It’s nice to know that the Constitution still trumps Kafkaesque legislative acts of tyranny.

An anti-terrorism law was struck down Wednesday by a federal judge who said she saw legitimate fears in claims by journalists, scholars and political activists that they could face indefinite detention for exercising First Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan ruled that the law, passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012, was unconstitutional. She said the government has softened its position toward those who filed suit challenging the law, but she said the “shifting view” could not erase the threat of indefinite military detention. She urged Congress to make the law more specific or consider whether it is needed at all.

“First Amendment rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and cannot be legislated away,” Forrest wrote. “This Court rejects the Government’s suggestion that American citizens can be placed in military detention indefinitely, for acts they could not predict might subject them to detention.”

The Chief sees no other possible outcome for this…assuming that we still want to have constitutional government.

“That is no small question bandied about amongst lawyers and a judge steeped in arcane questions of constitutional law; it is a question of defining an individual’s core liberties,” she said.

She questioned in her 112-page opinion whether a news article perceived as favorable to the Taliban and garnering support for the Taliban could be considered to have “substantially supported” the Taliban?

“How about a YouTube video? Where is the line between what the government would consider “journalistic reporting” and “propaganda?” she asked. “Who will make such determinations? Will there be an office established to read articles, watch videos, and evaluate speeches in order to make judgments along a spectrum of where the support is ‘modest’ or ‘substantial?’”

President Obama, employing his strongest language to date on the Supreme Court review of the federal health care overhaul, cautioned the court Monday against overturning the law — while repeatedly saying he’s “confident” it will be upheld….The president, adopting what he described as the language of conservatives who fret about judicial activism, questioned how an “unelected group of people” could overturn a law approved by Congress

The Supreme Court is merely “an unelected group of people”?! Well, yes, that’s the way the Constitution sets it up, the last time I looked. Article II Section 2, and Article III section 1. Of course if one has the view that anything that limits the grandiose sweep of executive power is a mere archaism that should be ignored at will, then this WOULD be annoying. (Tough rocks, B.O. – you’re not First General Party Secretary, or Reichsfuhrer…at least not yet!)

AS for the bit about “judicial activism”…there is also a fundamental error in that also.  “Judicial activism” is extending the Constitution to say or do something that is beyond the bounds of what is Constitutionally stated as being a part of the powers granted to the government.  It is NOT, as in the present case, applying the standard of the Constitution to determine whether an act at issue is constitutionally granted.  As the prez goes on with his pseudo-reasoning he then states:

“I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” Obama said.

At BEST this is wildly disingenuous; at worst he’s totally immersed in some form of governmental psychosis where his view of the reality of constitutional review, established in the early days of the republic by Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison 5 US 137 (1803). Laws have been overturned on average of about every 16 months or so since then…not QUITE unprecedented OR extraordinary.

…and Obama claims to have been a constitutional scholar? Really?

If he came up with today’s comment as a submission in a H.S. history or government class that I was teaching, it would earn an “F” grade, for having missed the whole main point that applies in this situation.

As terrorists struck New York on September 11th, the United States vowed to fight back and protect their country, their people and their freedom. But 10 years on, it seems that freedom is just an illusion, and the US is becoming an Orwellian state.

When George W Bush spoke about the necessity of “protecting the homeland of our country”, he probably thought that the homeland was literally just that – a land that one calls home. And while most people focused on the fact that the then US president had once again made a grammatical blunder, many saw a hidden danger in his statement – not only because of the Big Brother-type security changes ahead, but also because of the very nature of the word “homeland”.

Read on…the rest of this piece makes more sense than just about anything you can find in the US media for some time:

Merriam-Webster defines “homeland” as “a state or area set aside to be a state for a people of a particular national, cultural, or racial origin.” Now, that really doesn’t apply to one of the youngest countries in the world, which has no shared cultural or racial origin. Dig a little deeper and many linguists will tell you of the word’s decidedly Teutonic origin. A blend of two proto-Germanic words “kham” (home) and “landan” (land), a homeland does not unite people by ideas or beliefs. It ties them firmly to the land. It is a concept that has little to do with patriotism – despite the fact the words do share common Greek roots – and, ironically, it was used ad nauseam by the US government in the post-9/11 world. Ironic because it’s patriotism that is more applicable to the concept of the United States as a nation – one where people of all cultures and backgrounds come together for shared ideas, opportunities and beliefs. And one of the key ideas that most people chose to make the US their home was one much propagated by President Ronald Reagan. The idea of freedom.

Reagan once said that “above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.” But 20 years after Reagan was sworn in, the terrorist attacks of September 11th happened – and George W Bush decided that there are weapons more appropriate than freedom.

Because freedom – that greatly advertised American concept – was effectively taken away from the people, with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Under the new Patriot Act, The Federal Bureau of Investigation began probing almost every second of every life in the country and when people wanted to leave the country, the Transport Security Administration probed them. The Big German-sounding Brother was fully established, the people living in the ‘land of the free’ under surveillance at all times.

This makes so much sense it’s scary.

It’s a sad commentary when one realizes that RUSSIA finds itself in a position to point out the corrosive erosion of our Constitutional system.

House Panel to Vote on ‘Disapproving’ Net Neutrality

The congressional assault on network neutrality regulations adopted by the Democratic-led Federal Communications Commission in December continues Wednesday, when the House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee votes on a “resolution of disapproval” designed to derail the requirements, which prohibit the blocking or degrading of online competitors.

So, what’s so bad about this? Imagine you build a railroad, so you can make some money delivering freight to the locations along your line. A would-be competitor decides this is unfair, since his delivery via truck is much more expensive, and not as efficient. So…should he be given the right to use YOUR line to deliver HIS freight, with exactly the same cost and priority as you do? That could be called “freight neutrality”…sort of reminds me of something out of Atlas Shrugged, when stated in those terms.’

When put in terms of the interned, it becomes “Net Neutrality”, additional regulation of the most free and open part of the economy, which will inevitably result in degradation of the net, as elaborated on by House Speaker Boehner commenting on the same issue, as well as the problem of the ballooning national debt:

Boehner rips bid to regulate Internet
Debt likened to Sputnik threat

House Speaker John A. Boehner lashed out against efforts to regulate Internet traffic before an audience of evangelical Christian media leaders and pointedly responded to President Obama by comparing the challenge of the burgeoning national debt to the Sputnik-era space race.

In a speech to religious broadcasters that received a sustained ovation at his conclusion, he said free expression is under attack by a power structure in Washington populated with regulators who have never set foot inside a radio station or a television studio.

“We see this threat in how the FCC is creeping further into the free market by trying to regulate the Internet,” Mr. Boehner said. “The last thing we need, in my view, is the FCC serving as Internet traffic controller, and potentially running roughshod over local broadcasters who have been serving their communities with free content for decades,”

Sounds about right, as does this:

But, the Ohio Republican warned, one threat “dwarfs others in terms of the danger it poses to freedom and our children’s future.”

“You may recall President Obama, in his State of the Union address, talking about a ‘Sputnik moment,’ the moment that shocks our generation into getting serious. In my view, America’s ‘Sputnik moment’ is our shocking national debt,” he said.

Boehner also commented on another fundamental communication issue that has been under some discussion recently:

Mr. Boehner also inveighed against any effort to reinstate the so-called “Fairness Doctrine,” whose 1987 elimination led to the rise of a vibrant talk-radio industry.

“Our new majority is committed to seeing that the government does not reinstate the Fairness Doctrine,” he said.

Mr. Boehner said Rep. Greg Walden, Oregon Republican, “has teamed up with another former broadcaster, Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana, to introduce legislation to help keep the airwaves free. I expect the House to act on this measure as well.”

The rationale for this is to be more “democratic”.   Humbug!

There were, and are sound reasons NOT to run our national system as a democracy.  I noted comments earlier on this from Madville Times, as well as on SD Politics, but was distracted from commenting byvarious  meteorological and mechanical events.  It is NOT fun to work on machines without a heated environment when the weather is what the weather was, but I digress.

My own feeling is that this sort of thing is not particularly of benefit.  The constitutional system was designed to be a non-democratic federal republic.  The stake-holders were the states, as well as the people.  The states had their place at the federal table by selecting the senators in the state legislators. (Personally, I think the 17th Amendment is well worth repealing, not that I expect to ever see it happen.)   The people had their input via the directly elected representatives.  The electoral college was a scheme to prevent the more populous states from automatically running rough-shod over the smaller states in the selection of the president.

The most frequently heard complaint about the current electoral college is that it can allow a failure in the Divine Commandment of Vox Populi, Vox Deus, as occurred most recently in 1980, and in a few cases before.  So what?  We survived the experience in good order.  The last time I checked last November the republic was still functional!

I have real trouble seeing how a popularization of the presidential vote can be of any benefit to small states.  I note that Cory cites an example of enabling concentration of funds in the large cities as being a possible GOP advantage, but frankly I don’t see it.  It doesn’t matter HOW much the GOP spends in L.A., Boston, New York, ‘Frisco, etc….they are probably not going to do very well, at least in the inner cities.  (The last time I visited the old home town of St. Louis, 24 of 28 city aldermen were of the Donkey persuasion.)  What would be more likely to happen with a popular vote scheme would be for the Donks to ignore the core cities, and rural areas, and pump THEIR funds into the suburbs to swing enough votes to make a difference.  The GOP would of necessity be forced into the same pattern to avoid being totally swamped.  In both cases, places like ND, SD, WY, MT, etc. would become virtually invisible in presidential elections if the prize automatically went to the pop-vote winner, which could be swung relatively easily by the larger urban areas.  (Farm vote?  We don’t need no steenkin’ farm vote!)

And the problem with that is…?  What is the guarantee to prevent a “democratic” majority for selecting an individual or party with a dedication to running rough over a minority’s interests, up to and including their right to do things like worship, or even live, to cite a couple of commonly denied things.  It behooves one who genuflects before the altar of democracy to recall that such luminaries of humanitarian civilization as Mussolini, Hitler, Ahmadinejad, or even Slobodan Milosevich were all elected!  Also, the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip more recently selected the wanna-be genocidalists of Hamas as their favored rulers.  But hey, that’s all OK if it’s “democratic”, right?

Wrong!  That’s why the designers of our republic’s constitution wisely (IMHO) hobbled the free-exercise of democracy.

(By the way, with the news as it’s been lately, it might be worth recalling just why they denied the vote to the District of Columbia.  It’s the same reason that D.C.’s street plot had all those circles with radiating streets:  cannon strategically placed could easily sweep the streets of rioters! (Look up the effects of the Roman and Byzantine mobs on their imperial politics.)

The 26 state suit against B.O.’s version of a National Health Service prevails in it’s initial court test presumably on the way to a SCOTUS hearing (sooner or later).

A federal judge in Florida struck down President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare overhaul as unconstitutional on Monday in the biggest legal challenge yet to federal authority to enact the law.

U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruled that the reform law’s so-called individual mandate went too far in requiring that Americans start buying health insurance in 2014 or pay a penalty.

“Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire act must be declared void,” he wrote, “This has been a difficult decision to reach and I am aware that it will have indeterminable implications.”

Referring to a key provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Vinson sided with governors and attorneys general from 26 U.S. states, almost all of whom are Republicans, in declaring the Obama healthcare reform unconstitutional.

What makes this even sweeter is the fact that the decision was based to some extent on B.O.’s own comments. Hoist on his own petard!

Judge uses Obama’s words against him

In ruling against President Obama‘s health care law, federal Judge Roger Vinson used Mr. Obama‘s own position from the 2008 campaign against him, when the then-Illinois senator argued there were other ways to achieve reform short of requiring every American to purchase insurance.

“I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that, ‘If a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house,’” Judge Vinson wrote in a footnote toward the end of his 78-page ruling Monday.

Once the principle of forcing behavior (whether buying health insurance, or anything else) is established, there is, of necessity no remaining legal restraint on the power of the state to compel ANY behavior in any other areas that attract the attention of our would-be progressive masters.  Perhaps, for example, to satisfy the 1st Lady’s concern for proper nutrition there could be a federal law mandating that everyone eat their vegetables, or that pedestrians must wear crash-helmets for their own safety, or whatever else the nanny-state advocates can dream up to protect us from ourselves.

This sort of crap is NOT the proper role of  our Constitutional government.

For the Tea Party soldiers worried that the young upstarts they’re poised to send to Congress will lose their constitutional druthers once they get to Congress, Rep. Michele Bachmann has a message: Fear not, she’s going to set up constitutional classes.

Bachmann spokesman Sergio Gor says, “It was something she’s always wanted to do. There’s so many folks that come to Capitol Hill to discuss obscure and mundane topics, but no one coming regularly to discuss bill of rights or the role of government.”

Bachmann won’t be teaching the classes, Gor says, but will help organize sessions with constitutional scholars, experts, and judges likely to be held in one of the committee rooms on the Capitol Hill complex. The classes will be open to any members — not just freshman — looking to continue their study of America’s founding documents. They will not be open, however, to staff or members of the press, and the list of speakers won’t be made public.

This is much needed in a day when the (hopefully soon to be ex-)House Speaker reacts with scorn to a reporter who had the temerity to ask her about the constitutionality of a proposed bill.

A federal judge in Florida on Thursday said he will allow some of the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the health care law to proceed — and criticized Democrats for making an “Alice in Wonderland” argument to defend the law.

U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson allowed two major counts to proceed: the states’ challenge to the controversial requirement that nearly all Americans buy insurance and a required expansion of the Medicaid program.

In his ruling, Vinson criticized Democrats for seeking to have it both ways when it comes to defending the mandate to buy insurance. During the legislative debate, Republicans chastised the proposal as a new tax on the middle class. Obama defended the payment as a penalty and not a tax, but the Justice Department has argued that legally, it’s a tax.

“Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing, after which the defenders of that legislation take an “Alice-in-Wonderland” tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely, thereby circumventing the safeguard that exists to keep their broad power in check,” he wrote.

Vinson ruled that it’s a penalty, not a tax, and must be defended under the Commerce Clause and not Congress’s taxing authority.

A Dec. 16 trial date is planned in the lawsuit, brought by 20 state attorneys general and governors. Many legal experts expect it to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

This could be B.O.’s Schechter case [A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935) that poked a stick in the spokes of the NRA (NOT the National Rifle Association!) and effectively gutted the early phase of the so-called New Deal of FDR.]

One can hope for an outcome that would clamp down of B.O.’s latest iteration of the progressive worship of bureaucracy and centralization of power as expressed by Obamascare.

Towards the end of a speech on September 15 to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, Obama began quoting the famous “rights” line from the founding document. But partway through, he omitted where those rights come from: a Creator.

The line is supposed to read: “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.”

But Obama’s recitation left out an important part: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are crated equal. [Long Pause] Endowed with certain inalienable [sic] rights: life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

So what’s the big deal about? If our unalienable rights (as stated in the Declaration…not inalienable as stated by the alleged Constitutional scholar) do not come from the Creator, then they come from where? Inevitably from the organization of the state, and if that’s the case, amen to the rights, for what the state gives, the state can take away!

In the first 126 words of the Declaration, there are 5 fundamental principles that are the underpinnings of the American republic:
– there is a Creator
– He gives us unalienable rights
– there is a moral law that governs man
– government exist to protect the rights He gives
– below the God-given rights, rule is by the consent of the governed

All of those are dependent on the rights obtained from the Creator: what the Creator gives, no man, nor no human agency can take away. In the world of B.O. that would never do…then the transformational change we can {had better) believe in (or else!) could never happen.

Oakland’s City Council late Tuesday adopted regulations permitting industrial-scale marijuana farms, a plan that some small farmers argued would squeeze them out of the industry they helped to build.

It looks like the only argument in Oakland is whether or not the corporate dopers will crowd out the small-time family dopers. (I know that sounds weird, but there it is!)

I REALLY don’t get this one! (And no, I am not arguing here one way or the other about Bob Newland’s Favorite Issue. That’s a whole other discussion.)

As far as I know the Federal drug laws are still on the books, and are still (sort of?) being enforced…at least the DEA hasn’t been abolished yet, as far as I know.

SO…Arizona is sued by DoJ for having the unforgivable nerve to presume to pass a law on immigration that mirrors the Federal laws, and is slapped down for doing so. They are acting IN SUPPORT of the Federal legislation.

Meanwhile, Oakland, and other locations, are actively promoting the direct VIOLATION of Federal laws withing their jurisdiction, with no Federal action in response?

Can you say N-U-L-L-I-F-I-C-A-T-I-O-N? Wasn’t there a rather sharpish discussion on that topic from the 1830’s until 1865 when the issue was supposed to have been disposed of? If not, perhaps the spirit of J.C. Calhoun and the other proto-Confederates of his day is truly alive and well and lurking under a hempen shroud.