Obama, oaths and the end of constitutional government

WND

By Alan Keyes and John Haskins
January 20, 2009

Now steps onto the stage of world history a man apparently quite conscious that the Supreme Law of the United States prevents him from being president of the United States.

For why else would anyone hire lawyers and expend millions of dollars to avoid producing a $12.50 birth certificate to show eligibility under the Constitution? ‘Midst the rhythmic chants of a delirious, sycophantic media, inaugural splendor will substitute for simple proof that the United States of America will have a constitutionally legitimate president.

If Obama is not eligible, legally, the United States of America will have no president. A usurper will wield such power as few men have ever held, having no constitutional warrant. However beloved of the media or adored by racialist groupies, and irrespective of public support, Obama will be a tyrant, in the original sense of the word (from the Greek tyrannos meaning one who wields power to which he has no lawful claim). As he sends young soldiers to die, even the appearance of his usurpation of presidential powers will insult their sacrifice and thwart the Constitution they give their all to preserve. Even as he utters the oath – hand on Lincoln’s Bible – he will betray it, not upholding, protecting and defending the Constitution, but subverting it.

The elites insist that we should pretend to be convinced by an exhibition of a “certificate of live birth” via the Internet, lacking the very information the Constitution requires. On the strength of this we are to exercise blind faith and risk the consequences of an unconstitutional usurpation of the presidency?

“Put not your faith in men, but bind them down with the chains of the constitution,” Jefferson warned us. Caesar rose to power on the passions of men, and killed a republic. Napoleon did the same. So did Hitler, with strong support from the secularized, university-educated elite. But the elites approve as Obama whistles past the Constitution, just as they did when Mitt Romney flushed away the Constitution he’d sworn to uphold. They regard the Supreme Law of the United States as a dead letter, “living and breathing” of course, which is their code for dead and buried.

Like the sophisticated, educated elites in Weimar, Germany, they long to live under what they presume will be a benevolent dictatorship. This one will be different, they are quite sure: soft, touchy-feely, agreeably in tune with the restless, ever-mutating consensus of the chattering class. Thus was it in human history, until the Declaration birthed our state and federal constitutions, now just archaic platitudes, to shape naïve youths in American History classes as docile subjects of bureaucratic tyranny.

It would not be hard to clarify Obama’s eligibility to be president. The Constitution provided an entire branch of government to adjudicate constitutional questions. But judges have concocted various “rules” over the years that they cite as their license to violate the Constitution and to excuse their failure to uphold it. These they now use to claim that Americans lack standing to ask their courts for a judgment of fact required by our Supreme Law. They dismiss lawsuits that ask only that judges fulfill their oaths and uphold the Constitution. Are solemn oaths now meaningless?

Whether rooted in incompetence, cowardice or calculated cynicism, these dismissals of valid lawsuits are willful subversions of the Constitution, the inevitable result of legal education that substitutes judicial decrees for the authority of real laws and constitutions.

‘Discretion’ to violate one’s oath?

An article in the Michigan Law Review rehearses the legal gibberish being used to obscure a simple issue. It boils down to this: Constitutional law makes the Constitution unenforceable. By what anti-logic can a Constitution make itself unenforceable?

Clearly solemn oaths to uphold the Supreme Law of the United States are now meaningless. “We’ve washed our hands,” the judges are saying. Politicians are on the honor system now, they say.

But among those who claim that “prudential” or discretionary considerations prevail over solemnly sworn non-discretionary oaths, honor is obsolete. What remains is the law of the jungle, tarted up in lawyer-talk. It’s every man for himself. The strong versus the weak.

The article relies on the hidden presuppositions and circular legal reasoning that lawyers and judges use in totalitarian regimes. For example, a claim that citizens have no “standing” to demand that the law be carried out:

The three requirements for Article III standing are well-established. …

The author’s passing reference to Article III in the Constitution is a lawyer’s head-fake. Revealingly, he’s forced to take immediate cover in judges’ thoughts (which modern lawyers pretentiously call “case law”) rather than the Constitution itself:

Under current case law, plaintiffs in the cases challenging the presidential candidates’ eligibility probably lack standing. In fact, it is questionable whether anyone would have standing … in federal court as an initial matter, due to the prudential limitations on standing. … First, as described in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife and other cases … the Court has said. In Allen v. Wright, for example, the Court held …

The vocabulary and hidden dogma would not even make sense to those who wrote or ratified the Constitution: “Current case law.” “Well-established.” “Probably lack standing.” “Questionable.” “Prudential limitations.” “The Court has said.” “The Court held.” It is all about judges’ thoughts, which over the years produce multiple layers of self-contradiction.

Attempts to equate the modern fiction of judge-made “law” with the ancient system of English Common Law are inept or dishonest. Those who established our form of government left no room for the concept of judges’ opinions as law. The Massachusetts Constitution is more brutally explicit than most: “[T]he people … are not controllable by any other laws than those to which their constitutional representative body have given their consent.” (Part I, Article X.)

The term “case law” did not exist and could not have existed because it was a negation of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and of the United States of America itself. The term had to be invented much later by lawyers to hide their theft of power from the people. Portrayal of judges’ opinions as the law itself reveals that the Constitution has been put out to pasture – even when it is the subject of dispute. But fear not. Judges’ opinions about the Constitution are even better than the real thing.

Ironically, judges’ failure to carry out their oaths and uphold the Constitution fatally undermines the reasoning that supports their authentic role as “guardians of the Constitution.” As Founding Father Alexander Hamilton wrote:

“The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought of course, to be preferred; or, in other words the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.” (The Federalist Papers, No. 78, italics added)

Hamilton made clear binding principles of American law and government then universally understood and both explicit and implicit in our Constitutions:

the duty of judges to faithfully defend the original intent of the fundamental law of the United States is never discretionary, but always obligatory;

It is a duty to interpret, not to generate law;

jurisprudence is original intent jurisprudence or else it is not jurisprudence at all;

The Constitution is fundamental, which in plain English means simply that when not honestly interpreted and enforced the foundation of government is removed.

Some shout that “an election” cannot be overturned, Constitution or no constitution. This is irrational and is the road to tyranny.

A simple majority vote for any particular president can never trump the ground rules established by the people as a whole: the duly ratified Constitution which is the Supreme Law of the United States. Therein are found the rules by which a simply plurality of voters may legally impose on an unwilling remainder of the population a president by whom the remainder do not wish to be governed.

The sovereign collective act that ordained the Constitution determines the legitimacy of every subsequent act under its authority, including elections by the people. If the Supreme Law establishing the rules and boundaries of elections and government is abrogated, the legitimacy of the government itself is undermined. If any transient majority can use an ordinary election to bypass the Constitution, there is no Constitution, only the tyranny of the majority. Judges are obliged by their oath of office to declare illegal acts that violate the Constitution.

The legitimacy of government is not merely an abstract concern. Laws are more easily enforced, and with less occasion for violence and conflict, when government has the respect and allegiance of the people. Under despotic government based on fear, cults of personality and sharing of the spoils, power is the personal instrument of the rulers (res private). Under constitutional government, power belongs to the people (res publica), whose will and intention the Constitution declares. Loyalty to the Constitution displaces personal fealty as the focal point of respect for law. When public officials show contempt for the Constitution, they set the stage for an escalation of force as the instrument of the law; and for the eruption of civil conflict.

Throughout the history of the United States, the frequent descent of other nations (France, Italy, Germany, Spain, India, China, Sudan, etc.) into anarchy, violence and dictatorship has reminded conscientious leaders in America that inculcating respect and love for our Constitution is a matter of national survival. Enlightened self-interest made the Judiciary one of the chief promoters and guardians of this essential sentiment. So also public-spirited elements of the American elite were prudent enough to fear the consequences of letting our government slip into the pattern of devalued legitimacy that produces historic cycles of repression, violence and perpetual conflict seen around the world.

Today, technological advances and sweeping expansion of corporate enterprise have encouraged boundless self-satisfaction and arrogance among our elites. Through the virtual reality of the information media and economic manipulation, they shape perception, consciousness and behavior, dispensing, they believe, with the practical need for moral leadership and for education that inculcates character. They scorn character as the basis for self-government, creating in its stead a powerful illusion of their own infallible technical and economic competence. For now they preserve the outward appearance of respect for the people, but as modern techniques of despotism take their effect they will no longer need the mask of constitutional process to obscure the end of the age of government based upon the consent of the governed.

It is no accident that, as his hands reach for the levers of power, Barack Obama feels safe in refusing to show meticulous public compliance with the Constitution’s requirements. After all, among those who swear our solemn oaths, honor has gone out of style. Cavalier disregard for the Constitution and the authority of the sovereign People who ratified it as a whole, suggests the imminence of the power elite’s nonchalant abandonment of the very guarantee of our liberty.

Like the dog who didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes story, the silent complicity of America’s elites, including judges, elected officials and others sworn to uphold the Constitution, reveals to those who are not asleep, or blinded by selfish ambition, that the silver blaze of liberty is being extinguished by the very guardians who ought to be keepers of the flame.

A high-level Reagan era diplomat and long-time leader in the conservative movement, Alan Keyes is well-known as a staunch pro-life champion and an eloquent advocate for the re-establishment of respect for America's moral basis and the constitutional protection of the God-given, unalienable rights to life and liberty for all. His efforts to restore the eroded sovereignty of the American people by securing our borders, abolishing the federal income tax and bringing the federal Judiciary back within proper constitutional bounds continue. He formally severed his Republican Party affiliation in April of 2008 and thereafter became the presidential nominee of America's Independent Party. More information and useful links can be found at http://www.alankeyes.com/, http://www.aipnews.com/ or at http://www.selfgovernment.us/.

John Haskins, editor of http://www.undergroundjournal.net/, is a writer, editor and former media executive who has interviewed Nobel Prize winner and anti-communist hero Lech Walesa and Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the first post-communist prime minister of Poland, and reported from Albanian refugee camps during the Balkan War. He has written in the American Spectator, Insight and World magazines, on WorldNetDaily and other outlets on world affairs, constitutional issues, parents' rights and the direction of American society.

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That Sound You Heard Today

cross-posted from TOCB

This post was written and posted at TOCB the day the unconstitutional Wall Street bail out bill failed…

~Snooper~

That sound you heard today was Common Sense once thought to be dead and buried coming to life and coming home to roost.

That sound you heard today was the United States Constitution making itself noticed.

That sound you heard today was We The People getting our message made known.

That sound you heard today was socialists screaming from the rooftops in anguish and pain.

That sound you heard today was Collective Reasoning forcing itself upon the unreasonable and the intolerant.

That sound you heard today was the fat cats, crooks and robbers screeching in agony as their reign of deceit, lies and charlatanism being exposed.

That sound you heard today was Free Markets fixing itself in spite of government fabricated cure intrusion.

That sound you heard today was defective government meddling into financial markets coming to a screeching halt.

That sound you heard today was the sound of the demanding of Personal and Professional Accountability of those responsible for the current self-induced quagmire.

That sound you heard today was the sound of charlatans admitting, without the integrity to actually admit, failure.

That sound you heard today was the groans of those responsible being made known.

That sound you heard today were those trying to not get caught red-handed lying as being exposed as liars and having to face the American People for their lies.

That sound you heard today was the death of an unconstitutional Wall Street Bail Out Bill.

That sound you heard today was the politicians that actually still care about the United States Constitution standing up to be recognized as the Constitutional Caretakers that they are, both Democrat and Republican alike.

That sound you heard today was the Free Market Ghosts of days past being revived as if to say, "Leave us alone and we will take care of ourselves, thank you very much."

That sound you heard today was foolish people knowing that their days of defrauding the American People are gone.

That sound you heard today was a message being sent to CONgress and those in CONgress responsible for the self-induced idiocy CONgress has become: "The party is over."

That sound you heard today was the sound of We The People dictating to CONgress and not the other way around.

That sound you heard today was the American People reclaiming their Constitution and once more claiming it as their own as it does not belong to the government and never has.

That sound you heard today was the sound of Freedom annihilating the Socialist Demons of the Democrat and Republican Parties.

That sound you heard today was Free Enterprise reasserting itself.

That sound you heard today was Capitalism reasserting itself and granting the ability to either succeed or fail on one's own merit and not some governmental intrusion and fabricated reality.

That sound you heard today was Reality settling in.

That sound you heard today was Personal Responsibility raising its ugly head.

That sound you heard today was the inevitability of the official acknowledgment of the total and complete lack of leadership qualities of the Speaker of The House Nancy Pelosi being revealed for what it is...the worse leadership in the People's House in the history of this Nation.

That sound you heard today was the inevitability of the official acknowledgment of the total and complete lack of leadership qualities of the Senate leader Senator Harry Reid being revealed for what it is...the worse leadership in the People's Senate in the history of this Nation.

And I will ask the following: what program, policy or legislation of note that has had a positive influence on our Nation that the SoH Pelosi or Senate Leader Reid has accomplished in their two years of service? Someone please name me one. Just one. That is all I ask. I have been searching and I have not detected any. And they dare criticize others within and without or Nation? Please. Stop insulting our intelligence.

That sound you heard today was the Death Knell of American Socialism.

Selah.

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Senator Schumer and Supreme Court Judges-And THEY Say WE'RE Obstructionist!

This is word for word from Fidelis:

I posted this article while I was on my way to class tonight; there is a companion article in my email.

Lately, since the Republicans in Congress and the grass roots new media have BOTH stood up to the thugs, communists and do-nothings masquerading as respectable members of Congress (i.e., the Democrats), the Democrats have been whining the rest of us are--GASP-- "OBSTRUCTIONISTS".

They say this because we refuse to allow smoky back room deals being shoved down our throats (Immigration). They say this because the President continues to veto their surrender bills--even with the publicity stunt slumber party (in which they knew they didn't have enough votes to override the impending veto). They say this because we have had ENOUGH of their do-nothing, time wasting, tax-payer insulting, feel they can do what they want with OUR tax dollars worthless carcasses. They say this because we DEMAND they listen to the troops on the ground rather than the polls that stroke their already over-inflated egos (Just today one of the farthest left of the dinosaur media actually had to eat crow and acknowledge the truth in Iraq--the surge is WORKING and Iraqis are STEPPING UP to take over their own country and THEY SIMPLY CANNOT HANDLE THIS).

They say this because they are LOSING, because they are the WORST Congress ever inflicted upon this country and because they are terrified the average American citizen has had enough--and they WILL lose their jobs in the next election.

Their credibility is GONE.

You have the SOH conspiring with known states protecting terrorists, on a trip she was advised not to take--and by thumbing her nose at the American people, she screwed up a vitally important message entrusted to her by our ALLY, Israel.

You have a presidential candidate with no experience and no substance, one who swings in the wind and his policy changes when the wind does--stating unequivocally he will meet, without conditions, leaders (thugs?) of known terrorist regimes because we "don't talk enough".

You have a thief and liar finally letting her hair down, coming straight out and saying she intends to turn this country into a communistic, totalitarian state, punishing people for being successful by taking their rightfully earned wealth and plunging this country into the class of a third world country by doing so.

THESE are the people calling US obstructionist.

Now, you have this. A bunch of children saying they're going to blatantly ignore the Constitution in appointing judges because THEY'RE ineffective in running this country. But WE'RE the obstructionists. A bunch of bleating sheep who will NOT be happy until each body bag ever manufactured is filled--hopefully, in their eyes, with one of our troops. Holding funding for those troops (and therefore vitally needed armor, transportation and supplies) in their childish temper tantrums. Withholding funds that WILL lead to more troop deaths because THEY didn't get their way.

But WE'RE the obstructionists.

And, I GUARANTEE the moonbat brigade is going to go stark raving bonkers the more they get "Mitch-slapped"--hopefully, bonkers enough people will turn out in DROVES at election time to GET THESE OBSTRUCTIONISTS OUT OF WASHINGTON.

********************

Schumer to fight any new Bush High Court pick

Carrie Budoff
Politico.com
07-30-2007

New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a powerful member of the Democratic leadership, said Friday the Senate should not confirm another U.S. Supreme Court nominee under President Bush “except in extraordinary circumstances.”

“We should reverse the presumption of confirmation,” Schumer told the American Constitution Society convention in Washington. “The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.”

Schumer’s assertion comes as Democrats and liberal advocacy groups are increasingly complaining that the Supreme Court with Bush’s nominees – Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito – has moved quicker than expected to overturn legal precedents.

Um...perhaps because, rather than follow the principle of stare decisis required of all United States court actions, these previous "precedents" were either actual legislation from the bench or were truly unconstitutional. The reversal should NOT have been necessary because they never should have been legislated from the bench to begin with. The justices job is to INTERPRET the Constitution, not add to it the way Dr. Frankenstein added to his monster--a leg here, an arm there and oh, wait a minute, let's add a second head over there because that's what the "public" (communists aka democrats/liberals) wants.

Senators were too quick to accept the nominees’ word that they would respect legal precedents, and “too easily impressed with the charm of Roberts and the erudition of Alito,” Schumer said.

Once again...the justices causing such an uproar have actually been DOING THE JOB AS DELINEATED IN THE CONSTITUTION. They have begun to overthrow the non-legal "precedents" the better red than dead crowd wanted so badly. Abortion is illegal, not precedent. Nowhere in the Constitution is it acceptable to kill an unborn child and is in fact against the prevailing "law of the land". But then, communists and liberals like to kill helpless things. Further, just as prohibition was an absolute disaster, so was school busing. Prohibition was repealed; now, the ground has been broken for the same treatment to school busing.

“There is no doubt that we were hoodwinked,” said Schumer, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

This is just too stupid to acknowledge.

A White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said Schumer's comments show "a tremendous disrespect for the Constitution" by suggesting that the Senate not confirm nominees.

"This is the kind of blind obstruction that people have come to expect from Sen. Schumer," Perino said. "He has an alarming habit of attacking people whose character and position make them unwilling or unable to respond. That is the sign of a bully. If the past is any indication, I would bet that we would see a Democratic senatorial fundraising appeal in the next few days."

From another Fidelis article, here's how they reacted in the past:

“Republicans in the Senate went on to confirm 15 of President Clinton’s nominees. In contrast, the Democrat controlled Senate has only confirmed three of President Bush’s nominees in the first six months of this year. This is barely half the speed of which Senator Leahy considered ‘not acceptable’ seven years ago. Chairman Leahy is perfectly positioned to rectify the injustice of denying qualified nominees an up or down vote,” said Burch.

Schumer voted against confirming Roberts and Alito. In Friday’s speech, he said his “greatest regret” in the last Congress was not doing more to scuttle Alito.

And, why is that, ladies and gentlemen? BECAUSE THE MAN IS TERRIFIED conservative values might actually gain a foothold and be given a chance to grow again--showing him for the red-loving (ever notice how communists like the color red--like blood?) jerk he is.

“Alito shouldn’t have been confirmed,” Schumer said. “I should have done a better job. My colleagues said we didn’t have the votes, but I think we should have twisted more arms and done more.”

Oh REALLY? "Twisted more arms...?" Doesn't that fall under undue duress? Back room deals? Undue influence? LOBBYING?

While no retirements appear imminent, Bush still could have the opportunity to fill another vacancy on the court. Yet the two oldest members – Justice John Paul Stevens, 87, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 74 – are part of the court's liberal bloc and could hold off retirement until Bush leaves office in January, 2009.

Earlier this week, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, said he was persuaded by a conversation with Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who spoke with Specter at the Aspen Institute gathering in Colorado this month, to study the decisions of the Roberts Court. The term that ended in June was notable for several rulings that reversed or chipped away at several long-standing decisions, delighting conservatives but enraging liberals.

See above--of course they're going to investigate--they KNOW the decisions they call precedents are illegal and they're terrified the American public will finally wake up. Further, Breyer prefers to rely on "global" precedent rather than AMERICAN/CONSTITUTIONAL precedent. GLOBAL precedent has no bearing in the United States jurisdictions--and he is in blatant contempt of violating the Constitution himself.

Breyer has publicly raised concerns that conservative justices were violating stare decisis, the legal doctrine that, for the sake of stability, courts should generally leave precedents undisturbed.

Once again, stare decisis is required for all jurisprudence issues in the United States; however, it is invalid in dealing with global precedent and with illegal legislation from the bench.

“It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much,” Breyer said, reading his dissent from the bench in June to a 5-4 ruling that overturned school desegregation policies in two cities.

Well, he certainly tried to do a lot more. I think the green-eyed monster of jealousy plagues this idiot because he simply couldn't accomplish what he wanted to, and that was push more communist/democrat/liberal bias on the country through continued illegal activity from the bench.

Schumer said there were four lessons to be learned from Alito and Roberts: Confirmation hearings are meaningless, a nominee’s record should be weighed more heavily than rhetoric, “ideology matters” and “take the president at his word.”

And those are BAD THINGS??? In whose eyes? The unborn children who will live? The kids who won't be forcibly bused to a school they don't belong in, simply to satisfy a "quota"? And the funniest of all--"take the President at his word". Funny, he doesn't seem to understand that anywhere else.

“When a president says he wants to nominate justices in the mold of [Antonin] Scalia and [Clarence] Thomas,” Schumer said, “believe him.".

Yes--believe him. And, believe him when he says he's going to pull out the veto pen while you fritter troops lives away, while you endanger the country's security and while you embolden the enemy.

********************

Further, when it comes to abuses of the Constitution--all of the communist/democrat/liberals need to take a good look at who the TRUE shredders of the Constitution are--and the best place to start is in their own mirrors.

Now, we need to get back to the basics of said Constitution--quit favoring muslims with the religiosity of their fanaticism while slamming Christians and Jews. Quit giving special consideration to a barbaric, murderous political system (although not as bad as communism has proven to be in sheer numbers of corpses stacking up like cordwood--YET) and their "religious propaganda symbols" over and above the same considerations, beliefs and symbols of other religions such as Christianity and Judaism.

When was the last time you heard of your tax dollars being used to install "religiously acceptable" wash facilities and religiously correct cafeterias on a publicly funded campus for Christians and Jews? You haven't--and you won't. But go to the University of Michigan and that's EXACTLY what they're doing on THEIR campus for muslims--again, with YOUR tax dollars.

Doesn't THAT violate the communist/democrat/liberal belief in separation of church and state (which is, by the way, a COMPLETE misinterpretation of "the government shall not interfere with an individual's right to worship as they please" and something else legislated from the bench to trash all Christian and Jewish holidays).

An alleged hate crime consisting of flushing a koran down a toilet occurred over the weekend at Pace University--yet an alleged "artist" standing a crucifix in a bottle of urine and titleing it "Piss Christ" is considered to be that "artist's" First Amendment right to free expression and no Christian group is allowed to stop it. Where were Alito, Thomas and Roberts then? Oh wait...the communists/democrats/liberals held the majority bloc on the Court at the time. It's okay to "hate" Christians and appease muslims. I forgot there for a minute.

If I had a koran---I'd have a killer bonfire. And I'd fight it ANY "charge" of a "hate crime" as high as I could take it, as loud as I could make it because I'd be indulging MY First Amendment right to free expression. I can hate a book and it's NOT a hate crime.

And the communist/democratic/liberal faction in this country needs to look into their mirrors and confront their Dorian Gray souls--conservatives are rising and it's not going to be pretty for them. The more OBSTRUCTIONIST THEY BECOME--the more powerful WE become in Taking Our Country Back (to paraphrase the name of Snooper's site). It's time to Wake Up America (Spree's site), and get back to our heritage of freedom instead of the communist/democrat/liberal agenda to turn us into the Orwellian world envisioned by them.

[UPDATE] Politico has two excellent articles on this issue here and here.

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