Socialist Nuts Taking Over America
God Is Not Welcome
You're Probably A Federal Criminal
Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have them in derision (Psalm 2:1-4).
"Americans don't realize that the next four years could be full of bizarre initiatives plucked from the wildest dreams of the animal-rights fringe."
"Sunstein has also been an outspoken proponent of tough restriction on gun sales and ownership and what has been characterized as a "Fairness Doctrine" for the Internet."
"...the government can often secure a conviction without having to prove that the person accused even intended to commit a bad act..."
You're Probably A Federal Criminal
July 26, 2009 (July 21, 2009)
You're Probably A Federal Criminal
Brian Walsh
FOXNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/07/21/heritage-house-law/
Federal law now criminalizes activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. Consequently, every year, thousands of upstanding, responsible Americans run afoul of some incomprehensible federal law and end up serving time in federal prison. With all the attention that's been paid lately to long federal sentences for drug offenders, it's surprising that a far more troubling phenomenon has barely hit the media's radar screen. Every year, thousands of upstanding, responsible Americans run afoul of some incomprehensible federal law or regulation and end up serving time in federal prison. What is especially disturbing is that it could happen to anyone at all -- and it has.
We should applaud Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), then, for holding a bipartisan hearing today to examine how federal law can make a criminal out of anyone, for even the most mundane conduct. Federal law in particular now criminalizes entire categories of activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. This is an inevitable result of the fact that the criminal law is no longer restricted to punishing inherently wrongful conduct -- such as murder, rape, robbery, and the like. Moreover, under these new laws, the government can often secure a conviction without having to prove that the person accused even intended to commit a bad act, historically a protection against wrongful conviction.
Laws like this are dangerous in the hands of social engineers and ambitious lawmakers -- not to mention overzealous prosecutors -- bent on using government's greatest civilian power to punish any activity they dislike. So many thousands of criminal offenses are now in federal law that a prominent federal appeals court judge titled his recent essay on this over-criminalization problem, "You're (Probably) a Federal Criminal." Consider small-time inventor and entrepreneur Krister Evertson, who will testify at today's hearing. Krister never had so much as a traffic ticket before he was run off the road near his mother's home in Wasilla, Alaska, by SWAT-armored federal agents in large black SUVs training automatic weapons on him. Evertson, who had been working on clean-energy fuel cells since he was in high school, had no idea what he'd done wrong. It turned out that when he legally sold some sodium (part of his fuel-cell materials) to raise cash, he forgot to put a federally mandated safety sticker on the UPS package he sent to the lawful purchaser.
Krister's lack of a criminal record did nothing to prevent federal agents from ransacking his mother's home in their search for evidence on this oh-so-dangerous criminal. The good news is that a federal jury in Alaska acquitted Krister of all charges. The jurors saw through the charges and realized that Krister had done nothing wrong. The bad news, however, is that the feds apparently had it in for Krister. Federal criminal law is so broad that it gave prosecutors a convenient vehicle to use to get their man. Two years after arresting him, the feds brought an entirely new criminal prosecution against Krister on entirely new grounds. They used the fact that before Krister moved back to Wasilla to care for his 80-year-old mother, he had safely and securely stored all of his fuel-cell materials in Salmon, Idaho.
According to the government, when Krister was in jail in Alaska due to the first unjust charges, he had "abandoned" his fuel-cell materials in Idaho. Unfortunately for Krister, federal lawmakers had included in the Resource Recovery and Conservation Act a provision making it a crime to abandon "hazardous waste." According to the trial judge, the law didn't require prosecutors to prove that Krister had intended to abandon the materials (he hadn't) or that they were waste at all -- in reality, they were quite valuable and properly stored away for future use. With such a broad law, the second jury didn't have much of a choice, and it convicted him. He spent almost two years locked up with real criminals in a federal prison. After he testifies today, he will have to return to his halfway house in Idaho and serve another week before he is released.
The other hardened criminal whose story members of Congress will hear today is retiree George Norris. A longtime resident of Spring, Texas, Norris made the mistake of not knowing and keeping track of all of the details of federal and international law on endangered species -- mostly paperwork requirements -- before he decided to turn his orchid hobby into a small business. What was Norris's goal? To earn a little investment income while his wife neared retirement. The Lacey Act is an example of the dangerous over-breadth of federal criminal law. Incredibly, Congress has made it a federal crime to violate any fish or wildlife law or regulation of any nation on earth.
Facing 10 years in federal prison, Norris pled guilty and served almost two. His wife, Kathy, describes the pain of losing their life savings to pay for attorneys and trying to explain to grandchildren why for so long Poppa George couldn't see them. Federal criminal law did not get so badly broken overnight, and it will take hard work to get it fixed. It is encouraging that members of Congress such as Reps. Scott and Gohmert are now paying attention to the toll over-criminalization takes on ordinary Americans. Congress needs to begin fixing the damage it has done by starting to restore a more reasonable, limited and just federal criminal law. Today's hearing is an excellent first step.
Sotomayor Would Not Concede A Right To Self-Defense
July 20, 2009
Sotomayor Would Not Concede a Right to Self-Defense
By Adam Brickley
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=51222
Washington (CNSNews.com) Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor delivers her opening statement on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, July 13, 2009, during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. – When Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) asked Wednesday whether citizens have a right to self-defense, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “I don’t know.” Coburn had asked, “As a citizen of this country, do you believe innately in my ability to have self-defense of myself – personal self-defense? Do I have a right to personal self-defense?”
In reply, Sotomayor said that, “I’m trying to think if I remember a case where the Supreme Court has addressed that particular question. Is there a constitutional right to self-defense? And I can’t think of one. I could be wrong, but I can’t think of one.” She then went on to explain that self-defense rights are usually defined by state law.” Unsatisfied, Coburn continued, “But do you have an opinion, of whether or not in this country I personally, as an individual citizen, have a right to self-defense?” Sotomayor responded, “I – as I said, I don’t know.” Later in the exchange, Coburn said, “I wasn’t asking about the legal question. I’m asking your personal opinion.” “But that is an abstract question with no particular meaning to me,” Sotomayor relied.
William van Alstyne, a professor at the William and Mary School of Law, said that Sotomayor was technically justified in her answer. “It’s actually a more subtle and elusive question than most people would even reasonably understand,” he said. Van Alstyne told CNSNews.com that the issue has not come directly before the Supreme Court, and states do indeed have different laws regarding when a person has a right to use deadly force (some say there is a “duty to retreat” if retreat is a safe alternative to deadly force, others say there is not). However, van Alstyne also said that the court has made rulings that indicate a basic right to defend one’s life. “Interestingly enough,” van Alstyne said, “I think you may find it, as I would, in the court’s abortion cases.” He asserted that, “even under Roe v. Wade and all of the other decisions, once the fetus has hit the seventh or, at latest, eighth month, it is deemed quote ‘viable.’”
Continuing this line of reasoning, he stated that, “the woman may, nevertheless, get a physician’s willing help to off the fetus – the viable offspring – if it’s necessary to do so either to save her own life or merely to keep her physical health unimpaired.” “The Roe court,” van Alstyne claimed, “and the current court, in the majority opinion has taken the position that your right to ‘protect your own life’ as a woman gives you an entitlement to kill the viable human being that you carry.” “That’s an approximate decision,” he concluded, “that’s at least relevant in the discussion you and I are holding.” As for his own personal opinion, van Alstyne said that, “for the most part, in my own view, the dicta of the court, the history of the treatment of self-preservation, and of constitutional reasoning and text, inevitably lead to the sensible conclusion that indeed there is a fundamental right to save your life by killing another if those are the alternatives confronting one.”
Van Alstyne also expressed the idea that the right to self-defense is so basic as to be implied by the very nature of the Constitution itself. “If you go back to the philosophic grounds of the Constitution, a social compact, the theory is that we yield power to others, namely a democratic majority, because it’s necessary so that we don’t live according to a law of the jungle – but if government is unable to protect us from the threat of others to kill, why then we never gave to government the power to deprive us of our natural right of human self defense.” “So,” van Alstyne concluded, “it is always implicit in the social compact that indeed, if it’s necessary to save our lives those of our family, why then we revert to that natural right, and it is protected by the Constitution.”
President Obama's Friend And Nominee For "Regulatory Czar"
"Raving Animal Rights Nut" Who Has A Secret Agenda
July 24, 2009
By Chelsea Schilling
WorldNetDaily
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=104820
Obama czar pick: 'Raving animal rights nut' nominee advocated hunting ban, giving creatures right to file lawsuits. David Martosko, director of the Center for Consumer Freedom, told Fox News' Glenn Beck that Cass Sunstein, the Harvard Law professor nominated by the president to become the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is a "raving animal rights nut" and devout disciple of Peter Singer. Singer, a bioethics professor at Princeton University, is a leader in the animal rights movement. He has also argued that abortion should be permissible because unborn babies as old as 18 weeks cannot feel pain or satisfaction. Singer once explained his belief that, "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living."
In 1993, Singer said infants lack "rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness." "Infants lack these characteristics," he said. "Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings." Martosko told Beck, "When you embrace this whole utilitarian idea, guess what else comes in the back door? Some animals, according to Singer, are worth more than some humans. A smart border collie, he says, is worth more, inherently, than a retarded child. …Cass Sunstein has embraced the whole enchilada. …He believes that animals should have some of the same rights as humans, in fact, greater rights than some people – including the right to follow lawsuits." Sunstein has also supported outlawing sport hunting, giving animals the legal right to file lawsuits and using government regulations to phase out meat consumption.
The center quotes Sunstein's 2007 speech at Harvard University, where he argued in favor of "eliminating current practices such as …meat eating" and proposed: "We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn't a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It's time now." He also said, "[Humans'] willingness to subject animals to unjustified suffering will be seen … as a form of unconscionable barbarity… morally akin to slavery and the mass extermination of human beings." According to the group, Sunstein was editor of the 2004 book "Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions" that said "animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives (that cow is suing your family for $1M because that hamburger you ate was his brother). …Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian-like obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients' behalf." Martosko believes if Sunstein becomes "regulatory czar," he could "spell the end of animal agriculture, retail sales of meat and dairy foods, hunting and fishing, biomedical research, pet ownership, zoos and aquariums, traveling circuses, and countless other things Americans take for granted."
"Cass Sunstein owes Americans an honest appraisal of his animal rights agenda as America's top regulator," Martosko said in a statement. "Americans don't realize that the next four years could be full of bizarre initiatives plucked from the wildest dreams of the animal-rights fringe." As WND reported, Sunstein has also been an outspoken proponent of tough restriction on gun sales and ownership and what has been characterized as a "Fairness Doctrine" for the Internet. Revelations about Cass Sunstein's views on the "Fairness Doctrine" come in a book by Brad O'Leary, " Shut Up, America! The End of Free Speech." Sunstein also has argued in his prolific literary works that the Internet is anti-democratic because of the way users can filter out information of their own choosing. Several senators have expressed concern about Sunstein's stances, and two "holds" have been placed on his nomination.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., blocked Sunstein's nomination last month. "Chambliss worries that Sunstein's innovative legal views may someday lead to a farmer having to defend himself in court against a lawsuit filed on behalf of his chickens or pigs," The Hill reported. Chambliss told The Hill that he blocked Sunstein's nomination because the law professor "has said that animals ought to have the right to sue folks." However, Chambliss later removed his hold because he said Sunstein had assured him that he "would not take any steps to promote litigation on behalf of animals," and that he believes the "Second Amendment creates an individual right to possess guns for purposes of both hunting and self defense" (yeah right, at least not until after his confirmation). But Sunstein is now facing another hold on his Senate confirmation process.
According to Fox News, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas., believes Sunstein could use the position to push a radical animal rights agenda and impose restrictions on agriculture and hunting. "Sen. Cornyn finds numerous aspects of Mr. Sunstein's record troubling, specifically the fact that he wants to establish legal 'rights' for livestock, wildlife and pets, which would enable animals to file lawsuits in American courts," Cornyn spokesman Kevin McLaughlin, told the news organization. The American Conservative Union is offering an opportunity for Americans to sound off on Sunstein's agenda. The organization has created a website called Stop Sunstein through which readers can submit petition signatures to members of the U.S. Senate. It also provides a 12-page list of Sunstein's most controversial quotes.
Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself; That frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners mad; that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish... (Isaiah 44:24-25).
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