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Obamacare ‘fix’ affirms Obama as absolute dictator with power to change laws as he pleases
by Mike Adams
(NaturalNews) In a desperate bid to save the rapidly collapsing Obamacare socialized medicine program, President Obama announced a “fix” yesterday that would “allow” health insurance companies to avoid cancelling whatever plans haven’t already been cancelled due to Obamacare itself.
In doing so, Obama effectively declares himself absolute dictator over all laws across the country, assuming the power to enforce, ignore or alter laws at he pleases.
The problem with this is that such powers do not exist in the Office of the President. Like everything else surrounding Obamacare, Obama himself is simply inventing new powers as he goes along and hoping no one will question his assumed (illegal) authority.
“The unexpected compromise was announced amid growing revolt within Mr. Obama’s own party over his broken promise that Americans who liked their insurance could keep it. But it sparked another backlash as some legal scholars questioned whether the president had the authority to create the loophole,” reports the Washington Times.
It also, by the way, thrust the insurance industry into a state of chaos where insurance companies now have no idea what’s going to be “law” tomorrow, next month or next year. Apparently Obama can simply change his mind at any time and decide that insurance companies are suddenly engaged in mass criminal activities which can then be prosecuted under the law as it is written.
Beware of presidents who claim absolute power over Congress
This is how Hitler rose to power, of course. It’s how every tyrant throughout history got his start. It’s also precisely what the United States Constitution prohibits in Article II, Section 3, where the language demands that the President “take care that laws be faithfully executed.”
Nowhere in the Constitution does it say any President can simply choose to selectively ignore laws passed by Congress. Thus, Obama’s new “fix” is blatantly illegal from the start.
Even if it were legal under the U.S. Constitution, it is clearly discriminatory, allowing the White House to essentially decide which insurance companies “get” to be ignored by the law and which companies will be prosecuted for “illegally” keeping policies in place that violate the Affordable Care Act as written. This only creates yet more centralization of power in the White House, giving them the tools to silence dissent among insurance companies by wielding prosecutorial discretion as a political weapon.
Obama unleashes economic despair and market chaos on America
The health insurance industry is now suffering from a case of regulatory whiplash. Obama’s enforcement of federal law seems to change with the direction of the wind, and his highly irresponsible, immature actions are causing extreme market destabilization.
At this point, insurance companies have no idea what to believe. Nor do consumers who are shopping for plans. Healthcare.gov remains in a disastrous state and even though Obama has now announced his unconstitutional “fix” for people to keep their health care plans, there exists no government-legalized mechanism for insurance companies to reinstate policies already cancelled!
Thus, all the policies already cancelled are dead and gone forever. So it’s not even clear how Obama’s so-called “fix” helps anyone at all.
Like everything else in the Obama administration, this “fix” is nothing more than deceptive smooth talking to gloss over a problem and promote the delusion that everything is working just fine.
Obama’s campaign promise of “hope and change” has become a joke. Sometimes hope is little more than false hope pretending to be real. And sometimes, the most charming, slick talking salesman is actually a con artist. Kevin Trudeau is in prison right now for lying about a weight loss book. Obama lied to the whole country about a far more serious issue, and he gets rewarded with even more power in his unconstitutional effort to “fix” the very problem he caused in the first place.
What’s wrong with this picture?
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Obama Suspends the Law
Like King James II, the president decides not to enforce laws he doesn’t like. That’s an abuse of power.
By MICHAEL W. MCCONNELL
President Obama’s decision last week to suspend the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act may be welcome relief to businesses affected by this provision, but it raises grave concerns about his understanding of the role of the executive in our system of government.
Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution states that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so.
This matter—the limits of executive power—has deep historical roots. During the period of royal absolutism, English monarchs asserted a right to dispense with parliamentary statutes they disliked. King James II’s use of the prerogative was a key grievance that lead to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The very first provision of the English Bill of Rights of 1689—the most important precursor to the U.S. Constitution—declared that “the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of parliament, is illegal.”
To make sure that American presidents could not resurrect a similar prerogative, the Framers of the Constitution made the faithful enforcement of the law a constitutional duty.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the president on legal and constitutional issues, has repeatedly opined that the president may decline to enforce laws he believes are unconstitutional. But these opinions have always insisted that the president has no authority, as one such memo put it in 1990, to “refuse to enforce a statute he opposes for policy reasons.”
Attorneys general under Presidents Carter, Reagan, both Bushes and Clinton all agreed on this point. With the exception of Richard Nixon, whose refusals to spend money appropriated by Congress were struck down by the courts, no prior president has claimed the power to negate a law that is concededly constitutional.
In 1998, the Supreme Court struck down a congressional grant of line-item veto authority to the president to cancel spending items in appropriations. The reason? The only constitutional power the president has to suspend or repeal statutes is to veto a bill or propose new legislation. Writing for the court in Clinton v. City of New York, Justice John Paul Stevens noted: “There is no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the president to enact, to amend, or to repeal statutes.”
The employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act contains no provision allowing the president to suspend, delay or repeal it. Section 1513(d) states in no uncertain terms that “The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013.” Imagine the outcry if Mitt Romney had been elected president and simply refused to enforce the whole of ObamaCare.
This is not the first time Mr. Obama has suspended the operation of statutes by executive decree, but it is the most barefaced. In June of last year, for example, the administration stopped initiating deportation proceedings against some 800,000 illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. before age 16, lived here at least five years, and met a variety of other criteria. This was after Congress refused to enact the Dream Act, which would have allowed these individuals to stay in accordance with these conditions. Earlier in 2012, the president effectively replaced congressional requirements governing state compliance under the No Child Left Behind Act with new ones crafted by his administration.
The president defended his suspension of the immigration laws as an exercise of prosecutorial discretion. He defended his amending of No Child Left Behind as an exercise of authority in the statute to waive certain requirements. The administration has yet to offer a legal justification for last week’s suspension of the employer mandate.
Republican opponents of ObamaCare might say that the suspension of the employer mandate is such good policy that there’s no need to worry about constitutionality. But if the president can dispense with laws, and parts of laws, when he disagrees with them, the implications for constitutional government are dire.
Democrats too may acquiesce in Mr. Obama’s action, as they have his other aggressive assertions of executive power. Yet what will they say when a Republican president decides that the tax rate on capital gains is a drag on economic growth and instructs the IRS not to enforce it?
And what of immigration reform? Why bother debating the details of a compromise if future presidents will feel free to disregard those parts of the statute that they don’t like?
The courts cannot be counted on to intervene in cases like this. As the Supreme Court recently held in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the same-sex marriage case involving California’s Proposition 8, private citizens do not have standing in court to challenge the executive’s refusal to enforce laws, unless they have a personal stake in the matter. If a president declines to enforce tax laws, immigration laws, or restrictions on spending—to name a few plausible examples—it is very likely that no one will have standing to sue.
Of all the stretches of executive power Americans have seen in the past few years, the president’s unilateral suspension of statutes may have the most disturbing long-term effects. As the Supreme Court said long ago (Kendall v. United States, 1838), allowing the president to refuse to enforce statutes passed by Congress “would be clothing the president with a power to control the legislation of congress, and paralyze the administration of justice.”
Mr. McConnell, a former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, is a professor of law and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
A version of this article appeared July 9, 2013, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Obama Suspends the Law.
Obama Breeds Rebellion Among the States
By Alan Caruba
The resistance to Obamacare is writing a new chapter in U.S. history. It may well become the most unpopular law since Prohibition became an Amendment to the Constitution in 1919. By 1933, another Amendment repealed it.
Obamacare passed by a straight Democratic party vote on Christmas Eve in 2009. No Republican voted for it and, as one poll recently revealed, a third of Americans are still unaware it is the law of the land. A divided Supreme Court gave it a pass, calling it a tax, but it is a profoundly unconstitutional law insofar as the federal government may not pass a law that requires Americans to purchase something and to fine them if they do not. It is also playing havoc with the economy, delaying recovery as it deters hiring and encourages firing.
Nonetheless, a number of states have gone on record seeking to nullify its enforcement and some are doing the same as regards gun control. Arizona became famous when it passed its own immigration law in response to the federal government’s failure to protect its border with Mexico. The proposed “Gang of Eight” immigration law is facing stiff opposition for its various provisions, most of which do not address the central issue of security on the southern border.
How out of touch is the President? He went to Mexico and blamed the violence arising from its drug cartels on America, saying “Most of the guns used here to commit violence came from America.” He made no mention of the scandalous “Fast and Furious” scheme in which the ATF actually ran guns into Mexico, claiming they would track them. It took an executive order to throw a blanket of silence over it and a compliant media to ignore that scandal.
It is, however, Obamacare that poses the greatest threat to the nation, intruding on the patient-doctor relationship, robbing billions from Medicare to pay for it, requiring states to fund more Medicaid when many are strapped to meet other needs, and putting 16% of the nation’s economy under federal control.
A total of twenty-seven states have filed suit against Obamacare. Two federal judges have upheld its individual mandate to purchase health insurance and two others have ruled that it is unconstitutional.
Twelve states have introduced versions of the Federal Health Care Nullification Act that was drafted by the Tenth Amendment Center. They include Texas, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Alabama, and Maine. All declare that Obamacare is “hereby declared to be invalid, shall not be recognized, is specifically rejected, and shall be considered null and void and of no effect.”
In South Carolina, on May 1st, the state House passed a bill that declares the bill null and void and goes a step further, criminalizing its implementation. Earlier Governor Nikki Haley, in her state of the state address, said that South Carolina does not want and cannot afford Obamacare, saying of the President’s namesake, “not now, not ever.”
The following day, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback sent a letter in response to Attorney General Eric Holder’s opposition to its Second Amendment Protection Act, declaring it unconstitutional; essentially tell him to piss off. “The people of Kansas,” said the Governor, “have clearly expressed their sovereign will.” The same day, Missouri passed a comparable law protecting the Second Amendment.
Not since the years leading up to the Civil War was kicked off on December 20, 1860 when South Carolina voted for secession, has there been such open resistance to the mandates of the federal government by the states on a range of issues. Earlier, in 1832, President Andrew Jackson had threatened to send troops to South Carolina to enforce federal laws.
Nullification, however, will not succeed as a means to rid the nation of Obamacare. To Obama’s dismay, his gun control law failed in Congress when even members of his party joined in voting against it. The fate of immigration reform remains unknown but it will come to a vote soon enough.
The reason why nullification will fail is embedded in the Constitution. The Supremacy Clause states “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be found thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary, notwithstanding.”
That has not discouraged the legislatures of many states from expressing their opposition to Obamacare, intrusions on the Second Amendment right of citizens to bear arms, and to demand the federal government enforce the laws regarding its borders.
There isn’t a constitutional scholar that does not support the Supremacy Clause. The Heritage Foundation has a policy paper on the subject of nullification that says “there is no clause or implied power in either the national or the various state constitutions that enables states to veto federal laws unilaterally.”
The states, though, can express their displeasure and their opposition to federal laws and that is what lies at the heart of the spate of nullification laws that have been passed. As sovereign republics, the states can and do express themselves and, through their elected Senators and Representatives, have the power in concert to repeal obnoxious and injurious federal laws.
That will be the fate of Obamacare.
© Alan Caruba, 2013
Posted by Alan Caruba at 3:01 PM 
The Good Guys Are NOT Coming To Save Us
Apr 23rd, 2013
A lot of Americans know that the US government is out of control. Anyone who has cared enough to study the US Constitution even a little knows this. Still, very few of these people are taking any significant action, and largely because of one error: They are waiting for “the good guys” to show up and fix things.
Some think that certain groups of politicians will pull it together and fix things, or that one magnificent politician will ride in to fix things. Others think that certain members of the military will step in and slap the politicians back into line. And, I’m sure there are other variations.
There are several problems with this. I’ll start with the small issues:
- It doesn’t happen. A lot of good people have latched on to one grand possibility after another, waiting for a good guy to save the day, and it just doesn’t happen. Thousands of hours of reading, writing and waiting are burned with each new “great light” who comes along with a promise to run the system in the “right” way, and give us liberty and truth. (Or whatever.) Lots of decent folks grab on to one pleasant dream after another, only to end up right back where they started… but poorer in time, energy and finances.
- Hope is a scam. It’s a dream of someday, somehow, getting something for nothing. People who hope do not act – they wait for other people to act. Hope is a tool to neuter a natural opposition: they sit and hope, and never act against you. Even the biblical meaning of hope is something more like expectation (or sometimes waiting) than the modern use of hope.
- Petitioning an abuser for compassion. The “good guys” are considered to be a few people inside the abusive government. But if the good guys were really good, wouldn’t they have dissociated themselves with an abuser some time ago? By pleading for the good guys to rise up, people are asking one sub-group of the abusers to save them from the rest of the abusers. However, they all work for the same operation; they all get paid out of the same offices; according to the same rulebook. And if the good guys are so willing to turn against their employers, why would they have waited until now?
- Movies. We all grew up in the company of movie heroes who rode in at the last minute to save the noble victims. From John Wayne to Star Trek to Bruce Willis, the story line differs little. These are pleasant stories, of course, but cinema is not reality, and hoping for it to become reality is something that we should get over prior to adulthood.
But, as I say, those are the smaller issues. Let’s move on to the serious ones.
The Magic System
A lot of Americans believe that the American “Founders” created a system that automatically fixes itself. They talk about the “balance of powers,” and think that it will always save them from a tyrant. The balanced powers of the US Constitution, however, were trashed within fifteen years and doubly-trashed just a century ago.
In the Constitution, the states balanced the power of the national government (the one now in Washington, DC.) Not only did the states control half of the legislature, but they decided if and how they would implement the edicts of the national government. And that included deciding whether a law was constitutional or not.
This changed in 1803 with the Marbury v. Madison ruling. This ruling – taught as a work of genius in American schools – was a fraud against the US Constitution. In it, the Supreme Court held that they understood the Constitution better than James Madison, the man who wrote it!
But worse than even this, they held – with absolutely no basis – that it was they who would decide what was constitutional or not. The states were tossed aside. Even the sitting President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, called it “a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”
Marbury’s Judicial review (the Supremes ruling on constitutionality) merely involves one branch of the national government providing a check on the other branches of the national government. After Marbury, no one could check the national government.
Washington DC was unleashed with Marbury v. Madison. What made it almighty was the 17th Amendment of 1913, which took the powers of the states and transferred them to Washington, by mandating the popular election of senators.
With senators being elected directly by the populace, the states were cut-out of the equation. In their place, political parties gained massive power, and nearly all power was consolidated in the city of Washington.
And so it is today. Washington is an unfettered beast. The system will NOT fix itself; the mechanisms to do that were lost a long time ago.
The Easy Way Out
Standing up against a beast like Washington DC is scary, to be sure. Understandably, not many people want to do such a thing. But if the beast is abusing you, what other choice do you have? You can certainly avoid or evade the beast, but we all know that the beast hurts people it catches avoiding it, so the risk of doing this isn’t zero either.
So, what’s a person to do? They hate their abuse, but outright disobedience would be scary. Unfortunately, many people have come up with a third option: Get someone else to do it for you.
Lots of writers have done this, for example: Write flamboyantly about the abuses people face and stir them to “rise up against the power.” Fairly seldom does the writer take big risks himself – he just stirs up others to do the scary stuff.
Something very similar happens to basically moral people who don’t want to risk pain and suffering: they imagine good guys riding in to save them.
But, as I say, these are genuinely decent people, and they are willing to take smaller risks to help the good guys: They will spend time and money promoting them, and they will even accept name-calling in many cases. They just don’t want to become full-blown rebels and outcasts.
The result of this is predictable: abuse by the political class. If the politicians show them a viable possibility every election cycle, they’ll keep voting their way forever… and the hero never really has to show up.
The Sad Truth
Let’s just say it:
No one is going to ride in and save you.
If you want things to get better, then YOU will have to make them better. YOU will have to stand up and take the arrows, yourself. Liberty, at this stage of human development, requires risk and pain.
I trust that you will remember the end of Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount: That it is not those who call upon his name who will be saved, but only those who DO the things he said.
Likewise in this situation, our only hope of salvation lies in DOING.
Paul Rosenberg
FreemansPerspective.com
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It’s YOUR Constitution Obama is Shredding
The United States of America was formed on the foundations recorded in our Declaration of Independence. As acknowledged by even our federal government archives, “Drafted by Thomas Jefferson between June 11 and June 28, 1776, the Declaration of Independence is at once the nation’s most cherished symbol of liberty and Jefferson’s most enduring monument.”
That document and the foundation of our nation has but only three fundamental precepts – 
- “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
- “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;”
- “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Precept #1 establishes that everything that follows is not based upon British Common Law, but rather upon “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
Precept #2 establishes that the government has no power without the consent of the governed. That which the people do not consent to, is beyond the scope and power of the government, period.
Precept #3 establishes that when “the governed” deem it that their government has become destructive towards Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness… it is the right and the duty of “the governed” to alter or abolish that government and institute new government that will once again serve the common interests of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
It is important to note that in the original handwritten document, the term used to describe these rights is “inalienable” – not to be confused with “unalienable” used in many reproductions of the Declaration today.
While these two words are similar, they are not the same, or they were not the same at the time the word inalienable was written into the Declaration. Whereas unalienable simply meant – “Not alienable; that cannot be alienated; that may not be transferred; as unalienable rights.” – the word inalienable is much more specific and restrictive – “Unalienable; that cannot be legally or justly alienated or transferred to another. The dominions of a king are inalienable. All men have certain natural rights which are inalienable. The estate of a minor is inalienable, without a reservation of the right of redemption, or the authority of the legislature.”
The entire foundation for our Charters of Freedom is based not upon man-made laws, but upon the inalienable God given Rights which exist in Natural Law, and remain forever beyond the scope and authority of the legislature. Our inalienable rights are “endowed by our Creator,” and protected by the Charters of Freedom.
In essence, inalienable natural rights are beyond the authority of the legislature, the only branch of government entrusted by the people with the authority to make law. It is upon these foundational inalienable rights that the US Constitution was drafted and adopted by the early colonies in 1787.
Noah Webster’s 1828 First American Edition Dictionary defines our Constitution as follows –
“The established form of government in a state, kingdom or country; a system of fundamental rules, principles and ordinances for the government of a state or nation. In free states, the constitution is paramount to the statutes or laws enacted by the legislature, limiting and controlling its power; and in the United States, the legislature is created, and its powers designated, by the constitution.”
A constitutional government is a limited government, which explains why many anti-American politicians and law professors want to terminate the Constitution, unleashing an unbridled government power operating without and at odds with the consent of the governed.
The preamble of your Constitution is critical to everything that follows.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
It is this brief text which lays the foundation for everything else. It identifies the point of origin, “We the People of the United States”… it identifies the purpose, “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” and it identifies the context, a constitutional government, a very limited governmental power.
It is all of these foundational precepts which Barack Hussein Obama and his cabal of anti-American thugs hope to destroy forever. Before going further, I must point out for our nations ill-educated, that by General Welfare, our founders did not mean food stamps or free cell phones.
Obama has repeatedly said “we are not a Christian nation” – even though nearly every Founder was a Christian, Jefferson borrowed all of his concepts from Judeo-Christian teachings and based everything on God given inalienable rights and Natural Law; and the fact that over 70% of Americans still proclaim the Christian faith today, over 90% proclaiming a faith in God.
Obama did not say this just to appease his Muslim brothers and sisters, though I’m sure his words were quite comforting to jihadists everywhere. He said this because he knows that a Christian nation places its trust in God, God given inalienable rights and the Laws of Nature, not of men.
Obama said this because before men can truly rule all mankind, they must first destroy God and the Christian social fabric that created this nation and once dominated the nation and the world. Obama said this to open the gates of the nation to all worldly evils.
Barack Hussein Obama is not a fool, he is the great deceiver. But God is not deceived and neither are God’s children. Our Founders told us that what they created in our Charters of Freedom were only well-suited for a moral society and they were right.
In a speech to the military in 1798, John Adams warned his fellow countrymen stating, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Things have changed a bit since then. Today we do have a government armed to the teeth, which is seeking to disarm decent honest American citizens in direct violation of the Charters of Freedom and everything they stand for.
Noah Webster, author of the first American Speller and the first Dictionary said, “[T]he Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis, or rather the source of all genuine freedom in government. . . . and I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of that religion have not a controlling influence.”
But people who exist in an immoral abyss are easily deceived by men like Barack Hussein Obama. Still, the children of God see right through the deception. This explains why Christians are mocked, belittled, and labeled as “extremists” or “crackpots” or even “potential domestic terrorists.”
It is not God’s laws that immoral people revere, but rather man-made laws, specifically, laws put in place to benefit them at the expense of other Americans. Even though the government will turn their guns on these people as well, so long as they are free to feed from the public trough, they are not concerned with where or how the government fills that trough.
The best example is the current assault on Americans Second Amendment Rights under the guise of stopping the next Sandy Hook tragedy. No crime statistics support the current gun grab by federal Marxists and even if they did, the Charters of Freedom place the individual right to keep and bear arms beyond the constitutional authority of the federal government.
“I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.” – George Mason, Co-author of the Second Amendment
“The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.” – Zachariah Johnson
“Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence;” – George Washington, First President of the United States
There are no constitutional restrictions on what type of arms citizens have the inalienable right to keep and bear. Our nation’s Founders were quite clear about their intentions… “To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.” – Richard Henry Lee
Many modern liberals who support federal gun control claim that the Founders meant muskets, as those were the arms at the time. Of course, there was no federal government capable of threatening American sovereignty and security with the full arsenal of today’s U.S. Military and ATF at that time either.
That’s really the point… as our federal government would become more powerful, it would become more tyrannical as well. The Founders dealt with this problem for all posterity by simply saying – “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government” and providing the Second Amendment as the means by which to secure liberty.
The point to all of this is that the Charters of Freedom remain the foundation of these United States. Without those documents, there is no United States. The Federal Government was created by the several states to exist at the pleasure of the states and the people.
When the federal government no longer serves the common interest of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, it is the right and duty of the people to alter that government, returning it to its constitutional foundations.
Contrary to modern propaganda, our federal government does not have “supremacy” over the states and the people. Only within the enumerated powers authorized by the people and the states does the federal government have any power at all.
The people must create a ground-swell movement that will alter the current state and direction of the federal government before there is no choice but to abolish it and start over.
To save this nation, the people must first save their individual states by enacting legislative measures that will return each state to .
Unless and until the people clean up a highly corrupt and fraudulent election process, the election booth is off the table as a means of solving anything.
If the people allow a runaway federal government to strip them of their Second Amendment rights, they will have no other rights. And unless the people unite to fight, divided, they will fall.
No matter what side of the political arena you sit on, this stuff matters to you and every American, unless you are a fool.
As JFK put it, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
Unite and fight peacefully now while you can alter rather than abolish the system of self-governance created some 236 years ago. Our Founders created a system designed to protect freedom and liberty forever, so long as the people remained forever moral and vigilant.
The future of the United States is not in Obama’s hands, unless the people allow it.
JB Williams
Co-Founder
www.PatriotsUnion.org
www.VeteranDefenders.org
www.ThePatriotsNews.com
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Would States Secede to Protect Their Citizens?
By Alan Caruba
Many, if not most, Americans are unaware that the nation is composed of separate republics with their own constitutions. They are, of course, the individual states.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved respectively, or to the people.” – Tenth Amendment
By tying compliance with federal laws and regulation to receiving funds, the states have been coerced to accept programs that limit freedoms enumerated in the Constitution and the passage of Obamacare is but one example. Some twenty states have refused to set up the mandated insurance exchanges. Obamacare grants the government complete control over the provision of medical care that every American has formerly received from the free market health system that it destroyed. It gives the federal government control over our lives in terms of who lives or dies.
As noted on the website of the Tenth Amendment Center: “The Founding Fathers has good reason to pen the Tenth Amendment.”
“The issue of power – and especially the great potential for a power struggle between the federal and the state governments – was extremely important to the America’s founders. They deeply distrusted government power, and their goal was to prevent the growth of the type of government that the British has exercised over the colonies.”
“Adoption of the Constitution of 1787 was opposed by a number of well-known patriots including Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and others. They passionately argued that the Constitution would eventually lead to a strong, centralized state power which would destroy the individual liberty of the People. Many in this movement were given the poorly-named tag ‘Anti-Federalists.’”
“The Tenth Amendment was added to the Constitution of 1787 largely because of the intellectual influence and personal persistence of the Anti-Federalists and their allies.”
Their worst fears are coming true as the nation heads into 2013. In just four years, the Obama administration, through its profligate borrowing and spending, has brought the nation to the brink of financial collapse and, as we have seen, the refusal of the President to negotiate anything than the current Band-Aid to avoid the “fiscal cliff” for another two months, has brought the nation to a point where the collapse of the U.S. dollar is not just imminent, but likely.
When that occurs the individual states may elect to secede in order to avoid having the federal government nationalize their National Guard units or take control of their state police to enforce whatever measures it might take to control the population. Individual state law enforcement authorities in cities and towns would need similar protection. Reportedly, massive amounts of funding have been directed to them to ensure their cooperation.
It would be a means to protect their citizens insofar as state constitutions grant the same rights as found in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. It would not surprise me to see Texas lead the way. Others would follow.
You know things are bad when historians like Arthur Herman, writing on the January 3 Fox News, says that “Washington’s Republicans and Democrats alike have become the toll collectors on the road to serfdom.” Citing recent riots in Argentina, Herman said that “Argentina reveals who really suffers when those who create a nation’s wealth get mugged by those who spend it—as just happened this week in Washington.”
If the private sector manages to rally this year, it may buy some time before the midterm elections in 2014. A letter to the editor in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune summed up the problem neatly. “Let’s look at what we have learned from this election: Twenty-one of 22 incumbent senators were re-elected, and 353 of 373 incumbent members of the House were re-elected. The American people have re-elected 94 percent of the incumbents who were running for re-election to an institution that has an approval rating of about 9 percent. This indicates, as an electorate, we are a nation of idiots. We’re now stuck with the useless, dysfunctional government that we deserve.”
The U.S. Constitution was written in the wake of the failure of the Articles of Confederation, the first attempt to unite the states for the common good of the growing nation. It is the product of some of the finest minds, the most dedicated advocates of liberty, to gather in one place at one time. It is the oldest, living Constitution in the world. It was adopted on September 17, 1787 and ratified in June of 1788.
On December 17, 1791, the first ten amendments—the Bill of Rights—were ratified. It is a list of immunities from interference by the federal government and the fears of the Founders are now being borne out by a government that is too large, borrows and spends too much money, and has departments such as the Homeland Security that threaten the rights of free speech, travel, and other freedoms. Every U.S. citizen is now subject to government surveillance more typical of a totalitarian government than one that respects and protects their personal security and rights.
This is why the United States could find itself in a rebellion that will rival the causes of the Civil War, itself a state’s rights conflict in addition to the issue of slavery that had hung over the Constitution since its ratification; an effort to “kick the can down the road” the Founders agreed to in order to get it ratified.
It is not beyond the imagination that a deliberately created crisis would prompt individual states to withdraw from the Union to protect themselves and their citizens, otherwise known as “the people.”
Related articles
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The Next American Civil War
A Commentary by J. D.Longstreet
“Tyrants preserve themselves by sowing fear and mistrust among the citizens by means of spies, by distracting them with foreign wars, by eliminating men of spirit who might lead a revolution, by humbling the people, and making them incapable of decisive action…” … Aristotle
You’d think ole “Ari” might have been peering through some sort of cosmic window into modern day America some 2300 years ago with comments such as those above.
There’s another way to look at it, as well. One can grudgingly admit that the Greeks, of 2300 years ago, were smarter than modern Americans. In my estimation — you’d be right. So, I tend to go with the latter explanation.
See, America is building a head of steam preparing to go to war with itself a second time at this very moment. This is not unusual — not in America. We have already had two revolutions. You may recall the American Revolution against Great Britain and the second — the War for Southern Independence, often erroneously referred to as the American Civil War, or the War Between the States.
Tensions are running high all across the country as citizens are rushing to arm themselves with the closest thing resembling combat weaponry they can possible find. Ammunition of all calibers is disappearing for the shelves of gun shops and back orders at the manufacturing plants are piled high.
Americans are preparing to dig-in. In other words they are preparing for a fight. They are preparing for the day when the words run out, as they surely will. They will then have no other alternative than to turn — as their forefathers have done since the country was founded — to the gun.
Look. Nobody really knows how many guns are in the hands of private citizens in America. Many have multiple weapons. A few are even registered, but, my guess is — the vast majority are not registered anywhere for exactly the reason Americans feel they are being driven, herded, as it were, to armed resistance. Of the weapons known to be in the hands of private civilian Americans there are enough, according to some reports, to arm every man woman and child in America today — well over three hundred million.
That’s a lot of guns, but not nearly as many as there will be in 2013. Manufacturers are finding it impossible to keep up with demand for their guns.
The old expression: “Fools rush in” is as apropos a word, or phrase, as I can conger to describe the actions of the so-called “gun grabbers” in America in recent days. Their propagandists and boosters in the press and the Mainstream Media added to the mental light weights already liberally salted throughout the US Congress and White House are mindlessly fanning the flames of a conflagration that threatens to consume the country in another American war over the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution — including the Bill of Rights. These are rights sacred to Americans. These are the rights for which they have been willing to valiantly lay down their lives to protect since the birth of the nation. They are no less ready to put their lives on the line once again. I do not think our current “masters” fully understand that.
Look. Those who would disarm America seem oblivious to the buzz saw into which they are mindlessly running. Their naivete is monumental, off the scale. When describing weapons they want banned, their description of such weapons makes it clear they haven’t the foggiest notion what they are talking about. It is also clear they are operating from pure emotion with no reason mixed in. They often describe weapons they want banned. They don’t seem to know that those weapons have already been banned since the 1930′s in America. They use the term “assault weapon” when there is actually no such weapon, only a political term to describe a weapon that is, well, scary looking.
In their ignorance, they cannot grasp that even if a gun ban were successful, a black market in guns and ammunition will spring up, almost overnight, and will make Prohibition resemble a Sunday school picnic. Gun owners and those familiar with guns know, already, that guns are fairly simple to make, many with off the shelf, readily available, parts.
The very first firefight between government agents and American private citizens will be the ignition point of an all consuming maelstrom that will inundate the nation and render null and void any chance that America might reconstitute itself into its former image afterwards.
To the folks on the left, the gun grabbers, if there is any doubt in your minds that Americans will defend their constitutional rights to the death, simply drive across the Lincoln Bridge and take a long look at row after row of white grave markers at Arlington National Cemetery. As you gaze upon that place of honor, remember, we are the sons, grandsons, and great-grand sons of the men lying there. We are no less inspired than they to defend the constitution against all enemies — domestic and foreign.
For those of you who purportedly serve the public in your position within the Congress, understand that we are taking careful note of your maneuvering to deny us our constitutional rights and we will be working tirelessly to see that your political career is ended when next you stand for election. That is a promise.
The idiots in the Mainstream Media still do not understand that freedom of the press , freedom of speech, is only viable so long as the right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The job of the press is inextricably linked to the armed citizen. If the armed American goes, so does the independent, non-state-controlled press. Freedom of the press, freedom of speech, will disappear.
It is such a simple thing — when thought through. But that’s the problem. They aren’t thinking. They are reacting out of raw emotion — certainly NOT reason. It is their handlers, however, who ARE reasoning. They reason, and rightfully so, that they cannot accomplish their agenda as long as the American citizen is armed. And so the useful idiots of the Mainstream Media are trotted out to happily make fools of themselves in service to the political left, which will grind them into so much dust once their goals are realized.
It is such idiocy as this that brings men to grapple at each other’s throat.
And here we are again, preparing to do battle with each other, brother against brother, over an issue that was settled two and a half centuries ago.
At first glance it appears to be lunacy of the highest order — and yet — here we are on the cusp of violence to defend something the political left, an authoritarian cabal itself, cannot abide, AT ALL: personal freedom, individual freedom.
Remember that Aristotle said: “Tyrants preserve themselves by … by eliminating men of spirit who might lead a revolution, by humbling the people, and making them incapable of decisive action… .” Could this be why over a dozen of the US’s highest military officers have been hounded from service in recent months? Is it why this financial crises has dragged on and on … to keep us humble and incapable of decisive action?
And now they intend to disarm us.
Look. There is so much pent-up anger in America today that if this argument over gun control ever gets beyond the talking stage it is reasonable to believe there will be violence on a scale not seen since the 1860′s in this country.
I would ask the political left if they understand that this is only a temporary argument over gun control? Do they understand it will quickly become an argument over whether or not the country continues to exist as a single fifty state entity or breaks up into separate countries? I don’t think they do. Indeed, I don’t think most Americans understand that once this fight begins, in earnest, there will be no turning back and when it is ended — there will be no going back, either.
I don’t want a war in my homeland, either. But, dear reader, THIS is exactly how they begin.
Related articles
- American Civil War files made public (thehimalayantimes.com)
- The 2nd American CIVIL war is about to Start but how soon as White House receives secession pleas from all 50 states (antinewworldorderparty.wordpress.com)
- Average Guys With Guns (lewrockwell.com)
- Obama Effort to strip constitutional gun rights may start American Civil War (freedomoutpost.com)
Defending the Supremacy Clause via State Nullification
Posted by William Kennedy
The major argument used by those that oppose Nullification is the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, but the arguments for the Supremacy Clause ARE the arguments for Nullification.
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. Article VI, US Constitution
Timothy Bloodworth in the State Ratifying Convention of North Carolina stated the consensus of those that opposed the Supremacy Clause when he stated, “It appears to me to sweep off all the Constitutions of the states. It is a total repeal of every act and Constitution of the states. The Judges are sworn to uphold it. It will produce an abolition of the state governments. Its sovereignty absolutely annihilates them.”
So, was Timothy Bloodworth and others who opposed the Constitution and the Supremacy Clause right or were the Federalists?
The major architects of the Constitution and those that led the fight for its adoption laid down what the Supremacy Clause meant in reality at the Ratifying Conventions, by doing so they defended State Sovereignty, and set the stage for the negation of unconstitutional actions.
Alexander Hamilton promised during the New York Ratifying Convention that the, “supreme Legislature has only general powers and the civil and domestic concerns of the people are regulated by the laws of the several States. … If the State governments were to be abolished, the question would wear a different face; but this idea is inadmissible. They are absolutely necessary to the system. Their existence must form a leading principle in the most perfect Constitution we could form.” And later he said, ““I maintain that the word supreme imports no more than this — that the Constitution, and laws made in pursuance thereof, cannot be controlled or defeated by any other law. The acts of the United States, therefore, will be absolutely obligatory as to all the proper objects and powers of the general government…but the laws of Congress are restricted to a certain sphere, and when they depart from this sphere, they are no longer supreme or binding”. And again In Federalist #33: “It will not, I presume, have escaped observation that it expressly confines this supremacy to laws made pursuant to the Constitution….” (Emphasis Added)
Or this from Thomas McKean, at the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention: “The meaning [of the Supremacy Clause] which appears to be plain and well expressed is simply this, that Congress have the power of making laws upon any subject over which the proposed plan gives them a jurisdiction, and that those laws, thus made in pursuance of the Constitution, shall be binding upon the states”. (Emphasis added)
And from the First North Carolina Ratifying Convention where James Iredell said, “When Congress passes a law consistent with the Constitution; it is to be binding on the people. If Congress, under pretense of executing one power, should, in fact, usurp another, they will violate the Constitution.” (Emphasis added)
James Madison further defended the Supremacy Clause in Federalist #45 by stating, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” (Emphasis added)
Then we have Noah Webster writing as “America” also explaining the Supremacy Clause when he stated, “you know that the powers of the Congress are defined, to extend only to those matters which are in their nature and effects, general. You know, the Congress cannot meddle with the internals police of any State, or abridge its Sovereignty. And you know, at the same time, that in all general concerns, the laws of Congress must be supreme, or they must be nothing.” (Emphasis added)
Repeatedly the Federalist indorsed arguments establishing federal supremacy in the areas that were laid out in the enumerated powers of the Constitution but in doing so, they recognized that in ALL other areas the states were supreme. This is what has come to be known as “dual federalism” or “dual sovereignty” and this is the common thread put forth in defense of the Supremacy Clause. They clearly intended that the states be a check on the general government exceeding its authority.
Thus by their very defense the proponents of the Supremacy Clause they established the concept of Nullification if not the word, that came later with Thomas Jefferson. Because as they the writers and ratifiers repeatedly stated that unconstitutional laws were “no longer supreme or binding” and “Congress cannot meddle with the internal police of any state, or abridge its Sovereignty”, they clearly intended for the states to be a “check” on the general government.
So, if the states where to be a check on the unconstitutional actions how where they to do so?
Well Thomas Jefferson said when writing in the Kentucky Resolves opposing the Alien and Sedition and Acts; “Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government … whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”
And, …”that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the constitution, would be the measure of their powers…
That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour (sic) of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.” (Emphasis added)
And what did Madison say when writing the Virginia Act opposing the same Alien and Sedition Acts?
“That this Assembly (Virginia) doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them. (Emphasis added)
“…That government was an agent. It could not be the judge of its own powers. To allow it to be so would mean nothing less than a government of unlimited power, a tyranny. The partners to the Constitution, the sovereign peoples of the States, were the final judges of what they had intended the Constitution to mean. When the general government exceeded its power it was the right and duty of the State to interpose its authority and defend its people from federal acts of tyranny – yes, to render a federal law inoperative in the State’s jurisdiction…” (Emphasis added)
Clearly, our Founders “are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government”, they established the means for the states to defend themselves and their citizens from a general government that exceeding its authority and that power is NULLIFICATION.
I think the best description of what NULLIFICATION is and is not is found in Nullification: It’s Officialby Derek Sheriff.
“Nullification is not secession or insurrection, but neither is it unconditional or unlimited submission. Nullification is not something that requires any decision, statement or action from any branch of the federal government. Nullification is not the result of obtaining a favorable court ruling. Nullification is not the petitioning of the federal government to start doing or to stop doing anything. Nullification doesn’t depend on any federal law being repealed. Nullification does not require permission from any person or institution outside of one’s own state.
So just what IS “official” nullification you might be asking?
Nullification begins with a decision made in your state legislature to resist a federal law deemed to be unconstitutional. It usually involves a bill, which is passed by both houses and is signed by your governor. In some cases, it might be approved by the voters of your state directly, in a referendum. It may change your state’s statutory law or it might even amend your state constitution. It is a refusal on the part of your state government to cooperate with, or enforce any federal law it deems to be unconstitutional.
Nullification carries with it the force of state law. It cannot be legally repealed by Congress without amending the US Constitution. It cannot be lawfully abolished by an executive order. It cannot be overruled by the Supreme Court. It is the people of a state asserting their constitutional rights by acting as a political society in their highest sovereign capacity. It is the moderate, middle way that wisely avoids harsh remedies like secession on the one hand and slavish, unlimited submission on the other. It is the constitutional remedy for unconstitutional federal laws.”
William Kennedy [send him email] is the State Director for the North Carolina Tenth Amendment Center. A strong supporter of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights with special emphasis on State Sovereignty protected by the Tenth Amendment.
Related articles
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- Nullification and Obamacare: rejection of the rule of law (inpropriapersona.com)
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- Refuting Historical Ignorance On Secession & Nullification! (politicalvelcraft.org)
Continents of the World
Mb50's "Liquid Mud" Rant 