The crime?  Have you not heard?

Here’s what the law says:  The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The federal government is specifically forbidden to search you, your papers, your house or belongings, without a warrant issued by a court supported by oaths and specific accusations of wrongdoing.  Forbidden.  To do so would be a federal crime.

Been on an airplane lately? Were you put through a scanner that showed a TSA agent every detail of your skin, bones, underwear, and whatever else you might have had under your clothing?  Worse, did you or some member of your family have to endure a “thorough patdown,” allowing a complete stranger, and not even a law enforcement officer at that, to put his or her hands in places only one other person in your life is allowed to touch?

The Houston police officer overseeing the area where last I enjoyed this illegal assault waved his hand at the screening area and said, “Well, that whole thing is a federal area, and they pretty much do whatever they want.”

Couldn’t have said it better. The ironic part is that preventing what they are doing, that “whatever they want” thing, is so important that the very document that created the federal government contains the prohibition against them doing exactly that thing.

They are not allowed to do that.  Period.

Why do we allow it?  I’ve been asking that question. The answers are amazing.  You should try it.

The best answer has to be the one already mentioned, that the feds “do pretty much whatever they want.”  Even things that they are prohibited to do.  And that’s acceptable?

The managing TSA officer at the screening area explained that “flying is a privilege, not a right, so you agree to whatever screening is needed when you buy your ticket.”  Funny, I don’t remember that … buying a bus ticket requires giving up Constitutional protections?  Missed that somewhere.  And what is an airplane, but a flying bus?  I should read the “contract for carriage” that is actually created when you buy an airline ticket, but I’ll be surprised if there’s a waiver of 4th amendment rights in the fine print.

He further explained that when you enter the screening line, you are giving permission to be searched.

Hmm.  Is there any other way to get to the airplane I have a ticket for?  Well, no, not at the moment.  So I have no other way to get to the plane, so … I waive my Constitutional rights because an illegal federal action is being carried out between me and the plane?  Did you ask me for permission? Did I give it?  Was I drinking, and just don’t remember?  In the words of Captain Jack Sparrow, “I’ve never been that drunk!”

Another Houston police officer explained that the Harris County district attorney, supported by “a recent Supreme Court ruling,” had told them that it was not an “unreasonable search,” because when you enter the screening line you are giving implicit permission, which makes it “reasonable.”

It’s “reasonable” to commit a federal crime against me because I bought a bus ticket and got in line to board the bus?  Excuse me?

An airline service agent offered a series of incomprehensible rationales, including that individuals must give up some things for the benefit of the whole society.  I’m sure the millions murdered by Lenin’s social improvement efforts would have agreed, and gladly contributed their part.  Likewise those blessed by Pol Pot, Mao Tse-Tung, and others aggressively improving their societies over the last century.

He further explained that the federal government is supreme, and admitted he actually has no idea what’s in the Constitution.

So we have a choice.  The TSA is going to commit a crime against you, as part of your getting on the airplane for which you bought a ticket. Either they will strip you of your ability to use that ticket — isn’t that robbery?  theft? — or they will simply strip you. Which is a federal crime defined over 200 years ago.  The wonderful part is that you get to choose the crime, and it happens with the blessing of the local law authorities watching over the airport.  And although many you talk to, including the police, will express a gut reaction that it is somehow wrong, they can’t begin to explain why, or what we should do about it.

It’s not that hard.

At this writing, the first judge to do so has ruled Obamacare — ie, government control of the healthcare industry that includes requiring you and I to purchase insurance — is unconstitutional.

Well, of course it is.  Now we’ll see if the Supreme Court agrees.  But if they disagree, if they let Obamacare proceed, does that make it constitutional?

Well, of course not.

The whole involvement of the federal government in our healthcare decisions is outside the scope of the powers delegated to them; the bill is unconstitutional on its face, never mind in its details.

How can we break free of this idea that 7 unelected lawyers, and more recently an increasing number of them appointed purely as political support for the party in power, have life and death authority over our entire lives?

The states must step up, as Jefferson insisted they must, to defend their citizens from enemies both foreign and domestic.  Any attempt by the federal government to exert unauthorized power over any citizen of any state constitutes an attack on that citizen.  What else would you call it?

What?  The states?  How are the states authorized to stand against supposedly constitutional actions, especially if the Supreme Court has approved them? Didn’t that law professor on the radio just laugh at that idea?

Yes, he did.  And he was wrong.

The states can trump such actions, because the Supreme Court is subject to the Constitution, just like the other two parts, and has not been give power to extend and “adjust” it by fiat.  Here’s how Jefferson explained it in the Kentucky Resolutions:

“…that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”

So, who’s Supreme? Who really has final say about health care, and light bulbs, and dishwashing soap, and how much salt we eat, and a thousand other things being taken under Washington’s wing as we speak?

You are.  The tenth amendment has not been repealed, just trampled.

If the other party to any agreement is engaged in aggressive, unlawful expansion of its powers, you have to respond. Don’t you?

It’s time to quit being run over.  It’s time to stand up to the bullies.

It happens all the time, and the reason it happens, the way it happens … well, that’s the rub.

A close friend — let’s call her Lila, since I know no one by that name — was talking recently about having an animal communicator in to talk with their dying dog, and find out how it wanted the process to be managed.  Did it want aggressive medication, etc, or just a few quality of life adjustments for its final days?  The animal communicator was able to convey the dog’s wishes to Lila and her husband, and they were both surprised and pleased at what he had to “say”.

She also mentioned being in Africa some time back, and a “healer” there happened to say, quite unexpectedly and off topic, that Lila would never return to Africa until she resolved the issues with her mother.  My friend, accepting this as somehow true, threw up her hands and said to her husband, “Well, we’re never coming back to Africa!”  Today, those issues are being resolved, and they are expecting to be back in Africa soon.

How did the stranger have any idea about Lila’s issues with her mother?

She also mentioned a series of books including “The Journey of Souls,” in which a doctor apparently began working with hypnosis to find the reason for longstanding, undiagnosed pain in one of his patients.  The experience led to many more such efforts, all revealing issues in “past lives” that explained current issues.

The common thread in all these is people knowing things that are not available to be known.  What animals think, what issues are deep in other people’s histories, what happened in prior centuries of which the person today has no specific knowledge … how can these be known?

The assumed explanation, of course, is that some people CAN speak with animals, and that some people ARE “seers”, able of themselves to look into other people’s minds and histories, and that some or all of us have lived prior lives.  Lila completely accepts that.

What if that’s not true?  Is there another explanation, if reincarnation and telepathy do not actually exist?

There’s one man who has demonstrably been to death and back again, and demonstrated the ability to know other people’s thoughts quite clearly, and was known to communicate effectively with plants and the weather, not just animals, and predicted future “resolutions” with precision. What would his explanation be, of these matters?

We have two ways of knowing.  What he said — which is preserved in the most validated historical records on the planet — and what he continues to say and do through the millions who have walked with him for two millenia.  His name, of course, is Yeshua.  In English we call him Jesus.

And there’s a third way, of course, and it’s really the most appropriate. Go ask him yourself. He said “my sheep will know my voice,” not “my sheep will know my handwriting.” And he wasn’t talking about sheep.  Talking about future years and generations, he said the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth.  So go be led.

A friend in graduate school at Harvard was discussing the Freudian view of psychological treatment, versus Jesus’ dealing with indwelling, invading spiritual beings that needed to be expelled.  My friend finally said he would choose Jesus’ approach over Freud’s because, after all, “it works.”

So, in Jesus’ view of the cosmos, how do we explain the things Lila was relating?

Is there reincarnation?  Have we lived past lives?  No.  “… it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement,” just to pick one principle of many.  And in the three days after his death, according to his close friend Peter, Jesus went into Hades and gathered all who wanted to go with him for a victory parade.  To make the obvious point, if they had moved on to subsequent lives on earth, they would not have been there!

No, nothing in the massive revelations of God’s will and character, of the nature and history of man, etc, presented in the JudeoChristian scriptures supports the idea of reincarnation.  Moreover, interaction with the deceased is consistently prohibited.  Note that such interaction is possible, because life does not end with death, the end of the original human body; dead persons have not gone on to become a second person, and never will.  We were made for eternal life, as who we are.  We stay ourselves, forever.

Can people talk with animals?  More specifically, can animals verbalize thoughts to us?  It has certainly happened, but in each case we know of it was enabled by a specific spiritual being for a specific purpose.  Inhabiting a serpent, Lucifer spoke with Adam and Eve.  And Balaam’s ass corrected his asinine behavior, under the Holy Spirit’s action.

Other than that?  I love the idea C.S. Lewis paints of talking Narnian animals, and I certainly chat with a variety of animals who populate my novels, but I think “not yet” is really the answer today.  “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God,” and the trees will clap their hands in that day, and the rocks could have cried out when Jesus entered Jerusalem, so it appears full cross-species communication is on the way.  But not yet.

And the seer?  Telepathy?  Mediums and seances?  How is all that explained?

The obvious, single, and completely sufficient answer to all of the above issues is that spiritual beings communicate with us all the time.  God’s spirit works in the world to heal, expose, direct, convict, and deliver from bondage,, and his angels are literally “messengers.” Other spirits also communicate continually, and their purpose is deception and destruction, even when they speak the truth.

We all experience this, until we come to grips with it, recognize who is speaking, and as Paul puts it, “take every thought captive to obey Christ.”  Who has not found thoughts of bitterness, temptation, anger, or rebellion suddenly appearing in their minds, leading to destructive behavior?  Are those just arising “from our subconscious”? What if they are not?

Jesus conversed openly with such spiritual beings as he expelled them from people oppressed by them, and that is still the experience today of Christians willing to participate in the ongoing ministry of the Holy Spirit in these areas.  Many times these spirits proclaimed (using the voice of the person they inhabited) who Jesus was, as they begged not to be expelled, and he told them to shut up and get out.  The slave girl following Paul was declaring the truth about who he was, but it was to incite others to kill him.  In each case a person was saying what they could not have known by themselves.

It is common experience for Christians in ministry to have a “word of knowledge” about someone, i.e., for the Holy Spirit to tell them something they could not have known, for the purpose of physical, mental, or emotional healing of the person being attended to.  And the ministry typically called prophecy is simply listening to the Holy Spirit and saying to others verbatim what He is saying to you.

So, can people know things beyond their experience?  Certainly.  Happens all the time.  How?  From the Holy Spirit, working through any person or creature he wants to use, and from other spiritual beings with the motive to deceive and destroy (and in particular to ensure the people involved dismiss any thought of needing to get serious with God).

Can a spirit who has been alive for millenia enter a person who is under hypnosis and spin any yarn he likes? Easily; the essence of hypnosis is the absence of control of what’s happening to your mind and spirit. Can that lying spirit convey many details of true history, to make the “past life” appear the more real?  Of course, why not?  Will the hypnotist believe the person on the couch is the one actually speaking?  Every time.

Can a spirit give an animal communicator all sorts of images, thoughts, ideas, and emotions that the communicator will believe came from the animal?  Of course.  Will the non-Christian practitioner have any way of knowing it’s not real?  No.  And the prestige, satisfaction, and sense of having done real ministry will prevent them from even wanting to know if they’re being fooled.

Can a spirit convey to a medium or seer any details at all about your personal life and history? Easily. Your life is an open tabloid to the spiritual hierarchy, and much of what you wish you had not done arose from their prompting anyway.

With two radically different explanations available for all this, you need to decide for yourself what’s really happening.  But the first issue is how you will phrase the question.  “If there is no God, how …” will lead you to one answer.  “If what God says is true, how …” will lead you to an entirely different one.

Does it matter which explanation you choose?

If you walk onto a battlefield, does it matter whether you realize there’s a war going on?

But the real problem with earmarks is deeper, and simpler.

The much-abused “general welfare” clause says — no, I mean really, not what Congress takes it to mean — what it really says, is that as the Congress taxes us for their legitimate purposes, the money must be spent for the general welfare.  That is, NOT for a single person, or a single bridge, or a single city or state or region.  The money must be spent for the general welfare.  For all of us.

And the essential nature of an earmark is to give a special benefit to a selected recipient.

So the real, underlying problem with earmarks is that they are flatly illegal, and there are early examples in our history of the Congress rightly refusing to allocate money to very worthy needs, for exactly this reason.  Those who vote for them today are breaking their oath of office, and should be immediately impeached.

In a day when the general welfare clause is wrongly interpreted to allow the Congress to do anything they judge to be worthwhile, whether they have the authority to do it or not, let’s apply it correctly. If the courts won’t slap it down, the states can, and if they won’t, the people must.  The choice is simple: Constitutional government that operates under the rule of law … or tyranny.

1.  Will we be a nation under the rule of law, specifically the Constitution and the legal means provided to change it, or will we be ruled by the elected leaders in Washington doing whatever they please?

One consideration:  If you like what the current administration is doing, essentially all of which is in violation of the Constitution, you may prefer the latter option.  If so, you will have no grounds to complain if the next election brings an opposite mindset to power, and THEY do whatever they please, again in violation of the law of the land.  If you approve the current actions, then you approve massive violation of oaths of office in pursuit of personal agendas.  So you must also approve of the other side violating their legal bounds to pursue their personal agendas, when they come to power … if you are honest.

2.  Will we be a socialist nation, or a free nation? Will we continue as free men and women managing our own lives, or will we submit to a massive state that makes all our decisions for us? Centrally-managed economies have always produced poverty, misery, and disastrous economies; and since they are usually socialist, in our era, they also murder their own citizens by the millions.

Today, we have turned over the steering wheel to committed socialists, and the economic disaster of the day is entirely predictable, in fact, unavoidable under their policies.  Is it our desire to turn America into an oppressed, third-world country?  Is it theirs?

I prefer, as Dr. Walter E. Williams would say, the moral superiority of freedom.  Do you?

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said [Alvin] Greene was not a “legitimate” candidate and called his victory “a mysterious deal.” (Yes, how could a young African-American man with strange origins, suspicious funding, shady associations, no experience, no qualifications, and no demonstrable work history come out of nowhere and win an election?)

by Kelly Galbreath

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
–James Madison

James Madison warned often of the encroachments of a central government, and warned that a central or federal government needed to be kept in check by a balance of power. The cornerstone of this balance of power was the will of the people being governed expressed not only in Congress but ultimately through the sovereignty of the individual states.

The federal government has over-reached and encroached on state sovereignty for decades – and under the leadership of both Republicans and Democrats. Each time the federal government has gone unchecked it has become bigger and bolder – and continues to do so with each usurping of power belonging to the states. The passing of Obamacare, just might be the coup de grace, or at least a giant step toward bringing down the republic.

What do I mean by such harsh rhetoric? Consider the Weimar Republic. This is the name of the parliamentary republic established in Germany in 1919. Although it was governed by a constitution, much the same as we are, the republic fell to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in the 1930’s through a usurpation of power. Simply put, it was done by passing legislation that enabled Hitler to circumvent their constitution.

It is noteworthy that one of the first major takeovers by Hitler of the public sector was health care. While it is argued that Obamacare does not constitute a takeover of the health care system, I submit that it is a gradual, insidious usurping of power, the likes of which Madison warned against.

Have you ever played a game in which the rules constantly changed to benefit your competitor? There is absolutely no way to win in such a scenario, and Obamacare is just that. The government regulates the market in which it has become a player. The competitors, the private insurers, cannot possibly compete and will therefore be forced to operate at a loss.

Since no one goes in business to lose money, eventually the private insurers will have no choice but to leave a losing market leaving only the government as the sole insurer of the public. The result will be sky- rocketing health care prices, and ultimately, rationed care – as such a system is too costly to sustain, especially given an already weakened economy.

Ultimately, if we continue on this path of unlimited spending and borrowing, the economy will collapse under the weight of all of the social programs and public health care, the republic as we know it will have gone a fundamental transformation, the likes of which President Obama himself spoke of on the campaign trail.

What can be done to stop it? Madison himself gave us the answer:

“Resolved, That the General Assembly of Virginia, doth unequivocally express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this State, against every aggression either foreign or domestic … That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.”

So likewise did Thomas Jefferson:

“RESOLVED: That the principle and construction contended for by sundry of the state legislatures, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the constitution, would be the measure of their powers: That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.”

Therefore, the solution lies with you and I, holding our state legislators accountable to the people that elected them to office, and to the Constitution which they have sworn to uphold. Insist that your legislators stand on the Tenth Amendment and assert the sovereignty of their state. Insist that they vote to nullify every unconstitutional piece of legislation passed by Congress. The time is now as never before, that we the people, arise from our slumber and stand for liberty.

Kelly Galbreath is the State Chapter Coordinator for the Missouri Tenth Amendment Center.

Copyright © 2010 by TenthAmendmentCenter.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Commentators and news outlets across the western and southern United States are reporting a huge upswing in racist bigotry by New Englanders towards people of Icelandic heritage. Polls in New England seem to indicate something else is going on, but the evidence mounts that the people of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and other states as far south as Pennsylvania are seriously opposed to immigration from Iceland.

For the past few years, and increasingly in the past 18 months, increasing numbers of undocumented workers have been coming ashore in the sparsely populated regions of the Nova Scotia coast, making their way into New Brunswick, and slipping across the border into Maine and states further south with automatic weapons and large quantities of marijuana and cocaine. They appear to be coming across the border simply to mow lawns, roof homes, and build a better life for themselves than is possible in Iceland.

This is perfectly acceptable under current federal guidelines, of course, as the administration hopes to convert many of the arriving undocumented workers into Democratic voters by means of an amnesty plan being considered in Congress.

In the meantime, reports are increasing of land owners along the upper eastern Maine border being murdered by these immigrants, and the number of state and municipal police across New England being shot by undocumented workers has risen sharply. A troubling wave of car-jackings in the area seems to be unstoppable, and Boston has suddenly become the kidnapping capital of the world, with ransom demands being paid almost daily as citizens try to rescue their family members. Officials are at a loss to explain these phenomena.

Jackets and blankets have been found along the frequently-used paths across the Maine border with emblems depicting airplanes flying into twin towers, and with Arabic slogans commonly associated with Jihadists. A significant number of the immigrants from Iceland appear to actually be from other points of origin, including several nations supportive of Jihad against the United States, according to the data on those few transients captured by local authorities. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs indicates the administration has no such information.

The Governor of Maine has just proposed a law that would require Maine officials to enforce federal immigration regulations, but he has been heavily criticized by the President, the Attorney General, and others around the country, for his obviously racist motives.

Iceland’s government has sharply criticized those who are speaking out against this flow of future citizens into New England. From a quick review of their statutes, however, it appears that similar immigration into Iceland would not be tolerated.

In related news, the complaints about Arizona’s new law being driven by racism have suddenly disappeared from the New York Times and the major networks.

Governor Perry
Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711-2428

Governor Perry,

Thank you for your office’s response on April 22 to my letter about Texas’ interposition against the federal encroachments. Your answer was essentially that you will take no action to convene the legislature to deal with these issues, because the legislators are not clamoring for you to do so, and the next session will be here soon.

But you have said repeatedly that you will do “everything in our power” to protect us from the constitutional violations going on in Washington. In what I’ve seen and heard, you did NOT say you would do “everything in my power that the legislature asks me to do, and I’m going to wait until next year to do it”. That is a far weaker and more passive position than what you have articulated!

Look at what can happen between now and November, never mind when the Texas legislature reconvenes in January. They’ve already seized the automotive and healthcare industries, they are currently engaging in a hostile takeover of the financial industry, and by November they will also ram through immigration and “cap and trade”.

How much damage will we sustain, before you’re willing to walk the talk?

And there is enormous opportunity for Texas here. Corporations will run to the state that preserves their freedom. Why should that not be Texas?

Please reconsider your decision to simply watch the clock, while our liberty and Constitutional rights take one assault after another. The states are our last defense against this socialist tide, and time’s a-wasting!

Unfortunately, they have no such right.

I refer you to an excellent review of this point in “The American Thinker”.

Everything Washington is currently doing in regards to healthcare, health insurance, and the medical industry is in clear and continuing violation of their oaths of office to uphold the Constitution. They are casting aside our most fundamental laws in order to drag us further into socialism and government control of yet another major industry (medicine), and in my opinion should be impeached for it. (Impeachment is the remedy provided in the Constitution for removing misbehaving public officials from office, whether or not they have broken laws.)

What do you think?