Saturday, January 25, 2014

Dispatch from Ukraine: A Journalist Describes the Unrest from Inside


ANYTHING PEACEFUL


JANUARY 24, 2014

 Note: Events in Ukraine in recent days have gripped the hearts of people around the world. We at FEE are appalled at the repressive measures being taken by the Ukrainian state against protesters, particularly young people who are active there in the movement for peace, liberty, and representative government. We sincerely hope that the brutality of statism, on vivid and tragic display at this very moment in Ukraine, will be crushed by the forces of freedom and with a minimum of bloodshed. Below, we share with our readers a moving account of what’s happening from a Ukrainian journalist who is in Kiev on the front lines of the current upheaval. We withhold his name for his protection.

—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:


 

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


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


Written by  Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.

 
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 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

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

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.

 
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.
 

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Lt. General McInerney: Muslim Brotherhood Inside White House


Ohio Refuses to Enforce REAL ID Standards



 

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module by Spiral



"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.
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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