Archive for May 22nd, 2013

Bob Campbell at AmericanGrandJury.org recently posted the following from Gerry Donaldson, constitutional activist and central Texas director for ResistNet.com, who has apparently garnered 1 million signatures for a petition to be sent to authorities in Texas essentially demanding sovereignty or secession:

Gerry Donaldson has invited you to the event ‘Sovereignty or Secession Rally’ on Draw A Line In The Sand!

Time: August 29, 2009 from 11am to 12:30pm
Location: South Capital Steps in Austin, TX
Organized By: Gerry Donaldson

Event Description:
Texans will converge on Austin to deliver a petition to Restore America by Demanding our Sovereignty or we will be forced to call a vote for Secession.

This is straight out of the Declaration of Independence and our right to “alter or abolish” our government if it has, “after a long train of abuses” refused to protect the rights of the people.

At present, the Texas Nationalist Movement has a petition with 1 Million signatures directly calling for a vote of secession.

We are calling for an orderly process that will allow our federal government to fall back in line with the Constitution. We are reclaiming our states rights and our individual rights.

With 37 states moving for Sovereignty in resolutions, we are just stepping this up from a weak request to a demand that we be returned our rights.

So far 12 states are mirroring our “Sovereignty or Secession” movement.

We must stand up and be counted or we will find ourselves in another government. Either we restore America, we will live in a Marxist dictatorship, or we will secede and start over again.

Go to ** www.drawaline.org ** for more information and to sign the petition. We need to push this massively or there will be a vote for secession immediately! [emphases original]

According to Mr. Donaldson’s site, he claims to have the support of numerous State legislators:

Throughout the 37 States with Sovereignty Resolutions (signed or not), We The People hereby give our government the option to either restore our Individual and State Sovereignty (alter), to nullify ALL Federal legislation that is unconstitutional, and restore our God-given, unalienable rights, or we will be forced to exercise the right our Founders set down in the Declaration of Independence and abolish our government (secede) and start a new government that will adhere to our contract with government that we call a Constitution.

This is not and should not be a violent confrontation. Violence is not condoned by anyone involved. However, we are exercising our rights and our duty to compel the restoration of our sovereignty and rights (alter our government) or it will leave us with no choice but secession.

Here in Austin, Texas, we’ll be holding a Town Hall/Rally and delivering the petition and signatures you find here to Governor Perry’s office. We also have the support of Rep. Leo Berman, Rep. Brandon Creighton, and all the 99 representatives who supported Rep. Creighton’s Sovereignty Bill, HCR 50, and those supporting Rep. Berman’s House Bill 1863 that nullifies all Federal legislation that does not have explicit authorization within the U.S. Constitution. We’ll also be demanding the dismantling of all State agencies that have been created to support unconstitutionally authorized Federal agencies. We will demand that all support of illegal aliens be stopped in Texas and that the Governor deploy our National Guard and other volunteer citizens along our southern border to stem the tide of illegal immigration.

The actual event has seen a few last-minute modifications and will now be 11 AM -12:30 PM. The reason for this change is that MoveOn.org decided to schedule 2 separate events on the SAME DAY to push Obamacare! Seems a little “convenient” that they would try to block out a big portion of the day on the SAME DAY we are telling the federal government that we want to ROLL BACK our government to its originally intended, limited role; doesn’t it? We are obviously a real threat to the Marxist agenda that MoveOn.org and Obama’s administration is trying to shove down our throats.

When we deliver this petition to Governor Perry, we will also have copies of this petition and demand delivered to every county courthouse and County Sheriff throughout the State of Texas, effectively putting our local public servants on notice that they will be held accountable to the letter of their Oath of Office.

It should also be noted that Mr. Donaldson is a part of the Texas effort promoting the citizen grand jury concept, whereby private individuals have been gathering together to cull and aggregate evidence to potentially form presentments that can then be forwarded to authorities as a means of bringing official attention to injustices. Much more information on this seldom-used grassroots concept can be found at AmericanGrandJury.org.

According to Mr. Donaldson’s blog, the French press and the Lincoln County Examiner out of Lincoln, Nebraska are intrigued enough by the above announcement to say they’re showing up for it:

Ok folks, if you haven’t made your plans to attend the rally this Saturday, YOU NEED TO!

In addition to this rally and our counter protest against MoveOn.org, we have a lot of attention brewing!

I had calls from a French TV reporter working for the press agency CAPA (www.capatv.com there’s an English version if you want to surf it). He works for a program called “L’effet papillon” (the butterfly effect) on Canal+ (one of the main TV chanels in France). He is flying into this rally with to film this event as it is getting attention in Europe!

I also had a request from the Lincoln County Examiner, a major newspaper in Lincoln, Nebraska, and they want coverage of this event!

As I’ve mentioned before, this will be THE TEA PARTY of 2009! We will be Drawing a Line in the Sand here in Texas and the nation and the world is watching this one.

In addition to chartered buses coming in from around the state, we have RV’rs heading in to bring more crowds (see previous posting).

There is, no doubt, a chord that has been struck in this nation concerning Mr. Obama. His ideas are considered nothing short of being anti-American (which most tea party and town hall protestors would call “socialism,” “Marxism,” “collectivism,” and, really, “statism”); this is precisely why you can kick the “astroturf” out the door and you will always find grassroots uprisings around the country (so much so that many Dem federal lawmakers have cancelled their town halls or held them at the last minute or in private locations).

Some dissenting commenters on my site would immediately bristle at the idea of anything that is not conservative as being anti-American; under normal circumstances, I would immediately come to at least partial rhetorical aid and say that someone is not stating something correctly. Unfortunately, at this stage of our country’s history, this is no longer the case.

I think State soveriegnty is absolutely important in our federalistic system of governance — our constitutional republic. Fundamentally, the Constitution demands it, and I think that’s precisely the point of the above. In other words, here’s the key concept:

Dear politicians, why won’t you realize that you took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States? We really don’t like it when you lie to us by saying that you’ll uphold it, but in the next minute, you deliberately undermine it by not constricting the federal behemoth to the shackles that were set forth by the founding fathers. While we agree that the Constitution doesn’t spell out how to deal with every given situation, it is respect for the States and, ultimately, the individual that we demand. And, yes, we’re going to actually take a stand and start doing something about it, considering you won’t get off your asses and properly represent us.

Do I think that secession is wise? No, and this is why I would be torn if I were to have been born in the 1840s (or thereabouts) and, if the opportunity were available, to have had to make the decision of whether to fight for the Union or the Confederacy. Why? Because I’m a staunch States’ rights supporter (clearly my site bears this out), but I simultaneously believe that it takes all the States to make a “more perfect” Union. I would have hoped that, if I were to have been around more than 160 years ago, I would have helped to lead the push towards a strong but limited — shackled — federal government that fully respected States’ rights. Then again, in hindsight, that would have been to no avail.

I hope that the talk of secession stays just that — rhetoric. I also hope that such a threat by enough citizens would be enough to begin reasserting the balance of power between the States and the federal government.

We have a Bill of Rights in the Constitution for a reason. They all go together and they need to be properly used: to protect the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of the individual. Again, that’s really what this is all about.

It really is no wonder that strict constitutionalists are considered other than normal; if we really restricted the federal government to the confines of the Constitution, it would likely be less than one-third the size that it is now. Obviously, that’s a real threat to those who subscribe to the statist mentality.

Go, Texas, for being one of a number of States willing to seriously consider sovereignty.

Sunday, August 30 Update: Robert Moon of the Examiner.com site reported the following:

Thousands of Texans poured into the capitol and other major cities across the state on Saturday to demand that their elected officials immediately deliver an ultimatum to Washington: “sovereignty or secession.”

With the federal government rampantly violating their 10th Amendment rights like never before, refusing to defend their borders, and bankrupting this country with backwards leftist insanity, many Texans feel they need to draw a line in the sand.

Armed with a statewide petition to that effect, they called on their leaders to follow through on state sovereignty legislation passed earlier this year by sweeping margins. Overwhelmingly, the response from state officials has been supportive.

They have the backing of Texas Representatives Brandon Creighton, who drafted their 10th Amendment legislation (HCR 50), Leo Berman, who drafted a similar states’ rights bill to protect gun rights (HB 1863), and 97 others who voted to confront non-stop federal intrusions. They also have the support of Governor Rick Perry, who signed HCR 50 into law in May.

Two gubernatorial candidates in the upcoming election, Debra Medina and Larry Kilgore, spoke at the event, along with a slew of other candidates for the Texas legislature.

With so much of the state government cohesive with the concerns of its constituents, it seems there is adequate vigilance against Obama’s ongoing war on the Constitution and no immediate need to push for full-blown secession. But there is a growing sense that Texas teeters on the edge.

From an embedded link in the above update, the TenthAmendmentCenter.com provides the following video regarding the background on this story:

-Phil

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Photo courtesy The American Prospect

Prolific blogger and attorney Leo Donofrio has posted yet another fascinating opinion regarding not only natural born citizenship myths — you know, those things that we tend to presume when getting into a great debate either on this blog or other sites — but also the “law of nations” as referred in the Constitution:

Rarely, when conducting legal research does one find a historical document that is directly on point.  But even more rare is to find a document which is directly on point multiple times.  But that’s exactly what has happened this week.  A historical document which destroys every bogus point being made by Obama POTUS eligibility supporters was recently discovered by a cracker jack team of university students from UCONN.  They call themselves UNDEAD REVOLUTION.

They have been sending me good stuff for quite a while now.  A wonderful contributor to comments at this blog – Kamira – is part of that team.  This group is preparing the mother of all natural born citizen research reports based upon their unique historical document discoveries.  It will be guest blogged by them right here when it’s ready for public consumption.

But for now, and as a lead in to their work, I offer you one of their superb historical finds.  It’s an article from The American Law Reviewdated Sept./Oct. 1884.  The American Law Review was a premier legal journal -  the brain child of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes.

This was not a law school publication.  It was considered to be the state of legal art which utilized the most esteemed attorneys of the period.

The article I am about to show you was published in The American Law Review, written by George D. Collins, Esq.  Attorney Collins was the Secretary of the California Bar Association.  His name was recognized nationally for cases in the federal courts and moreso due to his regular publishing of articles via The American Law review.

The article I am excited to bring you is titled:

ARE PERSONS BORN IN THE UNITED STATES IPSO FACTO CITIZENS THEREOF?

The article provides historical opposition for every single point raised by Obama eligibility pundits and destroys all propaganda in its path.

The article is written in a clear and concise manner, easily understood by lawyers and lay persons alike.  I will now introduce each relevant issue confronted in this article and then present the article in full for your review.

OBAMA POTUS ELIGIBILITY MYTHS DESTROYED BY MR. GEORGE COLLINS

MYTH #1: Chester Arthur’s British birth was known and accepted by the American people.

This article was written in Summer 1884, while Chester Arthur was stillPresident.  Since The American Law Review was such an esteemed legal publication, old Chester must have been somewhat intimidated by the report of Mr. Collins.  This is because the article makes perfectly clear that to be a natural born citizen one must have been born to a US citizen father.

Chester’s father William was not naturalized until 1843, 14 years after Chester was born.  This meant that Chester Arthur was a British subject at birth and was therefore not eligible to be President as was first reported at this blog back in December 2008.

It has been argued that Chester Arthur’s occupation of the White House set a legal precedent for Obama since both Chester and Barack were born of British fathers.  But the public – at the time Chester was running for VP and later when he became POTUS – never knew that Chester Arthur was a British subject since he successfully lied to the public about his parental heritage.

The law review article goes into great detail concerning the issue of who exactly rises to the level of natural born citizen.  It discusses law cases and legal precedent in its analysis, but it does not even mention the current President – Chester Arthur – even though Attorney Collins steadfastly denies that a person born on US soil to an alien father could be a natural born citizen.

If Attorney Collins – esteemed lawyer, Secretary of the Bar Association and nationally known legal journalist – had thought his current President at the time this article was published – Chester Arthur – was a British subject at birth, then the article would have required a discussion of that point.

But the article does not mention President Chester Arthur because Chester Arthur managed – through blatant deceit - to cover that issue up.  He successfully concealed his British birth from the American people.  This law review article is proof of that conclusion.

MYTH #2: Lynch v. Clark ( a New York State case, not federal) is legal precedent for Obama to be considered a natural born citizen.

Despite the fact that state court cases have absolutely no legal weight of authority in federal court, Obama eligibility supporters cite this case often.  Attorney Collins tears the decision to shreds and exposes its faulty conclusions.

MYTH #3: Common law states that being born on the soil – Jus Soli – makes one a “natural born subject” and therefore every person born on US soil is a “natural born citizen”.

Attorney Collins takes this on directly and establishes clearly that there is no common law in the United States.  He also explains that natural born citizens are in no way, shape or form, the same as natural born subjects.

MYTH #4: Vattell’s definition of a natural born citizen was not considered by the framers.

Attorney Collins discusses Vattell in great detail.  And Collins agrees that to be a natural born citizen one must be born on the soil of parents who were themselves citizens.  Collins quotes Vattell.

But more important is the fact that Collins makes it clear Vattell’s definition of “natural born citizen” was not actually Vattell’s definition.

This is very important.

The definition of “natural born citizen” was not created by Vattell in his treatise, “Law of Nations.”  That treatise simply discussed the established body of law known as “the law of nations”.  The definition of natural born citizen discussed in Vattell’s treatise was actually the definition established by the body of law known as “law of nations”.

Attorney Collins makes all of this quite clear in the article below.  Now please review Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution:

The Congress shall have power…To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the Law of Nations;

The capital letters are not in reference to Vattell’s treatise, but theyare in reference to the body of law Vattell wrote about – the actual “law of nations”.  And that body of law -  according to Attorney Collins as well as Vattell – held that a “natural born citizen” was somebody with connections to the nation for having been born on the soil as well as having been born of citizen parents.  In Article 1, Section 8, we therefore have a direct recognition that the framers respected the law of nations.

DOUBLE ALLEGIANCE TO THE NATION

This is what the framers required for the Commander In Chief.  Any child of immigrants from any nation could become President – as long as his parents became naturalized US citizens before that child was born on US soil.  In their wisdom, the framers sought two generations of US citizenship.  This discriminates against no race at all.

To be an American has nothing to do with race.  It has to do with being a person cloaked in liberty – free from monarchy, free of repression, free forever.

The natural born citizen clause does not establish a superior form of citizenship.  It does establish a national security safeguard against foreign invasion of the White House and takeover of the US Armed Forces.

It makes all the sense in the world that the person who holds the keys to the massive nuclear arsenal in our possession should be born on US soil to parents who were citizens.

If we allow persons born in the US of alien fathers to be President of the US then Kim Jong Il, Osama Bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are all eligible to have their direct offspring become President of the United States and Commander In Chief of our Armed Forces.

That is what you are saying if you think Obama is eligible to be President.

You can’t discriminate based on race or nationality in this country.  If a person whose father was not a US citizen at the time of his birth can become President, then it doesn’t matter what nation that person is a dual citizen of.

This is the main issue and main reason why I have dedicated so much of my time to this situation.  I am no more worried about Obama than I was about Bush or Clinton.  I see all of them as having struck horrific blows against US sovereignty.  But I am seriously worried about who comes next.  Who is being groomed as a Manchurian candidate as we speak? [emphases original]

Here is the George D. Collins article:

Are Persons Born Within the United States Ipso Facto Citizens Thereof – George D. Collins

All of the above is definitely worth a read. I don’t think that anyone can disagree with the notion of bringing more evidence to either substantiate or refute the fundamentals of the eligibility issue is a bad thing. And while I haven’t always personally commented in response to some in the opposition tha have brought up many of the above arguments, I think that it’s about time to seriously take the eligibility issue seriously.

Of course, the natural question is, “Why?”

Is it not abundantly clear that one risks employing a complete and total alien (of the terrestrial kind!) to the presidency if one does not explicitly enforce the presidential eligibility clause? Why is it considered by some to be such a bad thing to ask about such an ambitious individual’s background?

I have said a long time ago on this site that the issue is not so much Mr. Obama, per se, regarding eligibility; he’s merely the catalyst that got the research started. Rather, it is the constitutional aspect of the question that continues to intrigue me. What’s more, the fact that this clause in the Constitution hasn’t been more explored is bizarrely appalling to me; just because there is next to no actual case law specifically referring to constitutional presidential eligibility doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be pursued.

I think it’s been shown quite clearly as of late that the opposition to discovering more about the eligibility clause (does there really have to be an opposition to further studying out the Constitution? Frankly, that sounds quite crazy to me as I type it!) operates under their own standards of what’s acceptable.

Unfortunately, those standards are biased under the auspices that to question the eligibility clause is to fundamentally question who Mr. Obama is in terms of what he brings to the political table. As such, I’m sure that many opposition commenters would turn the question around and ask, thusly:

What if the President were an individual who pushed for the federal government to be constrained by the enumerated powers as defined in the Constitution, yet who is constitutionally ineligible for the presidency? Would you “birthers” be pushing just as hard to remove such a person?

My answer is a resounding “yes.” Though I would readily admit I would hate for such a scenario to occur, it doesn’t matter to what party the individual belongs — they are either eligible or they are not.

As a final thought on the above, I can only imagine that very few individuals in the press (e.g.: outside of the blogosphere) have even contemplated any of the above. Therefore, be better than them — read, contemplate and then comment. It certainly won’t hurt the situation!

Update: Criminal investigator Paul Andrew Mitchell responded to Mr. Donofrio’s posting thusly:

The “common law” is mentioned TWICE in the Seventh Amendment:

http://www.supremelaw.org/ref/whuscons/whuscons.htm#7th-amend

Moreover, the Seventh Amendment is the supreme Law of the Land
throughout the 50 States and D.C. and all Federal Territories, chiefly because
Congress expressly extended the Constitution into D.C. in 1871
and all Federal Territories in 1873.

And, 42 U.S.C. 1988 permits a State’s common law to decide a court case
if there is no adequate Federal remedy:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/42/1988.html

“… but in all cases where they are not adapted to the object, or are deficient in the provisions necessary to furnish suitable remedies and punish offenses against law, the common law, as modified and changed by the constitution and statutes of the State wherein the court having jurisdiction of such civil or criminal cause is held, so far as the same is not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States, shall be extended to and govern the said courts in the trial and disposition of the cause, and, if it is of a criminal nature, in the infliction of punishment on the party found guilty.”

Also, 28 U.S.C. 1652 authorizes importation of State laws into Federal court cases, as rules of decision:
the common law is the rule of decision in all California courts, for example:  CCC 22.2:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/28/1652.html

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=civ&group=00001-01000&file=22-22.2

22.2. The common law of England, so far as it is not repugnant to or inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, or the Constitution or laws of this State, is the rule of decision in all the courts of this State.

Also, see UCC 1-103:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/1/article1.htm#s1-103(b)
concerning supplemental principles of law:

(b) Unless displaced by the particular provisions of [the Uniform Commercial Code],
the principles of law and equity, including the law merchant and the law relative to capacity to contract, principal and agent, estoppel, fraud, misrepresentation, duress, coercion, mistake, bankruptcy, and other validating or invalidating cause supplement its provisions.

Accordingly, it is NOT correct to say that “there is no common law in the United States”
EVEN IF “United States” is limited to the federal zone and/or to the Federal government.

(Emphases original)

See the following links regarding the eligibility saga:

• Obama’s Presidential Eligibility: What You Need to Know
• Obama’s Sealed Background Documentation
• Newsmax.com: Obama Birth Certificate Not Released
• What’s the Difference Between a Birth Certification Versus a BirthCertificate?
• Keyes v. Lingle: Forensic Examiner and IT Expert Disprove Certification of Live Birth
• Obama Citizenship Facts
• The State Department and Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) Natural Born Citizen Resolution (April 10, 2008)
• Citizen Grand Jury Updates and Eligibility Lawsuit Listing

-Phil

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