The nation's premiere criminal class, Congress, is on break yet again. Anybody know what they accomplished this past year? Anyone care?

As usual, the budget was not done on time. It was another last minute montage of "bipartisan" agreements, whipped together in the last days of the session so they could get out of town as soon as possible. We'll see what type of unconstitutional and oppressive riders got attached to the budget bills in a few months. Right now, no one knows because hardly anyone on the Hill ever reads the full budget bills. Anything could have been attached.

One thing Congress did not do was to repeal some archaic and unconstitutional laws. Nor did Congress do anything to protect the people from an overactive federal regulatory bureaucracy. Ditto for all those unilateral laws passed by Presidential directives called executive orders. No action.

A good part of the government is not Y2K compliant, but those with oversight duties went home anyway. Apparently, many in Congress do not care if welfare checks will not be delivered on time. If there are inner-city riots, they will authorize the Army to intervene. Better that than miss a vacation day.

Once upon a time there were some rumblings about a Waco hearing, but nothing happened. There is a great body of proof that federal officials -- possibly joined by foreign military people and certainly accompanied by our military -- out and out gassed, burned and murdered those poor people at Waco. But many in Congress (especially Democrats) do not want to embarrass the government by making all that public. Therefore, no one will be charged with any of the crimes.

Same with the Danforth "investigation." It has been months. What have they accomplished -- other than trying to stop others from looking over the evidence, that is? Nothing, would be a good answer.

Those tax breaks are looking good, though, huh? Yeah, sure! The results on that legislation are about the same as the results on the China campaign money laundering and Waco investigations. Nada. No changes. Nothing.

Yet, both the administrative and the legislative branches say there is a tax "surplus." No reasons given, though, why the national debt keeps increasing at the same rate. How can there be a surplus and a national debt increase at the same time? Government needs accounting lessons, apparently.

Obviously, the federal government needs a Mom. There needs to be a housewife -- someone who has made a budget and paid the bills on time for a few years -- to take charge. Because, anyone wanting to refute that "no inflation" myth need only speak with the person who does the shopping for a family.

Congress also violated an amendment to the Constitution they think no one knows about yet. The Twenty-seventh Amendment to the Constitution states clearly that: "No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened." That's the law of the land, folks.

But Congress gave themselves a hefty "cost of living" pay increase to make up for that inflation they say we do not have. According to the 27th Amendment, that pay increase should not take effect until after the next election. But, it did anyway. That's stealing.

Another blatant Constitutional violation was identified to Members of Congress but also received no action. That was the matter of Echelon, the National Security Agency's system for listening to all of our (except local) telephone calls and reading all of our e-mail. The Fourth Amendment requires that a government agent first get a warrant before spying on an American citizen. NSA, however, has been tapping many of our telephones for about fifty years.

One would think that those entrusted with protecting and defending the Constitution would be interested in looking into that little matter. But, other than Rep. Bob Barr, apparently no one is.

We don't count, in other words. The Constitution does not mean what it says, we can safely believe. The NSA, CIA and FBI (all share in the information) trump our Constitutional rights, Congress tells us by its silence.

This Echelon matter begs for a class action lawsuit.

Actually, what we need is a "public prosecutor;" one with the authority to prosecute any public official violating his or her oath of office or a citizen's common or Constitutional rights. Government officials have been getting a free ride and doing exactly as they please for way too long. When they violate the law, they should go to prison.

Liberal law professors supporting the Constitution? Shades of misunderstanding! What the hell is going on nowadays? But, such are the rumblings in the liberal media.

Actually, it's mostly just Laurence Tribe of Harvard. Evidently, someone pointed out to him that Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and other Founders had opinions that were 180 degrees out of phase with his on the right to keep and bear arms. So was James Madison's, the man who actually wrote the bill of rights and would probably know what was intended.

George Washington said that:

Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's Liberty teeth and keystone under independence." Washington instructed that "the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. ... The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference -- they deserve a place of honor with all that's good.

Thomas Jefferson inserted into the Virginia Constitution: "No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." Jefferson had good reason, as he later stated in a 1787 letter to William S. Smith:

And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. ... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Jefferson was also a firm believer in the right of self defense:

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.

As George Washington can be called the "Father of our Country," so then may Professor St. George Tucker justly be called the most important legal scholar of the early American republic. St. George Tucker taught law at William and Mary from 1790 until President James Madison appointed him to the federal court for Virginia, a post which he held until 1827.

Some like to quote Tucker as writing: "In America we may reasonably hope that the people will never cease to regard the right of keeping and bearing arms as the surest pledge of their liberty." That is a true quote. However, there is a great deal more from this great Professor of Law:

If, for example, Congress were to pass a law prohibiting any person from bearing arms, as a means of preventing insurrections, the judicial courts, under the construction of the words necessary and proper, here contended for, would be able to pronounce decidedly upon the constitutionality of these means.

It is not "proper" for Congress "to pass a law prohibiting any person from bearing arms," even "as a means of preventing insurrections."

According to the Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789) St. George Tucker's friend, James Madison, originally wrote what is now the Second Amendment to read:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.

Someone down the line reversed what Madison wrote so as to put the preamble sentence first. Nevertheless, the meaning is the same. The right of the people to keep and bear arms "shall not" be infringed.

In fact, there's really nothing else for us to know. Because, even if the Second Amendment was removed from the Constitution today, there still would be no authority for the federal government to regulate personal firearms. The power, then, would belong to the States alone.

Noah Webster warned that our personal arms protect our country, our personal liberty, from a military uprising:

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troop.

Webster's opinion is pervasive throughout the writings of all Founding Fathers. Clearly, they wove the personal right to keep and bear arms into our Constitution because a well armed citizenry was seen as a bulwark against oppressive government. And so it still seems today -- what with the sudden appearance of over 65,000 armed federal officials and the military practicing sneak attacks on our cities.

Yet, even though all the above -- and hundreds of lines more -- of conclusive information is available to any legal scholar who wishes to read, liberal academics like Laurence Tribe still believe the right to bear arms is limited, subject to "reasonable regulation in the interest of public safety."

If Tribe is correct, then the right to teach and practice law may also be limited "in the interest of public safety." So can the freedom of the (liberal) press.

Our Constitution is the law of the land. That being true, any person in authority must support all of it equally. Else, they are breaking the law and should be treated as such.

For legal background material on our right to keep and bear arms, see:

the "Second Amendment Law Library" at: http://www.2ndlawlib.org and

"Sources on the Second Amendment and Rights to Keep and Bear Arms in State Constitutions" by UCLA Professor of Law Eugene Volokh at:

http://www.law.ucla.edu/faculty/volokh/2amteach/sources.htm and

http://www.gunscholar.org

We know them by the company they keep. So, when we have a presidential candidate who is Republican in Name Only (RINO), it's no wonder that the press love him.

Far left scribbler Lars Erik-Nelson wrote in the NY Daily News that "McCain is different; he is a warrior, not a hired-gun lawyer. He says what he believes, and he cares about the causes he champions."

Yeah. But perhaps if McCain knew a little about law he wouldn't have gotten in trouble participating in the Keating Five fund-raising scandal.

This past month, McCain has made the cover of nearly every major news magazine, and even some political journals like The Weekly Standard. Even Carl Bernstein is profiling him in Vanity Fair and he's a topic on Larry King Live.

"I'm a journalist who is for a politician. You're not supposed to do that," Michael Lewis admitted to The Hartford Courant while finishing up a story for The New York Times Magazine. "But after I write this piece, I'm going to send money to his campaign. I just like being around him. He's resisted the enormous pressure to be a phony. There's great pressure to succumb to the phoniness of politicians, and he hates it."

"McCain is so much fun to be around it almost shouldn't be legal," said Robert Timberg, who told about McCain's POW days in his book "The Nightingale's Song." "He's perhaps the funniest man I've ever met. He has great stories."

Great stories? Too bad none of them have anything to do with honoring his oath of office in the Senate. Showing up for work would be a start. McCain has one of the worst absentee records on the Hill. In the Senate, McCain has no legislative victories but he does have a lot of enemies among his Republican colleagues. Then, there's an off the record whispering campaign about his hot-temper. Politically and personally, McCain is said to be a loose cannon. Even McCain's hometown paper questions whether he has the proper presidential temperament.

Worse, many of the bills McCain champions are totally and completely unconstitutional. For instance, the anti-tobacco legislation attacks a legal industry that is actually older than our country.

But, it's McCain's campaign finance bill that makes him the darling of the liberal media. If the bill ever became law, it would shut down the political speech of citizen's groups from coast to coast and make the media king of all political speech other than that paid for by a campaign committee. Certainly, the media like that.

And it is many of the very same Washington media people who supported Bill Clinton over George Bush, simply because they thought Bush was "no fun," who now support John McCain. This time, their reason is that McCain is willing to go out and have a drink with them from time to time. McCain is "fun" at the bar, in other words. That's their justification for supporting him.

"Spinning is lying," McCain is quoted as saying. That being true, McCain lied continuously about his tobacco and campaign finance bills. Because, what he said was to benefit the American people was not backed up by what was written in the legislation.

There's a lot more, of course. Other unconstitutional legislation pushed by McCain includes a so called HMO bill of rights, more gun control, merit pay for teachers and even "voluntary" teacher testing by state and local education authorities.

McCain also supports the overbearing federal regulatory bureaucracy's control of everything in our lives from womb to tomb. For instance, on the ever expanding EPA: "I support the strong national environmental protection goals and the initiatives embodied in these vital laws." And: "I believe we should continuously examine the implementation of environmental statutes to ensure that national anti-pollution goals are being met."

McCain claims he has integrity, yet what we see is hypocrisy. He takes every opportunity to play to the media -- and then trash other Republicans. He says he wants campaign finance reform, then collects campaign funds the old fashioned way -- from anyone with a checkbook. And he uses corporate jets for campaigning, paying only the first-class fares required by law, when the actual cost is much higher.

He also chaired the Senate Commerce Committee that should have passed a "bill of rights" for airline passengers. However, as usual, it was all talk and no substance. The lobbyists "talked" with him. McCain needed a lift around the country for the campaign. That's all it took.

At "The Third Way: Progressive Governance for the 21st Century," April 25, 1999 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Bill Clinton joked around a little about world socialism with his Third Way socialists friends British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok, and Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema. (See the May 9 issue)

Last month, Clinton again talked of global socialism to the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) Annual Conference Leadership Dinner. Generally speaking, Clinton's speech was little more than a bunch of mean spirited political baloney. However, he wound up his speech by saying:

But we're going to globalize one way or the other, and we'll be at the front of the line, or the back, or somewhere in the middle. And I believe it is profoundly in our interest and in the interests of the world for America to be leading the pack.

Last week, at a dinner in honor of the Conference on Progressive Governance for the 21st Century, in Florence, Italy, Clinton clarified some of his Third Way socialist ideas.

The word "Progressive," of course is the Third Way's chosen word for socialism. In reality, today's Third Way is little more than an extension of Cecil Rhodes and the socialist training of the Rhodes Scholar program at Oxford University. Which is also closely aligned with the Fabian Society, a radical socialist group in England. http://www.fabian-society.org.uk

Anyway, the Clintons were there to explain the elements of progressive governance in the 21st century to the less informed socialists. In his prepared text, Clinton went on to clarify that "we have the Internet, the global economy, exploding diversity within and across national lines, the simultaneous emergence of global cultural movements." So, the problem at hand will be how to completely control everything, worldwide. He stated that there are

profound problems among and within nations. Making the most of our possibilities, giving all people a chance to seize them, minimizing the dangers to our dreams, requires us to go beyond the competing models of Industrial Age politics; that's why we're here. We think ideas matter. We think it's a great challenge to marry our conceptions of social justice and equal opportunity with our commitment to globalization.

That's when Clinton's speech started getting interesting:

We think we will have to find what has often been called a Third Way -- a way that requires governments to empower people with tools and conditions necessary for individuals, families, communities and nations to make the most of their human potential. In the United States, we have proceeded for the last seven years under a rubric of opportunity for all, responsibility from all, and a community of all Americans.

 

Perhaps he got a little too close to his personal life in that last paragraph with the "responsibility from all" remark, but whatever. Anyway, Clinton thinks that government should "empower people with tools and conditions" to progress. Next thing you know he'll be telling us how to go to the doctor, too.

We have also recognized something that I think is implicit in the whole concept of the European Union, which is that it is no longer possible, easily, to divide domestic from global political concerns. There is no longer a clear dividing line between foreign and domestic policy. And, therefore, it is important that every nation and that all like-minded people have a vision of the kind of world we're trying to build in the 21st century and what it will take to build that world.

 

Which means, of course, a world controlled by a central government delegating some "equal rights" and equal means to all. Well, all except the chosen few controlling everything, of course. They get rich.

In fact, he almost says that a couple paragraphs later:

On social questions, I think there is an emerging consensus that we should favor equal opportunity, inclusion of all citizens in our community, and an insistence upon personal responsibility.

"Personal responsibility," coming from him, is a joke and a half by itself. However, in the lexicon of the Third Way, it means that the serf-citizens are to behave and do as they are told by their betters. And, of course, the Clintons want desperately to become our betters.

Clinton also mused: "I think virtually every European country has done a better job than the United States in providing adequate family leave polices, adequate child care policies, adequate supports." No matter that the socialist countries do that by heavily taxing business and the few people willing to work.

Apparently, though, Clinton thinks he has the Third Way well established here: "So we have to acknowledge while we, who say we are developing a Third Way -- and in our case, we've been able to do it with the smallest federal government in 37 years -- we have to acknowledge the fact that some countries need more government."

Yeah, yet another lie: "the smallest federal government in 37 years."

Everything about that Third Way is lies and propaganda. That is, everything except for the oppressive laws and regulations they are putting in place. Those are real. Watch for enforcement of these unconstitutional laws and regulations in your neighborhood very soon.

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