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Judges Are Changing the Meaning of Marriage

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Idaho, Nevada, North Carolina, West Virginia… So much has happened in the past week on the gay-marriage front you may not have even heard about the latest example of judicial tyranny. On Sunday U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess, a George W. Bush appointee, declared Alaska’s constitutional marriage amendment unconstitutional. Alaska was the first state to pass a constitutional marriage amendment in 1998 and it was passed with the support of 68% of Alaska voters.

Judge Burgess’s reasoning for overturning the will of the people of Alaska is telling:

Refusing the rights and responsibilities afforded by legal marriage sends the public a government-sponsored message that same-sex couples and their familial relationships do not warrant the status, benefits and dignity given to couples of the opposite sex.

Apparently there is nothing wrong in Judge Burgess’s mind in “refusing the rights and responsibilities afforded” to the people of Alaska to decide issues such as these for themselves. We have to wonder if Burgess and the other revisionist federal judges redefining marriage have ever read the 10th Amendment. The Constitution does not say anything about marriage (and the 14th Amendment doesn’t say anything about it either). Ergo, this is a State issue. No federal judge has the right to declare it unconstitutional.

Read more from this story HERE.

Congresswoman Sees 'Threat' In Constitution

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

The head of a gun-rights organization is delivering a lesson on the Constitution to a member of Congress who claimed his statements on the Second Amendment constituted a threat against her.

“Allow me to explain the obvious,” Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, wrote in an open letter to Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.

“I have never encouraged, or even suggested, that anyone harm anyone. Rather, my speech was designed to educate citizens, and politicians, that it is the fact that Americans are armed that allows them to resist efforts to be dominated, intimidated, or controlled by politicians.”

His letter came after Maloney reported him to Capitol Police and the House Sergeant-at-Arms because of his statements in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.

In the interview, she alleged, “Mr. Pratt is actively encouraging his members to threaten violent action against members of Congress.”

Read more from this story HERE.

CARSON: Playing a Name Game with the Redskins

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Photo Credit: Greg Groesch / The Washington TimesThe audacity of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in canceling the trademark of the Washington Redskins is frightening. When the government is in charge of deciding what is offensive and what is not, and has the power to punish the “offenders,” we move further away from a free society and closer to a tyrannical nanny state.

We are not talking about a political issue that should have Democrats and Republicans coming down on different sides here, but rather the fundamental freedom to express oneself, which is a part of the fabric of America. In the case of Dan Snyder, who owns the Washington Redskins, he is being demonized for standing up for basic American principles. The team bore the same name when he purchased it in good faith. There was no indication at the time that subsequent demands for a name change would emerge, costing him millions of dollars in related expenses, not to mention lawsuits he might encounter by other businesses that could be injured by such a move.

There is no indication that many in the Native American community are upset after decades of the team’s prominent and proud display of its mascot and name. This appears to be yet another case of purposefully induced hypersensitivity, providing yet another opportunity for unnecessary heavy-handed government tactics to infringe upon the peaceful existence of Americans.

I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Snyder, who is far from the demonic characterization seen in the gullible press that allows itself to be manipulated by those wishing to bring about fundamental change in America. I do not doubt for one minute that the Redskins organization would change the name tomorrow if it thought it was truly offensive to most Native Americans. Also, the majority of American citizens are still decent people who would not only demand a name change, but would vote with their feet and purses in a way that would send a loud and convincing message — if they thought the name was offensive. It appears that many have forgotten the power of free-market economic forces and have instead placed their trust in flawed government forces. Historically, individual freedoms vanish as government interventions increase.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rep. Trey Gowdy Rips Obama for Acting Like Tyrant (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A member of Congress is now warning that Obama’s imperial presidency – his arbitrary enforcement or non-enforcement of the nation’s laws – has gone too far. And so he’s endorsing a resolution in the U.S. House that would allow a lawsuit over Obama’s decisions to abrogate laws passed by Congress.

“Assume that a statute said you had to provide two forms of ID to vote. Can the president require three forms? Can the president require one form? Can you suspend all requirements? If not, why not?” said Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., in an interview on Fox News.

“If you can turn off certain categories of law, do you not also have the power to turn off all categories of law?”

He said Obama’s actions have reached “an unprecedented level, and we’ve got to do something about it.”

Gowdy cited Obama’s decisions to ignore certain immigration laws, even though Congress did not approve the changes. And Obama’s decisions to change the Obamacare law as he goes along. And his decision to make “recess appointments” even though the U.S. Senate was not in recess.

Read more from this story HERE.

America Is One Step Closer to a One-Party Tyranny

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Photo Credit: ctj71081November 21, 2013, may be another date that will live in infamy. Instead of conventional bombs and aerial torpedoes exploding at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the “nuclear option” went off in the U.S. Senate at Washington, D.C.

By a 52-48 vote, the Senate voted to change the institution’s regulations related to the filibuster, thereby emasculating a political minority’s ability to thwart, or at least delay, majoritarian dictatorship. A Senate minority can no longer thwart the president’s nominations of judges to lesser federal courts or of executive department officials.

Although the filibuster can still be used in cases of nominations for the Supreme Court and of substantive legislation, the Senate’s historic power of “advise and consent” has been narrowed to just “consent” in many, perhaps most, cases. The Senate, once said to be the world’s greatest deliberative body, has been reduced to the president’s rubber stamp. Furthermore, if the Senate’s rules — originally written by Thomas Jefferson — can be changed at the majority leader’s whim, what is to prevent them being altered again, even to the point of eliminating the filibuster, which used to be called “the soul of the Senate”?

If Harry Reid’s assault on representative government, which was probably an attempt to distract public opinion from ObamaCare, remains in place, American politics will be forever changed…for the worse.

To comprehend the severity of the damage Reid and his minions have done, we need to explore the nature of representative government.

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Mark Levin Proposes Article V Constitutional Convention, Intended as End-Run Around Federal Tyranny

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[On his radio show this week, Mark] Levin previewed an argument under Article Five of the United States Constitution which expresses how the Constitution can be changed through the amendment process by using the traditional passage of a proposed amendment by two-thirds of both the House of Representatives and the Senate; then on to the several states for ratification. Once three-fourths of the states have ratified the proposed amendment, the approved Amendment becomes part of our United States Constitution.

What Levin also said was that the States could also propose a convention to add a specific amendment or reject a current amendment by calling an Amendment Convention. This convention would have no bearing on the existing framework of the Constitution, but would only affect the addition or subtraction of an amendment at hand.

Levin reported that under Article V of the Constitution, two-thirds of the several states could form a convention on their own through actions initiated through their own state legislatures. Once an amendment is successfully proposed, it could be ratified by approval of three-fourths of the legislatures of the several states, and then imparted into the Constitution.

The Founders placed this alternative method of amending the Constitution as an end-around the possible tyranny of an all-powerful federal government. The Founders knew the federal leviathan could never be completely trusted with policing itself and therefore gave ultimate authority to the states to make changes when they deemed it necessary.

Read more from this story HERE.

More Tyranny in America: Judge Rules First Amendment Has No Authority

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Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla

Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla

America has fallen off the cliff into the abyss of tyranny. The signs are numerous. From unconstitutional laws that directly contradict Second Amendment gun rights to a rogue federal agency that routinely spies on all citizens to Supreme Court judges who create law out of thin air, it has become abundantly clear that none of the liberties that are supposed to be protected by the Constitution are in fact being protected.

The primary purpose of the Constitution is to safeguard the rights of citizens from oppressive government and from the tyranny of majority rule. The fact that in the current Court system, and in Congress, and in the White House these safeguards no longer apply means that the Constitution has been rendered impotent, meaningless, and invalid.

The latest case in point is a California case in which a citizen is being tried in court on charges that state prosecutors say could land him in prison for 13 years. His crime? He engaged in propagating negative messages about the Bank of America.

The Bank of America, it is to be remembered, was one of the large financial institutions that received tax payer funded bailouts in order to stay afloat in 2008-09. According to financial expert and talk radio host Dave Ramsey, Bank of America is one of the most inept and poorly managed banks in the country, along with Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs.

As an individual citizen who is endowed with the unalienable right of free speech, California resident Jeff Olson began scrawling anti-megabank messages in water soluble chalk on sidewalks last year in San Diego. For this he was charged with vandalism.

Read more from this story HERE.

Judicial Tyranny? FISA Courts Fashioning Their Own Rules, In Secret, to Spy on Every American

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Photo Credit: Washington Post

Photo Credit: Washington Post

Wedged into a secure, windowless basement room deep below the Capitol Visitors Center, U.S. District Court Judge John Bates appeared before dozens of senators earlier this month for a highly unusual, top-secret briefing.

The lawmakers pressed Bates, according to people familiar with the session, to discuss the inner workings of the United States’ clandestine terrorism surveillance tribunal, which Bates oversaw from 2006 until earlier this year.

Bates had rarely spoken of his sensitive work. He reluctantly agreed to appear at the behest of Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who arranged the session after new disclosures that the court had granted the government broad access to millions of Americans’ telephone and Internet communications.

The two-hour meeting on June 13 featuring Bates and two top spy agency officials — prompted by reports days earlier by The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper about the vast reach of the programs — reflects a new and uncomfortable reality for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and its previously obscure members. Within the past month, lawmakers have begun to ask who the court’s judges are, what they do, why they have almost never declined a government surveillance request and why their work is so secretive.

The public is getting a peek into the little-known workings of a powerful and mostly invisible government entity. And it is seeing a court whose secret rulings have in effect created a body of law separate from the one on the books — one that gives U.S. spy agencies the authority to collect bulk information about Americans’ medical care, firearms purchases, credit card usage and other interactions with business and commerce, according to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

Read more from this story HERE.

Rep. Huelskamp: Obama Admin. “Creating Tyrannical Culture of Political Correctness in the Military”

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A Midwestern lawmaker is calling on his colleagues in Congress to offer cover to an Army soldier under fire for his conservative political views and religious faith, and accusing the Obama administration of “creating a tyrannical culture of political correctness in the military.”

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., is introducing an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would prevent the Army from conducting a court martial of Master Sgt. Nathan Sommers until the military first files a report for Congress to review.

“The Secretary of the Army shall provide to Congress a report on activities with respect to Master Sergeant Nathan Sommers at least 90 days prior to taking any further disciplinary or administrative action against that individual,” states Huelskamp’s amendment.

The amendment would also allow service members to sue in the event their First Amendment rights are violated. Huelskamp said the legislation will “unblock the courthouse door so that service members whose First Amendment rights have been violated by the federal government can seek redress like any other American.”

“Sgt. Sommers is the poster child for an increasingly pervasive pattern of persecution,” Huelskamp told Fox News.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sen. Rand Paul: We Fought a Revolution Over this Kind of Tyranny

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When Americans expressed outrage last week over the seizure and surveillance of Verizon’s client data by the National Security Agency, President Obama responded: “In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother . . . but when you actually look at the details, I think we’ve struck the right balance.”

How many records did the NSA seize from Verizon? Hundreds of millions. We are now learning about more potential mass data collections by the government from other communications and online companies. These are the “details,” and few Americans consider this approach “balanced,” though many rightly consider it Orwellian.

These activities violate the Fourth Amendment, which says warrants must be specific—”particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” And what is the government doing with these records? The president assures us that the government is simply monitoring the origin and length of phone calls, not eavesdropping on their contents. Is this administration seriously asking us to trust the same government that admittedly targets political dissidents through the Internal Revenue Service and journalists through the Justice Department?

…Monitoring the records of as many as a billion phone calls, as some news reports have suggested, is no modest invasion of privacy. It is an extraordinary invasion of privacy. We fought a revolution over issues like generalized warrants, where soldiers would go from house to house, searching anything they liked. Our lives are now so digitized that the government going from computer to computer or phone to phone is the modern equivalent of the same type of tyranny that our Founders rebelled against.

Read more from this story HERE.