Lawless Constitution - Something Called Democracy

[UPDATE Below]

Chris Williams lives in Fortuna and is one of a rare few that actually "gets it." His letter to the Times-Standard Editors is neat, clean, simple to understand, and right on the subject issue. He defines the real war raging within America today. The battle lines are drawn between the law abiding, those that believe in, support and defend the rule of law, versus the corrupt lawless Anarchists that believe they are the Law. Democracy is reduced to mob rule, guilt by accusation and mass anarchy. No one is held responsible for breaking the law and NEVER held accountable for undisputed and admit gross crimes. (Times-Standard Letter to the Editor, May 2, 2014)

 Here is his letter:

First they came for Donald Sterling ...

We must remember that freedom of speech is a right guaranteed to us by our Constitution, and that includes all speech, even if offensive, inaccurate, unpopular or just plain dumb. But, with political correctness running amok in our society today, racist or rude comments, even uttered privately, are now grounds for public condemnation, expulsion, job loss, or more. 

We may all deplore the comments made by Donald Sterling, L.A. Clippers' owner, but he's been unfairly found guilty in the court of public opinion, thanks to selective media outrage. Sterling's alleged words, taped illegally by a vengeful girlfriend in the privacy of his own home, are likely inadmissible in a court of law because secret taping of conversations is illegal in California, yet he's already been tried and convicted by sensation-seeking media and an uninformed public, both eager to rush to judgment. 

The NBA commissioner also over-reacted by banning Sterling for life, imposing a hefty fine, and illegally confiscating his team, as words alone are not legal grounds for confiscating private property. 

That many Americans condone these actions shows a dangerous misunderstanding of our founding principles. Freedom of speech means no one is punished for expressing negative opinions, critical comments, racial slurs, or for just being a jerk. 

We all have the right to freedom of speech, private property, privacy, non-self-incrimination and more, but all of our rights derive from a strongly defended Constitution, which is specifically what makes us free citizens and not enslaved subjects. [Emphasis mine.]

Chris Williams
Fortuna

Currently no one in the U.S. is "strongly defending the Constitution." They may believe they are, but that perception is only a hazy illusion. Everyone believes they have the god-given right to interpret the Law as they see fit - for their own self-interests. Then they go off and do whatever they damned well want to do. And then, Lord have mercy on the poor bastard that dares say anything. You're lucky to get away with your life.

Have a minor problem with your neighbor, call him or her on the telephone or speak to them over the fence, even though you try to keep the conversation civil and decent and the next thing you know you've got two, three even four EPD officers at your door threatening you with all kinds of mayhem for threatening your neighbor or some other such action. Does you no good to deny any such action or statements took place. You called them or spoke to them and that's all they need to know. "Do it again and your ass goes to jail," simple as that. So, tell me how do you work out your, now rather extensive problems with your neighbor? You don't dare say anything. If you do, they use it against you, even if you didn't say anything of the sort to start with. You are in a virtual state of war whether you want to be or not.

So, how often do you actually stop and red lights and stop signs?

[Source]

[UPDATE :: May 6, 2014] - Gangster State America - Where is America’s Democracy?

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
"Anyone who looks carefully behind the veil of words cannot find democracy in America. For years I have been writing that the US government is no longer accountable to law or to the people (see, for example, my book, How America Was Lost).  The Constitution has been set aside, and the executive branch is degenerating into Caesarism."

--Joe

You Are Being Watched...

[UPDATE :: December 9, 2013]

Local Law Enforcement Using NSA Methods To Spy On Cellphones

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Juan Cole posted this:

FBi Laptop Camera Snooping and Orwell’s 1984: Side by Side ComparisonBy Juan Cole | Dec. 7, 2013 |Jon Schwartz ( @tinyrevolution ) posted this to Twitter. It is a side by side comparison of a passage from “1984″ to the news report from a former senior FBI official that the FBI can turn on the laptop cameras of individuals without activating the red light that shows the camera is operating.

The Washington Post broke the story. If the FBI is doing this without a warrant it is yet another nail in the coffin of the US 4th Amendment, which guarantees people the right not to have government snoop through their personal effects without evidence of wrongdoing and a judge’s permission.

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Obama continues to shred the U. S. Constitution and the American people cheer him on.

--Joe

What Showed Up on the Internet Today.

This is from The Patriot Post:
'I Will Obey the Constitution'
and this is what turned up about the same time on Firedoglake:
Obama Admin Claims to Support Cellphone Unlocking but TPP Leak Shows Opposite

Here's an excerpt of both pages, first The Patriot Post:

“This is part of the theory of George Bush, that he can make laws as he goes along. I disagree with that. I taught the Constitution for 10 years. I believe in the Constitution. I will obey the Constitution of the United States.” In case you needed a reminder, these words were spoken by none-other than then-Senator Barack Obama in May of 2008.

and from Firedoglake:

When you buy something from someone you own it, right? Not if President Obama has his way on cellphones. And by his way, I mean the telecom monopolies that pull his strings’ way. Cellphone unlocking, which allows owners to alter the phone they purchased and use it with other carriers should they so desire, is a front line issue on the fight for rational copyright laws. Telecom companies want the practice of unlocking a cellphone to lead to prosecutions and imprisonment because free competition somehow means government granted monopolies.

While the Obama Administration has publicly backed cellphone users rights to unlock their cellphones  – the information published by Wikileaks on the Trans-pacific Partnership (TPP) tells a different story.

The leaked treaty draft shows that while the White House was championing restoring free market principles to phones, the U.S. proposed that the TPP lock in the process that allowed the Librarian of Congress to rule this technology as illegal through international law. This would make potential reforms like H.R. 1892 impossible.* It should be noted that Canada did submit an amendment proposal that could allow unlocking, but neither the United States nor any other country supported it.

Surprise. The reason the Obama Administration wanted its TPP positions to be a secret is because they are lying to the public about them. The Most Transparent Administration in History© strikes again.

For the rest of the article continue here.

America's New Reality - An Imaginary Constitution

The article needs to be repeated. Juan Cole writes on his blog October 25, 2013, How the US Government Betrayed the Constitution and invented an Imaginary Fascist One

[Fascism: a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power,forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.] -Dictionary.com

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How the US Government Betrayed the Constitution and invented an Imaginary Fascist One

Posted on 10/24/2013 by Juan Cole

The idea of having a strong Federal government was controversial in the early United States, and one of the ways Federalists reassured Americans that it wouldn’t become tyrannical was to append a Bill of Rights to the Constitution.

That attempt to prevent despotism has failed, because the Federal government and its various agencies have set aside the Bill of Rights as a dead letter, substituted for them a bizarre set of interpretations of law, and either avoid having the courts adjudicate their fascist fantasies or managed to have appointed to the bench unethical or authoritarian judges that will uphold virtually anything they do.

How corrupt our system has become is evident when even the New Yorkeremphasizes that a secret Senate report found that torture in the Bush years was “unnecessary” and “ineffective.” Not that it was “unconstitutional.”

The Eighth Amendment of the US constitution forbids ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’ US courts have found that the Framers’ injunction was intended to be dynamic, and did not only forbid those things thought barbaric in 1789 but those things contemporary Americans would find cruel and unusual. As Cornell Law school put it,

‘in Weems v. United States it was concluded that the framers had not merely intended to bar the reinstitution of procedures and techniques condemned in 1789, but had intended to prevent the authorization of “a coercive cruelty being exercised through other forms of punishment.” The Amendment therefore was of an “expansive and vital character”41 and, in the words of a later Court, “must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” ‘

If a sheriff in a small town arrested a shoplifter and waterboarded him 54 times, the sheriff would go to jail. Federal officials? Not so much.

Let us just underline the Supreme Court’s diction here in Weems. The Framers had sought, they said, to forestall “a coercive cruelty being exercised through other forms of punishment.”

Coercive cruelty. Coercive cruelty was the hallmark of treatment of Federal detainees in the Bush era. That was what Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo were about. Some prisoners were likely victims of manslaughter by coercive cruelty (it is hard to know when to stop).

Waterboarding is illegal (not to mention setting German shepherds on people to viciously bite them). Professor of Law Wilson R. Huhn writes:

“Three major treaties that the United States has signed and unambiguously ratified prohibit the United States from subjecting prisoners in the War on Terror to this kind of treatment. First, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, which the Senate unanimously ratified in 1955, prohibits the parties to the treaty from acts upon prisoners including “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; . . . outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.”[18] Second, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the Senate ratified in 1992, states that “[n]o one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”[19] Third, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, which the Senate ratified in 1994, provides that “[e]ach State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction,”[20] and that “[e]ach State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture . . . .”

The United States has enacted statutes prohibiting torture and cruel or inhuman treatment. It is these statutes which make waterboarding illegal… The four principal statutes which Congress has adopted to implement the provisions of the foregoing treaties are the Torture Act,… the War Crimes Act…,and the laws entitled “Prohibition on Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of Persons Under Custody or Control of the United States Government”… and “Additional Prohibition on Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.”… The first two statutes are criminal laws while the latter two statutes extend civil rights to any person in the custody of the United States anywhere in the world.

The Torture Act makes it a felony for any person, acting under color of law, to commit an act of torture upon any person within the defendant’s custody or control outside the United States…. Torture is defined as the intentional infliction of “severe physical or mental pain or suffering” upon a person within the defendant’s custody or control… To be “severe,” any mental pain or suffering resulting from torture must be “prolonged.”[29] Under this law, torture is punishable by up to twenty years imprisonment unless the victim dies as a result of the torture, in which case the penalty is death or life in prison.”

But somehow employees of the US military, the CIA and other Federal agencies managed to ignore all that. So yes, unnecessary and ineffective. But also, illegal and unconstitutional and treasonous.

Then of course there is the National Security Agency’s gutting of the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable search and seizure. As long as the unreasonable search and seizure happens on the internet, apparently that is all right. What arrogance, what hypocrisy, what fascism.

An honest appeals court just ruled that the government needs a warrant to put a tracking device on your car and follow you around by GPS. But your cell phone metadata also reveals your movements, and the NSA is scooping that information up, effectively following you around without a warrant, exactly what the court just found unjustified. But the Federal government (yes, the Obama administration) has succeeded in keeping NSA practices out of the courts.

While few Americans care that the NSA was intensively spying on the Mexicans, French and Germans, even on German chancellor Angela Merkel’s private cell phone, they should. The Bill of Rights were once a point of inspiration for human rights activists around the world. Much of what the youth who led the Arab upheavals of 2011 wanted was enshrined in the Bill of Rights. American ideals and rule of law were part of America’s soft power in the world. The European Union is suddenly less cooperative because of our allies’ outrage at being spied on. No one wants to be like creepy peeping toms or vicious torturers, and that is what Americans have become.

Moreover, the NSA foreign spying is racist. Yes, on top of everything else, it involves a racist hierarchy. The US doesn’t intensively spy on Canadians, British and Australians, i.e. on what were called in the 19th century ‘Anglo-Saxons.’ It is only the inferior races that Washington subjects to surveillance.

But all that is crashing and burning as the US government has betrayed those ideals over and over again. We’re being massively spied on by our government, our location, the people we call, the websites we visit, all being monitored constantly. And if the government decides we are terrorism suspects, we could well be tortured. Martin Luther King’s principle of civil disobedience would be categorized as terrorism today, and if he were active in our time, instead of naming a Federal holiday after him, the government would have MLK waterboarded by police dressed up as military commandos.

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-Joe

President Barack Obama and The Oath of Office

On Sunday January 20, 2013, I had the privilege of watching the "Official" swearing in, the making "Legal" the Presidency of one Barack H. Obama. He affirmed or swore this "Oath" before God and witnessed by all humanity - more importantly witnessed and shared with his wife and two daughter. To lend validity to the "Sacredness" of his oath is the fact that he placed one hand, his left hand, on the Sacred Book The Holy Bible. Here are the 37 words of his Oath:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Please note, what he swears a solemn and sacred oath before and, therefore, empowered by Almighty God to do:  "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." He does NOT swear to be "The Commander and Chief. Nor does he swear to put the protection of America and Americans FIRST. Neither does he "swear" that his first and only responsibility is to provide "jobs" for all Americans. No! His ONLY physically attested and committed obligation and responsibility as President of these United States is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution."

History has already attested and testified to the facts and the absolute truth whether or not he has fulfilled his sworn, legally obligated duties as President of the United States. History has already determined whether or not his Oath of Office on Sunday, January 20, and again on January 21, 2013, was genuine or a lie. - [Picture Source]

--Joe

Our Worthless Constitution

The Constitution of the United States of America is only words on paper. Those words cannot make anyone do anything. They don't pack clubs and guns to beat people into submission; forcing them to yield all power. As the Supreme Court continues to debate and decide the constitutionality of law it cooperates and empowers the Legislative and Executive branches of Government to discredit, demean and void that very Constitution. The American people's elected representatives and their appointed cohorts that are sworn and tasked with defending and enforcing Constitutional Law use it to justify their criminal acts repudiating it's very legitimacy - it's right to exist.

So, what value is the U.S. Constitution? What protection does it provide for the people? If the U.S. Constitution amounts to nothing more than an inanimate, but revered document, what obligates anyone to it?

Before the United States could become legally united, the majority of the people had to create and accept a legal document to legitimize their right to exist, first as an independent people and second, as a sovereign nation. Replacing that legal document with the defacto rule by men delegitimizes the American people's legitimate existence. Rule of Men is defined when they justify their deliberate refusal and failure to obey and enforce the Law: "The punishment does not fit the crime, therefore the crime is disallowed." The "ends" now legally, by precedent "justify the means." To prove that, we have to go no further than the current President Barack Obama's conduct. Here's just one example: Collapsing U. S. Credibility. The historical record for the past twenty years in particular since 2000 clearly demonstrates America's slide into the black hole of anarchy and lawlessness - like cancer, evidence of their illegitimacy. Every American that stands outside of law is responsible for this. Every time you choose to run a stop sign you vote for corruption, you vote for lawless anarchy and chaos. You vote for this:

Nothing Justifies This - from Amnesty International. Read the article and view the clip, it needs to be experienced to realize this happens right here on American soil. It's time for you to make a choice.

--Joe

Judicial Killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki-MacLeod Cartoon

JUDICIAL?

CRIMINAL?
[MacLeod Cartoons]

--Joe