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DENVER -- Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel. Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he was attempting to take pictures of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel. Police on the scene refused to tell ABC lawyers the charges against the producer, Asa Eslocker, who works with the ABC News investigative unit.

"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has...

A Wyoming hunter who accidentally caused a security concern at the Grand Hyatt hotel Saturday said he’s sorry for the problems he caused and didn’t know the Democratic National Convention was in town. When Joseph Calanchini walked into the Grand Hyatt hotel with 2 rifles and 2 pistols Saturday around 4:00 pm, Denver Police evacuated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) from the hotel until they arrested Calanchini and made sure it was safe for Pelosi to return. “I didn’t even know the DNC was in town. I don’t watch the news,” said Joseph Calanchini from the Denver City Jail where...

Governments tend toward tyranny. Governments are comprised of selfish humans with personal desires for money, job security, and increased authority over fellow citizens. A citizen working for a government has opportunities to rule over and oppress fellow citizens, they would never have outside their government position. Therefore, government becomes a magnet for selfish power-seeking individuals. By their sheer size and superior firepower, governments tend to overrun and ignore personal rights. The machine capriciously devours it's victims. The Declaration of Independence declares that governments exist to protect the rights of citizens. The Constitution for the United States of America further states...

A prominent Philadelphia attorney and Hillary Clinton supporter filed suit this afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee. The action seeks an injunction preventing the senator from continuing his candidacy and a court order enjoining the DNC from nominating him next week, all on grounds that Sen. Obama is constitutionally ineligible to run for and hold the office of President of the United States. Phillip Berg, the filing attorney, is a former gubernatorial and senatorial candidate, former chair of the Democratic Party in Montgomery (PA)...

The same California Supreme Court that created a "right" to homosexual "marriage" earlier this year has now ruled that the state may force healthcare professionals to provide services that support an immoral and physically dangerous lifestyle. California's highest court was unanimous in its decision on Monday that Christian doctors may not refuse to perform artificial insemination for homosexual patients. (See "California court says no religious exemption for doctors") Attorney Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), reacts to the ruling. "This is a clear violation of the fundamental rights of individuals to live and practice their faith," he...

You've Gotta Have Heart? How Obama Chooses Judges by Deal W. Hudson 8/10/08 Evoking the power of the human heart is the daily bread of American pop culture. It rarely raises an eyebrow. But the use of "heart" by Barack Obama to describe his criteria for picking judges is troubling. Speaking to Planned Parenthood just over a year ago, Obama said: We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom; the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And...

Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush By Thomas E. Woods Jr & Kevin R.C. Gutzman (Crown Forum, 272 pages, $25.95) In Who Killed the Constitution?, bestselling authors Thomas Woods and Kevin Gutzman provide their largely conservative readership a valuable service on two counts. First, the book disabuses Republicans of the self-serving notion that they are always the heroes and Democrats always the villains. Infidelity to Constitutional writ is a bipartisan sin. Second, by stressing the affronts to the Constitution by all three branches of government, instead of obfuscating the...

I was with some friends and the subject of presidents got brought up. They all proceeded to to give their highly educated /s opinions on who was the worst and why: Reagan because he was a capitalist pig; Bush because he is an imperialistic fascist; Hoover because he was laissez faire (which isn't true). They became enraged that I could even suggest the FDR was anything short of the savior of mankind and that because I was black I had an obligation to vote for Obama. So I'm wondering, who do you think is the worst or most overrated president?

It's been 75 years since the federal government, on the spurious grounds of fighting the Great Depression, ordered the confiscation of all monetary gold from Americans, permitting trivial amounts for ornamental or industrial use. This happens to be one of the episodes Kevin Gutzman and I describe in detail in our new book, Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush. From the point of view of the typical American classroom, on the other hand, the incident may as well not have occurred. A key piece of legislation in this story...

How can a person with a degree in law misinterpret the meaning of the Second Amendment? Why is it clear to me, HHS graduate, class of '42 (most likely graduated because I would soon be drafted), what the writers of the Second Amendment meant? Let us take this slowly. "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state," means a state is going to recruit men to become on-call soldiers. The state is going to arm those men to protect the state. That is the reason a militia is necessary. Here is where intelligent, thinking men...

If old Karl Marx, the embittered inventor of communism, could return from the grave, he would no doubt be surprised to find that most of the 10 planks of his Communist Manifesto, issued in 1848 in collaboration with Frederick Engels, have been happily adopted or are at least supported by Americans. Let's look at the 10 planks: 1. "Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes." Well, we're working on this one. The federal government owns huge amounts of land and is acquiring more. Private property rights are being eroded deliberately in the...

Peter Tubic ignored a $50 parking fine in 2004, and on Monday, it cost him his $245,000 house. In what city officials believe is the first case of its kind, the city foreclosed on Tubic's house on W. Verona Court after repeated attempts to collect the fine - which over the years had escalated to $2,600 - had failed. "Our goal isn't to acquire parcels," said Jim Klajbor, special deputy city treasurer. "Our goal is to just collect taxes. . . . It is only as a last resort that we would pursue . . . foreclosure." Milwaukee County Circuit...

If there is a chief spokesman for the far left, it has to be MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. It is difficult to think of a talking head that is more fawned over by liberals. On his nightly cable television show, the #1 show on MSNBC, he "analyzes" the news and adds his own angry, leftist flavor. One of his segments is to name a "Worst Person in the World." People such as George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly and Robert Novak have made the list. Recently, he named Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia the "Worst Person" for his role in...

We have 4 very important shows coming up! 1) DC Weekly Wrap Up- I call DC every single day (Mon-Fri) on various issues, such as Energy, Immigration, 2nd Ammendment, etc. This week I will share the fun I had with DC talking about "Global Poverty." Friday, August 1st at 6pm Eastern Time- Link2) Charles Key- Oklahoma House Representative Charles Key will join us! You may recal this article about him in World Net Daily. This is a MUST hear show! He will be making an big announcement and you will want to be a part of this! Saturday, August 2nd...

I watched Ron Paul on Glenn Beck today and as usual I was amazed that he is just about the only politician in Washington talking about the real issues. Neither McCain nor Obama will talk about monetary policy. They are scared to, because they know the system we have is unconstitutional and that the only way to fix things is to go back to constitutional money. But that would hurt, so it wouldn't be prudent to bring it up...

Representative Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) denied that his lack of a residence in his congressional district should disqualify him from holding his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. “Where I live isn’t as important as whether I bring home the bacon for my district,” Wexler insisted. “No one can fault me on that. I get my share of earmarks for my constituents.” According to the law, congressmen must reside in the district they represent. Wexler has been illegally using his mother-in-law’s address to conceal his failure to meet the residency requirement.

After denying residents rights guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States, the Village of Morton Grove, Illinois, finally repealed their unconstitutional ban on handguns this week. The village board seemed unrepentent for their past crimes. One board trustee called the outrage " a noble experiment". The Chicago Tribune reported that: Peggy Friewer, 56, who said her father was mayor when the ban was enacted, told the board that she was "very saddened that you would even consider amending the ordinance."

Civil rights organization fights elitists and racists By John Bender With the Heller decision only hours old, the National rifle Association, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, filed suit against Chicago and San Francisco seeking to overturn obviously unconstitutional laws those cities have on the books. In the case of Chicago, their anti-civil right law mirrors the Washington, D.C. law the court struck down. In San Francisco the anti-civil rights law being challenged is different, but also absolutely unconstitutional on its face. In fact the San Francisco law is elitist and racist and the federal government should have insisted it...

Barack Obama may be on a world tour surrounded by a fawning media, but Sunday an expert in electronic document forensics released a detailed report on the purported birth certificate -- actually a "Certification of Live Birth" or COLB -- claimed as genuine by his campaign. The expert concludes with 100% certainty that it is a crudely forged fake: "a horribly forgery," according to the analysis published on the popular right-wing Atlas Shrugs blog. The purported Certification of Live Birth published by the Daily Kos left wing blog and claimed as genuine by the Obama campaign features a security border...

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." If Barack Obama, God forbid, is the one taking this oath on Jan. 20, does anyone seriously believe he will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution? It appears that his first loyalty is as citizen of the world. He has no problem whatsoever knocking our country.

Making a Federal Case by: Emily Ham, July 24, 2008 In a study documenting the total number of federal crimes within United States law, researchers have found that there has been a major increase in the definition of such offenses since the founding of the nation in 1776. “When the country started, there were basically three crimes: piracy, counterfeiting and treason,” said former Attorney General Edwin Meese, “At the time of our [1998] report, there were some 4,000 crimes.” Meese, who now serves as chairman of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, noted that while two centuries...

I believe it is time for congress to dissolve state governments. Here are my reasons: 1) State governments simply don’t care about the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. The majority of laws enacted by state governments violate the rights of American citizens in one way or another. 2) State governments don’t care about their own state constitution either. The majority of laws enacted by state governments violate their own state constitution. 3) State governments look the other way while municipal governments within the state, which are created and controlled by the state government, routinely pass ordinances that violate, the...

A Mississippi congressman (Rep Thompson, D) wants to create even more defensless victim zones. Thompson is displeased with a recent Georgia State law that removes infringements on the right of Georia citizens to bear arms on public transportation. While there is no history of problems in this area, Thompson wishes to ban guns from unspecified zones around airports, far beyond the traditional security zones established to prevent terrorists from smuggling arms onto airliners. Most airports around the country respect the second amendment rights of citizens to bear arms outside the designated security zones.

Natural Born Citizen Clause The clause of the U.S. Constitution barring persons not born in the United States from the Presidency. [Black’s Law Dictionary, Eighth Edition] [cf. Natural Born Citizen Clause] Greetings, The analysis below is indeed helpful, but it is erroneous and/or misleading on several important points which do deserve further clarification, as follows: (1) there are two (2) classes of citizens under American laws never repealed, not one (1) class: http://www.supremelaw.org/rsrc/twoclass.htm (see all links at the very end) Federal citizens aka "citizens of the United States" were not even contemplated with Article III -- and hence Article II...

One of the unappreciated casualties of the War of 1861, erroneously called a Civil War, was its contribution to the erosion of constitutional guarantees of state sovereignty. It settled the issue of secession, making it possible for the federal government to increasingly run roughshod over Ninth and 10th Amendment guarantees. A civil war, by the way, is a struggle where two or more parties try to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more wanted to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington wanted to take over London. Both wars are more properly described as wars of...

Orin's and David Kopel's posts below discuss whether Heller recognized a constitutional right to self-defense. I'm inclined to say the answer is yes, for the following reasons: 1. Heller recognized a right to keep and bear arms in self-defense, which logically presupposes some legal right to self-defense. Why would the Constitution let you keep an object for a certain purpose, when all use of the object for that purpose could be outlawed? 2. Heller often talks of a "right to self-defense" in contexts that suggest it is of constitutional statute, e.g., "That of the nine state constitutional protections for the...

On June 26, the last day of the 2007-2008 term, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed a lower-court ruling striking down a 33-year-old handgun ban in the nation's capital. District of Columbia v. Heller was the first Second Amendment case that the court has heard in 70 years and represents the first time the court has ever addressed the question of whether the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to bear arms for private purposes. In a recent interview with NationalJournal.com's Mary Gilbert, Adam Winkler, professor of law at University of California, Los Angeles, discussed the historical context...

Everyone knows this, but it's worth repeating: The Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln and was established in 1854 to block the expansion of slavery. The Democratic Party was the party of slavery: Its two founders, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, owned large numbers of slaves, and every party platform before the Civil War defended the institution unequivocally. After the war, it was the Republican Party that rammed through the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution over Democratic opposition. Republicans also enacted a series of civil-rights laws that culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1875,...

With their appeal to independents, Barack Obama and John McCain may scramble the electoral map in November. Others want to go further and throw out the Electoral College completely, replacing this "complicated" and "undemocratic" system with a direct, nationwide popular vote for the presidency. Despite its democratic allure, it's a bad idea. Backers of the popular vote do not seek to amend the Constitution; they know this is a nonstarter. Instead, a growing "National Popular Vote" (NPV) movement wants state legislatures to instruct their electors to vote for the winner of the greatest number of popular votes in the national...

Anyone familiar with the threat posed by the advancing American Fifth Column understands all too clearly that our Constitution is under attack. Whether it is the insistence that the Constitution is a living document meant to conform to the will of the times or the institution of political correctness – a shadow set of laws effectively usurping the laws of our Constitutional Republic – the American Fifth Column is slowly, incrementally, systematically, chipping away at the wisdom as set forth by our Founders and Framers. With news that a non-governmentally charged commission is introducing a measure that would impose “group...

Anyone familiar with the threat posed by the advancing American Fifth Column understands all too clearly that our Constitution is under attack. Whether it is the insistence that the Constitution is a living document meant to conform to the will of the times or the institution of political correctness – a shadow set of laws effectively usurping the laws of our Constitutional Republic – the American Fifth Column is slowly, incrementally, systematically, chipping away at the wisdom as set forth by our Founders and Framers. With news that a non-governmentally charged commission is introducing a measure that would impose “group...

Go to the article to read the usual yada yada about how the local congressfolks are bringing home the bacon.What caught my eye was this paragraph:"There's no way in hell I would support banning earmarks," said Rep. John Mica of Winter Park, top Republican on the House Transportation Committee. "That's our job, getting elected and making decisions. Yes, there are bad earmarks, like there are bad members of Congress. And what you do is get rid of them."

Dukakis calls for end to Electoral College Dave Wedge By Dave Wedge Tuesday, July 8, 2008 Calling it “critically important” to eliminate the Electoral College system, former Bay State Gov. Michael Dukakis called on lawmakers to join a growing number of states supporting a switch to a national popular vote to elect the president. “I think it is high time we got rid of the Electoral College and elected our presidents the way we elect every other elected official in the country - by a vote of the people,” Dukakis wrote in a letter e-mailed to state lawmakers yesterday. “The...

The founding fathers of this country had a passion to be independent of the persistent tyranny and irresponsibility of the then-king of England, George III. They even delineated many of his abuses toward the American colonies in our nation’s most landmark document, the Declaration of Independence. The founders felt so strongly about these abuses that it led to a revolution against Great Britain, which ultimately led to our independence. Our independence today is not bound by any external sovereign power, although we are under constant threat of a different kind of external tyranny – Islamic fascism. However, our independence today...

The Supreme Court openly violated its separated powers under the Constitution by defying Congress' Article I, Section 9 authority to suspend habeas corpus "when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." Congressional Democrats cheer the decision because it provides them with political cover for what they could not accomplish legislatively - their preference to execute a battle as you might an indictment and prosecute a war as you might a trial. This once co-equal branch has morphed into a tyrannical tree and President Bush has foolishly said that he'll "abide by their decision." Question: How...

The best book about the constitution in two hundred years Akhil Amar’s America’s Constitution: A Biography is the second best book ever written about the U.S. Constitution. The best, of course, is The Federalist—but this may be unfair, as it requires counting a coauthored serial work (by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison) that first appeared as a series of newspaper essays, later collected into a single volume. Still, The Federalist, considered as a whole, counts as the most important single exposition of the U.S. Constitution, masterfully, lucidly, and colorfully written by a marvelous composite political and constitutional theorist...

The Federalist Papers: The Key to Restoring Our Constitutional Republic By John Eidsmoe, Professor of Constitutional Law Summary: In the long standing debate on how the Constitution should be interpreted, Dr. Eidsmoe makes a strong case for following the original intent of the founders as the only way to avoid bizarre and disastrous results. "It's the only anchor that prevents judges from roaming at large in the trackless fields of their own imaginations," he states. To those who argue against following "original intent" because it cannot be known, Dr. Eidsmoe suggests that a sufficient exposition of the ideas of...

The Second Amendment provides that “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the plain language of the amendment recognizes a personal right, belonging to “the people,” to possess firearms. The court rejected arguments that the Second Amendment simply permits the states to form, arm and maintain their own militias or the modern National Guard. Heller arose out of the district’s complete ban on possession of usable handguns in the...

The Divinely Inspired Constitution Apostle Dallin H. Oaks, The Ensign, Feb 1992 Photograph by Eldon K. Linschoten Not long after I began to teach law, an older professor asked me a challenging question about Latter-day Saints’ belief in the United States Constitution. Earlier in his career he had taught at the University of Utah College of Law. There he met many Latter-day Saint law students. “They all seemed to believe that the Constitution was divinely inspired,” he said, “but none of them could ever tell me what this meant or how it affected their interpretation of the Constitution.” I...

The last case directly involving the Second Amendment before D.C. V. HELLER was UNITED STATES V. MILLER, decided in 1939. A great deal of misinformation has been written about MILLER, but the facts are much stranger than most of the fiction that has been printed about the case. The article that is linked reveals fascinating items about the MILLER case. The trial judge, Hiram Heartsill Ragon, was a partisan Democrat Roosevelt appointee who was endorsed by the KKK. Ragon was an anti-gun activist who used the criminal, Miller, as his vehicle to fashion a test case for the Roosevelt administration...

In a nation where around 25% of the citizens categorize themselves as ‘French’, and a province where that number is drastically lower than that, we find ourselves now force-fed a different language and a different culture. And people wonder why I am an Alberta separatist.

America’s cities and towns will soon fill with parades, fireworks, and barbecues in celebration of the Fourth of July, the 232nd birthday of America. But one hopes that the speeches will contain fewer bromides and more attention to exactly what is being celebrated. The Fourth of July is Independence Day, but America’s leaders and intellectuals have been trying to move us further and further away from the meaning of Independence Day, away from the philosophy that created this country. What we hear is that independence is outdated, that we’ve reached a new age of “interdependence.” Our presidential candidates call for...

“ A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever,” John Adams. As we move into another election year, the term Revolutionary Republicanism comes to mind. This political mindset separated America from the rest of the world before, during, and after the Revolutionary War. There was boldness unmatched throughout history to create the most powerful Republic on earth through this new political philosophy.

An ancient Ukrainian code was used as the basis for the United States constitution, insists Ukraine’s Prime Minister, Yulya Timoshenko. She made the extraordinary claim while addressing compatriots on the country’s Constitution Day, on June 28. The Gas Princess said: “The Ukrainian state has an undeviating constitutional tradition. In 1710, when civilised Europe was tentatively mulling over the separation of powers, and baron de Montesquieu even didn’t start writing The Spirit of the Laws, Ukraine had its own constitution by Pylyp Orlyk.” Timoshenko also claimed that she once read that the U.S. and some of the European constitutions were copied...

Friday morning, July 4, our nation marks for the 232nd time the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which we have always regarded as the event that makes us what we are. Also we have regarded it as the event that marks us a special nation, a nation holding out a light to guide the rest of the world. Always, that is, until lately. Today critics celebrate that the world is passing us by. Fareed Zachariah declares: “America remains the global superpower today, but it is an enfeebled one.” China and India will soon tower above us. Amy Chua writes...

Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) warned voters to carefully consider the issue of who they want appointing federal judges before they cast their ballots for president. “Senator McCain has said he will appoint men who look to the past for guidance on how they will rule on the cases brought to them,” Obama pointed out. “If you want judges to play such a passive and uninspired role, maybe you should vote for him because I will appoint active judges who look to the future for inspiration.” “We need people who can adapt the laws to meet our current and...

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5-4 ruling upholding the clear meaning of the Second Amendment – a ruling it should never have been necessary to issue at all. In D.C. v. Heller, the Court struck down Washington D.C.'s handgun ban, correctly determining that the District is still in fact part of America and therefore subject to the Constitution's guarantee that individuals can keep and bear arms. That it even got to this point, much less that four black-robed idiots still can't comprehend plain English – or, more likely, perfectly well can but simply don't want and thus...

It has been a splendid week for the Bill of Rights at the Supreme Court. In addition to their landmark gun rights ruling, the same five Justices took another whack at Congress's attempts to limit political speech via campaign-finance limits. John McCain, call your office. In Davis v. FEC, a 5-4 majority overturned a portion of the 2002 McCain-Feingold law that exempted the political opponents of rich candidates from the usual fund-raising limits in order to "level the playing field." Known as the Millionaire's Amendment, the law saddled wealthy, self-financing candidates with burdens designed to help their opponents. Millionaires had...