The Imperial Judiciary is Destroying the Rule of Law

By Rich Kozlovich

 

One April 22, 2014 Mary Ann Allen posted the article, The Constitution is Not A Living Organism, which I can't link as the site no longer exists, so you will have to take my word for what she said....or not, as you please.  She notes:

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia recently said, “The Constitution is not a living organism”  “It is a legal document, and it says what it says and doesn’t say what it does not say”. Well said Justice Scalia. The Founding Fathers who sought Gods’ wisdom were indeed led by Gods wisdom. Ask, and you shall receive.

Other court justices, attorneys, this administration, and other progressives and liberals refer to the Constitution as a “living organism”. That sounds good, if one does not know what that term means. So why is that bad for our Constitution, and the American people?

The “original” framers view of the Constitution held without debate. It generally meant that judges should interpret the Constitution as its framers intended it. A historian was quoted saying,” The Constitution has a fixed, uniform, permanent construction. It should be, not dependent upon the passions or parties of particular times, but the same yesterday, today and forever.” Judges should not stray from the text’s literal meaning”. Amen to that!

 

That was over ten years ago, and now yesterday Andrea Widburg, one of my favorite writers, posted this piece, The DC appellate court order affirming Judge Boasberg dishonestly ignores its lack of jurisdiction demonstrating how much worse the federal judiciary has managed to stray from the clear intent of the Constitution, every federal law passed, and every SCOTUS decision that interferes with their view of how the world should function saying:

 

Last week, a D.C. District Court judge, James Boasberg, took it upon himself to substitute his feelings for the President’s statutory authority under the Alien Enemies Act (“AEA”). When issuing his order telling the President to return to the U.S. planes filled with Tren de Aragua members bound for Venezuela, Boasberg didn’t even attempt to find law to justify his decision.  Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit backed Judge Boasberg. A quick read shows that its reason for doing so is utterly spurious because it glosses over the fact that the courts lack any jurisdiction in this matter.

 

She goes on the explain not only the lack of logic in this ruling, but a failure to address the lack of jurisdiction, but how they spew out a lot of non sequiturs to cloud the real issues.  

 

The problem with the federal judiciary falls right into the lap of the founding fathers.  Article III of the Constitution creates a “supreme Court” with the responsibility to adjudicate  “all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution."  

 

Alexander Hamilton, who was a statist by the way, assured everyone the judiciary would never run amok in response to "Judge Robert Yates, who warned of a rapacious judiciary in Anti-Federalist No. 78. Hamilton was wrong, and Yates was right."  It's apparent Yates understood people will always be people, and when there are no boundaries on their activity, they become unbalanced, and he wasn't the only one who warned of the danger of the judiciary.  All the warnings from that time have come to fruition.  

 

There's nothing in the Constitution about "Penumbras and Emanations". The courts made that up in order to redefine the simple wording and understanding of the Constitution in order to give them the power to in fact rewrite the Constitution, and the Congress should have stopped that nonsense decades ago.  

 

The founding fathers failed to create boundaries for the federal judiciary, and with lifetime appointments, that resulted in no checks or balances for the courts, however, the Constitution gives the Congress the right to determine the jurisdiction of the federal courts, and it appears the Congress, at least the Republicans, are considering doing just that.

1. 'Blatantly unconstitutional': Mike Lee takes action to restrain 'whims' of judges blocking Trump orders
2. 'It's Unconstitutional': Chuck Grassley Puts Activist Judges on Notice
3. Speaker Johnson Issues Warning: Congress Has the Authority to Defund and Disband Federal Courts (Video)
4. Hawley: End Federal District Courts’ Ability to Issue Nationwide Injunctions

With the exception of the Supreme Court, all federal courts are creations of Congress, and Congress can eliminate them, and have done so in the past when the judiciary got out of control, and it appears may have to do so again.  All these unconstitutional actions by these rogue judges is just another form of Lawfare, and it needs to be halted, and punished.  

Mark Levin: Democrats and Their Media Outlets 'Want to Destroy the Constitution'

Michael W. Chapman | December 15, 2022

In reference to ongoing attacks on the Constitution by the leftist media, radical academics, and the Democrat Party, constitutional scholar and conservative talk radio host Mark Levin said, "Joe Biden has violated the Constitution repeatedly," and the Democrats and their "media outlets," such as the New York Times, "hate the Constitution." The left-wing press and the Democrats "don’t believe in the Constitution," said Levin on his Dec. 5 broadcast.  "They don’t believe in the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech." ...........To Read More.....

 

The Fourth Branch

By Rich Kozlovich

Paradigms are defined in following manner.

A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.

In short; it is how we look at the world. How we perceive reality. It is the basis of how we judge our actions and the actions of others.

Fully 25 percent of all federal regulations that have been passed involve environmental issues and EPA has only been in existence since 1970. Since that time we have a plethora of regulatory bodies at the state level to meet the minimum federal standards and in some states, like California, they go way beyond federal standards, and the Federal Registry increased from 62,000 pages to 75,000 pages in one three year period. President G.W. Bush passed more federal regulations than any president since Richard Nixon; and Nixon created, among other things, the EPA and OSHA.

Now we have a host of federal and state agencies, along with researchers and their universities imposing their views on society without regard to the impact of their actions. Yet we have to ask; what terrible thing happened to impose these kinds of costs and to give state and federal bureaucrats the authority to overturn the protections under the fourth amendment against unlawful search and seizure and self-incrimination under the fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution?

I did the research and found that this was fought up to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) and it was decided that in these cases state and federal bureaucrats, and their regulations, usurp the protections “guaranteed” by the Constitution. What regulation passed by any regulator to make society safer was not already covered under criminal and civil penalties of state or federal law?

Why is it when you ask everyone if they think it is okay that they say, for the most part; yes it is necessary. Environmental paradigms have become everything! It started with Rachel Carson when she wrote Silent Spring in 1962. Her book, which was lauded and continues to be lauded, launched the modern environmental movement. Yet, almost everything she touted in her book was conjecture, prediction or lies.

Her book was never peer reviewed because it didn’t start out as a published book. I started out as excerpted installments in New Yorker magazine. That presentation was so popular the book followed, and when you read her work you can understand why.  She was a magnificent writer. I have been re-reading Silent Spring and I am now amazed at how poor her science was, in spite of the fact that her acolytes praise her as a scientist unendingly.

Her work was not science because it hadn’t been peer reviewed before publication. When it was, after the fact, it was discovered that everything she predicted failed to come true and in at least one case she knowingly and deliberately misrepresented the facts. Her book is full of anecdotal evidence (stories), which may or may not have been true, but there was no way to check it because she didn’t footnote source information for these stories. That isn’t science! She became the Mother Superior of the green movement, but in reality she was the mother of junk science.

Ultimately, this book was the justification for the formation of EPA by Richard Nixon, with the primary purpose of eliminating DDT. Everything you know about DDT is a lie. Yet the regulations and impositions continue! Now we have Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) imposing their will and jumping on the “funding” bandwagon.

In 1790 the fledgling U.S. Federal government passed the Whiskey Tax. The result was that in 1792 they had armed rebellion that President George Washington had to put down with the Federal army. Who were the biggest supporters of this bill? The whiskey distillers in the large cities! Why? Because this would give them the competitive edge they needed over the backwoods farmers who made moonshine, which was easier to transport into the towns than corn was. Far more profitable too!

Apparently having all these government imposed regulators and regulatory agencies aren’t enough to satisfy large industry. We now have regulators for hire who are just like bureaucrats; they need activity to give the impression of accomplishment. And what is the only activity we can expect from a regulator? More regulations! And more regulations and taxes put the largest companies in a position that will allow them to avoid real competition.

 Just as was the case with the Whiskey Act. Large companies and corporation love regulations and taxes. That is why they support all sorts of greenie nonsense because they believe they will profit from it and believe they will still survive, even if it is in some other form. But what about the consequences to society for adopting regulations that will restrict pesticides and pesticides applications to humanities detriment? That is the problem. These people never have to pay the consequences for their actions.

In order to generate some heterodoxy, I have four questions I would like to ask.

1. What terrible event or series of terrible events took place that would justify a SCOTUS decision that would give bureaucrats and government agencies the right to ignore the rights guaranteed under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution against illegal search and seizure and self incrimination?
2. What civil and criminal penalties in state and federal pesticide laws administrated by state and federal agencies were not already covered under criminal and civil law?
3. Have we been lied to regarding the need for all these regulations?
4. Will there ever be enough regulations?

The United States Constitution created three branches of government consisting of the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial branches. The result of all of these regulations is that there are now actually four branches of the United States government; now we have the Bureaucracy.  After the laws are passed these people are the ones who make the rules, they change the rules, they make all the decisions as to how the laws that are passed are to be interpreted; and without consequence. Why? They never have to answer for their actions.

They were not chosen by the people; they went to college, took a test and got hired. Most of them never have done anything except go to school and go into government, which we call “public service”!

How is it that those who create jobs, meet the payrolls and create the economy that we all enjoy aren’t considered public servants, but those who do nothing except undermine those who do are?

Why in the world would we think these people could possibly have any special insights as to how the economy or anything else should work? I find it interesting that in 1900 “government spending at all levels (local, state, and federal) represented 7.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Out of that amount 66 percent occurred at the local and state levels. Local government spent 55 percent, state government spent 11 percent, and the federal government spent the remaining 34 percent.”

Did it occur to anyone to ask; do we really need all these rules and regulations? Did it occur to anyone to ask; what would happen if these bureaucracies were eliminated and these people were fired?

 Comments will not be accepted that are rude, crude, stupid or smarmy. Nor will I allow ad hominem attacks or comments from anyone who is "Anonymous”, even if they are positive!

The 2019 Unconstitutionality Index: 12 Federal Agency Rules for Every Law Congress Passes

Clyde Wayne Crews • December 31, 2018

Even in an administration attempting to cut regulation, the number of rules from hundreds of federal agencies (nobody really knows exactly how many) will vastly outstrip the number of laws that Congress passes. That represents the triumph of the Administrative State over the Constitution, and this it even holds under President Trump.

The year 2018 and the 115th Congress have drawn to a close, so let’s look at Trump’s second calendar year.

The 116th Congress gets underway The 116th Congress gets underway January 3, 2019, in the wake of the Trump administration’s touting notable regulatory rollback achievements in a 2018 Regulatory Reform Status Report on the adminstration’s “one-in, two-out” goals for regulation. It’s available on the Unified Agenda web page, although it must be said that it becomes harder over time, for a president acting alone, to streamline anything. ..............As 2018 wound down, the Federal Register ended at 68,082 pages. Within those pages, agencies issued a total of 3,367 rules..........To Read More....

State Law, the Constitution and Your Rights!

By Rich Kozlovich

Forty years ago I was working for a construction company who was building what at that time was the largest coal fired power plant in the world, and safety was a major issue. I got to know the people from the Safety Department, which of course dealt with OSHA regulations, all of which I found more than a little interesting, and I kept paying attention to this issue as a result.

Around that time there was a factory in Washington state OSHA wanted to inspect and the company refused stating if they didn’t have a warrant they weren’t coming in. Of course, OSHA went after them in court – but here’s the rub – the company won. The company claimed their biggest problem was to pay for the legal fees.

Around twenty years ago I wanted to do a piece on what I consider violations of the 4th and 5th amendments of the Constitution regarding what seemed to me to be clearly unconstitutional searches by state government agencies. I spent hours looking for the case in Washington state, but I couldn’t find it, so all I’ve said on that is from memory, but that case was the foundation for my thoughts on this issue of illegal search and seizure of legitimate businesses property by overreaching, out of control government agencies.

Yesterday I received a “For Immediate Publication” press release from the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law entitled, Sixth Circuit Victory: State Cannot Inspect Ohioans' BusinessesRecords Without Warrant.

This started around four years ago dealing with a company dealing in precious metals, which falls under the Precious Metals Dealers Act ("PMDA"). This gave state authorities the “right” to ignore 4th amendment rights, by demanding “all books, forms, records, and all other sources of information with regard to the business shall at all times be available to inspection”. Furthermore, the statute gave the state “free access to the books and papers and other sources of information with regard to the business”, and that information shall “be open to the police upon demand.” They further demand: businesses at the end of the business day are be required to fax business records for that day to the police.”

I don’t know about everyone else, but to me those must be considered, “conveniently worded “writs of assistance”’,  just as were the King of England’s.  Statutes such as the one fought in court in this case couldn’t be considered anything less than “conveniently worded” rights of search and seizure that were extremely broad and general in scope, giving “broad powers” to state agents by any rational definition. Later we will see why that’s important.

Drug dealers, murders, and thieves would have their cases thrown out of court if they were dealt with in this manner, but legitimate businesses apparently have somewhere between less rights and no rights against illegal search and seizure.

Before we discuss the 4th amendment let’s discuss the Bill of Rights.

The Ten Amendments were adopted in 1791 for two reasons, the Constitution, as originally written, really didn’t have individual rights protections, and many in the States felt changes were required to the Constitution to guarantee those protections became rights, and to prevent the federal government from becoming all powerful and forgetting the government was the employee – and the people were the employer.

It was clear the Constitution didn’t address one of the major issues which prompted the Revolution - Search and Seizure by the King’s representatives. The Founding Fathers rightly believed there was no freedom if the government could march into your home and search and seize whatever they found. That principle wasn’t unique to America during the 1700’s. This is a foundational principle in English history as first outlined in 1604 by Sir Edward Coke who said:

“The house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defense against injury and violence as for his repose.

The English government used revenue collection bills to steal as much from the colonists as possible. The colonists resented it and did everything in their power to overcome those laws through smuggling. In short, this became an extortion racket imposed on the American colonists by an all powerful central government.

The Boston Tea Party was not about the tax on tea. The British East India company was going broke, but they had tons of tea rotting on the docks of England, so it was decided to send it to America and sell it cheaply. So cheaply that even with the tax on the tea it would be sold more cheaply than could the smugglers. First, this would save the British East India Company, and secondly, this would get Americans used to paying the tax. John Hancock was the primary instigator of the Boston Tea Party – he was also a major player in the smuggling racket.

So, to overcome this the King decided to create “conveniently worded “writs of assistance”’, which gave his agents broad powers to “enter someone’s property or home with no notice and without any reason. Agents could interrogate anyone about their use of customer goods and force cooperation of any person. These types of searches and seizures became an egregious affront to the people of the colonies.”

That’s one of the things the Revolution was about, as a result the Founders saw the need for a 4th amendment to prevent the Federal government from imposing the same kind of tyranny as did the British government.

The 4th Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

We also have to understand everything in the Constitution only applied to preventing the Federal government from abusing our rights – it didn’t prevent the states from doing so. The word State didn’t mean “province” in that time frame – it meant an independent nation, and those States had their own Constitutions that allowed for things we would be outraged at today. That changed with the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments saying:

The 14th Amendment: No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The reasoning and actions of the Founding Fathers for a 4th Amendment were sound then, and are sound today, and based on a rock like foundation - the preservation of freedom. When we become uninterested in maintaining those rights we’re adopting a dangerous course to tyranny, which parleys well with the 5th amendment against self-incrimination.

Here’s the information from “the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law took up the case in 2012 on behalf of Liberty Coins, a coin dealer of Delaware, Ohio, and Worthington Jewelers, a retail jeweler in Worthington, Ohio. Each balked at the prospect of losing their business licenses and being fined and prosecuted for refusing to turn over cell phones, laptops, and paper records simply "upon demand" of state enforcement agents.”

According to the press release, the decision of the court is explained as follows:

"Business owners cannot be forced to choose between being arrested on the spot and standing on their Fourth Amendment rights." "[The challenged statutes] are both unnecessary to furthering Ohio's state interest and too broad in scope to withstand facial Fourth Amendment scrutiny . . . both statutes effectively allow searches of dealers' entire businesses . . . They therefore do not provide any standards to guide inspectors in the exercise of their authority to search." "The provisions' seemingly unlimited scope, along with the grant of free access to such information at all times, does not sufficiently constrain the discretion of the inspectors."

"This ruling essentially affirms that while government may request some basic record-keeping, reporting, and inspection of inventory purchased from the public that has been reported stolen, state officials cannot walk into a business without a warrant or evidence of wrong-doing and demand to review our papers, cell phones, laptops, or other business records," said Maurice Thompson, Executive Director of the 1851 Center. "No entrepreneur deserves to be arrested for questioning the authority of a state agent to show up at his business unannounced, without any evidence of wrongdoing, and confiscate or filter through these records."

Maurice Thompson of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law added, "This precedent will guard warrantless searches of business records in all industries, since the Court of Appeals decision acknowledged that even 'closely regulated' industries are entitled to greater protection. Ohioans should feel free to decline invasive and costly government searches without fear of retaliation."

He further stated, "This precedent will guard warrantless searches of business records in all industries, since the Court of Appeals decision acknowledged that even 'closely regulated' industries are entitled to greater protection. Ohioans should feel free to decline invasive and costly government searches without fear of retaliation.

The pesticide and fertilizer industries of Ohio have had a very good working relationship with the Ohio Department of Agriculture, a relationship other states envy.  We like that relationship, and have no desire to upset it, but decisions are going to have to be made, and those decisions cannot be based on industry policy.  This is no longer a policy issue - it's a matter of law! 

Will this be appealed to the Supreme Court, and if so how will they rule?  I don't know since the Supreme Court has ruled against 4th amendment protections regarding FISA searches, but those are national security issues involving foreign entities.  This is a domestic issue - and I think they would affirm this decision since it's patently obvious these kinds of 4th Amendment violations aren't much different that the extortion racket the King of England imposed on the American colonies. 

It's time to "Drain the Swamp".  We now have a window of opportunity - let's take advantage of if before it closes, maybe forever!