Post-Constitutional America: Your Basic Rights Are at Greater Risk Than You Think [Video]

The Great One, Mark Levin, warns that we are living in a post-constitutional America. What does this mean for you? Are you at risk of losing your basic rights such as free speech? Find out on this episode of Trifecta.

Progressing Toward Moral Darkness

By Gary Horne | May 19, 2012 | American Thinker

 A fashionable name for the left these days is “progressive.”  The use of this word hints that the progressive has already passed the rest of us and is moving on to some place where the normal rules of reality don’t apply.  Is it the Garden of Eden?  Atlantis?  Oz?

What will life be like in this destination?  Will the moral standards be compatible with the society we want?  How do progressive values compare with the traditional American ethical standards from the founding of the United States and from the major religions?

From the Founding:

The moral underpinnings of the United States of America were beautifully and concisely expressed in the Declaration of Independence:

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.

Can we rely on the progressives to protect those unalienable rights derived from our nature as human beings?  Will they uphold the standards in the Declaration of Independence: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness?

America’s Courts Have Been Violating the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause for Three Decades

By Jerry A. Kane | May 12, 2012 | Canada Free Press

For thirty years the ACLU and its atheist hordes have been in state and federal courts vigorously marginalizing Christians and uprooting public memorials and symbols of the nation’s Christian heritage. Any cross, crucifix, sculpture, statue, figurine, or carving that could trigger memories of America’s Christian founding has been targeted for eradication from the public sphere.

The Framers wrote the Bill of Rights to restrict the powers of the federal government, which means the First Amendment was intended to protect religion from an intrusive government, and not the government from religion.Even though over two-thirds of the American public believes the First Amendment erects a “wall of separation between church and state,” the truth is the Framers of the Constitution never entertained such a notion. For three decades now, rulings by the courts ordering the removal of Christian symbols from public property have violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

The First Amendment begins with the words, “Congress [i.e. the federal government] shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” The Framers didn’t want the federal government establishing a “state church” (as England and some European Countries had at the time) or interfering with the free exercise of religion. The First Amendment kept the federal government from interfering with the people’s right to establish their own churches and denominations and worship freely.

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. … Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.”—Thomas Jefferson The suggestion that Christian symbols displayed on public property could amount to a violation of the Establishment Clause would be laughable to the Framers.

The concept of a Judeo/Christian God or nature’s God was embraced by the Founders:

Fifty-two of the 55 Framers of the U.S. Constitution were members of established orthodox churches in the colonies:

Congregationalist-7
Deist-1
Dutch Reformed-2
Episcopalian-26
Lutheran-1
Methodist-2
Presbyterian-11
Quaker-3
Roman Catholic-2

In fact, the Framers enshrined the concept of the Judeo/Christian God and nature’s God in the Declaration of Independence:

When …it becomes necessary for one people to …assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them …

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 …

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America … appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies …

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

At the time the First Amendment was written, several states were dominated by churches, e.g., Connecticut was Congregationalist, Massachusetts was Puritan, Virginia was Baptist, and Pennsylvania was Quaker. The people in those states chose the religion they preferred, and they didn’t want the federal government imposing any particular sect or denomination on their states.

It’s safe to assume that when the Framers wrote the First Amendment, they understood that:

1. God establishes the place of nations in the world.
2. God created man.
3. God endowed man with certain unalienable rights.
4. God is the supreme judge of human conduct.

As Mark Levin writes in Men In Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America,“the Declaration of Independence … is an explicit recognition that our rights derive not from the King of England, not from the judiciary, not from government at all, but from God. … Religion and God are not alien to our system of government, [sic] they’re integral to it.”

If the Framers intended the Establishment Clause to erect a “wall of separation” between the Judeo/Christian God and nature’s God and government, they would have included the “separation of church and state” notion in the First Amendment or would have at least introduced and discussed it at the first Constitutional Convention. But not one of the Framers ever mentioned it. None of the Congressional Records of the discussions and debates of the 90 Founding Fathers who framed the First Amendment contains the phrase “separation of church and state.” The phrase is not found in the Constitution, the First Amendment, or in any of the notes from the Convention.

The idea of a “wall of separation” between church and state surfaced in 1947 when the Warren Court lifted the “wall of separation” phrase from a letter written by President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut. Jefferson used “wall” as a metaphor to address the Baptists’ concerns about religious freedom, and to clarify for them that the federal government was restricted from interfering with religious practices. Jefferson’s letter explained that the First Amendment put restrictions only on the government, not on the people.

The truth is the current “separation” doctrine is a relatively recent concept and not a long-held constitutional principle. The Warren Court took Jefferson’s “wall of separation” phrase out of context and reinterpreted the First Amendment to restrict people instead of government. And now some 65 years later, 69 percent of the American people believe the First Amendment actually contains the “separation of church and state” phrase.

In his dissenting opinion in the 1985 ruling against silent prayer in public schools, Chief Justice William Rehnquist decried how the Warren Court’s “wall” notion undermined the Framers’ original intent of the First Amendment:

“There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build the ‘wall of separation’ that was constitutionalized in Everson. But the greatest injury of the ‘wall’ notion is the mischievous diversion of judges from the actual intentions of the drafters of the Bill of Rights. [N]o amount of repetition of historical errors in judicial opinions can make the errors true. The ‘wall of separation between church and state’ is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.”

Read the full article here.

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‘A Struggle Ensued’: Lynch Mob Justice In Florida

By Clarice Feldman | April 15, 2012 | American Thinker

From time to time the U.S. is engaged in its popular, charming pastime, following criminal cases. Once the special hobby of retirees who flooded the courthouses, since cable TV and the Internet, anyone can participate in these modern versions of morality plays.  The latest episode is the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman one, a story that shows how a media rife with malpractice and incompetence, a black grievance industry supported by a corrupt Attorney General , and a special prosecutor in a difficult re-election fight can twist facts and put to jeopardy a man already cleared of wrongdoing despite the lack of persuasive, dispositive new evidence sufficient to meet the  state’s burden of overcoming a claim of self-defense.

A.  Media Malpractice

American Thinker has already published a short course on how media malpractice turned an ordinary, everyday incident into a nationwide racial dispute.

More detailed day by day breakdowns of the media’s manipulation of the facts in the case, were made by Tom Maguire on Just One Minute. Here are some of the running accounts:

• http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2012/04/semi-props-to-ms-alvarez-ny-times.html;
• http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2012/04/wapo-media-watchdog-barks-up-wrong-tree-protects-nbc.html;
• http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2012/04/opening-a-new-front-against-nbc.html;
• http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2012/04/trayvon-martin-day-three-of-eerie-silence-at-ny-times.html;
• http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2012/04/trayvon-martin-and-the-times-flooding-the-zone-or-signing-off.html;
• http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2012/04/trayvon-martin-and-the-silence-of-the-times.html

NBC and MSNBC were the worst offenders, but no major news outlet was spared the ignominy of sloppy reporting, sometimes followed by subtle, unannounced corrections of the record, and often simply perpetuating the false accounts  when the facts they reported were proven untrue.

Here’s a typical analysis by Tom  based on a video NBC and MSNBC played of George Zimmerman’s appearance at the Sanford, Florida police department soon after the shooting:

If NBC’s non-investigation of five appearances of the bogus Zimmerman 911 edit isn’t enough, let’s poke at this mystery – what “enhanced” police video did MSNBC air last month, what did it really show, and where is it now?

Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler called this out on April 4 but we can illustrate it with a screenshots.  Over to Bob:

Last Thursday afternoon, MSNBC played videotape of Zimmerman’s apparent injuries which was much more “enhanced,” much more clear. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/30/12.

Martin Bashir referred to this tape as “an extended and newly released surveillance video” which showed “new angles, never seen before, of George Zimmerman being brought into the Sanford police station.” This suggested that MSNBC had received a second tape from the Sanford police video system-that this was not the same old tape others had aired before.

 Bashir’s tape did provide a much clearer look at the back of Zimmerman’s head. It seemed to show a rather large goose-egg style bump on the back of his head, with a rather clear abrasion atop it.

This tape is much more “enhanced” than the ABC tape. And it has now disappeared.

He linked to a March 30 post which included this:

What videos does NBC have in its archives, and which are authentic?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Read the full article here.

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Judicial Review v. Judicial Activism

By Mark Alexander | April 12, 2012 | The Patriot Post

SCOTUS and Constitutional Authority

“No legislative act … contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.” –Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78 (1787)

Last week, seeing that his signature legislative achievement was in jeopardy, Barack Hussein Obama fired a shot across the bow of the Supreme Court as it considered the constitutionality of his so-called “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (a.k.a., ObamaCare). Obama warned the court against “judicial activism.”

“I am confident,” proclaimed Obama, “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. I just remind conservative commentators that for years what we have heard the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. That an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example and I am pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step. … [T]hat’s not just my opinion, that’s the opinion of a whole lot of constitutional law professors and academics and judges and lawyers who have examined this law.”

Actually, as Obama knows well, the Supreme Court’s consideration of ObamaCare is not an example of judicial activism as Obama erroneously claims, unless the Court actually upheld the institution of socialized medicine as constitutionally compliant.

In fact, SCOTUS is exercising appropriate judicial review as outlined in Article III of our Constitution, and established as precedent in 1803 with the Court’s Marbury v. Madison decision under Chief Justice John Marshall. In that fundamental case, Marshall wrote, “The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written. … [T]he framers of the constitution contemplated that instrument, as a rule for the government of courts, as well as of the legislature.”

Marbury v. Madison is often derided as the beginning of the end of Liberty. However, it certainly was consistent with our Framers’ intent, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 78: “[T]he courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority. The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges as, a fundamental law. It, therefore, belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.”

The unfortunate consequence of the Marbury precedent is that it rendered the Constitution vulnerable to broad extra-constitutional interpretation, should the courts ever become highly politicized — as indeed they did in the 20th century, from FDR forward.

Judicial review was and remains a foundational component of republican federalism and was instituted to preserve Liberty. However, as Thomas Jefferson feared when warning the judiciary could become the “despotic branch,” the federal court’s checks and balances have been adulterated by judicial activists who, in the words of the venerable Senator Sam Ervin, “interpret the Constitution to mean what it would have said if [they], instead of the Founding Fathers, had written it.”

Thus, now, as Jefferson warned, “The Constitution [will be] a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”

Read the full article here.

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Alarms Over Obama Coup Against Constitution Surging

By Bob Unruh | April 13, 2012 | WND

‘2nd term free of electoral restraints may be a frightening prospect’

There always have been those few who have launched diatribes over the dictatorial actions of any given U.S. presidential administration, over civil rights, foreign affairs, the economy, the draft or a dozen other topics – even though the Constitution was written specifically to prevent the collection of too much power by one branch of government.

Now, again, there are words like “egocentric megalomaniac” being ascribed to the White House, and warnings about detention camps and government surveillance of its citizens.

But where previous generations of warnings emanated from lone wolves with their fax machines in dusty spare rooms, the current alarms are being issued by the likes of Investors Business Daily, First Amendment authority Nat Hentoff, New York Times best-selling author Robert Ringer and their equals.

“A second term free of electoral restraints [for Obama] may be a frightening prospect,” IBD wrote in a commentary in the last week. “This is, after all, a president who has said he can’t wait for Congress to act and will govern by executive order and regulations if necessary. He has questioned the Supreme Court’s ‘unprecedented’ review of Obamacare.”

The publication pointed out that the Obama administration already is in contempt of court – in a court dispute over its ban on oil drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

When U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman ruled that the Obama Interior Department unconstitutionally imposed an offshore drilling moratorium, the agency “simply established a second ban that was virtually identical.”

“Judge Feldman was not amused. ‘Each step the government took following the court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance,’ Feldman said in his ruling. ‘Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the re-imposition of a second moratorium …. provides this court with clear and convincing evidence of its contempt,’” the editorial said.

The issue recently was brought into the headlines by comments from Judge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News analyst who said, “I think the president is dangerously close to totalitarianism. A few months ago he was saying the Congress doesn’t count. The Congress doesn’t mean anything. I am going to rule by decree and by administrative regulation. Now he’s basically saying the Supreme Court doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter what they think. They can’t review our legislation.

“That would leave just him as the only branch of government standing,” Napolitano said.

His comments came after statements from Obama that the U.S. Supreme Court wouldn’t take the “unprecedented” action of actually overturning the Obamacare law, even though that is exactly what courts do when justices determine the legislation is unconstitutional.

“I think he [Obama] has some problems with understanding the Constitution, or accepting limitations on his power,” said Napolitano. “Look, they’re equal branches of government, but with respect to what the law means and what the Constitution means, the court is superior to the president.”

His comments came recently on Neil Cavuto’s program, when the discussion turned to the U.S. Supreme Court’s discussion of the unconstitutionality of Obamacare and Obama’s verbal attack on the court shortly after the oral arguments.

Here are Napolitano’s comments:

Read the full article here.

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The Plot to Get Rush

By Jeffrey Lord | March 27, 2012 | The American Spectator

Hannity, Palin next targets: Who is Angelo Carusone?

It was a set up.

From start to finish.

A quite specific, quite detailed plot to get Rush Limbaugh, ruin his career, and drive him off the air.

Next targets? Sean Hannity and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Lots to cover here.

Let’s start with Mr. Angelo Carusone.

Who is Angelo Carusone? Today he is now the “Director of Online Strategy for Media Matters for America.”

But a few years back? He was just your basic left-wing law student with a standard left-wing passion. That passion? Totalitarian-style censorship.

Let’s stop here for a moment for a brief bit of historical background — not a detour but a very necessary context.

It is a big mistake — a really big mistake — to dismiss what’s being done to Rush Limbaugh as just some crazy guys at Media Matters.

When we work our way through what Angelo Carusone and his Media Matters comrades and others are doing when they target Rush, or went after Glenn Beck, or plan to do in targeting Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin and who knows who after that (Levin? Laura?) remember: this is the way the Left — the global left throughout history, not simply the American Left today — has always behaved. A fanatical intolerance is part of the leftist DNA.

The late Austrian free-market economist Ludwig von Mises described the leftist method of operation as “fanatical and intolerant.” It works, he said, this way:

Socialism… works on the emotions…to stifle the voice of reason by awakening primitive instincts.

Primitive instincts.

And that most primitive of human instincts? You got it.

Fear.

Read the full article here.

The Ryan Test: Demagoguery Versus Ideas

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

By Jonathan S. Tobin | August 11, 2012 | Commentary Magazine As John wrote earlier today, liberals are convinced that Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan to be his running mate offers them a golden opportunity to savage the Republicans about the Wisconsin congressman’s budget plans. Predictably, the New York Times delivered one of the first such salvos in its editorial posted […]

Smoking Obama’s Crack and Yearning for the Mud

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

By Vanderleun | August 10, 2012 | American Digest [From 2008. Only the names have been changed because the target has changed.] This downward flight of intellectuals has been going on ever since the Romantic movement began its counter-revolution a couple hundred years ago. No matter how much they flap their lips it’s a fall, not […]