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National Constitution Center to Display Rare Founding Document

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Photo Credit: Scott Olson / GettyThe National Constitution Center in Philadelphia previewed the new George H.W. Bush Gallery last week and displayed its hallmark exhibition, “Constituting Liberty: From the Declaration to the Bill of Rights.”

The gallery features a first-edition copy of the Declaration of Independence and a copy of the U.S. Constitution from its first public printing.

But its star attraction—thanks to an historic agreement between the state of Pennsylvania and the New York Public Library—is an exhibition of one of the 12 remaining original copies of the Bill of Rights. This exhibition marks the first public display of the document in Pennsylvania.

The preview of the gallery opening later this year brought rare public remarks from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. He spoke of how fitting it was for the cities of New York and Philadelphia to work in tandem to display the document, as both are former capitals of the United States.

The “Bill of Rights codifies the rights in the Declaration of Independence,” Alito said. “The Bill of Rights is needed to keep the federal government and the state governments in check, that they do not violate precious individual rights. … The precious freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights are always fragile, are always under threat.”

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Citizens Jailed on Trumped Up Charges a Foretaste of Coming Woes?

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Photo Credit: abardwellSeveral trusted friends with significant contacts in the federal government have reported that they personally know of many citizens who are sitting in jail on trumped up charges, all the result of retaliatory actions on the part of the federal government. The reason? The only reasonable explanation is that the current administration and its enablers in Congress seem determined to punish those who run afoul of what the Washington elitists deem to be the politically correct manner of speaking and behaving in the new world order.

While many of these citizens are being held in prison on trumped up charges, others are “guilty” of obscure laws that are rarely enforced. But federal attorneys with an agenda can use these laws to put away an unsuspecting citizen who is not only unaware that they committed a crime(s) but unaware that such laws exist at all.

A report was issued last year in a book which indicated that the average citizen in the United States commits an average of three crimes per day, most if not all of which are felonies. These citizens are unaware of problems with their actions due to the fact that so many laws are on the books that it is impossible to keep up with them all. It is even difficult for lawyers to keep up with them. But in this day and age under an oppressive government such as the Obama regime, woe be unto you if you show up on their radar screen as a troublemaker for the political goals and ideology of the Administration. You could find yourself in trouble with the law, even federal prosecutors, the most dishonest of which will find a rationale, any rationale, using obscure laws, to create a legal nightmare for the unsuspecting citizen.

Once a citizen demonstrates to the Washington political elitists that he may be a significant threat to the goals of the current government and thus shows up on the radar screens of the Obama Administration, the elitist leadership in Congress, and the Justice Department in particular, it is easy enough for that citizen to become a target. The purpose is to silence their voices and discredit them. How better to do that than to bring false charges against these citizens, many of whom lack the funds, time, and resources to mount a successful defense? So, it’s off to prison they go for crimes they did not commit.

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Sen. Ted Cruz Plans Constitutional Amendment to Protect State Marriage Laws

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Photo Credit: American Life LeagueIn the wake of the United States Supreme Court’s refusal to review five court cases in which lower courts overturned individual states’ marriage protection laws, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, R-TX, slammed the court for “abdicating its duty to uphold the Constitution” and announced his plan to introduce a Constitutional amendment preventing federal legislators and judges from interfering with state-level laws defining marriage.

“The fact that the Supreme Court Justices, without providing any explanation whatsoever, have permitted lower courts to strike down so many state marriage laws is astonishing,” he said.

“This is judicial activism at its worst,” Cruz added. “The Constitution entrusts state legislatures, elected by the People, to define marriage consistent with the values and mores of their citizens. Unelected judges should not be imposing their policy preferences to subvert the considered judgments of democratically elected legislatures.”

In the absence of a Supreme Court ruling about the legality of marriage protection laws, which generally define marriage as a union between one man and one woman, the nation has rapidly become a patchwork landscape of differing definitions of what it means to be “married.”

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Hawaii College Sued for Stopping Students from Handing out Constitution

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Photo Credit: ARCHIVES.GOV

Photo Credit: ARCHIVES.GOV

Two students at the University of Hawaii at Hilo are suing the school over alleged First Amendment violations after they were told by a campus official that they couldn’t approach fellow students to hand out copies of the Constitution.

Merritt Burch and Anthony Vizzone, members of the campus chapter of Young Americans for Liberty, filed the lawsuit Thursday in federal court, alleging that administrators violated their constitutional rights by stopping group members from passing out copies of the document during an outdoor event in January where student organizations had set up tables to distribute literature.

The students are being represented by Davis Wright Tremaine, the law firm that recently helped a student who was blocked last year from handing out copies of the Constitution win a $50,000 settlement against Modesto Junior College in California.

“So far this academic year, students have twice been prohibited from distributing the Constitution on a public campus, less than four months apart. That is absolutely unacceptable,” said Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which is assisting with the lawsuit.

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America Has A Constitutional Crisis

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Photo Credit: teaparty.orgIt is not a president’s job to decide the merits of the Constitution but rather to enforce it as it is, or convene enough states to call for a constitutional convention and change it. It is not in his purvey or power to decide whether to enforce and defend it, it is in his oath of office and when he in any way refuses to abide by every sentence in the document, he violates his oath.

When an Attorney General decides he will ignore the Constitution and selectively enforce the duly legislated laws of the land, it is the job of the president to fire him, but when the president himself goes along with this unlawful violation, in my opinion, America has a constitutional crisis.

How does an Attorney General have more right to choose the laws he’ll enforce than private citizens have the right to decide which ones they’ll obey. What’s the difference?

When a president changes a piece of duly passed legislation that has become law, supposedly using the latitude afforded him by executive privilege, is he not circumventing the Congress and Senate and violating the process set forth in the Constitution?

The Constitution guarantees private citizens the right to keep and bear arms. There are those who will claim that this provision speaks to maintaining a militia, but keeping and bearing arms and maintaining a militia are two separate sections and never meant to be construed as one being dependent on the other.

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WATCH: Republican Representative Explodes on Obama

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Photo Credit: APIgnoring President Barack Obama’s veto threat, the House voted on Wednesday for a bill that would expedite congressional lawsuits against the chief executive for failure to enforce federal laws.

The vote was 233-181 in the Republican-led House as GOP lawmakers excoriated Obama for multiple changes to his 4-year-old health care law, steps he’s taken to allow young immigrants to remain in the United States and the administration’s resistance to defend the federal law banning gay marriage.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., sponsor of the ENFORCE the Law Act, delivered a fiery speech and read a series of statements by Obama when he was an Illinois senator in which he warned of the encroachment of the executive on the powers of the other branches of government.

“How does going from being a senator to a president rewrite the Constitution?” Gowdy asked. “What’s different from when he was a senator? Mr. Speaker, I don’t think there’s an amendment to the Constitution that I’ve missed. I try to keep up with those with regularity.”

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Former Justice Stevens: Change 2nd Amendment to Improve Constitution

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Photo Credit: AFPFormer Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has released a new book focused, in part, on “improving” the Constitution through amending the Second Amendment–by making the rights protected therein applicable only to a militia instead of the citizenry at large.

Stevens’ book is titled Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.

As written, the text of the Second Amendment is: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Stevens believes recent court decisions–notably District of Columbia v Heller (2008) and McDonald v Chicago (2010)–placed too much emphasis on individual rights, rather than on what he believes was the Founding Fathers’ primary goal: namely, to answer “the threat that a national standing army posed to the sovereignty of the states.”

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Texas Congressman: Obama Just Doesn’t Understand the Constitution

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Photo Credit: teaparty.orgObama doesn’t understand the Constitution says one Texas congressman.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) believes that is why Barack Obama is arbitrarily making changes to the Affordable Health Care Act, otherwise known as the Obamacare law. Brady said maybe that’s why Obama himself has insisted that as president he can do whatever he wants and that he intends to pursue his agenda with – or without – Congress. Brady’s take: Obama just does not understand the Constitution.

According to a report by The Hill, as reported by WND, Brady believes that Obama does not understand how the executive, legislative and judicial branches of our government work.

Brady’s comments were in relation to U.S. House plans for legislation that would allow the president to be sued by the House for violating the Constitution.

The Hill report stated that “When asked by Ransom Notes Radio whether people will finally get tired of Obama’s use of executive authority, Brady said: ‘I certainly hope so because enough’s enough. He just doesn’t understand the branches of government or the Constitution.’”

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Republicans: Obama Violating Constitution, But Little Can Be Done About It

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsWashington Republicans on Sunday restated their argument that President Obama has violated the Constitution by using executive orders to alter the Affordable Care Act but acknowledged they likely have no recourse or ability to stop another incident.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, told “Fox News Sunday” that congressional Republicans think the president abused the government’s separation of powers by using the executive orders to sidestep Congress and delay the law’s employer mandate.

“The president knows this is wrong.” – Sen. Mike Lee

However, he said critics would be challenged to win in court because Congress lacks the so-called “legal standing” to present the case and they would have a “tough time” finding somebody hurt enough by the delays to be a good plaintiff.

“The president knows this is wrong,” said Lee, among the most outspoken ObamaCare critics. “What gives him the ability to rewrite the law?”

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Fed. Judge Misquotes Constitution in Marriage Ruling, ‘All Men’ Are Created Equal? NYT and NBC News Do Too

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Photo Credit: APIn her ruling yesterday that Virginia’s ban against gay marriage was unconstitutional, U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen confused language from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, an error that was quoted in a New York Times story but not corrected by the “newspaper of record,” and also was repeated by NBC News and not corrected.

In the first paragraph of her Feb. 13 ruling for the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Allen wrote, “Our Constitution declares that ‘all men’ are created equal. Surely this means all of us.” (See edva-ssm-opinion.pdf)

However, the Constitution does not say that; in fact, the words “all men” do not appear as a phrase in the Constitution at all.

The second paragraph in the Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

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