When Mrs. Crucis and I took off on our trek last month, we make one decision before we left. We would not enter Colorado. We would not spend any of our money in a state that has purposely violated the US Constitution.
We bypassed Colorado taking a route that passed through Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas to reach New Mexico. A few days later we made another decision. Head Northeast towards Cortez, CO to go toward Moab, UT, and Canyonlands NP, or head west towards Page, AZ and Zion NP and Bryce Canyon NP. Sorry, Moab, we decided to skip you this time. We turned west into Arizona. On our return route home, we chose to head east on I-80 through Nebraska than use I-70 and drop through Colorado to Kansas.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
However, SCOTUS has already declared that portion of the 1st Amendment must apply to Colorado as does the rest of the Amendments. The US Supreme Court has declared that the US constitutional amendments (cite: McDonald v. City of Chicago) applies to the states as well as to the federal government.
The ACLU brought the original suit against the bakers and chose their target carefully; a small establishment unable to finance a strong defense. The bakers were unable to do so and the ACLU, abetted by the Colorado courts, has declared the “free exercise” portion of the 1st Amendment does not apply in Colorado. This viewpoint was expressly defeated in McDonald v. Chicago.
The Left likes to pick and choose when and under what circumstances they support the Constitution. They support free speech—when it is THEIR speech. They support free assembly—when it is their assembly and their riots. But when WE want to exercise OUR rights, our free speech, our free exercise of OUR religious beliefs, OUR right to assemble, to protest and petition government, then they do not support those same rights for us.
That is the reason we, as a family, chose to boycott Colorado. I would hope someone, some organization with sufficiently deep pockets helps those bakers appeal through the federal court system. They have a case.
A story appeared today in the Washington Times,“Chief Justice John Roberts may be beyond reconciliation with conservatives.”Is anyone surprised? Roberts received a pass by many in the GOP after his affirmative vote in favor of Obamacare. After his vote to support subsidies for Obamacare, Roberts lost whatever good-will he retained with conservatives and the rank-and-file GOP.
To his credit, Roberts voted against same-sex marriage and against the over-reach of the EPA in regulating the coal industry. It was Justice Anthony Kennedy who voted with the four liberals on the Court to uphold Obamacare subsidies and same-sex marriage. Ironically, while it was Kennedy who tipped the Court in favor of same-sex marriage, it was Roberts, the Chief Justice, who took the blame.
Now an outcast among conservatives, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. may get the chance to redeem himself in the coming months with his stand on affirmative action, the power of labor unions and other key cases, but some on the right say it’s too late for him to salvage his credibility with them.
The court over the next year will issue several highly consequential decisions in cases of deep importance to conservatives. The justices will decide whether labor unions can force nonmembers to pay the equivalent of union dues, whether universities should consider race during the admissions process and, in a case that could dramatically alter the political landscape, how voting districts can be drawn.
Other cases centering on abortion and gun rights also could find their way before the Supreme Court, giving Chief Justice Roberts chances to regain the faith of conservatives who believe he betrayed them with two votes in three years to salvage the Affordable Care Act and cement a central piece of President Obama’s legacy. — Ben Wolfgang – The Washington Times – Sunday, July 5, 2015
For many, it is too late for Roberts to redeem himself. He has proven himself to be unreliable in the votes that have counted. The Justice who should be more despised is Kennedy. His vote was the tipping point on the Court for same-sex marriage and in truth, he has voted with the liberal wing as often as he has for the conservative wing.
The Court had been viewed, before the first Obamacare vote, as having a majority of conservatives. That belief has been dispelled and no conservative, now, has any faith that the Court will support any conservative issue.
This section of the First Amendment,“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,”has just been rendered invalid. Our right to choose whom a church will or will not marry has been made illegal.
The US Supreme Court releases its decisions for the year during June. There are a number of highly important decisions we all are waiting for, such as restraining the EPA and banning subsidies for Obamacare. We often forget that some other less well-known cases are important, too. SCOTUS released three decisions yesterday. All were favorable from a conservative perspective.
The first of these, Kingsley v. Hendrickson, dealt with the standard an inmate must meet to prevail on a section 1983 action for excessive force while in pretrial detention. For the non-lawyers, 42 U.S.C. section 1983 (paraphrased) allows citizens to bring lawsuits against agents of the government when those agents deprive them of their constitutional rights (including the right to be free of the excessive use of force). The case concerned a man named Kingsley who was awaiting trial in county jail, and who was forcibly removed from his cell with some considerable force (including the use of tasers). Mr. Kingsley brought suit, alleging that his Constitutional rights had been violated. — Red State.
The Court affirmed that a person held in pre-trial confinement was still presumed to be innocent and therefore was entitled to be as free from excessive force as anyone simply walking in public.
A person who is in pretrial custody is still entitled to the same presumption of innocence that you and I are, and is still entitled to the same constitutional protections against excessive use of force. The government often tends to treat people who are in pretrial detention as being presumptively guilty nonetheless, and this decision will hopefully help reinforce the point that it isn’t so. This decision may not seem like anything that matters to you now, but if you ever find yourself awaiting trial on bogus or politically motivated charges (a reality that occurs more often than we would care to admit), it will be a major protection. — Red State.
The second decision, City of Los Angeles v. Patel, was a win for our 4th Amendment rights. The City of Los Angeles passed an ordinance requiring hotels and motels to keep copies of their registry records for 90 days and to hand them over for police inspection at any time without any judicial recourse. Failure to do automatically generated a fine against the hotel/motel owner.
Mr. Patel sought to facially challenge this ordinance on Fourth Amendment grounds – something that was previously difficult if not impossible to do (many ordinances and statutes had been subject to facial challenge under, say, the First Amendment, but not the Fourth).
The Court held that a) facial challenges under the Fourth Amendment were permissible (and not disfavored) and b) that an ordinance that did not permit independent judicial review of a search of this type was facially unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. This decision reaffirmed a basic bulwark of our constitutional protections from police overreach – that when police demand the right to conduct a search and seizure of your property, you are always entitled to a before-the-fact judicial review of their actions, in the absence of special exigent circumstances which it is their burden to prove at court. — Red State.
This decision could also be grounds for suits against some of the more egregious asset forfeiture laws and the abuses caused by them.
The third decision was a direct blow against the Department of Agriculture and the federal government as a whole. The Government may not seize property real OR personal, without due process and compensation.
The third, Horne v. Department of Agriculture, concerns one of the most shocking and longstanding abuses of the free market that the government has ever engaged in – the government’s “marketing orders” program that it uses to artificially set the market for many agricultural products. Under this abominable program, if you wish to sell many agricultural products in the United States (in this case, raisins), the government can (and does) require you to set aside a portion of your crop and just give it to the government for them to sell it, donate it, or destroy it as they see fit. For raisin growers, the government regularly confiscates nearly half the products they grow, for absolutely nothing, just for the right to sell raisins in the United States. Keeping in mind that the Department of Agriculture, with little or no Congressional oversight, determines how much of your crop they get to steal, how they dispose of your crops, and whether you get anything back at all.
The Hornes were raisin growers who refused to participate in this program, reasoning that, at the very least, if the government wanted to take their raisins, this would constitute a “taking” under the Constitution, which under Fifth Amendment precedent would at least require the government to pay them “just compensation” for their personal property. The Federal Government argued that this constitutional provision only applied to real property (i.e., land) and not personal property (e.g., raisins). Thankfully, the SCOTUS ruled for the raisin farmers, reasoning that “the Government has a categorical duty to pay just compensation when it takes your car, just as when it takes your home.” — Red State.
This last decision may well end the long abused USDA practice of “marketing orders.” It is no longer a constitutional method of generating revenue for the federal government without compensation to the owners of the seized property. SCOTUS declared that ‘person’ property is just a protected under the 4th Amendment as is real, i.e., land, property. It may seem to be small victories, but we should celebrate every victory against the statists and a tyrannical government and their dictatorial edicts.
The next release of SCOTUS decisions is expected on Thursday of this week if the Court follows its usual practice.
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News to watch! Boehner, watch your back! Uhhh, on second thought, Johnny-boy, just ignore them. You’re safe. Heh, heh, heh…
I read. By that, I mean I read a lot. If you see me away from home, you may notice I have my tablet with me. I have a couple of thousand books on it. I finished a book last night, Joe Steel by Harry Turtledove. I’m not going to give it a review. I rarely, if ever, review books. I’ve read a lot of Turtledove’s books and his favorite theme is Alternate History. I would suggest you read this one. It has some critical insights within it.
The alternate history in this book is simple…what if Joe Stalin’s parents had emigrated to the US well before Joe Stalin was born? Leon Trotsky, a darling of some current leftists, would have succeeded V. I. Lenin to lead communist Russia. Joe Stalin, who is called Joe Steel in the book, becomes a California congressmen running against FDR in 1932…and FDR and Eleanor mysteriously die in a fire in the New York Governor’s mansion.
I remember my father saying, he was an FDR democrat, that the country came to within a hair’s breadth of a revolution in 1932. Progressive propaganda blamed Wall Street for the nation’s woes. Some of that blame is valid; much was not.
The book uses that concept to show how the US could be changed into a dictatorship by an unprincipled strongman. I don’t know Turtledove’s politics but some of the tactics used by Joe Steel are eerily similar to some being used by Barak Obama.
How could the US be suborned into a dictatorship? The answer is in the book if you look: complacency, ignorance, and bigotry against the fundamental principles of this nation with a well-planned attack by democrats against free enterprise and capitalism. Take a look at our current politics and you’ll see the parallels in the book.
If you’re a student of military history, you may have noticed something that is no longer allowed in the US military. Not all that long ago, a soldier’s weapons were stored, not in the armory, but with him in his barracks. In the 1990’s, during Clinton’s administration, that changed and those weapons were removed, taken from the troops. If the question was asked, “Why?” no real answer was given. There is one very reasonable motivation—the military leadership feared their troops.
Ted Cruz has an answer. Allow troops to carry personal weapons on base. It won’t alleviate the fears of mutiny by the leadership. It will, however, allow troops to have the means to be able to defend themselves and their families.
Base commanders fear accidents, escalation of personal disputes
By Jacqueline Klimas – The Washington Times – Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Sen. Ted Cruz is asking lawmakers to consider allowing troops to carry personal firearms on base for protection, reviving a fight that has previously been a nonstarter with Congress after military leaders said they didn’t support the change.
While many lawmakers said Tuesday they were open to having a discussion on changing the rules in a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing, most said that they would defer issues of base security to military leaders — who have historically been against allowing concealed carry on their posts.
Mr. Cruz formally sent a letter to Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and chairman of the committee, on Tuesday afternoon asking for a hearing on the subject, saying that current restrictions impede Second Amendment rights and weaken the safety and security of troops.
“The men and women in our military have been at war for over a decade; they understand the responsibilities that go along with carrying a firearm,” Mr. Cruz wrote in the letter. “Yet their Second Amendment rights are removed at the front gate.”
I suggest you read the entire column at the Washington Times website. It’s worth a read.
Today’s post title was taken from a movie that came out some time ago. The movie was about the introduction of a new Supreme Court Justice to the Court and some of the cases that were being heard.
The United States Supreme Court, Washington, DC
The 1st of October is approaching. We’ve a week and a half until that first Monday arrives but the Court is preparing to hear a number of cases that could have significance. The Daily Signal writes about six of that upcoming cases.
1. Elonis v. United States: Aspiring rapper Anthony “Tone Dougie” Elonis was convicted of making criminal threats after posting rap lyrics on Facebook about killing his estranged wife. Did the government have to prove Tone Dougie intended to actually threaten his wife, or is it enough to show that a reasonable person would have viewed those Facebook posts as true threats?
2. Department of Transportation v. Association of American Railroads: Can Congress delegate regulatory authority to a private entity? This case involves a 2008 law that authorized Amtrak to co-author regulations governing the railroad industry. Amtrak is a unique creature—created by an act of Congress but run as a for-profit corporation. The Court will decide whether this delegation of regulatory authority was proper.
3. Heien v. North Carolina: Ignorance of the law is no excuse, or so the saying goes. Consistent with the Fourth Amendment, a police officer may make a traffic stop if he has a reasonable suspicion a law is being violated. But what happens if the officer makes a mistake about what the law requires?
4. Holt v. Hobbs: Can a state prison prohibit inmates from having beards? An inmate serving a life sentence in Arkansas argues he must maintain a beard to comply with his faith and notes that 39 other states and the District of Columbia allow inmates to grow beards of varying lengths. The Supreme Court will decide whether the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act protects this exercise of religion.
5. Maryland State Comptroller of the Treasury v. Wynne: In Maryland, residents pay not only a state income tax, but also a county income tax. This case involves Maryland residents who are trying to avoid paying duplicative taxes for income earned out-of-state and already taxed by other states. But the Supreme Court previously ruled states can tax their residents seemingly without limits.
6. Yates v. United States: Does the federal white collar criminal law known as Sarbanes-Oxley cover “shredding” fish? In this case, a Fish and Wildlife officer issued a citation to John Yates for catching undersized red grouper in the Gulf of Mexico. Yates was instructed to return to port where the grouper were to be seized, but when he arrived, the officer counted fewer undersized fish and suspected Yates threw them overboard. Yates was convicted under Sarbanes-Oxley for destroying “tangible objects” with the intent to obstruct an investigation.
The Supreme Court has plenty of room on its 2014-2015 docket to add more cases, and it may do so following the “mega-conference” on Sept. 29. The justices may not be eager to jump back into the marriage debate—as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested during a talk at a law school last week—but it seems only a matter of time before the issue is back before the Court. Following the Court’s 2012 decision in United States v. Windsor, traditional marriage laws have fallen across the country. Parties from cases out of Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin already have petitioned the Court for review.
The first case, Elonis v. United States, is another review of the “reasonable man” concept and whether online threats are real. Basically, it reviews what a reasonable man may do in similar circumstances. The concept has been upheld in courts for a long time, more than a century at least. A legal wag referred to the case as, “If it looks like a duck…” believing that Elonis’ case will be defeated. But, we all know that no one can predict the result of a case before the Court. Robert’s reversal in the Obamacare as a tax is a prime example.
Another interesting case is Heien v. North Carolina. We have long been told that ignorance of the law is no excuse. We’ve been told this frequently when we, the public, unknowingly break some law and have been ticketed or arrested as a result. But what if it is the law enforcement officer who is ignorant of the law? Should not the same reasoning apply to law enforcement as it does to ordinary citizen’s?
From SCOTUSBlog:Whether a police officer’s mistake of law can provide the individualized suspicion that the Fourth Amendment requires to justify a traffic stop.
The issue is explained in this excerpt from the ACLU’s website.
The driver in this case was stopped by the police because his car had only one working tail light, which the police mistakenly believed was a violation of North Carolina law. The ACLU’s amicus brief, submitted with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Cato Institute, argues that a mistake of law can never supply the reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing that the Fourth Amendment requires in order to justify a traffic stop. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse for motorists, and it ought not to be an excuse for the police.
If SCOTUS sides with Heien, that the arbitrary stopping and subsequent ticketing was a violation of the 4th Amendment, then, by extension, other such stops without probable cause, should also be illegal—such as DUI roadblocks and other arbitrary stops designed to catch a few offenders among the many of the innocent also stopped.
Other cases appear to be frivolous from an uneducated standpoint. One is whether prison officials can regulate the growth and/or length of a prisoner’s beard. Another concerns a fisherman who was ticketed for catching undersized fish. When the fisherman’s boat arrived at the dock, the offending fish were fewer than the Fish and Game agent had estimated. The fisherman was charged for violating Sarbanes-Oxley by destroying “tangible objects” with the intent to obstruct an investigation. The fisherman was later convicted of violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. If no actual count of the fish at the time of apprehension was made, how could the agent determine that some of the illegal fish had been tossed over the side? Also, is using a law designed to protect shareholders from corporate destruction of documents, be a reasonable use of the law against a fisherman?
Perhaps the most interesting case is one that hasn’t, yet, appeared on the Court’s docket. It is another issue with Obamacare and taxes and subsidies.
The justices also may hear a challenge to the IRS subsidizing health insurance purchased from federally-run Obamacare exchanges. Section 36B of the Internal Revenue Code, enacted as part of Obamacare, allows the IRS to provide subsidies to individuals who buy health insurance through state-run exchanges, and the IRS claims it can extend this to individuals in the 27 states that chose not to open exchanges. Two appellate courts issued rulings within hours of each other that reached opposite conclusions about this IRS interpretation. Given the significant implications this may have for the practical implementation of the law, it looks like Obamacare may be heading back to the Court for a third time. — The Daily Signal.
It is beginning to appear that this year’s term before the Court could be interesting.
Saturday was a range day. I’m in the process of joining a new rifle club. Saturday was the time for the required safety class. It’s a growing range with pistol, shotgun and rifle ranges up to 500yds.
A club member and shooting buddy joined me after the class. We did a bit of pistol shooting (my Colt Commander does give me hammer bite!) and then shot 10″ steel gongs at 200yds. I surprised myself with hits using the iron sights on my AR Frankengun (Olympic upper and lower receivers plus the barrel, with DPMS innards.)
One of my to-does is cleaning my pistols and rifle. That also means I have to clean up my office to free up needed space. What a way to force me into Spring cleaning!
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I wrote about the Kelo Decision last week in a post titled, Boundaries. The decision allowed the municipality of New London in Connecticut to seize private property (Kelo’s) for a developer’s use. The argument was that the developer would put the property into better use (read generate more tax revenue to the city,) than the private owner. The suit went to SCOTUS and was upheld. A travesty. It was a win for the left who believe everything belongs to government and government allows ‘private’ owners to use their property only under governmental ‘guidance.’
That line of thought has arisen here in Missouri—St. Louis, to be specific.
St. Louis County, Mo. is planning to force property owners to purchase a landlord’s license to rent out or even allow friends or family to inhabit a privately owned domicile.
Not content with collecting fees for “safety” inspections and occupancy permits, the county government is now intent on imposing a landlord’s license and extracting yet another fee. Duplication of current law aside, this new requirement strikes at the heart of a fundamental legal right: the right to ownership of property.
Private property is the most basic principle in American jurisprudence. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he borrowed from the philosopher John Locke, who asserted three fundamental rights enjoyed by all: life, liberty, and property. Jefferson, at the urging of Benjamin Franklin, changed the last to “pursuit of happiness” because he did not want to give slaveholders any sort of legal justification should abolition finally overtake the “peculiar institution.” Still, everyone knew what Jefferson was getting at here, and though the Declaration is not a foundational legal document, it does illustrate the mindset of the Founders, who clearly believed in ownership of property.
As John Adams stated:
The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.
And so it is; without a sacred view of property, a society inevitably slides into despotism.
The first property right is self-ownership. We have seen the left nibble away at this concept, and the ObamaCare mandate has effectively tipped the scales toward state ownership of American citizens.
With that under their belts, the Progressives can now turn their lustful eyes back toward real estate. Actually, they have been nibbling away at the rights of property owners for decades. Eminent domain, the Fair Housing Act, zoning restrictions, occupancy permits, “safety” inspections (which are more often than not also about cosmetics), property maintenance codes – all circumscribe the rights of owners to have final say on the use of their property. Yes, many of these things were well-intentioned and have contributed to a more pleasant society, but the movement has been ever toward government regulation of private property. While property rights are not absolute, where does ownership end? If government tells the owner how he can use his property, can it be said that we have private ownership at all?
We’ve seen some huge leaps in recent years: the Kelo decision allowing property to be taken from the lawful owner and given to a developer, for instance, or the declaration of property as environmentally sensitive and so not allowed to be developed. We have the Cliven Bundy affair; Bundy had purchased grazing rights, which are in themselves a contractual interest. We’ve seen government shut off water to farmers , or allow lands to be flooded, bankrupting farmers and forcing them off their lands.
Now we witness the imposition of licensing requirements for property owners. The issuance of a license presupposes that government holds the rights and that the “owner” is being granted a privilege.
The bill is chock-full of “at the discretion of the Administrator.”
The column continues at the website, but that last sentence is crucial—“at the whim…” In short, the rules can change any at moment for any reason or for no reason at all! The result is total governmental control. He or the agent who makes the rules is the true owner of the property. If this is passed, the county will be the owner of your property, not you.
I’m not going to give it a review. I rarely, if ever, review books. I’ve read a lot of Turtledove’s books and his favorite theme is Alternate History. I would suggest you read this one. It has some critical insights within it.