We don't usually bother asking politicians Constitutional questions anymore. If we do, they generally think it's a trick question because most will not know the answer.

The same thing applies to the national news media. I personally know a few of them who know much less about the Constitution than I do about building bridges -- and I have never tried to build a bridge. Yet, these scribblers are writing about federal government issues every day -- and, hence, Constitutional issues -- with absolutely no background on the type of government we should have. That is why I prefer to designate them as "repeaters" rather then "reporters" or journalists. All 90% of them do is repeat the Democratic Party line and bash any Republican ideas that do not promote more big government controls.

Now CNN is saying they want to be our "Campaign network." They just don't announce that they are supporting all liberals and plan to present most Republicans in the worst possible light. The other news networks, of course, take the same liberal opinion. They just do not announce it publicly. Other than Fox, they all seem to be very deliberate in sticking to the big government, socialist party line.

For instance, it's difficult to find grass roots Republicans who support John McCain. Yet, listening to the liberal national media -- which seems to be McCain's main core constituency -- one would believe that most Republicans secretly want McCain as president. But the real truth is, most Republicans think of McCain as a disrupter and just want him to go away.

Conversely, there's the Alan Keyes campaign. Keyes has a very strong core constituency within the Republican Party. Yet, the liberal media will not give him any time (compared to the way they push McCain on the American people) because they fear interviewing him. The cold hard fact is, any "journalist" interviewing Alan Keyes better know the workings of the federal government -- as defined in the Constitution -- or Keyes will have them looking like an uninformed, babbling idiot within the first minute.

That is not true with McCain, or any of the other major candidates. The reason is that "journalists" have no idea how the federal government is supposed to work and neither do many of the candidates for any office. So, public officials and candidates for office may speak, uninterrupted, about any project they wish, no matter how unconstitutional it may be.

The gun control issue is presented like that. The controlling limousine liberals want the common folk disarmed so only the rich have weapons. The media took its cue from them and so consistently presents a perverted, unrealistic and Constitutionally improper spin on our gun rights. Therefore, misinformation, exaggeration and out and out lies about guns are common in the news. It's always very one sided and there shall be no "opposing opinions" because the liberals control the media.

One interesting argument against the liberal line is that nearly every kid had access to many guns when I grew up. Many of us often had a gun of some sort in our hands (and fired them both supervised and unsupervised) a number of times each month. Yet, no person was ever shot. And we're talking about the City of Detroit here, which had over two-million residents of all races and nationalities at the time.

Another little point never mentioned by the liberal media is that over 99% of the personal arms in the United States are never used improperly. And, those that are, usually are misused by people already predisposed to rob and batter others as a way of life.

Which brings us to yet another important point: As John Lott Jr., senior research scholar at the Yale University Law School, reported in the Washington Times last April 26:

Giving law-abiding adults the right to carry concealed handguns had a dramatic impact [on killings by firearms]. Thirty-one states now provide such a right under law. When states passed right-to-carry laws, the number of multiple-victim public shootings plummeted below one-fifth, with an even greater decline in deaths. To the extent attacks still occur in states after enactment of these laws, such shootings tend to occur in those areas in which concealed handguns are forbidden. The drop in attacks in states adopting right-to-carry laws has been offset by increases in states without these laws.

 

This being true, it puts the government socialists and their obedient sycophants in the media in a rather poor light. They all must know this information. Therefore, perhaps they actually want law-abiding Americans to be helpless and easy to kill.

Such is the state of today's national media. They support law-breaking politicians and they want the American people disarmed so as to be easy pickings for the new breed of feral street punks developed over the past few decades because of unconstitutional liberal programs.

There was a time, a few decades ago, when Americans respected each other's right to privacy. Butting into someone else's business, back then, could easily get one a swift punch in the nose. That applied to federal agents as well. In fact, in some areas of the country, back then, federal agents actually feared to tread in their official capacity. They could come to "visit." But, snooping around was most definitely not healthy.

Since then, Americans have given up their right to privacy.

It all started very slowly, of course. The hippies of the late 60's and early 70's caused such problems that many adults thought it would be fine for the police to stop and search them. Then it was all the drug users and dealers, especially when they started shooting at each other. Complicating everything was the federal government's "Great Society" programs, which created large urban slums and frequent urban unrest. And, heck, the police really should constantly roust all "those" people. Right?

Maybe. But things have gotten a little out of hand. Today, everyone is "those" people. There is no more personal privacy in the United States.

For instance, Congress gave the IRS permission to scrutinize every single monitory transaction Americans make. That's so they can insure that we came by our money legally, you see. Without a search warrant, such scrutiny would be totally unconstitutional, of course. But, no one seems to care anymore.

The drug enforcement officers, Army Corps of Engineers, EPA, BATF, and a series of other government agencies feel free to trespass on our property at will. No warrant is necessary anymore. We no longer defend that right.

To be allowed to travel, Americans must have their "papers" in order at airports and be willing to submit to any search the nice officer feels is necessary. Liberty and privacy is even suspended on the public highways. Police regularly stop and question people at "check points" for no reason whatsoever. No one complains anymore. And, even if they wanted to complain, no official would listen. Police have been given a general search warrant and may do nearly anything they wish with it.

If you own a business, all sorts of government agents feel free to come in and snoop around anytime. There is absolutely nothing government agents cannot inspect, for any reason or no reason, in an American business. Regulators even can take a head count of employees, categorize them by age, sex and race, and fine a business that does not hire people in the categories that government directs.

Americans are beginning to believe things are supposed to be this way. However, this is far from the truth. Those who pass and enforce such laws, rules and regulations are in direct violation of the Constitution.

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution was put there precisely because the Founding Fathers had some of these very same privacy problems with the agents of King George. To insure there would be no misunderstanding, they wrote the words of the Fourth Amendment clearly:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

 

That's it. There is nothing else to understand. If the government agent does not have a warrant, signed by a judge, which states exactly their reason for being there and exactly what they are looking for, they are in violation of the Constitution. There is no distinction made between "civil" and "criminal" laws, or between laws, rules and regulations. And, most assuredly, the Fourth Amendment was intended to include the tax collector. We know that for a fact because one of the reasons the Founding Fathers went to war was the abuses of authority by the tax collectors. Now, unfortunately, we have the exact same problems again.

When James Madison proposed what we now call the Fourth Amendment, he added another catch-all Amendment, today's Ninth Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The Tenth Amendment then carries this thought on to its logical end:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

So, our right to privacy is Constitutionally protected in four separate ways. The body of the Constitution gives the federal government almost no authority to violate the privacy of the people. The Fourth Amendment protects our privacy against arbitrary police action. The Ninth Amendment instructs the federal government that, even when a right or liberty is not discussed in the Constitution, the people still have it. And the Tenth Amendment instructs the federal government that all powers not mentioned in the Constitution, including all of our rights and liberties, belong to the States respectively, or to the people individually.

This ain't rocket science, folks! This is easy stuff to understand. Our individual right to privacy was protected by the Constitution in four different ways. Still, we're acting like we gave it up. Why?

Actually, we cannot give up our right to privacy. It is an unalienable right, which means that we cannot relinquish or transfer it. In truth, we just do not protect it any longer.

The Constitution is the highest law of the land. No law may supersede the Constitution. Only a Constitutional amendment my change a Constitutionally protected right. Any violation of the Constitution must be, therefore, a serious breach of the law -- a violation much more serious than a breach of the laws passed by Congress.

In fact, a law, executive order, rule or regulation contrary to the Constitution cannot be a legal "law." And, in The Federalist Papers No. 78, Alexander Hamilton tells us exactly that:

There is no position which depends on clearer principles than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.

One sentence there sums it up nicely: "No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid." When government violates the Constitution, then, it becomes an illegal entity and relinquishes Constitutional authority. This places the burden of correction squarely on the shoulders of the people.

To start, it is time that we demand our Fourth Amendment rights -- our right to our own personal privacy -- again be respected by all agencies of government. There is no excuse for this wholesale violation of the Constitution by government agents.

This is an election year. Let's have at them. Tell them: All government agents must respect the privacy of all American citizens completely. There can be no excuse for not putting this matter on "fast track." Or -- and, this is the part the Lords and Ladies of the Hill will understand best -- we will organize to defeat their reelection to Congress.

Next, we should put some teeth in Constitutional law. When a public official violates the Constitution, they should be treated like any other lawbreaker: arrested and sent to prison.

Most Americans are familiar with that capricious morass we know as the federal regulatory bureaucracy. That's the alphabet soup agency domain based inside the Beltway where arrogant bureaucrats wield "Administrative Law" with tyrannical expertise. Administrative Law is to American citizens, of course, that unconstitutionally despotic branch of law where one is always guilty until able to prove themselves innocent.

Today's federal regulatory bureaucracy controls nearly everything in the life of nearly every American citizen. That whole socialist regulatory scheme was unconstitutional from its inception, and the U.S. Supreme Court correctly labeled it as such. It took the antics of FDR, the closest thing the United States has had to a full socialist dictator, to intimidate and harass the Court into granting approval. Since then, it's been a Washington control thing. The administrative and legislative branches have learned to like these unconstitutional regulatory powers, and so refuse to give them up.

So, it was with great surprise that, while snooping through federal government organization laws in Title 5 we stumbled on Part 1, Chapter 7, which pertains to judicial review of federal agencies.

Specifically, the law is 5 USC 706, which describes the scope of review of the courts. This may be dry stuff, but this law is also short, to the point and potentially very useful. Check it out:

To the extent necessary to decision and when presented, the reviewing court shall decide all relevant questions of law, interpret constitutional and statutory provisions, and determine the meaning or applicability of the terms of an agency action. The reviewing court shall --

(1) compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed; and

(2) hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions found to be --

(A) arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law;

(B) contrary to constitutional right, power, privilege, or immunity;

(C) in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right;

(D) without observance of procedure required by law;

(E) unsupported by substantial evidence in a case subject to sections 556 and 557 of this title or otherwise reviewed on the record of an agency hearing provided by statute; or

(F) unwarranted by the facts to the extent that the facts are subject to trial de novo by the reviewing court. In making the foregoing determinations, the court shall review the whole record or those parts of it cited by a party, and due account shall be taken of the rule of prejudicial error.

Pay close attention to section 2, parts A and B. "The reviewing court shall" . . . "hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions found to be" . . . "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion" or . . . "contrary to constitutional right, power, privilege, or immunity."

Congress wrote this law and a President signed it in 1966. Therefore, we can assume that they meant it to be enforced. And, that being the case, we citizens have cause for some very serious discussion with the federal regulatory bureaucracy.

"The reviewing court shall . . . hold unlawful and set aside agency action . . . contrary to constitutional right." So, we have a strange but true law. Congress has directed that the courts must do their duty and enforce Constitutional rights.

As an aside here: Congress inflicts stiff penalties for civilians violating laws, but very few for public servants. That must be changed. There should be at least a mandatory five year prison penalty for any judge, prosecutor or bureaucrat breaking or ignoring a law which causes a wrong to an American citizen. Else, they will continue doing exactly as they wish, to the detriment of all of our rights and liberties.

Lawyers feel perfectly free to go after physicians and other professionals for negligence and malpractice. Judges, prosecutors, bureaucrats and lawyers are also negligent and malpractice from time to time. It's time they stop getting a free ride from the legal system. Their mistakes adversely affect people's lives. Therefore, they must also be held legally accountable for all of their acts. Otherwise, we have two classes of citizens.

NOTE: Below is a repeat of an article published in Issue #78, back on March 29, 1998. A journalist asked where the reference could be found and, when I started looking it over again, I found the piece even more pertinent today that it was in 1998.

For those of us interested in the growth of police powers and how they are used by government to achieve strict social and political control, authoritative information is now available. We were recently provided a very enlightening report titled: "An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control."

The report discusses some very sensitive topics, such as the growth of policing powers, militarization of the police, worldwide convergence of nearly all technologies of political control, new arrest and restraint methods, surveillance devices, and human recognition and tracking devices. There is also a very interesting section on the chemical, kinetic and electrical devices used for crowd control. And, rounding out the report is a section on the use of more powerful restraint, torture, killing and execution, and the role of privatized enterprise in promoting it.

This is very scary stuff! Unfortunately though, an American reader will quickly realize this is not science fiction, but rather that most of it represents the present "state of the art" law enforcement practice within the United States.

The report is published by the European Parliament, Directorate General for Research, Directorate B, The STOA (Scientific and Technological Options Assessment) Programme, and is directed to Members of the European Parliament. But, don't let that fool you. Most of the equipment and techniques described in the report were developed right here, in the United States. Much of this stuff was developed via military contract, by direction of our Department of Justice. One major benefit of this report is that it identifies the exact origin of all equipment and techniques described, as well as their effectiveness in actual field use.

Below is the official abstract of the report. British spelling was not changed. We should also note that the words "political control," as used herein, mean people control by the use of force:

The objectives of this report are fourfold:

(i) to provide Members of the European Parliament with a guide to recent advances in the technology of political control;

(ii) to identify, analyse and describe the current state of the art of the most salient developments;

(iii) to present members with an account of current trends, both in Europe and Worldwide; and

(iv) to develop policy recommendations covering regulatory strategies for their management and future control.

The report contains seven substantive sections which cover respectively:

(i) The role and function of the technology of political control;

(ii) Recent trends and innovations (including the implications of globalisation, militarisation of police equipment, convergence of control systems deployed worldwide and the implications of increasing technology and decision drift);

(iii) Developments in surveillance technology (including the emergence of new forms of local, national and international communications interceptions networks and the creation of human recognition and tracking devices);

(iv) Innovations in crowd control weapons (including the evolution of a 2nd. generation of so called 'less-lethal weapons' from nuclear labs in the USA).

(v) The emergence of prisoner control as a privatised industry, whilst state prisons face increasing pressure to substitute technology for staff in cost cutting exercises and the social and political implications of replacing policies of rehabilitation with strategies of human warehousing.

(v) The use of science and technology to devise new efficient mark-free interrogation and torture technologies and their proliferation from the US & Europe.

(vi) The implications of vertical and horizontal proliferation of this technology and the need for an adequate political response by the EU, to ensure it neither threatens civil liberties in Europe, nor reaches the hands of tyrants.

The report makes a series of policy recommendations including the need for appropriate codes of practice. It ends by proposing specific areas where further research is needed to make such regulatory controls effective. The report includes a comprehensive bibliographical survey of some of the most relevant literature.

Taken as a whole, the report accurately describes a phenomena we find throughout the United States: the proliferation of paramilitary assault teams used for everyday police work. "It is argued that one impact of this process is the militarization of the police and the para-militarization of the army as their roles, equipment and procedures begin to overlap," the report states. And, as rogue segments of our U.S. Army practice live-fire attacks on our civilian population, we see that to be exactly true.

Furthermore, they found that 46% of American SWAT team members are prior military. We might also add that many others received military training after joining SWAT teams. SWAT teams are, therefore, military assault teams -- albeit, not usually active, on-duty members of the armed forces, per se.

This report is must reading for anyone still believing in our United States Constitution, the rule of law, and those things we once called the "American way" of life. Because, if we do not quickly put a stop to this "political control" of the people by brute force of arms, all freedom is fading away. We will have developed into little more than a very efficient police state.

The full report can be found at: http://www.uhuh.com/laws/europar3.htm

Then read http://www.uhuh.com/laws/DODD3025_12.html for domestic background.

  ** uhuh **

The President said he is reducing taxes.

uhuh.

Congress says they are balancing the budget.

uhuh. Sez who?

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