Unfortunately, the Obama administration, with the help of the leftist elite in the U.S.
Senate, the House of Representatives, and even some Federal judges are systematically
destroying our Constitution, our freedoms, and our country. It is not an accident; it is being
done with malice and design. Here are the facts about what has occurred in the three years
that Obama has been in office.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution has been violated by Congress passing the
Obama health care bill. Congress has no authority under that section or any other section of
the Constitution to enact legislation requiring the American people to purchase health care
insurance, or to provide free health care to illegal aliens. Yet, this among other things is what
has been done. I am confident that the U.S. Supreme Court will rule that it is unconstitutional;
yet, President Obama has repeatedly shown his disdain for the rulings of the Judicial Branch of
government.

Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution also gives Congress the sole legislative powers in
the federal government. Article 2 of the Constitution that establishes the Presidency and the
Executive Branch of government gives no such legislative powers to the President. In other
words, only Congress can make laws and the President and his cabinet appointees can only
enforce laws made by Congress; the President has no authority to make laws. Yet, that is
exactly what Obama is doing.

By misusing the power to issue Executive orders to enforce laws or take emergency
action if Congress is not in session the President is bypassing Congress and the Constitution to
implement his personal agenda on immigration, cap and trade, gun control, and in many other
areas. He actually brags about this in his taxpayer funded campaign speeches, and during the
State of the Union Address he stated that he plans to continue the practice if Congress doesn’t
do exactly what he demands.

In addition, ever since he took office Obama has continuously violated Article 2, Section
2 of the Constitution by making appoints to major positions in the Executive Branch of
government without the required Senate approval. I’m referring of course to the over 40 Czars
that the President has appointed. These appointments are in numerous areas from overseeing
the takeover of the automobile industry to regulating free speech on the internet. These Czars
are not under the control of the Congress, and are given massive budgets at taxpayer expense.
By the way, the very use of the term Czar violates Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution that
specifically forbids the U.S. government from bestowing titles of nobility on anyone.

Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution does give the President the right to make short
term appointments when the Senate is in recess. The important point here is that the
Constitution only empowers the Senate to declare when it is in recess. Obama recently showed
his disdain for that part of our governing document by making several high level appointments
when the Senate had not formally declared a recess. Obama claimed he has the right to decide
when the Senate is in recess. The purpose of these appointments was to put people in positions
of power that the Senate would not have approved. The reasons are already becoming clear
because the new appointees to the National Labor Relations Board are preparing to order
companies that are not unionized to turn over the private phone numbers and email addresses
of their employees to labor union organizers. This is a clear violation of the right of privacy of
these individuals.

Article 2, Section 2 also authorizes the President of the United States to sign treaties
with other countries; however, the Senate must ratify the treaties by a two thirds vote of those
Senators present and voting. Now Obama has decided that this Constitutional requirement
should not keep him from doing what he wants. Since the SOPA and PIPA bills were withdrawn
in Congress Obama is looking for a new way to take control of the Internet and limit freedom of
speech.

According to the U.S. Justice Foundation Obama is going to sign and enforce an
international treaty “which will give governments and special interest groups the power to shut
down websites, and terminate your access to the internet, without the due process of law.” It is
called the ACTA Treaty and Obama does not intend to send it to the Senate for ratification, but
instead will do it as a “sole Executive Agreement.”

There is nothing in the Constitution that allows such agreements although Federal
courts have allowed Presidents to enter into some international agreements that are minor in
nature. The ACTA agreement is not minor, but would allow websites to be shut down, such as
my blog site, at the whim of the President. I also suspect that Obama is planning to use the
same approach to enter into and enforce the United Nations “Small Arms Treaty” that would
virtually eliminate the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution that protects the rights of Americans
to keep and bear arms.

The state of the constitution is not good; in fact it is gravely ill. This article has just
scratched the surface and in my next post I will talk more about Obama’s all out assault on the
Bill of Rights. A good friend of mine recently said that this upcoming election is not about
personalities or even the economy. It is instead a referendum on the Constitution and whether
it and our American way of life are to survive. I concur with that statement.

Michael Connelly
mrobertc@hotmail.com
www.michaelconnelly.jigsy.com
www.constitution.jigsy.com

Tuesday, February 7th    6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott – Jacksonville
4888 Lenoir Ave
Jacksonville, FL 32216

Having received some of the best and toughest survival training in the world at the US Air Force Survival Instructor School, Fairchild AFB
near Spokane, WA, Class 71-02, Byron is one of a select few of former USAF SERE instructors who have designed and created from
start-up a successful survival school for civilians.

http://www.byronkernssurvival.com/

Mr. Kerns will lecture  on what basic equipment and skills civilians need to master in order to survive an extended natural or man-made disaster.
He will also provide information on the courses and individual instruction available at his school.

In addition, there will be vendors displaying the latest innovations in survival equipment available on the market.
We look forward to seeing you there.

When our founding fathers declared our independence from Great Britain in 1776 the
colonists were already in the middle of a bloody and costly war to secure their freedom. Once
the war was successfully concluded it was necessary to create a new nation with a form of
government that would not allow a single individual or group to establish another totalitarian
regime and steal the freedom of Americans.

It took years and one failed effort with the Articles of Confederation before the
founders settled on the Constitution of the United States that established a unique type of
government with three separate, but equal branches of branches. These are the executive
branch that includes an elected President and his cabinet appointees, the legislative branch
that consists of a Congress made up of two houses, the Senate and House of Representatives,
and the judicial branch that consists of the Supreme Court and any lower federal courts that
Congress might authorize.

A system of checks and balances was put into place to ensure that none of the three
branches would be able to dominate the others and establish a dictatorship. In addition, the
basic distrust of a powerful centralized government caused the framers of the Constitution to
adopt the Bill of Rights that protected the rights of both individual Americans and the various
states that formed the United States of America. The system has worked so well that our
country became the most prosperous and powerful nation in the world.

Yet, now, almost 250 years later, elements in all three branches of government are
conspiring to shred the Constitution and rob us of our God given rights. We have a rapidly
emerging dictatorship and prime examples of it can be found in what is occurring in the first
days of this New Year. As part of the balance of powers prescribed in the Constitution, the U.S.
Senate must approve Presidential appointments to major positions in the Executive Branch of
Government. The only exception is that during the times that the Senate is in recess the
President can make appointments without the approval of the Senate, but they are temporary
in nature.

However, on January 4, 2012, President Obama appointed three members to the
National Labor Relations Board and a new “Czar” to head the Consumer Protection Agency
without Senate approval despite the fact that the Senate was not in recess. This has created a
Constitutional crisis of epic proportions.

I refer to this as a Constitutional crisis because this is not the first such action Obama
has taken that has clearly violated not only the provisions of the Constitution, but also his oath
of office, and he obviously plans to continue ignoring both the legislative and judicial branches
of government. In fact, he actually brags about what he is doing while campaigning for
reelection at the expense of American taxpayers.

There is now no doubt that the current President of the United States considers himself
a de facto dictator who is so much smarter than the rest of us that he can ignore the
Constitution, the supreme law of our nation, and do whatever he wants. History has taught that
in order to establish an effective dictatorship there must be three decisive actions taken.
First, if the military in the country is patriotic and pro freedom, it must be marginalized
to minimize its ability to resist the imposition of tyranny. Right after the New Year, Obama
announced drastic cuts in the size and strength of our military forces across the board. He is claiming to have the authority to do this under the bill passed by Congress that created the so-called super committee that was to enact wide ranging spending cuts.

If it failed to do so there would be massive reductions of the defense budget. In previous
articles I pointed out that the very creation of this super committee was unconstitutional
and that its failure to act would cause the “doomsday scenario” to unfold for our military.
Unfortunately, not only are my predictions coming true, but Obama is not even waiting for the
automatic cuts to begin in 2013, he is unilaterally moving to destroy the military now.
Secondly, the citizens of any country to be subjugated must be disarmed in order to
diminish their ability to resist the imposition of a dictatorship. It is now clear, by virtue of
the ongoing investigation in Congress of “Operation Fast and Furious” that over 2500 semi
automatic weapons were sold to Mexican drug dealers on orders from the U.S. government not
for the purpose of entrapping the drug dealers, but so Obama could impose gun control laws on
U.S. citizens. He has now done so by Executive Order, bypassing Congress that had refused to
take the same action.

In addition, Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton have pledged to sign the United
Nations Small Arms Treaty that specifically targets private gun ownership in the United States.
This treaty would essentially abolish the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution and make
private ownership of firearms illegal despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has twice
ruled that the right to keep and bear arms is a valid and individual right under the provisions of
the Constitution.

Of course, the Constitution requires that any treaty that is signed by a President must
be approved by two thirds of the Senate to be valid. The U.S. Supreme Court has also ruled
that no treaty can supersede the provisions of the Constitution, particularly those that deal
with individual rights. All of this would seem to render the treaty moot since two thirds of the
current Senate will not ratify it, and it clearly violates the provisions of the second amendment.
So why is Obama pushing for it? Simply put, he believes he can ignore the Senate and
the court, sign the treaty, and then allow the United Nations to begin enforcing it. If you believe
that he won’t try that, just look at what he has done in other areas.

The third goal of an effective dictatorship involves limiting the rights of the citizens
to have free speech and a free press. People who can’t communicate and learn the truth are
easier to control. Most of the main stream media in this country have already relinquished their
freedom of the press and are doing whatever Obama tells them to do. Those that oppose him
are under constant assault and Obama’s minions on the Federal Communications Commission
are looking for ways to shut down conservative talk radio and control internet content. This is
despite the fact that the Supreme Court has said that the FCC has no authority to regulate the
Internet. Once again, Obama has issued orders that the Supreme Court and the Constitution be
ignored.

Even more frightening is the fact that legislation pending in both houses of Congress
will effectively give Obama an Internet kill switch. It is being pushed in the Senate by the usual
leftists like Reid and Schumer, but in the House of Representatives it is some Republicans that
are pushing it. My next blog article will contain more information about these and other bills
pending in Congress.

The bottom line is, we are headed for a country that is no longer a Republic, but a
nation controlled entirely by a small group of elitists, and unless the American people wake up

soon it will be too late to stop it.
Michael Connelly
mrobertc@hotmail.com
www.michaelconnelly.jigsy.com
www.constitution.jigsy.com

This pie cost me about six dollars and fifty cents to make. Most restaurants assume a thirty percent food cost so you would expect to pay two dollars and seventy cents for a slice of this pie if it was cut into eight pieces. The problem is you that cannot find it at that price anywhere. What you are offered instead is a poor imitation of the reality that is chocolate pudding pie. A chiffon filling with artificial flavor that is more air than anything else, and topping made of whipped oil instead of cream. All this for about three dollars and fifty cents and that doesn’t include the coffee. The sad thing about it is that most people don’t realize that they are being served a cheap imitation. They like the way it tastes.

A silly thing to be writing about, chocolate pudding pie. But I submit to you that so much of what we are being served up today by our suppliers, our corporations, our media and our government is so pervasively artificial that we should be seriously considering what it might take to replace them with the genuine article. To begin with we would have to stop swallowing the stuff they are feeding us. Even if we often like the way it tastes.

I never really cared that much whether homosexuals were permitted to serve in the military. I figured this was just as much their country as mine and they’d be just as tenacious, and perhaps more so, defending it as anyone else, especially when you consider that in some countries homosexuality is punishable by death.

Barry Goldwater wrote that he didn’t care either. All he wanted to know was that the guy next to him in the foxhole could shoot straight. Ken Hamblin, the Black Avenger, wrote something similar about affirmative action; that he never cared what color the pilot was when he flew, he just wanted to know ‘did he kick ass in flight school.’ I’ve always felt that way and never really understood the problem.

Some claimed that it would create a sense of unease if military people knew that homosexual members were looking at them in the shower which seemed reasonable until I realized that I’d already been in open showers at YMCAs and health clubs where it was highly likely there were homosexuals anyway. So what was the big deal?

A number of years ago, one of the Lucian Truscotts, the fourth I think, wrote an article that appeared in The Providence Journal about his experiences in the Korean War when the men in his battalion thought one was homosexual. Truscott wrote of the cruel taunts heaped upon him but also, finally when he was killed, how they all wept. That’s what it takes sometimes to awaken people to their intolerances, I’m afraid. We forget all too quickly that we are all Children of a Creator and that none of us is more worthy of His love than another. We’re all capable of some cruel things and some wonderful examples of decency. At any rate, I’m glad that’s all over.

But there is a far more vexing question which has not been posed by either the conservatives nor the liberals in this matter. That question is, why do we have such an extensive military in the first place?

Article I, Section 8 of The Constitution empowers the Congress ‘To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; (and) To provide and maintain a Navy. Article II, Section 2 states ‘ The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;…’

The wording of The Constitution with regard to the navy is much more permanent than that for the army. I think this is no accident. A mere look at the map is enough to tell why.

Even today, we’re isolated from many of our trading partners. At that time, we were contiguous only to Canada; Spanish and French colonies lay to the west and south with Mexico, a long overland distance away, all with indistinct borders. We were just a short sail from many Caribbean and other New World nations but an ocean away from Europe.

We had to become a maritime nation and we needed to have a navy to protect our shipping. In fact, a lot of what it did in those early years was just that, as evidenced by the Barbary Coast Wars and the Quasi-War with France. Our shipping was being harassed and it also contributed to our War of 1812 with Britain. Shipping was vital to our survival! It still is.

We have five basic military services; Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard but we really need just two. The Marines are actually part of the Navy anyway; the Coast Guard a naval service. Aircraft carriers could many of the needs of an air force. That would leave only domestic ground defense to be provided which, of course, is where the militia come in which could also fill the remainder of the needs of an air force, which was part of the Army to begin with.

It’s also obvious that Founders wanted us to rely extensively on our various militias for defense. That was part of the purpose of the Second Amendment. So we really have little need of a standing army but like everything else governmental, the military has become a huge bureaucracy whose main interest is self-preservation.

Most military spending is unnecessary. Harry Browne once estimated that the entire defense budget could be covered with just $100 billion; later he lowered it to $50 billion. A stripped down federal military, especially the Army, with reliance on militias, run by the states, necessitates only a skeleton federal crew with fifty states as laboratories for developing the most efficient & effective models.

Anyone who has spent any time on a military base knows about the budget jokes; how at the beginning of the budget year there’s meat loaf for dinner and at the end, roast beef and lobsters. That’s how all bureaucracies work. They have to spend their allotment for the year so their officers can trek to Capitol Hill to request an increase for the next year to mourn how ‘woefully inadequate’ the current allowance is for their current mission, which, of course, always has to be expanded.

Whether it’s health education, welfare, environmental, law enforcement or military services, a bureaucrat is a bureaucrat is a bureaucrat. You will never hear a department or military Chief of Staff ask for a budgetary decrease. That has to be a sure ticket to a funeral for any government career.

Cyril N. Parkinson formulated his famous, humorous law, partly from observations of the military while in the British Civil Service. He noted how the number of personnel in the foreign service increased as the empire dissolved. An essence of Parkinson’s Law is that any bureaucrat wants subordinates, to magnify his own position; he doesn’t want competitors and he certainly never wants to resign.

I don’t know what was going through so many of our minds during those years when, unbeknownst to us, the Soviet Union was collapsing from within. We got snookered by the military and the CIA that kept up the alarms about Soviet capabilities. For me, I began to see the light about the military sometime during the 1980s, the Reagan years.

Our children were going to school and my wife became friendly with another woman whose husband was a career military man. She told my wife, one day, that they were anticipating that the next hot spot would be the Mideast.

At that, I said, whoa! Aren’t we simply fighting to end the communist threat to us? Isn’t that why we’ve had this huge military presence all these years? The answer, I came to realize was, of course it’s not. We’ve had this military presence to ensure the military’s survival.

It was then I realized that the military is just like any other government bureaucracy. Its first order of business is its own preservation. Karl Marx predicted the withering away of the state once the workers’ paradise came to pass but, the neither the state nor its bureaucracies, ever withers; no earthly paradise is possible. And so, today we find ourselves in imbroglios around the world.

That’s why the military discerned future problems in the Mideast. It needed a secondary bogeyman if the first one faltered and falter it did with the collapse of the eastern Europe Soviet satellites and finally the Soviet Union itself in 1991. And the fun continues.

The groundwork for overseas intervention that began with William McKinley, accelerated with Woodrow Wilson making the world safe for democracy and Franklin D. Roosevelt maneuvering us into World War II and the CIA’s unconstitutional foreign policy interventions that Robert Taft warned about, all have come to fruition. The military-industrial complex has been saved.

If tomorrow, somehow, peace descended over the entire arc from Morocco to Bengla Desh, the military would scramble and discover a new enemy du jour. You can count on it. It’s the truth about the military.

And as far as freedom goes, one of the greatest dangers to a free society and the world, is from soldiers sitting around with little to do. But don’t ask and don’t tell about it.

This article originally published in The Freedom Beam, November 7th, 2011 Dr. Roderick T. Beaman is an osteopathic family physician practicing in Jacksonville, Florida. Born in New York City, he attended New York University as an undergraduate. He is a recipient of a 2003 Ron Paul Liberty in Media Award. He has written a novel that he has given up hope of ever getting published and so has made it available for the asking through TheFreedomBeam@comcast.net.

The FHFA (Federal Housing Financial Authority) has instituted seventeen separate law suits in the state of New York on behalf of Fraudie Mac and Phoney Mae (that’s us, as both of these institutions are in receivership) against the seventeen major banks (trusts/securities) for the massive fraud that perpetrated the biggest ponzi scheme in the history of our nation that has flat lined our economy. Since the filing of these suits, the fifty attorney general investigations and settlements (ooops I mean forty-nine now, they ousted Sniederman from New York because he was too tough on the banks) has been halted with the major banks walking out of the settlement meetings. That has me very busy and quite frustrated on two counts. First, didn’t like the settlement terms as it would let the banks off the hook for their criminal and civil liability, leaving homeowners without legal recourse to pursue a remedy and a collective settlement amount of only twenty billion to be divided up among the fifty states leaving a mere four hundred million for each state in the hands of, in our case Pam Bondi. Once the fees and cost for this investigation, which has already taken over one year, are paid back, that doesn’t leave much for the folks and there is no specifics in the plan of how much or who will be the recipient of what is left. So maybe it’s a good thing the banks walked out of the settlement meetings. But is it? No, it is not because there have been no penalties imposed for their walking out and that clearly tells us all just exactly who is in charge, the banks and not the attorney generals. Pam Bondi either doesn’t have a clear understanding of the problem or she too is in bed with the banks as throughout this year-long investigation she has lead the disruption (along with four of her contemporaries) of the settlement stating boldly and loudly that the deadbeat homeowners should not be rewarded for their irresponsibility by not paying their mortgages. Part of the original deal was the majority of the attorney generals wanted to make the banks reduce the principal amount of the loans to current market value and reduce the interest rate to a fixed four percent on homesteaded property. Ms. Bondi was against that too and fired the two assistant attorneys’ general, June Clarkston and Teresa Edwards, because they were too aggressive when pursuing the banks and the companies aiding the fraud. This has lead to an investigation into their wrongful termination. More of your tax dollars at work.

You may remember HB1191 the Fair Foreclosure Bill that it was subsequently killed in the 2011 Florida legislative session. That’s the bill that would make the State of Florida a non-judical state leading to the abolition of our homestead exemption and leave homeowners without legal recourse to pursue the massive fraud and the threat of eviction in twenty-four hours, rather than the current seventy-two hour requirement. Passidomo (R), of Tampa, has reintroduced The Fair Foreclosure Act of 2012 to be taken up in January’s session. This is the third year she has presented this bill. We must stop it once again, however this time will be the most difficult as the bank lobbyists have been very busy bees stuffing our representative’s coffers with career bonuses and promises of more for their 2012 re-election campaigns . This is a non-partisan problem…surely you see if this bill passes it will strip Floridians of so many of their liberties. The elderly are already having a very difficult time making their property tax payments, as with the rest of the state with their unemployment rate is so high.

We, at RLCNEF are committed “restore” the peoples liberties, and take our country back. Conservatives stand for the rule of law, and as such we hold the position that no citizen shall be deprived of property except by that same rule of law. Accordingly, we also hold that sufficient laws already exist in the state of Florida. We must stay on careful watch and not allow any more of our liberties to be taken and I sincerely feel that is role is to combat the Unfair Foreclosure Act of 2012. I am working day and night on this ONE project. Please help me.

The seventeen lawsuits filed in New York on behalf of the people, is yet another smoke and mirrors game to allow the folks to think that finally something serious is being done to make the banks pay back the money they stole from this country. Surely it will end in yet another settlement with most of the language written in such legalese as to exonerate the banks of all their civil and criminal liabilities at a huge cost to taxpayers. Let’s consider the expense to file, maintain and bring to a conclusion seventeen lawsuits in New York. The J.P. Morgan complaint filed is two hundred, seventy-seven pages long. I know because I read it. Imagine how much that document alone cost us to prepare and file. It’s nice to see so many attorneys employed in this country while the remainders of the folks eke out a living day by day. Let’s not forget that Fraudie Mac and Phoney Mae engaged in the exact same illegal and fraudulent behavior as the folks they are suing (and continue to engage in as I write this) and that will certainly be raised during the course of these suits. There is already talk of banks filing suit against them. So it goes that Wall Street has begun the in-fighting between themselves, all pointing the finger at each other.

Now the trillion dollar question is: How is any of this helping the economy, the homeowners or the rest of the American people? This is just another attempt to divert the public from the simple and plain solution put all the bankers in handcuffs. All these suits filed to avoid the obvious conclusion that what they have done is immoral, illegal both criminally and civilly and arresting each and every one and freezing their assets, both on shore and off shore, would solve the problem. Then, require the principal reduction to all homestead property to five percent below the Net Market Value (NMV), leaving a five percent equity position in the home. This very simple solution would get the economy back on track as homeowners can make their payments, plus fix up the homes they are allowing to deteriorate due to fear of foreclosure. Lowes, Home Depot, all kinds of businesses would improve and so would the real estate sector. Home values would go up, or at least stop going down and would serve to get this country back on track again.

I am committed wholeheartedly to this cause and will stand with the millions of others who have been and continue to be affected by this tragedy. If you agree please sign the petition to kill this bill: http://signon.org/sign/do-not-support-the-florida?source=s.tw&r_by=26214

Rebekah Sharp is a member of the Executive Board of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Northeast Florida.

Racism is still going strong, based on the idea that the color of a person’s skin will automatically serve as an indicator of how they think and act politically. Of course there are some cultural arguments to be made. If you are a member of a group of people that looks alike and has the same history and traditions, and lives in the same area, it might be likely that you would hold the same opinions as your life-long friends and relatives. But that should not discount the fact that a person can grow as an individual and change their political opinions based on reason.

People love to mix racism with politics, not to end it, but to promote is and use it to fool the voter. Although it is personally appalling to me, I will condescend for a moment to draw attention to skin color. Former Councilwoman Glorious Johnson, Mr. Sam Newby, Vice Chairman of the Republican Party of Duval County, Clive Rickets, Chairman of the Libertarian Party of St John’s County, these among others are champions of Liberty and the American Way. Patriots do not view them as “African” Americans, but only as Americans who by the serendipity of nature happen to have dark skin. They are not leaders of “black” men, they propose to lead “all” men. Justice Clarence Thomas, defender of the Constitution and natural law, a man who would never apologize for his country; Dr. Alan Keyes, defender of Liberty and the life of the unborn, Herman Cain, Dr. Condi Rice, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jennifer Carroll, Eldridge Cleaver, all of them Republican political examples to be emulated. However, to say that one does or does not admire them because of their color their skin is as ludicrous as saying that I admire Lord Acton because he was fat.

What is most annoying is when racists accuse others of being racist. It is not racist to be rich and to want to keep your money. It is not racist to say that before we allow this country to degenerate into all-out, one-world socialism, we will go to war in the streets. It is not racist to say that we do not have as a country or as individuals the resources, or the responsibility, or even the desire to take care of all the needs of the poor. It may or may not be selfish, or mean spirited, but it is not racist. Racism is the big lie and should never be tolerated. The vocabulary of racism, even the word “race” should never be tolerated. We are all one race, one set of DNA. Differences in color, in height and weight, in age, are ridiculous subjects for political contemplation.

Differences in ideology however are not. Differences in ideology are fodder for war between countries, and for civil war. We fought the Civil War based on the question, “Will men be free or slaves?” NOT “Will black men be free or slaves?” It appears that we are soon to fight that battle again, not over the issues of color but over the issue of economics. Will men be free or slaves? Will they be able to keep the fruits of their labor? Will they be able to own property? Will they be able to keep what they have earned to enrich themselves and their families, or will it be taken from them and given to others who have not earned it in the interest of “fairness.”

We on the far right despise racism and do not tolerate it. We stand for liberty for all. We demand due process and equal access for all to the procedures and processes that describe our political system. Our system, a constitutional republic, administered by representatives elected by democratic process. A capitalistic economy ruled by market forces that anyone, anyone at all may benefit from and grow rich . A system where the rights of the individual are more important than the rights of the “state”, or the “masses.” A system that tens of thousands of Americans have died to establish and preserve, that we ourselves are prepared to fight and die for even today, and tomorrow. Let’s celebrate that instead the memory of some horrific act that means nothing today except for its value as a tool to alienate men and women of good will on the basis of color.

(Louis William Rose is a political philosopher and the Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Northeast Florida you can contact him at louisrose@yahoo.com)

By Kristi Dunn

In Florida’s Republican Party, like many around the country, we are told that unity is always supporting the Republican Candidate who wins their primary race. When attending Republican Party functions, we are told that we are to “come together at election time” by the leaders of the party. It is rare, however, that these same party leaders do not see their candidate win in the primary. The win allows them, with immunity, to demand total support for the candidate that so many in the grassroots were working to defeat, which often leaves these workers in a state of utter confusion and wondering how they can be expected to so drastically change their support.

In the case of Governor Charlie Crist, many of the Republican Party leadership, who knew exactly what Charlie stood for, supported him and his decisions to the end. That end, of course, was when Charlie changed parties, and now Charlie is despised. He has become a talking point for Republicans in the 2010 state elections for what is wrong with Florida; however, many of those same Republicans supported and demanded that others support him before his party change. Did Charlie’s actions or beliefs change? Did Charlie suddenly morph into someone that aspired to beliefs that were not in line with the Republican Party? The Answer is no. Charlie did not change; rather, simply his affiliation with the Republican Party changed.

In Duval county we have a mayor that claims to be a Republican, yet has proposed tax increases the last two years. These increases were supported by the mostly Republican City Council, but were protested by many of the hardworking, grassroots people of Duval County. Meanwhile both years the Republican Party leadership declined to participate in the discussion, because to do so would have been to go against a fellow Republican. What issue pertains more to the Republican Party than low taxes? Yet, Republican leaders would rather remain silent, then true to principles.

At a time when so many within both parties are disenfranchised and ready for another option, perhaps demanding loyalty to a party is short sighted. It is because of these types of demands that so many organizations and groups have sprung up. From the Tea Parties and 912 groups to the Republican Liberty Caucus and Campaign for Liberty, these groups are now standing for what the Republican Party was always supposed to be: The Party that represented small, limited, Constitutional Government, less taxes, a strong national defense, and State and National Sovereignty.

Now is the time to examine the political system to determine if, perhaps, the idea of loyalty to an organization or party, that often asks the people to dismiss their personal convictions and standards and offer their blind loyalty to the title “Republican”, is somehow missing the big picture. Does supporting someone like Charlie Crist, only to have them prove that they have always stood for different principles, lend credibility to the Republican Party leadership?

Many serving on the executive committee take a loyalty oath to support the party. This oath has often been enforced with a stern hand. Meanwhile, who is enforcing the oath to the Constitution that our elected officials take? Should their failure to uphold their own oath to their constituents void any oath to unconditionally support them? They have forgotten that they serve the people, and their primary duty is to uphold the US Constitution. If we continue to blindly support them, forcing loyalty on those working to get them elected, we are creating an infrastructure that will collapse on itself.
To pretend that America’s problems started the day that Obama was sworn into office is to dismiss the damage that Republicans, such as John McCain and Olympia Snow, have been doing to the party for years. It was the Republican Party that supported them and enabled them to continue their harmful ways without accountability. The Party needs to figure out what it stands for and what it stands against so that the people working to get “Republicans” candidates elected in the fall will know exactly what these candidates stand for.

Organizations such as the Republican Liberty Caucus stand for accountability within the party at all levels and with every elected official. When officials fail to uphold their oath to the Constitution, or to support the principles that the stated Republican platforms claims to uphold, they deserve to be called out and in turn voted out.

If those in party leadership would unite under principles, they could harness the growing power of the Tea Parties, the RLC, the 912 groups, and thousands of disenfranchised voters.

Now is the time to decide if uniting under a title is more important than returning this country to its roots and seeing real change take place in our cities, counties, states, and Nation

In Oklahoma the state legislature has a Bill pending to re-assert their state sovereignty.  The short caption of the bill reads:

“Joint Resolution claiming sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over certain powers; serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates; and directing distribution.”

Essentially, Oklahoma has asserted that the federal government and those in Washington D.C. are no longer going to dictate the way they run their state education, industries, National Guard, state police and they are especially not going to run rough shod over their state legislature. Oklahoma has told Washington, enough is enough. GET OUT!

In Montana the Governor and the State Legislature are reasserting their sovereignty and telling the Director of Homeland Security they have no constitutional authority to force the National ID on its citizens.

In New Hampshire a group of legislators are diligently working to introduce sound money backed by gold and silver as a state currency.

In Nevada the State Legislature rules the Federal Reserve Corporation unconstitutional.

It is All About Sovereignty

When we look at the source of the problem, most every problem in America today stems from a failure to respect and understand sovereignty: national, state, local and individual. The national police state and (FBI, DEA, CIA, OSHA, Corp of Engineers, Homeland Security, IRS, Fish and Wildlife, EPA, Fusion Centers, etc., etc.) runs rough shod over the state police, local sheriff’s offices and citizens in each state. The dire problems in this country were created by unconstitutional, unconscionable actions of the U. S. Congress. These agencies undermine the liberties of all Americans, violate the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and undermine the sovereignty of each state. Take a look at a list of all Federal Agencies. You will not believe it (http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/All_Agencies/index.shtml ).

The financial problems created by having to feed this machine seem so complex and overwhelming that most Americans have developed a sense of hopelessness and despair. When it comes to dealing with issues such as the national debt, the growing federal bureaucracy and the national police state, the citizens and states have no viable avenue for redress. When citizens have more fear of the IRS and the federal government than of dying, we have a problem.

When it comes to protecting one citizen from another, the sheriff of each county is the legitimate constitutional protector of the rights and liberties of the citizens. Their offices are charged with both protecting the liberty of the citizens and prosecuting those who commit criminal acts against another citizen. Should the sheriffs’ office ever engage in violating the rights of its citizenry, the citizens have immediate recourse by calling a town meeting or replacing the sheriff at the next election. The sheriff is immediately answerable to those who entrust him with such power. This is the proper order of things.

With a Federal Police state or federal regulatory bureaucracy, there is no redress for the citizens of the state. Can one vote out the director of the US Army Corps of Engineers or the head of the Internal Revenue Service in Washington D.C.? Write your Congressman and see what kind of results you get. Additionally, the U.S. Congress and its agencies treat our states and city municipalities as low level extensions of Congress. They have forgotten that, THE STATES CREATED THE CONGRESS and gave them their limited powers. The national police and federal regulatory agencies routinely undermine the citizen’s inalienable right of self defense by placing limitations on gun ownership. The federal government has undermined the citizen’s right of freedom and life through the personal income tax and regulation of every area of one’s life or business. The average state citizen now works nearly 4 months of the year for the federal government. The sad irony is, we created the federal government to protect our liberty and privacy and now it is the federal government we need protection from. This is not how the Founders intended.

Debt, Taxes and Inflation

In order to pay for the federal behemoth, the U.S. Congress and Federal Reserve Corporation have saddled the American people with an unrecoverable $13 trillion of debt. Half of this debt was accumulated in the past 8 years. This is now expected to be repaid by our children and grandchildren. No generation has the right to pass on a debt to the next generation.

Unfortunately, the U.S. treasury is empty, we are taxed until we cannot be taxed anymore and the federal government has borrowed until it cannot borrow anymore. According to the former Controller General of the United States David Walker, the U.S. has another $50 trillion in social service, Medicare and Medicaid obligations coming due over the next 30 years. http://www.federalbud….

Walker says, the U.S. Government is already insolvent and operates only off of borrowed money. The income taxes collected are primarily paying the $1.5 billion a day interest payment. Assuredly, he states, at our present course the U.S. Government will cease to operate.

Privacy

Did you know that the federal government has passed legislation requiring every citizen to obtain a National Id Card? The little known legislation is known as the Real ID Act was passed into law by Congress in 2003 and began being implemented in May of 2008 ( http://www.realidstates.com/category/real-id-act/ ). Florida, my home state, implemented the program in January 2010. The national ID Card is a centralized federal government file database on every American. This legislation allows the director of the Department of Homeland Security to track all of your financial transactions (i.e. political affiliations, social clubs, service clubs, gun ownership, types of guns purchased, places traveled) health records, biometric data, blood type, DNA information and social security number and will have the ability to be directly connected to your ATM or Debit Card.

People often say that if you have nothing to hide why should you care?

First of all, it smacks of a modern version of the required papers required by the Gestapo in Nazi Germany and secondly the government was created to protect our privacy not invade it. Read a little on the Nazi police state for a brief history lesson. Also, I am uncomfortable knowing that my small children, for their entire life may have every doctor visit, everywhere they travel and everything they ever purchase collected, maintained and analyzed by the government official in a federal government database.

So with all of this, what can possibly be the good news?

The Solution

The good news is that our founding fathers anticipated all of this and they gave us the ability at any time to bring the house in order. When this Republic was founded, we referred to one another as Floridians, Alabamans, Georgians, and Virginians.

When referring to the states collectively it was states the “United States are” …

Today the federal government would have us to believe the “United States is” one large collectivist national state, run and operated out of Washington D. C.

This issue probably would not be resurrecting itself if it were not for Washington seeking to strip our liberties and God given rights from us, enslave us through taxation, burden our children with debts, and collapse the dollar we trade in until our entire nations wealth disappears through inflation. As a result, few leaders in Washington can be trusted. Our founding fathers repeatedly warned us to not trust those in power. We must follow Oklahoma’s lead, dust off the Constitution, re- assert our state sovereignty and turn to ourselves to preserve our liberties and our prosperity.

Our solution will be a long arduous battle that begins at the local level, then state level, one legislator at a time. Eventually we will have a legislature and governor willing to stand up to the federal leviathan. During the process they will be under tremendous pressure to abandon the course. Their careers will be threatened, if they own businesses they will be threatened with loss of business or contracts, they will be ridiculed by the media as anachronistic and the weight of their party will bear on each of them. There are trillions of dollars being spent at the federal trough and the pigs will not leave until they are starved out. This plan will take governors calling governors and legislators calling legislators. We must follow the Founders advice and the states must re-assert their sovereignty. The states must refuse to allow the US Government to continue to run roughshod over their legislatures. We must do as Oklahoma has done, tell them enough is enough.

We need to find, educate and elect officials who think deeply about the principles this county was founded upon. Leaders that understand that taking office is a burden not a popularity contest. We need leaders that do not allow themselves to become compromised. We need leaders with the courage of their convictions to tell those in Washington D.C. that our state is not going to take it anymore. As Oklahoma has said, enough is enough. We are here to take it back!

If you are committed to the cause of liberty and limited constitutional government please join or contribute to the Republican Liberty Caucus of Northeast Florida www.rlcnf.org.

Regards,
Will Pitts, Chairman

Republican Liberty Caucus of Florida

Florida Liberty Candidates

Here are some good candidates to support in Florida:

Charles Perniciaro, State Senate District 8
http://www.charlesperniciaro.com

Luis Melendez, State House District 16
http://www.electmelendez.com

Marcus Rivchin, State House District 117
http://www.marcusrivchin.com

Francisco Rodriguez, State House District 83
http://www.rodriguez2010.com

Nathan McDonell, State House District 26
http://www.nathanmcdonell.com

Roger Shealy, State House District 29
http://www.shealy2010.com

In the Madisonian republic that the citizens of the several states have managed to sustain, above all else, including such abstractions as “the common good” and “general welfare” for example, stands the rule of law.  It is with strict adherence to and equal application of a supreme law of the land that we are able to live, at worst, relatively free and, at best, with ultimate liberty and maximum personal responsibility.  As Madison explains in Federalist Paper #57, the same laws that apply to the citizens also apply to the representatives.  No man–not the executive, nor the legislative– is above the law.  It is with this understanding then that we must allow ourselves to be guided when making judgments and decisions on our elected officials.

We must learn to set aside our own “special interests” when seeking out the best candidates to rule us.  Citizens of the modern states excel at disdain for the organized interests of business, for example, who employ professional lobbyists, but fail to draw the parallels between their own intentions and the intentions of these organized groups.  Each citizen who makes a judgment of a candidate based upon any issue that is personal to them commits the same offense against the Republic that the professional lobbyist does.  The only difference is that the professionals often do so with more money than the common citizen.  But, in principle, there is no difference.  Each is trying to influence the system based on their own personal values and ambitions.  As secondary considerations, this practice is not so harmful; however the primary qualification for office in a constitutional republic is this:  Will the candidate respect the limits place on his power by the Constitution?  If no, then the candidate must not serve, no matter what a voter may like about the candidate’s views on other issues.

Contrary to what so many people believe, and what the lobbyists hired by the special interests practice daily, the elected representatives do not serve us.  They serve the Republic.  When representatives serve the people, then by consequence they will serve the majority at the expense of the minority, the rich at the expense of the poor, the influential at the expense of the commoner.  This is the evil which we see today where the elected are divorced from the electorate.  We must elect moral men who will bound themselves with the chains of the Constitution, vote for no legislation that is not authorized by the Constitution, and represent the interests of the whole of their constituency in the interest of maintaining the republic.

Much of my message here to you has been a nice way of saying the following:  Nobody cares what you think.  Your opinion does not and should not matter.  Your influence must be defended against by every liberty-loving citizen of the states.  It MUST be this way.  We have a rule of law and a system of government designed, as its primary function, to protect me from you .  My motivation for electing a representative to government is to make sure they will keep you from forcing your values upon me, to keep you from stealing my property, to prevent you from forcing my children to march off to foreign lands to slaughter innocent citizens of another geo-political union.  I know you’re my enemy when I see you supporting issues like the Fair Tax, which is a different disguise of theft of my fortune.  When you support aggressive and pre-emptive war, I know you are willing to kill my children to further your agenda against the enemies you’ve made for yourself.  When you support a ban on gay marriage, I know you are telling me that you own the definition of marriage and, at any time, you can further clarify that definition to exclude me.

I must find a moral man who recognizes the threat you pose to me and my liberty, and do everything I can to put him between you and me to provide protection.  THAT is what this republican form of government and our Constitution is designed to facilitate.  Only candidates who run on this platform are fit to serve our Republic.  Stop being selfish and become self-interested.  Cease looking for ways to participate in the power-grab which has become modern-day politics.  Find it in yourself to be brave enough to give up the tendency to use the power of government to force others to think like you, act like you, and vote like you.  Instead, choose liberty for all to do as they please so long as they do not rob another of life, liberty, or property!  Be loyal, not to a flag or another man or a government; rather be loyal to the principle of liberty that this country was founded on!