Coming Attractions at the Supreme Court Theater of the Absurd

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As usual in mid-June, the hearts of Supreme Court junkies beat ever more rapidly as they eagerly await “blockbuster” ex cathedra diktats from on high. Of great interest is whether Justice Anthony Kennedy meant what he said just two years ago, when five justices overpowered and insulted (Scalia, pp. 21, 25) four justices to declare unconstitutional an overwhelmingly enacted federal law restricting marriage to opposite sex couples. Writing for the five justices, Kennedy promised (pp. 25-26) that they had “confined” their ruling to requiring federal recognition of same-sex marriages in states choosing to make them lawful. However, what is now awaited is whether five justices will further abuse their power by barring any State from making same-sex marriage unlawful.

Justice Scalia added yet another warning (24) regarding a Kennedy promise. “As far as this Court is concerned, no one should be fooled; it is just a matter of listening and waiting for the other shoe.”

The five-justice fiat two years ago was itself predicted (5-6) by Scalia a decade earlier: “… Every single one of these State laws … against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution … bestiality, and obscenity … is called into question by today’s decision….” His then scoffed-at prediction was vindicated in 2013.

If five justices, including Kennedy, again prove Scalia prescient, this “raw judicial power” spectacle will not be over.

Organizations long-advocating sex between men and boys, and between humans and animals (see also) doubtless anticipate their turn at having five human beings who happen to sit on the Supreme Court proclaim that the Constitution protects their “lifestyle choices”—regardless of duly enacted laws, historic beliefs and traditions, and the wishes of millions of Americans, often majorities, who still adhere to those beliefs.

Fanciful you say? Shortly after the last “confined” gay marriage decision, a group wedding for police dogs took place halfway round the world, as

nine pairs of police sniffer dogs dressed in shawls, hats and socks were placed on a decorated platform like those used in traditional Buddhist weddings.

* * * *

The dog marriages were registered by an official in the presence of a crowd of veterinary surgeons, medical doctors, top police officers and the public at a ceremony …. Local television showed the dog couples later being driven away in a decorated police jeep for their “honeymoons.”

Yes, it did take place halfway round the world. But in this age of instant worldwide communication, rest assured that once anyone anywhere concocts any far-out scheme, it will arrive here sooner or later, probably sooner.

And don’t be surprised if five justices give it serious consideration.

What is NOT Stated Here

The probable coming same-sex marriage decision will be but the latest illustration of a long history of judicial abuse of power. Nothing above should be misconstrued or—more likely—misrepresented as endorsing or opposing either side’s position(s) in the same-sex marriage decision by likely no more than five out of nine human beings who happen to be Supreme Court justices. Rather, the position taken here is that these five power-wielding mere mortals have no business deciding this at all. They have absolutely no legitimate Constitutional authority whatsoever to impose their personal moral values upon well over 300 million people in what was founded as a representative democracy.*

Dog-marriage is a reductio ad absurdum of what all too often has been perpetrated by justices, whose happenstance occupancy of high court black robes does not confer upon them superior morality, wisdom or rationality—contrary to their inflated opinion of themselves. Justices Scalia and Thomas and Chief Justice Rehnquist were once left breathless (p. 12) by fellow justices’ “arrogance.” More recently, Scalia objected to (2) five justices’ “jaw-dropping … assertion of judicial supremacy over the people’s Representatives in Congress and the Executive.”

Not infrequently, judicial arrogance is accompanied by absurdity. With little effort, one can write a long article, or perhaps even a book, filled with examples of justices’ absurdities. A few should suffice to show that these are not confined to same-sex marriage, not by a long shot.

First, justices once declared (p. 41n) that raping a sixteen-year-old, under threat of death three weeks after she gave birth, was—unharmful! Second, few Americans realize that justices have created what they call a constitutional right exclusively for depraved human beings already convicted of the most gruesome acts to commit additional depraved violence free from any punishment whatsoever. (If five justices want something, they label it a “constitutional right,” regardless of whether or not highly literate people can find it in the actual Constitution.) Third, justices declared that a young man, who sexually assaulted four elderly women—including his grandmother—and murdered one of them, should be allowed to “succeed with the argument” that he should not be executed because he was only dangerous to old ladies (pp. 9-10) and would not be a threat if sentenced to life without parole (which, in reality, cannot be guaranteed). Even so, three out of four opinions on behalf of the rapist-murderer, occupying 19 pages, did not mention “grandmother” at all! Fourth, it is beyond absurd for justices to decree that no judge or jury can ever find (15-19) that a young man nearly 18 years old is mature enough to fully understand that premeditated torture-murder is immoral and unlawful, but that judges may rule (pp. 899, 970) that 12-year-old girls are mature enough to decide to have an abortion. (It should not surprise anyone if, not long from now, five justices rule that 12-year-old boys can be mature enough to validly consent to have sex with 45-year-old men.)

Popular Support Seeking Judicial Fiats

If popular support for same-sex marriage is growing, as advocates claim, why don’t they just ask elected legislators rather than unelected judges to write or re-write laws? Moreover, in states with initiative and referendum, a popular majority can change the law without legislators. After a California majority voted for Proposition 8 to restrict marriage to one man and one woman, it was beyond passing strange when opponents of that proposition went to court seeking its nullification by judicial fiat while, at the same time, claiming that a majority of voters now supported same-sex marriage. Why wasn’t another referendum sought for repeal? Recently, Catholic Ireland adopted same-sex marriage by referendum. Also, advocates already have obtained much from elected officials. If support is as widespread as claimed, it should be unnecessary to short-circuit the political process through judicial fiat, whose legitimacy is neither respected nor accepted by millions. (Of course, polls are always open to manipulation, and at least one recent poll was recently exposed as a fraud, in purporting to show wider than actual support for same-sex marriage.)

The advantage of legislative over judicial lawmaking is that justices “pre-empt [p. 20] the democratic debate” by “inscribing… current preferences…into our Basic Law.” These are made unchangeable (p. 567) by “remov[ing them] from the democratic process and writ[ing them] into the Constitution,” which is thus judicially amended to include sweeping rules embodying any five justices’ personal values.

For example, when they constitutionalized a right to homosexual sodomy, justices declared (p. 11): “liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex.” As quoted above, Justice Scalia objected that this called into question all state laws concerning sex. More recently, Justice Alito suggested that, if States are constitutionally prohibited from restricting marriage to one man and one woman, the same constitutional rule would require the States to permit incest (p. 33) and group marriage (pp. 17-19).

These examples illustrate Judge (and later Justice) Benjamin Cardozo’s famous reference to the “tendency of a principle to expand itself to the limit of its logic.” That often happens when justices usurp the prerogatives of elected officials by deciding hotly contested political issues about which the Constitution is silent. By contrast, if these issues are left to elected officials to resolve after public debate, the law can be adjusted and re-adjusted. Some laws can then be left in place and others changed, without trying to turn them into irrational one-size-fits-all legislation. To have same-sex marriage, there is no need for blanket principles that apply to all sex matters, including man/boy and human/animal sex, incest, bigamy, polygamy—or dog weddings.

Justice Scalia repeatedly has told audiences that, when the Constitution says nothing about an issue, “persuade your fellow citizens.” Instead, many activists, apparently lacking confidence in their own persuasiveness, prefer to short circuit the process. Two decades ago, Scalia (joined by Rehnquist, White and Thomas) warned (p. 1002):

[B]y foreclosing all democratic outlet for the deep passions [abortion] arouses, by banishing the issue from the political forum that gives all participants, even the losers, the satisfaction of a fair hearing and an honest fight, by continuing the imposition of a rigid national rule instead of allowing for regional differences, the Court merely prolongs and intensifies the anguish.

And two years ago, Scalia repeated (p. 26):

We might have let the People decide. But that the majority will not do. Some will rejoice in today’s decision, and some will despair at it; that is the nature of a controversy that matters so much to so many. But the Court has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat.

For decades, justices have been arrogantly, illegitimately —and absurdly—usurping legislative prerogatives, forcing their personal morality down the throats of everyone else.

Justice Thurgood Marshall’s former law clerk, Harvard Professor Mark Tushnet, asks: “Why do we let them get away with it?”

Why indeed!!

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Same-Sex Marriage: The Sanctity of an Oath and the Duty to Disregard

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The U.S. Supreme Court will issue its opinion in the Obergefell v. Hodges case later this month. The complainants in the four cases consolidated under Obergefell ask the Supreme Court to, in effect, strike down state laws limiting recognition of “marriage” to the union of one man and one woman. Their complaints allege violation of equal protection and/or due process safeguards found in the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. State officials in my home state of Indiana, as well as the other sovereign states, are duty-bound, as a result of their oath of office, to disregard such meddling in state marriage policy by the federal government – especially by the Supreme Court.

It’s a well-established principle in government that personnel subordinate to a higher command authority are required to follow only “lawful” orders directed to them. This principle is made express in the military, where the Uniform Code of Military Justice (Title 10 of the U.S. Code) requires that “any person subject to this chapter who … violates or fails to obey any lawful general order or regulation … shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”

Note that a member of the Armed Services of the United States is subject to court-martial if he “violates or fails to obey” a “lawful” precept directed to him. The obvious inference is that a member of the armed services is not subject to punishment for his refusal to obey an order which is not “lawful.” At least since Nuremburg, military law does not allow a soldier to argue in a court martial proceeding that he was “just following orders” if those orders were unlawful.

How do these principles apply in the context of the judiciary? Article III of the U.S. Constitution expressly only creates “one supreme Court,” and then authorizes Congress to create courts “inferior” to the Supreme Court. Section 27 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 mandated that “a marshal shall be appointed in and for each [judicial] district …, whose duty it shall be … to execute throughout the district, all lawful precepts directed to him, and issued under the authority of the United States.” Once again, marshals are empowered to execute only “lawful” orders issued by the judiciary. If in enacting the Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress considered all judicial orders to be lawful, it would have not included the word “lawful” in that statute. If federal officials are bound to execute only those “precepts” which are “lawful,” how then should state officials consider their duty to faithfully execute their offices under the U.S. Constitution?

In order to understand the duty of a state official, it is necessary to understand the doctrine of federal “preemption.” Constitutional law scholars and lawyers routinely assert that federal law and federal judicial edicts “preempt” state and local law and state judicial edicts. That is, whenever the federal government takes an action, any state or local action to the contrary is “preempted” by the federal action. The doctrine of preemption is grounded in the Supremacy Clause in Article VI of 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;… any thing in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”

Should the majority of Supreme Court justices believe that the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from defining marriage as only between one man and one woman, it will be widely assumed that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution “preempts” the “constitution or laws of any state to the contrary” solely because of the opinion issued by the High Court. However, the doctrine of preemption is not unlimited, as those lawyers and politicians who embrace the doctrine of judicial supremacy seem to believe. Let’s re-examine the original plan.

In explaining the supportive role that the states would play in the proper operation of the federal government, Alexander Hamilton put it this way in Federalist Paper No. 27:

“the legislatures, courts and magistrates of the respective members [i.e., states] will be incorporated into the operations of the national government, AS FAR AS ITS JUST AND CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY EXTENDS; and will be rendered auxiliary to the enforcement of its laws.” [Capitalization original.]

Thus, properly understood, preemption only applies to the “JUST and CONSTITUTIONAL authority” of the federal government. Given that (i) the law of domestic relations and marriage policy has never been made the “JUST and CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY” of the federal government (except for the District of Columbia and federal territories) and (ii) the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies only to a limited set of protections in state-administered legal processes, there is no “lawful” basis for a claim of preemption in this case.

The duty to disregard any federal judicial usurpation of the states’ lawful jurisdiction of marriage policy flows from another constitutional clause which invokes a duty to an even higher authority than any temporal legal system, federal or state. Immediately following the Supremacy Clause, Article VI of the Constitution provides that “the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers … of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this constitution.” Known as the “Oath or Affirmation Clause,” this provision requires every state official to swear or affirm their fidelity to the U.S. Constitution. In explaining the profound relationship between the Supremacy and the Oath or Affirmation Clauses, Alexander Hamilton highlighted the limited application of both. Once again in Federalist Paper No. 27, Hamilton remarked,

“the laws of the Confederacy, as to the ENUMERATED and LEGITIMATE objects of its jurisdiction, will become the SUPREME LAW of the land; to the observance of which, all officers legislative, executive and judicial in each State, will be bound by the sanctity of an oath.” [Capitalization original.]

It’s clear that state officials are “bound by the sanctity of an oath” to observe “the laws of the Confederacy.” However, that oath is limited in its application to the “ENUMERATED and LEGITIMATE objects of” the Confederacy’s jurisdiction. The power to overrule the states’ restrictions on marriage policy has never been added to the “ENUMERATED and LEGITIMATE objects of” the jurisdiction of the United States. Therefore, without the future addition of such authority through the process set out in Article V for amending the federal Constitution, no order pursuant to any such opinion is “lawful.”

Finally, it cannot be overemphasized at this juncture that no provision of the U.S. Constitution elevates an opinion issued by the federal judiciary — including an opinion issued by the U.S. Supreme Court — to the level of the “supreme law of the land.” Indeed, there is only one time that I have ever heard that the U.S. Supreme Court was so consumed with pride to have even uttered such a radical principle. See Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 18 (1958) (“[T]hat the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment enunciated by this Court in the Brown case is the supreme law of the land, and Art. VI of the Constitution makes it of binding effect on the States ‘any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.’”).

This aberrational statement of the Supreme Court should be viewed as a very lonely exception to the view of Blackstone as embraced generally by our Framers that “the law and the opinion of the judge, are not always convertible terms, or one and the same thing; since it sometimes may happen that the judge may mistake the law.” I. W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 71 (Univ. Chi. facsimile ed. 1765).

Additionally, no provision of the U.S. Constitution obligates any elected official — federal or state — to “be bound by oath or affirmation, to support” an opinion issued by the federal judiciary.

If it had been the intention of the Constitution’s framers to exclusively delegate all questions of Constitutional finality to the unelected, life-tenured members of the U.S. Supreme Court — and to relegate every other elected office — federal and state — to a position of subservience to the decisions of that Court, Article VI of the United States Constitution would have been the place in the U.S. Constitution where this peculiar doctrine would have been made obvious. From its omission, it is clear that this was never the Framers’ intent.

Therefore, state officeholders remain bound by the sanctity of the oath they took which binds them to uphold their respective state constitutions and the laws which define and regulate marriage in their particular member of the Confederacy. They cannot be considered “good soldiers” by doing anything else.

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John Hostettler served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995-2007; he is author of Ordained and Established: A Statesman-Citizen’s Guide to the United States Constitution (www.ordainedandestablished.com).

This article is part of a series on “Building Resistance to Same-Sex Marriage.” Should you want to help support this important work, contributions may be made to the U.S. Justice Foundation.

Permission is freely granted to publish, copy, reproduce, distribute, or excerpt from this article for any purpose.

Repulsive Display of Child Abuse: Young Boy Grinds, Twerks at Gay Pride Festival While Bystanders Watch [+video]

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A young boy was filmed grinding and twerking at a Gay Pride event, while a group of attendees stood around him and watched.

In the controversial video (below), the boy was seen with his shirt off and wearing shorts while dancing in the middle of a circle of people. The onlookers encouraged the child as he grinded and twerked to the music playing throughout the festival . . .

“If this were a 12 year old girl, everybody would be sh**ting all over the parents and the festivalgoers encouraging them,” one viewer wrote on Reddit. “The fact that it’s a boy doesn’t make it somehow acceptable.”

(Read more from “Young Boy Grinds, Twerks at Gay Pride Festival While Bystanders Watch” HERE)

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What Was Spotted Behind Hillary at Her Big Announcement Has Many Crying ‘Conspiracy!’

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Twitter lit up over the weekend with speculation over whether Hillary Clinton’s campaign planted a gay couple prominently behind her on the platform, who just happened to kiss on queue when the candidate stated her support for homosexual marriage.

Clinton has made a well-publicized flip-flop on the issue since her last time as a candidate in 2008.

As reported by Western Journalism, Clinton claims her position on the issue has evolved over time.

When she ran for the U.S. Senate in New York in 2000, she said: “Marriage has got historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman.”

She also indicated that if she had been in the Senate at the time, she would have voted for the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which her husband signed into law.

In 2004, from the Senate floor, Clinton said:

I believe that marriage is not just a bond but a sacred bond between a man and a woman. I have had occasion in my life to defend marriage, to stand up for marriage, to believe in the hard work and challenge of marriage. So I take umbrage at anyone who might suggest that those of us who worry about amending the Constitution are less committed to the sanctity of marriage, or to the fundamental bedrock principle that exists between a man and a woman, going back into the mists of history as one of the founding, foundational institutions of history and humanity and civilization, and that its primary, principal role during those millennia has been the raising and socializing of children for the society into which they are to become adults.

(Read more from “What Was Spotted Behind Hillary at Her Big Announcement Has Many Crying ‘Conspiracy!'” HERE)

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Transgender? That’s so Yesterday: Now, Meet the Transabled

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Ideas have consequences. We used to understand this.

Examples of the truth of this are everywhere. Once we accepted the premise that the pre-born child in the womb is of no value, then we saw wide-spread slaughter, regardless of whether those legislating this premise intended abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare.”

Once we accepted the premise that sex is not intended to be both unitive and procreative in its purpose, then, as one writer dryly put it, society accepted that “any orifice will do” . . .

The National Post ran a feature on “transabled” people yesterday, beginning their story with a shocking account of a man who intentionally cut his right arm off. “One-Hand Jason,” as he calls himself, is apparently not the only one. From the Post:

“We define transability as the desire or the need for a person identified as able-bodied by other people to transform his or her body to obtain a physical impairment,” says Alexandre Baril, a Quebec born academic who will present on “transability” at this week’s Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Ottawa…

(Read more from “Transgender? That’s so Yesterday: Now, Meet the Transabled” HERE)

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NAACP Imposter Sued School Over Race Claims

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The NAACP official who today resigned in the face of evidence that she masqueraded as black once sued Howard University for denying her teaching posts and a scholarship because she was a white woman, The Smoking Gun has learned.

Rachel Dolezal, 37, who headed the NAACP’s Spokane, Washington chapter, sued Howard for discrimination in 2002, the year she graduated from the historically black college with a Master of Fine Arts degree.

Dolezal, then known as Rachel Moore, named the university and Professor Alfred Smith as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C.’s Superior Court. During the pendency of the civil case, Smith was chairman of Howard’s Department of Art.

According to a Court of Appeals opinion, Dolezal’s lawsuit “claimed discrimination based on race, pregnancy, family responsibilities and gender.” She alleged that Smith and other school officials improperly blocked her appointment to a teaching assistant post, rejected her application for a post-graduate instructorship, and denied her scholarship aid while she was a student.

The court opinion also noted that Dolezal claimed that the university’s decision to remove some of her artworks from a February 2001 student exhibition was “motivated by a discriminatory purpose to favor African-American students over” her. (Read more from “NAACP Imposter Sued School Over Race Claims” HERE)

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Just When You Thought Obama’s Appeasement of Iran Couldn’t Get Any Worse [+video]

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It’s very simple, if Republicans allow Obama to continue our dangerous alliance with Iran for even one hour after the June 30 deadline, they are just as complicit in the malfeasance. Republicans can take a few days off from rubber-stamping Obama’s agenda and growing government in order to deal with Iran.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported that UN monitors have received no reports from the U.S. or European countries pointing out Iranian violations of sanctions, “even though some have unfolded in plain sight.”

The White House would have you believe that they will not lift sanctions on Iran until they comply with the terms of a potential nuclear agreement. The problem is they have already de facto lifted sanctions, not just through the $700 million per month in unfrozen assets given to Iran for stringing us along in these negotiations, but by turning a blind eye to their violation of travel bans and importing nuclear materials.

For example, nobody bothered to report that General Qassem Suleimani, the head of the terrorist Quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, broke his travel ban and has been seen all over the Middle East promoting the Iranian proxies. The U.S. and other governments also turned a blind eye to recent shipments of nuclear missile materials from North Korea to Iran. And when it comes to Iran’s growing piracy of international ships and international waters, the “international community” has pursued a ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ approach.

Moreover, as the Financial Times reports, Iran is already negotiating contracts with OPEC and international oil companies with the full confidence that sanctions will be lifted, irrespective of their behavior or willingness to cooperate with nuclear disarmament.

It gets worse.

Not only has Obama turned a blind eye to existing violations, he is now reneging on his promise to keep the “non-nuclear” sanctions on Iran, even if they strike a deal to curb their nuclear program. In the April 2 factsheet, the White House boasted, “U.S. sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human rights abuses, and ballistic missiles will remain in place under the deal.” The notion that the UN and U.S. could untangle the nuclear sanctions without affecting the rest of the sanctions was always dubious, but now the AP reports that the Obama administration is officially backtracking.

Officials say the administration can meet its obligations because of how it interprets nuclear sanctions.

For example, they say measures designed to stop Iran from acquiring ballistic missiles are nuclear-related because they were imposed to push Iran into the negotiations. Also, they say sanctions that may appear non-nuclear are often undergirded by previous actions conceived as efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

The officials who provided information for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the private discussions.

The AP goes on to explain that this convoluted designation will essentially free 23 of the 24 Iranian banks from all sanctions. So Obama will treat Iran’s ballistic missile program like its nuclear program for purposes of rewarding them with sanctions relief, but not for the purpose of forcing them to abandon it.

Consider this in the context of several other appalling developments:

Last week, the Obama administration shipped another supply of weapons, including AGM-114 Hellfire II missiles, to the Lebanese Army – a force that is completely controlled by Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah.

The White House made sure to publicly celebrate their victory at the Supreme Court this week granting them the continued authority to refuse to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on passports of those born in the Israeli capital. This was clearly another groveling exercise before the Iranians.

Obama has announced that he is sending 400 additional “advisors” to Iraq in order to train the “Iraqi security forces.” The reality is that these are not advisors to an independent Iraqi force. Instead of directly arming the Kurds, Obama is sending 3,500 of our finest troops into a meat-grinder of an Islamic civil war in order to deliver Iraq into the hands of Iran, which currently controls Baghdad.

What should boil the blood of anyone who loves America most is that Iran and Hezbollah are responsible for more military deaths than any other country or entity in modern history. According to the Jerusalem Center for Public Policy, Iran and Hezbollah were responsible for killing 1,100 U.S. soldiers in Iraq and incapacitating thousands more. And this is all putting aside the vast history of killing American troops, from the Marine barracks in Beirut to the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

This is how we are going to repay Iran for their genocide? Are Republicans, with their endless timidity, prepared to be complicit in this immoral appeasement of Iran?

June 30 will be a time for choosing. (“When You Thought the Appeasement of Iran Couldn’t Get Any Worse…”, originally posted HERE)

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Obama Releases Yemeni Suspects Despite Them Being Classified as ‘High Risk’

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Six detainees have been freed from Guantanamo Bay after 13 years – but Britain’s last inmate remains behind bars.

Shaker Aamer was not among the men released from the controversial military prison, dealing another painful blow to his anguished family in London.

Officials at the US Department of Defence revealed the Yemeni terror suspects had been let out even though they have been classified as ‘high risk’. The captives have been sent to Oman in the Middle East.

They included two men accused of being Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards and an alleged Al Qaeda soldier who fought in a group called the ‘Martyr’s Brigade’.

The US is refusing to say why Mr Aamer, 48, remains languishing in captivity despite President Barack Obama telling David Cameron during top-level talks in January that his release was a ‘priority’. (Read more from “Obama Releases Yemeni Suspects Despite Being Classified as ‘High Risk'” HERE)

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Possible Pentagon Destruction of Evidence in NSA Leak Case Probed

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The PentagonTwo government watchdog agencies are investigating whether the Pentagon inspector general destroyed evidence improperly during the high-profile leak investigation of former National Security Agency senior official Thomas Drake.

The Justice Department acknowledged the probes in a letter last week to a federal magistrate judge who recently received the allegations from Drake’s lawyers. The judge is determining whether she should take further action in a case that ended in 2011 when Drake pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge.

The Justice Department told the judge the inquiries are being conducted by a committee that looks into allegations of misconduct by inspectors general offices and the Office of Special Counsel, a federal agency that investigates whistleblower complaints.

“DOD OIG’s handling of documents … is within the scope of an ongoing inquiry by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC),” Raymond Hulser, the chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, wrote to U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephanie Gallagher in a letter dated June 11. “In the event that OSC finds evidence of criminal conduct during the course of its work, it will refer that evidence to the Department of Justice for appropriate action.”

The pair of executive branch probes renews questions about the federal government’s controversial pursuit of Drake on charges that he improperly retained classified information under the Espionage Act. (Read more from “Possible Pentagon Destruction of Evidence in NSA Leak Case Probed” HERE)

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Brothers Mow Lawn for Neighbor After Learning She Could Face Jail Time for Uncut Grass

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A group of young brothers in Texas stepped up to help an elderly neighbor after they discovered that she was facing jail time for the grass in her yard being too high.

The Reynolds brothers, from Riesel, Texas, reportedly saw a piece on the news about 75-year-old Gerry Suttle, who was facing jail time for the grass in her lawn being too high. The brothers soon realized that Suttle was unable to mow the lawn herself and, although they didn’t know the woman personally, decided to reach out and help.

“It’s a summer day, we don’t have season passes yet to Hawaiian Falls,” Blaine Reynolds said. “What else could we do but go out and help some people. We haven’t met her yet but she’s 75 years old and she needs some help mowing. That’s the least we could do.”

The Reynolds made their way to Suttle’s lot, mowers in tow, and began cutting the woman’s grass to help keep her out of jail. After a short time, others in the community joined in to help get the job done. In about two hours, her entire lot was cut.

“I cannot believe this,” an overwhelmed Suttle said after the amazing act of kindness. (Read more from “Brothers Mow Lawn for Neighbor After Learning She Could Face Jail Time for Uncut Grass” HERE)

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