Category Archives: The Bill Of Rights

A Statement of Position on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Constitution, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Government Regulation, Individual Rights, Keep and Bear Arms, Legal, Politics, The Bill Of Rights, Theory and Ideas

The recent Parker decision, has as usual brought out the opponents of the second amendment; those who would repeal it, or make it’s repeal effective through the disingenuous twisting of language.

These people must be opposed, refuted, educated, and actively resisted at all turns, by all free men; as must all attempts to abrogate our essential rights and freedoms.

The second amendment has a very clear, and very important purpose:

All men by their essential nature have the right to defend themselves and their property from harm or oppression, be it by other individuals, or by the state; through whatever means necessary up to and including lethal force.

That right is fundamental to our nature as sentient persons. No law or amendment granted that right. No repeal or passage of any amendment may abrogate that right. No repeal or passage of any law may take away that right. No government or society may say that right is invalid, unnecessary, or “uncivilized”. That right is absolute.

The second amendment recognizes that right, and specifically limits the governments ability to attempt to infringe upon it.

Some may say that such a right is unnecessary, or outdated, or that the constitution and second amendment did not recognize and should not be construed as protecting that right.

They are wrong; by ignorance, by denial, or by design.

If you want proof you need not look far…

Sudan, Rwanda, Liberia, Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Congo, Germany, Armenia, Russia… The only thing that ensures against genocide, is an armed, and educated populace. The Warsaw ghetto should be all the example you ever need.

It is our duty as free men, and as citizens, to ensure that our populace remains both educated, and armed.

Chris Byrne
I am a cynically romantic optimistic pessimist. I am neither liberal, nor conservative. I am a (somewhat disgruntled) muscular minarchist… something like a constructive anarchist.

Basically what that means, is that I believe, all things being equal, responsible adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as nobody’s getting hurt, who isn’t paying extra

http://anarchangel.blogspot.com

Civil Unions and Multiple Wives

Church and State, Individual Rights, Privacy

In the wake of the post Chris put up, which gathered a fair bit of attention, I felt that it might be a good time to re-post this, which I posted at my personal blog back in 2005.

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Jackie Passey posted yesterday about a topic I feel is pretty much unassailable, Civil Unions for Everybody. The idea, which I fully agree with, is that marriage is a religious concept, that happens to bear the same name as a legal concept. Most of the uproar over the gay marriage issue is based upon the contention that it will somehow damage the “sanctity of marriage”. This claim underscores the fact that church and state have become much more intertwined on the issue of marriage than is needed. We would be much better off if the government never broached the subject of marriage, and instead gave any consenting adults who wanted one a “civil union”.

Of course, that leads to the slippery slope argument. Many have claimed that if we allowed same-sex marriage, we would then have no moral argument against polygamy. In fact, in Utah, the legal abolition of polygamy has just been challenged in the courts, but remained illegal.

To them I say, what of it? A civil union, which the state calls “marriage”, is just a legal agreement on ways to divide property, provide “group” legal benefits based upon a mutual contract, and help to handle things such as next-of-kin issues. Who’s to say that this needs to be limited to two people? After all, how is it that much different from a legal partnership in a business? It is multiple people contractually binding themselves to one another for the perceived benefits of the arrangement. As long as all members bound by the agreement are consenting adults, I fail to see the problem.

I’ve said that people who scream about the “sanctity of marriage” don’t understand that the best way to preserve it is for the government to butt out of the deal. Marriage has become a legal arrangement, and as such, the government cannot discriminate as to who is acceptable to meet that legal arrangement. Marriage and religion will both be better served by extricating them from the government. If we then still allow the government to endorse and protect civil unions for anybody who wants one, all parties are better off.

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

D.C. Circuit Court Gets it Absolutely Right

Constitution, Founding Fathers, Government Regulation, Individual Rights, Keep and Bear Arms, Legal, Politics, The Bill Of Rights

I couldn’t imagine a better statement about the right to keep and bear arms coming from any court in this land (emphasis mine):

To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms.

That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad).

In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to placate their Antifederalist opponents. The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty.

Despite the importance of the Second Amendment’s civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.

More, including links to other sites and analysis, at How Appealing

Chris Byrne
I am a cynically romantic optimistic pessimist. I am neither liberal, nor conservative. I am a (somewhat disgruntled) muscular minarchist… something like a constructive anarchist.

Basically what that means, is that I believe, all things being equal, responsible adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as nobody’s getting hurt, who isn’t paying extra

http://anarchangel.blogspot.com

FBI Doesn’t Follow Laws With “National Security Letters”

Individual Rights, Privacy, The Bill Of Rights, War on Terror

I’m shocked! SHOCKED!

A Justice Department investigation has found pervasive errors in the FBI’s use of its power to secretly demand telephone, e-mail and financial records in national security cases, officials with access to the report said yesterday.

The inspector general’s audit found 22 possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department regulations — some of which were potential violations of law — in a sampling of 293 “national security letters.” The letters were used by the FBI to obtain the personal records of U.S. residents or visitors between 2003 and 2005. The FBI identified 26 potential violations in other cases.

Now, normally this would assume that these cases came before a judge, were looked at to ensure they met the standards, and somehow still passed the scrutiny they needed to be blocked. But as we all know, that’s not how they roll.

The letters enable an FBI field office to compel the release of private information without the authority of a grand jury or judge. The USA Patriot Act, enacted after the 2001 attacks, eliminated the requirement that the FBI show “specific and articulable” reasons to believe that the records it demands belong to a foreign intelligence agent or terrorist.

…

Now the bureau needs only to certify that the records are “sought for” or “relevant to” an investigation “to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.”

I would think that this goes against the 4th Amendment.

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.

I do believe this would entail a complete instance of the government to demand records of peoples’ “papers, and effects” without a warrant, and by the above quote, the proof of probable cause (which is no longer certified by a judge) is greatly diminished.

Of course, I can’t completely blame the FBI here. Business has been more than willing to roll over for the feds, to the point where they are providing information that isn’t asked for and is not legally allowed to be provided. Of course, our wonderful FBI is destroying that information filing it away for future use.

In at least two cases, the officials said, Fine found that the FBI obtained full credit reports using a national security letter that could lawfully be employed to obtain only summary information. In an unknown number of other cases, third parties such as telephone companies, banks and Internet providers responded to national security letters with detailed personal information about customers that the letters do not permit to be released. The FBI “sequestered” that information, a law enforcement official said last night, but did not destroy it.

Now, don’t you feel safer? After all, we don’t need to worry about terrorists in a police state. We just need to worry about the police.

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

Is Islamofascism a Legitimate Threat to Liberty?

Blog Discussions, Church and State, Foreign Affairs, Founding Fathers, General, History, Individual Rights, Politics, Religious Liberty, The Bill Of Rights, Theory and Ideas, War on Terror

In my recent post about Michael Charles Smith, I received a response from a reader by the name of Carl Deen regarding my support for the war against terror Islamofascism (Not the war on terror. Terrorism is the method the Islamofascist uses to accomplish his political-religious goals). I think his challenge is worth a post of its own so rather than responding in the original post, I have decided to answer him here.

Deen writes:

Let’s see if I understand the author. Without provocation, much like Germany did to Poland, the USA invaded Iraq, a country that was no threat to us; however, because, we did, we cannot admit our mistakes and withdraw. I suppose, by that reasoning, we must stay there forever at a cost of $500 billion and the lives of several hundred solders a year.

According to the author, Islam is a threat to us; therefore, we must attack and meddle in their affairs. It doesn’t occur to the author that if you attack and meddle in their affairs, you make more enemies than if you leave them alone.

Oh, I forgot; they hate us for our freedoms. Therefore, by using the war as reasons to turn the USA into a police state, they will stop hating us because we will have lost our remaining freedoms.

Was Iraq a threat to the United States?

First of all, the comparisons of the U.S. to Nazi Germany are getting very tiresome. Whatever ‘atrocities’ the U.S. has committed pale in comparison to the Holocaust. I also reject the premise that Iraq was no threat to the U.S. Regardless of whether or not Saddam had WMD, he was a threat to the U.S. Saddam did in fact invade Kuwait in the early 1990’s to steal the Kuwait’s oil. Had Saddam been allowed to proceed, there would have been national security threats as well as economic threats to the U.S. and the world.

When Saddam surrendered to the international coalition, there were certain conditions that he agreed to so that he could continue to be in power. Among those conditions were that he was not to reconstitute his WMD program and was restricted from flying in the ‘no fly zones.’ To enforce the agreement, coalition fighters patrolled the no fly zones from the time of the surrender to the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Saddam routinely fired with anti-aircraft weapons on the coalition fighters patrolling the no fly zones, directly putting the lives of U.S. and coalition pilots at risk. These attacks were provocative acts of war.

Let’s also not forget that Saddam attempted to assassinate former President Bush. Regardless of how you feel about President Bush, he was a president of the United States. An attack on the president—any American president is a provocative act of war against the United States.

And then there were the families of the suicide bombers who Saddam paid to spread terrorism throughout Israel. Sure, he was not paying suicide bombers to make attacks in American cities (as far as we know anyway), but this still proved that he was not above such tactics. Though the 9/11 commission found no links between Saddam Hussein and the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the commission did find that attempts were made between Saddam and Bin Laden to form an alliance. Their ties however, were non-operational. Had Saddam been as far along in his WMD program as most of the world’s intelligence agencies and world leaders had thought, it is not out of the realm of possibility to believe that those ties could have eventually become operational making it possible for Islamofascits to gain access to this material and carry out an attack on the U.S. Based on Saddam’s track record (his use of chemical and biological weapons on his own people, for example), there was no reason to believe that he did not have WMD. U.S. intelligence had underestimated Saddam’s progress in his WMD programs in the past. If left unchecked, he would have.

» Read more

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/
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