U.S. Constitution, Article 3 Constituency

Why Can't Christians Agree With The Apostle Paul, And Jefferson On The Fundamental Purposes Of Government?

2005-01-28T12:19:00.000-08:00

Why Can't Christians Agree With The Apostle Paul, And Jefferson On The Fundamental Purposes Of Government?

Christians, of all people, should know the difference between good and evil. They should know that the fundamental purpose of government, as described in Romans 13, is expounded upon in the Declaration of Independence, and Preamble of the U.S. Constitution. They should know the difference between politicians who use religious (2 Tim 3:1-5), and pro-life rhetoric to get elected, and those who really are pro-life, and pro-Constitution. It should go without saying, that voting should be based on the commands of the Creator who granted those inalienable rights, and revealed those self-evident truths.

ROMANS 2:13

(For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. 14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: 15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) 16 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.

Romans 2:14 & 15 refers to those who didn't have the law of Moses in written form, but did have some vestige of the moral law in their hearts. The law written on their hearts when combined with reason was sufficient to guide their actions, and their conscience judged their compliance. Those without the written revelation and those rejecting the written revelation know the vast difference between good and evil. One of the major objections atheists have against the existence of a good God is the presence of pervasive evil. How do they know what evil is without knowing what good is? Devoutly secular nations based upon the atheology of communism have laws derived from second half of the Jewish, and Christian Decalogue governing human relations. Covetousness prohibited by the Tenth Commandment can be punishable under criminal conspiracy laws, if the covetousness leads to actions that would constitute a crime when committed.

ROMANS 12:9

"….Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. 14 Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not. 17 Recompense to no man evil for evil….19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. 20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink…. 21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."

Christians have the "work of the law written in their hearts," and accept the written record of Moses. Christians should know the difference between good and evil. God is far more capable than any human of repaying evil, and has many means of doing so. He takes the burden of personal vengeance from Christians, and in some cases places that burden on government, as the 13th chapter of Romans reveals. John Locke in his Second Treatise Of Government recognized that a community of people were far better able to protect their "life, liberty and property" by consenting to government formed for those purposes rather than living in a state of anarchy.

ROMANS 13:1 "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. 2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: 4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. 5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. 6 For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. 9 For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 10 Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law."

Romans 13:1 includes the governing officials themselves when it states "every soul." Robertson's Word Pictures of the New Testament [1] contains some notes that help clarify this verse. "Every soul….As in…. (every man). To the higher powers…. Abstract for concrete. See Mark 2:10…. Huperecw is an old verb to have or hold over, to be above or supreme, as in 1 Peter 2:13."

"Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; 2:14 Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. 2:15 For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men:"

The "rulers" are "ordained" "ministers of God" to be a "terror to evil" by "executing wrath upon those that do evil." In verses 3, and 4 of Romans 13 the terms ‘good,’ and ‘evil’ are used three times. Verse 9 describes "evil" by repeating the second half of the Decalogue found in Exodus 20:13-17, and Deuteronomy 5:17-21. The latter part of verse 9, and verse 10 describes "good." Is murder good, or evil? Genesis 9:6 "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man." If murder is evil, then mass murder isn’t good. Proverbs 6:16-17 "These six things the Lord hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him...hands that shed innocent blood…." Why do Christians vote for politicians who claim that America isn’t ready to discard the law-breaking opinion of Roe[2], when thirty states are ready to?[3] Are these pro-life states not part of America? Why do Christians praise, and vote for politicians who claim that Roe v Wade is "settled law;" when there is nothing lawful, or Biblical about that unconstitutional opinion?[4] The words of Amos need to be repeatedly repeated in our Christianized, but lawless culture: Amos 5:14,15 "Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the LORD,the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken. Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate…."

Some federal judges, and politicians act as though they are above the law once they take office; but Paul is not arguing for the divine right kings, or the divine right of a federal judicial oligarchy. The "higher power" in the United States is the Constitution. Article 6, Paragraph 2 states,"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof…shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby…." The majority opinion of a federal court isn’t listed here, or anywhere else in the Constitution, as being equivalent with, or superior to the written Constitution. Congress is the law making branch, not the federal courts! In paragraph 3 we find, "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution…." Additionally, the President is held to an even higher standard in Article 2, Section 1: "…he shall take the following oath or affirmation:-- ""…I…will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."" Section 3 states that the President "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Nowhere does the Constitution state that he shall take care that "federal court orders" be faithfully executed.

No one is bound to support the unconstitutional majority opinions emanating from federal courts! Their decisions are confined to the parties involved according to the specifics of the particular case. Law by definition is a rule binding on people generally, not just upon individuals who happen to be parties to a case. Congress and state legislatures are the law making branches, not the federal courts. Federal courts have no authority to break laws made "in Pursuance" of the Constitution.

Not only did God ordain the written Constitution, but so did the people as stated in the Preamble: "We the people of the United States, in order to…establish justice…secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Amendment V expounds upon our posterity. "No person shall be...deprived of life...without due process of law...." The Foundation for the National Archives[5] states that, "The Virginia Declaration of Rights strongly influenced Thomas Jefferson in writing the first part of the Declaration of Independence. It later provided the foundation for the Bill of Rights." The Virginia Declaration of Rights[6] states, " That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life…."

Adam Clarke's Commentary on Romans 13:1[7] describes the relationship between the rulers, the ruled, and the rule of law:

"In all nations of the earth there is what may be called a constitution-a plan by which a particular country or state is governed…. The civil governor, whether he be elective or hereditary, agrees to govern according to that constitution. Thus we may consider that there is a compact and consent between the governor and the governed, and in such a case, the potentate may be considered as coming to the supreme authority in the direct way of God's providence; and as civil government is of God, who is the fountain of law, order, and regularity, the civil governor, who administers the laws of a state according to its constitution, is the minister of God.

Nothing can justify the opposition of the subjects to the ruler but overt attempts on his part to change the constitution, or to rule contrary to law.

When the ruler acts thus he dissolves the compact between him and his people; his authority is no longer binding, because illegal; and it is illegal because he is acting contrary to the laws of that constitution, according to which, on being raised to the supreme power, he promised to govern. This conduct justifies opposition to his government…."

James Madison, in Federalist #51[8], recognized that government must be based upon a realistic view of human nature:

"But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."

And in Federalist #55[9], Madison states that republican government promotes good and restrains evil (Jeremiah 17:9) better than any other form:

"As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form."

It is no surprise to find that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…." in Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution. Chief Justice Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803)[10] described the major distinguishing feature of a republic: "The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men."

At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, Benjamin Franklin responded to a question about what form of government they had agreed to. His answer was; "A republic if you can keep it."[11] We haven’t kept it! The republic of the United States has degenerated into a United State ruled by law-breaking men in the federal courts, and politicians whose state of ignorance is only equaled by their acts of cowardice, and lust for power.

In 2002 the Republican Congress, and President gave $60 million in taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood through Title X federal family-planning grants![12] The GOP Congress, and President in defiance of; 1)the "law written on their hearts;" 2) reason; 3) conscience; 4) the fundamental purpose of government stated in the Declaration of Independence, and Romans 13; 5) the Preamble of the Constitution, and the Fifth Amendment have been funding surgical abortions, chemical abortions, and the nation's largest perpetrators of child-murder-by-abortion, Planned Parenthood via Medicaid.[13] What in the name of the risen Son Of God who suffered and died for our transgressions are Christians doing voting for those people? There is no justification for Christians to vote for those who exist to transgress the rule of law, and suppress the truth in their unrighteous acts (Rom.1:18).

Untermensch, sub-human, or under-men was the dehumanizing label assigned to people regarded by the Nazis as so inferior that they were not human beings at all. It is worth noting that Nietzsche's Overman, or super-human was to overcome the traditional ethicist and create a new morality, by the triumph of will over conscience.[14] The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal convicted ten Nazi leaders for "encouraging and compelling abortions," an act which the Tribunal characterized as "a crime against humanity." As with their other crimes against humanity, the Nazis protested that "we were just following orders." Lieutenant General Richard Hildebrandt, the SS (Schutzstaffel) Chief of the RKFVD's Race and Settlement Office in Berlin, stated that "Up to now nobody had the idea to see in this interruption of pregnancy a crime against humanity."[15] The following excerpt from abortion survivor, Gianna Jessen, in her testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, July 20, 2000[16] describes what it is like to be born in a country with no regard for the rule of law, and is morally indistinguishable from Nazi Germany:

"I would like to say thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I count it no small thing to speak the truth. I depend solely on the grace of God to do this. I am 23 years old. I was aborted and I did not die. My biological mother was 7 months pregnant when she went to Planned Parenthood in southern California and they advised her to have a late-term saline abortion.

A saline abortion is a solution of salt saline that is injected into the mother’s womb. The baby then gulps the solution, it burns the baby inside and out and then the mother is to deliver a dead baby within 24 hours.

This happened to me! I remained in the solution for approximately 18 hours and was delivered ALIVE on April 6, 1977 at 6:00 am in a California abortion clinic. There were young women in the room who had already been given their injections and were waiting to deliver dead babies. When they saw me they experienced the horror of murder. A nurse called an ambulance, while the abortionist was not yet on duty, and had me transferred to the hospital. I weighed a mere two pounds. I was saved by the sheer power of Jesus Christ.

Ladies and gentleman I should be blind, burned.....I should be dead! And yet, I live! Due to a lack of oxygen supply during the abortion I live with cerebral palsy. [...] Adolph Hitler once said: ""The receptive ability of the great masses is only very limited, their understanding is small; on the other hand their forgetfulness is great. This being so, all effective propaganda should be limited to a very few points which in turn, should be used as slogans until the very last man is able to imagine what is meant by such words."" Today's slogans are: ""a woman's right to choose"" and "freedom of choice,"" etcetera.

There was once a man speaking from hell, recorded in Luke 16, who said, ""I am tormented in this flame."" Hell is real and so is Satan, and the same hatred that crucified Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago, still resides in the hearts of sinful people today. Why do you think this whole room trembles when I mention Jesus Christ? It is because He is real, and He is able to give the grace for repentance that we need as Americans. We are proud and boastful and we kill without shame."

It cannot be overstated that Christians should not vote for those who subsidize "crimes against humanity!" It cannot be repeated enough that unconscionable slogans should not be allowed to subvert the rule of law. There was a time in this nation’s history when patriots would rather part with life, and limb than part with "We hold the truths to be self-evident…" There was a time in history when preachers would rather part with their life, than deny the plainly written commands of God, but the time has come in this nation when preachers in large denominations denounce those in government who uphold the rule of law as plainly stated in the "supreme Law of the Land."

The plainly written language of the First, and Tenth Amendments refutes the myth that Roy Moore violated the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment states,"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…." Roy Moore has never been a member of Congress, and the Ten Commandments monument was never introduced in the U.S. Congress as a bill "respecting an establishment of religion." The first rule of statutory construction is to give a statute its plain meaning; if the meaning is clear, then there is nothing to construe! The fact that entire books[17] have been written explaining the plain meaning of those sixteen words in First Amendment indicates that the problem they seek to solve is far worse than mere illiteracy. Children can be taught to comprehend what they read, but men convinced against their ungodly rebellious will are of the same unconstitutional opinion still.

Many think that the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution has been repealed. That myth was refuted by Justice Clarence Thomas in US Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 US 779 (1995)," ….where the Constitution is silent about the exercise of a particular power - that is, where the Constitution does not speak either expressly or by necessary implication - the Federal Government lacks that power and the States enjoy it."[18]

The federal judge who unlawfully ordered the Chief Justice of Alabama, Roy Moore, to remove the Ten Commandments monument violated the U.S. Constitution ordained by the People, and rebelled against the "ordinance of God." A raw recruit in the military can’t be prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for failing to obey an unlawful order, but the Chief Justice of Alabama was removed from office for failing to obey an unlawful order from a rebellious federal judge. A national CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll indicated that 77% disapproved of Thompson's order to remove the monument.[19] The U.S. House of Representatives, in July 2003, overwhelmingly adopted John N. Hostettler's amendment to the Commerce Justice, State and Judiciary Appropriations bill forbidding the expenditure of federal tax dollars to enforce the opinion of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Glassroth v. Moore.[20] The President should have announced that the unlawful order wouldn't be enforced, while the U.S. House commenced impeachment proceedings against U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson.

Why didn't it happen? The President has been in the habit of rewarding the evil of abortion with tax money. What would prevent him from punishing good behavior? Abortion clearly violates one of those commandments - "Thou shall not murder." Every state has laws against homicide, and thirty states recognize the unlawful killing of an unborn child as homicide in at least some circumstances,[21] but the President, by enforcing Roe, and Congress, by failing to pass We the People Act[22], are just as determined as any abortionist to prevent thirty states from enforcing laws that defy the unconstitutional majority opinion in Roe v Wade and progeny. Edgar Lee Masters claimed that Lincoln "argued that the Dred Scott decision was the result of a conspiracy on the part of the slavocracy to nationalize slavery,"[23] The testimony of Douglas W. Kmiec Professor Of Constitutional Law before Congress demonstrated that Roe v Wade was a conspiracy on the part of the abortocracy to nationalize abortion by " Justice Blackmun's own admission, the holding in Roe is more ""arbitrary"" preference than constitutional interpretation."[24] Dr. Bernard Nathanson, 1969 co-founder of the National Association for the Repeal of the Abortion Laws, corroborates that conclusion. "A truthful poll of opinion then would have found that most Americans were against permissive abortion. Yet within five years we had convinced the Supreme Court to issue the decision which legalized abortion throughout America in 1973 and produced virtual abortion on demand up to birth."[25]

Is it possible that many of these politicians, claiming to be Christian, can’t remember the difference between good and evil, and despise being reminded by the second half of the Decalogue? That reminder would force them to confront the fundamental purpose of government as expressed in Romans 13, and the Declaration of Independence which states, " WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men…are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life…. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted…." Let those who are determined to forget, recall that Psa 9:17 states, "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." At the beginning of his Templeton Address, Solzhenitsyn made that point. "Over half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia. Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened."[26]

Why do Christians repeatedly vote for politicians who minimize (Rom 1:28 or 2^ndTimothy 3:5) the difference between good and evil, and who can't recognize a self-evident truth as fundamental as the right to life that government is to secure by punishing those who murder? It is one thing for a politician, blinded by might, to fail to see the difference between right and wrong, but quite another for Christian conservative leaders and preachers to repeat their error. Those who denounced[27] Chief Justice Roy Moore for defying an unlawful order should heed the warning of Isaiah 5:20 "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"

Chapters 2 and 13 of Romans mention the word conscience. An article in the September, 2003 issue of Touchstone, "The Nightmares of Choice"[28] speaks to those who still have a conscience:

""I have fetus dreams, we all do here: dreams of abortions one after the other; of buckets of blood splashed on the walls; trees full of crawling fetuses,"" reported Sallie Tisdale of her time as a nurse in an abortion facility. Writing in Harper's magazine, she told of dreaming that two men grabbed her and dragged her away: ""Let's do an abortion,"" they said with a sickening leer, and I began to scream, plunged into a vision of sucking, scraping pain, of being spread and torn by impartial instruments that do only what they are bidden. I woke from this dream barely able to breathe and thought of kitchen tables and coat hangers, knitting needles striped with blood, and women all alone clutching a pillow in their teeth to keep the screams from piercing the apartment-house walls."

When politicians and federal judges rebel against the written Constitution, they are also resisting the ordinance of God. Preachers and Christian conservative leaders shouldn't follow them in their rebellion, and trample underfoot those in government who submit to the ordinance, and commandments of God. The first four Commandments reveal the existence of Higher Authority and Higher Law than the state. The preachers, politicians, and pundits leading the people to reject the rule of law revealed by the Most High God are inviting the rule of men. History reveals[29] it is an invitation that tyranny cannot refuse, and will eagerly hasten to accept.

Many in government may praise the rebellious preachers who resist the ordinance of God, but that praise is only temporary. Those who joined the rebellions of Myron Thompson, and Roe will have to defend their words, and actions before the Supreme Judge of World, as Jefferson described Him in the closing lines of the Declaration of Independence. He will have the final say, and no temporary earthly praise, or position will overrule His eternal condemnation.[30]

The Constitution Party is "working to restore our government to its Constitutional limits and our law to its Biblical foundation."[31] If America is going to be restored to the rule of law, and have the future its Founders intended, Christians are going to have to distinguish the difference between good[32] and evil. Christians are going to have to vote for those who will adhere to the rule of law, and Constitution; and not vote for those who make some nebulous reference to God with the sole intent of deceiving for political gain, as most of the Republican and Democrat politicians do.

If America has any hope of ever becoming "One Nation Under God…with liberty and justice for all," Christians must stop allowing federal courts to separate God from government.[33] According to Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "Those of us who venerate freedom, be we Jewish or Christian, be we religious or secularized, have no option but to pray for the health of Christianity in America. No other group possesses both the faith and the numbers sufficient to hold back the ever-encroaching, sometimes sinister, power of the state."[34]

According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the resident population of the United States, projected to 01/28/05 is 295 million.[35] Total US adult population (age 18 & over) 220 million.[36] A Gallup Poll[37] conducted November 7-10, 2004 found that; "A third of adults, aged 18 and older are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word." 73 million adult Americans believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word. 120 million out of 204 million[38] eligible to vote, cast a ballot for president in the 2004 election. America has a minimum of 57 million voters who believe that the Bible is to be taken literally, word for word. Rabbi Daniel Lapin's assessment is correct. Christians need to realize that they have the numbers to restore the rule of law, but they lack the faith to do so. As long as they have more fear of Democrats than faith in God, the Republicans will continue to take advantage of them by running on the GOP platform to get elected, and then run away from it once in office.

ENDNOTES

The Robertson's Word Pictures of the New Testament, Copyright © Broadman Press 1932,33, Renewal 1960. http://bible.crosswalk.com/Commentaries/RobertsonsWordPictures/rwp.cgi?book=ro&chapter=013&verse=001&next=002&prev=014

"If Dred Scott Wasn't The ""Settled Law of the Land,"" Neither is Roe," January 19, 2001, Republican National Coalition for Life http://www.rnclife.org/faxnotes/2001/jan01/01-01-19.html

"Report: 30 States Ready to Outlaw Abortion, Tuesday," October 05, 2004, FOXNews.com http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134530,00.html ."The State-by-State Consequences of Overturning Roe v. Wade," September 2004, The Center for Reproductive Rights http://www.crlp.org/crt_roe.html, http://www.crlp.org/pub_bo_whatifroefell.html

Roe V. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) Rehnquist dissent: "To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. The only conclusion possible from this history is that the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter." caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=410&invol=113

The Foundation for the National Archives http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/charters/declaration.html

The Foundation for the National Archives, The Virginia Declaration of Rights, see Section 1 http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/charters/virginia_declaration_of_rights.html

"Adam Clarke's Commentary" on Romans 13:1, GodRules.net. http://www.godrules.net/library/clarke/clarkerom13.htm

The Avalon Project : Federalist No 51, The Avalon Project at Yale Law School http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/federal/fed51.htm

The Avalon Project : Federalist No 55, The Avalon Project at Yale Law School http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/federal/fed55.htm

Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) , FindLaw http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=5&page=137

"A Republic, If You Can Keep It." As cited by Hon.Ron Paul of Texas, January 31 & February 2, 2000, U.S. House of Representatives. http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2000/cr020200.htm

"Bush AIDS Policy Collides with Mexico City," March 7, 2003, Republican National Coalition for Life http://www.rnclife.org/faxnotes/2003/mar03/03-03-07.shtml

"Bush's abortion funding," October 9, 2004, The Covenant News, Steve Lefemine http://www.covenantnews.com/lefemine041011.htm

"Thus spake Zarathustra,"Friedrich Nietzsche, Introduction By Mrs Forster-Nietzsche. How Zarathustra Came Into Being. Nietzsche Archives, Weimar, December 1905. "Am I understood?...The overcoming of morality through itself-through truthfulness, the overcoming of the moralist through his opposite-THROUGH ME-: that is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth." http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/n/n67a/part1.html

Nuremberg Military Tribunals,IV:1081-84. Nuremberg: NO-3512.

Born-Alive Infants Protection Act Of 2000, Statement Of Gianna Jessen, July 20, 2000 Franklin, TN http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju67226.000/hju67226_0.HTM#54

"Separation of Church and State," Philip Hamburger, Harvard University Press, 2002 http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/HAMSEP.html, "Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State," Daniel L. Dreisbach, July 2002, New York University Press http://btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?btob=Y&BT=Y&pdf=y&isbn=081471935X "No Liberty for License: The Forgotten Logic of the First Amendment," David Lowenthal, Spence Publishing Company (October 15, 1997) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0965320847/qid=/sr=/ref=cm_lm_asin/002-3069269-8567232?v=glance "Present Dangers: Rediscovering the First Amendment," David Lowenthal, Harvey C. Mansfield, Publisher: Spence Publishing Company; 2nd Rev edition (February 1, 2003) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1890626473/qid=1106865364/sr=1-19/ref=sr_1_19/002-4048144-2625652?v=glance&s=books

US Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 US 779 (1995), Justice Clarence Thomas dissent. http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-1456.ZD.html

"Ten Commandments monument moved," CNN.com Law Center, Friday, November 14, 2003 Posted: 7:36 AM EST (1236 GMT) http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/08/27/ten.commandments/index.html

Hostettler Amendments Prohibit Funds To Enforce Court Decisions Against Pledge, Ten Commandments, July 23, 2003, Office of United States Representative John N. Hostettler http://www.house.gov/hostettler/News/Hostettler-news-2003-07-23-pledge-amendment.htm

30 states recognize the unlawful killing of an unborn child as homicide in at least some circumstances.http://www.nrlc.org/Unborn_victims/Statehomicidelaws092302.html

We the People Act (HR 3893 IH). http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.R.3893.IH:108th%20CONGRESS

Lincoln the Man, Edgar Lee Masters ,(New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1931), p. 252

Testimony Of Douglas W. Kmiec Professor Of Constitutional Law, University Of Notre Dame, before The Subcommittee On The Constitution, Committee Of The Judiciary, U.S. House Of Representatives April 22, 1996 http://www.vanderbilt.edu/SFL/scoperoe.htm

"Confessions of an Ex-Abortionist" In The Hand of God: A Journey from Death to Life by the Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind, Bernard Nathanson, Regenery Publishing, 1997. http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/abortion/ab0005.html

"Men Have Forgotten God" - The Templeon Address, 1983, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn; translator: A. Klimoff http://www.roca.org/OA/36/36h.htm

"Southern Baptist Leaders Should Correct Their Course," Rev. Mark H. CreechSeptember 2, 2003, AgapePress http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/9/22003mc.asp "As the World Turns? WORLD Magazine digs itself in, deeper and deeper," Doug Phillips,October 31, 2003, Vision Forum Ministries. http://www.visionforumministries.org/sections/hotcon/ht/interposition/2003-10-31_world_mag.asp

"The Nightmares of Choice: The Psychological Effects of Performing Abortions," Rachel M. MacNair, September, 2003,Touchstone http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-07-022-f

"Death By Government," Chapter 2, Definition of Democide, R.J. Rummel "Democide is meant to define the killing by government as the concept of murder does individual killing in domestic society. Here intentionality (premeditation) is critical. This also includes practical intentionality. If a government causes deaths through a reckless and depraved indifference to human life, the deaths were as though intended. If through neglect a mother lets her baby die of malnutrition, this is murder.... Similarly, for example, as the Soviet government forcibly transported political prisoners to labor camps hundreds of thousands of them died at the hands of criminals or guards, or from heat, cold, and inadequate food and water. Although not intended (indeed, this deprived the regime of their labor), the deaths were still public murder. It was democide." http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP2.HTM Also, see http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) Enfield, ConnecticutJuly 8, 1741http://www.ccel.org/e/edwards/sermons/sinners.html

The Constitution Party http://www.constitutionparty.com/

Sanctity of Life http://www.constitutionparty.com/party_platform.php#Sancity%20of%20Life

"Ameica's Real War," Rabbi Lapin, Multnomah Publishers (December 15, 1998), p. 246. Also, cited Sept. 2, 2000 ,Volume 15, Number 34 WORLD ON THE WEB, Marvin Olasky http://www.gcc.edu/alumni/visionvalues/6_2001/default.htm

U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html

2004 Election Overview, The Center for Responsive Politics http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/DonorDemographics.asp?cycle=2004 and http://www.census.gov/popest/states/files/SC_EST2004_18+POP_RES.csv

"Third of Americans Say Evidence Has Supported Darwin's Evolution Theory: Almost half of Americans believe God created humans 10,000 years ago." Frank Newport, November 19, 2004. Gallup Poll On Demandhttp http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/login.aspx?ci=14107

"Voter Turnout: The numbers prove that 2004 may signal more voter interest." Michael McDonald, Visiting Fellow, Governance Studies, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 27, 2004. http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/mcdonald20041127.htm

How Many Millions More Must Be Murdered, Before ‘We The People’ Demand Adherence to the Constitution?

2005-01-15T17:26:00.000-08:00

The Sierra Times mission statement reads in part:

"The Sierra Times is not affiliated with any political party. We consider ourselves independent, yet we have been labeled left-wing, right-wing, and everything in between. We try, whenever possible, to be fair in our news reporting, giving both sides of an issue the opportunity to be heard. This goes especially for our editorial commentaries.

Zealots, on the other hand, get little tolerance here. We find 'extremism' on either side to harm the overall debate. The lone exception is regarding the Constitution of the United States, where we must in fact admit that we are extremists in defending it."[1]

The mainstream liberal media operates according to an implied mission statement which could be summed up by stating: Regarding the Constitution of the United States, we must in fact admit that we are extremists in destroying it.

The mainstream conservative media tries to be fair and balanced, but the relevant evidence to convict them of zealously defending the Constitution is probably little more than sporadic, excited utterances of hearsay. The Sierra Times proclaims the Bill of Rights as "our 'mission statement'." How often do you read or hear the major personalities in the conservative media mentioning anything about the Constitution?

The Northwestern University Law School website contains a paper, "The Irrepressible Myth Of Marbury,"[2] presented by Michael S. Paulsen, Briggs & Morgan Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School,[3] for the Constitutional Theory Colloquium Series, that was held on February 18, 2004.

Professor Paulsen begins his lengthy presentation with these introductory comments:

"Nearly all of American constitutional law today rests on a myth. The myth, presented as standard history both in junior high civics texts and in advanced law school courses on constitutional law, runs something like this: A long, long time ago - 1803, if the storyteller is trying to be precise - in the famous case of Marbury v. Madison,¹ the Supreme Court of the United States created the doctrine of "judicial review." Judicial review is the power of the Supreme Court to decide the meaning of the Constitution and to strike down laws that the Court finds unconstitutional.

As befits the name of the court from which the doctrine emanates, the Supreme Court's power of judicial review - the power, in Chief Justice John Marshall's famous words in Marbury, ""to say what the law is""² - is supreme. The Congress, the President, the states - indeed, ""We the People"" who ""ordain[ed] and establish[ed]""³ the Constitution - are all bound by the Supreme Court's pronouncements.

[….] Indeed, the Court's authority over constitutional interpretation by now must be regarded, rightly, as one of the pillars of our constitutional order, on par with the Constitution itself.

So the myth goes. But nearly every feature of the myth is wrong."

Professor Paulsen writes at length, because the voters are victims of unconstitutional, and extra-constitutional propaganda declaring the unelected, and unaccountable judges on the U.S. Supreme Court as the de facto tyrants of the United States. When, in fact, they are the de jure subordinates which the Constitution emphatically states that they are in the text and internal logic of that document which federal judges routinely defy in their unconscionable edicts permitting mass murder, euphemistically termed as ‘abortion,’ ‘choice,’ ‘privacy.’

The candid citizen, after examining the text, and internal logic of the U.S. Constitution, is led to only one inescapable conclusion about the federal judiciary that is stated in Federalist #78:

"The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.

This simple view of the matter suggests several important consequences. It proves incontestably, that the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power [1]; that it can never attack with success either of the other two;

[Footnote 1] The celebrated Montesquieu, speaking of them, says: ""Of the three powers above mentioned, the judiciary is next to nothing.''" ""Spirit of Laws.''" vol. i., page 186.

Madison confirms that conclusion in Federalist #51: "But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates."

In Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall derived the doctrine of judicial review from Hamilton's other comments in Federalist #78, the ‘Supremacy Clause’, and the ‘Loyalty Clause’ in the Constitution. Using the same simple logic as Marshall, Presidents Jefferson [4], Jackson [5], and Lincoln [6] expounded upon the doctrine of ‘Executive Review,’ which is as constitutional a doctrine as judicial review, with one supremely important difference. Congress can override a presidential veto, but the United States Supreme Court possesses no power to force any President to comply with their unconstitutional edicts. Thirty states recognize the unlawful killing of an unborn child as homicide in at least some circumstances,[7] and thirty states stand ready to overthrow Roe.[8] It is not the United States Supreme Court, and most certainly not the Constitution that bars them from doing so – and here is why: Congress can invoke Article 3 [9], and the President is not constitutionally, legally, or ethically mandated to enforce the criminally insane edicts of Roe and progeny. The pro-life, and pro-constitution constituency must stop blaming the Constitution, the judges, and the anti-constitutional constituency whose sole purpose in life is to destroy the Constitution, and push this nation beyond the "point of no return." The blame lies squarely where Federalist #51 puts it - with the Congress - and in the Office where "the buck stops,"[10] as President Truman's sign on his desk read.

When federal courts shred the very fabric of the Constitution as was violently done in Roe and subsequent cases; Congress and the President are obligated by their oath of loyalty to the Constitution - the Supreme Law - to immediately check those courts and restore Constitutional order - anything less is an absolute dereliction of Constitutional duty leading to tyranny.

When a common criminal commits homicide, does the press say that he 'overruled' or 'struck down' a state law forbidding same? The criminal broke the law, just as the criminals dressed in black robes bearing the title of Justice of the United Supreme Court do, every time they break state laws prohibiting abortion with the tacit approval of the press, and pro-life organizations. Could it be that the press and pro-life organizations rely on legal advice tainted with the "Myth of Marbury?" Does the pro-life constituency habitually rely on politicians who are indoctrinated with the same myth? Or is the politician who hides behind the long robes of the federal judiciary when voters demand adherence to the Constitution simply afraid, like the small child who hides behind his mother's long dress?

How do the citizens and their elected representatives know when the federal courts have erred? Justice Curtis answered that excellent question in his dissent from the majority in Dred Scott v. Sandford:

"[W]hen a strict interpretation of the Constitution, according to the fixed rules which govern the interpretation of laws, is abandoned, and the theoretical opinions of individuals are allowed to control its meaning, we have no longer a Constitution; we are under the government of individual men, who for the time being have power to declare what the Constitution is, according to their own views of what it ought to mean." ^.

Even the press should be able to tell the difference between strict interoperation according to fixed rules, and penumbras emanating [11] from the feral fantasy of a federal judge. The President, each member of Congress, and every pro-life citizen should have a sign on their desk that reads, "The Myth Of Marbury Stops Here!"

The press would likely contend that, if the conservative politicians took the Supremacy Clause, and Loyalty Clause seriously, it would precipitate a constitutional crisis. But the average home schooled child who has been taught the Constitution by his liberty loving, patriotic parents would likely respond with - It would resolve the one we have been in since 1973!

The Honorable John N. Hostettler of Indiana on June 24, 2004, before the House of Representatives, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, DC. commenting on the issue of "Limiting Federal Court Jurisdiction To Protect Marriage For The States," [12]described the plague of propaganda parroted, and perpetuated by the pernicious press:

"Mr. Chairman, as a nonlawyer, I count it a high privilege to serve as a Member of this Subcommittee. However, as a student of the United States Constitution, I would not be truthful if I said that I have always understood as perceived by this nonlawyer to be a disconnect between the plain wording and construction of the Constitution and the opinions handed down by the Federal judiciary as, quote, "''constitutional,''" end quote.

But this perceived disconnect was explained to me with such clarity by, and rightfully so, a lawyer when I read the testimony of Dr. Leo Graglia, before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, of May 15, 1997. Dr. Graglia, who is the A. Dalton Cross Professor of Law at the University of Texas law school, profoundly observed that, quote, "''the first and most important thing to know about constitutional law is that it has virtually nothing to do with the Constitution,''" end quote. At that point, the scales fell from my eyes, and I realized that I cannot confuse what is taught in our Nation's law schools and what is expounded by so-called constitutional scholars on the 24-hour news talk shows with the work of folks like Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and Washington, and others at Philadelphia in 1787, or for that matter the first Congress in 1789 or the 39th Congress in 1866."

Congress has another member who understands the difference between the Constitution, and unconstitutional edicts supported by nothing more than the Marxist spin that Hostettler described. He represents the 14^th District of Texas, and his name is Ron Paul.

Four years ago, he included this comment in "A Republic, If You Can Keep It."[13]

"At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a Mrs. Powel anxiously awaited the results, and as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the long task now finished, asked him directly: ""Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"" ""A republic if you can keep it"" responded Franklin."

There are many distinguishing features between a Republic with a written Constitution, and judicial oligarchy that deviates further from the rule of law with each evolving opinion. The major difference is that laws, not men govern a republic, whereas law-breaking men govern those in servile subjection to a judicial oligarchy. If the pro-life constituency was as serious about demanding legal protection for life as the homosexuals are about demanding legal protection for their life-style, Roe v Wade and progeny would have been relegated to the trash bin of unconstitutional opinion containing Dred Scott, and Korematsu.

In the world of politics, those who don't act serious will never be taken seriously. There is plenty of room for compromise on a host of issues, but there must be no compromise on the fundamental purpose of government in securing the right to life. Politicians promoting exceptions according to the slogan of 'safe, legal and rare,' are as responsible for breaking the law as the judges who join majority opinions promoting abortion.

In the 107th Congress (2001-2002), Congress used the authority of Article III, Section 2, clause 2 on 12 occasions to limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts.[14] On March 4, 2004, "Mr. Paul (for himself and Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland)" introduced "We the People Act (HR 3893 IH) to limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes."[15] The bill returns abortion, sodomy, and establishment clause issues to the states where competent citizens with consciences can mend their broken laws, and prevents the U.S. Supreme Court from breaking them.

We the People Act will probably be reintroduced in the 109^th Congress prior to the summer session. The pro-life and pro-constitution constituency needs to make reintroduction a certainty, and passage a prerequisite for retaining office after the next elections.

I greatly appreciate Sierra Times commitment to the Constitution, and Christian Patriots For Life support of the scientific/medical, Biblical/ethical, and constitutional arguments for life. It is the only pro-life organization presently supporting We The People Act, and return to constitutional sanity. Christian Patriots For Life[16] is as committed to destroying the Blackmum Wall [17], as Reagan was to the destruction of the Berlin Wall.

REFERENCES THE CANDID CITIZEN CAN PRESENT TO THE PRESS & POLITICIANS:

#1 About The Sierra Times: An Internet Publication for Real Americans.

http://www.sierratimes.com/mission.htm

#2 The Irrepressible Myth Of Marbury. http://www.law.northwestern.edu/mainpages/curriculum/colloquium/Michael%20Paulsen.pdf.

#3 Michael S. Paulsen, Briggs & Morgan Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School.

http://www.law.umn.edu/facultyprofiles/paulsenm.htm

#4 Jefferson wrote in a letter in 1820: "You [William C. Jarvis] seem ... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions, a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy . . . The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party its members would become despots." 9

http://www.libertyhaven.com/thinkers/thomasjefferson/thomasjefferson.html

#5 President Andrew Jackson on Executive & Congressional review:

"The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve."

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/veto/ajveto01.htm

#6 "[T]he candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, . . . the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal." A. Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (Mar. 4, 1861), reprinted in Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States, S. Doc. No. 101-10, p. 139 (1989).

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-744.ZX4.html

Ex Parte Merryman - Lincoln simply ignored Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s order.

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h248.html

#7 30 States Ready to Outlaw abortion.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134530,00.html

#8 30 states recognize the unlawful killing of an unborn child as homicide in at least some circumstances.

http://www.nrlc.org/Unborn_victims/Statehomicidelaws092302.html

#9 Expert testimony on Article 3.

http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju94458.000/hju94458_0.HTM

#10 President Harry Truman's sign. The saying "the buck stops here" derives from the slang expression "pass the buck" which means passing the responsibility on to someone else.

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/buckstop.htm

#11 " The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance."

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0381_0479_ZO.html

#12 The Honorable John N. Hostettler of Indiana on June 24, 2004, before the House of Representatives, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, DC. commenting on the issue of "Limiting Federal Court Jurisdiction To Protect Marriage For The States,"

http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju94458.000/hju94458_0.HTM

#13 "A Republic, If You Can Keep It."

http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2000/cr020200.htm

#14 In the 107th Congress (2001-2002), Congress used the authority of Article III, Section 2, clause 2 on 12 occasions to limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts.

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20031006-085845-5892r.htm

#15 We the People Act (HR 3893 IH).

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.R.3893.IH:108th%20CONGRESS

#16 Christian Patriots For Life.

http://www.cpforlife.org/pro_life.htm

http://cpforlife.blogspot.com/

#17 Blackmum Wall.

http://www.lifedynamics.com/Pro-life_Group/Pro-choice_Women/

This Article Published 01. 17. 05 at 13:10 Sierra Time, SierraTimes.com™ A Subsidiary of J.J. Johnson Enterprises, Inc.

Hearing Before The Subcommittee On The Constitution Of The Committee On The Judiciary

2005-01-07T12:51:00.000-08:00

Notes on the Testimony Of Martin H. Redish, Louis And Harriet Ancel Professor Of Law And Public Policy, Northwestern Law School, June 24, 2004

Professor Redish is a nationally renowned authority on the subject of Federal jurisdiction. He received his A.B. With honors, with highest honors, in political science from the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. Magna cum laude from Harvard law school. He has been described in a review of his book, The Federal Courts in the Political Order, as quote, ''without a doubt the foremost scholar on issues of Federal court jurisdiction in this generation,'' unquote.Professor Redish is the author or coauthor of 70 articles and 13 books, including Federal Jurisdiction: Tensions in the Allocation of Federal Power. He was recently included on a list of the 100 most cited legal scholars of all time.

Section 1.
The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.

There are absolutely no federal cases constitutionally excluded from state court jurisdictional authority. The State courts provide an adequate forum to interpret and enforce Federal law, including the Federal Constitution. State courts are empowered and obligated under article VI, clause 2, the supremacy clause, to interpret and enforce the Constitution. The Constitution didn't require Congress to create the lower federal courts (Madisonian Compromise). Congress did create the lower Federal courts immediately, but it is well established in the case law that that power to, from time to time, ordain and establish the lower Federal courts includes the power to abolish the lower Federal courts, and the greater power to abolish the lower Federal courts logically subsumes within it the power to leave the courts in existence, but limit their jurisdictions. The Supreme Court has proceeded on the logical assumption that if Congress possessed discretion not to create lower federal courts in the first place, it also has the power to abolish the lower federal courts. See, e.g., Lockerty v. Phillips, 319 U.S. 182 (1943); Sheldon v. Sill, 49 U.S. (8 How.) 441 (1850). Since it has been assumed that Congress possesses the authority to abolish the lower federal courts completely, the Court has assumed that it has the logically lesser power to ''abolish'' them as to only certain cases by limiting their jurisdiction.

Section 2.
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States;--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

In Ex parte McCardle, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 506 (1868), the Supreme Court recognized the unlimited authority explicitly authorized in the text. There are no internal constitutional limits, no limits in article III on Congress' power. Its power is plenary. There are external constitutional limits on this power; the Due Process Clause, and the equal protection directive in the fifth amendment apply, but are satisfied by state courts which Congress can't affect. The text, and internal logic of the Constitution allows Congress to combine its power over the article III lower courts and the Supreme Court under the exceptions clause, the end result is that it can completely exclude Federal judicial power over pretty much any issue, as long as the State courts remain available. The case law agrees with the Constitution in this respect.

The text and internal logic of the Constitution are the antidote for deceptive arguments claiming Congress hasn't the power which is explicitly stated, and which has been used with no objections of any U.S. Supreme Court. Congress' Article 3 power dosen't violate separation of powers, since the Constitution dosen't provide for Congress to adjucate a case, or dictatate a case, or enforce a decision, or overturn a decision. The states are bound by the Constitution, and not unconstitutional/extraconstitional federal judicial majority opinion.

The Avalon Project : Federalist No 81

"The judicial power of the United States is'' (by the plan of the convention) "to be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may, from time to time, ordain and establish.''1

The arguments, or rather suggestions, upon which this charge is founded, are to this effect: "The authority of the proposed Supreme Court of the United States, which is to be a separate and independent body, will be superior to that of the legislature. The power of construing the laws according to the SPIRIT of the Constitution, will enable that court to mould them into whatever shape it may think proper; especially as its decisions will not be in any manner subject to the revision or correction of the legislative body.... But the errors and usurpations of the Supreme Court of the United States will be uncontrollable and remediless.'' This, upon examination, will be found to be made up altogether of false reasoning upon misconceived fact.

In the first place, there is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which DIRECTLY empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution, or which gives them any greater latitude in this respect than may be claimed by the courts of every State. I admit, however, that the Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of the convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution; and as far as it is true, is equally applicable to most, if not to all the State governments. There can be no objection, therefore, on this account, to the federal judicature which will not lie against the local judicatures in general, and which will not serve to condemn every constitution that attempts to set bounds to legislative discretion.

To avoid all inconveniencies, it will be safest to declare generally, that the Supreme Court shall possess appellate jurisdiction both as to law and FACT, and that this jurisdiction shall be subject to such EXCEPTIONS and regulations as the national legislature may prescribe. This will enable the government to modify it in such a manner as will best answer the ends of public justice and security.

The Avalon Project : Federalist No 78 It proves incontestably, that the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power 1 The celebrated Montesquieu, speaking of them, says: "Of the three powers above mentioned, the judiciary is next to nothing.'' "Montesquieu: The Spirit of Laws.'' vol. i., page 186. The Avalon Project : Federalist No 51 But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. Amendment IX - The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Amendment X - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Republicans Offer the Unborn 32 More Years of Roe v. Wade

2005-01-06T11:41:00.000-08:00

In a December 16, 2004 National Review Online article A Pro-Life Mistake , Attorney Clark D. Forsythe of Americans United for Life recommended that State Legislators cease and desist in the introduction of legislation prohibiting abortion in their States. Attorney Forsythe counseled that since the Supreme Court is not pro-life (despite the fact that Republican Presidents appointed a super-majority, seven out of nine, of those Justices), it would be folly to introduce such legislation at this time. An old proverb comes to mind, "If not now, when?"

On November 2, 2004, the American electorate voted into office a Republican President, Republican House, Republican Senate and a majority of Republican Governors. The Supreme Court is made up of a super-majority of Republican appointees. We have, in America, undeniable Republican Party Rule. If the Republican Party is pro-life, now is the best and only time to effectuate any real pro-life legislation.

Those pro-lifers who refused to support the reelection effort of Mr. Bush were told that the election was about the judiciary and the Supreme Court - without good appointments, we'll have another 32 years of Roe v. Wade, we were told. Prior to the election, and since, was there any evidence from the White House that there is any intention to nominate pro-life justices? In fact, has not Mr. Bush nominated several abortion supporting judges to the lower benches, and wasn't his campaigning for Alren Specter (who has promised to block all pro-life Justices) evidence that Mr. Bush has no intention of creating a pro-life judiciary and of eliminating legal abortion in America.

Perhaps we must come to grips with the fact that with Republican President, Republican Senate, Republican House and majority Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, 4,000 dead babies daily is the best the GOP has to offer. Given the President's remarks in the third Presidential debate, that "reasonable people can come together and put good law in place that will help reduce the number of abortions," we ought not be looking to the Republican Party as the vehicle by which abortion will be made illegal. All the big-government GOP has to offer is regulations that might reduce the number of abortions. I know from a statistical point, 1,000 puréed babies daily would be "better" than 4,000 diced-up babies, but it is not better for the 1,000 the President has permitted to die on his watch.

I question why the director of Americans United for Life (AUL) would council his fellow colleagues in the pro-life movement to refrain from introducing legislation that would prohibit abortions. I can't help but believe that he shares the opinions of the Republican Party - and the President specifically - regarding minimizing abortions, and he is not committed to ending legal abortion in America. The AUL offers model legislation guides to pro-life lobbyists on Abortion Clinic Regulations, Cloning, Crimes Against the Unborn Child Act, Human Embryo Research, Heath Care Rights of Conscience Act, Parental Involvement for Minors Seeking Abortion, Physician-Assisted Suicide and Informed Consent Legislation. Not a one of the AUL eight recommended legislative strategies decries the legality of abortion. If, and frankly since, abortion is immoral and unlawful, it cannot be regulated without us acquiring the same bloody hands that the pro-abortion lobbyists have. Regulating abortion concedes its legality, and assumes that abortion is here to stay as a Constitutionally secured right. Apparently this is the best the Republican-minded pro-lifers have to offer - to concede defeat before the battle begins. Compromise requires that you be willing to accept half a loaf, we are told. Then the GOPers ask for a quarter loaf, and get about an eighth. Why has no one thought to ask for a loaf and a half? Preemptive concession - in this case that abortion is legal and will remain such - is the rule of day.

Additionally, regulating abortion creates new federal regulative programs, requires funding and oversight, and permits the pro-life movement to remain on its high horse demanding more federal intervention in abortion related causes. Keeping abortion legal for nearly 32 years now is quite possibly the best fund-raising strategy any lobbyist organization could have ever conceived.

It is due to this politically impotent view that I am not a member of the Republican Party. When you belong to the political machine, as Attorney Forsythe and his Americans United for Life, the National Right to Life and other compromisers satisfied with being the reasonable people the President suggested would come together and pass good laws permitting a certain number of abortions, you lose your taste for victory. What Mr. Bush, Attorney Forsythe, the AUL and others have effectively said is that they want abortion to remain safe, legal and rare. But, if every pregnancy resulted in a natural end (either birth or miscarriage), but abortion was still legal, the pro-life movement would have lost the battle, and the pro-abortion "rights" advocates would have won.

The GOP and the pro-life lobbyists have demonstrated their lack of commitment to the unborn, and they must, therefore, be opposed. They are no longer the friend of the unborn, and they are no longer our friends if they are unwilling to expend the political capital we have given them to protect the unborn. Parties and lobbyists are vehicles to advance a cause – if they stop advancing, it is time for us to find or create one that will.

The crux of Attorney Forsythe's argument (I'm not picking on him since in reality the grand majority of these "pro-life lobby" organizations would contend the same as he) is this: Legislatures, don't expend in 2005 the political capital received in 2004 since the courts will oppose you, and you will be slapped with an attorney's fees bill from the ACLU.

Legislators, if I may humbly submit to you an alternative to the preemptive concession of Attorney Forsythe: If you fail to act, you will be slapped with a bill for the blood of the unborn you have permitted to be shed in your State. As State Legislatures, you can interpose between the Judicial Usurpation of Roe and the unborn babies in the womb. Since Roe was decided unconstitutionally and fraudulently, it is void ab initio and invalid as against the States - but you must be willing to make and stand by that argument.

As a party to the Contract of the United States Constitution, you have an absolute right to insist upon compliance to it from the other Party, namely the Federal Government. Go right ahead, declare abortion illegal - you have, after all, also taken an Oath to the United States Constitution. To submit to Roe in your jurisdiction is to commit perjury of your Oath to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

The only question left is this: If the Republicans elected into office are willing to make that stand, will the leaders of the Party and the pro-life movement support it? If not, and frankly my hopes are not very high, or if they are not even willing to raise Interposition as a remedy against a Federal usurpation of power, it is time to conclude that neither the Republican Party, nor the pro-life lobbyists, are committed to ending legal abortion in America.

Republicans Offer the Unborn 32 More Years of Roe v. Wade, December 17, 2004, by Scott T. Whiteman, Esq.

The Irrepressible Myth Of Marbury .pdf file requires Adobe Acrobat Reader (free), or can be read in online @ The Irrepressible Myth Of Marbury

CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY COLLOQUIUM SERIES

Nearly all of American constitutional law today rests on a myth. The myth, presented as standard history both in junior high civics texts and in advanced law school courses on constitutional law, runs something like this: A long, long time ago - 1803, if the storyteller is trying to be precise - in the famous case of Marbury v. Madison,1 the Supreme Court of the United States created the doctrine of "judicial review." Judicial review is the power of the Supreme Court to decide the meaning of the Constitution and to strike down laws that the Court finds unconstitutional.

As befits the name of the court from which the doctrine emanates, the Supreme Court's power of judicial review - the power, in Chief Justice John Marshall's famous words in Marbury, "to say what the law is"2 - is supreme. The Congress, the President, the states - indeed, "We the People" who "ordain[ed] and establish[ed]"3 the Constitution - are all bound by the Supreme Court's pronouncements. Thus, the decisions of the Supreme Court become, in effect, part of the Constitution itself. Even the Supreme Court is bound by its own precedents, at least most of the time. Occasionally the Court needs to make landmark decisions that revise prior understandings, in order to keep the Constitution up to date with the times. When it does, that revised understanding becomes part of the supreme law of the land. Other than through the adoption of a constitutional amendment, however, the Supreme Court is the final authority on constitutional change.

Judicial review (the myth continues) thus serves as the ultimate check on the powers of the other branches of government, and is one of the unique, crowning features of our constitutional democracy. The final authority of the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution has withstood the test of time. It has survived periodic efforts by the political branches, advanced during times of crisis (the Civil War and the Great Depression) or out of short-term political opposition to initially unpopular or controversial rulings (like Brown v. Board of Education4 and Roe v. Wade5), to undermine this essential feature of our constitutional order. Through it all - Dred Scott6 and the Civil War, the New Deal Court-packing plan, resistance to Brown, the Nixon Tapes case,7 the Vietnam War, the quest to overrule Roe v. Wade - the authority of the Supreme Court as the final interpreter of the Constitution has stood firm. Indeed, the Court's authority over constitutional interpretation by now must be regarded, rightly, as one of the pillars of our constitutional order, on par with the Constitution itself.

So the myth goes.

By Michael S. Paulsen, Briggs & Morgan Professor of Law

Very long article that is a must read for the pro-life constituency that dosen't understand Republicans Offer the Unborn 32 More Years of Roe v. Wade

Rabbi Yehuda Levin,Speech to National March for Life, Washington, D.C., January 22, 2004

2005-01-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

Three decades ago, in 1973, a decadent Supreme Court, in this city of Washington, D.C., issued a shameful decree—the ROE vs. WADE ruling that empowered the abortion establishment to murder and mutilate tens of millions of G-D’s children in cold blood.

Today, 31 years later, ROE vs. WADE is still the law of this great country. So, we have come here today to dramatize this appalling condition.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they made a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this guarantee, as far as her unborn children are concerned.

So, we have come to demand that America’s leaders make good on this guarantee. We have come to demand that President Bush act immediately, together with the leaders of the House and Senate, to restrict the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court on the subject of Abortion, and to change the law to protect America’s unborn children.

They have the right to do this, under the Constitution of the United States.

This is no time to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

Now is the time to open the doors of life to all of G-D’s children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the consequences of the continued murder of millions of unborn children.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day our political leaders will liberate themselves from the tyrannical rule of the pollsters and political gurus, and stand up for what is right and decent.

I have a dream that one day, very soon, no child will be murdered or mutilated in this great country—that all of America’s children will have the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of freedom.

But not only that—let freedom ring from the abandoned abortion clinics of Planned Parenthood--From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

Let us speed up the day when all of G-D’s children: White, Black, Brown, Gentile, Catholic, Protestant, and Jew alike will be able to sing the words of that old Negro spiritual: "Born at last! Born at last! -- Thank G-D Almighty, we are born at last!"

Abortion in the State of Israel

Abortionists kill more children than terrorists

"He who destroys his own children…who wrecks the handiwork of G-D…brings hunger, plague, and the sword upon the world." —Zohar, Shemos (Exodus)

"Abortion is murder, plain and simple." —Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, Da Ma Shetoshiv

The Ex-abortionists: Why They Quit

2005-01-05T17:18:00.000-08:00

As a young doctor in the early 1970s, Paul E. Jarrett, Jr., did a number of legal abortions. He began having doubts, though, after the urea-induced abortion of a mental patient. The child, weighing two pounds, was born alive, and the mother screamed, "My baby's alive! My baby's alive!" Dr. Jarrett later said, "I often wondered what we did for her mental status. That baby lived several days."

But it was a 1974 operation that "changed my mind about abortion forever." While doing a suction abortion, Jarrett found that the suction curette was obstructed by a torn-off fetal leg. So he changed techniques and dismembered the child with a ring forceps:

And as I brought out the rib cage, I looked and I saw a tiny, beating heart. And when I found the head of the baby, I looked squarely in the face of another human being–a human being that I'd just killed. I turned to the scrub nurse and said, "I'm sorry." But I just knew that I couldn't be a part of abortion any more.

The Ex-abortionists: Why They Quit by Mary Meehan - 2000 Spring/Summer - The Human Life Foundation, Inc.

Whose Justice?

2005-01-05T13:11:00.000-08:00

Judicial activism, the practice of judges ignoring the law and deciding cases based on their personal political views, has been a problem in America since well before the Supreme Court invented a right to abortion in Roe v. Wade. Many federal judges have become de facto legislators in recent decades, substituting their self-presumed wisdom for the will of Congress. In the process, the American people have lost more and more power to influence the laws under which they must live.

Activist federal judges often view the Constitution as an anachronism that stands in the way of their visions for "social justice." They usually view European socialism very positively, and unconditionally believe in the United Nations and international law. Accordingly, activist judges increasingly are looking outside the US for guidance when deciding cases.

This latest brand of judicial activism has a name: "transjudicialism." Transjudicialism means that American federal judges consider foreign and international legal sources when deciding cases, even though such sources often conflict directly with our own Constitution.

As Robert Bork explains, six of the nine Supreme Court justices have either written or joined opinions that favorably cited foreign authorities. These justices have considered the European Court of Human Rights, various United Nations conventions, international human rights treaties, and even judicial decisions from India, Jamaica, and Zimbabwe when writing their opinions! Simply put, these justices are making the incredible argument that American federal courts should consider sources other than US law when deciding cases. In the words of one justice, the Court "cannot afford to ignore the rest of the world."

It’s not hard to see the grave danger posed by this new trend. Anti-gun judges could cite restrictions on gun ownership in other countries approvingly when disregarding our Second amendment. Hate speech laws in other nations could be used as authority to weaken the First amendment. Our wholly domestic tax, labor, environmental, and family laws could be influenced by United Nations edicts, foreign court judgments, and international treaties which have not been ratified by the United States.

The US Constitution is the supreme law of the land in America. Congress needs to exercise its constitutional power over federal courts and send judges a strong message that Americans will be governed by American law only. I recently introduced legislation that forbids the Supreme Court and lower federal courts from citing any foreign or international laws, rules, policies, or court decisions as authority for their opinions. Federal judges take an oath of office promising to decide cases in accordance with the Constitution and US federal law. Those judges who insist on considering foreign law and foreign opinions should be removed from their positions for violating that oath, pure and simple. Justice Scalia warns that "Day by day, case by case, the Court is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize." Congress needs to act quickly before Mr. Scalia’s fears are fully realized.

April 12, 2004- Congressman Ron Paul of Texas

The Imperial Judiciary

2005-01-05T12:44:00.000-08:00

Last week’s debate over the constitutional marriage amendment brought even greater attention to the issue of activist judges. From gay marriage to Boy Scouts to frivolous lawsuits to the Pledge of Allegiance, Americans have grown increasingly distrustful and suspicious of our federal courts- and rightfully so. Never in our history have unaccountable federal judges wielded more power over our lives.

Judicial activism, the practice of judges ignoring the law and deciding cases based on their personal political views, has intensified in the decades since Roe v. Wade. This practice is now standard for many federal judges. They dismiss the doctrine of strict construction as hopelessly outdated, instead treating the Constitution as fluid and malleable to create a desired outcome in any given case. For judges who see themselves as social activists, their vision of justice is more important than the letter of the laws they are sworn to interpret and uphold. With the federal judiciary focused more on promoting a social agenda than upholding the rule of law, Americans find themselves increasingly governed by men they did not elect and cannot remove from office.

But what is to be done? Since many citizens lack basic knowledge of our Constitution and federalist system, they are easily manipulated by media and academic elites who tell them that judges are the absolute and final arbiters of US law. But the Supreme Court is not supreme over the other branches of government; it is supreme only over lower federal courts. If Americans wish to be free of judicial tyranny, they must at least develop basic knowledge of the judicial role in our republican government. The present state of affairs is a direct result of our collective ignorance.

The ultimate solution to the problem of unbridled judicial activism at the federal level is clear: Congress must reassert its constitutional authority to define and restrict the jurisdiction of federal courts. This power is plainly granted in Article III, and no constitutional amendments are required. On the contrary, any constitutional amendment addressing judicial activism would only grant legitimacy to the dangerous idea that social issues are federal matters. Remember, when social issues are federalized, conservatives always lose. Giving more authority over social matters to any branch of the federal government is a mistake, because a centralized government is unlikely to reflect local sentiment for long. If anything, the marriage amendment would have given the secular left an excuse to impose gay marriage on all of us in future years, as the issue would have been irrefutably federalized.

Congressional cowardice enables judicial activism. Just as Congress ceded far too much legislative authority to presidents throughout the 20^th century, it similarly has allowed federal judges to operate wildly beyond their constitutional role. In fact, many current members of Congress apparently accept the false notion that federal court judgments are superior to congressional statutes. Unless and until Congress asserts itself by limiting federal court jurisdiction, judges will continue to act as de facto lawmakers.

The political left increasingly uses the federal judiciary to do in court what it cannot do at the ballot box: advance an activist, secular, multicultural political agenda of which most Americans disapprove. As a society we should reconsider the wisdom of lifetime tenure for federal judges, and pay closer attention to the judicial nomination procedure. It’s time for the executive and legislative branches to show some backbone, appoint judges who follow the Constitution, and remove those who do not. It’s also time for Congress to start establishing clear limits on federal judicial power.

October 4, 2004 - Congressman Ron Paul of Texas

Objective Of This Blog

2005-01-04T14:06:00.000-08:00

In the 107th Congress (2001-2002), Congress used the authority of Article III, Section 2, clause 2 on 12 occasions to limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts. The relevant portions of Article III are a mere 200 words, involving the first sentence of Section 1 and the first two clauses of Section 2. The essence of those 200 words can be reduced to the following, which reveals the enormous power Congress has over the federal courts:

"The judicial power of the United States shall be vested...in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."

"....the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction...with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make."

Congress has plenary authority to regulate and even abolish all jurisdiction of the lower federal courts and it has near plenary authority to restrict the jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court. The State courts are explicitly bound to uphold federal law under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause to interpret and enforce the Constitution, and they are more than adequate to protect individual rights. The State courts aren't bound to uphold unconstitutional federal judicial majority opinion found in deviant precedent, and neither are any other Federal or State officials whose oath of Office requires them to uphold the Constitution.

Article III has enormous implications for numerous issues, such as abortion, sodomy and 'establishment clause' cases, where the federal courts routinely issue nothing but unconstitutional majority opinions. The State courts, strictly interpreting the Constitution according to fixed rules, could begin to reverse the severe damage done by federal courts over the past half-century.

Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, acknowledged the source of Rights and expressed the fundamental purpose of government:"....all Men are created equal...endowed by their Creator with...unalienable Rights, that among these are Life....to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted...."

Science and rational demonstration prove that a human being exist from the moment of conception. The ethic of reciprocity compels one to consider others, as he desires to be considered by others. The combined effect of science and ethics indicates that the only way a living human being can't be fully human is by broken law. Roe v Wade and progeny broke the law; for, among the fundamental purposes of government is the security of the right to life.

Combining scientific & medical facts with Biblical & ethical principals to form arguments which save lives by persuasion is of inestimable value - however - these victories for life haven't succeeded in terminating the unconstitutional opinions, commencing with Roe v Wade which have broken the rule of law.

Article III of the U.S. Constitution empowers the U.S. Congress to let the States begin to mend their broken laws.

We the People Act(HR 3893 IH)

2004-12-23T11:29:00.000-08:00

HR 3893 IH - 2d Session - H. R. 3893

To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

March 4, 2004

Mr. PAUL (for himself and Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

A BILL

To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as `We the People Act'.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

The Congress finds the following:

(1) Article III, section 1 of the Constitution of the United States vests the judicial power of the United States in `one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as Congress may from time to time ordain and establish'.

(2) Article I, section 8 and article 3, section 1 of the Constitution of the United States give Congress the power to establish and limit the jurisdiction of the lower Federal courts.

(3) Article III, section 2 of the Constitution of the United States gives Congress the power to make `such exceptions, and under such regulations' as Congress finds necessary to Supreme Court jurisdiction.

(4) Congress has the authority to make exceptions to Supreme Court jurisdiction in the form of general rules and based upon policy and constitutional reasons other than the outcomes of a particular line of cases. (See Federalist No. 81; United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 128 (1872)).

(5) Congress has constitutional authority to set broad limits on the jurisdiction of both the Supreme Court and the lower Federal courts in order to correct abuses of judicial power and continuing violations of the Constitution of the United States by Federal courts.

(6) Article IV, section 4 of the Constitution of the United States guarantees each State a republican form of government.

(7) Supreme Court and lower Federal court decisions striking down local laws on subjects such as religious liberty, sexual orientation, family relations, education, and abortion have wrested from State and local governments issues reserved to the States and the People by the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

(8) The Supreme Court and lower Federal courts threaten the republican government of the individual States by replacing elected government with rule by unelected judges.

(9) Even supporters of liberalized abortion laws have admitted that the Supreme Court's decisions overturning the abortion laws of all 50 States are constitutionally flawed (e.g. Ely, `The Wages of Crying Wolf: A Comment on Roe v. Wade' 82 Yale L.J. 920 (1973)).

(10) Several members of the Supreme Court have admitted that the Court's Establishment Clause jurisdiction is indefensible (e.g. Zelamn v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639, 688 (2002) (Souter, J., dissenting); Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 861 (1995) (Thomas, J. concurring); Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free Sch. Dist., 508 U.S. 384, 399, (1993) (Scalia, J. concurring); and Committee for Public Ed. And Religious Liberty v. Regan, 444 U.S. 646, 671 (1980) (Stevens, J., dissenting).

(11) Congress has the responsibility to protect the republican governments of the States and has the power to limit the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the lower Federal courts over matters that are reserved to the States and to the People by the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

SEC. 3. LIMITATION ON JURISDICTION.

The Supreme Court of the United States and each Federal court--

(1) shall not adjudicate--

(A) any claim involving the laws, regulations, or policies of any State or unit of local government relating to the free exercise or establishment of religion;

(B) any claim based upon the right of privacy, including any such claim related to any issue of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or

(C) any claim based upon equal protection of the laws to the extent such claim is based upon the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation; and

(2) shall not rely on any judicial decision involving any issue referred to in paragraph (1).

SEC. 4. REGULATION OF APPELLATE JURISDICTION.

The Supreme Court of the United States and all other Federal courts--

(1) are not prevented from determining the constitutionality of any Federal statute or administrative rule or procedure in considering any case arising under the Constitution of the United States; and

(2) shall not issue any order, final judgment, or other ruling that appropriates or expends money, imposes taxes, or otherwise interferes with the legislative functions or administrative discretion of the several States and their subdivisions.

SEC. 5. JURISDICTIONAL CHALLENGES.

Any party or intervener in any matter before any Federal court, including the Supreme Court, may challenge the jurisdiction of the court under section 3 or 4 during any proceeding or appeal relating to that matter.

SEC. 6. MATERIAL BREACHES OF GOOD BEHAVIOR AND REMEDY.

A violation by a justice or a judge of any of the provisions of section 3 or 4 shall be an impeachable offense, and a material breach of good behavior subject to removal by the President of the United States according to rules and procedures established by the Congress.

SEC. 7. CASES DECIDED UNDER ISSUES REMOVED FROM FEDERAL JURISDICTION NO LONGER BINDING PRECEDENT.

Any decision of a Federal court, to the extent that the decision relates to an issue removed from Federal jurisdiction under section 3, is not binding precedent on any State court.

Original & Appellate Jurisdictions

2004-12-19T12:29:00.000-08:00

Article. III. Section 1.

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.

Section 2. Clause 1

: The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State; (See Note)--between Citizens of different States, --between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

Clause 2

: In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have ORIGINAL Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have APPELLATE Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make. Note - between a State and Citizens of another State; (Amendment XI prevents individuals from suing another state in any federal court)

Notes on Article 3, Section 2, Clause 1 & 2

Clause 1 enumerates jurisdictions, and clause 2 classifies jurisdictions enumerated in clause 1 into original or appellate jurisdiction. The first in the list of enumerated jurisdictions in clause 1 is the first half of the first sentence in clause 2. Identifying the remainder of original jurisdiction cases only requires determining which cases have one or more States as a Party. 'Between a State and citizen of that State' isn't explicitly stated anywhere in the Constitution. Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheat. 304 (1816), assumed that the USSC could review a state court decision, and that assumption could only be implied under appellate jurisdiction. The Constitution only explicitly gives the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction over cases originating in the lower federal courts. A Constitutional amendment stating;"between a State and a Citizen of that State," would empower the USSC to review a state court decision under original jurisdiction.

If the belabored explanation above fails to convince, perhaps the following appeal to authority will. Either way, the difference is critical to understand Article 3.

The words in the constitution, 'in all cases ... in which a state shall be party, the supreme court shall have original jurisdiction,' necessarily refer to all cases mentioned in the preceding clause in which a state may be made of right a party defendant, or in which a state may of right be [143 U.S. 621, 644] a party plaintiff. It is admitted that these words do not refer to suits brought against a state by its own citizens or by citizens of other srtates, or by citizens or subjects of foreign states, even where such suits arise under the constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States, because the judicial power of the United States does not extend to suits of individuals against states. ^{United States v. Texas, 143 U.S. 621}

The Sin of Silence:A Defining Moment

2004-12-10T09:05:00.000-08:00

The Sin of Silence: a message to American pastors and their congregations

Address delivered September 6, 2000 at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, MO

By Dr. Laurence White, Senior pastor, Our Savior Lutheran Church, Houston, Texas

(Reproduced With Permission from Bott Radio Network)

DR. MICHAEL WHITEHEAD:

Our special speaker today is Reverend Laurence White. I’ve heard his testimony about his love and his passion to disciple first his family, his sons and his daughter. He’s a pastor's pastor. He’s been involved in shepherding his local church, but also shepherding and encouraging and inspiring pastors around the country to be both salt and light, not one or the other. Not just preach Jesus but preach everything that Jesus commanded us to do. And so it is my great pleasure to invite to our platform at Midwestern Seminary in Kansas City, our brother, the Reverend Dr. Laurence White. Welcome brother, let’s welcome:

DR. LAURENCE WHITE:

Thank you, and thank you, Dr. Whitehead. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’ve never been introduced by an attorney before, this is a new experience. Much less an attorney who is the President of a seminary, that is truly a unique experience. Thank you for your kind words. It is a joy to be here with you today. In a place where God has done great things, in a place where once again you stand for the truth of God’s Word; for the verbal inspiration of Scripture; for the inerrancy of that which God has written from the first chapter of Genesis to the 22^nd chapter of the book of Revelation. And I applaud you for that stand, and I stand with you in that faith.

On the basis of that word today, we confront that which is happening in our culture. Now I’m a Lutheran Christian, that means that my historical and theological roots go back to Germany. And I find a context for what is happening in America today in that which took place in that great homeland of the Reformation in the 1930's and the 1940's.

Let me begin with a story about an incident that took place a few years ago as a prominent Evangelical pastor was invited to a Christian university on the East Coast to address the student body. And upon his arrival on the campus, he was greeted by the President of that institution, a distinguished looking older gentleman, with upswept white hair, who spoke with a decided German accent. As they walked to the chapel that day, the President requested permission to say a few words to the students before the service itself actually began. And of course, you don’t say no to the President on his own campus and that permission was granted. After the student body had gathered, the old gentleman walked to the rostrum with the ramrod straightness that only a German has and he looked out over the students assembled there, the picture of dignity and composure.

Gazing intently into the eyes of the young people in front of him, he began. "For you," he said, "today is a day like any other day but it is an extremely important and painful day for me." Silence fell over the room and the students noticed that as the old gentleman spoke, tears were streaming down his face. This uncharacteristic display of emotion stunned the student body and riveted their attention.

"Today is November the 9^th"

he continued

"the 50^th anniversary of "Kristal Nacht," the Night of the Broken Glass. On this day in 1938, Nazi thugs moved through the cities of Germany smashing the windows of German homes and shops, burning the synagogues. Innocent people; men, women and children were beaten and killed simply because they were Jews.

"I was there as a young man,"

he sobbed, "and I can still hear the sound of the shattering glass. There were many of us who were Christians then but we did nothing. We looked the other way and we did nothing. That was the beginning of the Holocaust because the Jew haters knew then that no one would stop them, no one would stand in their way." The old man went on to quote the words inscribed at the Auschwitz memorial in Poland, a place where so many died. "Never again," he pleaded,

"Christian young people we must never let it happen again."

My friends, it is happening again. It is happening again today in our beautiful America. So richly and abundantly blessed by a gracious God. It is happening today as the innocent are slaughtered in a twenty-seven year Holocaust that has seen nearly forty million little boys and girls brutally done to death. It is happening again as families are fractured and marriages are broken, while self-obsessed people pursue the immediate gratification of their every desire. It is happening again as militant homosexuals pursue absolute approval, complete acceptance, and preferential legal treatment for their perversion. It is happening again as our young people lost their way, and often their lives, in a maze of alcohol and drugs and the corridors, and classrooms of the high schools of our land are littered with the bodies of murdered teenagers. It is happening again as the nation's leaders wallow in decadence and deceit, while the people look on in apathetic indifference. It is happening again.

For while the killing goes on and the nation is led down the path of destruction, the church and her pastors stand silent and afraid. This country that we love, our America, is fighting for her life. Not against the military power of foreign enemies, but against the principalities and powers of this dark age. You and I, as sons and daughters of the Lord Jesus Christ, but even more so, those of you here today who are pastors of the church of Jesus Christ, are being called upon to take a stand in this moment of crisis. And let there be no one among us who doubts the urgency of this hour. To compare what is happening in America today to Nazi Germany is no mere flight of rhetorical exaggeration.

This nation is heedlessly stumbling toward third millennium darkness. Look around you and read the signs of the times. Look beyond the walls of our beautiful sanctuaries, and the comfort of our padded pews to see the chaos, the corruption, and the confusion that reigns throughout our culture.

We live in a society where passions are riderless horses, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, in which there is a desolation of decency. In which love has become a jungle emotion, lust exalted to lordship, sin elevated to sovereignty, Satan adored as a saint, and man magnified above his maker.

Americans have come to dwell in an Alice in Wonderland world of fantasy and self-delusion. Everything has been turned upside down and inside out in our America. Right is wrong, and wrong is right, good is bad, and bad is good, normal is abnormal, and abnormal is normal, true is false, and false is true. We are fast degenerating into a decadent culture obsessed with selfishness and sin, death and destruction.

In the face of this relentless onslaught of evil, the church of Jesus Christ has grown timid and afraid. We have abandoned the truth of God’s Word, compromised the stern demands of His Law, tailored our message to meet the felt needs of sinful men, (as if sinful men ever knew what they actually needed) and prostituted ourselves and the Gospel that we profess to proclaim, for worldly popularity and success.

We, as Christian pastors, seem to have forgotten that God did not call us to be popular or successful, God called us to be faithful. Faithful preaching never comes in the form of safely vague, pious platitudes. Faithful preaching must identify and denounce the false gods of this world that call upon our people to bow down before them every day. God did not call us to be successful CEOs, protecting institutional peace and tranquility, bringing in the bodies and the bucks by avoiding controversy, and telling everybody what they wanted to hear.

God called us to proclaim His Word, to be vigilant watchmen standing high upon the walls of Zion, sounding forth the clear clarion call of the trumpet, calling out God’s people to war against the host of evil advancing all around us. We as the Christians of America, we as the pastors of America, have failed in this responsibility before God, and our country is paying a dire price for that failure. Make no mistake about it, brothers and sisters, we are responsible.

The great reformer Martin Luther once declared that the preacher who does not rebuke the sins of the rulers through God’s Word spoken publically, boldly and honestly, strengthens the sins of the tyrants, and becomes a partaker in them, and bears responsibility for them.

Now note carefully Luther’s words. They ought to sear the conscience of every pastor in America today. The preacher who does not speak out becomes a participant in the wickedness of the tyrants and bears responsibility for it. We cannot shift that responsibility to anyone else today. We cannot blame the liberal media, or the corrupt politicians, or the apathetic public for that which has overtaken America. This is our fault, for we are the ones whom God placed here at this moment in our nation’s history to be the stinging salt and the shining light. We are responsible for what has happened to America. In this year of our Lord, 2000, there is no Pontius Pilot’s basin that can cleanse the hands of America’s pastors from the guilty stain of innocent blood.

When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, he scornfully dismissed the church, and her pastors, as an irrelevant force which posed no threat to the Nazi agenda for that great nation. "I promise you," he boasted to his inner circle, "that if I wish to I could destroy the church in just a few years. It is hollow, it is rotten, and false through and through. One push and the whole structure would collapse."

"We should trap the preachers," he said, "by their notorious greed and self-indulgence. We shall thus be able to settle everything with them in perfect peace and harmony. I shall give them a few years reprieve, why should we quarrel? They will swallow anything in order to keep their material advantage. The parsons will be made to dig their own graves, they will betray their God for us, they will betray anything for the sake of their miserable jobs and incomes."

The dictator's words proved to be tragically accurate. The great majority of Christians in Germany looked the other way and minded their own business. They kept their religion and their politics strictly separate from one another, and refused to vote on the basis of single issues which would have set them apart from the rest of the electorate. They blended in and they went along and they followed the path of least resistance. They did that which was expedient and practical and safe, while their country was dragged down into a swirling maelstrom of barbarism and death.

Only a few lonely voices were raised in protest. In 1940 Nazi Germany was near her zenith, the nation’s power, prestige, and prosperity unparalleled in history, her armies invincible on every front. The Jews had been systematically excluded from the life of the nation, deprived of the protection of the law and citizenship, gradually disappearing into the spreading network of concentration camps. In that year, 1940, at the height of Hitler’s power and popularity, a courageous, young pastor, named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, denounced the churches failure to speak out against the evil.

In 1940, that lonely voice of truth proclaimed, "We the church must confess that we have not proclaimed often or clearly enough the message of the One God who has revealed Himself for all time in Christ Jesus, and who will tolerate no other gods beside Himself. She must confess her timidity, her cowardice, her evasiveness and her dangerous concessions. She was silent when she should have cried out because the blood of the innocent was crying aloud to heaven. The church must confess that she has witnessed the lawless application of brutal force, the physical and spiritual suffering of countless innocent people, oppression, hatred, and murder. And that she has not raised her voice on behalf of the victims. And has not found way to hasten to their aid.

"The church is guilty of the deaths of the weakest and most defenseless brothers of Jesus Christ. The church must confess that she has desired security and peace, quiet, possession, and honor to which she has no right. She has not born witness to the truth of God and by her silence, she has rendered herself guilty, because of her unwillingness to suffer for what she knows to be right."

Bonhoeffer's warning went unheeded. He was dismissed by most of his colleagues as a single issue fanatic. In less that five years, he was dead, hung naked from a piano wire noose, in Flossenburg concentration camp.

Germany lay in ruins. Her great cities bombed out of existence. Cathedrals that had stood for a thousand years reduced to piles of broken brick, rubble. In the face of monstrous evil, he who keeps silent fails in his responsibility before God and shares in the guilt.

The moral meltdown that has overtaken America has been met with a deafening silence from the pulpits of America, and the people-pleasing preachers who presume to stand in them. This desolation of decency could not have occurred if the pulpits of this land were once again aflame with righteousness. To use Alexis De Toqueville’s famous words, "By our apathy, by our acquiescence, and by our ignorance, the church of Jesus Christ has consigned itself to irrelevance and impotence in the ongoing struggle for the soul of America."

Our political leaders deal in trivialities and superficial nonsense, practicing the feel-good politics of deliberate ambiguity, while the destruction of our families, the perversion of our most basic moral principals, and the murder of innocent, unborn children goes on, and on, and on.

Those candidates in the presidential primaries who denounced the evil of abortion, and stood unequivocally for moral values, against the corruption of our times, never rose out of single digits in the polls.

And therefore, they were never considered serious contenders in this election cycle, and the moral issues for which they stood were pushed aside in favor of more practical considerations. We have come to this sorry state because Christian voters were more concerned about electability, than about integrity.

The result, to use the words of former President Gerald Ford is, "We have an election in which candidates without ideas, hire consultants without convictions, to carry out campaigns without content."

Throughout the mind-boggling series of scandals that have gushed out of Washington like filth from a sewer in recent years, the endless refrain of the beltway establishment and the media elite has been, "We’ve got to get on with the nation’s business." Well folks, there was a time not too long ago, when righteousness and decency and justice were the nation's business. And unless that time comes again soon, this nation will not endure. John Adams once warned that the problem with democracy is that you get the leaders you deserve. This sad spectacle ought to remind us that a people who cannot control themselves, cannot govern themselves. It’s not the economy, stupid. It’s the morality, stupid.

The issue before us as Christians and as Christian pastors is faithfulness to the Word of God, and submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. To speak to the great moral issues of our day is an integral and essential part of that God-given responsibility. To fail to do so is nothing less than a denial of the Lordship of Jesus.

Pastor Martin Niemueller was yet another of that lonely band of Christian heroes who stood against the tide of evil in Nazi Germany. He was arrested by the Gestapo for faithfully preaching the Word of God. Now Niemueller was what we would today call a celebrity. He was a national hero. He had been a U-boat commander, highly decorated, in the first world war and only then, after the war, did he enter the ministry. His congregation, in the Berlin suburb of Dahlum, was one of the wealthiest and most influential evangelical churches in the land. Its membership made up of high government officials, generals, and so on. And the arrest of this pastor from that church was highly controversial.

The judge before whom he was arraigned on charges of sedition seemed genuinely puzzled why a patriot like Martin Niemueller would criticize Adolf Hitler, the man whom the German people hailed as their Fuhrer, an absolute leader, to whom unquestioning obedience was owed. The magistrate pleaded with the minister to end his attacks on the Nazi regime and upon the Fuhrer. He promised Niemueller immediate release, and the opportunity to return to his pulpit today, if only he would agree to do so. Niemueller’s reply was steadfast, "I cannot, and I will not be silent," he said, "because God is my Fuhrer."

Our allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ must take precedence

over any other loyalty in every part of our lives. If the Lord Jesus is truly our Lord, then we must serve Him. If the Lord Jesus is truly our Lord, then He cannot be safely compartmentalized to one place, one time, one day of the week, with one group of people, while we live like the heathen all the rest of the time. If the Lord Jesus Christ is truly our Lord, He cannot be left outside of the ballot box like an unneeded umbrella when we go in to vote. We must serve Him in all that we do. We must participate in this democracy that He has given us. Not as rock-ribbed republicans or yellow-dog democrats, not as liberals or conservatives, not as men or women, not as labor or management, not as senior citizens who want to protect social security, or as wage earners who want their taxes lower, not as whites or blacks, or Asians or Hispanics, but as

sons and daughters of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We must participate in this democracy as Christians

. For only then, will America turn from the path of destruction. But as we participate, we must be careful to maintain our

theological and moral integrity.

God has not called us to be social agitators or reformers, He has called us to be faithful spokesmen for His Word. Politics is the art of the possible. Christianity is the art of the impossible. The politician always has his eye on the next election. The Christian pastor must always have his eye on eternity. There is only one Savior, and His name will not be appearing on any election ballot in this particular cycle or any other.

We dare never labor under the illusion that the Kingdom of God is about to arrive aboard Air Force One. Nor may we ever allow the church of Jesus Christ to be reduced to the status of a sanctimonious shill for a political candidate, party, or philosophy.

The Roman statesman, historian, Pliny Legonier once observed, "The common people find all religions to be true. The philosophers find all religions to be false. The politicians find all religions to be useful." When we as Christian pastors participate in this democracy, our participation must be prophetic, not political. We must summon this nation and its leaders to repentance, as we relentlessly proclaim the truth of God. What America needs essentially, is not merely a change in administration, what America needs is a spiritual rebirth.

There are a great many issues under debate in the political arena today about which the pastor should have nothing whatsoever to say. Where God’s Word does not speak, there His spokesman must be silent. When we profess to speak for God let us be absolutely certain that it is God’s will we express, not our own inclinations or opinions. But where God’s will does speak, on the fundamentals of life, morality, and family, there God’s pastors must address the issues. On the basis of Scripture, without equivocation, and without hesitation.

God may have not endorsed a particular method for tax reform but of this one thing we can be absolutely certain, the Lord God Almighty hates the murder of innocent, unborn children. God is not the mascot of the republican or the democratic parties, but let there be no doubt whatsoever about this, the Creator instituted holy marriage as the lifelong union of a man and a woman. Any other combination, no matter how modern, innovative, or politically correct, is a perversion of the divine intent.

That prophetic witness will not be welcome by those politicians on either side of the aisle, who seek only to preserve their own position and power. We who profess to speak for God must proclaim the truth in the political world of diplomatic double talk and deliberate evasion. Once again, that won’t make us popular, but God did not call us to be popular, He called us to be faithful. And we as His spokesman, must be willing to pay the high personal price that that faithfulness requires.

The morning after Pastor Martin Niemueller was arrested, the Lutheran chaplain was making his rounds in the city jail. And as he entered Niemueller’s cell he was astounded and dismayed to find his fellow clergyman sitting there under arrest. "My brother!" he exclaimed, "what did you do? Why are you here?" Niemueller, never at a loss for words immediately reacted, "My brother, given what is happening in our country, why aren’t you here?"

Those days have not yet come in America, but they are coming soon. We have already seen the ominous beginnings of attempts to muzzle Christian witness on radio and television, to label rejections of abortion and homosexuality as "hate speech." In Europe and Canada significant steps have already been taken in that direction. And if present trends continue, America will not be far behind.

Gentleman and ladies, it is only a short step from prohibiting that which is politically incorrect as hate speech in the media, to prohibiting in the pulpits of every church in America. My brothers, given what is happening in our country, why aren’t you here?

The saddest and most tragic feature of the Christian experience in Germany was the bitter expression of regret that came from so many afterwards, who realized their failure only too late. One such man was a University professor and a diplomat named, Albrecht Haushoffer. He was a quiet, gentle man who wrote poetry in his spare time. As gradually he came to recognize the enormity of the evil of Nazism, he was drawn into the resistance and arrested in 1944 after the failure of the Stauffenburg plot to assassinate Hitler.

In the final days of the war, as the Russian tanks moved through the outskirts of the city of Berlin, and the dictator hid in the Fuhrer bunker like a rat trapped in his hole, the SS Guards at the Mobed City Prison were given a list of those who were not to be allowed to survive the downfall of Nazism because they knew too much. Albrecht Haushoffer’s name was included on that death list. A group of seven or eight prisoners was taken out of their cells that morning. They were told they were about to be released. Each of the prisoners was assigned an SS Guard. They were led out of the jail into the nearby Tiergarten, the great park in the center of the city of Berlin. And as they came to the middle of that park, out of sight from anyone else, each guard stepped up behind the prisoner assigned to him and shot them in the back of their heads. The bodies were abandoned there in the snow and the mud of the ruined city.

Sometime later Albrecht’s brother heard rumors of what had happened, and he hurried into the park to search for his brother’s body. And when he found it, there clutched in his hand was a blood stained sheet of paper. Written on that paper was a poem that Haushoffer had composed just a few hours before his execution. It was entitled in German, Schuldig Bin Ich, I am Guilty.

"The burden of my guilt,"

the condemned man wrote,

"before the law weighs light on my shoulders. To plot and conspire was my duty to the people. I would have been a criminal had I naught. I am guilty, although not in the way that you think. I should have done my duty sooner. I was wrong. I should have called the evil more clearly by its name. I hesitated to condemn for far too long. I now accuse myself within my own heart. I have betrayed my conscience for far too long. I have deceived myself and my fellow man. I knew the course of evil from its start. My warning was not loud enough or clear enough. Today, as I die, I know what I am guilty of."

We, too, have known the evil from its start. In this great nation, where for twenty-seven long years the innocent unborn have been slaughtered, we have grown accustomed to the killing and have gone on with our business, with our lives, and our ministries, while the little ones have perished, every day, 4,500 a day. This is what we have come to in America. The Supreme Court of our land sanctions the horror of partial birth abortion, this most barbaric and grotesque killing of a child in the midst of its birth.

And yet even in the face of this abomination, the churches of America, the pastors of America, are silent. Where is the cry of outrage!? Where is the indignation of the people of God? We, too have known the evil from its start. Dumpsters full of ravaged infant bodies stand in mute testimony to our failure and to our guilt.

The Christians of Germany realized only too late how much had been at stake and how much they had lost. But we still may have a chance. It's not too late, yet, for our America. The righteous judgment of God has not yet come upon us. The New Testament speaks of unique moments of divine destiny, when God confronts His people with a challenge, and offers them an opportunity. The Greek word for such a moment of divine destiny is Kairos. I believe that the Christian church in America has come to such a time, a Biblical Kairos. A moment of divine destiny.

If we fail to meet this challenge, and rise to this opportunity, our nation will not survive. It is as simple, and as stark as that. This is our moment, my friends. Our time of testing. I pray that we may be equal to the challenge of these days; that we may seize this precious opportunity from God; that we may be within this dying culture the stinging salt that stops the decay of death; the shining light that dispels the darkness of doubt and despair, that America may once again be the gleaming city set high upon a hill, that shines as a beacon light of life and hope for this nation, and to every nation.

I pray that we may serve the Lord Jesus Christ with courage, and with honor, for the glory of His name. That we may snatch our country back from the brink of destruction, and preserve this legacy of faith and freedom for those who will come after us. This is our moment of divine destiny, our Kairos.

In the winter of 1943, a group of university students in Munich, calling themselves the White Rose, began a desperate effort to awaken the young people of that nation to the malignant evil that had engulfed their country. Led by a twenty-five year old student named Hans Scholl, they distributed leaflets across the campus in a doomed effort to provoke resistance to the Hitler regime. Six leaflets were written. Number four in the series included this desperate plea, a plea which could have been written today, a plea which could have been addressed to us.

Scholl wrote, "Everywhere, and at all times of greatest trial, men have appeared, prophets and saints, who cherished their freedom, who preached the one God, and who with His help, brought the people to a reversal of their downward course. I ask you now, as a Christian, wrestling for the preservation of your greatest treasure, why do you hesitate!? Why are you inclined toward intrigue, calculation, and procrastination? Are you hoping that someone else will raise his arm in your defense? God has given you the strength. God has given you the will to fight. We must attack the evil now, where it is strongest."

Their valiant effort was crushed. After only a few weeks, Shoal and his young comrades were beheaded by the Gestapo.

They died for their faith but their words reverberate down across the years to us in America, today. To a nation that has been blessed more richly than any other nation in the history of mankind. Their words come to us. Why do you hesitate? God has given you the strength. God has given you the will to fight. We must attack the evil now where it is strongest.

Christians of America, this is our Kairos, our moment of divine destiny. God has give us this time, let us use it to His glory. To that end may our gracious God bless you, and may God bless our America. Thank you.

A federal judge & fetal pain

2004-12-07T13:55:00.000-08:00

Judge Jones cited evidence showing that neonatal and medical science "now graphically portrays, as science was unable to do 31 years ago, how a baby develops sensitivity to external stimuli and to pain much earlier than was then believed." The evidence reviewed by Judge Jones on the issue of fetal pain was similar to that produced by the federal government in recent trials on the constitutionality of partial-birth abortion. There, an Oxford-educated specialist in neonatal pain, Dr. Kanwaljeeet Anand, testified that unborn children are likely to feel pain in the womb by 20 weeks of gestation — perhaps even earlier — and that abortion could therefore cause excruciating pain for an unborn child. Reviewing similar evidence before her, Judge Jones concluded that "if courts were to delve into the facts underlying Roe's balancing scheme with present day knowledge, they might conclude that the woman's 'choice' is far more risky and less beneficial, and the child's sentience far more advanced, than the Roe court knew."

One need only pick up a newspaper to know that Judge Jones is correct — and that knowledge presents the biggest threat to the abortion movement today. Recent advances in ultrasound technology show in utero babies walking or smiling in the womb much earlier than once thought possible. The National Abortion Federation's main response to claims that partial-birth abortion caused severe pain to the unborn has been to note that most other abortions do too. But that sort of candor is in short supply among abortion advocates. It's little wonder that doctors and hospitals that supported the recent challenge to the federal partial-birth-abortion ban fought so hard to keep their medical records from seeing the light of day. The more the truth of their practices is exposed to sunlight, the less public support they can claim.

Shannen W. Coffin is a former deputy assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. - Tough Boat to Roe, National Review Online, September 16, 2004

The Worst Constitutional Decision of All Time

2004-12-07T11:57:00.000-08:00

"As noted before, the Supreme Court did not invent abortion. There might be plenty of abortion, perhaps authorized or permitted by state laws, even without Roe and Casey. Moreover, the Court is, arguably, not directly responsible for the wrong moral choices of individuals that the Court's decisions permit. Finally, the Court is not responsible - cannot be responsible, consistent with its constitutional role - for correcting all injustices, even grave ones. But the Court is responsible for the injustices that it inflicts on society that are not consistent with, but in fact betray, its constitutional responsibilities. To the extent that the Court has invalidated essentially all legal restriction of abortion, it has authorized private violence on a scale, and of a kind, that unavoidably evokes the memories of American slavery and of the Nazi Holocaust. And by cloaking that authorization in the forms of the law - in the name of the Supreme Law of the Land - the Court has taught the American people that such private violence is a right and, by clear implication, that it is alright. Go ahead. The Constitution is on your side. This is among your most cherished constitutional freedoms. Nobody ought to oppose you in your action. We have said so.

The decision in Casey, reaffirming Roe and itself reaffirmed and extended in Carhart, in my view exposes the Supreme Court, as currently constituted, as a lawless, rogue institution capable of the most monstrous of injustices in the name of law, with a smugness and arrogance worthy of the worst totalitarian dictatorships of all time. The Court, as it stands today, has, with its abortion decisions, forfeited its legal and moral legitimacy as an institution. It has forfeited its claimed authority to speak for the Constitution. It has forfeited its entitlement to have its decisions respected, and followed, by the other branches of government, by the states, and by the People. The enthusiasm of liberal intelligentsia for the Court's abortion decisions, the sycophancy of the law professorate, of the legal profession, and of our elected officials, and the docility of the American people with respect to our lawless, authoritarian Court rivals the pliancy of the most cowardly, servile peoples toward ruinous, brutal, anti-democratic regimes throughout world history. We suffer people to commit despicable acts of private violence and we welcome - some of us revere - a regime that destroys popular government for the sake of perverted, Orwellian notions of "liberty." After a twentieth century that saw some of the worst barbarisms and atrocities ever committed by humankind, at a time when humankind supposedly had progressed to more enlightened states, we still have not learned. The lesson of the Holocaust - "Never Forget" - is lost. We fail to recognize the amazing capacity of human beings to commit unthinkable, barbaric evil, and of others to tolerate it. We remember and are aghast at the atrocities of others, committed in the past, or in distant lands today. But we do not even recognize the similar atrocities that we ourselves commit, and tolerate, today."

Michael Stokes Paulsen, The Worst Constitutional Decision of All Time, 78 Notre Dame L. Rev. 995, 1003-1007 (2003).

Candidates Must Have Consistent Pro-Life Views

2004-12-05T15:45:00.000-08:00

Too many politicians get away with splitting the difference. On the one hand, they say they are pro-life, and on the other, send a signal to the pro-abortion crowd that they are really no threat to legal abortion after all.

We must send a loud and clear message to candidates that we will not grant them pro-life status unless they earn it with a publicly stated position that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed—no exceptions—no compromise!

If legal protection of the right to life is to be restored in the United States it will take a majority of Members of the U.S. House and Senate who will exercise their powers under the U.S. Constitution to withdraw jurisdiction from the Courts over these matters. If legislation is to be enacted recognizing that unborn babies are persons under the law, it will take lawmakers who are unconditionally pro-life to do it. If men and women with the dedication and commitment necessary to make these things happen are to be elected it will take pro-life leaders and individual voters who will no longer settle for second best.

Republican National Coalition for Life January/February 2004

The Exception Makes the Rule :"Pro-Life With Exceptions" A Contradiction in Terms

2004-12-05T15:28:00.000-08:00

When will elected officials exercise the political will to do what is necessary to overturn Roe v. Wade?

….only when the pro-life movement, its leaders and its supporters, speak with one voice, with no exception and no compromise.

For more than 29 years millions of us have done whatever we could on many fronts to restore respect for life in our country. Nearly 50 million dead babies and wounded mothers later, we are still no closer to our goal of legal protection of unborn babies….

The AP reported on January 20 that, "Mr. Bush called on Americans to ‘reject the notion that some lives are less worthy of protection than others’ . . ." A noble thought, and one we share, but how will that happen when the President himself has never said that he would do anything to try to overturn Roe? How can that happen when he, and many politicians in the Republican Party have clearly said that abortion can be justified in some cases? How can that happen when President Bush’s own position contradicts the proclamation? Indeed, he supports "exceptions" for babies conceived through rape or incest, a view that deems those babies "less worthy of protection than others." How can that happen when the President and others in power think abortion is justified if the mother’s life is in jeopardy, when today’s medical science and technology make it unnecessary to ever kill a baby to save his mother’s life? How can it happen when Laura Bush, First Lady of the land and the person closest to the President joins his mother, Barbara Bush, in saying that Roe v. Wade should not be overturned?

Beyond that, how can protection of the right to life be restored when important leaders in the pro-life movement endorse as "pro-life" politicians whose commitment and actions do not match their rhetoric? How can it be restored as long as grassroots pro-lifers don’t demand, in exchange for their support, that candidates take a position on innocent life at every stage of development that leaves no room for "exceptions" or compromise? ….As long as pro-lifers are willing to bestow the "pro-life" mantle on politicians who truly are not, abortion, deadly experiments on human embryos, human cloning, and yes, infanticide, will remain legal.

The exception makes the rule.

And so, we pray for unity in the pro-life movement. The politicians will say and do what they think they must to get our support. The outcome is our responsibility. If we are to succeed in this our Godly mission, we must demand of them total respect for all innocent life - no exceptions, no compromise.

Republican National Coalition for Life - January 22, 2002

WorldNetDaily: The Pennsylvania Treason

May 1, 2004 By Mark Crutcher

The fact that Specter's eventual margin of victory was so razor-thin made one thing absolutely undeniable. Without the influence and treachery of Bush and Santorum, we would have seen a raging pro-abort who has always been viciously hostile toward anything that the pro-life movement does replaced with a pro-lifer. It is laughable to suggest that the combined efforts of a Republican president and a Republican senator can't influence even 2 percent of the votes in a Republican primary. Given that, it is simply a fact that Bush and Santorum cost the pro-life movement this election.

One of the things that made this particular election so crucial for the pro-life movement is that, if re-elected, Specter's seniority will give him the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Pro-lifers often say that we must support the Republicans and George Bush because of Supreme Court appointments. However, that is now a dead issue given that no pro-life nominee to the Supreme Court is going to get past Specter.

Bush and Santorum defenders will claim that if Toomey had won he might turn around and lose in the general election and, thereby, turn control of the Senate over to the Democrats.

That's garbage. First, upon what do these people base the assumption that Toomey could somehow beat the senior incumbent United States senator in his state, but then not be able to beat a non-incumbent Democrat? If their claim is that Toomey's advocacy for the right-to-life makes him unelectable in a Pennsylvania general election, how do they explain Santorum's election?

Second, from a pro-life perspective, who cares if the Democrats win if the alternative is a pro-abortion Republican? Are we supposed to believe that the unborn are better off with their fate is in the hands of pro-abortion Republicans than pro-abortion Democrats?

Third, what happened to principle? Regardless of political considerations, if Bush and Santorum were more than just rhetorically committed to the pro-life cause they would have never come to the aid of a pro-abortion candidate who was about to lose to a pro-life one. In fact, when they saw that Toomey actually had a chance, their response should have been to do what they could to secure the victory not work against it.

In the final analysis, the Bush/Santorum betrayal was obviously the result of party politics. These guys sold the unborn down the river for political reasons, and they felt comfortable doing so primarily because the pro-life movement has always let them get away with it. For 30 years we have shown the Republican Party that whatever they do we'll stick with them, and as long as we keep sending that message we are fools to think they will ever change.

That is the bottom line, and while the American pro-life establishment is so enamored with having a seat at the Republican table that they will never say this, I will:

Through their participation in The Pennsylvania Treason, the Republican Party, George Bush and Rick Santorum have lost the right to ever again ask for the support of pro-lifers.

Thomas Jefferson:Liberty and Power

2004-12-05T14:34:00.000-08:00

While he was President, he asserted his position by his action (or inaction) rather than by theories, but after he had left office he made clear in letters and otherwise his position. For example, he wrote in a letter in 1820: "You [William C. Jarvis] seem ... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions, a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy . . . The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party its members would become despots." ⁹

Jefferson's position was that neither the United States, nor any of the branches of the government, nor of the states, is the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution. Ultimate authority is not vested in the United States government. It is a limited government. On the dispersion of powers among the governments, he wrote to Joseph C. Cabell in 1816: "Let the national government be entrusted with the defence of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties. . . , " and so forth. "It is by dividing and subdividing . . . that all will be done for the best. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body . . . ¹¹ The ultimate arbiter of the Constitution, Jefferson explained, "is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention at the call of Congress or of two-thirds of the States."¹² In short, if some issue of power so agitates the country, let the matter be settled and put to rest by constitutional amendment

the Supreme Court took the lead in the 1950s and 1960s, and during those two decades it out-consolidated and out- concentrated the executive and legislative concentrators and consolidators of earlier decades. The high court planted its foot on the neck of the state and local governments, took away their independence of action, compelled them to perform their functions under its directives, and removed them entirely as an obstacle to federal power.

The substantive obstacles to the exercise of federal power, and especially by the Supreme Court, had been so far ignored, evaded, and misconstrued by the 1970s that the Constitution no longer served as a restraint on government. Instead, it had been largely re-construed as the fount of a cornucopia of benefits bestowed upon a dependent people by a government ravenous for the wealth of America and bent upon directing the course of the lives of Americans. Is this oppression? Jefferson would have said so, for he said that concentrated power is by definition oppression. But Jefferson spoke in terms of essences, not existences, of reason, not feeling, and many Americans will not recognize oppression until they feel it. That, too, may come; for many, it already has.

The strange thing is that even though this vast consolidation and concentration of power has taken place in the twentieth century, the Constitution has been little changed since 1791, and then mainly by the Fourteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Amendments, and these were only made adjuncts of the concentration, they did not mandate it. The Constitution is still there to be recovered, if we but knew how and had the will to do it.

Clarence B. Carson, The LibertyHaven Foundation

The Fourth Choice: Ending the Reign of Activist Judges

2004-12-05T14:14:00.000-08:00

The trouble with the amendment process is that Congress is the gatekeeper. Since World War II, seven amendments got out of Congress, and five were ratified. The two losers in the states were the Equal Rights Amendment and District of Columbia voting. Since the ratification of the Constitution, 10,000 amendments have been introduced, 33 have been passed out of Congress, and 27 have been ratified by the states. The casualty rate is so high because, before an amendment can be proposed to the states, it must pass two thirds of both houses of Congress. The House of Representatives, whose members are elected every two years, will approve any popular proposed amendment. One third of the Senate, by contrast, need not face the electorate for six years. Consequently, one third of the Senate can defeat any proposed amendment with a minimal risk of political retribution. If a proposed amendment gets out of the Senate, it needs to be ratified by three fourths of the states to become part of the Constitution.

In recent decades, the ERA failed in the states, but most proposed amendments fail in the Senate. One-third minorities in the Senate have killed proposed amendments concerning term limits, school prayer, flag burning, busing, and a balanced budget. The process is so difficult that it is really a trap, wasting time and resources and, ultimately, frustrating those seeking the new amendment.

Previously known only to a few scholars, this fourth choice is a lot easier than the amendment process. Congress, by a simple statute, passed by majority vote, can effectively overturn any Supreme Court ruling. The decision itself, of course, binds the parties forever. The future impact of the case, however, is what people are worried about. Congress, under the Constitution, controls the Court’s jurisdiction, and, if it believes a uniform national rule is not desirable, it can restore it to state authority. Congress could, for example, reenact the Defense of Marriage Act, restricting marriage to men and women, but adding one sentence: "This law is not subject to review by the lower federal courts or the U.S. Supreme Court." The issue would then return to the states, which is where President Bush and John Kerry, at times, have said it should be.

Article III of our Constitution provides that Congress determines the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Congress has the power to establish or abolish all federal courts except the Supreme Court, and the power to abolish includes the power to limit jurisdiction. Congress can also limit the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction to "cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers, and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be a party." The Supreme Court has jurisdiction in all other cases only if Congress grants it by statute. Congress can remove, as it often has, any class of case from the lower federal courts and from the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction. Congress can even, as it did in the Reconstruction McCardle case, remove the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over a case that has already been argued.

Constitutional litigation would still take place—but in the state courts. The state supreme courts would have the last word. The state courts naturally would consider any prior U.S. Supreme Court decisions with respect. But they would not, according to Article VI of the Constitution, be bound by them. They are bound by the Constitution, not by the decisions of the Supreme Court. Moreover, new cases would always present somewhat different facts and issues than those previously decided by the Supreme Court. Congress could always, if state-court decisions go off the tracks, restore federal court jurisdiction.

Change by the statutory route is straightforward. If the opponents of a Supreme Court ruling can get Congress to enact a law removing federal-court jurisdiction and Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction, they can—by moving future constitutional litigation to the state courts—possibly change the outcome. They have at least changed the forum to one closer to home. If the opponents of a Supreme Court ruling cannot get a law passed to limit the Court’s jurisdiction, they should relax, realize they are a minority, and attempt to persuade others to join them.

William J. Quirk is a professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law. The Fourth Choice: Ending the Reign of Activist Judges - Chronicles - June 2004

Article III, Section 2 - The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED , October 6, 2003
In the 107th Congress (2001-2002), Congress used the authority of Article III, Section 2, clause 2 on 12 occasions to limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts.

Black's Law Dictionary: Interposition

2004-12-04T23:57:00.000-08:00

“The doctrine that a state, in the exercise of its sovereignty, may reject a mandate of the federal government deemed to be unconstitutional or to exceed the powers delegated to the federal government.

The concept is based on the 10th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States reserving to the states powers not delegated to the United States. Historically, the doctrine emanated from Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dallas 419, wherein the state of Georgia, when sued in the Supreme Court by a private citizen of another state, entered a remonstrance and declined to recognize the court's jurisdiction. Amendment 11 validated Georgia's position.

Implementation of the doctrine may be peaceable, as by resolution, remonstrance or legislation, or may proceed ultimately to nullification with forcible resistance.” Vision Forum Ministries

University of South Carolina Law Professors William J. Quirk and R. Randall Birdwell, in their book Judicial Dictatorship (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1997), note that

“The philosophical assumptions of judicial review are so inconsistent with democratic theory that there is along tradition of resistance to it. The resistance, today, is a largely underground movement that exists outside the normal academic and law school curriculum. Historically, the members of the resistance are an impressive group. The include the great democratic presidents: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. They include the great constitutional scholars: James Bradley Thayer, The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law (1893) and John Marshall [a 1920 book by Thayer]; Louis Boudin, Government by Judiciary (1932); Edward S. Corwin, Court over Constitution (1938); Henry Steele Commager, Majority Rule and Minority Rights (1943); and Learned Hand, The Bill of Rights (1958). Who made the Court, as Learned Hand asks: 'the arbiters of all political authority in the nation with a discretion to act or not, as they please?'”

Chief Justice John Marshall firmly entrenched the principle of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803). In that opinion he declared that a law repugnant to the Constitution is null and void. But if an Act of Congress is null and void if inconsistent with the Constitution, does not follow that the order of an unelected federal judge is also null and void if inconsistent with the Constitution?

At some point we must stand up and say to the federal judiciary, “Enough is enough! You have usurped powers that the Constitution has not delegated to you. You have imposed upon the rightful authority of the states.” But when do we reach that point?

The Doctrine of Interposition, Dr. John Eidsmoe, Esq.

Abortion survivor, Gianna Jessen confronts the Congress that REFUSES TO impeach &/or remove jurisdiction

2004-12-04T23:44:00.000-08:00

"My name is Gianna Jessen. I would like to say thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I count it no small thing to speak the truth. I depend solely on the grace of God to do this. I am 23 years old. I was aborted and I did not die. My biological mother was 7 months pregnant when she went to Planned Parenthood in southern California and they advised her to have a late-term saline abortion.

A saline abortion is a solution of salt saline that is injected into the mothers womb. The baby then gulps the solution, it burns the baby inside and out and then the mother is to deliver a dead baby within 24 hours.

This happened to me! I remained in the solution for approximately 18 hours and was delivered ALIVE on April 6, 1977 at 6:00 am in a California abortion clinic. There were young women in the room who had already been given their injections and were waiting to deliver dead babies. When they saw me they experienced the horror of murder. A nurse called an ambulance, while the abortionist was not yet on duty, and had me transferred to the hospital. I weighed a mere two pounds. I was saved by the sheer power of Jesus Christ.

Ladies and gentleman I should be blind, burned.....I should be dead! And yet, I live! Due to a lack of oxygen supply during the abortion I live with cerebral palsy. [...] Adolph Hitler once said: '"The receptive ability of the great masses is only very limited, their understanding is small; on the other hand their forgetfulness is great. This being so, all effective propaganda should be limited to a very few points which in turn, should be used as slogans until the very last man is able to imagine what is meant by such words.'" Today's slogans are: "'a woman's right to choose"' and "freedom of choice," etcetera.

House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, July 20, 2000

How Not To Overturn Roe v. Wade

2004-12-04T23:12:00.000-08:00

Justice Scalia writes: "My difference with Roe v. Wade is a legal rather than a moral one: I do not believe . . . that the Constitution contains a right to abortion. And if a state were to permit abortion on demand, I would—and could in good conscience—vote against an attempt to invalidate that law for the same reason that I vote against the invalidation of laws that forbid abortion on demand: because the Constitution gives the federal government (and hence me) no power over the matter."

….the Justices do not understand the nature of abortion, and that if they are forced to confront the scientific and medical facts about the conception and development of the unborn child, they will be compelled to reconsider Roe v. Wade and hold that the unborn child is a constitutional person. To speak in spiritual terms, the critics assume that the problem lies in the intellect rather than the will. That premise is mistaken. Every member of the Court understands what an abortion is.

The Court understands that the purpose and effect of an abortion is to kill an unborn (and, in some instances, a partially born) child.

….women need abortion to be legal in order for them to be full and equal members of American society. It is that judgment, and not any misunderstanding of what happens in an abortion, that is the source of our present predicament, as even a casual perusal of the Court’s opinion in Casey reaffirming Roe v. Wade would disclose.

….it should be clear that no member of the Court—past or present—believes that the unborn child is a "person," as that term is used in Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Seventeen justices have sat on abortion cases since and including Roe, and not one has ever stated that the unborn child is a constitutional person….Dissenting in Roe, Justice Rehnquist stated that "the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the states the power to legislate with respect to this matter [i.e., abortion]." Dissenting in both Roe and Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe, Justice White stated that "this issue [i.e., abortion], for the most part, should be left with the people and the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs."

But there is more than silence to indicate the Justices’ views. Dissenting in Casey, Justice Antonin Scalia stated, "The states may, if they wish, permit abortion-on-demand, but the Constitution does not require them to do so." This statement, in an opinion that Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice White, and Justice Clarence Thomas joined, quite obviously is not compatible with a recognition of personhood. And in dissenting from the Court’s decision to strike down the Nebraska partial-birth abortion ban, Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Scalia and Thomas once more urged that the issue of abortion be returned to the states.

In his brief dissent in Carhart, Justice Scalia stated that "the Court should return this matter to the people—where the Constitution, by its silence on the subject, left it—and let them decide, state by state, whether this practice should be allowed." Justice Thomas, writing for himself, Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Justice Scalia, began his lengthy dissent by stating: "Nothing in our Federal Constitution deprives the people of this country of the right to determine whether the consequences of abortion to the fetus and to society outweigh the burden of an unwanted pregnancy on the mother."

Entirely apart from the issue of personhood, there is little basis for believing that any of the Justices would accept the argument that the Supreme Court (or any court) is qualified to state when human life begins. Dissenting in Casey, Justice Scalia, joined by the Chief Justice and Justices White and Thomas, wrote that the question of when human life begins is not "a legal matter" capable of resolution by a court, but, instead, is "a value judgment" that may be made only by the political branches of government. In his concurring opinion in Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health (1990), Justice Scalia said that the determination of when human life begins is a question not capable of judicial resolution and instead must be left to the political process where compromise and accommodation of divergent views is possible. This theme—that the resolution of the abortion question should be left to the political branches of government—has been a leitmotif of Justice Scalia’s abortion opinions.

Nothing in Roe, properly understood, forbids New Jersey or any other state from imposing civil liability and/or criminal sanctions on anyone who causes injury to or the death of an unborn child (outside the context of abortion).

Paul Benjamin Linton is an attorney who specializes in pro-life litigation and legislative consulting, and has served as General Counsel of Americans United for Life. -How Not To Overturn Roe v. Wade - 2002 First Things 127 (November 2002): 15-16.

Life-Protecting Judicial Limitation Act of 2003 (Introduced in House)

To provide that the inferior courts of the United States do not have jurisdiction to hear abortion-related cases.

For purposes of this section, the term `abortion-related case' means any action in which any requirement, prohibition, or other provision relating to abortion that is contained in a State or Federal statute is at issue.'.

Scalia on the static Constitution v. evolving darwinian opinion

2004-12-04T20:57:00.000-08:00

"In his speech to the Federalist Society, Scalia offered a detailed description of his approach to constitutional interpretation. In his view, Supreme Court justices overstep not only their authority but also their expertise when they try to answer some of society's most divisive moral questions in legal cases such as abortion. He says moral issues should be resolved by elected political leaders, not unelected judges."

"Other than offering the anecdote of the fundraising letter, Scalia did not mention the chief-justice issue during his lecture. Instead, he focused on what he sees as the problem of judges becoming involved in issues that he believes have no place in a court of law."

"He offered examples from the US Supreme Court - abortion, gay rights, the death penalty, gender equality at military schools, and assisted suicide."

"Under a regime of static law, it was not difficult to decide whether under the American Constitution there was a right to abortion or to homosexual conduct or to assisted suicide," he said. "When the Constitution was decided, all those acts were criminal throughout the United States and remained so for several centuries. There was no credible argument that the Constitution made those laws invalid."

"Of course, society remained free to decriminalize those acts [through legislation], as many states have," he added. "But under a static Constitution, judges could not do so."

One justice's vision of role of the courts, November 16, 2004 edition Warren Richey Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Laws and Standards - Do They Evolve?

The single most influential jurist of the Twentieth Century was United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. His massive treatise, The Common Law, supplanted Blackstone's Commentaries as the premier text for law students. Holmes taught "the life of the law has not been logic, but experience," and argued that it was the responsibility of courts to direct the evolution of law. Because right and wrong do not exist in any absolute sense, judges must determine which standards are most appropriate at a given point in the evolution of a society.

For three decades, Holmes brought his distinctively Darwinian bias to the Court. He spoke candidly: "I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand."

A consistent evolutionist, Holmes declared that "the sacredness of human life is a purely municipal ideal of no validity outside the jurisdiction." He authored the landmark decision in Buck v. Bell upholding a Virginia eugenics law mandating the involuntary sterilization of people the State deemed undesirable.

It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.

Holmes and his contemporaries laid the foundation for legalized abortion, no-fault divorce, the legalization of homosexuality, and the rejection of the Framers' vision for Constitutional interpretation. Today, most courts have embraced an evolving standard for Constitutional interpretation, rejecting the notion that the Constitution must be interpreted in light of the meanings intended by the Framers.

Darwinian Roots of Judicial Activism

Pearcey analyzes "the crucial role played by the Darwinian view of origins" in the development of American legal philosophy. "Darwinism is not only a biological theory," she emphasizes; "it is also the basis for a comprehensive world view -- implying a new philosophy of mind, knowledge, morality, and law." Pearcey sees a direct connection between Darwinism and the postmodern view that "the only objective and absolute truth is that there are no objective and absolute truths." She argues that a "thorough-going critique" of judicial activism "must begin with Darwinism as a scientific theory." Pearcey advocates taking "the intellectual battle into science itself. The controversy over Darwin versus design is not a peripheral issue," she insists, "but lies at the heart of the cultural crisis of our day."

Evolution and the Law:"A Death Struggle Between Two Civilizations" by David Barton

The fact that governments do need to change ("evolve") and to incorporate social adjustments (i.e., the ending of slavery, the granting of suffrage to women, etc.) makes the argument to "modernize" the governing documents appealing to many. And thus many followers of Darwin urge the need for the Constitution and other governing documents to be flexible, living, and organic-to evolve.

Perhaps the first individual successfully to champion this belief was Christopher Columbus Langdell (1826-1906), dean of the Harvard Law School. Langdell reasoned that since man evolved, then his laws must also evolve; and deciding that judges should guide the evolution of the Constitution, Langdell introduced the case law study method under which students would study the wording of judges' decisions rather than the wording of the Constitution.

Under his case-law approach, history, precedent, and even many of the principles specifically enshrined in the governing documents, were deemed hindrances to the successful evolution of society. As John Dewey summarized:

The belief in political fixity, of the sanctity of some form of state consecrated by the efforts of our fathers and hallowed by radition, is one of the stumbling blocks in the way of orderly and directed change. [216]

Justice Holmes agreed, urging that "the lawyer's task . . . was to participate actively in freeing the law from those archaic doctrines that prevented the law from consciously fulfilling its role of promoting social policy," [217] because "the justification of a law for us cannot be found in the fact that our fathers always have followed it. It must be found in some help which the law brings toward reaching a social end." [218]

Justice Cardozo agreed, declaring:

If there is any law which is back of the sovereignty of the state, and superior thereto, it is not law in such a sense as to concern the judge or lawyer, however much it concerns the statesman or the moralist. [219]

Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) therefore encouraged the Court to break new ground and lead society in new directions, urging, "If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold." [220]

Even though individual Justices and legal educators had encouraged evolutionary law, it was not until Earl Warren (1891-1974) became Chief Justice that there was finally a majority of Justices on the Court willing to embrace that view. One of those Justices (now in the majority) was William Brennan (1906-1997), champion of what he termed "the evolving understanding of the Constitution," "the 'living' Constitution," "the freedom to reinterpret constitutional language," "a malleable Constitution," the Constitution's "power of adaptation," and "the Constitution's 'suppleness.'" [221]

Consequently, during Warren's sixteen year tenure, the Court became a powerful societal force, striking down numerous long-standing historical practices while acknowledging that it was doing so without any previous precedent. [222] In short, the Court thus publicly affirmed that it had finally arrived at its fully evolutionary aspiration, no longer bound by history or precedent.

Under this current theory, judges are solely responsible for the evolution of the Constitution, and it is living and organic according to their decree. As Justice Cardozo acknowledged, "I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life." [223] And Chief-Justice Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948) similarly declared, "We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is." [224]

Harvard Professor Steven Wise summarizes this radical revolution in legal theory occasioned by the adoption of Darwin's principles:

"To understand the strong normative appeal of evolutionary models, one must first appreciate that American law, like biology at the time of Darwin, faces the problem of providing a theory of creation which does not invoke a Supreme Being." E Donald Elliott, "The Evolutionary Tradition in Jurisprudence," 85 Columbia Law Review 38, 91 (1985). Elliott, who believes that the manner in which law is affected by the ideas that it routinely borrows from other disciplines has been largely unexplored, sets sail by chronicling how the Darwinian idea of evolution has affected the jurisprudential work of such legal scholars as Holmes, Wigmore and Corbin. Id. See also Jan Vetter, The Evolution of Holmes, Holmes and Evolution, 72 Cal. L. Rev. 343, 362 (1984) ("Holmes' The Common Law is first of all an account of legal change, and its object in this respect is to exhibit the workings of Darwinian evolution in law"). Evolutionary jurisprudence was often shunned during the middle half of the twentieth century due to that period's association of evolution with Spencer's racist and reactionary Social Darwinism. Elliott, at 59, 76. It is shunned no longer. Id. See Roger D. Masters, Evolutionary Biology, Political Theory and the State, in Law, Biology & Culture-The Evolution of Law 171 (Margaret Gruter & Paul Bohannon eds., 1983). [225]

Yet, is the fact that the Constitution is now a living, malleable, evolving document, necessarily bad? After all, society does change and should not necessarily be bound by decisions made two centuries ago.

Significantly, the framers agreed with this thesis-they understood that times would change and therefore so should the Constitution. However, they would have vehemently disagreed with the mechanism by which this change occurs today.

The framers made clear that when the meaning, and thus the application, of any part of the Constitution was to be altered, it was to be at the hands of the people themselves, not at the feet of the judiciary or through the usurpation of any legislative body. For this reason, Article V was placed in the Constitution to establish the proper means whereby the people might "evolve" their government. As Samuel Adams explained:

[T]he people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it. And the federal Constitution, according to the mode prescribed therein, has already undergone such amendments in several parts of it as from experience has been judged necessary. [226]

The Evolution of Genocide by Rebecca Messall

My greatest mistake as a pro-life person was in thinking Roe v. Wade arrived by itself. I didn't want to link abortion to other controversial subjects, which scared or confused me, detracting from the obvious atrocity of butchering a living, unborn child. Because of my narrow focus, I ignored the horrific world-view and the socio-political-financial machinery fueling abortion.

Like many pro-life people, I felt that the origin of the species was a matter of God's choice of methods--but not a pro-life concern. Busy in local pro-life matters, I believed evolution was an "education dispute," a controversy I could, gratefully, sit out.

I realized that evolution by natural selection has been the fundamental pro-life issue since Darwin himself. His argument that biologically inferior people threaten to deprive intellectually superior people of food and resources established a scientific-sounding rationale for genocide, which is used today by the abortion-based population control and family planning establishments, as well as others bent to this day on improving the race by laboratory methods.

What's Wrong With the Science Establishment?

Scientists, it seems, should be the last people to need reminders about the importance of facts. A good scientist cannot have too many facts, because they are grist for the scientific mill as it grinds out explanations and theories about the world around us.

Why, then, do so many scientists ignore certain facts of life as they line up to support abortion and to engage in destructive fetal and embryo research? Why do they obscure or deny the fact that human life begins at fertilization? Why are so many involved in population control? Why do some have a deep prejudice against people with disabilities and people of color?

How Darwinism led to the Holocaust And how it is destroying respect for human life today -From Darwin to Hitler, Weikart, Richard

Since the defeat of Nazism, evolutionists have been at pains to conceal the obvious connection between Darwin's theory of "survival of the fittest" and Hitler's ideology of a death-struggle between superior and inferior races. Their chief tactic: to claim that Hitler's "social Darwinism" was a perversion of "true" Darwinism. But in this stupendous work of intellectual history, Richard Weikart conclusively proves that Hitler's views were not only based firmly on core Darwinian principles, but widely echoed by leading Darwinist scientists, philosophers, and ethicists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- and that it was only after worldwide revulsion at the horrors of the Holocaust that such views disappeared from the Darwinist "mainstream."

With impeccable documentation, Weikart demonstrates that many leading Darwinian biologists and social thinkers of the pre-Hitler era believed -- and celebrated the fact -- that Darwinism overturned traditional Christian ethics, especially those pertaining to the sacredness of human life. In its place, they exalted evolutionary "fitness" (especially in terms of intelligence and health) as the highest arbiter of morality. Thus, whatever "improves" the race by favoring the strong and eliminating the weak is justified morally -- and this included not only euthanasia and abortion for certain groups, but even infanticide and genocide, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis.

POSTERITY & PERSONS

2004-12-04T18:54:00.000-08:00

In 1973 seven people opined that a woman can get away with murder and claimed that the Constitution agreed with their opinion. Every U.S. President since Roe v Wade has enforced that unconstitutional opinion against the States, as though it were an Act of Congress, or constitutional Amendment.

Let the following facts be submitted to a candidly democidal nation:

"The Virginia Declaration of Rights strongly influenced Thomas Jefferson in writing the first part of the Declaration of Independence. It later provided the foundation for the Bill of Rights." The Foundation for the National Archives
"I - That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." Virginia Declaration of Rights
Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, stated the source of Rights and expressed the fundamental purpose of government: "....all Men are created equal...endowed by their Creator with...unalienable Rights, that among these are Life....to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted...." Declaration of Independence : July 4, 1776
Preamble to the U.S. Constitution," We the People of the United States, in Order to....secure the Blessings of Liberty to...our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution...." Preamble
"No person shall be...deprived of life...without due process of law...."Amendment V

The National Lawyers Association takes the position that the practical effect of the legal connection or relationship between the Declaration and the Constitution is that the Constitution is to be interpreted in the light of the principles set forth in the Declaration.[...] The Preamble introduces and explains the purpose of The U.S. Constitution, and links it to The Declaration of Independence."

The Preface to the United States Code - Annotated states that "this code is the official restatement in convenient form of the general and permanent laws of the United States in force December 7, 1925...." The Preface also states that there is also contained therein a copy of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Ordinance of 1787 and the Constitution with Amendments. Robert C. Cannada, Senior Counsel, Butler, Snow, O'Mara, Stevens & Cannada, PLLC, Jackson, Mississippi, "America's Choice: A Limited Government Or A Totalitarian Government," The National Lawyers Association Review, Winter 1996.

If abortion is murder, then as currently practiced in the United States, it is mass murder on a scale that eclipses the Jewish Holocaust, and the most enlightened people on earth think that the U.S. Constitution permits mass murder. And we want to help Iraq with their Constitution?

American College Of Pediatricians on 'health of the mother.'

2004-12-04T18:39:00.000-08:00

...with higher regard for the advance of science and the values of medicine, we recommend that elective abortions not be performed. Although some abortions are said to be performed to preserve the life of the mother, they are in fact, rarely necessary for those purposes. Maternal health factors that are said to demand termination of the pregnancy can also be accommodated without sacrifice of the fetus. When there is possibility of independent viability of the fetus, we argue for ending the pregnancy by appropriate delivery.
All pre-term deliveries should be done with the health and safety of both mother and infant in mind, and, whenever possible, with a second physician present to safeguard the life and health of the fetus.6
Decisions regarding the provision of life-sustaining medical treatment for the newly born infant should then proceed as for any other infant or child.7,8

Addendum (Editor's Note):This statement is intended to answer an ethical question. How should pediatricians approach and manage a viable fetus who might be unintentionally or inadvertently delivered alive in a late-term abortion attempt? The ethical question of whether a legal right to an abortion implies a right to the termination (death) of the viable or near-term fetus is still important; but in the course of producing this statement, the legal question has been addressed in part. In August 2002, Congress passed and the President signed the "Born Alive Infants Protection Act." This new law extends the same protections to any infant born alive, including those survivors of an abortion procedure.

Though the "Born Alive" law is a step in the right direction, it leaves unanswered the issue of the rights of the unborn. The pediatric community unfortunately has been influenced in policy development by personal perception of societal values and by existing civil law. Civil law cannot take the place of conscience or dictate moral norms. Societal standards must be characterized by a moral basis of respect for all and especially for the rights of the weakest and the most defenseless. The issue here is not viability but rather the inviolability of all human persons from conception to natural end. As pointed out by Paul Ramsey in 1975 (Ramsey P. Appendix,Research on the Fetus, National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1975), "The fetus is generally viable at all stages unless it is removed from its natural environment." As we know, the limits of viability have undergone considerable change over the past 30 years and it is anticipated this change will continue. A court, society or the medical profession cannot define humanhood on the basis of such arbitrary measures.

Pediatricians must advocate for all children, not just for those determined "viable." We should honor the advocacy proclaimed interestingly by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1971, preceding Roe v. Wade by some thirteen months, to include pediatricians' responsibility for the child from conception through young adulthood. We must uphold scientific integrity. We must speak out against further "sacrifice of the fetus." The American College of Pediatricians shall not waiver from that commitment.

June 12,2003, Termination of Pregnancy

When Do Human Beings Begin?"Scientific" Myths and Scientific Facts by Dianne N. Irving, M.A., Ph.D

2004-12-04T18:20:00.000-08:00

"The fusion of the sperm (with 23 chromosomes) and the oocyte (with 23 chromosomes) at fertilization results in a live human being, a single-cell human zygote, with 46 chromosomes - the number of chromosomes characteristic of an individual member of the human species."

"A human zygote is a human being. It is not a "potential" or a "possible" human being. It's an actual human being — with the potential to grow bigger and develop its capacities.
When Do Human Beings Begin?"Scientific" Myths and Scientific Facts by Dianne N. Irving, M.A., Ph.D

"Scientifically, the international consensus of embryologists is that human beings begin at fertilization (or cloning)--i.e., when their genetic code is complete and operative; even before implantation they are far more than a "bunch of cells" or merely " potential human beings."" The Founding Statement of Do No Harm: The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics July 1, 1999

"Life begins like everything else, at the beginning. At the moment of fertilization, a new human life begins. The human embryo is a being; and being human, she is a human being. She is person and not property because no property has the property of building itself. Everything necessary to make the new human being-the entire blueprint necessary to build a human being capable of going to the moon and putting a foot on the moon-is there in the very beginning. Nothing is added after the moment of fertilization. It is all locked in. Not only the color of our hair and eyes but even how long we will live, accident or sickness not intervening, is there in the very beginning. The complete information necessary to build the new human being is written in the smallest subscript of the universe. We are fearfully and wonderfully made!"The Human Embryo: Too Little to Care Much About? by R. Martin Palmer, The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity

"A fertilized egg, or zygote, is the first cell stage and exists for only 24 hours. After cell division, this is no longer a fertilized egg. We then use several other names, which are incomprehensible to the general public, but one name covers them all and that is "embryo." So after the first day, he or she is a "living human embryo." Most importantly, "fertilized eggs" do not implant within the womb. There is a certain power to their sneering comment, "Why would you want to protect a fertilized egg from planting?" It makes a difference if you say, "Why would you want to prevent a living human embryo from planting?"" A Health Exception By J.C. Willke, MD

"After fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into existence. This is no longer a matter of taste or opinion. Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception." Dr. Jerome Lejeune, genetics professor at the University of Descartes, Paris. He discovered the Down syndrome chromosome.

"From the moment a baby is conceived, it bears the indelible stamp of a separate distinct personality, an individual different from all other individuals." Ultrasound pioneer, Sir William Liley, M.D. 1967.

"It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception." Professor M. Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School.

"By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception." Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic.

Rape, Incest, & Murder

2004-12-04T17:59:00.000-08:00

"The child conceived in rape is one of us, merely smaller and less developed and more dependent, and not in full view, but equally a person. Killing her is wrong, just as killing any child is wrong. We must remember that the child is absolutely innocent of the crime of her father. She is not a part of her mother's body, and she is not a part of her father's character. She inherits character traits from both her parents, but in her individual being as a person, she is absolutely distinct from both of them. Even the character traits that are received from a parent are now her own traits. The child is totally her own person. She is not responsible for the crime that led to her conception, and she is untainted by it.1 Seeing her in these negative ways is sheer prejudice, not based on reality, but at odds with it."
Dr. Stephen Schwarz, The Moral Question of Abortion, (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 1990), Chapter 10: Abortion in Cases of Rape, Incest, Health and Life of the Woman

"I belong to an on-line support group (me, in a sup- port group, there's a picture) composed of adult children born of rape or incest. There are more of us in the former category than the latter. Jennifer is our webmistress, organizer, facilitator, coach, head nanny, chief nag (though very nice about it), and the child of a violent rape. Mostly, I lurk. But for some in the group, I am a kind of unofficial chaplain and sometime pastoral advisor. There are children born before Roe v. Wade as well as children born after Roe v. Wade. The handles adopted by some in the group are evocative: "former fetus," "unawares angel," names like that." Everything Personal: Children Born of Rape or Incest," Touchstone Magazine, Jan/Feb 2003

" She is a young lady who spreads joy wherever she goes. She has a place in the lives of many, not only her new husband, her parents, and her brothers, but many who know her well, and many who have met her in passing-a unique place that no one else could fill. She is happy by nature at 23, married, an avid reader, a good friend, a serious Christian. This is the person that these well-meaning people were willing to sentence to death. Oh, not now, not when they can see her; but when she was in danger the first time, in the womb and hidden from view." Robert Hart, "Her Mother's Glory: The Hardest Abortion Case," Touchstone Magazine, Jan/Feb 2003

"I, having lived through rape and also having raised a child 'conceived in rape,' feel personally assaulted and insulted every time I hear that abortion should be legal because of rape and incest," says Kathleen DeZeeuw in Victims and Victors. "I feel we're being used to further the abortion issue, even though we've not been asked to tell our side of the story." We can begin by educating the public and legislators on what the women themselves-the victims of rape and incest-say about abortion. "Get Victims and Victors to legislators. Ask them to call for congressional hearings," says Dr. Reardon. "Urge them not to provide money for abortions resulting from rape or incest until they hear what the women say."Pamela Pearson Wong, "Abortion's House of Cards," Concerned Women for America, Family Voice, January/February 2001.

"In Victims and Victors, 20 women like the ones quoted above share what it is like to face a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. They speak bravely and candidly of the pain of sexual assault, of the sadness and trauma of abortion, and of the joy and healing of giving birth."
David C. Reardon, Julie Makimaa and Amy Sobie (Editors), Victims and Victors (San Francisco, CA 94109: Acorn Books, 2000).

"170 to 340 assault rape pregnancies occur per year in the United States."
Dr. and Mrs. J.C. Willke, Why Can't We Love Them Both, (Snowflake, AZ 85937: Heritage House 76, Inc., 1998) Chapter 29, Rape.

Kevin M. Jeanfreau on Democide in the U.S.

2004-12-04T17:49:00.000-08:00

The map above has 17 states blacked out. The population of these states is equal to the 45,000,000+ reported “legal” surgical abortions since 1973. Perhaps this visual perspective helps one to grasp the number of people that are gone, dead-robbed of their God-given constitutional rights to life and liberty. Each time a person is aborted or euthanized and robbed of their rights, our rights and very lives become less secure.

Kevin M. Jeanfreau, Founder Christian Patriots For Life

Definition of Abortion

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"The administration of any drug, device, potion, medicine, or any other substance or the use of any instrument or any other means whatsoever with the specific intent of terminating the life of a preborn child [the human being in existence from fertilization until birth] or preborn children; "abortion" shall not be construed to include the following: 1. a case in which the unintended death of a preborn child or preborn children results from the use by a physician licensed to practice medicine under (insert code pertinent to law) of a procedure that is necessary to save the life of the mother or the preborn child or preborn children. And that is used for the express purpose of, and with the specific intent of, saving the life of the mother or of the preborn child or preborn children; 2. a spontaneous abortion; 3. the removal of a preborn child who has died; 4. any therapeutic treatment or surgery performed upon a preborn child or preborn children that results in the unintentional death of a preborn child or preborn children."

American Life League

U.S. Constitution Article 3, Section 2, Clause 2

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In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

For expert testimony on this Clause see the following:

Impeaching Federal Judges:A Covenantal And Constitutional Response To Judicial Tyranny

2004-12-04T17:08:00.000-08:00

There is evidence that the mere threat of impeachment will have a salutary effect on the federal judiciary. As noted in the Introduction, the law school deans found this aspect of the impeachment movement especially troubling. Yet, the historical data clearly reflect that the Framers intended the threat of impeachment to have exactly this effect. Impeachment is a multi-step process. Resolutions can be introduced, authorizing impeachment directly or authorizing an investigation into possible impeachment proceedings. Assuming that an investigation occurs first, the steps leading to conviction would include investigation, debate on whether or not to draft articles of impeachment, a vote on passage of the articles, a trial in the Senate, and conviction. The farther the process goes, the greater the salutary impact will likely be. Those who are persuaded that impeaching judicial tyrants is correct should not give up before they start simply because they don’t think they can obtain the final goal of conviction.

Joseph Story understood that the threat of impeachment must be real in order to serve as an effective check. He wrote that on the one hand, impeachment should not "be a power so operative and instant that it may intimidate a modest and conscientious statesman or other functionary from accepting office," but that on the other hand, it must not be "so weak and torpid as to be capable of lulling offenders into a general security and indifference.

There is some evidence to support the thesis that impeachment investigations also serve the function Story anticipated.

Steven W. Fitschen, Impeaching Federal Judges: A Covenantal And Constitutional Response To Judicial Tyranny - Regent University Law Review, Volume 10, SPRING 1998

Rep. Bill Graves on Judicial Tyranny

2004-12-04T16:56:00.000-08:00

It is now generally believed that grounds for removal under impeachment must be only for treason, bribery or for violation of a criminal statute. However, David Barton, in his book “Impeachment: Restraining An Overactive Judiciary,” has documented that the Framers of the Constitution had a much broader view. Barton states that “impeachments of federal judges in the century-and-a-half following the ratification of the Constitution usually revolved around non-statutory and non-criminal charges rather than today’s standard of a direct violation of statutory law.”

Justice Joseph Story, the U.S. Supreme Court’s greatest scholar, believed such a restriction was preposterous and said, “No one has as yet been bold enough to assert that the power of impeachment is limited to offenses positively defined in the statute book of the Union as impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors.” Justice Story said impeachment was for protecting the rights of the people “and to rescue their liberties from violation,” and a remedy for “political offenses, growing out of personal misconduct, or gross neglect, or usurpation, or habitual disregard of public interests,” as well as a check upon “arbitrary power.” So were “unconstitutional opinions” and “attempts to subvert the fundamental laws and introduce arbitrary power.”

Founding Father and later Supreme Court Justice James Wilson said “(i)mpeachments are confined to political characters, (and) to political crimes and misdemeanors..” George Mason, who is called “the Father of the Bill of Rights,” saw impeachment as a remedy for “attempts to subvert the Constitution.” Hamilton said the subjects of impeachment are those which may “be denominated political.” Justice Samuel Chase was impeached for his judicial high-handedness and arbitrary uses of the judicial power. Barton also points out that one federal judge was impeached for supporting the secession movement. Federal judges were removed from office in 1904, 1912 and 1926 for judicial high-handedness.

Judge Robert Bork warned that lawless Courts are “engaged in civil disobedience, a disobedience arguably more dangerous, because more insidious and hence more damaging to democratic institutions, than the civil disobedience of the streets.” The Battle of Bunker Hill was not fought and the Founders did not pledge their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” to empower federal judges to twist, as Jefferson said, the Constitution into any form they please. If constitutional liberties are to be restored and republican government preserved, Congress must utilize its constitutional impeachment power.

JUDICIAL TYRANTS SHOULD BE IMPEACHED - Bill Graves is a lawyer and a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives

Terror in the Womb: The Forgotten Victims

2004-12-04T16:51:00.000-08:00

"Interestingly, more Americans were killed by abortionists on September 11 (about 4,300) than were killed by Islamic terrorists (about 3,000). Assuming 3,000 deaths among the 50,000 people who worked at the World Trade Center, about one in seventeen was killed. One in three unborn babies is killed by abortion every day. On September 11, it would have been six times safer to be a worker in the Twin Towers than it was to be a baby in her mother’s womb."

Terror in the Womb: The Forgotten Victims By Mark Harrington

R.J. Rummel on Democide

2004-12-04T16:44:00.000-08:00

Democide is meant to define the killing by government as the concept of murder does individual killing in domestic society. Here intentionality (premeditation) is critical. This also includes practical intentionality. If a government causes deaths through a reckless and depraved indifference to human life, the deaths were as though intended. If through neglect a mother lets her baby die of malnutrition, this is murder. If we imprison a girl in our home, force her to do exhausting work throughout the day, not even minimally feed and clothe her, and watch her gradually die a little each day without helping her, then her inevitable death is not only our fault, but our practical intention. It is murder. Similarly, for example, as the Soviet government forcibly transported political prisoners to labor camps hundreds of thousands of them died at the hands of criminals or guards, or from heat, cold, and inadequate food and water. Although not intended (indeed, this deprived the regime of their labor), the deaths were still public murder. It was democide.

DEATH BY GOVERNMENT Chapter 2, Definition of Democide - R.J. Rummel

State Homicide Laws That Recognize Unborn Victims

2004-12-04T16:16:00.000-08:00

A summary of the laws of the 30 states that recognize the unlawful killing of an unborn child as homicide in at least some circumstances. The federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act, enacted April 1, 2004, covers unborn victims of federal and military crimes.

NRLC

JUSTICE Clarence Thomas on the 10th Amendment

2004-12-04T15:47:00.000-08:00

In Madison's words, the popular consent upon which the Constitution's authority rests was "given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong." The Federalist No. 39, p. 243 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (hereinafter The Federalist). Accord, 3 Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution 94 (J. Elliot 2d ed. 1876) (hereinafter [ U.S. TERM LIMITS, INC. v. THORNTON, ___ U.S. ___ (1995) , 3] Elliot) (remarks of James Madison at the Virginia convention). 1

When they adopted the Federal Constitution, of course, the people of each State surrendered some of their authority to the United States (and hence to entities accountable to the people of other States as well as to themselves). They affirmatively deprived their States of certain powers, see, e.g., Art. I, 10, and they affirmatively conferred certain powers upon the Federal Government, see, e.g., Art. I, 8. Because the people of the several States are the only true source of power, however, the Federal Government enjoys no authority beyond what the Constitution confers: the Federal Government's powers are limited and enumerated. In the words of Justice Black, "[t]he United States is entirely a creature of the Constitution. Its power and authority have no other source." Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 5 -6 (1957) (plurality opinion) (footnote omitted).

In each State, the remainder of the people's powers - "[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States," Amdt. [ U.S. TERM LIMITS, INC. v. THORNTON, ___ U.S. ___ (1995) , 4] 10 - are either delegated to the state government or retained by the people. The Federal Constitution does not specify which of these two possibilities obtains; it is up to the various state constitutions to declare which powers the people of each State have delegated to their state government. As far as the Federal Constitution is concerned, then, the States can exercise all powers that the Constitution does not withhold from them. The Federal Government and the States thus face different default rules: where the Constitution is silent about the exercise of a particular power - that is, where the Constitution does not speak either expressly or by necessary implication - the Federal Government lacks that power and the States enjoy it.

These basic principles are enshrined in the Tenth Amendment, which declares that all powers neither delegated to the Federal Government nor prohibited to the States "are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." With this careful last phrase, the Amendment avoids taking any position on the division of power between the state governments and the people of the States: it is up to the people of each State to determine which "reserved" powers their state government may exercise. But the Amendment does make clear that powers reside at the state level except where the Constitution removes them from that level. All powers that the Constitution neither delegates to the Federal Government nor prohibits to the States are controlled by the people of each State.

To be sure, when the Tenth Amendment uses the phrase "the people," it does not specify whether it is referring to the people of each State or the people of the Nation as a whole. But the latter interpretation would make the Amendment pointless: there would have been no reason to provide that where the Constitution is silent about whether a particular power resides at the state level, it might or might not do so. In addition, it [ U.S. TERM LIMITS, INC. v. THORNTON, ___ U.S. ___ (1995) , 5] would make no sense to speak of powers as being reserved to the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole, because the Constitution does not contemplate that those people will either exercise power or delegate it. The Constitution simply does not recognize any mechanism for action by the undifferentiated people of the Nation. Thus, the amendment provision of Article V calls for amendments to be ratified not by a convention of the national people, but by conventions of the people in each State or by the state legislatures elected by those people. Likewise, the Constitution calls for Members of Congress to be chosen State by State, rather than in nationwide elections. Even the selection of the President surely the most national of national figures - is accomplished by an electoral college made up of delegates chosen by the various States, and candidates can lose a Presidential election despite winning a majority of the votes cast in the Nation as a whole. See also Art. II, 1, cl. 3 (providing that when no candidate secures a majority of electoral votes, the election of the President is thrown into the House of Representatives, where "the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representatives from each State having one Vote"); Amdt. 12 (same).

The people of each State obviously did trust their fate to the people of the several States when they consented to the Constitution; not only did they empower the governmental institutions of the United States, but they also agreed to be bound by constitutional amendments that they themselves refused to ratify. See Art. V (providing that proposed amendments shall take effect upon ratification by three-quarters of the States). At the same time, however, the people of each State retained their separate political identities. As Chief Justice Marshall put it, "[n]o [ U.S. TERM LIMITS, INC. v. THORNTON, ___ U.S. ___ (1995) , 6] political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into one common mass." McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 403 (1819). 2

Any ambiguity in the Tenth Amendment's use of the phrase "the people" is cleared up by the body of the Constitution itself. Article I begins by providing that the Congress of the United States enjoys "[a]ll legislative Powers herein granted," 1, and goes on to give a careful enumeration of Congress' powers, 8. It then concludes by enumerating certain powers that are prohibited to the States. The import of this structure is the same as the import of the Tenth Amendment:

US Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 US 779 (1995).

HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS on Roe v Wade

2004-12-04T15:42:00.000-08:00

The 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling caused great harm in two distinct ways. First, it legalized abortion at any stage, establishing clearly that the Supreme Court and the government condoned the cheapening of human life. Second, it firmly placed this crucial issue in the hands of the federal courts and national government. The federalization of abortion was endorsed even by those who opposed abortion. Instead of looking for state-by-state solutions and limiting federal court jurisdiction, those anxious to protect life came to rely on federal laws, eroding the constitutional process. The authors of the Constitution intended for criminal matters and acts of violence (except for a few rare exceptions) to be dealt with at the state level. Now, however, conservatives as well as liberals find it acceptable to nationalize issues such as abortion, marriage, prayer, and personal sexual matters-- with more federal legislation offered as the only solution. This trend of transferring power from the states to the federal government compounds our problems-- for when we lose, it affects all 50 states, and overriding Congress or the Supreme Court becomes far more difficult than dealing with a single state.

BEFORE THE US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES - November 20, 2004

Hamilton Or Madison: Federalist #51

2004-12-04T14:33:00.000-08:00

But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public.

But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.

In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects; and this may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under the same government. This view of the subject must particularly recommend a proper federal system to all the sincere and considerate friends of republican government, since it shows that in exact proportion as the territory of the Union may be formed into more circumscribed Confederacies, or States oppressive combinations of a majority will be facilitated: the best security, under the republican forms, for the rights of every class of citizens, will be diminished: and consequently the stability and independence of some member of the government, the only other security, must be proportionately increased. Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradnally induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful.

The Federalist Papers : No. 51

Robert H. Bork on Roe v Wade

2004-12-04T14:05:00.000-08:00

"Blackmun invented a right to abortion....Roe had nothing whatever to do with constitutional interpretation. The utter emptiness of the opinion has been demonstrated time and again, but that, too, is irrelevant. The decision and its later reaffirmations simply enforce the cultural prejudices of a particular class in American society, nothing more and nothing less. For that reason, ROE is impervious to logical or historical argument; it is what some people, including a majority of the justices, want, and that is that....Science and rational demonstration prove that a human exists from the moment of conception....Scalia is quite right that the Constitution has nothing to say about abortion."

Constitutional Persons: An Exchange on First Things 129 (January 2003): 28-36.

Abraham Lincoln describes the transition from a Democratic Republic to a judicial oligarchy

2004-12-04T14:00:00.000-08:00

"[T]he candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, . . . the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal." - A. Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (Mar. 4, 1861), reprinted in Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States, S. Doc. No. 101-10, p. 139 (1989).

Justice Curtis explains how to determine when the Federal Courts are wrong

2004-12-04T13:56:00.000-08:00

"[W]hen a strict interpretation of the Constitution, according to the fixed rules which govern the interpretation of laws, is abandoned, and the theoretical opinions of individuals are allowed to control its meaning, we have no longer a Constitution; we are under the government of individual men, who for the time being have power to declare what the Constitution is, according to their own views of what it ought tomean." - Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393, 621 (1857) (Curtis, J., dissenting).

Thomas Jefferson on the text of the Constitution
"On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), letter to Judge William Johnson, (from Monticello, June 12, 1823)

Citizens guide to the text of Constitution
"The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary, as distinguished from technical meaning; where the intention is clear, there is no room for construction, and no excuse for interpolation or addition." - Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheat 304; Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat 419; Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat 419; Craig v. Missouri, 4 Pet 10; Tennessee v. Whitworth, 117 U.S. 139; Lake County v. Rollins, 130 U.S. 662; Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1; Edwards v. Cuba R. Co., 268 U.S. 628; The Pocket Veto Case, 279 U.S. 655; (Justice) Story on the Constitution, 5th ed., Sec 451; Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, 2nd ed., p. 61, 70.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

, in a speech before The Catholic University of America, advocates literal interpretation of the Constitution, declaring "[t]he words are the law." Scalia says, "the Constitution means what it ought to mean...October 18, 1996 speech.

I belong to a school, a small but hardy school, called "textualists" or "originalists." That used to be "constitutional orthodoxy" in the United States. The theory of originalism treats a constitution like a statute, and gives it the meaning that its words were understood to bear at the time they were promulgated. You will sometimes hear it described as the theory of original intent. You will never hear me refer to original intent, because as I say I am first of all a textualist, and secondly an originalist. If you are a textualist, you don't care about the intent, and I don't care if the framers of the Constitution had some secret meaning in mind when they adopted its words. I take the words as they were promulgated to the people of the United States, and what is the fairly understood meaning of those words.

I do the same with statutes, by the way, which is why I don't use legislative history. The words are the law. I think that's what is meant by a government of laws, not of men. We are bound not by the intent of our legislators, but by the laws which they enacted, which are set forth in words, of course. As I say, until recently this was constitutional orthodoxy. Everyone at least said that: That the Constitution was that anchor, that rock, that unchanging institution that forms the American polity. Immutability was regarded as its characteristic. What it meant when it was adopted it means today, and its meaning doesn't change just because we think that meaning is no longer adequate to our times. If it's inadequate, we can amend it. That's why there's an amendment provision. That was constitutional orthodoxy. When I say constitutional orthodoxy, I don't mean its just judges and lawyers. Judges and lawyers are not very important. It's ultimately the American people. What do they think this document is?

This is not, I caution you, a liberal versus conservative issue. Conservatives are fully as prepared to create new rights under this evolutionist theory of the Constitution, as liberals are. Court TV Library: Supreme Court -- Antonin Scalia Speech, October ...

Clarence Thomas

, Be Not Afraid, 2001 Francis Boyer Lecture, American Enterprise Institute, Annual Dinner (Washington, D.C.) Publication Date: February 13, 2001

When deciding cases, a judge’s race, sex, and religion are not relevant. A judge is not a legislator, for whom it is entirely appropriate to consider personal and group interests. The ideal of justice is to be blind to such things.

When struggling to find the right answer to a case, judges should adopt principles of interpretation and methods of analysis that reduce judicial discretion. Reducing discretion is the key to fostering judicial impartiality.

The greater the room for judicial discretion, the greater the temptation to write one’s personal opinions into the law. This is especially important at the Supreme Court, where many of the usual limitations on judicial discretion, such as authority from a superior court or stare decisis, either do not exist, or do not exist with the same strength as with other courts. Hence, other doctrines and principles designed to narrow discretion and to bolster impartiality assume greater significance for the Court.

When interpreting the Constitution and statutes, judges should seek the original understanding of the provision’s text, if the meaning of that text is not readily apparent.

First, by tethering their analysis to the understanding of those who drafted and ratified the text, modern judges are prevented from substituting their own preferences for the Constitution.

Second, it places the authority for creating the legal rules in the hands of the people and their representatives, rather than in the hands of the judiciary. The Constitution means what the delegates of the Philadelphia Convention and of the state ratifying conventions understood it to mean; not what we judges think it should mean.

Third, this approach recognizes the basic principle of a written Constitution. "We the people" adopted a written Constitution precisely because it has a fixed meaning, a meaning that does not change. Otherwise we would have adopted the British approach of an unwritten, evolving constitution. Aside from amendment according to Article V, the Constitution’s meaning cannot be updated, or changed, or altered by the Supreme Court, the Congress, or the President.

Another principle of self-restraint derives from the nature of the legal analysis we employ. It is always tempting to adopt balancing tests, or to rest one’s decision on the presence of several factors. Judges can then say that they decided the case on its facts, thereby preserving some degree of flexibility for the next case. While this may be appropriate for trial courts, or for state courts, it is seldom the best approach for the Supreme Court or a federal appellate court. Whenever possible, the Court and judges generally should adopt clear, bright-line rules that, as I like to say to my law clerks, you can explain to the gas station attendant as easily as to a law professor.

Rules not only provide private parties with notice, but also limit judicial discretion by narrowing the ability of judges in the future to alter the law to fit their policy preferences. Broader rules are more likely to be impartial as to how they affect specific parties. Thus, clear rules—along with life tenure and an irreducible salary—encourage judges to maintain their impartiality.

A judge who strictly adheres to the rules of impartiality and judicial restraint is likely to reach sound conclusions. But as I’ve said, reaching the correct decision itself is only half the battle. Having the courage of your convictions can be the harder part. - AEI - News & Commentary

Honorable John N. Hostettler, a Representative in Congress From the State of Indiana Thursday, June 24, 2004, - House of Representatives,Subcommittee on the Constitution,Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, DC. - Limiting Federal Court Jurisdiction To Protect Marriage For The States

"Mr. Chairman, as a nonlawyer, I count it a high privilege to serve as a Member of this Subcommittee. However, as a student of the United States Constitution, I would not be truthful if I said that I have always understood as perceived by this nonlawyer to be a disconnect between the plain wording and construction of the Constitution and the opinions handed down by the Federal judiciary as, quote, "''constitutional,''" end quote. But this perceived disconnect was explained to me with such clarity by, and rightfully so, a lawyer when I read the testimony of Dr. Leo Graglia, before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, of May 15, 1997. Dr. Graglia, who is the A. Dalton Cross Professor of Law at the University of Texas law school, profoundly observed that, quote, "''the first and most important thing to know about constitutional law is that it has virtually nothing to do with the Constitution,''" end quote. At that point, the scales fell from my eyes, and I realized that I cannot confuse what is taught in our Nation's law schools and what is expounded by so-called constitutional scholars on the 24-hour news talk shows with the work of folks like Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and Washington, and others at Philadelphia in 1787, or for that matter the first Congress in 1789 or the 39th Congress in 1866."

{ When all else fails, read and follow the directions in the Constitution.}

Alexander Hamilton on the Weakest Branch, the Judiciary

2004-12-04T13:39:00.000-08:00

"The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.
It proves incontestably, that the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power...."

1 The celebrated Montesquieu, speaking of them, says: "Of the three powers above mentioned, the judiciary is next to nothing.'' "Montesquieu: The Spirit of Laws.'' vol. i., page 186. -
The Federalist Papers : No. 78

President Andrew Jackson on Executive Review

2004-12-04T13:22:00.000-08:00

"If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered the whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the coordinate authorities of this Government. The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others. It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision. The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve." - President Jackson's Veto Message Regarding the Bank of the United States; July 10, 1832

[ In Marbury v Madison, John Marshall used the same logic to derive the doctrine of judicial review which isn't explicitly stated in Article 3. If the federal courts can review federal & state laws, what prohibits the President, Congress and the States from reviewing opinions of the federal courts? If it doesn't it take an amendment to void federal and state law, then why should it take an amendment to void an unconstitutional majority opinion of the federal courts? Amendments are used to correct the Constitution. Impeachment and removal along with jurisdiction stripping are ways to correct the federal courts. ]