Across My Desk: August 2004

Have We Forgotten What Freedom of Speech Is?

"The Founding Fathers established the First Amendment to protect two forms of speech: political and religious. Yet in a typically perverse irony of our time, these blameless exercises of the First Amendment are regarded as 'shocking' violations of it while a growing culture of obscenity not protected by the framers receives its imprimatur. ... It would be difficult to come up with a more blatant violation of the First Amendment than the McCain-Feingold idiocy now accorded the utmost respect in our political culture. ...

Notice that both campaigns respond to ads by calling for their suppression -- a revealing measure of McCain-Feingold's straightforward silencing of political speech. Calls to suppress free speech would once have been politically dangerous. Now they are standard fare in the culture of McCain-Feingold which allows those with power to define the rules for its challenge, rigging the game in favor of established pols at the expense of individuals. The media, happy to go along with the silencing of the citizenry as that means their power increases, cast the suppression of free speech, a move they wouldn't tolerate in any other context, as 'reform.'

The destruction of the real purposes of the First Amendment is complete when pols can dignify obscenities with the name of free speech while treating 'issue ads' as intolerable obscenities worth punishing with jail time." --George Neumayr

The OTHER Founding Fathers

Gary Bauer recently wrote: "Alexander Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers that the Judiciary was to be the "least dangerous branch" of government. But there is something grossly wrong with our "representative democracy" when one unelected, unaccountable judge can overturn the will of the other two elected branches of government."

Hamilton was blind to the courts' potential abuses, but not all were. Check out Robert Yates' Anti-Federalist essays written under pen name, Brutus. Particularly AntiFederalist #81, titled The Power of the Judiciary #3.

Truly prophetic writing! Yates, the Chief Justic of New York, saw this as a fatal flaw in the proposed Constitution and wanted modifications to the document to stop what we are now dealing with everyday--the federal robed masters. Here's an excerpt, though you'll want to read the entire essays by Brutus on the Courts--trust me, you won't believe that they were written in 1789, but they were! It's like he had seen today and written about it last week.

"...Tthe judicial power of the United States ... would be authorised to explain the constitution, not only according to its letter, but according to its spirit and intention; and having this power, they would strongly incline to give it such a construction as to extend the powers of the general government, as much as possible, to the diminution, and finally to the destruction, of that of the respective states. I shall now proceed to show how this power will operate in its exercise to effect these purposes. . . . First, let us inquire how the judicial power will effect an extension of the legislative authority. ... "We have seen, that they will be authorized to give the constitution a construction according to its spirit and reason, and not to confine themselves to its letter." "

I think one of Judge White's favorite sayings is appropriate here: "We don't know what we don't know."

Incidentally, I sent this to Gary, and he was appreciative. I like approachable people. :)

Eye Witness Account for John Kerry's "War Wound"

Apparently, Mr. Kerry nicked himself on a grenade launcher.

UPDATE! Kerry is being investigated by the U.S. Navy for falsifying his awards.

According to a U.S. Navy spokesman, "Kerry's record is incorrect. The Navy has never issued a 'combat V' to anyone for a Silver Star."