Free Republic

Subtitle: The Federalist No. 40 Recall from the Introduction to this series, Brent Dunklau, COS District Captain (HD 33 Texas), noted James Madison' seemingly contradictory stances in The Federalist No. 40. Is the Constitution an amended version of the Articles of Confederation (AC) or is it an unauthorized and radical departure? Brent regularly encounters this question, and it is one which Article V opponents use to delegitimize the Constitution. James Madison opened No. 40 with a quick reference to No. 39, in which he distinguishes between national and federal systems. A national system is democratic. A majority of the people...

Michael Klarman talked about his book The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution, in which he recalls the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, from its tenuous start, according to the author the Philadelphia convention almost didn’t occur, to the many competing interests and internal debates that marked the Constitution’s creation. Michael Klarman spoke with Patrick Spero at the National Constitution Center.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, aka CAIR, has helped launch a series of protests across the country and plans lawsuits related to President Trump’s recent executive orders on immigration.

Republican Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger charged on CNN's New Day Friday that President Donald Trump was undermining America’s electoral system and Constitution by calling for a review of voter rolls in search of evidence for massive voter fraud. "This basically undermines the idea of an election, this undermines the Constitution," said Kinzinger, a frequent critic of Trump’s policy who refused to endorse him during the election.

Very busy day. Remember the political ideology exposed within the M-DSPD investigation, and the sunlight avoided by the MSM? Factual information, sworn affidavits etc., knowledge is leverage. Changes in approach are ideologically connected.

Were you happy to see the presidential election conclude on November 8th only to be disappointed in the escalation of hostility after the election? America has always taken pride in its ability to have a peaceful transition of power. Are we losing that ability? And if so, why? Perhaps it is because we are being conditioned and trained to believe our system is a pure democracy, so we are behaving as if it were true. Some democratic principles are an important part of our Republic and must be preserved if we are to maintain a balanced, free government. But history...

Subtitle: Passing the Torch. Remarkably, despite the enormous pressure to disclose the goings on of the federal convention, its delegates managed to keep very close to their oaths of secrecy. In a cost-saving move, several states simply recommissioned their congressional delegates to attend the convention. With so many in Philadelphia, congress, which was in New York, rarely had a quorum to conduct business during the summer of 1787. Edward Carrington of Virginia feared too few of his fellow delegates would return to New York and there wouldn’t be a congress to receive the report of the convention! The president of...

Burns Chronicles #54 Though I have posted the Preamble to the Bill of Rights a number of times, people still ask if there really is a Preamble to the Bill of Rights. A preamble sets forth the purpose of the document, as the Preamble to the Constitution sets forth its purpose. It is not a part of the document, rather an explanation as to why the document was created. When Congress approved, and sent the Bill of Rights to the States, as required by Article V of the Constitution, the first paragraph explained why the Joint Resolution was passed. It...

WASHINGTON — A team of prominent constitutional scholars, Supreme Court litigators and former White House ethics lawyers intends to file a lawsuit Monday morning alleging that President Trump is violating the Constitution by allowing his hotels and other business operations to accept payments from foreign governments. The lawsuit is among a barrage of legal actions against the Trump administration that have been initiated or are being planned by major liberal advocacy organizations. Such suits are among the few outlets they have to challenge the administration now that Republicans are in control of government. In the new case, the lawyers argue...

Subtitle: The New Jersey Plan.In this post, we’ll see why continuance under the Articles of Confederation (AC) was certain to destroy the Union. The commissions for delegates to the convention were, at most, slight variations of the wording of the report from the 1786 Annapolis convention, “to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.” It is on this clause that Article V opponents hang their collective hats. To them, entire state delegations intentionally disregarded their instructions to strictly stand by improvements to...

Submitted by Eric Peters via EricPetersAutos.com,America is in trouble because Americans got lazy. Not so much physically but morally. They began to care more about some passing thing than about the things that truly matter; the things that made America unlike other places.Better than other places.Things like principles; the plain meaning of words. The Fourth and Fifth Amendments, especially. Which were (past tense deliberate) laws written to articulate and protect principles that matter.It gradually became more important to – as Thomas More’s character in the play, A Man For All Seasons put it – cut down all the “trees”...

Subtitle: The Road to Philadelphia. Most narratives on the events leading to the federal convention in Philadelphia begin with the Mount Vernon meeting of 1785, in which delegates from Virginia and Maryland discussed various issues involving commerce along their common border, the Potomac River. Other narratives, like those from Article V opponents, start with the congressional call to convention in February 1787. Both neglect earlier attempts to correct the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation (AC). In previous posts to this series, we learned that congressionally proposed amendments to the still-to-be-ratified AC regarding nationwide taxation and regulation of commerce went...

“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.” -John F. Kennedy, 1958 This quote is bantered around a lot on the internet by some who, I’m guessing, are middle-of-the-road or don’t like all the animosity between the parties. What most of us who yearn for less conflict blissfully overlook is an omitted sentence before the quote and Kennedy’s challenge at the end of his speech. First, his quote in the speech is prefaced...

As Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, George Washington knew like no other man of the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation (AC). From the despair at Valley Forge in 1777-78, and a congressional recommendation that he plunder the Pennsylvania countryside for supplies, George Washington and his men felt the full measure of inadequate government. On March 15th 1783, Washington prevented a mutiny of his army encamped at Newburgh NY that would have changed the course of American history. The Revolutionary War did not end with victory at Yorktown; British troops still held New York, Charleston, Savannah, and western outposts. Ironically,...

Legislators have been skirting the Nevada Constitution to pass tax increases for 20 years, and it’s time to expose their scheme. They’re violating the Gibbons’ Tax Restraint Initiative, a voter-approved constitutional amendment that requires the support of two-thirds of lawmakers (or a majority vote of the people) on any bill that “creates, generates, or increases any public revenue.” Nevada’s local governments already can’t raise taxes unless the Legislature approves first. That should provide state taxpayers with a double firewall against local tax increases. But big government worked out an end-around. After the initiative went into effect in 1996, the Legislative...

A California GOP lawmaker is challenging the hiring of former U.S. Attorney Eric Holder to fight the Trump administration, saying it may violate the California Constitution. Assemblyman Kevin Kiley has asked the California Attorney General’s office to investigate whether legislative Democrats ran afoul of the law by retaining Mr. Holder and his law firm, Covington & Burling, for $25,000 per month to do a job that can be performed by state employees.

[Excerpted] Cuban Jose Enrique Manreza, who sold his house and belongings to embark on a epic journey by plane, bus and on foot in pursuit of the American dream, is now stranded in a Mexican border town after Washington abruptly ended a lenient immigration policy.

Your property is the sum of, or fruit of, your life and liberty. You purchase your property, not with money, but with your life and liberty. Say you make $60,000 per year and you purchase a car for $30,000 and someone steals that car. If you never get the car back what else will you also never get back? The thief has not only stolen your car, but has stolen six months of your life and liberty. You will never get that six months back or the liberty you used to work for and purchase the car. Remember your algebra...

Without a formal league until just a few months before the climactic battle of Yorktown in October 1781, the fledgling independent republics of the Revolutionary War somehow managed to frustrate the most powerful nation on earth. On March 1st, Maryland, under threat of invasion by General Cornwallis, joined twelve other states in confederation. As Maryland illustrated, the first purpose of the confederation was common defense from the English Army and Royal Navy. The Articles of Confederation (AC) formalized the powers of a pre-existing congress of the states. With one vote each, Rhode Island had as much influence as Virginia. Congress...

State law requires prospective teachers to understand the U.S. and Nevada constitutions. If the Clark County School District gets its way, new teachers won’t have to.