Friday, January 31, 2014
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Obama’s Hammer & Sickle ready to drop on the Free World
Obama’s Hammer & Sickle ready to drop on the Free World
Symbol of the Communist Revolution.
United Nations
GET IT?
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Dispatch from Ukraine: A Journalist Describes the Unrest from Inside
ANYTHING PEACEFUL
JANUARY 24, 2014
—Lawrence
W. Reed, FEE president.
Image from Shutterstock
Dear
friends—especially foreign journalists and editors,
These
days I receive from you lots of inquiries requesting descriptions of the
current situation in Kiev and overall in Ukraine, express my opinion on what is
happening, and formulate my vision of at least the nearest future. Since I am
simply physically unable to respond separately to each of your publications
with an extended analytical essay, I have decided to prepare this brief
statement, which each of you can use in accordance with your needs. The most
important things I must tell you are as follows.
During
the less than four years of its rule, Mr. Yanukovych’s regime has brought the
country and the society to the utter limit of tensions. Even worse, it has
boxed itself into a no-exit situation where it must hold on to power forever—by
any means necessary. Otherwise it would have to face criminal justice in its
full severity. The scale of what has been stolen and usurped exceeds all
imagination of what human avarice is capable.
The only
answer this regime has been proposing in the face of peaceful protests, now in
their third month, is violence, violence that escalates and is “hybrid” in its
nature: special forces attacks at the Maidan (the central square of Kiev, the
Ukrainian capital) are combined with individual harassment and persecution of
opposition activists and ordinary participants in protest actions
(surveillance, beatings, torching of cars and houses, storming of residences,
searches, arrests, rubber-stamp court proceedings). The keyword here is
intimidation. And since it is ineffective, and people are protesting on an
increasingly massive scale, the powers that be make these repressive actions
even harsher.
The
“legal base” for them was created on January 16, when the Members of
Parliament, fully dependent on the President, in a crude violation of all rules
of procedure and voting, indeed of the Constitution itself, in the course of
just a couple of minutes (!) with a simple show of hands voted in a whole
series of legal changes which effectively introduced dictatorial rule and a
state of emergency in the country without formally declaring them. For
instance, by writing and disseminating this, I am subject to several new
criminal code articles for “defamation,” “inflaming tensions,” etc.
Briefly
put, if these “laws” are recognized, one should conclude: in Ukraine,
everything that is not expressly permitted by the powers that be is forbidden.
And the only thing permitted by those in power is to yield to them. Not
agreeing to these “laws,” on January 19 the Ukrainian society rose up, yet
again, to defend its future.
Today in
television newsreels coming from Kiev you can see protesters in various kinds
of helmets and masks on their faces, sometimes with wooden sticks in their
hands. Do not believe that these are “extremists,” “provocateurs,” or
“right-wing radicals.” My friends and I also now go out protesting dressed this
way. In this sense my wife, my daughter, our friends, and I are also
“extremists.” We have no other option: We have to protect our life and health,
as well as the life and health of those near and dear to us. Special forces
units shoot at us, their snipers kill our friends. The number of protesters
killed just on one block in the city’s government quarter is, according to different
reports, either 5 or 7. Additionally, dozens of people in Kiev are missing.
We cannot
halt the protests, for this would mean that we agree to live in a country that
has been turned into a lifelong prison. The younger generation of Ukrainians,
which grew up and matured in the post-Soviet years, organically rejects all
forms of dictatorship. If dictatorship wins, Europe must take into account the
prospect of a North Korea at its eastern border and, according to various
estimates, between 5 and 10 million refugees. I do not want to frighten you.
We now
have a revolution of the young. Those in power wage their war first and
foremost against them. When darkness falls on Kiev, unidentified groups of
“people in civilian clothes” roam the city, hunting for the young people,
especially those who wear the symbols of the Maidan or the European Union. They
kidnap them, take them out into forests, where they are stripped and tortured
in fiercely cold weather. For some strange reason the victims of such actions
are overwhelmingly young artists—actors, painters, poets. One feels that some
strange “death squadrons” have been released in the country with an assignment
to wipe out all that is best in it.
One more
characteristic detail: In Kiev hospitals the police force entraps the wounded
protesters; they are kidnapped and (I repeat, we are talking about wounded
persons) taken out for interrogation at undisclosed locations. It has become
dangerous to turn to a hospital even for random passersby who were grazed by a
shard of a police plastic grenade. The medics only gesture helplessly and
release the patients to the so-called “law enforcement.”
To
conclude: In Ukraine full-scale crimes against humanity are now being
committed, and it is the present government that is responsible for them. If
there are any extremists present in this situation, it is the country’s highest
leadership that deserves to be labeled as such.
And now
turning to your two questions which are traditionally the most difficult for me
to answer: I don’t know what will happen next, just as I don’t know what you
could now do for us. However, you can disseminate, to the extent your contacts
and possibilities allow, this appeal. Also, empathize with us. Think about us.
We shall overcome all the same, no matter how hard they rage. The Ukrainian
people, without exaggeration, now defend the European values of a free and just
society with their own blood. I very much hope that you will appreciate this.
Pray for
Ukraine!
Friday, January 24, 2014
CONGRESS GRANTS OBAMA 'FREE REIN FOR MARTIAL LAW'
'Subjugation
of citizenry' looming as U.S. becomes 'police state'
Bob Unruh
joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as
well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from
legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is
also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.
Some of the nation’s most respected legal teams are asking the
Supreme Court to take up a challenge to the indefinite-detention provisions of
the National Defense Authorization Act, charging the law has created the
framework for a police state.
The controversial provision authorizes the military, under
presidential authority, to arrest, kidnap, detain without trial and hold
indefinitely American citizens thought to “represent an enduring security
threat to the United States.”
Journalist Chris Hedges is among the plaintiffs charging the law
could be used to target journalists who report on terror-related issues.
A friend-of-the-court
brief submitted in the case states: “The central question now before
this court is whether the federal judiciary will stand idly by while Congress
and the president establish the legal framework for the establishment of a
police state and the subjugation of the American citizenry through the threat
of indefinite military arrest and detention, without the right to counsel, the
right to confront one’s accusers, or the right to trial.”
The
bried was submitted to the Supreme Court by attorneys with the U.S. Justice
Foundation of Ramona, Calif., Friedman Harfenist Kraut & Perlstein of Lake
Success, N.Y., and William
J. Olson, P.C. of Vienna, Va.
The attorneys are Michael Connelly, Steven J. Harfenist, William
J. Olson, Herbert W. Titus, John S. Miles, Jeremiah L. Morgan and Robert J.
Olson.
They are adding their voices to the chorus asking the Supreme
Court to overturn the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the
plaintiffs didn’t have standing to challenge the law adopted by Congress.
The brief is on behalf of U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, Virginia
Delegate Bob Marshall, Virginia Sen. Dick Black, the U.S. Justice Foundation,
Gun Owners Foundation, Gun Owners of America, Center for Media & Democracy,
Downsize DC Foundation, Downsize DC.org, Free Speech Defense & Education
Fund, Free Speech Coalition, Western Journalism Center, The Lincoln Institute,
Institute on the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln Foundation and Conservative
Legal Defense & Education Fund.
The
2014 NDAA was fast-tracked
through the U.S. Senate, with no time for discussion or amendments, while most
Americans were distracted by the scandal surrounding A&E’s troubles with
“Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson.
Eighty-five
of 100 senators voted in favor of the new version of the NDAA, which
had already been quietly passed by the House of Representatives.
Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and others filed a
lawsuit in 2012 against the Obama administration to challenge the legality of
an earlier version of the NDAA.
It’s Section 1021 of the 2012 NDAA, and its successors, that
drew a lawsuit by Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Jennifer Bolen, Noam Chomsky, Alex
O’Brien, Kai Warg All, Brigitta Jonsottir and the group U.S. Day of Rage. Many
of the plaintiffs are authors or reporters who stated that the threat of
indefinite detention by the U.S. military already had altered their activities.
“It’s clearly unconstitutional,” Hedges says of the bill. “It is
a huge and egregious assault against our democracy. It overturns over 200 years
of law, which has kept the military out of domestic policing.”
Hedges is a former foreign correspondent for the New York
Times and was part of a team of reporters awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002
for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism.
The friend-of-the-court brief warns the precedent “leaves
American citizens vulnerable to arrest and detention, without the protection of
the Bill of Rights, under either the plaintiff’s or the government’s theory of
the case.
“The judiciary must not await subsequent litigation to resolve
this issue, as the nature of military detention is that American citizens then
would have no adequate legal remedy,” the brief explains.
Section 1021 allows the detention of anyone, including American
citizens, by the military, if the president considers that person to have help
with terror. It’s different from the Authorization for the Use of Military
Force, which was adopted immediately after the 9/11 terror attacks, because
while that law allows detention, there must be something linking them to the
9/11 attacks.
“Section 1021 authorizes detention, potentially forever, and
even rendition of American citizens to foreign nations,” the brief points out.
“If this court refuses to hear the Hedges challenge, it will leave American
citizens subject to unconstitutional military arrest and detention.
“If this court does not grant the petition, there is no reason
to believe the U.S. presidents would cease to assert ‘the right to place
certain individuals [including American citizens] in military detention,
without trial.’ There would continue to be no statutory constraint on an arrest
being authorized by a military officer of unspecified rank. There would be no
protection provided by the requirement of a grand jury indictment. There would
be no requirement of an arrest arrant issued by an Article II judge supported
by a sworn affidavit showing probable cause of the commission of a specific
crime. Neither would there be any protection against use of compelled
testimony, or against an violation of due process of law. There would be no
civilian proceedings whatsoever against the person detained. Indeed, there is
no requirement that the individual being detained has committed any federal
crime, and military detentions could be used to circumvent the protections
afforded American citizens by the treason clause of the U.S. Constitution.”
It describes a scary scenario.
“After the string of black Suburbans pulls away, it is difficult
to believe that the military would provide relatives or lawyers with any
information whatsoever as to where the person being detained was being held.”
After all, it explains, Congress specifically expressed its
desire for the detention provision to apply to American citizens even on
American soil by rejecting multiple amendments that would have exempted them.
And Obama, also, affirmed the detention authority, stating, “I
want to clarify that my administration will not authorize the indefinite
military detention without trial of American citizens … My administration will
interpret Section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it
authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other
applicable law.”
Simply stating that means it could be interpreted in a contrary
manner.
At the trial court level, U.S. District Judge Katherine B.
Forrest issued a Memorandum Opinion and Order that struck the provision as
unconstitutional.
Multiple
states have passed state laws banning its enforcement inside those states. Herb
Titus, a constitutional expert, previously told WND Forrest’s ruling
underscored “the arrogance of the current regime, in that they will not answer
questions that they ought to answer to a judge because they don’t think they
have to.”
The judge explained that the plaintiffs alleged paragraph 1021
is “constitutionally infirm, violating both their free speech and associational
rights guaranteed by the 1st Amendment as well due process rights guaranteed by
the 5th Amendment.”
She noted the government “did not call any witnesses, submit any
documentary evidence or file any declarations.”
“It must be said that it would have been a rather simple matter
for the government to have stated that as to these plaintiffs and the conduct
as to which they would testify, that [paragraph] 1021 did not and would not
apply, if indeed it did or would not,” she wrote.
Instead, the administration only responded with, “I’m not
authorized to make specific representations regarding specific people.”
“The court’s attempt to avoid having to deal with the
constitutional aspects of the challenge was by providing the government with
prompt notice in the form of declarations and depositions of the … conduct in
which plaintiffs are involved and which they claim places them in fear of
military detention,” she wrote. “To put it bluntly, to eliminate these
plaintiffs’ standing simply by representing that their conduct does not fall
within the scope of 1021 would have been simple. The government chose not to do
so – thereby ensuring standing and requiring this court to reach the merits of
the instant motion.
“Plaintiffs have stated a more than plausible claim that the
statute inappropriately encroaches on their rights under the 1st Amendment,”
she wrote.
Experts have expressed concern that even a journalist who has
interviewed a member of a terror group may be considered to have rendered aid
to that group.
The government appealed the trial judge’s ruling to the 2nd
Circuit, which abruptly ruled that the plaintiffs had no right to challenge the
law.
In the following interview, Hedges, early in the case, described
what he sees developing:
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/congress-grants-obama-free-rein-for-martial-law/#P5FxpYQ5Lkg9VmPJ.99
General: ‘There’s At Least 15 Muslim Brotherhood Members In The Obama Administration’
Posted on Saturday, January 11th,
2014 at 2:18 am.
by: Thomas Jefferson
via Before It’s News
Excerpted from WND: Retired U.S. Air
Force Gen. Tom McInerney, who served as both assistant vice chief of staff and
commander in chief of U.S. Air Forces Europe, has surprised interviewers on a
radio program by confirming the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood inside the
U.S. government.
The Islamic supremacist movement’s
influence on Washington was reported in “Impeachable Offenses: The Case to
Remove Barack Obama from Office” by New York Times bestselling authors Aaron
Klein and Brenda J. Elliott.
The book documents that Obama aided
the rise to power of Islamic extremist groups in the Middle East as members
served on important national security advisory boards.
The book confirms the Obama
administration may have exposed national security information through Huma Abedin,
Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, who has deep personal and family
associations with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Another key figure with Muslim
Brotherhood ties is Mohamed Elibiary, a member of the Department of Homeland
Security’s Advisory Council.
McInerney was being interviewed
Thursday by WMAL in Washington about a tell-all book by former Defense
Secretary Robert Gates that strongly criticizes President Obama and Vice
President Biden for making politically motivated decisions regarding national
security.
McInerney said Gates was doing the
nation a service by exposing decision-making in the Oval Office but said he
should have done it sooner. He also noted that the Muslim Brotherhood
influences have been causing major problems throughout the Middle East.
Then he added, “We’ve got Muslim
Brotherhood in the U.S. government today.”
Asked by the talk-show hosts for
their names, he said, “I haven’t got their names exactly but there’s a list of
them, at least 10 or 15 of them in the U.S. government.”
He cited the organization’s
influence in Homeland Security and the secretary of state’s office under
Clinton, where Abedin has worked.
“Her parents are Muslim Brotherhood.
And her intuitions are in that direction,” he said.
“There are a whole host of people in
this government.”
He said Islam experts Frank Gaffney
or Claire Lopez would have the details.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Indiana, South Carolina Join Fight to Nullify ObamaCare
As
the multitude of mandates contained within the ObamaCare behemoth begin
breathing down the necks of Americans, state legislators across the country are
proposing bills to protect citizens from being subjected to the healthcare
law’s unconstitutional provisions. These bills are also designed to restore the
walls of sovereignty that protect states from an overreaching federal
authority.
In
Indiana, for example, State Senator Phil Boots has offered a nullification bill that
would prohibit the enforcement of ObamaCare (officially called the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act) in the Hoosier State.
Boots’
bill (SB 0230) proposed changes to the current Indiana Code
regarding the administration of state and local government. Citing the Tenth Amendment
as authority, Boots’ bill states:
Provides
that any federal act, order, law, rule, regulation, or statute found by the
general assembly to be inconsistent with the power granted to the federal government
in the Constitution of the United States is void in Indiana. Provides that a
resident of Indiana has a cause of action to enjoin the enforcement or
implementation or the attempted enforcement or implementation of a federal act,
order, law, rule, regulation, or statute declared void by the general assembly.
Provides that a plaintiff who prevails in such an action is entitled to
reasonable attorney’s fees and costs.
The
general assembly finds the following:
The
people of the several states comprising the United States of America created
the federal government to be their agent for certain enumerated purposes as set
forth in the Constitution of the United States and for nothing more.
The
Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States defines the total
scope of federal power as being that which has been delegated by the people of
the several states to the federal government, and all powers not delegated to
the federal government in the Constitution of the United States are reserved to
the states respectively, or to the people themselves.
Unlike
similar statutes passed by other state legislatures, the Indiana bill
criminalizes the enforcement of ObamaCare, declaring state or local compliance
with unconstitutional acts of the federal government a felony. The relevant
section of the nullification bill reads:
A
person who knowingly or intentionally implements or enforces a federal law, or
attempts to implement or enforce a federal law, that is declared void under
section 2 of this chapter commits a Class D felony.
According
to information on the Indiana legislature website, on January 7, 2013, SB 0230 was slated to be considered by the Committee on Rules
and Legislative Procedure.
As
the noble opposition to federal tyranny proceeds in Indiana, state lawmakers in
the Palmetto State are busy building trenches around their state, as well.
According to a report filed by Columbia, South Carolina, television station
WLTX, hundreds of South Carolinians gathered at the State House to rally in
support of a state measure that declares ObamaCare unconstitutional.
The
story reports that “stickers with ‘Nullify Obamacare’ were passed out at
Tuesday's rally.”
Senate Bill S
01012 would make it illegal for ObamaCare to be implemented in South
Carolina.
A
story posted by Patch.com reports that Harry Kibler of RINO
Hunt, who was one of the rally organizers, believes that the nullification bill
has a solid chance of passage. “We have a lot of people who understand the
power of the free market and the importance of keeping the government from
coming between the doctor and patient relationship,” Patch quoted Kibler saying.
The anti-ObamaCare, pro-nullification rally coincided with the opening of the
state General Assembly.
Kibler
also remarked on the problems that will arise were the federal government to
assume the role of insurer. “The patient has a lot of options when he can deal
directly with the doctor. If they don’t like how their doctor or the insurance
or dealing with them they have the option of going somewhere else,” he told
Patch.
As
with the Indiana bill, the nullification measure being offered in South
Carolina would make it a felony for any agent or employee of the federal
government who tries to enforce ObamaCare within the borders of South Carolina.
Patch
states that “State Sen. Tom Davis spoke in favor of the bill. The Beaufort
Republican says the Founding Fathers would expect the people to speak out
forcefully against expanding federal government.”
A
companion bill will be working its way through the South Carolina House this
year, as well. On December 11, South Carolina State Representative William
Chumley pre-filed a bill in the South Carolina General Assembly that would
prevent the enforcement of ObamaCare within the borders of the Palmetto State.
Chumley’s
bill would also prohibit state officials from participating in the
implementation of state healthcare exchanges or from enforcing the individual
mandate that are key elements of ObamaCare, Chumley’s measure — the South Carolina Freedom of Health Care Protection Act — requires
state lawmakers to “prevent the enforcement of the “Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act” [ObamaCare] within the limits of this state.”
South
Carolina, a state with a long history of resisting federal despotism, joins Indiana a
handful of other states currently considering bills nullifying ObamaCare. State
legislators in Maine, New Jersey, and Oklahoma have also had bills introduced
aimed at nullifying ObamaCare.
Simply
stated, nullification is a concept of constitutional law that recognizes the
right of each state to nullify, or invalidate, any federal measure that exceeds
the few and defined powers allowed the federal government as enumerated in the
Constitution.
Nullification
is founded on the assertion that the sovereign states formed the union, and as
creators of the compact, they hold ultimate authority as to the limits of the
power of the central government to enact laws that are applicable to the states
and the citizens thereof.
In
the wake of the Supreme Court’s ObamaCare decision, it is encouraging to see
state legislators boldly asserting their right to restrain the federal
government through application of the very powerful and very constitutional
principle of nullification.It is important to remember, finally, that act of the federal government exceeding the limited powers granted it by the Constitution is not a law at all. Witness the words of Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist, No. 33:
If a number of political societies enter into a larger political society, the laws which the latter may enact, pursuant to the powers intrusted [sic] to it by its constitution, must necessarily be supreme over those societies and the individuals of whom they are composed.... But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the larger society which are not pursuant to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land. These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such. [Emphasis in original.]
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached at jwolverton@thenewamerican.com .
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/14195-indiana-south-carolina-join-fight-to-nullify-obamacare
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Think Tank: “Extraordinary Crisis” Needed to Preserve “New World Order”
Author of
‘shock and awe’ doctrine says elite threatened by non-state actors like Edward
Snowden
Paul
Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
January 17, 2014
Infowars.com
January 17, 2014
Writing
for the Atlantic Council, a prominent think tank based in Washington DC, Harlan
K. Ullman warns that an “extraordinary crisis” is needed to preserve the “new
world order,” which is under threat of being derailed by non-state actors like
Edward Snowden
Image:
Atlantic Council Meeting (Wikimedia Commons).
The
Atlantic Council is considered to be a highly influential organization with
close ties to major policy makers across the world. It’s headed up by Gen.
Brent Scowcroft, former United States National Security Advisor under U.S.
Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. Snowcroft has also advised
President Barack Obama.
Harlan K.
Ullman was the principal author of the “shock and awe” doctrine and is now
Chairman of the Killowen Group which advises government leaders.
In an
article entitled War on Terror Is not the Only Threat, Ullman
asserts that, “tectonic changes are reshaping the international geostrategic
system,” arguing that it’s not military superpowers like China but “non-state
actors” like Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and anonymous hackers who pose the
biggest threat to the “365 year-old Westphalian system” because they are
encouraging individuals to become self-empowered, eviscerating state control.
“Very few
have taken note and fewer have acted on this realization,” notes Ullman,
lamenting that “information revolution and instantaneous global communications”
are thwarting the “new world order” announced by U.S. President George H.W.
Bush more than two decades ago.
“Without
an extraordinary crisis, little is likely to be done to reverse or limit the
damage imposed by failed or failing governance,” writes Ullman, implying that
only another 9/11-style cataclysm will enable the state to re-assert its
dominance while “containing, reducing and eliminating the dangers posed by
newly empowered non-state actors.”
Ullman concludes
that the elimination of non-state actors and empowered individuals “must be
done” in order to preserve the new world order. A summary of their material
suggests that the Atlantic Council’s definition of a “new world order” is a
global technocracy run by a fusion of big government and big business under
which individuality is replaced by transhumanist singularity.
Ullman’s
rhetoric sounds somewhat similar to that espoused by Trilateral Commission
co-founder and regular Bilderberg attendee Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in
2010 told a Council on Foreign Relations meeting that
a “global political awakening,” in combination with infighting amongst the
elite, was threatening to derail the move towards a one world government.
Ullman’s
implied call for an “extraordinary crisis” to reinvigorate support for state
power and big government has eerie shades of the Project
For a New American Century’s 1997 lament that “absent some
catastrophic catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor,” an expansion of U.S.
militarism would have been impossible.
In 2012,
Patrick Clawson, member of the influential pro-Israel Washington Institute for
Near East Policy (WINEP) think tank, also suggested that the United States should
launch a staged provocation to start a war with Iran.
Ullman’s
concern over failing state institutions having their influence eroded by
empowered individuals, primarily via the Internet, is yet another sign that the
elite is panicking over the “global political awakening” that has most recently
expressed itself via the actions of people like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange,
Bradley Manning and their growing legion of supporters.
Facebook
@ https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watson.71
FOLLOW Paul Joseph Watson @ https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet
FOLLOW Paul Joseph Watson @ https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet
Paul
Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.
He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars
Nightly News.
Friday, January 17, 2014
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Ohio Refuses to Enforce REAL ID Standards
Written by Joe Wolverton,
II, J.D.
"Your
papers, please."
This
is a phrase that Americans should get used to hearing.
In
April, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reportedly will begin enforcing the REAL ID Act, a measure
requiring Americans to produce federal government-approved identification upon
demand.
In
order to ensure that all Americans carry the national ID card, the REAL ID Act
establishes standards for driver’s licenses that must be met by states. DHS
reports that to date 21 state governments have complied with the federal
mandates.
One
of those states, however, has now backed out of the REAL ID program.
Ohio's
Columbus Dispatch reports:
Privacy
concerns have scuttled state plans to meet all federal “Real ID” standards,
which could result in Ohio driver’s licenses not being accepted as sufficient
identification to board airplanes and enter federal buildings.
The
Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles decided about five months ago to back off the
Real ID compliance plan approved by the federal Department of Homeland
Security, but it never made a public announcement about the change.
Ohio
state officials take issue with Homeland Security’s demand that all relevant
personal data, including birth certificates and medical records, be stored and
shared with the federal agency.
The
Buckeye State also rejected the federal government’s offer of facial
recognition software that will scan license photos making it possible to track
people forever, even if they change names or addresses. Of course, as this
“one-person one license” standard is a federal program, every individual who
carries a state-issued ID will be able to be tracked no matter where they go in
the United States.
“The
objection is that it’s not acceptable in many circles in Ohio to do facial
recognition on everyone who comes in to get a license,” said Joe Andrews,
spokesman for the Ohio Department of Public Safety, as reported by the
Dispatch. “People have concerns we are trampling their rights if we do
this,” Andrews added.
Remarkably,
similar concerns have been expressed by lawmakers on Capitol Hill, as well.
In
an op-ed published in the Washington Times last May,
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) evoked the images of dictatorships of the past and
their citizen registration policies:
Forcing
Americans to carry around an identification card to affirmatively prove
citizenship offends our basic concept of freedom. Wanting to avoid a “papers
please” culture in our country is also why conservatives oppose federal
universal gun background checks. We oppose such measures not because we don’t
believe in common-sense rules or regulation — but because we are wary of giving
the federal government this kind of centralized power over our daily lives.
These
draconian ideas would simply give government too much power.
Consolidating
immense power is the true purpose of the REAL ID Act, and Ohio is right to
refuse to cooperate in the scheme. In fact, other states should follow suit and
force the federal beast to stay inside its constitutional cage.
It
is this refusal to go along with unconstitutional federal programs that James
Madison recommended as a way to maintain state sovereignty.
States,
Madison said in The Federalist, No. 46, possess a “means of
opposition” to federal overreach: “refusal to cooperate with the officers of
the Union.”
About
10 years later, Madison said that states have not only the right to resist
encroachments of the federal government, but also an obligation to do so. “In
case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not
granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the
right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the
evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities,
rights and liberties appertaining to them,” Madison wrote in the Virginia
Resolution of 1798.
Article
VI of the Constitution places state legislators under an oath “to support this
Constitution.”
We,
the people, must demand that our representatives in the state assemblies abide
by their oath of office by refusing to enforce all unconstitutional acts of the
federal government within the borders of the several states. This is the
foolproof, fail-safe means of resistance known as nullification.
The
first step in keeping the federal government from consolidating all power in
Washington is to remember that any act of Congress, bureaucratic regulation, or
executive order that exceeds the constitutional limits on federal power has no
legal effect. States can — must — courageously refuse to enforce
those acts using the historically, legally, and constitutionally sound
principle of nullification.
Simply
stated, nullification recognizes the right of states to invalidate any federal
measure that a state deems unconstitutional. The right to nullify federal
usurpations comes from the fact that the sovereign states formed the union, and
as creators of the compact, they hold ultimate authority as to the limits of
the power of the federal government to enact laws that are applicable to states
and their citizens.
Although
DHS refused to comment directly on Ohio’s decision (or that of the two dozen
additional states that have enacted some degree of REAL ID-nullifying bill), a
spokeswoman told the Dispatch that the Obama administration is
“committed to working with each jurisdiction to support their efforts to meet
its secure driver’s license requirements.”
Undoubtedly,
there will be a rude awakening for citizens of states that fail to comply with
the REAL ID standards. DHS will surely order its
minions patrolling the country's airports to forbid anyone without
federally approved identification to board planes. This, in turn, will put
additional pressure on state governments to give in to federal pressure to
participate with the national ID program. This acquiescence will then lead to
the mass uploading of personal information to federal databases.
The
idea that somehow federal law trumps state law is very popular, even among
self-described “conservatives.” The media and public schools have been very
successful in perpetrating this incorrect interpretation of one clause of
Article VI.
The
“Supremacy Clause” (as some wrongly call it) of Article VI does not declare
that federal laws are the supreme law of the land without qualification. What
it says is that the Constitution "and laws of the United States made in
pursuance thereof" are the supreme law of the land.
Read
that again: “in pursuance thereof,” not in violation thereof. If an act of
Congress is not permissible under any enumerated power given to it in the
Constitution, it was not made in pursuance of the Constitution and therefore
not only is not the supreme law of the land, it is not the law at all.
Constitutionally
speaking, then, whenever the federal government passes any measure not provided
for in the limited roster of its enumerated powers, those acts are not the
final word. Instead, they are “merely acts of usurpation” and do not qualify as
the supreme law of the land. In fact, acts of Congress are the supreme law of
the land only if they are made in pursuance of its constitutional powers, not
in defiance thereof.
Alexander
Hamilton put an even finer point on the issue when he wrote in The Federalist,
No. 78, “There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that
every act of a delegated authority contrary to the tenor of the commission
under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary
to the constitution, can be valid.”
State
efforts to fight the federal “your papers please” agenda are praiseworthy, but
more needs to be done. Americans should wage this battle on many fronts,
including demanding that their representatives in Washington, D.C. repeal the
REAL ID Act in advance of its full implementation (scheduled for sometime in
2015).
There
isn’t a single syllable in the Constitution giving Congress (or any executive
branch department) the authority to create a national ID card or develop facial
recognition software that will make it possible to follow people from state to
state, and so the REAL ID Act is ripe for repeal.
Joe
A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The
New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of
nullification, the NDAA, the Second Amendment, and the surveillance
state. He is the co-founder of Liberty Rising, an educational endeavor
aimed at promoting and preserving the Constitution. Follow him on Twitter
@TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at jwolverton@thenewamerican.com
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