Race Hustlers Will Always be Race Hustlers

By Rich Kozlovich  

It was recently reported the WNBA players were refusing to wear the USA 250 patch for their All Star game because 250 years ago there was slavery in America.  Okay, so what? 

1. Did it ever occur to them slavery existed for thousands of years?  
2. Did it ever occur to them slavery was ubiquitous in those days, including .... watch out now... here it comes.... in Africa.....where African slavery was created by Africans and Muslim slave traders who did the enslaving and merely sold them to everyone else?  
3. Did it ever occur to them it's still going on in Africa?
4. Did it ever occur to them America was the only nation in the history of the world that went to war to end slavery costing over 600,000 lives, some even claim 700,000 lives? 

That was a massive sacrifice to end the something that should have never taken place, and while there were black soldiers who fought in the war, that massive sacrifice was a white sacrifice.  Did any of that occur to them?  If it did, would they care?  No, they wouldn't because it's all about race hustling to justify everything that goes on in black America that's vile.  Ergo, all things great and small are racist now. 

Obama cast aspersions over the Founding Fathers because so many were slave holders, but that's typical of his ignorant corrupt race hustling.   Before he became President race relations was on a upward trend, and he had a chance to really make a positive difference in race relations in America.  He chose to sink down into the race hustling sewer instead.  

Originally there was an anti-slavery clause in the Constitution… promoted by slave owner Jefferson…. as it was clear that slavery was antithetical to the freedom being promoted by the Founding Fathers, and they understood that right from the beginning, but in spite of that, the battle over slavery was a major issue that was fought over in order to get the Southern colonies to sign the Constitution. 

The abolitionist Founding Fathers realized there would be no unified nation unless they gave in to slavery. What were they afraid of?  At that time the United States wasn't really united at all and worked under the Articles of Confederation.  The central government wasn't really a government.  The states truly were independent, and what they feared was if they didn’t unite and become a real nation, they’d become like Europe with its unending wars, and a very real potential of European intervention.  Truthfully, that’s what France wanted as they were ready to set up embassies in each state.

But for Obama to cast aspersions on the Founding Fathers takes real gall. They put their lives on the line, struggled with the revolution, and in the end they accomplished something that was unique in all of the world’s history. What we know as American democratic capitalism has brought more people out of misery and suffering than any other system in world history, ultimately including the descendants of those whose ancestors were slaves.  

And then Obama, who never had a real job, and never accomplished anything that didn’t turn into crap while President, has the nerve to criticize them. 

Race hustlers will always be race hustlers because they're shake down artists and grifters like Jesse Jackson and have nothing else.  So they live by the first rule of the criminal mind:  Never give up the con.  

Woodrow Wilson’s War Against the Constitution

Woodrow Wilson rejected the Founders’ constitutional order, replacing it with expert-driven administration that still defines American government.

By  Jon Fleischman June 8, 2026

Recently, Justice Clarence Thomas used a speech at the University of Texas at Austin to remind Americans why Woodrow Wilson still matters in the fight for constitutional government. “Since Wilson’s presidency,” Thomas warned, “progressivism has made many inroads into our system of government and our way of life. It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever.” That is the right frame. Wilson did not merely fail the Constitution. He rejected its central premises—and helped build the machinery that continues to threaten the Founders’ vision of limited constitutional government.

When I survey the long parade of presidents who led this country, from giants like Washington and Lincoln to the mediocrities and failures, one man stands apart as uniquely destructive: Woodrow Wilson.

When he entered the White House in 1913, he brought unusual credentials: a doctorate from Johns Hopkins, a scholarly reputation, and experience leading Princeton University. Americans thought they were getting their first true scholar-president.

What they got instead was the worst president in American history, a man whose toxic blend of intellectual arrogance, racial prejudice, and authoritarian instincts inflicted wounds on this country that we are still trying to heal.

The Classroom Meets the Real World

Wilson’s academic background shaped everything in his presidency, sometimes for better, often for worse. He approached governing like a professor addressing a stubborn class, convinced that if he explained things clearly enough, everyone would eventually see the wisdom of his vision.

That worked in lecture halls. It failed spectacularly in the messy world of politics.  ..............To Read More 

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Legitimate Scope Of Judicial Restraints On Presidential Power -- Trump Tariffs Edition

May 30, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

In my last post a couple of days ago (May 28), I was critical of the blizzard of injunctions issued by the courts against seemingly every policy change that President Trump seeks to implement. I went so far as to call this the “opposite of democracy.” But I also noted that there are instances where judicial restraints on the executive are legitimate, most notably where the statute on which the President relies to implement a sweeping policy does not in fact grant him the authority he claims. Thus, on finding a lack of grant of authority in the statutes cited, the Supreme Court had reined in President Biden when he sought to implement policies forgiving student loans and banning fossil fuel power plants.

I ended that article by asking whether President Trump’s actions with regard to imposition of tariffs may fall into the same category of overreach as Biden’s student loan and power plant gambits. I also noted that multiple law suits had already been brought challenging the legal basis for the tariffs unilaterally imposed by the President.

It turns out that even as I was getting ready to post that essay, two different courts were about to issue thorough opinions analyzing exactly the issue of whether President Trump had sufficient statutory authority for his extensive imposition of tariffs over the past couple of months. Both concluded that he does not have such authority.

After now reading both those decisions carefully, and also reading the underlying statutes, I think that the courts are very likely correct on the question of President Trump’s lack of authority to impose tariffs unilaterally, at least in most instances where he has done so.

The two just-issued decisions are this one from the Court of International Trade, in the case of V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. United States, issued on the evening of May 28; and this one from Judge Rudolph Contreras of the District Court for the District of Columbia, in the case of Learning Resources, Inc., v. Donald J. Trump, issued the next day, May 29.

The two decisions are not short (33 pages from the D.C. District Court and 49 from the Court of International Trade), but both get quickly to the main issue: Does the language of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) grant the President the power to impose and change tariffs on his unilateral authority when he has declared a “national emergency”? The CIT quotes the relevant language of the IEEPA as follows (page 9 of their opinion):

The President may . . . (B) investigate, block during the pendency of an investigation, regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit, any acquisition, holding, withholding, use, transfer, withdrawal, transportation, importation or exportation of, or dealing in, or exercising any right, power, or privilege with respect to, or transactions involving, any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States . . . .

(Emphasis added.) Basically, Trump’s position comes down to saying that the power granted under that provision to “regulate” the “importation” of “property” includes the power to impose tariffs. But does the power to “regulate” include the power to tax, and in unlimited amounts? From Judge Contreras’s decision in the DC District Court, page 18:

IEEPA does not use the words “tariffs” or “duties,” their synonyms, or any similar terms like “customs,” “taxes,” or “imposts.” . . . There is no residual clause granting the President powers beyond those expressly listed. The only activity in the [relevant section of the IEEPA] that could plausibly encompass the power to levy tariffs is that to “regulate . . . importation.” . . . The Court agrees with Plaintiffs that the power to regulate is not the power to tax.

From the CIT opinion, page 26:

Plaintiffs are correct in the narrow sense that the imprecise term “regulate . . . importation,” under any construction that would comport with the separation-of-powers underpinnings of the nondelegation and major questions doctrines, does not authorize anything as unbounded as the Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariffs.

This does not look to me like a close question. Trump’s position is very weak. This is a very poor hill for him to choose to die on, and I hope that he will come to his senses soon (although that is not his usual method of operation).

In a post on Truth Social on May 29, Trump criticized the Court of International Trade, saying “The U.S. Court of International Trade incredibly ruled against the United States of America on desperately needed Tariffs . . . .” Whether or not the tariffs are “desperately needed,” that is not a legal argument for the President having unilateral authority to impose them.

The CIT does distinguish certain of the Trump tariffs, particularly those on steel and aluminum, from the bulk of them, which are included in its terms “Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariffs.” As to the steel and aluminum tariffs, the CIT finds authority for Trump’s actions under other statutes.

An interesting question is where these cases go from here. In both the DC District Court and the CIT, the plaintiffs asked alternatively for a preliminary injunction or summary judgment, that is, final judgment on the merits of the case. In the CIT case, the court granted summary judgment and denied the motion for preliminary injunctions as moot. In other words, that case is over, and Trump has lost. Normally, that would mean that the case would go on to the appeal process in the ordinary course, without the claims of emergency and expedited time schedules that have characterized many of the preliminary injunctions issued by other courts against Trump’s policies. However, it appears that the government sought an emergency stay from the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which was granted yesterday, at least through June 9.

Over in the D.C. District Court case, Judge Contreras granted a preliminary injunction, but issued a 14 day stay for the government to seek relief at the appellate level. Between the two cases, something is going to be happening quickly at the appellate level.

One way of looking at this situation is that these cases give the Supreme Court a clear instance where they can and should rule against the President’s actions. That may help give them the fortitude to rule in his favor in other cases where his actions are appropriate within his authority.

The Legitimate Scope Of Judicial Restraints On Presidential Authority; The Need For Politically Neutral Principles

May 28, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Now more than four months into President Trump’s second term, there have been dozens of District Court injunctions blocking policies that the new administration has sought to implement. Deportations of gang members illegally in the U.S. back to El Salvador? Enjoined! Mass firings at USAID? Enjoined! Other mass firings at 22 other agencies and departments? Enjoined! Cancellation of funding of certain grants for Harvard? Enjoined! Ending of eligibility for Harvard to participate in foreign student visa program? Enjoined! Termination of federal funding for public schools maintaining DEI programs? Enjoined! Termination of security clearances for certain prominent law firms? Enjoined! And these are just examples among many more.

It seems that whatever new policy President Trump tries to implement, it will be enjoined within days by some left wing federal judge. Professor Adrian Vermuele of Harvard in a May 23 tweet called these pervasive injunctions “basically an automatic judicial veto on all new policy.” He commented, “let’s please not call it democracy.” It’s actually the opposite of democracy: President Trump tries to implement the policies he promised to implement and that the voters elected him to implement; and the unelected judges — almost all appointed by presidents of the party that just got voted out — stop him.

But before you get too outraged about the courts (and Democrat-appointed judges) blocking President Trump’s every move, let’s not forget about a few constraints that the courts imposed on prior President Biden. If you disagree with what the courts have just done in the list of injunctions in the first paragraph of this post, you might nevertheless find yourself agreeing with some big constraints that landed on Biden. 

For example, in Biden v. Nebraska, the Supreme Court held that President Biden did not have the authority under the Higher Education Act to engage in mass forgiveness of student loans; and in West Virginia v. EPA the Supreme Court held that the Biden EPA did not have the authority under the Clean Air Act to force the closure of all electric power plants using fossil fuels. The Supreme Court justices who voted to imposed these constraints on Biden were all appointed by Republicans.

So almost everyone, left or right, would agree that the courts have at least some legitimate role in reining in overreach by the executive branch. But the cases are so politically charged that one’s view of the outcome of any given case tends to turn almost entirely on the party of the President who got blocked. Republicans cheer on the courts when they block Democratic presidents, and Democrats are currently cheering on the courts when they block President Trump. At the District Court level, both sides forum shop for a friendly judge appointed by a president of their own party when trying to block an action of a president of the opposite party.

What is badly needed here are politically neutral principles by which one can distinguish the legitimate uses of the courts’ role in restraining executive overreach from the illegitimate. Remarkably, the Supreme Court to date has not really laid down such principles to any significant extent. The reason for that is that before now cases have not come before the Court requiring it to do so. But now things are different. President Trump is challenging the rule of the permanent bureaucracy to a far greater degree than did the two Bushes, or even Reagan or Nixon.

I don’t think there’s any single easy bright-line test that can separate the legitimate from the illegitimate uses of the judicial power to rein in the president. Instead, as cases come before it, I think the Supreme Court needs to lay down a set of guidelines for the lower courts, and then enforce those guidelines via prompt reversals of lower courts that step out of line.

Here are some suggestions that I will make for some proposed politically neutral principles:

• The Constitution must be the fundamental guide star of the enterprise. Most important are the provisions that “all legislative powers . . . shall be vested” in the Congress (Article I, Section 1), “the executive powers shall be vested” in the President (Article II, Section 1), and that the President “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed” (Article II, Section 3).
• Injunctions, and particularly preliminary injunctions, to force the executive branch to do anything, should be strongly disfavored. The main function of the preliminary injunction has historically been to preserve the status quo while the case proceeds. Many of the current round of preliminary injunctions have followed the opposite of this principle, for example by forcing the government to spend money that can then never be recovered. Note that neither the Biden v. Nebraska case, nor West Virginia v. EPA, involved any injunction. Rather, the Court just stated what the law is, and expected the executive to follow it.
• There should be essentially no constraints on the President firing at will anyone in the executive branch. The alternative is that large numbers of people work in the executive branch who disagree with the President’s policies and work to undermine him. This is fundamentally at odds with the vesting of all executive power in the President, and with the President’s duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. It is also fundamentally at odds with the principle of democracy, that is, that the people get to change the government’s policies by voting in a new President promising new policies. Yes, there are many statutes purporting to protect the jobs of government employees. To the extent that the employees in question have any role in deciding or influencing policy, those statutes are unconstitutional.
• The courts should have a very limited role in forcing the President to spend money appropriated by Congress. Most appropriation statutes do not say that the President must spend the money, but just say that x dollars are made available for the program. The courts should not interfere in a President’s decision to spend less than all the money. Yes, it is different if money has been contractually committed, or if Congress has specifically directed that x dollars must be spent; but even in those cases, a new incoming President should have the ability to hold up funds on grounds that, for example, there may have been corruption that needs to be investigated.
• The role of the courts should be very limited in situations that involve the core functions of the executive branch, for example decisions on how to enforce laws (e.g., immigration laws), and decisions with respect to foreign policy.
• By contrast, an area where the courts have a very important role in keeping the executive branch in line is the area of potential usurpations of the legislative power through overreaching regulations or executive orders. This was the situation in both Biden v. Nebraska and West Virginia v. EPA, in both of which the executive branch under Biden sought to assert vast powers never granted to it by legislation.

Analogous to President Biden’s overreaching with student loan forgiveness and greenhouse gas regulations is President Trump’s overreaching with tariffs. Perhaps you are wondering how it is that President Trump asserts the authority to impose a tariff of 100% on some country one day, make it 200% the next day, then back to 50% a week later, and so forth in a series of dizzying moves. The answer is that there is something called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, enacted back in 1977. The IEEPA grants power to the President to take certain actions, including imposing tariffs, in the event of the declaration of a “national emergency.” It turned out that giving Presidents the right to declare national emergencies was an open invitation to abuse. This is from Congress’s website:

As of January 15, 2024, Presidents had declared 69 national emergencies invoking IEEPA, 39 of which are ongoing. History shows that national emergencies invoking IEEPA often last nearly a decade, although some have lasted significantly longer. . . .

Numerous cases have been brought challenging President Trump’s use of the IEEPA and so-called “national emergency” powers for his series of actions on tariffs. The forum for these cases is the US Court of International Trade. Plaintiffs in the cases include many states (both red and blue) and something called the Liberty Justice Center. Here is a report from Professor Ilya Somin of the Scalia Law School on the argument of one such case that took place on May 24. Excerpt:

Judge Restani repeatedly noted that the government's position would allow the president to declare an "emergency" for any "crazy" reason, and then impose whatever tariffs he wanted.

I have not studied the details of these cases and the wording of the statute sufficiently to have a view of how it might come out. However, I do support the idea that the courts have a real role in restraining the President from making up the “law” as he goes along, thus usurping the legislative function that is delegated only to the Congress.

 Additions:

Three Judges Blocking Trump’s Tariffs Have Decades-Long Histories of Democrat Activism -The judges on the U.S. Court of International Trade who ruled that President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs are illegal have a history of Democrat Party activism. Each of the members of the three-judge panel issuing the Wednesday ruling – which was stayed Thursday by an appeals court, allowing the tariffs to continue – fit the profile of other activists judges who continued their political activism after joining the court.

 

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. 

Is There a Constitutional Right to Castrate Children?

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

A racist, former Survivor contestant and tobacco progressive sued the president claiming that unless we castrate the kids, they’ll die. And a judge ruled in front of a courtroom full of transgender activists cheering for child mutilation that banning castration wasn’t constitutional.

Where is child castration mentioned in the Constitution?

The closest that the matter came to the attention of the Founding Fathers was when Thomas Jefferson authored a Virginia state bill punishing rape with castration. What Jefferson thought fitting for rapists, modern day members of his party believe is fitting for young children.

The progressive child castration complex may be on the wrong side of history, sanity and decency, but so long as it has enough lawyers and judges, it will go on wielding the scalpel.

Trump’s “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” executive order had temporarily ended the practice, opposed now even by most Democrats, of performing experimental, deadly and destructive transgender procedures on minors.

In the latest New York Times poll, 71% of Americans and even 54% of Democrats opposed castrating kids in the name of transgender ideology. Only 10% of Americans and only 19% of Democrats supported the extreme leftist position adopted by most Democrat politicians of performing these experimental procedures on children as young as 10 years old. (In actual practice, transgender tracking is being practiced even on toddlers.) However Attorney General Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a former devout member of the racist Nation of Islam, who had been accused of abuse by two women, Attorney General Nick Brown of Washington, a former Survivor contestant and Biden nominee, and Attorney General Dan Rayfield of Oregon, funded by tobacco money, didn’t get the memo and sued the Trump administration for the right to go on castrating kids. “If the Order stands, transgender children will die,” the three attorneys general complained. The ‘order’ being an executive order that banned castrating ‘children’ for their ideological pleasure. No child dies because he or she isn’t subjected to unnecessary surgery promoted by adults for political reasons that will leave him or her unable to have children or live a normal life. The only thing that will ‘die’ from a castration ban is the lucrative income derived by some hospitals and doctors from performing these horrifying experiments on children, and what will also die is a major ideological plank of identity politics that insists sex is entirely subjective.

And women don’t really exist.

The British government already disproved the lie that a ban on experimental castration drugs (often misleadingly described as ‘puberty blockers’) leads to a rise in suicide rates. After lies spread by transgender identity activists, a review of the data in the UK showed no such rise.

The Trump executive order follows in the footsteps of similar moves in the UK and Europe.

Despite that three AGs for castrating kids argued that, “whatever interest the federal government may have in cutting off treatment to transgender kids during the pendency of this case pales in comparison to Plaintiffs’ irreparable harm.”

The interest of the federal government is in preventing irreparable harm to kids. Delaying castration meds or other destructive procedures does not cause harm to children. Acting on them does. The only irreparable harm in transgender procedures is in their implementation.

Despite that, Judge Lauren King, a Biden nominee, claimed that preventing hospitals from castrating kids for profit won’t survive “constitutional scrutiny” to the applause of a courtroom packed with transgender activists cheering for child mutilation.

Certainly if there’s anything that James Madison and the Framers had in mind for the Constitution was that it must absolutely protect child castration. And while those words may not appear in the text, surely they’re there in a penumbra, right next to a right to kill unborn children.

According to the three attorneys general and Judge Lauren, banning the castration of children, counts as discrimination on account of sex. This is a little confusing because those same people also claim that sex doesn’t exist. Or at least it exists only in its absence. If women don’t exist, they can’t be sexually discriminated against. However transgenders do exist and thus the entire body of sexual discrimination civil rights was really meant to protect transvestites.

Certainly if there’s anything the feminist leaders of the 1960s were after, it was protecting the rights of men to go into women’s locker rooms and drive them out of professional sports.

The stupid civil rights trick employed by Judge Lauren and transgender activists is to argue that a ban on everything from castrating kids to stopping male sex offenders from raping women in prison is discrimination on account of sex. And the only way to undo discrimination on account of sex is to let male boxers beat up women and Munchausen-by-proxy mothers turn their little boys into little girls. Anything else is a civil rights violation.

But if stopping assaults on women and children is a civil rights violation, then civil rights has been inverted into a horrid monstrosity that oppresses the weak and the vulnerable.

That seems to be the only option that Democrats are giving their own voters and supporters.

Judge Lauren complained that Trump’s “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” aims at the “erasure of trans individuals”. This isn’t judicial language, it’s activist rhetoric. The lawsuit and the ruling weren’t following the law, but following identity politics.

The truth is that identity politics invented a new victim class that it is sustaining with the suffering and mutilation of children and the abuse of women. That’s why even most Democrats have turned against the transgender movement. It’s one reason some of them voted for Trump.

There is no “erasure of trans individuals”. If a group has to be manufactured by imagination and medical intervention, whose only scientific basis is heated rhetoric, it doesn’t actually exist. It’s the transgender movement that is actually dedicated to taking healthy and functioning people and using them to erase sex differences and 99% of the population of men and women.

That’s why pronouns have been inflicted on 99.99% of society, why slurs like “cishet” have been formalized to make the normal seem abnormal, and why transgender ideology continues to be inflicted in the most destructive ways on the most vulnerable members of our society.

Rather than conducting a reckoning with the damage, instead of thinking of the children they have harmed, they cry to the courts, “won’t someone think of the castrating the children”.

And the courts answer, “sharpen your scalpels”.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

Kindergarten Konstitutional Law Comes To The Southern District Of New York

February 08, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

In yesterday’s post, reviewing a Washington Post op-ed by Ruth Marcus that called efforts by the duly-elected President to direct the bureaucracy to implement his policies a “power grab” and an “onslaught against the government itself,” I described the piece as reflecting “kindergarten-level constitutional analysis.” After all, my 6 year old first-grader grandson is fully capable of reading the first sentence of Article II of the Constitution (“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”) and figuring out that this guy is given the sole and full power to direct the executive branch of the federal government. Nothing about the elected President exercising such powers is or can be a “power grab.” If you are somehow unable to grasp that simple proposition, you therefore must be at sub-first grade level of comprehension, and thus kindergarten level, at the highest.

Well, today Kindergarten Konstitutional Law came to the Southern District of New York. In response to a motion made by some 19 states (all Democrat-led), a Southern District Judge named Paul Engelmayer issued a Temporary Restraining Order preventing President Trump and Treasury Secretary Bessent from “granting access” to Treasury Department payment systems to anyone other than “civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties.” Here is a copy of Judge Engelmayer’s Order. Looking at the language of the Order that I just quoted, it seems to mean quite clearly that even President Trump and Secretary Bessent themselves are enjoined from looking at the line-by-line details of who is getting paid by the Treasury. Why? Because the information is “sensitive.” I’m not making this up.

So who is this Engelmayer guy? You will not be surprised to learn that he is someone with the highest of the high credentials of the super-elite who claim the prerogative to run the federal government outside of any democratic control. Here is a Wikipedia biography of Engelmayer. (The bio contains a prominent caveat that “a major contributor” to the bio “appears to have a close connection” to the subject. I take that to mean that Engelmayer probably wrote the thing himself, so you can take it for what it’s worth.). 

The bio says that Engelmayer is a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard College, and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. He clerked on the D.C. Circuit, and then for Thurgood Marshall at the Supreme Court. He served as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, and did a term with the Solicitor General’s office in Washington during the Clinton administration. And at some point he slid seamlessly into the job of Managing Partner of the New York office of Wilmer Hale. He was named to the Southern District bench by President Obama in 2011.

Now there is a guy who is indisputably really, really smart. For a few of my prior pieces on rule by people who are really, really smart, try here, here and here.

Engelmayer is so smart that he has figured out that the elected President and his designates cannot be allowed get access to the details of where the government’s money is going, because that information is too “sensitive.” Here is the key line of reasoning (if you want to call it that) from Engelmayer’s Order:

The Court’s firm assessment is that . . . the States . . . will face irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief . . . both because of the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.

But of course Engelmayer’s Order specifically exempts from its restraints “civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties.” Those people somehow have a higher standing to know whom the government is paying than the elected President and his designees? By what constitutional provision? Engelmayer fails to mention that.

A bit farther down in Article II of the Constitution is the line that describes the President’s main job: “[H]e shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Now, how exactly is the President supposed to do that if the courts think they can prevent him from getting access to the details of where the government’s money is being spent?

At her blog today, ex-law professor Ann Althouse was quickly on top of this issue:

Is the federal judge taking the position that in the name of enforcing the Take Care Clause, it is the role of the judiciary to oversee whatever the President does with the executive power that the Constitution vests in him? Is there some extra-legal notion that the federal judge should seize the power to put on the brakes when a President with questionable judgment is moving too fast?

Excellent questions. But sorry, Ann, Judge Engelmayer is way, way too “smart” to ask himself such insightful questions. He knows that his main duty here is to his team to prevent the duly elected President from changing the preferred policies of the permanent bureaucracy. The role of his super-brainpower is to come up with some devious logic that can make that result seem somehow plausible under the Constitution.

This one is really too crazy to last long. The only issue is how much left-wing judges like Engelmayer will be able to slow Trump down from fulfilling his promises to the electorate.

UPDATE: A couple of comments from Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit. (1) “It’s a previously unknown clause in Article II: The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States, unless he threatens the establishment’s feedlot.” (2) “[Englemayer] is angling for Attorney General in the next Democratic administration.”

Really, ridicule is the only appropriate response to this kind of thing.

The Biden-Harris Plan to Upend the Constitution

Another leftist crusade driven by hate, fury, envy – and desperation. 

By Tim Donner | Jul 30, 2024 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags: Articles, Opinion, Politics

It came off almost like a schoolyard taunt from a lame-duck president desperate to restore his tainted legacy. It featured vintage campaign rhetoric, but from a man whose 50-year career in politics is now all but over, expressed in a series of proposals replete with lofty ideals for radical reform that he knows will go nowhere. Indeed, in a cliché-ridden op-ed in Washington’s most prominent newspaper on July 29, followed up by a speech at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, Joe Biden called for seismic reform: root-and-branch changes to the Supreme Court and a new constitutional amendment limiting executive authority.

If the 46th president had his way, he would end lifetime appointments to the High Court, limiting justices to 18-year terms, refresh the highest court in the land with new justices every two years, and institute a binding code of conduct. He also called for amending the constitution with what he amusingly calls the “No One Is Above the Law Amendment.” He left no doubt about his motivation when he added, “It would make clear that there is no (italics his) immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office.” One would think that a career politician like Biden would have masked his Trump derangement more effectively than that.

While it is hardly worth the time to examine the specifics of Biden’s plans any further since they will serve as little more than click-bait and talking points, the emotions and strategy animating them are worthy of discussion.

Root Causes: Hate, Fury, and Envy

First, let’s summarize the president’s agenda in plain language, shall we? Biden wants to upend the American constitutional system because he hates, fears, and envies Donald Trump.

We are already well aware of the president’s seething hatred for his predecessor and potential successor. But this op-ed revealed his passive-aggressive envy and fury. He is envious that Trump got three Supreme Court Justices confirmed in the space of four years while he got only one. He is furious that the Supreme Court has ruled on presidential immunity in a way that benefits Trump. He is envious that a single branch of government is delivering one victory after another for the right. He is furious that every indictment of Trump is crumbling. And he is both envious and furious that Trump is in a position to recapture the presidency.

To the matter of a law — or constitutional amendment — transparently aimed at a single person, Article 1 of the Constitution is clear. It specifically prohibits what’s called a bill of attainder — legislation declaring an individual guilty of a crime and allowing the government to punish the person for the perceived crime without due process. The provision is designed to strengthen the separation of powers by preventing Congress from assuming the functions of the judicial branch. While this is not directly applicable to Biden’s proposals, it captures the spirit of the framers and effectively defines the principle in play. Put another way, it is designed to assure that no man is either above or below the law.

In the wake of the recent High Court decision defining the parameters of executive privilege, Biden claimed “there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.” Of course, that is not true; a president’s protection is limited to official duties, and Biden knows it every bit as much as he knows Trump never actually called white supremacists very fine people. But, undaunted, he goes on to describe a court “mired in a crisis of ethics” — which apparently arose suddenly, as soon as Trump completed his trifecta of Supreme Court appointments assuring a 6-3 conservative majority. This is simply another broadside at the conservative justices, particularly Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, both subjects of recent intense investigations by left-wing media.

Intent on putting the mayhem of Jan. 6 prominently before the electorate once again, Biden tied the issue of presidential immunity directly to the Capitol riot, essentially warning that it is an invitation to insurrection. What is especially disturbing from this man who has been holding down the job for more than three years is that he ignored the grave consequences of any president being subjected to prosecution for decisions of great consequence if his private deliberations are subject to public disclosure and debate. This should be obvious to anyone not suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

There was also another inconvenient truth revealed in the president’s plans: This is yet another sign of leftists’ utter dependence on the courts to enable their unpopular progressive ideas to take root. And it signals their futility in seeing the Court overturn its most valued decisions, most prominently Roe v. Wade, knowing there is nothing they can do to stop it.

Unless, that is, the rules of the game are changed.

Rescuing the Supreme Court

Biden needs to answer a fundamental question about his “plans” for the Supreme Court and a 28th constitutional amendment: If these reforms are so vital to the future of the republic, why did you wait until the 11th hour when you were the lamest of lame ducks to advance these radical proposals to alter one of the three branches of government and amend the Constitution?

Biden knows full well that a lame-duck president no longer wields power with Congress, especially in the heat of a presidential campaign. That renders these proposals nothing more than political theater. It’s as true of Biden as any other president: Had he been really serious about these reforms, he would have prosecuted the case during his honeymoon, the first 6 to 12 months of his presidency, when his approval was highest. Revealing these proposals after he was forced out of his re-election campaign looks like little more than swinging wildly for the fences in a race Democrats are losing.

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Another sign that these plans are not legitimate is that they should have been advanced by the person who would theoretically steward them through to completion. That would be Kamala Harris, not Biden. But by announcing these proposals himself, Biden lifts the burden from Harris of making such an explosive announcement while at the same time handing her a radical agenda consistent with her pronounced plans for a prospective administration. Sure enough, the VP added her endorsement to the plans shortly after Biden’s announcement.

When Republicans go big, they usually propose things like tax cuts or changes in energy or economic policies. When Democrats get ambitious, they attempt to pack the Supreme Court, remove justices they find objectionable, turn left-wing territories into states, and abolish the Electoral College – all designed to guarantee perpetual leftist control of the federal government. Put simply, while the GOP works within the constitutional framework built upon centuries of debate and deliberation, modern-day Democrats seem intent on dramatically altering the law of the land to reflect the current progressive age.

With one foot out the door, Biden is using the fading remnants of his bully pulpit to lecture the American people on the injustice of a system that he has upheld for more than half a century. In doing so, he has come to personify the famously depressing lamentation in Shakespeare’s Macbeth about life itself: “a walking shadow, a poor player. That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale … full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

 Read More From Tim Donner

Fear Is the Explanation

By Rich Kozlovich 

I've said in the past I believe in historical cycles, and to a degree events, in a general way, are predictable and explicable.  What we're seeing today has a lot of history behind it. 

What we have here are the consequences of a long cycle from the 1890's until now, actually until about 25 years ago, and now the steam has built up to the point of explosion.   Americans now know they've been lied to, badly!!  The nation knows the education system is corrupted.  The nation is now acutely aware the federal, state, and local governments are out of control.  The nation is now aware spending has placed America in deep economic trouble.  The nation is now aware all the scare mongering the activists and leftists in government unending promote is a lie.  The nation is now aware the motive behind all this is to create a tyrannous form of world governance, and the elimination of the United States Constitution.  

 

It's not just the history buffs and writers who are aware this any longer. Those who are becoming aware are growing exponentially.  And in America, that means something.

 

In the 1890's the socialists started the take over of public education, they called themselves progressives to hide who and what they really were, atheistic socialists.  Both  andsupported their motives and goals, believing the "apple should fall as far away from the tree as possible".  The state, not the parents, and not the churches would be the ultimate arbiter of morality.   They both believed the Constitution was an impediment to human progress, and promoted the idea of an educated elite ruling the world.  Both subscribed to the idea "I am the state", and both acted accordingly.  Wilson's fascist takeover of the federal government didn't end until Harding was elected, and Coolidge dismantled it.   

 

It was reconstructed by FDR's New Deal, with many of the same operatives under Wilson heading up all these new agencies he created, all of which became infiltrated by communist agents, and we know that for sure since the release of the VENONA intercepts.  The FDR administration was the most heavily infiltrated government in the history of the world, and FDR had to know it.  The residual effects are still being felt. 

 

 There were only three conservative Presidents in the 20th century, Harding, Coolidge, and Reagan, and I've stated often that Calvin Coolidge was the greatest of the them all.   Sixteen years of conservative government and 84 years of varying degrees of progressive government, and if you include this century, it amounts to 20 years out of the last 124, and the lasting damage of one hundred an four years of "progressivism" may not be repairable, since "it's no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption."

Machiavelli outlined there were only two groups.  The ruling class, and the ruled.  The ruling class only want to maintain their privileges, and get more, and the ruled only want security, the ability to house, clothe, and feed their families, in safety.  

 

According to him if either group feels threatened as a group, governments fall.  But we find that's not always right away, and with total control of the instruments of propaganda, maybe never, as is true of N. Korea.  

But America isn't N. Korea, and the Machiavellian principle applies here.   The ruling elite are in fear as the ruled are now aware, and are resisting the crushing domination of their lives, and these leftists and elitists are resisting, destroying the rule of law, for political gain, and promoting violence, and if they don't get their way, they're threatening violence.

 

SCOTUS is over turning past decisions that gave unelected bureaucrats unconstitutional power over society, and the "elite" are using the same old vile tactics that's been in place since Julius Caesar destroyed the Roman Republic, which led to a multi-year civil war, to overcome these events.

 

Europe's recent elections are farce.  Culture is king, and the entire European culture is predicated on an elite ruling class, and the French are the most hypocritical of them all.  They love their class distinction, and find ways to incorporate it while claiming otherwise.  The French Revolution merely changed who the elite were to be.  But even in Europe, it's still all about three hots and a cot.  Security!  And they're now finally afraid, very afraid, and rightly so.  These socialistic rulers have placed the European culture in serious jeopardy of extinction bowing to Muslim invaders, they're calling immigrants, a problem that's now become a crisis for the continuation of Western civilization. 

 

First Rule of Geopolitics: All geopolitics is about four factors, geographics, demographics, economics, and that most elusive factor of all, the happiness factor.  These elites are clueless about the happiness factor because they don't care. They've decided the masses don't need to be happy, just obedient, own nothing and eat bugs, and society had better like it or else.   Now the masses are afraid, and are willing to fight the "obey and like it or else" battle.

 

The Homestead strike in 1892 at Carnegie Steel was caused by Carnegie cutting wages.   At that point the workers felt they have nothing to lose and struck, and it ending up being a war and people died.  When fear permeates a society it's because they now believe there's nothing left to lose, and things explode.

 

Fear, that's the cause.  Fear, that's the explanation.  And fear will have it's effect. 

Victimhood is an Oppressive System of Relative Rights

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog  

We are two years and spare change away from the American semiquincentennial which will celebrate 250 years since some brave men ratified the foundational document of our nation.

The Declaration of Independence’s bold assertion that the people were “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” is all the more relevant in the age of relativism where fewer people believe in a ‘Creator’ or in unalienable rights. That radical document is why America remains the only place on the planet where freedom of speech is absolute.

Other nations have their constitutions and human rights charters which run longer than an old-fashioned telephone directory, but their rights are granted by the government and then taken away by the government. Under the guise of buzzwords like ‘stakeholders’ and ‘evolving social contracts’ your rights are constantly reevaluated by committees according to leftist doctrine.

Unlike the absolute rights of the Bill of Rights, the reevaluation of rights follows a Marxist paradigm in which the existing state of rights is an imperfect system imposed by the privileged on the underprivileged, and must be constantly shaken up to liberate the new oppressed.

Your rights are not absolute, they are relative to how oppressed the committee thinks you are. And if you’re only as free as your oppression, then you have to be oppressed to have rights.

These rights are not a gift from the Creator, but from systemic racism, that you have rights is not something to be proud of or grateful for, but a mark of shame that indicts you for having benefited from whiteness, being adjacent to whiteness, the patriarchy, heteropatriarchy or cisheteropatriarchy, and the only way to atone is to cede your rights to the next group.

The clash between traditional feminism and the transgender movement clearly shows the difference between absolute and relative rights. In the absolute rights model, equality for women would have been a permanent victory, but in the relative rights model, by winning equal rights, women stopped being the oppressed and instead became the oppressors of transgender men.

Feminists have responded to the transgender movement with both absolute and relative arguments. The absolute argument is that womanhood is a fundamental biological reality and not a relative state of mind that can be redistributed to anyone who comes asking for it. The relative one is, like nearly all relative rights arguments, an assertion of unique victimhood.

The Marxist paradigm easily defeats past claims of victimhood. By the sixties, the old class warfare model had evolved to adopt and dispose of such past claims like an efficient factory, beginning with the original class of victims, the white working class, once the vanguard of the revolution, but quickly banished to the ranks of reactionaries and oppressors of the oppressed.

From the lofty progressive vantage point of the current year, every domestic group on whose behalf the leftists of a century ago had advocated, coal miners, factory workers, women, Italian and Jewish immigrants, the rural poor, have now become the contemptible enemies of mankind.

At the rapid pace of radicalization, everyone from white gay men to black men to lesbians, are being prepped for the social abattoir. By 2035, the only true victims may be groups so bizarre and warped as to be barely conceivable today. Before they too are exposed as the oppressors.

Under intersectionality, each right is also a wrong, and each liberation conceals another oppression. The process of liberation is a constant search for new wrongs, new minorities to liberate and then denounce in a constant upheaval of society that masks the oppressive transfer of power from the citizenry to a revolutionary vanguard that also doubles as the true ruling class.

The true oppression is a liberation movement that frees no one, only pits people against one another, giving each grievance its hour in the sun, before turning the aggrieved into the aggressors, so that only the revolutionaries can ever wield any meaningful power by arbitrating who the oppressors and the oppressed are at given moment.

And that is what relative rights look like.

When rights are dependent on defining who the oppressed and the oppressors are, then those rights are not truly inalienable rights given by the Creator or by a foundational document, but by the constantly shifting paradigms of academia and the accompanying leftist politics.

Who the oppressed and the oppressors are can change overnight, as feminists found out. Yesterday, women were the oppressed, today any man who puts on a dress is oppressed.

The difference between your rights being determined day to day by King George III or the editorial department of the New York Times is a preference for one tyranny over another.

Absolute rights, like those in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, build one achievement on top of another. And that is the rights that most Americans, even most liberals, thought that they were getting, but instead the oppressed groups of yesterday wonder why the revolutionary moment seems to have passed them by leaving them with less than they had.

What happened to the revolution, they wonder? What happened is that it’s a revolution.

A revolution is a state of instability. Freedom doesn’t come from revolutions, but from the order that emerges afterward. That’s why Americans commemorate July 4th, 1776 as Independence Day. July 4th was neither the first nor the final shot fired for independence. Like the French, we could have made an original violent confrontation, the Boston Massacre, into our Bastille Day. Or we could have made Evacuation Day, a mostly forgotten holiday marking the British departure from New York City and the end of British rule, into the date of our independence.

But instead we chose to commemorate the aspirational vision of the Declaration of Independence. Revolutions and battles come and go, but we wanted to build our independence around a new order of liberty, not around the perpetual revolution championed by some radicals.

In my book, Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against The Left, I described the radical American leftists who wanted to perpetuate the revolution and saw France as a model.

“Eternal providence called on you, you alone, since the world began, to reestablish on earth the empire of justice and liberty,” Robespierre had rhapsodized. During the Reign of Terror, the French leftist had assured fellow radicals that it would all be worth it for, “by sealing our work with our blood, we may witness at least the dawn of universal happiness.”

Some American leftists plotted to topple George Washington and the Constitution to pursue a French style perpetual revolution that would, after enough bloodshed, offer universal happiness.

Today the “dawn of universal happiness” has been replaced by the “right side of history”, but both are revolutionary movements of relative rights that are always incomplete and seeking perfection. But human affairs are by definition imperfect. The American experiment offered the security of absolute rights while the leftist approach is to rob of everyone of their rights over and over in search of the perfect state, the empire of justice and liberty, and the right side of history.

The real struggle is still between the absolute rights guaranteed nearly 250 years ago by the Declaration of Independence, and the relative rights promised by the leftist revolutions which are still going on today. And it is this clash of rights that will determine the future of our rights. 

 

 

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.

Thank you for reading.

Rights Are Not Grantings To Be Given or Taken Away!

By Rich Kozlovich 

This is an unending issue with the left, and I've written about this before but so much is in the news that obfuscates the truth I felt compelled to write about it again. If we want understanding we must first have clarity, and history is the clarifying agent.  On April 4th 2013 Ben Shapiro wrote an article titled, Obama: Constitution 'Constrains' Me. 

“In his pursuit of overarching gun control legislation in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre, President Barack Obama has been dogged. He's been relentless. He's been demagogic, too, whether flanking himself with schoolchildren (the implication being that his political opponents don't care about dead kids) or suggesting that if just one life can be saved by his legislation, we ought to buy into it wholeheartedly (a proposition that would justify almost any sort of government overreach).” He continues by saying; “on Wednesday, President Obama took his gun control push a step further: He admitted that only the Constitution stands between him and full gun confiscation”

He further points out that:

“Government is not us. Government is a group of people elected by us, who then use their own judgment”, however he points out, “the founders stated that rights descend not from government — not from "us," as Obama would have it — but from God or nature.” Quite frankly it seems a worthwhile effort, considering the wider ramifications of this kind of thinking, to lay some historical foundation regarding gun ownership rights in America in order to understand this argument properly. First of all; the Second Amendment is what it says, nothing more and nothing less, yet at one point Attorney General Holder claimed "We have no right to possess guns!"………

So what does a person who believes that we shouldn’t “need” guns to do? Well, that depends if that person believes that we shouldn’t “have” guns or not. There is a substantial difference between “having” and “needing”, but in this case the "having" is based on the "needing". 

The fact of the matter is we live in a dangerous world, and when the general population is armed the world is substantially less dangerous because crime goes down when gun ownership goes up. Clearly that, at the very least, is the "need" to justify the "having".

Most importantly we really do need to understand that America's founding fathers didn't trust government so the second amendment was deliberately inserted in the Constitution for two reasons. One, to make sure you can defend yourself, your loved ones and your property, and two, to give the citizenry the ability defend the Constitution against a government gone wild and is based on English natural law as codified in the English Bill of Rights.

The English Bill of Rights became law after a politically difficult time (actually it was more religious than political…or if you will…. the religious issues generated the political issues) in English history where the common people overthrew King James and forced he and his successors, William III and Mary II in to accepting the English Bill of Rights. This was done as a result of a fight over the authority or the King to govern without consent of Parliament, and the King’s (who was Catholic) desire to disarm his Protestant subjects and maintain a “permanent standing army”, against the wishes of Parliament; clearly and attempt to keep them in line with no way to defend themselves.

It might be noted that this wasn’t a new right being demanded by Parliament from the ruling authorities. This was merely codifying what was always considered a ‘the natural right’ of all Englishmen, and the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) agreed by saying this regarding the English Bill of Rights "clearly an individual right, having nothing whatsoever to do with service in the militia". Furthermore, this was not a “granting of a new right”, but codifying forevermore a right they held without permission of the King, nor did the King have the right to disarm them.

The Second Amendment says; A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

So, who does everyone think this "well regulated militia" is made up of? The general population! The term “well regulated” merely defines the difference between legal and criminal behavior. Otherwise they would be a mob bent of murder, mayhem, destruction. When the Constitution was written a militia was not anything but the general population fighting as a civilian army, organized to their own likings and purposes. 

And they could go back to their regular lives and take their arms with them because they might be called upon to stand up to defend their community once again. And from where did this right originate? If this is a natural right then it didn’t originate with the King in England and it isn’t a “granting” to be given or to be taken away by the Government of the United States.

This isn’t about gun rights. It is about the definition of rights. This is a foundational issue with ramifications so deep and so profound it is now incumbent upon us to start understanding the foundational thinking that created the most incredible political document in human history. The United States Constitution!

I do wish that more people would read the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution, and at the very least read the commentaries regarding the Federalist Papers. These are foundational!

I have written about this before but so much is in the news that obfuscates the truth I felt compelled to write about it again.  If we want understanding we must first have clarity.  History is the clarifying agent. 

• Second Amendment: It Is What It Says....Nothing More and Nothing Less

The Definition of Rights is the Real Issue!

By Rich Kozlovich

Recently Senator John Kennedy grilled a Biden judicial nominee, Nancy L. Maldonado, about a position she took on what's being commonly called,  "assault weapon bans", a position paper to the court that she signed off on, and it became clear she had no idea what she was taking about and ended up saying, "I'm not a gun expert".   Well, perhaps we need a little clarity.

Recently I wrote the article about gun control titled, Rights Are Not Grantings To Be Given or Taken Away!, explaining that this issue of gun rights isn’t really about guns at all, and even those who don’t own guns, don’t like guns, and don’t want guns in their homes have to understand the foundational issue.  It about the definition of rights – not about guns.  That makes this "gun rights" issue so much deeper and more profound. 

Today I received an e-mail from a friend outlining the consequences of "gun control" and what rights are left when “gun  control” leads to “government control”.  After that there will be no need to be able to define “rights” because they will cease to exist.   

I don’t know who Mark Lucas is, but it appears that he is the originator of the information in this e-mail.  Here is most of what was said:

The main topic of discussion these days is gun control.  Liberal progressive politicians are trying hard to convince people to give up their guns in order to stop violence. You know the mantra: Guns are bad and hurt people, so give up your guns while we all sing Kumbaya. Without guns it will be a safer world for everyone.

But there is a problem with this mantra: Do you really think criminals will give up their guns? Each gun law seems to just give birth to yet more gun laws. When the citizens guns are gone and only the government has guns, what then? We will be at the mercy and control of the prevailing regime of the time, with no means to resist. When this happens, the government is no longer the servant, but the master. It will then enact even more laws for “your protection” and the sheeple will have no choice but to fall in lock step and obey.

Consider the following historical facts:

1929,  the USSR established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, approximately
20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.

1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

1928, Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill and others who were unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

1935, China established gun control. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.

1956, Cambodia established gun control. From 1975 to 1977 one million “educated” people, unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.

1964, Guatemala established gun control. From 1964 to 1981, one hundred thousand Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated

1970, Uganda established gun control. From 1971 to 1979 three hundred thousand Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated

The body count is not yet in on the number of Serbs who were unable to defend themselves and were exterminated, but the television images should still be fresh in your mind. Adding the victims of genocide in Barundi, Darfur, and Iraq brings the total number of victims who lost their lives because of gun control to approximately 100 million people in the last century. These are cold, hard facts.

Every time gun registration has been enacted “for the safety of citizens,” it has led to gun confiscation.  We should learn from the mistakes of the past: the next time someone speaks out in favor of gun control, ask which group of citizens they want to see exterminated.

Rights are lost in small, insidious increments that seem inconsequential at the time, but they are never regained. Compare the erosion of rights to the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon was not formed in one fell swoop, but little by little, day by day, grain of sand by grain of sand until finally there was a gaping chasm. Rights that were paid for in blood are now being frittered away by a generation that has never had to sacrifices (with the exception of the few and the proud who voluntarily join the military). How many of these individuals has ever stood graveside to accept a folded flag “behalf of a grateful nation”?

If you make a lie big enough and repeat it often enough, people will believe it and the myth becomes reality. Gun control is NOT for the “good of the people”, gun control is about one thing and one thing only, government control, and the ability to impose tyranny on people incapable of doing anything about it.