Category: Constitution and Law

There was No One Left

Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was a German anti-Nazi theologian[1] and Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his statement, “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist …… and there was no one left to speak for me.”

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

 Donald Trump spreads the same kind of intolerance. First it was the Mexicans now it’s the Muslims. Who will be next?

Will you speak out?

End the Gun Epidemic in America

New York Times front page editorial, By DEC. 4, 2015 .  The first front page editorial in 95 years.

It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.

All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.

But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.

Opponents of gun control are saying, as they do after every killing, that no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal. That is true. They are talking, many with sincerity, about the constitutional challenges to effective gun regulation. Those challenges exist. They point out that determined killers obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have strict gun laws. Yes, they did.

But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not. Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.

It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.

Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.

What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?

“Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.”

By John Paul Stevens April 11, 2014

John Paul Stevens served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court from 1975 to 2010. Following is a part of his essay is excerpted from his new book, “Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.”

The Second Amendment expressly endorsed the substantive common-law rule that protected the citizen’s right (and duty) to keep and bear arms when serving in a state militia. In its decision in Heller, however, the majority interpreted the amendment as though its draftsmen were primarily motivated by an interest in protecting the common-law right of self-defense. But that common-law right is a procedural right that has always been available to the defendant in criminal proceedings in every state. The notion that the states were concerned about possible infringement of that right by the federal government is really quite absurd.

As a result of the rulings in Heller and McDonald, the Second Amendment, which was adopted to protect the states from federal interference with their power to ensure that their militias were “well regulated,” has given federal judges the ultimate power to determine the validity of state regulations of both civilian and militia-related uses of arms. That anomalous result can be avoided by adding five words to the text of the Second Amendment to make it unambiguously conform to the original intent of its draftsmen. As so amended, it would read:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed.”

Emotional claims that the right to possess deadly weapons is so important that it is protected by the federal Constitution distort intelligent debate about the wisdom of particular aspects of proposed legislation designed to minimize the slaughter caused by the prevalence of guns in private hands. Those emotional arguments would be nullified by the adoption of my proposed amendment. The amendment certainly would not silence the powerful voice of the gun lobby; it would merely eliminate its ability to advance one mistaken argument.

Ben Carson Continues to Prove He is not Ready for the Presidency

Ben CarsonGiven that Doctor Ben Carson is a retired neurosurgeon it is difficult to understand how lacking he is in basic knowledge about how the Federal government operates and how little he knows about American treaties.

Number 1:

When asked about what Eastern European nations should do about the fear of Russia he said they should join NATO.

Hugh Hewitt, talk radio host, asked if NATO should be willing to go to war if Russian leader Vladimir Putin attempts to do in the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania) what he’s already done in Ukraine.

“I think they would be willing to go to war if they knew that they were backed up by us,” Carson said. “We need to convince them to get involved in NATO and strengthen NATO.”

“Well, the Baltics, they are in NATO,” Hewitt responded. [In fact, they’ve been member states since 2004.]

After a commercial break, Carson explained that he was confused. “Well, when you were saying Baltic state, I thought you were continuing our conversation about the former components of the Soviet Union,” he said.

Carson’s views on the current Middle East turmoil are similarly confused. Read the entire Hewitt interview here:

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/ben-carson-trips-up-on-nato-knowledge-dates-islamist-rage-to-bc-era-116208#ixzz3o0G0kdKR

Number 2:

In an awkward back-and-forth on NPR’s “Marketplace,” the top-tier GOP presidential candidate baffled host Kai Ryssdal by apparently conflating the debt limit with broader budgetary issues.

Ryssdal asked Carson if the US should raise the debt limit, a hot-button issue that has repeatedly generated congressional brinkmanship in recent years.

Here is the transcript:

Ryssdal: All right, so let’s talk about debt then and the budget. As you know, Treasury Secretary Lew has come out in the last couple of days and said, “We’re going to run out of money, we’re going to run out of borrowing authority, on the fifth of November.” Should the Congress then and the president not raise the debt limit? Should we default on our debt?

Carson: Let me put it this way: If I were the president, I would not sign an increased budget. Absolutely would not do it. They would have to find a place to cut.

Ryssdal: To be clear, it’s increasing the debt limit, not the budget, but I want to make sure I understand you. You’d let the United States default rather than raise the debt limit?

Carson: No, I would provide the kind of leadership that says, “Get on the stick guys, and stop messing around, and cut where you need to cut, because we’re not raising any spending limits, period.”

Ryssdal: I’m going try one more time, sir. This is debt that’s already obligated. Would you not favor increasing the debt limit to pay the debts already incurred?

Carson: What I’m saying is what we have to do is restructure the way that we create debt. I mean if we continue along this, where does it stop? It never stops. You’re always going ask the same question every year. And we’re just gonna keep going down that pathway. That’s one of the things I think that the people are tired of.

Ryssdal: I’m really trying not to be circular here, Dr. Carson, but if you’re not going to raise the debt limit and you’re not going to give specifics on what you’re gonna cut, then how are we going to know what you are going to do as president of the United States?

Number 3:

Ben Carson told Meet the Press that no Muslim should ever be president. “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.” The constitution specifically says that there is no religious qualification to be president. Carson doubles down by telling Wolf Blitzer on CNN he is not sure that President Obama is a Christian – and that really doesn’t matter but being a Christian seems to matter to Ben Carson. 

A Gun Happy Nation

Alison Parker and Adam Ward It’s all baloney. CNN headline is “Our Hearts are Broken” as they display photos of Alison Parker and Adam Ward. Horror and dismay along with weeks of coverage after the massacres at a Colorado movie theater by James Holmes and Sandy Hook elementary school and the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. But we just can’t give up our guns.

After each event there are flowers laid at a critical location and a call for a gathering to remember those who have been killed. They call it a “vigil.” Then we all go on with life knowing that there will be another horrifying killing within the next few days.

The Los Angeles Times had an article about this very topic in the morning’s edition before the latest killing in Virginia. The article says that the United States is the leader in the most mass killing of any country in the world.

Where is our congress? On vacation forever on this issue.

So despite the killing of nine in a Black church in South Carolina and the killing in Tucson, Arizona that left Gabrielle Giffords maimed for life; Our love for guns trumps all other events. Our preference to own a gun has no limits. There is no price too high to pay that will change our love of guns.

When our leaders say we are the exceptional country is gun ownership part of that? The answer must be yes. Is there another reason we allow everyone to own a gun?

Canada’s birthright citizenship

It turns out that Donald Trump’s commentary is not new.  Canada and the United States are the only countries in the world that offer birthright citizenship.  Birth tourism is a thriving business in southern California.    I was born in Canada.  If Donald Trump is elected president of the United States will Canada take me back? From Toronto Life on May 20, 2014.

Jan Wong: Canada’s birthright citizenship policy makes us a nation of suckers

Pregnant women are travelling to Toronto from all over—China, Iran, India, Dubai, Jamaica—to have their babies on Canadian soil, and who can blame them? We’re a nation of suckers

By Jan Wong | Illustration by Graham Roumieu

Jan Wong: Motherlode

I don’t know about you, but I constantly congratulate myself on winning the jackpot in the lottery of life. Thank you, revered ancestor, for your wisdom in choosing Canada. My grandfather, Hooie Chong, came here as a coolie in the 1880s to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. Once it was complete, he paid a special tax to stay on and continue working, as a laundryman. Later, he paid triple head taxes to bring over my grandmother, their son and his wife. Family lore has it ­that Grandfather Chong was the 10th Chinese person to become a naturalized Canadian (albeit without any right to vote).

Now there’s a much easier path to ­citizenship: birth tourism. Foreign companies are helping pregnant women take advantage of our breathtakingly generous birthright policy, which grants automatic citizenship—and all the rights and ­benefits it entails—to any baby born on Canadian soil. You don’t even have to touch the soil: in 2008, a girl born to a Ugandan mother aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Boston was deemed ­Canadian because the plane happened to be in our airspace at the moment of delivery. Currently, Canada and the U.S. are the only two developed countries bestowing birthright citizenship.

For pregnant women actively seeking to jump the immigration queue, birth tourism agencies offer comprehensive package deals. One such agency is the Canada-U.S. Childbirth Counselling ­Services Company, based in Nanjing, China. According to their website, “the best gift you can give your newborn is a Canadian passport.” The company’s $36,200 package includes airfare, assistance with visas and paperwork, coaching on how to get through the border, private accommodation with Wi-Fi and “a special person to cook and look after your personal needs.” Among the advantages that come with Canadian citizenship, the company lists “great educational resources” and social benefits, including welfare payments of “$500 to $700 a month for a single person,” plus a Canadian passport that provides visa-free entry to more than 200 countries, including the U.S., Japan and western Europe.

Birth tourism consultants recommend that clients apply for tourist visas early and fly before they start to show. Otherwise they are advised to wear loose clothing to the airport. While some airlines such as Air Canada require a doctor’s note to fly after 36 weeks of pregnancy, in this age of political correctness, a woman is unlikely to be questioned about girth. Once at the border, birth-tourism agencies advise expectant mothers to say they’re visiting Canada to sightsee.

From there, the visitor’s experience is fairly straightforward. When she goes into labour, she’s automatically admitted into one of the many local hospitals offering high-quality obstetric care. Wendy Lawrence, in-house legal counsel at Mount Sinai, says the hospital considers every labour a medical emergency. “No matter what, we help them deliver the baby.”

Once the baby is born, the hospital opens a file and assigns a number. Hospital staff aren’t required to check the ­mother’s citizenship, and they don’t. The province (which is responsible for birth registration) doesn’t ask about the ­mother’s citizenship either—a lapse Ottawa says it will address. When mother and baby leave the hospital, they move into a short-term rental. Thanks to Canada’s streamlined application process, the parental paperwork is a breeze. It takes just 25 minutes online to register a birth, apply for a birth certificate and acquire a social insurance number. Official documents arrive in the mail a few weeks later; a passport takes another month.

The Power of the NRA and Gun Manufacturers

Just last week Fareed Zakaria pointed out on his program, GPS, that 150,000 people have been killed in homicides since September 11, 2001 and 74 people have been killed by terrorists since that date. Few seem to be concerned about the killing by guns in America even though those events happen on a daily basis.

American attitude is that this is a cheap price to pay for our right to own a gun. No other industrialized country in the world has the high rate of deaths from gun violence that is experienced here. Are there more people that have mental disease in the United States compared to other countries? That is not likely.

We have accepted the NRA and gun manufacturers arguments that we are safer with more guns. Can you imagine how many more people would have been killed in a dark movie theater in Aurora, Colorado if someone else has started shooting to defend themselves?

Fire Arms Control

Rick Perry said in an interview Sunday, July 26, 2015, on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana, earlier this week shows why gun-free zones are “a bad idea” and said he believes people should be able to take their firearms to the movies.

“I think that it makes a lot of sense to send a message across this country,” Perry said when asked by host Jake Tapper if the former governor believed a way to prevent such violence would be to allow moviegoers to take guns inside. “If we believe in the Second Amendment, and we believe in people’s right to protect themselves and defend themselves, and their families.”

In other words after you enter the theater and take your seat you should pull out a pistol and keep it on your lap just in case there is a gunman in the room.

On the same program Donald Trump said there was “a very fine line. You’ve got to do it very judiciously. If a person is mentally ill and it’s proven and it’s documented, you have to be extremely careful not to let them kill people,” he said.

“Frankly, he should be committed. Because he has the kind of a record where he should be in a institution. He was a very sick puppy.”

Mr. Trump has essentially taken my view. We test everyone before they receive a driver’s license. That should conducted for everyone who want to buy a gun. The test should confirm you know how to handle a weapon and should include a written test and a mental evaluation. Will this be expensive? More than the cost now but perhaps will save lives.

The NRA will throw a fit over this idea. Can our congress stand up to the NRA? I doubt it. But perhaps there is a chance. I continue to hope.

How Changing Demographics could change America’s Politics!

Could White People be the New Minority?

John Adams painting by Charles Wilson PealeOpposition to immigration has a history going back to our second president, John Adams. The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by the Federalist Congress in 1798 and signed into law by President Adams. These laws included new powers to deport foreigners as well as making it harder for new immigrants to vote. Previously a new immigrant would have to reside in the United States for five years before becoming eligible to vote, but a new law raised this to 14 years. In essence, this Act prohibited public opposition to the government. Fines and imprisonment could be used against those who “write, print, utter, or publish . . . any false, scandalous and malicious writing” against the government. (source: http://www.ushistory.org/us/19e.asp)

At the end of 2014 California’s population exceeded 38 million people and was on its way to 40 million in 2015.

Latinos outnumber Whites in Calfornia

A new tally, released in late June, shows that as of July 1, 2014, about 14.99 million Latinos live in California, edging out the 14.92 million whites in the state.

Asians account for more than 14% of our population. That equals more than 5 million people. Almost 1.5 million are Filipino.

Walk through your neighborhood mall and you will appreciate the large number of Non-White Americans living here.

This is bad news for the Republican Party. According to a Gallup poll taken in 2012 “Republicans are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic white, at a level that is significantly higher than the self-identified white percentage of the national adult population. Just 2% of Republicans are black, and 6% are Hispanic.”

Failure of the GOP controlled Congress to pass revised immigration laws along with their new idea of limiting legal immigration to a greater extent almost guarantees that Non-White Americans will be voting Democratic in the next national election. The Democratic Party is depending on that outcome. They have every reason to expect the turnout will be in their favor when you listen to GOP candidate talking points.

Donald Trump Donald Trump stands for a shrinking White minority.  Google the views of the Republican candidates and you realize they do not have a solution for the 12 million illegal immigrants in this country. They oppose amnesty and none wants to grant any recognition to those people. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has even discussed limiting legal immigration.

Not one candidate, neither Democrat nor Republican, for president has voiced the idea of enforcing current law that would result in penalties for hiring illegal immigrants.

Hillary Clinton sees a path to the White House by emphasizing the Republican opposition to any legal solution.

Unless the Republican Party changes in a dramatic way it will become part of America’s history.

G.O.P. has a Chance to Win the Next Presidential Election

Twelve million undocumented immigrants are working here in the United States. Many can’t speak English. Those people are doing jobs that Americans won’t take because the pay is too low. Those illegal aliens will do those jobs because it’s better to live in the United States illegally then staying in their native countries.

Donald Trump has put the issue of illegal aliens (undocumented immigrants) front and center. The rest of the Republican presidential candidates have been too timid in condemning Trump’s remarks.

As things stand now the Republican Congress has not lived up to the promises it made. Few laws have been passed. The One Hundred and Fourteenth United States Congress has been a continuation of the gridlock of the previous two year session.

The Senate did pass an immigration reform bill in 2013. The vote was 68-32. Fourteen Republicans crossed the aisle to vote with all Democrats in favor. Unfortunately the House has not acted on the bill. “The strong bipartisan vote we took is going to send a message across the country, it’s going to send a message to the other end of the Capitol as well,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the leader of the so-called Gang of Eight. “The bill has generated a level of support that we believe will be impossible for the House to ignore.” Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/immigration-bill-2013-senate-passes-93530.html#ixzz3fG7LNSir. We know how that has worked out.

Imagine now if the House passed that legislation. That would give the G.O.P. the campaign issue that could win them the White House. Today the Republicans are considered the party blocking immigration reform. Ah, but couldn’t the Democrats claim the victory? Thus the deadlock will probably remain.

Are the Republicans wise enough to blaze a new trail? At this time there is no answer.