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REQUIEM

Below are the two final essays to be posted on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed. The first one is written by a friend -- screen name 'Euro-American Scum' -- who, over the past four years, has been the most faithful essayist here. He has written about everything from his pilgrimage to Normandy in 2004 to take part in the 60th–year commemoration of the invasion, to his memories of his tour in Vietnam. His dedication to America’s founding principles ... and those who have sacrificed to preserve them over the past 200+ years ... is unequaled. Thank you, E-A-S. It has been a privilege to include your writing here, and it is a privilege to call you my friend.

The second essay is my own farewell. And with it I thank all of the many regular visitors, and those who may have only dropped in occasionally, for coming here. I hope you learned something. I hope a seed or two was planted. But, even if not, I thank you for stopping by ... 25 March, 2010

8/20/2006

Conveniently Amending the Constitution Without
Congressional Bill or Constitutional Convention


(Kudos to Cox and Forkum)

The American Civil Liberties Union (in conjunction with CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations) filed the lawsuit, which resulted in the outlawing of the government’s warrantless wiretapping program, on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who say the program has made it difficult for them to do their jobs.

American judicial activists, in conjunction with American “journalists, scholars, and lawyers,” are fast becoming every bit as much a threat to our safety, security and sovereignty as is any barbaric force from outside of our borders.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't feel too badly about this absurd decision because it's already having a number of positive effects among legal circles - uproarius laughter among them - and is sure to be struck down at the earliest opportunity.

The Democrats are running away from Judge Jackson and her hissy-fit writ large as fast as humanly possible. What was she thinking? The foolish woman actually went ahead and did what the Democrats all said they wanted, but didn't have the guts to do themselves.

Even the Washington Post calls it a Judicial Misfire, writing "the decision yesterday. . .is neither careful nor scholarly, and it is hard-hitting only in the sense that a bludgeon is hard-hitting." When the WaPo opposes anything Democrat, you know there's trouble in Donkey City.

The folks at Powerline (three lawyers) have looked at Judge Taylor's decision from a legal standpoint, and write in Where's the Beef?:

"...there isn't much to dissect. The opinion is almost devoid of analysis on the key constitutional provisions it relies upon (the court more or less ducks the issue of whether the intercept program is consistent with FISA and completely dodges the issue of whether the president has the inherent power to authorize the intercepts; it reasons that the Constitution trumps the statute (page 39) and that the president lacks the inherent power to violate specific constitutional provisions (pages 40-41)). It is part of my job as a litigator (and has been for more than 30 years) to read and understand judicial opinions. Off hand, I cannot recall reading an opinion as conclusory and content free as the key portions of this opinion.

"What, then, is the court's basis for finding that the president "undisputedly" has violated the Fourth Amendment? Here again, the court doesn't tell us. The judge spends three pages of the four devoted to the issue stressing (through lengthy general quotations from Supreme Court opinions) how important the Fourth Amendment and the right to privacy are. She distills the prior decisons to mean that all searches must be reasonable. (pages 30-31) But without attempting to demonstrate that the warrantless searches at issue here are unreasonable, or that they do not fall within an exception to the requirement of a warrant, the judge simply concludes that "the wiretapping program here. . .has indisputably been implemented without regard to FISA and of course the more stringent standards of Title II, and obviously in violation of the Fourth Amendment." (page 31)

"One begins to note some circularity here..."

One of the three Powerline bloggers, John Hinderacker who was on vacation at the time, wrote in with:

"I recall being taught as a preschooler that "just because" isn't a good argument.... Presidential powers aren't a tide; they don't ebb and flow; they are as set forth in Article II of the Constitution. Congress cannot make the President's powers "ebb" by disagreeing with a Presidential action or purporting to abolish a Presidential power, any more than the President can cause Congress's powers to "ebb" by disagreeing with a duly enacted statute. (He can, of course, veto the statute, but that is one of his prescribed powers, as is Congress's ability to override the veto.) Nor can Congress empower the President to take an otherwise unconstitutional action by agreeing with him, thereby creating a "flood tide." Nor does Congress create a fog of doubt by remaining silent in the face of a Presidential action--as Jackson absurdly asserts--regardless of whether that action is either plainly within, or plainly without, the President's constitutional authority. It would be hard to think of a sillier construct that has been taken seriously by people who should know better..."

And now it's come out that the ACLU lawyers and some of the "scholars and educators" who filed the case were Muslims and associated with terrorist organizations. Well Gaawwwwlllleee!

In 2004, John Kerry's "I voted for the war before I voted against it" was the Gift that Keeps on Giving.

Judge Taylors decision will serve that function in 2006.

Anonymous said...

Michael Barone writes of the America's enemy within Our covert enemies:

"In our war against Islamo-fascist terrorism, we face enemies both overt and covert. The overt enemies are, of course, the terrorists themselves..."

" Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Professor Samuel Huntington's) transnationalism."

At the center of their thinking is a notion of moral relativism. No idea is morally superior to another. Hitler had his way, we have ours -- who's to say who is right? No ideas should be "privileged," especially those that have been the guiding forces in the development and improvement of Western civilization. Rich white men have imposed their ideas because of their wealth and through the use of force. Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong. Our covert enemies go quickly from the notion that all societies are morally equal to the notion that all societies are morally equal except ours, which is worse."

"These are the ideas that have been transmitted over a long generation by the elites who run our universities and our schools, and who dominate our mainstream media. They teach an American history with the good parts left out and the bad parts emphasized. We are taught that some of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders -- and are left ignorant of their proclamations of universal liberties and human rights. We are taught that Japanese-Americans were interned in World War II -- and not that American military forces liberated millions from tyranny. To be sure, the great mass of Americans tend to resist these teachings. By the millions they buy and read serious biographies of the Founders and accounts of the Greatest Generation. But the teachings of our covert enemies have their effect."

Anonymous said...

This is a great site. You should try to get major conservative forums and blogs to link to it. You'd get a lot of traffic.

Anonymous said...

stonemason:

How did you happen to find this site, please? Just curious.

Anonymous said...

More articles! What's with the dry spell? :-)

Anonymous said...

John Cooper,

A while ago I got an email from a friend that linked me to a National Vanguard article about illegal immigration. I liked it and saved it (http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=9197). Then recently I read a good post on a site called Free Republic. I thought it might have been written by the same person, because the screen name was similar. The author’s profile there had a link to her weblog here and sure enough it was the same person because the article from National Vanguard is here too. It took me a couple days to read all the articles here, but they’re definitely better than most of what you find on the internet or anywhere else for that matter. Keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

Here's one of the best Cox and Forkum toons I've seen---

http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/06.08.24.Profiled-X.gif

Anonymous said...

Joanie:

"As each day passes it becomes clear that the responsibility of protecting our nations and societies from internal disintegration has passed to the hands of individuals, often working alone, who refuse to accept the degradation of their societies and so fight with the innovative tools of liberty to protect our way of life. The vigilance of just a handful of bloggers brought us the knowledge of the corruption of our media and the network of global NGOs that we have come to rely on to tell us the "objective" truth."

"It is up to all citizens of the free world, who value our freedom to recognize this corruption, applaud the bloggers and join them in refusing to allow these corrupt institutions to cloud our commitment to freedom."

--Great words of encouragement by Caroline Glick

Anonymous said...

John, I wish I shared Caroline’s (and your) optimism. And I hope it’s justified, and that my 'realism' is too skewed toward the negative.

I don’t believe bloggers (either conservative or liberal) represent the views (or lack of them) of the average American. Nor will the passion that the average conservative blogger feels and expresses rub off on his countrymen to a sufficient degree to counterbalance the corruption in the highest levels of our government, or the politically correct cancer that pervades that government, most of academia, and the mainstream media.

I live in a very conservative area of the country, and I believe that most of the people with whom I rub elbows on a regular basis are of average, or above-average, intelligence. Yet a growing number of them are too busy to look beyond the headlines to form their opinions.

Bloggers aside, with each succeeding year, the ‘average American’ becomes less informed and more special-interest oriented. Combining the ongoing illegal alien problem (whose solution is nowhere in sight) with the ‘education’ that our children are receiving in our public schools (placing less emphasis on our proud heritage, and civics in general, every year – focusing instead on phony, leftist multicultural philosophies), and the Marxist influence in virtually every institution of higher education, exactly what kind of optimistic view can we embrace of the intelligence/knowledge/allegiance of the new (both alien and youth) voters coming down the pike? Where is there a reason to believe that future disingenuous, un-American, anti-liberty candidates and programs will be held accountable by a citizenry that is even more apathetic, disinterested, special-interest-oriented, or leftist-indoctrinated than today’s voters?

Patriotism requires allegiance, education, strength, endurance, courage, resolve, and action. Until our leadership addresses the illegal alien problem, until the number of voters who feed at the government socialist welfare/entitlement trough (as forewarned by deTocqueville) can be dramatically reduced, and until we determine to educate our children as to their proud heritage and the dangers posed by relinquishing it, election results will continue to fall in favor of powerful liars who can voice the biggest promises to the host of least informed minds.

Bloggers are cut from the same cloth as those who used to climb up on soapboxes in the days before mass communication and the internet. But I don't know that the percentage of people who are 'converted' to activism by them is any higher than that of their predecessors.

Even if we accept the (too optimistic, in my view) premise that individuals are becoming informed and more activist, the ‘powers that be’ are increasingly prohibiting the individual from having anything more than a superficial say in the important decisions of government (with ‘campaign finance reform’ serving as the most recent glaring example of the muzzle being placed on genuine individual free speech).

Bloggers may uncover corruption or dishonesty (and bravo for those who do!) on occasion. But for every example of that glorious result, there are hundreds of examples of government overstepping its power, or refusing to do what it was chartered to do in defense of our liberty and sovereignty, that go completely unanswered (simply because their power is so much more unrestrained, corrupt, and self-perpetuating than ours) – and that place our lives and liberties in greater jeopardy.

I believe we are fighting a losing battle. But, unless and until the battle is lost, we are called to continue to do our part to keep the enemies (both foreign and domestic) at bay. To do any less would hold us just as accountable as those passive, 'sideline Americans' who choose not to be a part of the crusade to reclaim this republic from the scoundrels who call themselves leaders, but who bear no allegiance to our Founders and their vision.

Although we may not agree on this one important concept (i.e., the genuine power of the individual to make a difference), thanks, as always, for your invaluable (not to mention intelligent and insightful) contributions here, dear friend. And I pray that you are right. I will celebrate your ‘rightness’ every bit as much as you! :)

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

Your realism is not skewed to the negative. Well said.

Anonymous said...

stonemason,

I'm sorry I missed your explanation of how you happened upon this site. I'm flattered at the circuitous route you took to get here, and hope you'll come back and visit often. Looking forward to your comments on future essays.