Chore Boy Scrubber now a “silencer.”

This, from the nanny state bureaucrats that brought you the Waco Holocaust and Ruby Ridge.

A more sensible approach.

People can fight and die for our nation, but have a beer or own a firearm?

Colorado democrats ready for not so civil war it would appear.

As is well known weapon registration, which leads to confiscation, leads to extermination.

When the NSDAP became the second-largest party in German politics in 1930, Reichswehr officers were banned from membership in the party. In September 1930, months after massive NSDAP wins, two Reichswehr officers were arrested and tried for being members of the party (which they did not deny). Adolf Hitler made a highly-publicized appearance as a defense witness at the trial. He promised that the NSDAP – the Nazis – were not an extremist organization and that they only sought to enter politics through legal means. He calmly expressed a desire to respect the laws of Germany. By now, Mein Kampf had been released in full and had become wildly popular among the working poor.

President Paul von Hindenburg had appointed Heinrich Brüning as the chancellor. The pair had begun to form a plan for staving off the economic depression that had upended German recovery – ruling by emergency decree, they had decided to enact a series of massive spending cuts that were extremely unpopular with poor and middle-class voters (and, unwittingly, set the stage for what was to come). Despite their unpopularity, the austerity measures were put into place, cutting wages for government workers (including laborers), welfare benefits for the unemployed, and raising taxes on those who made more. To say that Brüning was unpopular is a spectacular understatement – he was generally hated.

The growing dissent among the people made it all but impossible for Hindenburg to combat groups such as the Nazis and the various German communist parties.

Hitler, however, was not a citizen of Germany yet and couldn’t run for public office. An associate came up with a solution to this; on February 25, 1932, the Nazi interior minister of Brunswick appointed Hitler to the Reichsrat (the German version of the House of Representatives – the Reichstag was essentially the German version of our Senate). Shortly thereafter, he unsuccessfully ran against Hindenburg in the presidential election. The defeat was by no means a resounding one; not only did he win a sizable portion of the vote, Hitler also established himself as a force to be reckoned with in German politics. During the election, he promised peace while at the same time promising to end the ongoing humiliation that was the Treaty of Versailles.

The German government was still in disarray, though, and a group of highly-powered and wealthy Nazi party members, along with certain well-known businessmen who had given money to Hindenburg, wrote a letter begging him to appoint Hitler as chancellor. While many other wealthy German citizens and politicians mocked Hitler (calling him “the Bohemian Corporal” behind his back, referencing his lack of an education and his military service being his only real claim to fame) and admonished Hindenburg not to give the man any power, Hindenburg reluctantly agreed to appoint him as the chancellor in the hopes that the position would stop him from running in the next election.

Hitler was no simpleton, education lacking or not. He knew that the arrangement was meant to be temporary and he had no intention of giving it up; he insisted on Nazi members Wilhelm Frick and Hermann Göring being appointed with him to positions that gave them command of most of the police throughout the country. Hitler then convinced Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and hold elections – the plan was cut short when, on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag burned to the ground. I agree with Nazi historian William Schirer that Nazi party members set the fire so they could use it as a rallying cry (I would suggest his book “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”).

The day after the fire, Hitler used his power to suspend all basic rights and allow indefinite detention without just cause or a trial. He immediately ordered the roundup of all known and suspected communist party members and the Nazis gained nearly half of the seats in the new Reichstag – not enough for a majority. It required that he be somewhat diplomatic, but he still managed to ban several members of another party. Then, on March 23, 1933, a vote was held on the so-called “Enabling Acts”. The acts would give the Nazis what amounted to absolute power for four years, even giving him the ability to alter the German constitution without a vote. Hitler needed a two-thirds approval for the acts to pass, so he made a promise he had no intention of keeping – he promised members of the Center Party that president Hindenburg would still have his veto power. He continued to promise peace both to his opposition and to the people.

With crowds outside the Kroll Opera House screaming warnings that what was going on was a major threat to Germany, Hitler was set up as the Fuhrer.

Immediately, Hitler began to dispose of any who either opposed him or gave him reason to believe they would eventually oppose him. All non-Nazi political parties were banned. Trade unions, which he had expressed such love and respect for in Mein Kampf as essential to protecting German workers, were disbanded and a centralized Nazi group set up in their place (the German Labor Front). By July 14, 1933, the Nazis had complete control. SA leaders, sensing danger in Hitler’s control, attracted too much attention and after just one year in power Hitler had them rounded up and shot. He still promised peace.

Then, Hitler had the Reichstag pass a law that would combine the office of the chancellor and the president upon the death of Hindenburg. The law was a violation of the Enabling Acts, which barred Hitler from making any changes to the office of the president (it was one of the few things he wasn’t allowed to do), but that didn’t matter with the Nazis in control. Coincidentally (or not), Paul von Hindenburg died on August 25, 1934. There was now no legal means by which he could be removed from power.

With the SA now morphed into the SS (Schtuzstaffel, or Protection Squadron), Hitler could silence all opposition. He made his intention to re-militarize Germany known by ordering military leaders to have the Wehrmacht ready for war by 1938. When two high-ranking officers immediately objected, the SS invented evidence of prostitution and homosexual acts to have them removed. Shortly after Hindenburg’s death, Hitler appointed an economic minister whom he ordered to prepare the economy for war as well.

In need of money, Hitler ordered all enemies of the state to be arrested and their assets transferred to the Nazis. He ordered construction to begin on a mass scale, intent on showcasing the greatness of Germany. Unemployment dropped drastically as rearmament and major construction projects began in the lead-up to war. He continued to make promises that while he was going to end the de-militarization of buffer zones set up by the Treaty of Versailles – particularly the Rhineland – that his intentions were completely peaceful.

While he promised peace in public, behind closed doors he was planning Anschluss (making Austria part of Germany again) and ending the restrictions on the German military and arms imposed in Versailles. In March 1935, after yanking Germany from the League of Nations, Hitler announced the Wehrmacht would expand to 600,000 troops. He also announced the founding of the Luftwaffe and the expansion of the navy. One year later, in March 1936, German troops moved into the Rhineland. Britain and France did nothing but protest. Still, Hitler promised peace.

The rise of Nazism was complete.

Young Adolf Hitler was an artist. Most people who don’t follow history closely don’t know this important fact about the man. When he was a teenager, his father insisted on sending him to a technical school so he could learn a trade skill that would make real money; Adolf, raised by a very strict authoritarian father (Alois) and an oversympathetic, doting mother (Klara), deliberately failed at school in his teen years in the hopes of forcing his father to enroll him in art school.

We all know now that his drive was fruitless. Adolf was Austrian and he grew up with friends who believed that Austria belonged to Germany. German nationalism was strong in the run-up to WWI. Only after his father’s passing did Adolf finish school and he only passed by the skin of his teeth – he still wanted to be an artist, and his mother supported his ambition. He ended up living as a bohemian in Vienna while he attempted to gain acceptance to the Art Institute of Vienna. Twice he was turned down because he didn’t have the “aptitude” for painting. By 1909 he’d been selling watercolor landscapes to tourists in Vienna for four years and was living in a homeless shelter. In 1913 the government finally turned over his father’s estate and Adolf moved to Munich.

Adolf’s Austrian citizenship was set aside when he volunteered to join the Bavarian army in August of 1914. He was made a messenger (a job that was extremely hazardous at the time) and was highly decorated – earning the Iron Cross, both second- and first-class, along with the black wound badge. He was wounded at least twice during his duties. When the Germans surrendered in 1918 and the Treaty of Versailles was signed, Adolf was enraged. During speeches later in his career he proclaimed that, as he lay in a hospital bed blinded by mustard gas, he knew that he would be the one to liberate Germany.

He knew that his career options were nonexistent, so he stayed in the army for the newly-formed Weimar Republic. In 1919, he was assigned to infiltrate the Deutsch Arbiterpartei – or the DAP, in English the German Worker’s Party. It was an anti-Weimar socialist organization formed to represent the working poor and push socialist ideals. During a meeting one evening, Adolf got into a row with a member who suggested the unthinkable: Bavaria separating from Germany, forming with Austria and creating an entirely new country. DAP founder Anton Drexler was so impressed with Adolf’s oratory skills that he immediately offered the young soldier membership in the party. Adolf left the army and joined in 1920.

He rapidly rose to a leadership position. His public speaking skills were so natural that he was described as “mesmerizing” and “hypnotic”. The year he joined, Adolf changed the name of the party to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsch Arbeiterpartei – the NSDAP, or the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. The very first syllable is pronounced “Nazi”.

And so, anti-communist socialism became an officially-recognized political party in Germany.

Adolf the artist designed the new NSDAP logo, a swastika – a symbol commonly used by many cultures prior – in a white circle superimposed on a red background. In just one year Adolf had brought a few thousand members into the ranks, but in 1921 a small but vocal group within the leadership attempted to oust him as the party leader. Adolf angrily resigned; the group knew that without him, they would disintegrate, so they offered him anything he wanted to remain. He insisted on being the Fuhrer, the only recognized leader of the NSDAP. His wish was granted. He also formed the Sturmabteilung, or SA – the NSDAP’s “stormtroopers”.

In 1922, reparations payments as ordered by the Treaty of Versailles helped cause the hyperinflation of the German Mark – German paper currency essentially became worthless, at around 8000 Marks on the US Dollar. This further angered the NSDAP, which now commanded a force of thousands of members alongside thousands of SA to do Adolf’s dirty work. Since the Weimar Republic couldn’t get France, Britain, and the US to accept paper Marks anymore, the French moved in and occupied the Ruhr to ensure that reparations were being paid in goods – specifically coal and industrial materials produced in German factories. It got worse when the workers in the mines and factories went on strike; the government printed more money to keep paying the workers.

Germany had descended into economic chaos. In 1922, while Germans were taking wheelbarrows full of worthless Marks to the food lines to buy basic items, Italian fascist Benito Mussolini etched his name into the history books with his March on Rome. Adolf Hitler, growing ever angrier at the state of his beloved country, was taken by Il Duce – so much so that he decided to emulate his actions. On November 9, 1923, Adolf ordered 600 SA to surround the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in Munich. Weimar state commissioner Gustav von Kahr, who had refused to entertain the notion of including Adolf in any new government and laughed the man out of his office, was speaking to a crowd of about 3,000. He dramatically marched into the auditorium surrounded by 20 of his NSDAP associates, fired a round into the ceiling and proclaimed that the government of Bavaria had been taken over and nobody was allowed to leave.

The Beer Hall Putsch ended the next morning after a mass crowd of 2,000 couldn’t figure out exactly what to do and were scattered by a force of only 100 soldiers (incredible considering that most of the rioters were former soldiers themselves). Adolf was taken into custody two days later, and on April 1, 1924, a judge eternally sympathetic to the cause of the accused in his courtroom sentenced Adolf to a measly 5 years. He only served eight months. The Putsch may have been a technical failure, but it ended up being a massive propaganda victory for the NSDAP. Adolf’s prison guards showed him respect and even pledged loyalty to his cause. It was during his imprisonment that he dictated Mein Kampf to Rudolf Hess.

On December 20, 1924, Adolf walked free. He didn’t receive the hero’s welcome he expected; during his incarceration, the economy had greatly improved and politics had become far less violent since workers did not feel nearly as put upon. What’s more, the NSDAP had become a banned organization in Bavaria and Adolf himself was barred from public speaking. He refused to give up, though. In January 1925, he promised government officials that he would only seek political power through honest public elections. He was hoping to have the ban on the NSDAP lifted, although he still wasn’t allowed to speak. Instead, Mein Kampf was published, and in 1925 the first volume was published to wide praise from the general population. He and his associates moved to Northern Germany to re-found the NSDAP. Joined by a group of highly skilled community organizers, Adolf Hitler went to work slowly working his way into government – he had realized that a sudden takeover would never be tolerated.

Then came the Great Depression. In October 1929, the US economy crashed and sent the still-recovering German economy into a tailspin. Millions lost jobs. President Paul von Hindenburg began ruling through emergency decrees. Adolf and the NSDAP, long telling the people that the Treaty of Versailles had been grossly unfair, found their stride during this time: they promised to end the promises of Versailles and renew pride in Germany.

In 1930, NSDAP members – all previously unknown to the public – won 107 seats in the Reichstag. The rise of Nazism had officially begun.

I was gobsmacked.  Here was an officer of the court, someone who is supposed to understand the law, and to think logically, proposing that it was immoral to expect people to pay for their own care if they had the means to do so, and suggesting that they had every right to pass their accumulated wealth on to their kids and grandkids, and make the peers of those kids and grandkids pay for their care.  As one of the people stuck with the bill according to this plan, and as someone with children whose own expectations are considerably diminished by this kind of thinking, I was angry.  As a practitioner, who can clearly see that the logic of this doesn’t work anyway, because those kids and grandkids will still be paying for the care of grandpa and grandma’s peers, I was livid.  I had to ask about the morality of presuming that this was owed to anyone, and how the mortgaging of future generations was in anyway a moral way to pay for it.  I then went on to ask how it was that the federal government had the lawful authority to engage in such largesse to begin with. 

To my relief, there were a few responses that were supportive of this view.  There were a few older members who, to their discredit, avoided the question of legal authority, and instead, somewhat condescendingly, waxed poetic about the views they held when they were “the masters of the world” back in the sixties, when they tried to change the world for the better.  I have been guilty in the past of joking about aging hippies behaving badly when discussing certain people in politics, but I had never seen generational hubris so baldly manifested.

Finally, a lawyer took up my question of the legal authority for the federal government’s largesse in this matter.  She assured me that it was found in the general welfare clause…of the preamble of the Constitution (and not in Article I, Section 8!).  I pointed out to her that it was her own unique translation, but Madison, who was one of the principal architects had a very different take which he articulated in the Federalist 41, in part in answer to the Anti-Federalist Brutus, in his paper, VI, in which he warned that its inclusion would lead to men of lesser character in succeeding generations deciding that anything and everything was “general welfare”, to the detriment of society as a whole.

Her response back to me asked “So what do we do in the alternative?”

At this point, I decided to learn more about her.  Among other things, she had been an aide to Senator George Mitchell for a very long time, and had written legislation here in Washington as well.  No doubt, she had been firmly indoctrinated to the idea that there is nothing that the federal government could not and should not do.  Therefore, while I could say “Gee, I dunno.  How about a return to limited government, in which we get its boot off our necks and its hand out of our back pockets?”, I felt reasonably certain that given her belief in the “Good and Plenty Clause” interpretation of the Constitution, it would have simply registered like a whale popping up in front of her, speaking in Russian and Mandarin.  Instead, between the utter disappointment I felt at such a manifest failure to understand our organic law in too many of my fellow lawyers, and the size of my workload, I simply chose to not respond at all, and I simply quit keeping track of the thread.

The head of that state bar section finally commented late this week about the “political” discussion that arose in that thread, and how she had been informed by the state bar that membership in that list serv fell off sharply due to the number of comments and the nature of the opinions discussed, and she asked that the thread be declared “over”, and that such “political” discussions be avoided in the future.

For my part, I didn’t see any reason to continue.  I saw a lot of supposedly intelligent people who are focused on treating symptoms, and who couldn’t be bothered with the idea of actually treating the disease, largely because they refuse to comprehend that there are limits to the compassion that they can engage in with other people’s money.  I’m afraid that we are sailing this ship of state right over the rocks and the falls beyond them, and that too many aboard are in denial about the whitewater ahead.

While Norm makes a habit of being wrong about lots of important things, he has a particularly insightful wrong opinion about the death penalty,and he graciously came on John Carlson’s show this morning to share it.

The thrust of Stamper’s position is this:

1.) Expense.  Stamper maintains that the cost to prosecute a death penalty case is approximately a half million dollars higher than a case where the prosecution seeks a life sentence.

2.) Delay.  With the automatic appeals and reviews that occur after a death penalty conviction, it is not unusual for a decade or longer to pass before sentence is finally carried out, and this process adds more expense.

3.) Life Without the Possibility of Parole means that the offender has decades to think about their horrendous crime every day for the rest of their lives.

4.) Survivor Fatigue.  Stamper maintains that while the appeals process drags on, survivors have to relive the horror every day, in ways that frequently impugn the victim’s character, and they would prefer that the process just rather be over with than be offended by the system every day.

By way of rebuttal, Stamper almost has something with his first point, except there are larger issues to be considered.  The justice system, at its core, essentially has two purposes: Keep the Peace, and Punish Wrongdoers.  These are part of government’s rightful and legitimate duties, because if these two things are not done, you no longer have a society, you have anarchy.  It is a sad fact that we already compromise on punishing wrong doing, and selectively prosecute certain crimes, and or often make deals to convict on lessor charges to avoid expense and conserve resources for “the worst of the worst”.  Any benefit this confers on society is negligible, as whether by accident or design, it creates a permanent criminal underclass of repeat offenders, who when they actually serve real time, only end up becoming better criminals.  This perpetuation prevents the real cost of law enforcement from sparking any serious consideration of whether or not the real problem might be too many laws, rather than an ever-increasing amount of “criminal behavior”.

The other part of this is that it ignores the cost of keeping that offender behind bars for the rest of their life if they really are “the worst of the worst”.  As this presentation demonstrates, the average cost in 2005 per inmate in the State of Washington was $25,000.00.  Multiply that by 45 years, and suddenly, you’ve sprung for $1,125,000.00 for the care and keeping of that inmate.  And if you’re being honest, you recognize that this average is low, when you consider that the “worst of the worst” should be in maximum security at the least, and may be in solitary confinement most of that time.   If you believe THAT cost is still only $25,000.00 a year per inmate, I have a bridge in Tacoma that I can sell you cheap.

As for the delay argument, it is a two-edged sword.  It is a safeguard put in place with the intent of preventing the execution of those who were not guilty of the crime for which they were convicted, and in a society that it honest, honesty requires the recognition that sometimes, the system makes a mistake, and that when it is your life on the line, extra measures to make sure that the verdict was correct are in order.  And when it is that serious, then maybe in the interests of fairness, it is to the benefit of all to provide extra process than what would ordinarily be due.  But this cost should not be a deterrent to the existence of the penalty; some crimes are so heinous, some crimes are so beyond the pale, as to cast doubt upon the fitness of the offender to ever be trusted to live in society and conform to its norms and expectations.  We know these people exist, and walk among us until they are caught, and we know they exist in the Pacific Northwest.  When there is little reason to believe that they can ever be reformed or rehabilitated, especially in a system that cannot be said to make a priority of either, there should be no reason to burden society with the cost of keeping them alive, to perhaps some day, either be placed in a position where they can escape or be released to again be a danger to the society they are incapable of respecting.

The “punishment” of “having to think about their crimes and victims everyday for the rest of their lives” can hardly be believed to be a real punishment for such people.  Indeed, John Carlson brought up the example of the offender who was incarcerated because of a truly brutal rape, wormed his way into the trust of prison officials, was eventually placed on an honor farm that he walked away from, to go back, and again brutally rape his victim, then slit her 5  year old daughter’s throat before her, kill the neighbor who stopped by (and who had also been the witness whose testimony had put him away to begin with) and then killed his victim.  People like that aren’t “punished” by living with that knowledge for their rest of their lives.  At best they do it and feel nothing; at worst, it inspires and arouses them. 

Finally, Stamper presented his argument for what I call Survivor Fatigue, the gist of which is that the process of giving the death penalty offender extra process means that they have to relive the horror and loss every single day, and sometimes have to hear their lost loved one’s character impugned.  The underlying rationale is that these people have a right to not endure this.  What Chief Stamper does not recognize is that unlike the individual rights that he doesn’t favor us having, such as the right to be armed and to make the criminal suffer instead of yourself, the process of prosecuting a death penalty case isn’t about an individual’s rights, which may or may not be incidental, as we would like justice for the victim(s), but it is about the right of society to rid itself of those who have proven that they are incapable of coexisting within it without being a threat not just to the well-being, but the very lives of other members of it.  This is why it is a legitimate power of the state as long as extra care is taken to make sure that the right people receive this punishment.  As advances in science reveal the errors that the system has made, it also reveals that it is even more possible than before to convict the guilty, and remove the burden that sociopaths, psychopaths, and people who chose to not just kill, but to do so with extraordinary cruelty and abandon from anything recognizable to a civilized society.  It is also possible that these advances will help to streamline the extra process, and expedite the departure of the monsters and animals that Chief Stamper would have us preserve indefinitely, taking up resources that could be used for others who might have a hope of redemption or a lack of interest in recidivism.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer!

–Thomas Paine, Common Sense.

So here are the addresses and phone number of NY Journal “columnist” (one who propagates journalistic abuse) Dwight R. Worley who published all of the HOME ADDRESSES of Law Abiding Conceal Carry Gun Owners of the entire state of NY as well as the rest of the Marxist swine at The Journal:

Dwight R Worley
23006 139 Ave
Springfield Gardens, NY 11413

But you might want to call him first to let him know you’ll be dropping in: (718) 527-0832

and here are the rest of the red diaper doper babies at
The Journal:

Journal News President:
—Janet Hasson, 3 Gate House Lane Mamaroneck, NY 10534 (914) 694.5204

Editors:
—Cyndee Royle, 1133 Westchester Ave., Suite N110, White Plains, NY 10604, 914-694-9300
–Nancy Cutler 9 Woodwind Ln, Spring Valley, NY. (845) 354 3485

Parent company of The Journal News Gannett
—–CEO Gracia C Martore 728 Springvale Rd Great Falls, VA 22066 (703) 759 5954

The reporter on the story is:
–Dwight R Worley 23006 139 Ave Springfield Gardens, NY 11413 (718) 527 0832

Plz hit the share button on this. Don’t let it get buried! Save a copy for when they re-set the comments.

SOURCE wishes to remain anonymous.

Related articles

• Judge Jeanine Pirro, outed as a gun owner in the NY area, nails the Journal News (erickbrockway.com)
• Court rules against N.Y. Times request for gun owners’ addresses (politico.com)
• Judge Jeanine Pirro Calls Out “Cowards” at The Journal News for Hiding After Publishing Names of Gun Owners (foxnewsinsider.com)

When it comes to economics, I am a simple man with a simple understanding of how things work. So it seems to me that as we approached the “fiscal cliff” in January, the Democrats either pulled off what they thought was sleight of hand or they were plain stupid. In resolving the fiscal cliff crisis Barack Obama and the Democrats got Republicans to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for the wealthiest of tax payers. Democrats claimed victory with a tax hike on the rich and Republicans played word games saying they voted to keep taxes low for the middle class and technically did NOT vote for a tax hike, after all, the expiration of a tax decrease is not a tax hike (yeah right).

Here is where the trick, or the stupidity comes in. Any wealthy individual who couldn’t somehow work around the January tax hike needed to fire his or her accountant. Not one single well-connected rich dude will pay one more cent of tax. So the tax hike was symbolic at best. Now we come to the sequester and the demand from Obama and the Democrats for more revenue via closing tax loopholes. Ahhhh, that’s the ticket! So the question is, did the Dem’s think they were being clever in January by going after the symbolic victory with the real revenue generator in their back pocket to whip out in March? Or did they waste the opportunity for real revenue generation by not going after loopholes in the first place?

Republicans can now express righteous indignation at Democrats for going to the revenue well again and holding it as a precondition for entitlement reform but aren’t they being a bit disingenuous? The GOP knows as well as anyone else that as long as loopholes exist, the rich don’t pay taxes.  Since it is highly unlikely that we will see true tax reform, the end result of all this Democrat brinksmanship will be the continuation of the imbalance of wealth in America.

My Nominee for Pope

Everyone was shocked by Pope Benedict XVI offering his resignation, a once in 600 year event. So now a conclave of Cardinals will descend upon Rome to elect his successor. I won’t even get started on the pure lack of logic involved in a man with a supposed hotline to God being elected. Does God influence the vote somehow? But let me jump to the chase. My nominee for the next Pope is …

Nobody.

That’s right, nobody. Most of the world’s religions seem to have a flat organizational structure with churches and temples loosely affiliated and no single person presiding over the whole shooting match. The Catholic church stands nearly alone in having a complex multilevel hierarchy protected by “religious freedom” and stuffed to the brim with wealth. There is a mathematical fact in this life as true as one plus one equals two. Complex hierarchies plus wealth equals corruption, often on a grand scale. The most flagrant scandal haunting the Catholic church is that of its pedophile priests who get shuttled about from place to place to avoid punishment and to inflict pain on another community’s children. In his pre-Pope days, when Benedict had the chance to aggressively pursue the issue, he fell short. But Benedict should not be the scapegoat here.

Folks, when Penn State got caught looking the other way as Jerry Sandusky abused children they got severely punished. Their sports program is now a shadow of what it once was. Where is the ability to similarly punish the Catholic church as an institution? Having a Pope is not a prerequisite for Catholics worshiping God in their way. I’m not calling for Catholics to stop being Catholic. I am calling for the entire Catholic power structure that protects and nurtures corruption to be torn down completely. Let Catholics rebuild their church from the ground up in a grass-roots fashion. Let all that wealth that maintains the “country” of the Vatican be given to charities who desperately need it. It’s 2013 and it’s time for the Roman Catholic church in its current form to cease to exist.

Late Breaking News–One Less Person for Paranoid Conservatives to Hate

As I write this, fresh news has come across the wire that the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, has died. Looks like crackpot Conservatives will have to find someone new to hate … and to somehow tie to Barack Obama.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

I’m certainly not happy with the way both sides handled this issue, but if the sequester lasts too long because the republican party failed to compromise, American’s aren’t going to solely blame Pres. Obama.  Additionally, I think it’s smart to say that the GOP needs to be focusing on issues that will help boost their party image.  We should be focusing on immigration reform, real tax reform, and creating jobs.  Because of GOP obstructionism, infrastructure reductions will mean, less construction jobs, a field historically dominated by Hispanics. There are so many sectors of the population that will be hurt and once again because the GOP wanted to protect the top 1% of wealthy Americans, the rest of the country is currently being held hostage til they get their way.  Here’s a great video created by Think Progress,

Republicans could care less about the working poor.  Just let them starve while the income disparity widens.  People won’t forget this. First, hold the country hostage during the debt ceiling debates, and the outcome being the sequester.  Second, prolong the fiscal cliff negotiations and the outcome being delayed tax refunds that disproportionally hit middle-low income tax filers.  Now, obstruct negotiations initiate the sequester and the outcome once again hurting the middle and low income people.  Great way to kick people while they’re down.

I couldn’t believe it.  FATHERHOOD.GOV???  It had to be a joke. 

Sadly, it wasn’t. 

I came home and typed www.fatherhood.gov into my computer’s web browser.

One of the graphics I saw was the one above.  Another had a picture of the President with his daughters, and the message below invited me to take the fatherhood pledge.  I paused, choking down the irony of a man who’s only political stands of any import before becoming the President were centered around maintaining abortion, and resisting palliative care for children who survived their mother’s attempts to murder them pressing me to “Take the Fatherhood Pledge”.

Then I scrolled to the bottom of the website, and saw these words:

This is an official U.S. Government Web site managed by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

The agency that DEMANDS employers provide abortion, abortifacients, and birth control, even when doing so goes against their religious beliefs, and which persists in the fantasy that giving taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood helps poor and low-income women get mammograms actually sponsors a website purporting to teach American men to be better dads.

  With OUR tax money. 

The same government which has managed to destroy the black family, (and has inflicted damage on all families) is now telling men how to be dads.  How is this acceptable?  How is it that the Federal government, even without everything it has done to destroy families, has the right to deign to tell men how to be fathers?  It isn’t the government’s job to tell me how to be a Dad…and the fact that it sees fit to do so with my money simply adds insult to injury.  The family is not the government’s sphere of influence, especially in light of the fact  that there is so little that the government can do efficiently.  This is the embodiment of the concept of government breaking your legs, then putting you in a cast and telling you how lucky you are to have it.  Add to the concept what government has done to make war on the family, and yes, erode parental authority, and there is simply no moral basis which government can stand on to defend this.  And in the meantime, I’m sure this extended middle finger to any parent with a brain is nowhere near the list of things to be cut in the miniscule curtailment in the growth of government known in the White House as SEQUESTERGEDDON!!!111!!!  Not when they can mess with airtravel instead….you know…for the CHIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDRRRREEEEENNNNNNNN!!!!!

I’m sure when my kids are still living in my house when they are 40, dreaming of the day when they can afford to move out to an 800 sq. ft. efficiency apartment all their own, I’m sure that they’ll thank Obama for the usurpation of authority never granted to the government and the deficit spending that make the offensive government lily-guilding like FATHERHOOD.GOV possible.  They’ll have a future full of much diminished prospects, but at least they’ll have the memory of Dad helping them learn to tie their shoes because government told him to do it.

“As the greatest danger is that of disunion of the states, it is necessary to guard against it by sufficient powers to the common government; and as the greatest danger to liberty is from large standing armies, it is best to prevent them by an effectual provision for a good militia.”

James Madison —ELLIOTT, ED., 5 THE DEBATES IN THE SEVERAL STATE CONVENTIONS 464 (1836, repr. 1941)

“Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going to far to say, that the state governments with the people on their side would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to their best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield in the United States an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. The these would be opposed a militia amounting to near a half million citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best aquainted with the late successful resistance of this country against the the British arms will be the most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the peopleof almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military attachments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain that this aid alone [mere quiet private possession of ordinary personal firearms], they would not be able to shake off their yokes.“|

James Madison —THE FEDERALIST, NO. 46

Et tu, James?

It’s almost like they didn’t trust government, or something.

Oh well, I’m sure they didn’t know what they were talking about or anything, right?

Someone whose opinion I have long valued just dropped a bomb on me. He no longer believes that the Jews had a right to found the Nation of Israel.

His question to me? “What right did the Jews have to displace the people living in the Palestinian Mandate?”

I’m going to answer that here, because apparently The Economist ignores the fact that Israel has the highest standard of living in the Middle East and believes that Israel had no right to be founded. The common argument has become one of turning the spotlight on us (deflecting is a poor way of winning an argument, by the way) – how would we, as Americans, feel if the Mexicans decided that they wanted to finally carry out Reconquista and take back the Southwestern United States by force? Well, first of all, Mexico wasn’t originally Mexico – it was taken over by the Spaniards, and if you really wanna get technical, there are indigenous people who were murdered and displaced by the ancestors of today’s Mexicans, so really, they don’t have a claim to their own land if you look at it that way.

But I digress.

Nations and cultures the world over have hated the Jews for centuries. If you go back far enough, it really started with Roman Christians a few generations after the crucifixion of Jesus blaming the Jews for “murdering” Him. (Side note: my take on that is that it’s ridiculous to blame the Jews. Jesus Himself didn’t have to die – He could have killed everyone who came for Him with a snap of His fingers, but He made the choice to go to His death willingly because all of mankind needed a way to get to God, and His sacrifice was that way.) This attitude carried over until the mid-1400′s, when Jews were restricted to very, very few professions – one of them being the middle-age version of banking. For centuries, it was one of the only real professions Jews were ever allowed to hold anywhere. They became adept at saving, lending, and larger economic principles because they had to.

Jews scattered to the four corners of the world never lost their longing to return to the Israel that had been founded by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In 1881, the First Aliyah began due to severe persecution of Jews worldwide – pogroms in Europe and Russia. In Russia, the assassination of Alexander II ended up being blamed on the Jews and they had to flee en masse. The overwhelming majority of the 3 million or so Jews came to the United States, but about 25,000 went to the area that once was Israel – which, at the time, was ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

At the time, there were already sizable Jewish enclaves in major cities in the area, particularly Jerusalem. The financial industry wasn’t established at all in the region, and most of the new settlers had absolutely no farming experience, so a British lord (whose name escapes me at the moment) gave them some help.

In 1904, the Second Aliyah began – and more than 40,000 Jews immigrated to the region, all expelled from Russia and Yemen. The Kishinev Pogrom kicked it off. In April 1903, an article in an anti-Semitic Russian publication claimed that a boy found dead and a young girl who committed suicide and was declared dead at a Jewish hospital were actually murdered by Jews who wished to use their blood in the preparation of matzah for Passover. The pogrom was led by Russian Orthodox priests and calls to kill the Jews were made as entire Jewish neighborhoods were leveled. By the time it was over, 49 Jews were dead, nearly 600 wounded and thousands were homeless. The very next year, Aliyah began – and in 1905, a second pogrom born of anti-Czar protests left 19 Jews dead, more than 50 wounded and hundreds more homeless.

It should be no surprise that Theodor Herzl would give birth to the World Zionist Organization. Jews were hated everywhere, to the point of mass murder. They needed a home – more than they knew. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire during WWI, the area known as Palestine (so named by the Romans, “Palestina”) became a tribal area with no government. Arabs quarreled with Jews in the area, sometimes had all-out battles with them, but that was nothing new – Jews weren’t wanted anywhere they went. The Russian Revolution led to the murder of 100,000 Jews and another 500,000 being turned out of their homes.

Then came the Nazis and Shoah. The pogroms escalated until Jews were forced out of their businesses, then their homes, then their ghettos – then their lives. between six and eight million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis (along with three million other “undesirables”, including homosexuals and gypsies). By the time Shoah had begun, there were around 200,000 Jews living in the British Mandate of Palestine. Muslims in the area rioted in 1920, protesting continuing Aliyah. Also, America had enacted severe limitations on immigration and the British were tired of trying to quell Muslim riots against Jewish immigration so they banned Jews from immigrating to the area – the Jews literally had nowhere to go. They had to immigrate in secret.

The area known as Palestine has never been an actual nation. It was originally a tribal region populated by farmers and shepherds until the Muslims came in and slaughtered them all – by 1938, the Palestinians were made up of the descendents of the Muslims who invaded and took the area by force (which led to the Crusades, but that’s a different argument). Jews made up nearly 35% of the population in the region by the end of WWII. Muslims in Palestine were so opposed to the Jews living there that Britain finally had to give up and leave. While the entire area from the Mediterranean all the way to the Eastern border of modern-day Jordan was originally supposed to be Israel, The United Nations had to come up with a compromise. The Jews needed a home, and the Muslims in the Palestinian Mandate hated the Jews just as much as the Russians and Europeans did. Their compromise? Two states: one for the Jews, one for the Muslims. 20% of the land originally promised as Israel became Eretz Israel. The rest became Transjordan.

On May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion declared Israeli independence. On May 15, every surrounding nation – Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria – declared war and attacked Israel. Some 700,000 Palestinians left – many will try to tell you that they were kicked out, but in reality, the majority of them left of their own volition. Only about 100,000 had been expelled from their homes and Israel later offered to allow them to come back, even offered citizenship and full rights as Israeli citizens; they all refused. It was Muslim Palestinians who began the violence against Jews settling in the area, and the Jews had to fight back; eventually they started hitting back afterwards to make it clear that they weren’t going to be pushovers. It still hasn’t ended.

Israel today is more accepting than any other Mideast nation. Whereas gays and lesbians are tortured and killed by Muslims in neighboring countries, they are welcomed in Israel. The Israelis have also contributed more to science, agriculture and economic issues than all of the Islamic republics combined. Yet we have gay groups in America standing against Israel and supporting groups that would murder them if they visited.

Golda Meir, one of my heroes, said quite succinctly, “there will only be peace when the Palestinians decide they love their children more than they hate us.”

What right did they have? I think it’s pretty clear.

At a Senate hearing on gun violence Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was humiliated by a police chief who abruptly interrupted his talking points to insist that he’s “wrong” on how enhanced background checks for gun buyers would work.

Echoing the National Rifle Association, Graham argued before the Senate Judiciary Committee that enhanced background checks are not needed because the laws currently on the books are not enforced well enough.

“When almost 80,000 people fail a background check and 44 people are prosecuted, what kind of deterrent is that?” he asked. “I mean, the law obviously is not seeing that as important, if it’s such an important issue, why aren’t we prosecuting people who fail a background check?”

Original image

Prepare to get spanked, Lindseypoo!

“Just for the record, from my point of view, the point of a background check…” Milwaukee police chief Edward A. Flynn began. “Senator…”

“How many cases have you made?” Graham pressed. “How many cases have…”

“You know what?” Flynn said. “It doesn’t matter. It’s a paper thing.”

“Can I ask the questions?” Graham interjected.

“I want to finish the answer,” Flynn replied.

“I want to stop 76,000 people from buying guns illegally,” he said. “That’s what a background check does. If you think we’re going to do paperwork prosecutions, you’re wrong.”

The Senate committee’s audience erupted into applause, which committee chair Sen. Dianne Feinsten (D-CA) asked to quiet down.

…snip…

At a prior Senate gun hearing in January, Graham bragged that he personally owns an AR-15 assault rifle, the same customizable assault rifle platform that was used to kill 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut.

Oh, Lindseypoo, are you really that frightened of getting primaried by some whackadoodle Teabagger?  Is keeping your seat in the Senate more important than protecting little kids and innocent people?  Or do you just think that having an AR-15 assault rifle actually makes you look manly?

Seldom do I ever use anything in my post that originates from an e-mail, and I do mean its is rare. However I came across an e-mail I had previously read.

This particular e-mail has around since 2006 and the essay has found its way back to my inbox once again.  The e-mail essay was written by a squared away Retired Marine,  Sgt Major J. D. Pendry.

Snopes indicates that the essay was properly attributed to, and the content is authentic.  After much consideration I decided to post the essay.  In view of the upcoming sequestration, I felt the essay delivers a powerful message and needed to be read by those who have never read Sgt Major Pendry’s essay.

I am sure that when it first came out in 2006 or there about it made some politicians feel a little uneasy,  the truth usually has that effect on a person who is or has been less than honest.

For you who agree with the essay, I would like to hear your comments about the sequestration and how it may or may not effect you. For those of you who disagree, let me hear your comments as well, just keep it civil, if can’t keep it civil,  I will just ban you from my site.  My blog site is dedicated to all American Patriots and for those who want to save our country from the likes of those mentioned in Sgt Major J. D. Pendry’s essay.

So without further ado I present the essay of USMC Sgt Major J.D. Pendry, (retired).

The Axis Of Evil

“Jimmy Carter, you are the father of the Islamic Nazi movement. You threw the Shah under the bus, welcomed the Ayatollah home, and then lacked the spine to confront the terrorists when they took our embassy and our people hostage. You’re the “runner-in-chief”.

“Bill Clinton, you played ring around the Lewinsky while the terrorists were at war with us. You got us into a fight with them in Somalia and then you ran from it.

Your weak-willed responses to the USS Cole and the First Trade Center Bombing and Our Embassy Bombings emboldened the killers. Each time you failed to respond adequately, they grew bolder, until 9/11/2001″.

“John Kerry, dishonesty is your most prominent attribute. You lied about American Soldiers in Vietnam … Your military service, like your life, is more fiction than fact. You’ve accused our military of terrorizing women and children in Iraq ..

You called Iraq the wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, and the same words you used to describe Vietnam . You’re a fake! You want to run from Iraq and abandon the Iraqis to murderers just as you did to the Vietnamese. Iraq , like Vietnam, is another war that you were for, before you were against it.”

“The late John Murtha, said our military was broken. He said we can’t win militarily in Iraq. He accused United States Marines of cold-blooded murder without proof and said we should redeploy to Okinawa. Okinawa?

And the Democrats called him their military expert! Maybe he suffered a traumatic brain injury while he was off building his war hero resume?

He was a sad, pitiable, corrupt, and washed up old fool, not a true Marine. He wouldn’t amount to a good pimple on a real Marine’s ass, a phony and a disgrace”.

“Dick Durbin, you accused our Soldiers at Guantanamo of being Nazis, tenders of Soviet style gulags and as bad as the regime of Pol Pot, who murdered two million of his own people after your party abandoned Southeast Asia to the Communists. Then you wanted to abandon the Iraqis to the same fate. History was not a good teacher for you, was it? Lord help us! See Dick run!”

“Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Carl Levine, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Russ Feingold, Pat Leahy, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, the Hollywood Leftist morons, et al, to name a few ad nauseam: Every time you stand in front of television cameras and broadcast to the Islamic Nazis that we went to war because our former President lied, that the war is wrong and our Soldiers are torturers, that we should leave Iraq, you give the Islamic butchers – the same ones that tortured and mutilated American Soldiers – cause to think that we’ll run away again, and all they have to do is hang on a little longer.

It is inevitable that we, the infidels, will have to defeat the Islamic jihadists. Better to do it on their turf, than later on ours after they may gain both strength and momentum.”

“American news media, the New York Times particularly: Each time you publish stories about national defense secrets and our intelligence gathering methods, you become one united with the sub-human pieces of camel dung that torture and mutilate the bodies of American Soldiers.

You can’t strike up the courage to publish cartoons, but you can help Al Qaeda destroy my country. Actually, you are more dangerous to us than Al Qaeda is.

Think about that each time you face Mecca to admire your Pulitzer.””You are America ‘s ‘AXIS OF IDIOTS.’ Your Collective Stupidity will destroy us..

Self-serving politics and terrorist-abetting news scoops are more important to you than our national security or the lives of innocent civilians and Soldiers It bothers you that defending ourselves gets in the way of your elitist sport of politics and your ignorant editorializing.

There is as much blood on your hands as is on the hands of murdering terrorists. Don’t ever doubt that. Your frolics will only serve to extend this war as they extended Vietnam . If you want our Soldiers home as you claim, knock off the crap and try supporting your country ahead of supporting your silly political aims and aiding our enemies”.

“Yes, I’m questioning your patriotism. Your loyalty ends with self. I’m also questioning why you’re stealing air that decent Americans could be breathing. You don’t deserve the protection of our men and women in uniform.

You need to run away from this war, this country. Leave the war to the people who have the will to see it through and the country to people who are willing to defend it.””Our country has two enemies: Those who want to destroy us from the outside and those who attempt it from within.

Semper Fi”.J. D. Pendry – Sergeant Major, USMC, Retired 

There is “IRON” in the words spoken by Sgt Major Pendry.  The words hold the truth. We the people need to DEMAND the truth and demand that our constitution be followed to the letter.  It is so simple, just follow the constitution, it really is that simple.

We the people need to rid congress of those who fail to live up to what is expected.  As it is right now, congress is a cancer eating away at America; and please  remember this, those named in Sgt Major’s essay are the CANCER, we the PEOPLE are the cure.
God Bless You and May God Bless America, now and forever

How about it politically correct hoplophobes and practitioners of misandry? You hate gun owners. We hate your stopping our ability to properly and effectively defend what is ours.

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The peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned while they neglect the means of self-defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allured the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside…Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them;…the weak will become prey to the strong.

Thomas Paine— 1 WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE 56 (Conway ed., 1894).

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”

Thomas Jefferson— 8 PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 407 (J. Boyd, ed., 1953).

“[W]hat country can preserve it[]s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve their spirit of resistance? Let them take arms, the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is nature’s manure.”

Thomas Jefferson—   Id., vol. 2 at 344.

I used these quotes from “the Toms” today because of their uniquely contrarian natures.  Paine was a fairly astute observer of human nature, and because of it, he understood that society, and government were both necessary evils…neither to be wholly trusted, and both should meet with some limitations preserved by the individual.  While his keen perception was not enough to keep him from the hubristic belief that man is capable of becoming better based on his intellect and self-restraint alone, and the sad consequences that followed for him, he still understood that arms were and are the great equalizer, which allow those who want to be able to live in peace, from all who threaten it, to do so, some without ever having to rely on their actual use.

Jefferson had no illusions about arms.  As the primary author of the prose of the Declaration of Independence, he also understood that at times, it falls upon the governed to open the ears of those who would govern them, and that sometimes, sadly, that means using arms.  Clearly, he also understood that the right to bear arms was a pillar of liberty, as he knew firsthand that going to government, hat in hand, and asking “Please sir, may I have some more freedom?” is no more effective than a sternly worded letter to a member of Congress who is convinced that the august body of which he is a member does not have a spending problem.

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And now, your moment of truth that your dear leader doesn’t want you to know:

I think I need a cigarette. You?

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; they are in almost every kingdom in Europe.  The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.”

Noah Webster —Pamphlet, An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, October 10, 1787, in PAUL LEICESTER FORD, ED., PAMPHLETS ON THE CONSITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, PUBLISHED DURING ITS DISCUSSION BY THE PEOPLE, 1787-1788, 60 (1888, repr. 1968)

“Mercenary armies…have at one time or another subverted the liberties of almost all the Countries that they have been raised to defend…”

George Washington—WRITINGS OF GEORGE WASHINGTON  388 (Fitzpatrick ed., 1931)

“Arms in the hands of citizens [may] be used in at individual discretion…in private self-defense.”

John Adams—A DEFENCE OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 475 (1787-88).

“To disarm the people [is] the best and most efficient way to enslave them…”

George Mason—ELLIOTT, ED. 5 THE DEBATES IN THE SEVERAL STATE CONVENTIONS 380 (1836, repr. 1941)

Why, it’s almost like these guys didn’t believe that government had their best interests at heart.  Afterall, the government only spends money it doesn’t have because it cares about us…so much so that it doesn’t care how much debt is wracked up for our children and grandchildren to eventually pay.  And it’s perfectly ok for it to be engaged in all manner of giveaways and performing all manner of functions never reserved or assigned to it, because if bubblewrapping your life and then taking away the consequences for bad choices, and then the ability to actually make any choices of consequence is wrong, they don’t wanna be right.

And they don’t want you to be, either…

Benjamin Berwick [DOJ Flunky]: “Well, your honor, I think, I think there are two distinct ideas here: One is: Is the corporation itself religious such that it can exercise religion? And my, our argument is that it is not. Although again, we admit that it is a closer case than for a lot of other companies. And then the second question is, can the owners–is it a substantial burden on the owners when the requirement falls on the company that is a separate legal entity? I think for that question precisely what their beliefs are doesn’t really matter. I mean, they allege that they’re religious beliefs are being violated. We don’t question that. And we don’t question that that is the belief.

Judge Reggie Walton: But considering the closeness of the relationship that the individual owners have to the corporation to require them to fund what they believe amounts to the taking of a life, I don’t know what could be more contrary to one’s religious belief than that.

Berwick: Well, I don’t think the fact this is a closely-held corporation is particularly relevant, your honor. I mean, Mars, for example–

Judge Walton: Well, I mean, my wife has a medical practice. She has a corporation, but she’s the sole owner and sole stock owner. If she had strongly-held religious belief and she made that known that she operated her medical practice from that perspective, could she be required to pay for these types of items if she felt that that was causing her to violate her religious beliefs?

Berwick: Well, Your Honor, I think what it comes down to is whether there is a legal separation between the company and—

Judge Walton: It’s a legal separation. I mean, she obviously has created the corporation to limit her potential individual liability, but she’s the sole owner and everybody associates that medical practice with her as an individual. And if, you know, she was very active in her church and her church had these same type of strong religious-held beliefs, and members of the church and the community became aware of the fact that she is funding something that is totally contrary to what she professes as her belief, why should she have to do that?

Berwick: Well, your honor, again, I think it comes down to the fact that the corporation and the owner truly are separate. They are separate legal entities.

Judge Walton: So, she’d have to give up the limitation that conceivably would befall on her regarding liability in order to exercise her religion? So, she’d have to go as an individual proprietor with no corporation protection in order to assert her religious right? Isn’t that as significant burden?

The correct answer, for those who didn’t pay attention in class, is “HELL YES, IT IS A SIGNIFICANT BURDEN!”

Corporations are private property. Even if you own publically traded stock, it is still private property. Why do people own private property? To do with it as they wish. If I can’t act through a corporation I own in a manner consistant with my Constitutionally protected beliefs, then how, exactly, do we still have a First Amendment?

I think the Judge understands that as it applies to personal services corporations, which are extentions of their owners, the government model becomes completely disconnected from reality, which is why he issued the injuction.

Sequestration also known as living within your means is a bitter pill to swallow. Through the lips and past the gums lookout stomach! Here it comes!

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“In the Second Article, it is declared, that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state; a proposition  from which few will dissent.  Although in actual war, the services of regular troops are confessedly more valuabl; yet while regular peace prevails, and in the commencement of a war before a regular force can be raised, the militia form the palladium [safeguard] of the country…

The corollary from the first position is, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

No clause in the Constitution could by any rule oc construction be conceived to give Congress a power to disarm the people.  Such a flagititious [infamous or scandalous] attempt could only be made under some general pretence by a state legislature.  But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both.

In most of the countries of Europe, this right does not seem to be denied, although it is allowed more or less sparingly, according to circumstances.  In England, a country which boasts so much of its freedom, the right was assured to Protestant subjects only, on the revolution of 1688, and it is cautiously described to be that of bearing arms for their defence “suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law.” An arbitrary code for the preservation of game in that country has long disgraced them.”

—William Rawle, A VIEW OF THE CONSTITUTION, p.125-126 (2nd ed. 1828)

William Rawle was a Philadelphia lawyer appointed to be the United States District Attorney for Pennsylvania by President George Washington in 1791, and Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania from 1796 until his death, and the Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar.

But I’m sure he simply didn’t understand that the right to bear arms was subject to whatever restrictions, conditions, and limitations that politicians in local, state, and Federal government could bleat effectly about being “reasonable”, and therefore legitimate limitations upon the right, because government would never, ever abuse power, and usurp authority not reserved to it, right?