. It's not clear whether Aiyana suffered her fatal gunshot wound before or after Weekley entered the house. In either case, Officer Weekley has been identified as the shooter. He initially claimed that his gun accidentally went off during a "scuffle" with Aiyana's 47-year-old grandmother. Within a few hours that account was "clarified" by the police, who said that there was incidental "contact" between Weekley and Aiyana's grandmother; the latter denies having contact of any kind with Weekley. Geoffrey Fieger, the attorney representing Aiyana's family, claims to have seen a videotape of the raid showing that the shot was fired into the house shortly after the grenade was hurled through the downstairs window. Chauncey Owens, who has been charged with the ...

The US Congressional Budget Office says the final version of the Democrats’ healthcare plan will cut the federal deficit by $138bn over 10 years.

March 18, 2010 | Constitution, Economy, Health Freedom

I generally like post articles like this in the forum, but I really had to get this out on the RTR main page. Finally an admission from "Your Elected Officials" that health-care reform is just another form of taxation. First of all, with history clearly showing us how badly, big government manages finances, do we really want  the Fed's in the health-care industry? And does it state anywhere in our beloved constitution that they have the authority to venture into the health-care business? It brings to mind, what they have done the last 50 years managing one of the greatest "Ponzi Schemes" eve created,  Social Security. Here's a suggestion, when asked to fill out the "Census Form" which I am going to save for another article entirely, because this years census form, does without a doubt, violates privacy laws, and is outside of its constitutional allowances, tell the census people, you will fill it out and return it, when they give you back all the social security money, that you gave to them, to be "HELD IN TRUST" which they did not honor. BBC The non-partisan body said the proposed legislation, which will likely be voted on in the House on Sunday, would cost about $940bn over the same period. President Barack Obama said the bill represented the most significant effort to reduce the deficit since the 1990s. Some undecided Democratic lawmakers had feared it would run up the deficit. The reforms would deliver on Mr Obama's top domestic priority by providing insurance to some 30 million people who currently lack it. They would increase insurance coverage through tax credits for the middle class and expanding of the Medicaid programme for the poor. If approved, they would represent the biggest change in the US healthcare system since the creation in the 1960s of Medicare, the government-run scheme for Americans aged 65 or over. Budget reconciliation The House of Representatives and the Senate adopted different versions of the healthcare bill in November and December. The usual procedure would be for two versions of legislation to be combined into a single bill for President Obama to sign into law, but after Senate Democrats lost the 60-seat majority required to defeat a filibuster by Republicans, party leaders decided to use a controversial procedure to ensure the bill's passage. Health Care....Help reduce the deficit.

Ron Paul on Wall Streets Bailout FRAUD

January 24, 2010 | Banking, Congress, Constitution, Economy, Federal Reserve

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." - John Maynard Keynes, 1919 Part I "There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." - Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, a Treatise on Economics, (Fox & Wilkes, 4th rev. ed., 1963) Part II