A Nation of Laws: To The Letter?

"In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the laws scrupulously. Our government is the potent omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example."

--Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

Never were those words more applicable than today. Never have they been truer. We were once known as a nation of laws. Over the last several years, especially, our government's adherence to the values and the sacred documents of our nation has waned, drifting perilously close to the edge of oblivion as our Bill of Rights, Consitution and election laws have been whittled away in favor of granting increased power and secrecy to not only Federal government, but individual State governments as well.

Governor Blagojevich and his assistant John Harris have been arrested; Axelrod and Obama suddenly claim not to have had any dealings with either of them in spite of reports from several sources about meetings and phone calls between them in November and early December.

In the wake of the release of a 77 page Criminal Complaint, Chicago homicide detectives have requested the asssitance of Federal Prosecutor Fitzpatrick in obtaining phone records from Obama, Reverend Wright, Donald Young and others. Previous attempts to obtain these records in connection with the murder investigation of Donald Young were thwarted by the Chicago Police Department and Mayor Daley's office.

In recent years we have seen a massive breakdown in the willingness to abide by our laws in some sectors. Although the majority of Americans are law abiding, many more are not, and the question remains as to what could be the cause. Surely a government must abide by its own laws--not just SOME of the government abiding by SOME of the laws--but ALL of the government must abide by and uphold ALL of its laws in order to command the respect and loyalty of its citizens. In these times of media generated fear and global concerns it is all too easy to excuse governmental law breaking as an exigency in fending off terrorists. Witness FISA, and the issue of employing illegal spy tactics. Senator Schumer of NY voted against granting immunity to the communication corporations who broke the law in that regard; Obama, despite his assertions that he would "filibuster against [granting them immunity]" voted to grant that immunity anyway.

With turnabouts like this, is it any wonder that integrity, loyalty, honor, and respect for our words, deeds and laws has seen a downturn at the least and a drubbing at worst?

We were once a nation of laws, and to continue to be a nation at all, we must resolve to follow them--ALL must follow ALL laws, not just the ones we deem convenient, be we citizens or government.

Update: disclaimer from one of those who reported a meeting between Obama and Blagojevich:

Wednesday, December 10, 2008 at 4:04 p.m.

KHQA TV wishes to offer clarification regarding a story that appeared last month on our website ConnectTristates.com. The story, which discussed the appointment of a replacement for President Elect Obama’in the U.S. Senate, became the subject of much discussion on talk radio and on blog sites Wednesday.

The story housed in our website archive was on the morning of November 5, 2008. It suggested that a meeting was scheduled later that day between President Elect Obama and Illinois Governor Blagojevich. KHQA has no knowledge that any meeting ever took place. Governor Blagojevich did appear at a news conference in Chicago on that date.

I rest my case.

Papers Then and Now

From the Federalist Papers, a series of essays under the nome de plume Publius, supporting the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison in the 1780s to the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam, commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in 1967 and never intended for publication, two hundred years have passed.

Leaked to the public in 1971 and exposing the administration of U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, in contrast with the Federalist Papers, written for publication in support of a system of rules from which to govern a new nation, the Pentagon Papers, according to Daniel Ellsberg, the individual who eventually leaked them to NY Times reporter Neil Sheehan, "demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates" and stated that he had leaked the papers "in the hopes of getting the nation out of "a wrongful war."

In that two hundred years, our nation went from one seeking truth in government for and by the People to one seeking to hide the truth from them in secretly commissioned studies, never intended to reach the public eye. In the decades since the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers have receded into the dusty shelves of library history stacks as we continued to face an onslaught of growing deception at the hands of a government once lauded for its populist view. The protection of checks and balances informed by the founding fathers continued to erode, leaving more room than ever for abuse of power and spurning of the Constitution and those transgressions for which Nixon finally fell have continued-- agreements with Iran to hold hostages until after the Reagan election, Oliver North and the Iran Contra affair, the Weapons of Mass Destruction fable floated to gain approval for the Iraq invasion and subsequent violations of privacy and human rights under the auspices of Homeland Security concerns.

Despite these tragedies, we have continued to survive as a nation even as the current administration has lowered our standing in the eyes of the world and the economic meltdown continues to unravel and unnerve the very fabric of our everyday life. As Joe Biden and Colin Powell make dire predictions of imminent food and water shortages, we struggle to recover from what appears to be yet another stolen election, this time by an entity whose very origin remains for the most part unknown, and whose titular head is most certainly not even qualified to hold the office of POTUS by the standards enunciated by Article II Section I of the U.S. Constitution and elucidated in U.S. Code, Title 8,§ 1401.

Rather than restate the arguments and their citations here, interested readers can refer to the excellent essay containing documentation links, by drkate, published on the TD site.

In recent years, freedom of the press has become little more than license for media to promulgate untruths and suppress truths, further hobbling the electorate's ability to make sound decisions at the voting booth. Schools and even institutions of higher learning have so curtailed basic civics and Amerian history classes that fewer and fewer of the American public have even the slightest idea as to how the papers of our founding fathers worked to form the structure from which our system of government grew, have almost no idea how our voting processes should work, or even the contents of our Constitution and its amendments, the first ten comprising our Bill of Rights. As a result, through ignorance and bad information from media, we are faced with a candidate who is ineligible to hold the office of POTUS,and our nation now faces the worst consitutional crisis in our history aside from the 1861 secession of the Confederate states. Perhaps saddest of all is the fact that few Americans seem to realize this or even care. Pravda, long dismissed as Russia's cold war propaganda paper, has scooped the American media on this momentous news. Not because no one knew it, but because, in spite of the thousands of entreaties by concerned Americans, the American media refused to cover it or even mention it until Friday, December 5, and when they finally did, couched the reports in snide looks, rolling eyes and pronouncements that the nearly 20 lawsuits challenging this ineligible individual's attempt to seize the White House through fraud are little more than political ploys.

Mounds of paper have already been drawn and served, and mounds will continue. Over 60,000 letters had reached the Supreme Court by the December 5 conference which was convened to examine the merits of granting certiorari for the Donofrio, and many more will follow. Lawsuits continue to mount as those who hold our Constitution dear try to wrest its destruction from the hands of the enemy within. The vigil of work and prayer continue as we strive to save the blueprint of our Democracy.

For updates see http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/ , http://drorly.blogspot.com/
To assist in the efforts, visit the links above or email RichardLawrenceMusic@gmail.com