http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/…

Barack Obama and Joe Biden both get a perfect 100 from the big-government liberal Americans for Democratic Action, which probably tells you all you need to know. But I remember a dramatic moment back in 1991 when Biden made his commitment to unlimited government clear and dramatic. Clarence Thomas had been nominated for the Supreme Court, and Biden, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was questioning him. Biden bore in on the possibility that Thomas might believe in “natural law,” the idea, as Tony Mauro of USA Today summarized it, that ”everyone is born with God-given rights - referred to in the Declaration of Independence as ‘inalienable rights’ to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ - apart from what any law or the Constitution grants.” Biden singled out Cato adjunct scholar Richard Epstein and Cato author Stephen Macedo and demanded to know if Thomas agreed with them that the Constitution protects property rights. Waving Epstein’s book Takings in the air like Joe McCarthy with a list of communists, Biden demanded to know, as we very loosely paraphrased it in Cato’s 25-year Annual Report (pdf; page 14), “Are you now or have you ever been a libertarian?” As most judicial nominees do when pursued by a senator roused to defend his power like a mama bear, Thomas assured Senator Biden that he wouldn’t take the Constitution too seriously. Here’s Biden on the warpath:

Was Biden right to worry? Well, as we said in the Annual Report, four years later Thomas joined the Court in declaring, “We start with first principles. The Constitution creates a Federal Government of limited powers.” But ten years later the Court finally considered whether the Constitution protects property rights and said, “Ehh, not so much.” Thomas protested, “Something has gone seriously awry with this Court’s interpretation of the Constitution. Though citizens are safe from the government in their homes, the homes themselves are not.” Biden was right to worry that Thomas’s understanding of individual rights and the Constitution just might put some limits on the power of government.

I doubt it’s changed.

I still believe that globalistic liberal fascism will destroy us slower than the Bush/McCain globalistic neocon fascism but these types of things certainly make it no easier in the lesser of two evils descussion. Perhaps it just makes it easier to present 3rd party candidates.

Spring 2008 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

As we roll along into summer, this issue is finally going to the printer, a bit later than usual, due to a series of meetings we had here to begin the work to revamp the FIJA web site to make it more user-friendly and to hold more content, and to begin the work on the FreedomLaw.com web site, which recently came under FIJA ownership.

So, may I assume that everyone is well-versed in our new brochures on the Second Amendment and Body Ownership? You have probably noticed that in these two new brochures, there are less quotes of Founders and Supreme Court decisions.

You may also be aware of the evolution of FIJA from an organization relying strongly on Supreme Court decisions and Founders’ quotes, towards an organization which places much more emphasis on individual initiative, conscience, and individual common sense. Not to negate the prior, but to affirm the latter, we must come to rely less and less on the role of government in rendering justice, and more on the individual.

As I am sure you can see around you every day, the legitimacy of every branch of the government diminishes daily right before our eyes.

Bureaucrats, politicians and their sycophants have become a society of scofflaws with respect to the intent, the words, the laws, and the covenant, that was so very cautiously, considerately, and conscientiously set forth in our Constitution so that this day would never arrive.

But it has arrived. We see decreasing legitimacy in our courts: jurors, those proper masters of the government, including the corrupt court officials, are treated with disrespect, lied to, threatened and sometimes even jailed or prosecuted for exercising their conscience.

Judges routinely lie to jurors about the legitimate authority of the juror. They no longer tell jurors that each individual human, while serving on a jury, has the absolute authority to determine the correctness of any law as well as the guilt or innocence of the defendant.

Therefore, we can no longer expect any reliance by the courts on those laws which were earlier enforced in this nation. We can no longer expect that those who stand before us as authorities on the law have even the least understanding of the law. How much less can we count on the for a sense of justice, fairness, equity, or protection?

As we watch the decline of the government, let us remember, that we, the people, are not the government any longer. The government is no longer a representative, nor yet a protector, of the people who formed it. It is debased and depraved.

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