Just try it.
Posted on 11/15/2012 11:56:37 AM PST by neverdem
That's been the constitutional-governance problem Slick created by beating impeachment. He really should have been removed for cause on the articles brought against him, but the 'Rats voted down the line, in Stalinist lockstep, for acquittal -- including Sens. Bob Byrd of W. Va. and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, both of whom let it out that they thought him guilty.
Now the problem is, with a lockstep partisan vote in his pocket in the Senate (and when was the last time the Republic elected 68 senators of the opposing party to the Senate?), the President can now break the law, break the Constitution, even break your face with impunity. That's the hard-rock truth. Clinton showed that there is no real remedy for a scofflaw president, even a felon.
bflr
Just try it.
“It would take repeal of the 2nd Amendment, for the UN Treaty to have any effect in the United States”
Who says the treaty would repeal the 2nd? The People know that they could easily regulate guns out of existence. We already have thousands of gun laws on the books. You obviously have not been paying attention all these years to the various schemes that have withstood court challenge,
As I have said many times before, this is going to involve an “individual” decision to the question...
“What are YOU prepared to do about it? And, what are YOU prepared to sacrifice for it???”
Over the last few years I have added to the statement(s) I make concerning our unalienable (and moral) right to keep and bear arms as WE see fit to do so...
My concern is that when and if this renewed effort to remove our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is bred out of future generations, those closest to us, friends, co-workers and even close family members will very well be our biggest enemies if we choose to reject and resist this potential threat...
For most it may be too late, to re-establish a trust to some of those folks and the threat of a Federal Whistle-blower program is a very likely to be a huge threat to us who choose to go against the grain on this issue...
I am at a loss to what the solution is for that, and it’ll have to be something the individual must decide to do about it...
I would recommend we just keep quiet about “our” capability to others and try to lessen the attention those threats to us may recall about our view on the issue, and what w have in the way of hardware and intentions...
The talk of burying our “capabilities” is over...This is the time to keep them close...And have a seriousness of purpose in our intent to fight this threat against our right...
Just remember, at the end of the day, if this goes against us...
Everyone loses...Let’s hope we can nip this in the bud again, and communicate that this is the political third rail that they just need to leave alone...
The elitists and foreign entities are embolden, they would like to see how far they can push, because they do believe, and are hedging their bets that we will not fight hard enough now to protect this right...
I believe we can give them a lesson they will not forget for a very long time...
Again, I would be very cautious, and guarded in my future discussions with friends, co-workers and family members about you and your intentions and capabilities...PLan accordingly, disperse your capabilities, don’t leave your eggs in one basket, and keep informed to the progress of the opposition to our freedoms...
Check six...
Over and out...
55 D’s to 45 R’s is not a good balance...
Elections have consequenses...Right???
“Elections have consequenses...Right???”
What are you asking me for, I never said they didn’t?
The eGOP screwed this election but good. I mean, there were 22 or so enate seats up for grabs and the GOP still managed to lose 2. Lose 2!
Obama has 34 Senators willing to sign on to this treaty and he knows how to get it passed.
Sorry, but obviously I have, and so far the only gun-control regimes that have been closely inspected and measured against the black-letter law of the Second Amendment have been knocked down by the Supreme Court; the gun-grabbers' successes have been at the appeals court level, in librul jurisdictions, and are vulnerable to reversal.
Of course, the real threat is a couple more "Diesel" Kagans being put on the Court to replace a conservative justice. Then we'd get an outright reversal of Heller, and probably by the same devices by which SCOTUS reversed, in the infamous Lawrence decision (2003), the still-new Burger Court precedent in Bowers vs. Hardwick (1986) which, contrary the Wiki accounting, AJ Kennedy basically ignored while redarguing the whole issue de novo in his majority opinion as if Bowers had never existed.
When the Court starts doing that, there's no justice anymore.
Here are the Supreme Court cases involving the Second Amendment. Between their recent vote to uphold the obviously unconstitutional ObamaCare law and Justice Scalia claiming we had better not count on the court to uphold the Constitution, I don’t think these cases support the idea that the USSC will knock down a treaty against the second if it is posed as both taxation and regulation.
1998: MUSCARELLO v. UNITED STATES - In the dissent on defining “carries a firearm”, several Justices note that “Surely a most familiar meaning is, as the Constitution’s Second Amendment (”keep and bear Arms”). . . .”
1998: SPENCER v. KEMNA - In his dissent, Justice Stevens noted that a conviction “may result in tangible harms such as imprisonment, loss of the right to vote or to bear arms. . . .”
1997: PRINTZ, SHERIFF/CORONER, RAVALLI COUNTY, MONTANA v. UNITED STATES - Brady Background Check overturned as unfunded mandate in violation of Tenth Amendment. Justice Thomas requests a Second Amendment case.
1995: U.S. v. LOPEZ - Gun-Free School Zones Overturned as Congress exceeded its powers.
1994: ALBRIGHT v. OLIVER - The court quoted POE v. ULLMAN on how the right to keep and bear arms and other rights are to have, “freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints” under the Fourteenth Amendment.
1992: PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF SOUTHEASTERN PA. v. CASEY - The court quoted POE v. ULLMAN on how the right to keep and bear arms and other rights are to have, “freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints” under the Fourteenth Amendment.
1990: PERPICH v. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE - National Guard is NOT the militia but part of Armed Forces. Militia divided into “organized” and “unorganized”.
1990: UNITED STATES v. VERDUGO-URQUIDEZ - The “people” under the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth & Tenth Amendments are individuals, not the States.
1980: LEWIS v. UNITED STATES - This case notes in a footnote that prohibiting felons from possessing firearms does not violate the Second Amendment.
1977: MOORE v. EAST CLEVELAND - The court quoted POE v. ULLMAN on how the right to keep and bear arms and other rights are to have, “freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints” under the Fourteenth Amendment.
1973: ROE v. WADE - The court quoted POE v. ULLMAN on how the right to keep and bear arms and other rights are to have, “freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints” under the Fourteenth Amendment.
1972: ADAMS v. WILLIAMS - In the dissent, Justices Douglas & Marshall took the portions of U.S. v. MILLER toward preservation of the Militia, but noted that some controls would be Constitutional, and preferable to “watering-down” the Fourth Amendment in this case.
1972: LAIRD v. TATUM - The court quoted Chief Justice Warren on how “fear and concern of military dominance” gave rise to the Second and Third Amendments and a decentralized militia.” The right to keep and bear arms is also listed with other individual rights.
1969: BURTON v. SILLS - U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to a STATE licensing law. Even today, the Second Amendment is not applied to the states.
1968: DUNCAN v. LOUISIANA - Court quotes Senator Howard, who introduced the Fourteenth Amendment for passage in the Senate, discussing why to pass the Amendment. Sen. Howard included “the right to keep and to bear arms” with other individual rights.
1965: GRISWOLD v. CONNECTICUT - In a case deciding that Connecticut’s birth-control law unconstitutionally intrudes upon the right of marital privacy, Justice Goldberg writes a concurring opinion that, “I have not accepted the view that “due process” as used in the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates all of the first eight Amendments ... I do agree that the concept of liberty protects those personal rights that are fundamental, and is not confined to the specific terms of the Bill of Rights.” As in other courts, the Second Amendment is listed with personal rights, and not distinguished or excluded as only a collective right.
1965: MARYLAND v. U.S. - The court found that the National Guard is the modern militia guaranteed to the states under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution but does not mention what is the Militia under the Second Amendment. See also HOUSTON v. MOORE.
1964: BELL v. MARYLAND - In a footnote on Black Codes, the court noted how “Negroes were not allowed to bear arms or to appear in all public places”.
1964: MALLOY v. HOGAN - The court notes in a footnote that the Second Amendment is one of the rights not yet held applicable to the states through the 14th amendment.
1963: GIDEON v. WAINWRIGHT - The court found that Amendments that are, “fundamental safeguards of liberty” are immune from both federal and state “abridgment” under the “Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” GROSJEAN v. AMERICAN PRESS CO. and POWELL v. STATE OF ALABAMA are both cited.
1961: KONIGSBERG v. STATE BAR - The court found that Free Speech and other individual rights are based on rights “transplanted from English soil.” The court went on to find Free Speech to be in unqualified terms and “In this connection also compare the equally unqualified command of the Second Amendment: ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.’”
1961: POE v. ULLMAN - Lists the “right to keep and bear arms” with “the freedom of speech, press, and religion;” and “the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.” The courts seemless aproach indicates that all are individual rights.
1958: KNAPP v. SCHWEITZER - The court rejected the Fifth Amendment as applying to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment. “By 1900 the applicability of the Bill of Rights to the States had been rejected in cases involving claims based on virtually every provision in the first eight Articles of Amendment.” The Court cited U.S. v. CRUIKSHANK for both the First and Second Amendments.
1957: GREEN v. UNITED STATES - Mentions how President Taft stated that the Philippine people secured “all the guaranties of our Bill of Rights except trial by jury and the right to bear arms.” See also KEPNER v. U.S. and TRONO v. U S.
1950: JOHNSON v. EISENTRAGER - The Court found that the Fifth Amendment doesn’t apply to alien enemies on occupied alien territory. The court listed the Second Amendment as a civil-right along with the First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments. The Supreme Court also uses the term “werewolves.”
1947: ADAMSON v. PEOPLE OF STATE OF CALIFORNIA - Justice Black in his dissent notes the many rights not incorporated under the Fourteen Amendment, including the Eighth Amendment, Seventh Amendment, and the Second Amendment’s right of the people to keep and bear arms citing PRESSER v. STATE OF ILLINOIS.
1939: U.S. v. MILLER - Militia-type weapons covered under Second Amendment/Militia composed of civilians primarily and bearing their own firearms. One Summary of Miller Documents.
1936: GROSJEAN v. AMERICAN PRESS CO. - Citing the findings from POWELL v. STATE OF ALABAMA , the court wrote, “We concluded that certain fundamental rights, safeguarded by the first eight amendments against federal action, were also safe-guarded against state action by the due process of law clause of the Fourteenth Amendment....”
1934: HAMILTON v. REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIF. - School’s requirement for military training for all male students is upheld as constitutional, citing “duty” to “support and defend government against all enemies.”
1932: POWELL v. STATE OF ALABAMA - This fourteenth amendment case quotes from TWINING v. STATE OF NEW JERSEY about, “the personal rights safeguarded by the first eight Amendments against national action may also be safeguarded against state action....”
1931: U.S. v. BLAND - A woman’s petition for Naturalization is rejected because she is not willing to “bear arms in defense of the U.S.” See also UNITED STATES v. SCHWIMMER & U.S. v. MACINTOSH.
1929: UNITED STATES v. SCHWIMMER - A woman’s petition for Naturalization is rejected because she was not willing to “take up arms” in defense of the U.S. The court mentioned the right to keep and bear arms and stated, “Whatever tends to lessen the willingness of citizens to discharge their duty to bear arms in the country’s defense detracts from the strength and safety of the government.”
1915: STEARNS v. WOOD - An officer tried to use the Second Amendment, Tenth Amendment and other Constitutional protections against limits on promotions in the National Guard, but the court refused to hear his arguments.
1908: TWINING v. STATE OF NEW JERSEY - The Court concluded that the privilege against self-incrimination (Fifth Amendment) wasn’t incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment, nor are other personal rights including the 7th Amendment, “and the right to bear arms, guaranteed by the 2d Amendment” citing PRESSER v. STATE OF ILLINOIS
1905: TRONO v. U.S. - In questioning whether an action of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, then a U.S. possession, violated an act of Congress applying most of the Bill of Rights to the Philippines, the court noted that the Act omitted “the provisions in regard to the right of trial by jury and the right of the people to bear arms, . . . . “ See also KEPNER v. U.S.
1904: KEPNER v. U.S. - Noted that the act of Congress regarding rights in the Philippines forget several Amendments, including the “the right of the people to bear arms” among several others. See also TRONO v. U.S.
1900: MAXWELL v. DOW - Cited PRESSER v. STATE OF ILLINOIS on how “all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force of the national government”.
1900: U S v. ELDER - The court repeatedly cited Government officials in the 1800s that provided “notice that they should keep arms sufficient for their defense.”
1900: THE PANAMA - The court recognized that a ship carries guns and cannons for “self-defense” and quoted from Portalis, “defense is a natural right, and means of defense are lawful in voyages at sea, as in all other dangerous occupations of life”. However, this did not apply to enemy property like the Panama.
1897: ROBERTSON v. BALDWIN - The court notes that each of the “Bill of Rights” have limitations on those rights, including the freedom of speech and of the press; the right of the people to keep and bear arms; double jeopardy, etc.
1896: BROWN v. WALKER - In his dissent, Justice Field quoted the counsel for the appellant: “The freedom of thought, of speech, and of the press; the right to bear arms; exemption from military dictation;. . . . . — are, together with exemption from self-crimination, the essential and inseparable features of English liberty.”
1894: MILLER v. TEXAS - Court refused to expand the Second and Fourth Amendment to the States since it was not brought up first during the trail. A very unfortunate trial mistake.
1892: LOGAN v. U.S. - The Court was faced with a question about the scope of the conspiracy statute involved in U.S. v. CRUIKSHANK. The court found that the First and Second Amendments under Cruikshank are not granted by the Constitution, but were both already existing and only a limitation on Congress. This case failed to recognize the Fourteen Amendment (Equal Protection - 1868).
1886: PRESSER v. STATE OF ILLINOIS - Second Amendment only a limitation on Congress, not the States. This case failed to recognize the Fourteen Amendment (Equal Protection - 1868).
1875: U.S. v. CRUIKSHANK - First and Second Amendment rights only limitation on Congress. These rights are not granted by, nor in any manner dependent, upon the Constitution. This case failed to recognize the Fourteen Amendment (Equal Protection - 1868).
1866: EX PARTE MILLIGAN - The court discounted the notion that The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments were limitations on “war-making” powers. Similarly, the right of the people to keep and bear arms would not “hinder the President from disarming insurrectionists, rebels, and traitors in arms while he was carrying on war against them.”
1857: DRED SCOTT v. SANDFORD - Slavery kept legal based in part on the fear that freed slaves could “carry arms wherever they went” under the Second Amendment.
1844: THE MALEK ADHEL - A piracy case where the court noted that “All vessels going to the Pacific carry arms for defence.”
1820: HOUSTON v. MOORE - This case seems to distinguish the Militia powers under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution and “the right to keep and bear arms.” Future decisions only mention one provision or the other. See also MARYLAND v. U.S.
1803: MARBURY v. MADISON - The court found that the Constitution is the “superior, paramount law” of the land and that “a law repugnant to the constitution is void; and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.”
Down the centuries, one of the foulest human habits was regularized and organized under the administration of the Flavian emperor Domitian, younger son of Vespasian who had slain his elder brother to get the purple. In those days tale-bearing and informing was called delatio, and delatores were coddled and protected, and they shared with the emperor's privy purse in the spoils of their condemned masters' estates. For under old laws, already commonly misused during the Civil Wars at the end of the Republic (when delation had previously prospered, although not in any organized fashion), condemned men's property was taken, lock, stock, and barrel, by the state, and as the centuries wore on, this became a principal source of state revenue, as the scrapings of the publicans and other tax-collectors tailed off over 400 years in a gradually failing economy.
As the example of East German ice skater Katarina Witt has shown, organized informing has been a staple of modern tyranny, and especially Communism.
The real problem is Cruikshank 1877 (not 1875), which was the basis of Presser and all the anti-gun-right decisions that relied on it, esp. including Miller. You see a clear dichotomy between opinions of the Court incorporating the BoR to the States, versus decisions that specifically exempt the States (Presser, Cruikshank, Twining vs. New Jersey).
The Court needs to revisit Cruikshank. If they did, they'd overturn it in a flash, inasmuch as it involved a case of Klan violence against Negroes attempting to vote; the Court found for the Klansmen, and instructed the injured Negroes that they must look to the Attorney General of Louisiana, their home State, for protection against the Klan -- which was a laugher.
Amen.
If you choose not to support the NRA, then you'd better be supporting the pro-gun organization of your choice with your dollars, your labor - or both.
Now.
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