Posted on 02/19/2008 7:35:11 PM PST by djf
Secy of State Brad Johnson of Montana delivered a letter to the Washington Times about possible outcomes of the Heller decision.
Second Amendment an individual right
The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide D.C. v. Heller, the first case in more than 60 years in which the court will confront the meaning of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Although Heller is about the constitutionality of the D.C. handgun ban, the court's decision will have an impact far beyond the District ("Promises breached," Op-Ed, Thursday).
The court must decide in Heller whether the Second Amendment secures a right for individuals to keep and bear arms or merely grants states the power to arm their militias, the National Guard. This latter view is called the "collective rights" theory.
A collective rights decision by the court would violate the contract by which Montana entered into statehood, called the Compact With the United States and archived at Article I of the Montana Constitution. When Montana and the United States entered into this bilateral contract in 1889, the U.S. approved the right to bear arms in the Montana Constitution, guaranteeing the right of "any person" to bear arms, clearly an individual right.
There was no assertion in 1889 that the Second Amendment was susceptible to a collective rights interpretation, and the parties to the contract understood the Second Amendment to be consistent with the declared Montana constitutional right of "any person" to bear arms.
As a bedrock principle of law, a contract must be honored so as to give effect to the intent of the contracting parties. A collective rights decision by the court in Heller would invoke an era of unilaterally revisable contracts by violating the statehood contract between the United States and Montana, and many other states.
Numerous Montana lawmakers have concurred in a resolution raising this contract-violation issue. It's posted at progunleaders.org. The United States would do well to keep its contractual promise to the states that the Second Amendment secures an individual right now as it did upon execution of the statehood contract.
BRAD JOHNSON Montana secretary of state Helena, Mont. Montana, the Second Amendment and D.C. v. Heller
If Obama is elected, we all should secede.
*****
Also Hillary is enough for the country to secede!
These characters have hijacked the constitution by subduing capitalism
you folks should listen to Mark tell how they did it!
Monday
http://abcrad.vo.llnwd.net/o1/levin/rss/levin02182008.mp3
Tuesday
http://abcrad.vo.llnwd.net/o1/levin/rss/levin02192008.mp3
To get on the ping list
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1972980/posts
Nothing succeeds like secession....
Name three cities or towns in Montana.
Not as easy as you think.
Better yet, as your child to point out Montana on a US map.
Why are we discussing Montana at all?
BTW, I would love to go there to see the mountains, streams and some fishing.
My hubby, the former Alaskan, says that Alaska has a secession season, like Korea (or Berkeley) has riot season. LOL!
I love Inyo and Mono Counties. I worked in Independence on murder cases years ago when the defendants were found guilty and got the death sentence. Rose Bird (rip) reversed on appeal. Been to Death Valley many times and Scotty’s Mansion (not really his mansion, but another story there).
I only find one thing incorrect in your profile page. Mt. Whitney was not the tallest mountain in the West. Go north about ten miles and you will find White Mountain. Some bureaucratic idiots were shoveling dirt and rocks off of White Mountain to make Mt. Whitney the taller of the two. “Why?” you might ask. Who the heck knows.
Met a nice lady a little north of Independence (County Seat in Inyo). She was there for 80 or 90 years. She wouldn’t sell her water rights, along with about 20 other families, to LA in the early days of So.Cal. She still had a two-inch pipe with the most fabulous water in her home from a stream that came off a mountain. And it was all for free, except the usual maintenance of old pipes.
Do you know the story about the man who walked through Death Valley in the summer months and FROZE to death? Quite an interesting place.
IOW, make Montana into Switzerland!
Billings
Great Falls
Glendive...
Want more?! (Ok...I was born there.)
When I first saw this a little while ago I got distraught.
Just wondering, do you know anything about Wisdom, Mont.
The term 'National Guard' was first adopted by a New York militia unit in 1825 to honor the Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the American Revolution and former commander of the Guarde Nationale de Paris during the French Revolution.And although individual states' militias may have been transformed into more independent, self-perpetuating organizations receiving state funding that were later known as the "National Guard", it doesn't follow that that is what the Constitution is referring to as the "militia" because the Constitution was written before any such later developments.
Yea, I can see the Feds now, surrounding Montana and using a bullhorn telling them to “Put down your guns and come out!”
I hope the filings are ready to go when the gavel drops. If not, the libs will certainly counter attack and regain the initiative...
LFOD...
LFOD...
That won’t last long. The west is drying up. A few more years of this and the population will drop in a BIG way.
WAY too cold for me!
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