Posted on 01/15/2004 6:37:31 AM PST by yoe
If you think we still have a Constitutional Republic then you are dumber than I thought you were. How are our Senators elected?
By 17th amendment, under Article V per that Constitutional Republic. Work for repeal of the 17th to undo its ratification by "We the People" if you figure that is what makes our form of government not a Republic.
Though you would have a hard time justifying it since Republic = representative government.
Last time I looked them Senators are still there, and are put there by the "Posterity" of "We the People" under the 17th amendment.
You bitch is that you do not like who "We the People" keep picking for Senators, not the fact the fact that Senators are elected by "We the People" who are supposedly being represented in a government guarteed to be representative, i.e. a "republican form of govenment"
What force remains in the Bill of Rights?
Just as much as they have ever had. Hamilton had it right, enumeration of some rights just assured that they would be at risk by implying power to government beyond the strict limit of enumerate powers that was in the Constitutions before the BOR.
How much of our legal system is more about LAW and less about justice as intended?
Little about "LAW" at the lowest level courts (statutory & equity jurisdiction), Mainly LAW at appellate level. And justice is up to juries "We the People", not to judges.
How many of those checks and balances are even functional anymore much less execised?
They are only as functional as they are exercised. In what respect are they not working? Nothing to prevent the executive or the legislative branch to be a logger heads, indeed we see it all the time in judicial appointments, and anytime 40 senators take in in their head to oppose a law, or 60 senators and half the House take it into their head to change or make a new one.
Congress can control the rules and cases the Courts may rule in and remove judges by impeachment anytime they command sufficient representation to due so. Congress sets appropriations as it always has.
Courts can declare statutes void whenever they decide to do so, and do all the time to the disgust of one side or the other. Juries can aquit.
Just what checks and balances do you figure are missing?
History shows time and again that once a system reaches that breakpoint, no amount of "working within the system" is effectual.
Hmmm, richest most powerful country in the world, you're free to complain all you wish and work for change all you wish. What breakpoint have we reached that no amount of "working within the system" is effectual.
I will agree, no amount of one voice is going to change anything much unless it interests the "representive" in the representive form of government called a Constitutional Republic.
So run for Congress, and/or work to get someone more to your way of thinking in there.
Ohhh, I forget, you don't like waiting on "We the People" to get around to seeing things your way. Its just supposed to happen while you sit back and carp.
Our schools are now controlled by our ideological enemy and you think mass re-education of our populace will be effective? Get real.
what mass re-education, one on one home schooling etc. It's working even if to slow for your likes. If you are persuasive and have something "We the People" are interested in sufficiently to support your view of things hey they might even elect you to office or listen to enough to toss the current rascal out.
Your idiot assertion on revolt will remain so for as long as the memory of what our Founders accomplished exists.
Well, you go find some new Founders leaders and sufficient numbers and force of educated and committed persons to prevent usurptions of your revolt into someone else's idealistic proper mode of socialism.
You have enough to fix the problems that exist without the need for violent revolt.
That is the reality of how this Constitutional government was constructed. We the People, can only get that government suitable to reflect their own morality and virtue as reflected in their choices of representation.
That my friend is the fundament basis for the longevity and survival of the vision of the Founders.
Reform the people, you will reform the government that represents them.
I suggest you start getting busy, doing something constuctive instead of whining that others are not interested in your narrow minded, testosterone driven views of revolt.
The Commerce clause may have been, but it is no longer.
Commerce Clause is the only hook there is.
Now it is UN mandates, "
LOL Your tinfoil's leaking around the edges. UN is a laughable debating society of idiot totaletarians trying to preserve their cush jobs.
"compelling interest", "collective Rights", " an eye towards ensuring firearms are kept from criminals", not too mention "for the militia, the National Guard, only".
Looks to me you've got a bit of educat'n to do on "We the People" that don't support your world view nor revolt, doesn't it.
One federal case establishing RKBA as an "unalienable Right" for individuals, as the Founders intended, is all it would take to correct 70 years of judicial side-stepping and fracturing of precedent and logic.
Unalienable right does not need a case. It is either exists or not.
Which is it? Does the Constitution/Courts/government give unalienable rights? No way No how Charlie. One can not depend on the mere belief in tooth fairies such as the "Constitution guarantees". It can guarantee nothing except to create an institution.
Where the BOR was concerned Hamilton had it nailed correctly. It just gave a big excuse for Congress to find ways to extend "enumerated" powers to bypass it. Totally killed the concept of strickly limited powers and allowed them to broaden to first encroach on everything not strickly defined within the BOR then nibble like mice at its edges.
If it takes a federal case to establish RKBA for the individual, your thinking is wrong to begin with.
They refuse all such cases. Every single one.
Until now, circuit opinions have never split in the 2nd Amendment issue before. You will get your wish for that one federal case before the USSC. However you had best be sure its the right case to press the issue of individual right or you will see your hopes for USSC recognition go down the drain.
90% of the battle is won, split circuit opinions. Don't blow the final step if you figure USSC to be the answer to your 70years of ill.
Personally I don't rely on a case to make that decision. I am the sole judge of whether or not a right is mine and unalienable. No institution nor document can make that call.
The determiner of unalienable right being: If you aren't prepared to expend and imperil your life, property and liberty in protecting it, it is only a privilege and not any kind of right at all.
However, you keep life, property and liberty, only if you convince your neighbor that it is in his interest to believe the same as you. That is what politics and representative government is about and what the Founders gave us. Nothing more, nothing less, and it is as true today as it was back in 1785 when the Constitution was drafted.
For starters: Representation. All of our representation is elected by "We the People". Even before the 17th. The 17th was a bad idea because it took our locally elected officials out of the loop and corrupted half of Congress by turning them in to popular vote whores. That whole portion of our Republic no longer functions as it was designed to do as a balance between Federal power, State interests, and "We the People". That you laud this as a good thing shows the "quality" of your thinking.
As for us getting the government we deserve. Do we really? When we are lied to at every turn by those in our two party Duopoly? When they violate their oaths of office time and time again? When the judges those self-same oath breakers WRITE law in their judicial opinions?
Even ennumerated Rights are spit upon. How much worse would it be if none were? Juries. A jury these days is only allowed to make their decisions as instructed by the Judge. Nullification is weeded out early in the selection process and mistrials because of a juror not following the judges explicit instructions are common place. Or are judges now considered our "peers" as well? What of the early maneuverings towards a jury-less system like they are pushing in Britain? Will you still be so sanguine about things then?
Hmmm, richest most powerful country in the world, you're free to complain all you wish and work for change all you wish. What breakpoint have we reached that no amount of "working within the system" is effectual.
Jobs being shipped overseas left and right and you can still say that? It has become too expensive to do business here. Bush's taxcuts and rampant spending can only prop up the DOW so long before that bill comes due. Without cutting the amount of government spending as well, those taxes will need to be paid back at some point. With companies like IBM moving overseas, that revenue may not be there. As for free speech, for how much longer? Between CFR limiting our options prior to an election, the PATRIOT Act limiting our options there, and rampant Political Correctness... exactly how much free speech do we have left? Sure, I can sit here and type these words out, but what if I do something the government finally feels crosses some imaginary line. Then what? How long before my small collection of firearms becomes some planet threatening arsenal? My copy of the US Constitution and books by authors like Rand and L. Neil Smith considered "hate speech" without any actual titles being mentioned in the news media? What then smart ass? It isn't too much of a stretch to the imagination and the mechanisms for it are already codified in the laws you seem to love so much.
Exactly how do you purpose to "reform the people"? They would rather watch "American Idol" and "Survivor" than pay attention to your bleatings. Those that bother going to the polls are the ones on the dole already and those few patriots trying to act as a counter to them. The other 50% stay at home with their asses firmly glued to the couch.
In our War for Independence, only 5% bothered to go fight the Kings Armies. In our first Civil War, only 11% of either sides population bothered to fight. There is currently around 25% of us that own at least one firearm. The numbers, should even half of us decide to take more drastic measures against the constant infringement of our RKBA, do not work in the governments favor.
Is the time come for us to take up arms? I honestly think that that time will be seen in our lifetime. Because of people like you mostly. You who keep us holding on to the false hope that government can be used to fix government. I've worked locally. I've worked with campaigns. I've donated money and pulled that lever in the voting booth. I've harrangued my co-workers, friends, and relatives, trying to get them to do research... get active. Nothing. My taxes go up. My effective Rights diminish. Corruption is daily observable at every level of our government.
If "We the People" voted to bring back slavery, you'd support that decision. Wouldn't you. Some things are wrong no matter who perpetrates them or how many support them in the implementation. Intelligence and morallity are not additive in nature. We can only hope people like you figure that out before too much more of our Nation is lost.
As for us getting the government we deserve. Do we really?
Who put them there, and where do the come from. "We the People".
When we are lied to at every turn by those in our two party Duopoly?
Our representatives, on whole, can be no better than "average" man as reflected in his morals and virtue. Judges can be no better than the representatives putting them on the bench. That's it and the most of what you have to work with.
When they violate their oaths of office time and time again? When the judges those self-same oath breakers WRITE law in their judicial opinions?
What good is an oath that does not invoke God to a person that does not fear God.
“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not by religions, but by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” Patrick Henry
Exactly how do you purpose to "reform the people"? They would rather watch "American Idol" and "Survivor" than pay attention to your bleatings. Those that bother going to the polls are the ones on the dole already and those few patriots trying to act as a counter to them. The other 50% stay at home with their asses firmly glued to the couch.
And you expect that representationg will be better than these people from who it derives?
In our War for Independence, only 5% bothered to go fight the Kings Armies.
And the Kings armies we a pittance, with England fighting the rest of Europe at the same time. And we still d'mned near lost it all through the Articles of Confederation infighting and no federal power.
In our first Civil War, only 11% of either sides population bothered to fight.
And lost half a million and still hasn't settled the real dispute over which government could rape the people best, States or National government.
There is currently around 25% of us that own at least one firearm.
More than that back in either of the prior examples.
The numbers, should even half of us decide to take more drastic measures against the constant infringement of our RKBA, do not work in the governments favor.
But then you do not have half, believing the same as you or the problem complain of would already be resolved quite peacfully through normal political process. Less than half vote, half of those determine representation and the nature of government generally 5% of the population decides the representation one way or another.
Is the time come for us to take up arms? I honestly think that that time will be seen in our lifetime. Because of people like you mostly. You who keep us holding on to the false hope that government can be used to fix government.
People make the government we have, is my point. Government reflects the population from which it is drawn in a constitutional republic.
I've worked locally. I've worked with campaigns. I've donated money and pulled that lever in the voting booth. I've harrangued my co-workers, friends, and relatives, trying to get them to do research... get active. Nothing.
Must be something about you, don't you think? That certainly seems to be the concensus as you are expressing it here.
My taxes go up. My effective Rights diminish. Corruption is daily observable at every level of our government.
“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not by religions, but by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” Patrick Henry
If "We the People" voted to bring back slavery, you'd support that decision. Wouldn't you.
ROTFLMAO. that does not even warrant a reply. However, slavery does not exist so maybe there's some hope afterall.
I express what I see exists, what I support and what exists do not always agree. One cannot hope to change anything at all until without an appraisal of reality. You cannot change that which you fail to perceive.
Some things are wrong no matter who perpetrates them
That somehow changes the fact that such things can and do exist?
or how many support them in the implementation.
The more that support evil the more certain the evil will reflected by representative government to the people from which it derives. Nothing more Nothing less.
Intelligence and morallity are not additive in nature.
An irrelavent truism.
We can only hope people like you figure that out before too much more of our Nation is lost.
Figures what out? That an immoral society generates an immoral government? Just how do you figure you can have a better result through a violent revolt of the same folks that perpetuates that government in the first place?
Dead Corpse: is an appropriate e-name you have chosen for your self, for you still don't get it.
I look forward to your cite on the Colorado case.
I would love to have a look at that case if you can get me the info.
Well friends, I finally got through to my friend in Colorado tonight. As background, he runs a business near the muffler shop, about 1/4 of a mile away and did business with the man on a daily basis. I could not find anything on the web about the happy outcome that my friend told me about. The only info I could find was about the indictments, but I'll post that so maybe you can use that as a basis for searching. I clearly remember him telling me about the $88K the IRS refunded to him a few years ago that the story mentions.
Maybe some FReeper with connections in the legal world could find out about this case from the info I post here.
The following was found here.
The third injunction, filed in Federal District Court in Denver, was sought against Richard D. Rudd Sr.; his wife, Dolores; their children and their spouses; and their company, Colorado Mufflers Unlimited, also known as Exhaust Pros, in the Denver suburb of Northglenn. They owe more than $210,000 for taxes not withheld from paychecks of the company's nine employees, according to court papers. In addition, the I.R.S. erroneously refunded $88,768 that had been withheld from employees of the muffler business in 1997 and 1998. In May, a federal judge ordered the Rudds to return the money to the I.R.S., according to court records. Richard D. Rudd Jr., one of those named in the request, said he was not aware of the lawsuit over the refund or anything about a tax dispute.
This probably means massive offshoring of every job possible and a tidal wave of illegals flooding across the border to take what's left. And it probably means this year rather than next.
And it makes sense. There is no First Amendment anymore. We certainly can't have a bunch of grumbling, hungry, displaced, poverty-stricken formerly middle class Americans. . . and 200 million firearms laying around to which they have ready access.
No First Amendment. No Second Amendment. The two go hand in hand. At least they used to.
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