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    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.: A New Nuremberg Moment

    A New Nuremberg Moment

    In particular, Americans are now confronted with the possibility that Mr. Obama, as the putative “President of the United States” and “Commander in Chief”, may seek the authorization or other approval of Congress for an order directing American Armed Forces to launch some kind of attack against Syria—but also that, based upon his supposedly inherent and independent “war powers” as “Commander in Chief”, he may order such an attack, whether Congress approves or not, or even if Congress specifically disapproves...



    A NEW NUREMBERG MOMENT
    PART 1 of 2
    NewsWithViews.com

    Mark Twain reputedly quipped that, although History does not repeat itself, it often rhymes. Such is surely the situation today. Everything that transpires within the Disgrace of Columbia seems in an uncanny manner to echo what transpired during the late 1930s—albeit in Germany, not the United States.

    In particular, Americans are now confronted with the possibility that Mr. Obama, as the putative “President of the United States” and “Commander in Chief”, may seek the authorization or other approval of Congress for an order directing American Armed Forces to launch some kind of attack against Syria—but also that, based upon his supposedly inherent and independent “war powers” as “Commander in Chief”, he may order such an attack, whether Congress approves or not, or even if Congress specifically disapproves.

    To describe Mr. Obama’s position as “absurd” would be to exercise the greatest excess of Christian charity. For it does not rise to the level of absurdity. To demonstrate this, one need merely ask, “To exactly what ‘war powers’ independent of Congress does Mr. Obama refer?” As usual in such inquiries, the answer is to be found in the Constitution.

    I. Under pre-constitutional Anglo-American imperial law (which, of course, applied in full force to the American Colonists), the King—not Parliament—enjoyed “the sole prerogative of making war and peace”; acted “as the generalissimo, or the first in military command, within the kingdom”; and exercised “the sole power of raising and regulating fleets and armies”, and “the sole supreme government and command of the militia”.[1] But other than the office of “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States”,[2] the Constitution explicitly denies the President—the executive in the American Republic analogous to the King in the British Monarchy—all of this authority, and assigns it instead exclusively to Congress:
    “[T]he [King’s] sole prerogative of making war and peace” became the Congressional power “[t]o declare War”,[3] so that “[t]he Constitution * * * invests the President, as Commander in Chief, with the power to wage warwhich Congress has declared” and nothing else.[4]
    “[T]he [King’s] sole power of raising and regulating fleets and armies” became the Congressional powers “[t]o raise and support Armies”,[5]“[t]o provide and maintain a Navy”,[6] and “[t]o make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces”.[7] And
    “[T]he [King’s] sole supreme government * * * of the militia” became the Congressional powers “[t]o provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions”,[8] and “[t]o provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States”.[9]
    Thus, rather than constituting some all-embracing authority that elevates the President to the level of a Führer over the United States as a whole, but absolves him of responsibility to anyone other than himself—and overall renders somehow irrelevant Congress’s powers “[t]o declare War” and so on—the office of “Commander in Chief” amounts to merely the thinnest residue of the prerogatives the British King enjoyed:
    The President is “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States”[10]—but is always subject to the power of Congress “[t]o make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces”.[11] (And Congress, of course, can make no such “Rules” that violate the Constitution.)
    The President is “Commander in Chief * * * of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States”[12]—but is always subject to the power of Congress “[t]o provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States”.[13] And the President may take up his authority with respect to the Militia (such as it may be) only after Congress has exercised its power “[t]o provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions”,[14] and only on the terms which Congress sets out in its exercise of that power.
    The President is “Commander in Chief” of nothing else—for the simple and unanswerable reason that the Constitution says so. After all, the “powers actually granted [by the Constitution to any branch of the General Government] must be such as are expressly given, or given by necessary implication”.[15]“[T]he President * * * possess[es] no power not derived from the Constitution.”[16] Consequently, “powers not granted [to the President] are prohibited”.[17] Inclusio unius exclusio alterius—no matter what the neo-conservatives and neo-Nazis in the General Government, in the big “mainstream” media, and in influential and subversive pressure-groups (both domestic and foreign) may claim to the contrary. And, overall,
    In fulfillment of his “Oath or Affirmation” “‘that [he] will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of [his] Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States’”,[18] and as part of his duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”,[19] the President must conform to each and every one of these limitations on his office.

    Thus, on the very face of the Constitution, the term “Commander in Chief” is not a separate, independent, and expansive status to the boundaries of which no clear limits can be assigned, other than the will of the President himself . To the contrary. That the term “Commander in Chief” is followed by the phrases “of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States” belies any such theory. For those are phrases of delineation, definition, and therefore delimitation. First, Congress might provide the President with no Army or Navy over which he could posture as “Commander in Chief” to any degree whatsoever. And Congress might provide for “calling forth the Militia” on terms so unusual, narrow, and strict that they would hardly ever be “call[ed] forth” to “be employed in the Service of the United States” (as opposed to performing services for their own States)—and, when they were, they might be “call[ed] forth” only on the authority of someone other than the President. Second, even if Congress does provide an Army and Navy, and does provide for “calling forth the Militia” on more than an extremely rare basis, the President remains bound at all times and for all purposes by the rules Congress promulgates for the governance of those institutions. Ex necessitate those rules will determine—and therefore will limit—the authority of the President as “Commander in Chief”. Obviously, no one in the Army, Navy, or Militia may follow any purported “order” of the President which contravenes the very rules upon which the Army and Navy are founded, and upon which the Militia operate when “in the actual Service of the United States”.

    Self-evidently, the Founding Fathers did not engage in this radical departure from Anglo-American legal tradition simply for the sake of novelty or sport. For “[i]t cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect”.[20] Rather, the Founders sought to insure that the determination for or against “War”—on which decision the lives, or deaths, of countless citizens and even of the Nation as a whole might depend—should always remain in the hands of a large, diverse body of legislators who would serve as “checks and balances” on each other, not in the hands of a single executive officer who could even prove to be psychologically unbalanced.

    Plainly, too, Congress may not delegate, let alone abdicate, to the President any part (let alone the entirety) of the powers “[t]o declare War”, “[t]o raise and support Armies”, “[t]o provide and maintain a Navy”, “[t]o provide for calling forth the Militia”, “[t]o provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia”, “[t]o make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces”, “[t]o provide * * * for governing such Part of the[ Militia] as may be employed in the Service of the United States”, or “[t]o make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers”.[21] First, in general, by their very placement in the Constitution these powers are “legislative Powers * * * vested in * * * Congress”, not “executive Power * * * vested in [the] President”.[22] And “[t]hat Congress cannot delegate legislative power to the President is a principle universally recognized as vital to the integrity and maintenance of the system of government ordained by the Constitution”.[23] Second, and even more decisively, Congress may not delegate any of those particular powers to the President, because that would reverse WE THE PEOPLE’S specific determination—consciously made in the face of and directly contrary to centuries of pre-constitutional Anglo-American law—to remove these powers from executive jurisdiction and transfer them to the legislative domain.

    II. In addition to the foregoing limitations, even Congress cannot authorize aggression by the United States against any other country. The Declaration of Independence establishes that all of America’s political and legal institutions are founded upon “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”, and upon no others. Under those “Laws”, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers”—and only “just powers”—“from the consent of the governed”. Even WE THE PEOPLE themselves, the highest source of all earthly powers, cannot delegated “unjust powers” to their government. The first principle of war under “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” is that, to be legitimate—morally, politically, and legally—a war must be a “just war”. That is, to be a “just power”, “the war power” must be exercised solely forjust purposes: that is, purposes consistent with “justice”. The Preamble to the Constitution incorporates this understanding when it conjoins the two purposes: to “establish Justice” and to “provide for the common defence”. The first principle of a “just war” is that it can never be waged for purposes of aggression, but only for defense.[24] So, inasmuch as the Preamble controls the interpretation and application of all of the powers set out in the body of the Constitution,[25] it cannot be doubted that “the genius and character of our institutions are peaceful, and the power to declare war was not conferred upon Congress for the purposes of aggression or aggrandizement”.[26]

    No one can demonstrate that, under present circumstances, an attack upon Syria by the Armed Forces of the United States—unprovoked by anything that Syria has done or threatens to do to this country in the way of aggression—has any rational relationship to “the common defence” of America.

    III. Congress cannot authorize interference in the internal affairs of any other nation that do not directly, imminently, and adversely affect the United States, such that they both in fact and law provide the moral, political, and especially legal basis for self-defense. The Declaration of Independence asserted on behalf of the American people their right “to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them”. This “separate and equal station” was not a status to which Americans alone were then, or are now, so “entitle[d]”. All peoples all over the world can rightfully claim it for themselves. So, if today Congress supposedly enjoys a power to act as “a world policeman”, denying “the separate and equal station” of other nations, exactly where is that authority to be found in the Declaration of Independence? Nowhere. Where is any power through which Congress could so impose upon the rest of the world to be discovered in the Constitution? Again, nowhere. And if the proponents of such a constitutional power assert that it does exist—notwithstanding any such power’s patent contradiction of the Declaration of Independence—they need to point it out, word for word. For “[t]he burden of establishing a delegation of power to the United States * * * is upon those making the claim.”[27] For part two click below.

    Click here for part -----> 2,

    © 2013 Edwin Vieira, Jr. - All Rights Reserved

    Footnotes:
    1. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Robert Bell, American Edition, 4 Volumes & Appendix, 1771-1773), Volume 1, at 257, 262.
    2. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 1.
    3. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 11.
    4. Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 26 (1942) (emphasis supplied).
    5. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 12.
    6. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 13.
    7. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 14.
    8. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 15.
    9. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 16.
    10. U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 1.
    11. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cls. 14 and 18.
    12. U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 1.
    13. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cls. 16 and 18.
    14. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cls. 15 and 18.
    15. Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 14 U.S. (1 Wheaton) 304, 326 (1816). Accord, McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 405 (1819).
    16. Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 25 (1942).
    17. United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1, 68 (1936).
    18. U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 7.
    19. U.S. Const. art. II, § 3.20. Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 174 (1803).21. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cls. 12, 13, 15, 16, 14, 16, and 18.
    22. Compare and contrast U.S. Const. art. I, §§ 1 and 8 with art. II, § 1, cl. 1.23. Marshall Field & Company v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 692 (1892). See, e.g., Panama Refining Company v. Ryan, 293 U.S. 388 (1935).24. See generally, e.g., Neo-CONNED! Just War Principles: A Condemnation of the War in Iraq. Asserting the traditional, Christian just war doctrine against the neoconservative caricature that masks violence and aggression, D.L. O’Huallachain & J. Forrest Sharpe, Editors (Vienna, Virginia: IHS Press, 2005), Chapters 11 and 14.
    25, See, e.g., Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheaton) 1, 187-189 (1824); Rhode Island v. Massachusetts, 37 U.S. (12 Peters) 657, 730-731 (1838 ).
    26, Fleming v. Page, 50 U.S. (9 Howard) 603, 614 (1850).
    27, Bute v. Illinois, 333 U.S. 640, 653 (1948 ).
    28, E.g., Doe v. Braden, 57 U.S. (16 Howard) 635, 657 (1853); The Cherokee Tobacco, 78 U.S. (11 Wallace) 616, 620-621 (1871); Holden v. Joy, 84 U.S. (17 Wallace) 211, 243 (1872); Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U.S. 258, 267 (1890); United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 701 (1898 ); Asakura v. City of Seattle, 265 U.S. 332, 341 (1924); United States v. Minnesota, 270 U.S. 181, 208 (1926); Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 16-18 (1957) (opinion of Black, J., announcing the judgment).
    29, See U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 8.
    30, These are available on the Internet.
    31, See U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 4.
    32, See, e.g., Joachim Hoffman, Stalin’s War of Extermination, 1941-1945 (Capshaw, Alabama: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2001).
    33, 18 U.S.C. § 241.
    34, 18 U.S.C. § 242.
    35, 18 U.S.C. § 17.


    Edwin Vieira, Jr., holds four degrees from Harvard: A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School).

    For more than thirty years he has practiced law, with emphasis on constitutional issues. In the Supreme Court of the United States he successfully argued or briefed the cases leading to the landmark decisions Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, and Communications Workers of America v. Beck, which established constitutional and statutory limitations on the uses to which labor unions, in both the private and the public sectors, may apply fees extracted from nonunion workers as a condition of their employment.

    He has written numerous monographs and articles in scholarly journals, and lectured throughout the county. His most recent work on money and banking is the two-volume Pieces of Eight: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution (2002), the most comprehensive study in existence of American monetary law and history viewed from a constitutional perspective. www.piecesofeight.us

    He is also the co-author (under a nom de plume) of the political novelCRA$HMAKER: A Federal Affaire (2000), a not-so-fictional story of an engineered crash of the Federal Reserve System, and the political upheaval it causes. www.crashmaker.com

    His latest book is: "How To Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary" ... andConstitutional "Homeland Security," Volume One, The Nation in Arms...

    He can be reached at his new address:

    52 Stonegate Court

    Front Royal, VA 22630.

    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  2. #2
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    A NEW NUREMBERG MOMENT
    PART 1 of 2
    NewsWithViews.com

    III. Although at this point in time Mr. Obama does not seem likely to receive any approbation from the United Nations to launch an act of aggression against Syria, explicit approval from the UN would be of no consequence in any event. The adhesion of the United States to the UN is merely the product of a treaty. And no treaty can add to, subtract from, or qualify the powers of either the General Government or the States, let alone the limitations on those powers, nor deprive WE THE PEOPLE of any of their rights, set out in the Constitution.[28] The UN can no more authorize the General Government to engage in aggression than it can authorize Congress to crown a King—or install a Führer—and infuse him with the unilateral power to wage war.[29]And, of course, no treaty can override the Declaration of Independence, let alone the principles of government set out therein, which derive not from any merely human law but instead from “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”, which are absolutely superior to all human laws. Indeed, if the UN put forward a resolution in the Security Council purporting to authorize—or, worse yet, to command—the United States to attack Syria, it would be the duty of the United States to veto that resolution (and, one would hope, to consider immediately terminating this country’s participation in that body).

    IV. The truly shocking aspect of the present situation lies in the parallels that can be drawn between it and the context of the Nuremberg Trials. The record of those proceedings is contained in a set of volumes entitled, appropriately,Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression.[30] The theory of the prosecution—which, of course, resulted in convictions of the leading Nazis hauled before the tribunal—was that, although the Nazi Party was in many respects a political institution legitimate under German law, it was also (and perhaps primarily) a conspiratorial, even criminal, enterprise—because its ultimate aim was to seize power in Germany, pervert that power to its own purposes, and under color of that perverted power to wage a series of aggressive wars against other nations in order to advance the Nazis’ illegitimate political and economic interests. On several key points, the present situation in the United States is arguably worse than the situation in Germany which led to Nuremberg.

    (1) As monstrous as he proved to be, originally Adolf Hitler was legitimatelyelevated to the status of Chancellor of Germany, and thereafter waslegitimately granted the powers which he later abused to the terror of the world. Although he has adopted and is carrying out at least one policy as criminal and despicable as Hitler’s—that is, “official assassinations” (discussed in my previous NewsWithViews commentaries entitled “Death Squads” and “Where Is the Outrage?”)—as a general matter Mr. Obama may actually enjoy less legitimacy than did Hitler. For he (Obama) may in fact and law not be “eligible to the Office of President” at all, because he is not “a natural born Citizen”;[31] whereas, in contrast, Hitler, although a native Austrian, was eligible for the office of Chancellor of Germany.

    Of course, not being privy to all of the important details, I take no hard and fast position on Mr. Obama’s eligibility
    vel non. But the undeniable fact remains that, although the issue of his ineligibility is not only notorious but also of critical political and legal importance for myriad reasons, he and his apologists have refused to present for public scrutiny the key documentation—in its original, unexpurgated, and undoctored form—which could settle the matter once and for all. As this evidence is under their control, and its contents presumably known to them, the only reasonable conclusion which one can draw from their reluctance to make full disclosure is that such disclosure would not support the claim that Mr. Obama is actually “eligible to the Office of President”. Thus, America is confronted with the fantastic assertion that an individual arguably not “eligible to the Office of President” at all may nevertheless exercise powers beyond those which that “Office” extends to an individual actually “eligible” for it. This is usurpation to the second power, of which even Hitler was not guilty.

    (2) To excuse his invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler claimed to have launched a necessary “preventive war” or “preëmptive strike”. And a not insignificant body of evidence tends to support the thesis that Stalin was, indeed, deploying his own massive forces near the frontier in preparation for a sneak attack on Germany sometime in late 1941 or early 1942, and that Hitler simply beat him to the punch.[32] Nonetheless, Hitler’s rationale has never been treated as a justification for his actions. Ironically, not even Mr. Obama himself has worked up the nerve to claim that Syria is preparing to attack the United States with nerve gas (or in any other fashion). Apparently, the Syrian régime has been nervy enough to try to resist the puppet forces Mr. Obama has unleashed against Syria, and which his mouthpieces describe as “freedom fighters” when they are obviously little more than hired “terrorists”. But an act of self-defense by Syria within her own borders can hardly qualify as an act of aggression against the United States, unless any resistance by any country to armed neo-imperialism emanating from the Disgrace of Columbia is an act of “aggression” on the victim’s part.

    (3) Hitler explained his attack on Stalin’s Russia as aimed at overthrowing the center of world Bolshevism. Even if one discounts that theory notwithstanding Hitler’s evident sincerity in making it, no one can deny that Stalin was one of the worst, if not absolutely the worst of all, tyrants of the Twentieth Century (or perhaps of any other century); and that, if any tyrant ever deserved to be overthrown by force of arms, he did. (Moreover, Stalin was hardly an innocent bystander in the events leading up to World War II. Had it not been for the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, through which Hitler and Stalin agreed to attack and dismember Poland, the war might not have broken out in 1939, or perhaps at all.) Yet, after Hitler was defeated, the world refused to accept the Nazis’ plea that his crusade against Stalinist Bolshevism justified the German attack on Russia.

    If the present “Obama doctrine”—which in all fairness cannot be attributed to him alone, as it finds its antecedents in the same line of aberrant special pleading put forward by both the real Presidents Clinton and Bush—were generalized so as to apply to all nations, most nations could attack the United States just as “rightfully” as the United States could attack Syria. Indeed, they would be even more justified in doing so, because of the peculiar status of Mr. Obama himself. If Mr. Obama is actually not “eligible to the Office of President”, he is an usurper on that score alone.

    No country should be forced to tolerate an usurper in its highest national office. Certainly that crime is as serious as any which Mr. Obama attributes to the régime in Syria. In addition, as the faux “President” and “Commander in Chief”, Mr. Obama is usurping the utterly nonexistent power of a real President to deploy the Armed Forces of the United States for the purposes of aggression whenever he “draws a line in the sand”. This threatens, not only all Americans, and not only the Syrians, but all peoples everywhere who somehow might arouse Mr. Obama’s ire. He has already done incalculable damage in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and so on (just as Clinton did in the Balkans and Bush in Iraq). He baits and bristles at Iran openly. He threatens Russia and China, albeit more subtly. So those countries—and for that matter the rest of the world, confronted as it is by the rabid “dogs of war” howling in the Disgrace of Columbia—have even more “right” to intervene here than Mr. Obama has to intervene anywhere. Indeed, they could justifiably demand, not necessarily “régime change”, but instead simply “régime clarification”: namely, Who is “Barack Obama”? What rightful claim does he have to be eligible for “the Office of President” as a “natural born Citizen”? What rightful claim does he or anyone else have to deploy the Armed Forces of the United States against other nations which pose no imminent threat to America? And who in official positions in the General Government is covering up his masquerade, and for what reasons? One must wonder why Vladimir Putin—who, with masterly understatement, recently described as “utter nonsense” Mr. Obama’s claims concerning the Syrian régime’s alleged use of poison gas—has not raised these obvious and telling objections to the Obama régime and the American “war party” as a whole.

    V. In order to solve these problems, Americans should not have to depend upon intervention by foreigners or the invocation of so-called “international law”. This country’s present body of domestic law—both constitutional and statutory—is quite adequate for that purpose. For instance, assume arguendothat Mr. Obama and his shadowy “advisors”, henchmen, and hangers-on decide to attack Syria. To that end, Mr. Obama orders to the Eastern Mediterranean American military and naval personnel stationed within some part of the United States. He then orders these personnel to conduct military strikes against Syria. As with most orders of this type, these are enforced by the at least implicit threat of court-martial (and probably the explicit threat, too, as more and more service personnel are starting seriously to questionunder what authority they can be dragooned into such foreign military adventures). In the course of these attacks, some (yea, far too many) American servicemen suffer bodily injury or are killed.

    What has come before in this commentary should convince any Grand Juror that, as hypothesized, this entire operation reeks of the most fetid aggression imaginable. No American can be ordered under color of law—whether civilian or military—to commit aggression. Therefore, these orders, enforced by the threat of court-martial, violated the affected service personnel’s constitutional and statutory rights, all of which are “civil rights” in the full legal sense. The first and primarily causative link in the chain of illegal activities was forged in the United States when the affected personnel received their illegal orders to deploy. So this case comes squarely within the statutes which provide that:

    If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States * * * —

    They shall be fined * * * or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section * * * , they shall be fined * * * or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.[33]

    Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States * * * shall be fined * * * or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section * * * shall be fined * * * or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section * * * shall be fined * * * or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or shall be sentenced to death.[34]

    Observe that the phrase “under color of law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom” in the second of these statutes would cover both: (i) usurpers with a claim to the office but no claim to the particular power they purported to exercise; and (ii) usurpers not only with no claim to the particular power they purported to exercise but also with no claim to the office they purported to occupy under falsified credentials. In the latter case their misbehavior would be doubly wrongful (although they could be penalized only once for each offense). Moreover, observe that not one of these defendants—whether an usurper in an unitary sense or in a dual sense—would need to be “impeached” before he could be indicted and tried.

    The readers of this commentary can easily draw up their own lists of likely defendants, starting at the White House, and then proceeding to the Capitol, to the Pentagon, to the big “mainstream media”—and finally to the powerful lobbying groups, both domestic and foreign, which hatched these criminal policies and then put them into effect through the wiles of political ventriloquism. Of course, these malefactors would be suffered to proffer a defense. That is the American way of “due process of law”. Maybe they could successfully assert the insanity defense: namely, that, “as a result of a severe mental disease or defect, [they] w[ere] unable to appreciate the nature and quality of the wrongfulness of [their] acts”.
    [35] Then again, maybe not. But they should be given the opportunity to try. America and the world deserve as much.

    VI.
    If the “civil-rights laws” quoted above had existed in Germany in the late 1930s, and the German people could have enforced them, how long would Hitler and his crowd have lasted? Der Führer’s tenure in office might have been counted in mere months, not years; and the damage he could have inflicted upon Germany and throughout Europe would have been largely forefended. Unfortunately for them, Germans in that day were not armed with such laws (or with a constitution which properly limited the powers of their central government).

    Today, in the United States, these laws exist (and have existed for more than a century). Yet “the war party” has succeeded in dragging this country into one foreign military adventure after another, none of them covered with even a fig-leaf of constitutional respectability. New Nuremberg Trials are not being held. Indictments are not being had. No one is even calling for them. (Well, almost no one.) Although Americans have the inestimable advantage of actually possessing the Constitution and laws of a free country, they are no more living in such a country than did the Germans under the Nazis—and next to no one, including most self-styled “constitutionalists” and “patriots”, seems to want to do anything about it other than to bemoan the state of affairs which has beset this country.

    Now why is that? It is because WE THE PEOPLE do not control this country as a matter of fact, although they certainly still do as a matter of law. WE THE PEOPLE do not control this country in fact, because they do not dispose of the institutions the Constitution itself tells them are “necessary to the security of a free State”. I shall refrain from identifying these institutions by reference to “the M word”, lest some readers who have been thoroughly conditioned by a certain “poverty” law center should lose control of their bodily functions and be forced to run out to purchase a jumbo-sized box of industrial-strength adult underwear upon which they can depend for protection. Yet, although I should be the last person to denigrate the fundamental individual right of the sheeple to keep and wear diapers (political or otherwise), which seems to be gaining favor amongst timid “constitutionalists” and “patriots” at an ever-accelerating rate, I must assert my doubts that denying the Constitution will ever prove to be an effective way to defend it.

    No one who views the present situation through clear eyes can come to any conclusion other than this country is confronted by a new “Nuremberg moment”. The last time, Americans were among the prosecutors. This time, unless they cast aside their fear, indifference, and sloth, the American people themselves will be the ones History indicts.
    © 2013 Edwin Vieira, Jr. - All Rights Reserved
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    Senior Member Airbornesapper07's Avatar
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    Thread: NUREMBERG 2.0
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