My enlightenment was precipitated by a Jazz Shaw article on Hotair.com. Shaw zeroed in on the ensuing excerpt from an interview CNN’s Wolf Blitzer conducted with Cain, but the underlying animus by Shaw was the unveiling of Cain’s oddball ideology or his sophomoric inability to operate at the elite political level, and thus misspoke:

BLITZER: How about gun control?

CAIN: I support the 2nd amendment.

B: So what’s the answer on gun control?

C: The answer is I support, strongly support, the 2nd amendment. I don’t support onerous legislation that’s going to restrict people’s rights in order to be able to protect themselves as guaranteed by the 2nd amendment.

B: Should states or local government be allowed to control guns, the gun situation, or should…

C: Yes

B: Yes?

C: Yes.

B: So the answer is yes?

C: The answer is yes, that should be a state’s decision.

Blitzer’s incredulous reaction can only leave one to believe Blitzer believed he caused Cain to commit self indictment as a maniacal right-winger, and Shaw furtively seized upon it. Shaw displayed and noted at the end of his article a comment by one Doug Mataconis, an attorney who blogs for Pajamas Media:

Now, it’s possible, as Jazz Shaw suggests, that Cain simply misspoke under Blitzer’s rapid fire barrage. The other possibility, though, is that he’s one of those “Constitutional” conservatives who rejects the entire idea that the Federal Bill of Rights should be applied to the states. Ron Paul believes this, and it’s one reason I’m not entirely a fan of his. Is this Cain’s position? Does he believe that, not just the 2nd, but also the 1st, 4th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Amendments shouldn’t apply to the states? Some clarification on this issue would be most helpful.

Shaw and Matoconis both agree that Cain must have misspoke from the Blitzer’s blitzkrieg questioning. But Matoconis goes further and suggests the possibility that Cain is one of “those people”; he is one of those “Constitutional” conservatives who believe in the original meaning and intent–the sanitary quotation marks imprisoning the word “Constitution” employed by Matoconis are obviously intended to mock originalists. The two pundits believe that if he did not misspeak, he is fundamentally wrong about the 2nd Amendment. Shaw and Matoconis are both disciples of bad case law, and are, indeed, themselves in the wrong. It is this jejune ideology of Shaw, Matoconis, et al. that has been complicit with the systematic extinction of the balance of power between the federal government and the states, and the sanctimoniously injudicious marriage of the fallacious judicial interpretations of the 14th Amendment and the preposterous politically motivated court rulings incorporating the 1st eight amendments.

The truth is, Cain actually spoke the Holy Grail of constitutional law, especially if you possess the intellectual honesty and capacity to rebuke the idea that this country’s static foundation should shift in accordance with malignant case law for the sanctity of stare decisis. If Cain does not retract his statement, and continues to defend it, he would join a very elite group of people–especially politicians and jurists–that believe in, and will apply and defend the fundamentals upon which this country was founded, and be a great steward of this country’s founding document.

Herman Cain answered the question presented by Wolf Blitzer regarding the 2nd Amendment exactly as any one of the Founders would have answered. They would have soundly rejected the 14th Amendment at face value, and would have abhorred the cancerous case law incorporating the 1st eight amendments by ideological judicial/political fiat. Cain’s answer is one of the most fundamentally astute answers regarding gun control and state’s rights versus the federal government and the 2nd Amendment. The NRA, being an archetypal political body, cannot resist the forces of narcissism, and argued relentlessly against state’s rights, and indiscriminately for the right to bear arms regardless of its constitutionality. Herman Cain is not a friend of the NRA in this regard.

Two of the most damaging constitutional follies that have done irreversible harm are the federal government’s use of the 14th Amendment to incorporate the first eight amendments, and the catastrophic and felonious abuse of the Commerce Clause.

Let me explain:

There is an opaque and murky demarcation that separates conservatives and constitutionalists. Under no circumstance should conservatism and constitutionalism be considered mutually inclusive–especially regarding the Supreme Court; a conservative court is not a constitutional court and vice versa. They are two different species, but at times display similar characteristics.

The very idea of the Supreme Court deciding the fate of a city’s laws, within the boundaries of a sovereign state–especially regarding the Bill of Rights, whose only intention was to limit the power of the federal government–would have been preposterous to the men who wrote the Constitution. It was also viewed as preposterous by the authors of the Constitution that a Bill of Rights was even necessary, as all the limits upon the federal government were plainly manifested in the Constitution. The federal government did not have the authority to abridge the rights of the citizens of the 13 sovereign states. The Bill of Rights was added as a dualistic precaution preventing the federal government from infringing upon the rights of the citizens of the states.

To understand the true meaning of the 2nd Amendment, it is important to understand the men who wrote and ratified the Constitution and their intent, and not the inane ramblings of academia, iniquitous Supreme Court rulings and its debauched case law, and the nefarious transmutational acts of politicians–the very group the Bill of Rights was intended to protect the people from. If the creators of the Constitution had wanted the first eight amendments applied to the states they would have stated it, but if that were the case, the Constitution would never have been ratified, and our country as we know it would not exist. Herman Cain understands this.

Every law, every rule, every dictate has a spirit, a reason for being, a purpose. The Constitution of these United States has a very clear spirit, yet through the malice of progressives, the greed of conservatives, and through unadulterated ignorance, our Constitution is engaged in a battle each and every day defending itself and its spirit. Sometimes winning, sometimes losing. Mostly losing. Herman Cain appears to grasp the spirit and original intent.

Herman Cain has stunned Wolf Blitzer, befuddled the likes of Jazz Shaw and Doug Mataconis, and probably has the entire faculty of Harvard and Yale law schools writhing on the floor gnashing their teeth and wringing their hands with the remote likelihood that this country may once again be under the auspices of the Constitution rather than politically and ideologically motivated case law.

The Supreme Court of these United States, one year ago, while determining whether the 2nd Amendment applied to the states in the case of McDonald v. Chicago, ruled that it in fact applies to the States under the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment. This Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, has been harshly criticized for being too conservative a court–and justifiably so. The court is far too conservative as witnessed by the McDonald ruling. The court ruled that the 2nd Amendment applies to the states as well as the federal government. Considering that all of the first eight amendments had been previously incorporated, excepting the 2nd and parts of the 4th Amendments, by politically motivated courts in the past, it would be fair to surmise the members of this court were merely servants of stare decisis and bad case law. They ruled as a conservative court would, but not as a constitutionalist court would. This court had the opportunity to eradicate thousands of spurious federal laws and reset the limits of the power of the federal government over the states back to the intended balance. Herman Cain understands this.

The 14th Amendment never intended to incorporate the first eight amendments, but ideological politicians parading around as justices started chipping away at the foundation with the 1st Amendment in the 1920s, and again stare decisis has taken the final chip out of this country’s fundamental governing document that spared the states from the oppressive federal government we have today. We are sovereign citizens of sovereign states under the very limited supremacy of the federal government according to the 10th and 11th Amendments, and by the dictate of the creators of this country. The very intention of the Constitution was to protect the citizens of the states from a ruling such as McDonald v. Chicago. Herman Cain understands this.

So now I know five things about Herman Cain: he is black, is the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, is running for president, is not a conservative but a constitutionalist, and of all the conservatives trying to achieve the nomination Cain is the one who would have the support of the founders of this country.

Benjamin Franklin Gates, was a descendant of a family of treasure seekers, who sought one treasure, and one treasure only–the Brobdingnagian treasure hidden by the Founding Fathers shortly after the Revolutionary War. The Gate’s family was made aware of the treasure by their ancestor, Thomas Gates, who was a stable boy for President Jackson. Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, unable to pass the information about the treasure to Jackson, was left with the only option available to him at the time: to pass the information to the stable boy, Thomas Gates. The plot involves characters such as pharaohs, emperors, the Knights Templar, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Clues to the location of the treasures are hidden in the most elaborate and clandestine places with the most intellectually defying cryptic clues imaginable. Each clue leads to another clue, then another, and etcetera. This is, of course, not real; it is the plot line from the movie National Treasure, starring Nicholas Cage as Benjamin Franklin Gates, and is just a fantastical cinematic adventure, (or so I thought).

Alternate plot:

The man who is considered the author of the Constitution and who proposed the Bill of Rights, James Madison, abetted by the surreptitious influence of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Thomas Paine, unbeknownst  to the other Founders, inserted secret meanings and rights into the text of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. As in the movie, National Treasure, it would be almost two hundred years before a man, and a court, would be able to find the adumbrated cache of privacy rights hidden within the Constitution and Bill of Rights without the use of lost maps and encrypted clues; their only tool was an agenda.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee’s questioning of Sonia Sotomayor at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing, she was asked how she felt about the Roe v. Wade ruling. She responded that “there is a right of privacy…the court has found it in various places in the Constitution.”  She also stated that the right to privacy is in the Fourth Amendment regarding unreasonable search and seizures and in the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. Her conclusion is far from an original thought, as it is an obtuse and incestuous parallel of the descriptive language Justice Blackmun used when authoring Roe v. Wade.

“Found” it! Chief Justice Warren Burger and his court “found” this particular right to privacy in the Constitution after two hundred years. Pardon me, but conventional wisdom dictates that  for something to be found, it had to have been either misplaced or hidden in the first place. Either the authors of the Constitution misplaced the “right to abort a fetus” through some arbitrary privacy right, or they went to elaborate lengths to ensconce this “privacy right” within the words of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Considering the intricate and laborious lengths the Founders endured to craft, then ratify the Constitution, they would be impervious to misplacing certain rights.  That would leave the alternative of cryptically hiding the rights. At that time, there must have been a legitimate reason for them to not want anyone to know about this “special right to privacy” that would permit the aborting of fetuses, especially since the Constitution contains no express right to privacy, so they obviously decided to hide this particular right. But, for how long did they intend for this to be hidden, and from whom? It would not be hard to imagine that once they ratified the Constitution and Bill of Rights, they all sat down and chortled about their caper over a pint of ale.

Justice Blackmun used the word “penumbra” to describe his finding of previously undiscovered privacy rights within the Constitution, a breathtaking discovery that had eluded legal scholarship for two hundred years–though there is serious doubt anyone was looking for it. The dictionary definition for “penumbra” is: a shadowy, indefinite, or marginal area. Shadowy, a staple in the making of Hollywood mystery and adventure movies. So how did the court find it? Quite simple, actually, all it took was boundless imagination, special decoder-agenda rings, and enough chutzpa to flagrantly write a law from the bench. Disregarding the one and only legitimate capacity of a justice, to apply the law to the facts, Sonia Sotomayor, with her bromidic concurrence that Roe v. Wade is “settled law” is also reaffirming criticism that she does indeed endorse a judge’s right to create law from the bench.

The Warren court may have been the first to find hidden “privacy rights” in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and then its ensuing anomalous application, but they were not the last. Since Obama has taken office, he and the Democrat-led congress have somehow, in their first six months, been able to find all genres of cleverly hidden treasure troves never before discovered in the Constitution and have feverishly been trying to apply them ever since.

There have been several things “found” during the Sonia Sotomayor hearings as well; she may be a Latina woman, but it would be a stretch to label her a “wise Latina woman.” Smart, sure, but wise, not so much. She has stumbled, given non-answers, backtracked on previous statements, then backtracked on her backtracks. Her command of the English language, as can be ascertained by her writings, pales in comparison to someone of a generally accepted wise, or intellectual aptitude. Her discourse during the hearings was pregnant with such an abundance of  malapropian language, it could at times have passed as a comedy script. It has been “discovered,” “found,” or “detected” that Sonia Sotomayor may be a smart individual, but she is not wise, nor an accredited intellect, regardless of her credentials. And just as Justice Potter Stewart, when unable to define pornography in Jacobellis v. Ohio, stated, “but I know it when I see it,” I don’t see it.

Conservatives/Federalists believe that this federated group of states, governed by a representative government with the Constitution as the foundation and the rule of law as the bedrock that keeps this country from spiraling into the abyss that has historically plagued other forms of government.

Traditional liberal Democrats believe that the Constitution is, at best, a rough and antiquated guideline of law that can be edited and adapted to whatever capricious disposition the country is experiencing at the moment, whether it be in the name of improvement, progress, reform, or votes.

Contemporary Democrats/Fascists, quite frankly, see the Constitution as an inconvenient barrier in the conversion from Federalism to Nationalism, then progressing into some form of a Fascist central governing body. And quite contrary to what the Left would have you believe, Fascism is a predilection of the Left, not the Right.

Barack Obama and the leaders of the Democratic Congress have governed, especially since Obama’s inauguration, with quintessential Fascism. Three of the Supreme Court justices, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, David Souter, and John Paul Stevens have legislated from the bench in a bizarre and agenda-driven, activist manner, in stark contrast to the original intent and meaning of the Constitution and its role in this Republican form of government. With Justice Souter’s retirement, and the nomination of Judge Sotomayor to replace him on the bench, it is imperative to ascertain where she fits, ideologically, into the make-up of the court.

The Supreme Court is the omnipotent arbitrator of the constitutionality of laws and their applications. This is the universally accepted role of the court dating back to the Marshall court with Marbury v. Madison in 1803. The court’s judicial review power was relativity benign until FDR’s expeditious assault on the Constitution and the rule of law. The Supreme Court, the last bastion of Federalism at the time, struck down, repeatedly, various components of Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation as unconstitutional. At this point, it became apparent that if a political party were going to circumvent the Constitution to advance an agenda, it would be necessary to gerrymander the Supreme Court. FDR tried packing the court with justices he could control. He was eventually able to replace enough justices to get his New Deal rubber stamped by the Supreme Court. Congress rejected the court packing scheme, the power and politicization of the Supreme Court in the modern era had begun.

The scatology of  American politics involved in the appointing and confirming of a Supreme Court justice,  one of nine who will magisterially be arbitrating the law of a sharply divided nation–ideologically and politically–will now put Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s entire being under the microscope. What does she mean to the Constitution, Nationalism, Federalism, original intent, original meaning, activism, identity politics, agendas, the Left, the Right, etcetera, and etcetera?

I have a few questions that should be asked of Judge Sotomayor regarding some of her controversial rulings, and contextually puzzling remarks regarding the role of a justice on the Supreme Court. This country has an erratic history, especially in the twentieth century, of Supreme Court rulings that strayed, for trendy and ideological reasons, far from the original intent of the Constitution. And for this country to be shackled to malignant case law has become a perpetual disservice. The questions asked of Sotomayor, or any other nominee, should be directly related to the meaning of the Constitution, and not whimsical interpretations by various nihilists on the bench.

Series One: Since you will be one of nine justices sitting on the highest court of these United States, my first question concerns the United States’ form of government.

In your senior thesis at Princeton, The Impact Of The Life Of Luis Muñoz Marin On The Political And Economic History of Puerto Rico, 1930-1975, you referred to yourself as a Puerto Rican nationalist. Also, in the body of your thesis, you repeatedly referred to the Congress of these United States as the North American Congress, and Mainland Congress.

Do you have a clear understanding of the American form of government?  If so, why did you refer to the Congress as the North American Congress and Mainland Congress?  Do you understand our form of government, but disagree with it, or do you not understand it?  Do you understand that if confirmed, the Senate of these United States, and not the North American Senate, will confirm you?

Do you consider yourself an American citizen, a Puerto Rican citizen, or an American citizen who is a proponent of Puerto Rican nationalism?

Series Two: You have, in the past, referred to yourself as an “affirmative action baby.” You were admitted to Princeton and Yale with substandard test scores, by your own admission, because you were Hispanic, and poor. Your exact statement on a panel of three female judges was: “if I had gone through the traditional numbers route of those institutions, it would have been highly questionable if I would have been accepted.”

Do you think it fair, considering there were other applicants to Princeton and Yale with markedly higher academic achievements, and possibly a better work ethic than you, that you were chosen over them solely based on your ethnicity and financial hardships? And, without referencing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or any other “racial quota” laws, do you believe that your taking their deserved spot violated their equal protection rights under the 14^th Amendment?

Series Three: The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), issued a brief stating that the right to an abortion is the same as any other fundamental right. You were serving on the board of PRLDEF at the time of this brief.

As you should be well aware, the Constitution, on which you will rule if appointed, derives its fundamental rights from natural law, or God’s law. Also eloquently stated by Supreme Court justice Benjamin Cardozo in the case of Palko v. Connecticut, 1937, fundamental rights are, “the very essence of a scheme of ordered liberty, without which justice is not possible. To deprive an individual of these rights is a hardship so acute and shocking that our polity will not endure it.”

With that in mind, do you believe that the right to abort a fetus is a fundamental right derived from God, and if so, do you believe that, as Justice Cardozo stated, that depriving one of the right to abort a fetus would cause “a hardship so acute and shocking that our polity will not endure it?”

Series Four: In 2005, you stated to a group of law students at Duke University that the U.S. Court of Appeals “is where policy is made.”  Are you aware that these United States have three branches of government? Do you understand that the Legislative Branch makes the laws, the Executive Branch approves and enforces the laws, and the Judicial Branch interprets the laws and determines if the laws are Constitutional? Do you believe that the role of a judge is to make the laws and policies that govern this country?

Series Five: You have stated in the past that, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” In your defense, Barack Obama, referring to that statement said, “I think she’d say that her word choice in 2001 was poor… I am sure she would have restated it.”

Would you have restated it, and if so, which particular time would you have done so? Was it the 4000 word lecture that you prepared and gave at the University of California, Berkeley, that was turned into a law-review article? Or was it when you made the same statement in a speech in 1994 in Puerto Rico? Or was it when you stated it in 1999 at the Women’s Bar Association of New York? Or was it in 1999, at a speech at Yale University?  Or was it in a lecture in 2000 at the City University of New York School of Law? Or was it in 2002 at the Princeton Club? Or was it in a lecture in 2003, at Seton Hall?

And can you explain how a “wise Latina woman” would reach a better conclusion than a white male regarding Constitutional law, that quite frankly, was written by old, wise, white men over two-hundred years ago?

Series Six: In the case of Maloney v. Cuomo, you joined in the opinion on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that the rights of the Second Amendment do not apply to the states, and a state can restrict an individual’s Second Amendment rights. You also stated, “it is settled law, however, that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right.” You also issued an opinion in 2004 that “the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right.”

Is it your opinion, since the Second Amendment does not apply to the states, that the states are free to limit the entire scope of the Bill of Rights for individuals?  Do you believe that all state gun laws should supersede all federal gun laws? Can you explain how, when clearly stated in the Constitution in the Second Amendment, “the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right?” And can you explain how you reached the conclusion that possessing a gun it not a fundamental right, but aborting a fetus is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution?

In your answer, use only the Constitution and related information from its ratification for reference, no case law, and be specific and avoid the murky use of a penumbra to ferret out an implied right to privacy as Justice Blackmun did in Roe v. Wade.

Series Seven: In the case of Ricci v. DeStefano, a decision of yours that was recently overturned by the Supreme Court, you ruled that the white firefighters that passed the test for promotions were not discriminated against when the city of New Haven invalidated the test results because only two Latinos and no African Americans scored high enough for a promotion.

One question in this matter: If no white firefighters had passed the test, and only African American firefighters had passed the test, and the city refused to invalidate the test and the white firefighters sued, would you have ruled that the white firefighters had been discriminated against?

Sonia Sotomayor will be front and center in the news this week as her confirmation hearings begin, but if three things were different about her, she would in all probability be an unknown quantity, and certainly not a candidate for a Supreme Court justice. If she had been born rich, white, and male, but maintained the same substandard academic achievements, Princeton and Yale would not have been factored into the equation, and law school, especially an Ivy League school, would have been an impossibility.

It is manifestly apparent that Sotomayor has demonstrated the she has not, and will not, according to the oath she will be required to take, adhere to that oath of office: “I, Sonia Sotomayor, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as Supreme Court Justice under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.

Sotomayor has demonstrated time and again that she is incapable of meting out equal justice without being influenced by poverty, wealth, race, or any other minority or underprivileged-related plight.

The primary reasons that Obama picked her were that she is Hispanic, a woman, and she will violate her oath of office, just as Ginsberg, Souter, Stevens, and Breyer have done on a continual basis. Obama could not advance his Leftist agenda otherwise.

Many political pundits have been taken to task for labeling Sotomayor a racist because of her straightforward racist rulings and statements. But if a white male had made the statement that  “I would hope that a wise, white male with the richness of his experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn’t lived that life,” is there any doubt as to how the character of the person making that statement would be branded?

A modicum of the case’s history for the uninformed: on October 2003, Assistant Principal Wilson, after receiving an uncorroborated tip from a student that Savana was in possession of prescription strength ibuprofen, queried Savana about the allegation. After Savana denied knowledge of the medicine, Wilson, along with Helen Romero, an administrative assistant, searched Savana’s backpack and other belongings for the ibuprofen. When the search did not yield any ibuprofen, Wilson had Romero escort Savana to the school nurse’s office to have a strip search performed. The strip search, performed by school nurse,Peggy Schwallier, also yielded no medicine. Savana’s mother subsequently filed a lawsuit against Wilson, Romero, Schwallier, and the Safford United School District for the unreasonable search, a violation of Savana’s 4th Amendment rights.

After traveling through the lower courts, the case ended at the Supreme Court; the court heard the oral arguments on April 21, 2009. Considering that the Supreme Court has a history of being less than sympathetic towards public school students’ privacy rights, the court’s questioning was aggressive and penetrating–as is the context for all oral arguments before the Supreme Court. But of the nine justices, Justice Ginsberg was conspicuously restrained in her argument of the case. The reason: she was the only one on the bench who had, at one time, been a 13-year-old girl. While clearly aggravated by the line of questioning during oral arguments by the male members of the bench, Ginsberg publicly admonished her eight male colleagues in an article by Joan Biskupic in USA Today by stating, “They have never been a 13-year old girl. It’s a very sensitive age for a girl. I didn’t think that my colleagues, some of them, understood.” Ginsberg also stated that the court needed another woman on the bench. Ginsberg’s concern with having another woman on the court may stem from the fact that, at some point in the future, a case will be presented that will require a jurist of the female gender to interpret the meaning of a law written by old, wise white men two hundred years ago.

Ginsberg was clearly, in this particular case, the only justice on the bench who possessed the “compassion to interpret the Constitution,” the compassion that Obama so recklessly prescribes for a Supreme Court jurist, rather than the actual meaning  and intent of the law.

The line of questioning by the eight male justices, devoid of the experience of being a 13-year-old girl, and the court’s history in students’ privacy rights cases, appeared to intimate that the ruling would be 8-1 in favor of the Safford School District.

The perplexing part of the Supreme Court’s ruling was the 8-1 majority in favor of Savana Redding. The dissenting vote came from Clarence Thomas, the only ethnic minority on the bench. How could a court, with 8 members who never experienced being a 13-year-old girl, not having the council of a “wise Latina woman” on the bench, comprised of seven “white males who were never a Latina woman (to quote Sotomayor), ever reach the conclusion, by an 8-1 margin, that the school violated the law by performing a strip search of Savana Redding?

Here is how they did it: they ruled on the 4th Amendment as it was intended. No compassion, no life experiences as a 13-year old girl, no “wise Latina Woman,” just the intent of the 4th Amendment.

The second perplexing area of this case is why this was a case at all. Why did this incident have to breach the boundaries of the school, or the Safford School District, for that matter?

The first indication that this was a case impregnated with stupidity, politics, political correctness, and an astounding lack of common sense was the answer to this question: did the punishment equal the crime, or in this case, alleged crime?  This is generally the scenario of all zero tolerance cases–a draconian consequence as punishment for minor infraction, or allegation. For a 13-year-old girl to be strip searched without reasonable and corroborated evidence, is punishment.

When these cases read like a satire, the question of who is to blame for the ridiculously dim-witted zero tolerance rules and their enforcement is murky. Is it that school administrators are devoid of common sense? Does a school district rule of zero tolerance force their hands? Is it state mandated laws of zero tolerance that overrule and make obsolete the use of discretion and common sense?

A fellow student, without corroborating evidence, accused Savana Redding of having prescription strength Ibuprofen on her person. As the Supreme Court has allowed, this warranted a cursory search of her backpack and belongings. But what danger did the alleged prescription strength pills pose the student body?  Consider that prescription strength ibuprofen is 800 mg and over the counter ibuprofen is 200 mg., and any student could walk into a convenience store, buy a bottle of ibuprofen, take four, and have administered a prescription dosage. Did the assistant principal not use common sense to ascertain this fact? Should ibuprofen even have been considered a drug under the zero tolerance for drugs? Did the assistant principal, without common sense, or by mandate, have to assume that a 13-year-old girl would be carrying ibuprofen in her underwear? Was the scope of the search warranted since this was something that could be bought at a store down the street?

This is not an isolated case of a school district, administrators, and state lawmakers absurdity regarding zero tolerance.  These nonsensical descents into educational black holes, which makes for daily headline news fodder, are strong indications as to why our educational system is in disrepair.

So despite a government run educational system that mostly operates antithetical to the foundations of administering actual education, and despite the fact that eight of the nine justices never experienced being a 13-year-old girl, and that Sonya Sotomayor was not on the bench to dispense a “compassionate interpretation of the Constitution,” the Supreme Court, these seven “white males,” somehow managed to muddle through and render a decision congruent with theauthor’s intention of the 4th Amendment.

John McCain’s patriotism has been tested, and tested hard. There is no unknown as to how McCain would handle a crisis. He would not be found under his desk curled up in the fetal position. Politics aside, it would be intellectually disingenuous for someone to either state, or believe, he would have the capacity to fold under pressure.

Barack Obama on the other hand wants to be the Commander in Chief of these United States, when in actuality, and sans his position as a U.S. Senator, had he applied for a job that required the highest level security clearance, it is plausible that he would be denied due to his radical alliances with terrorists, felons, and anti-American pulpiteers. Obama has never been tested, never lead, and it would be intellectually disingenuous to state with authority that he would not curl up in the fetal position, metaphorically speaking, in a time of crisis.

This election cycle presents not only an American economy, but a world economy, that is teetering on the brink of a recession, rogue nations in possession of, or rapidly acquiring or manufacturing nuclear weapons, possible four Supreme Court appointments in the next four years, and another assault on the United States and its allies by Islamic terrorists. These are the issues the next President will face. The next President’s leadership, and the Congress, will determine the dénouement in regard to these issues in the ensuing next four years. Come November the fourth, this, whether the voter is aware of the aggregate of the issues listed above, is what the vote is about. Not the redundant and ridiculous mantra of change, or the same ridiculous mantra of four more years of Bush. Those are irrelevant, sophomoric, and dangerously inept reasons to cast a vote for Obama on November the fourth.

Sometimes a vote is a vote to salvage the soul of a country. A soul that has been chipped away for the past thirty years by the ever increasing radical left’s influence in politics and the courts. Europe has lost its soul. It was not taken in war, sold on the market, or wrenched away in some Machiavellian conspirative, but just given up with the same defeatist modus that Obama, Pelosi, and Reid espouse. For the sake of salvaging the soul of this country, I am voting for John McCain for four reasons only: The economy, national security, judgment, and the Supreme Court. The arguments are as follows:

The Economy: If elected to the presidency, and if the Democrats in Congress increase their position to a super-majority, an all out assault against capitalism in this country can be expected. Some variation of the economy from 1929-1945 can also be expected. Obama will increase taxes on the very entities that create the jobs in this country, which will in turn result in a significant loss of jobs and benefits. Obama’s statement to Joe the Plumber: “It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too. My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” This should give even the most casual observer an idea of where the economy will be headed.

But a more ominous problem faces the economy if Obama is elected and the Democrats can muster up a filibuster-proof majority, The world economic crisis, the very one that can be attributed to a handful of Democrats in the Congress and their defective ideology, the very ones who have the most blood on their hands from their culpability in the current crisis, will be in charge of the banks, Wall Street, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc. To calculate the consequences of that scenario, one would only need to possess a modicum of common sense.

John McCain cannot fix the economy. The economy, other than the proper dispensing of the seven hundred billion dollars by Paulson, is at a point where it can only sort itself out. But Obama, and Congress, can significantly magnify and perpetuate a painfully prolonged experience.

The Supreme Court: Obama has made it very clear that he does not like the disposition of the United States, and has a rabid disdain for the U.S. Constitution that is the foundation of this country, and was the driving force behind making it the greatest, most prosperous, and the most powerful country on this planet. He believes ,as did FDR, that the Supreme Court is a tool to be manipulated by the Executive Branch to recast the foundation of this country in a mold of how he perceives it should have been to start with. When speaking of the Supreme Court, and especially the Warren Court, the most radical court in U.S. history, Obama had this to say about the role of the Supreme Court:

“The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. What the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.”

As I have stated many times before, for someone who has a law degree, and taught Constitutional Law, Barack Obama has continually displayed an unparalleled and profound ignorance of the Constitution and U.S. history. He also does not understand the role of the Supreme Court, as set up by the Founding Fathers, as witnessed in this statement by him as to what he believes the role of the Supreme Court should be:

“I taught constitutional law for 10 years, and . . . when you look at what makes a great Supreme Court justice, it’s not just the particular issue and how they rule, but it’s their conception of the Court. And part of the role of the Court is that it is going to protect people who may be vulnerable in the political process, the outsider, the minority, those who are vulnerable, those who don’t have a lot of clout.

“Sometimes we’re only looking at academics or people who’ve been in the lower court. If we can find people who have life experience and they understand what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have the system not work for them, that’s the kind of person I want on the Supreme Court.”

“We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”

Obama’s ignorance of the Supreme Court is absolutely astounding.

Even though John McCain did bruise the tenets of the 1st Amendment with the McCain-Fiengold Act, an act that I hold to be unconstitutional, yet an appointment of a constructionist to the bench can be expected if he is elected . But if left unchecked, with a Democrat controlled Congress, Obama will put in motion a chain reaction that will systematically dismantle the very Constitution that made this country what it is. Can you live with that? Will you live with that? Can the country survive that?

National Security: The dissection of national security, in regard to the two candidates, needs to be broken down into two factions, first being the threat of terrorism domestically, and second being the general security of this nation.

Concerning domestic terrorism, such as 9/11, as with George Bush, McCain will be a failure. McCain is a reckless illiterate in regard to his advocating open borders and amnesty for illegals. It can’t be made any clearer than that. On September 11th we were attacked on our soil by terrorists that were in our country illegally. Seven years later, our borders are as porous as they were on that day and there are still 15-25 million people in this country that the government does not know the identity of. There are, at any given time, 600,000 unaccounted for criminal and visa violating aliens in this country–just as the terrorists were who flew the planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Pennsylvania. Seven years and nothing has changed. A very comforting feeling and the possibility of either candidate changing it is nil.

General National Security with Obama as Commander in Chief leaves no room for his voting “present”, ducking the issue, playing coy by being nuanced, or hiding behind the media’s protective coattails. Obama has zero record of leadership and has demonstrated no quantifiable skills in leadership. A person is either a leader or not and it is apparent in any endeavor they pursue. Obama has never risen to any occasion, not once. Obama has a very dangerous and naive view of the world we live in.

Joe Biden summed it up best:

“Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.”

“Remember I said it standing here. if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he’s gonna have to make some really tough — I don’t know what the decision’s gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it’s gonna happen.”

If tested, and tested hard, do you, first, want to take a chance on someone with such a perception of weakness as to guarantee a test for this country, and second, if tested hard, there will be one winner and one loser–is that a chance you are willing to take by voting for Obama? Do you want to play that game?

Barack Obama will emaciate the military of this country. He has stated he will dismantle the Missile Defense Shield at a time when Russia, who, incidentally, has approximately twice the nuclear arsenal of the U.S., is flexing its imperialistic muscle. North Korea is continually working on becoming nuclear; Iran, while thumbing its nose at the world, is steadfastly working towards nuclear weaponry; and Communist China is continually increasing its military budget to front a very formidable nuclear military. While Obama wants to regressively shift this country’s national security, Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Congress have stated they will accommodate Obama by contributing to the emaciating process via a 25 percent cut in military spending,saying the Pentagon has to start choosing from its many weapons programs.

Judgment: Obama, if elected, will have the opportunity to make over 1000 appointments from the Supreme Court on down. He has a long history of making very poor judgments in regard to his associations. To exercise sound judgment, one must have a balance of intelligence and virtue. Aristotle, in his work, Nicomachean Ethics, speaks about the five intellectual virtues of knowledge, art, prudence, intuition, and wisdom. Counter to what Obama apologists want to believe, Obama has not demonstrated the possession of any of the five virtues of knowledge beyond a rudimentary level, though having myriad opportunities in his life to do so, thus making his past and future decision making anemically problematic.

Aristotle takes the position that friends can be viewed as second selves. Obama has surrounded himself with the likes of William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Rashid Khalidi, Samantha Powers, and Acorn, etc. According to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, there exists three types of friends. Friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of the good. Utility friendships are of convenience and gain, and are terminated when the usefulness of the friendship has run its course. This seems to be the type of friendships that Obama has cultivated throughout his life. Such was the ease that Obama discarded Rezko, Wright, et al, and has tried to downplay his relationship with Ayers.

The friendship of the good is a combination of like character and a mutual affection for each other’s company. This would be true friendship. This is a void that is apparent with Obama. There has not been a person of the stature of a true time tested friend to stand up for Obama–no one from his childhood, university, or early career had appeared beside him for support. He has only been flanked by supporters and people of a utility nature in his life. He also does not seem to have developed any friendships of pleasure where there would be a general accommodating attraction. Contrast this to McCain, who has a very long list of distinguished true friends dating back to the time of his imprisonment in Viet Nam while serving his country. As there was not a lot of time to be doing community organizing and associating with radicals while lying in a prison cell with broken limbs and refusing to be released until soldiers with a longer tenure in the prison were released first, he forged time tested friendships based upon mutual respect.

The Democrat Party has de-evolved into an uncivilized, and feral cult with an inordinate amount of political clout to possess such a destructive ideology. If you truly believe that the dismantling of the Constitution, a long and painful recession, and being vulnerable to any one of the above enumerated rogue countries is the change this country needs, then by all means vote for Obama, but I will vote for McCain–which will be a vote for America’s soul.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

What is the original textual meanings and intents of words “militia, people, and state” in the context of the Constitution and its ensuing amendments by the framers? Does it protect an individual’s right when addressing people or does the term people refer to the state? And is it limited to a state’s militia possessing guns? And without a state militia is there no fundamental individual right to own or possess a firearm?

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the original intent of Second Amendment in the case of Washington, D.C. v. Heller with a vote of 5-4. This was the first time since the ratification of the 2nd Amendment, in 1791, that the court has ruled as compressively as it did, yet, leaving enough common sense subjectivity in the ruling for reasonable restrictions.

Heller petitioned “whether the Second Amendment guarantees law-abiding, adult individuals a right to keep ordinary, functional firearms, including handguns, in their homes.” The Supreme Court chose not to review the questions petitioned, but write their own question(s). The Supreme Court’s rephrased question: “Whether the following provisions, D.C. Code secs. 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02, violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”

On its path to the Supreme Court, the case passed through a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals Washington, D.C. The panel ruled 2-1 that the gun control laws in D.C. were unconstitutional. In the lone dissent, Justice Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms relates to those Militia whose continued vitality is required to safeguard the individual States.” She also stated, with axiomatically repressed anarchy, that she believes the District should be immune from the Second Amendment because it is not a state. According to Justice Karen LeCraft Henderson’s ideology, Washington D.C. would be immune from the entire Constitution, and its 27 amendments. Judges like Henderson, and other spawn from the same genus, who share the same lacunal qualifications, are the personification, and the definitive literal definition, of anarchy.

After the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of the 2nd Amendment, and the suspense had abated, attention was leveled at the farcical dissents that would surely follow. Stevens inaugurated the obtuse.

In his dissent, and staying comfortably within the rigid boundaries set by the benighted reprobates consisting of himself, Ginsberg, Souter, and Breyer–Stevens argued that the majority’s “law changing decision” gave gun rights to individuals that were never there to begin with through a “dramatic upheaval in the law.” He also went on to point out not what the 2^nd Amendment said, but what it did not say, he focused on the 2nd Amendment’s “omission of any statement of purpose related to the right to use firearms for hunting or personal self-defense.”

Justice Breyer, in a separate dissent, stated that, “In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas.”

This is the de regueur behavior of agenda driven judges. Since the use of firearms for hunting and self protection was not explicitly written into the 2^nd Amendment, they believe that it cannot be explicated–unless of course it advances their agenda. One must wonder, then, about the problematic formula in reaching the Roe v. Wade decision. There was no constitutional language to support Roe, only the conjectured penumbra theory of privacy to concoct legislation from the bench.

To further their constitutional hypocrisy, liberals and their constitutional anarchist judges have stretched the boundaries of constitutional interpretation beyond the breaking point when it serves their purpose, yet they want to read the Second Amendment so narrowly they could thread it through the eye of a needle. To get an even further grasp on the left’s biased opinion of the Second Amendment one would only have to read the ACLU’s opposition of individual rights concerning the Second Amendment or the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. The ACLU and the influential anti-gun organization, The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, are infected with hyperbole, self-serving conjecture and outright lies. Neither can produce one factual statement backed up by historical antithetical evidence that would legitimately contradict the decision by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Heller v Washington D.C.

Does the Second Amendment guarantee an individual the right to have a gun for private use, or does it only guarantee a collective right to have guns in a militia such as a state’s National Guard? Does the first clause in the Second Amendment limit the last clause in the amendment?

Let’s not focus on laws, court rulings, municipal ordinances, or opinions by the left or right. But take a common sense approach to the 2nd Amendment from a purely historical view. Let us try and justify the left’s point of view on the 2nd Amendment with a few questions. If answered, it should clear up the matter once and for all: What was a militia during the time of the Constitution? If it was something other than armed citizens who grabbed their muskets off their mantels when called upon, what was it? If the 2nd Amendment only prescribed for militias to own and use firearms, who were the militias and where would the firearms be housed in between skirmishes? Did perhaps Washington and Adams co-own a warehouse to house firearms? Since most everyone owned a gun at that time, why were they left with their guns after the ratification of the 2nd Amendment, and why were they not confiscated? Why was there not a federal agency formed to confiscate the guns and control them until the militia was called up? Why was there not a firearms case presented before the Supreme Court for almost 200 years? How were the majority of the populace going to hunt for their meat? How were they supposed to protect themselves against hostiles, since there was not an army, police force, nor sheriff’s office?

Presented will be two arguments, one prejudicially concurring with the current ruling supported with historical and judicial evidence concerning the language of the amendment. The opposing argument will be supported with historical and judicial evidence concerning the language of the amendment contrary to the right of an individual’s right to own a gun.

Historical arguments and evidence supporting an individual’s rights to be armed:

The amendments were not written to give rights, but as a restriction on the Federal Government from abridging individual’s rights beyond the limits already set forth in the Constitution. The framers did not invent the right to keep and bear arms when they drafted the Second Amendment, it was a pre-existing right under Common Law (Blackstone Commentaries on the Law…“natural right of resistance and self-preservation”, espousing the individual right to protect oneself.) and previously part of the original 13 state’s constitutions.

The Framers had already addressed the issue of a militia in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution(To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions). Why was it addressed again in the Second Amendment, and with the addition of guaranteeing individual’s the right to bear arms? If the framers had meant to limit it to the “state“, why did they add the term “people” in the amendment? It was added for the same reason the other amendments were added–to double guarantee that a particular right would not be infringed upon by the Federal Government. Without the strengthening of rights, via amendments, the states would not have ratified the Constitution.

The Supreme Court has ruled, in other cases, that the term “people” means “individuals” in the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments.

There is little need for conjectural interpretation of something if you have a categorical definition of its meaning by its author(s). In the case of the Second Amendment there are annotations by George Mason, James Madison and the other crafters of the Second Amendment. There also exists the records of the debates for the ratification of the Second Amendment. A few notable attestments and quotes from the men involved with crafting the Second Amendment:

• “The great object is that every man be armed and everyone who is able may have a gun.” – Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the Constitution
• ... to disarm the people – that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
  – George Mason
• I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.”
  - George Mason
• No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
  – Thomas Jefferson
• “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and
  better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for
  an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
  -Thomas Jefferson, quoting Cesare Beccaria.
• “The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”
  – Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188
• “Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?” –Patrick Henry

These men either wrote or were instrumental in the ratification of the Constitution. Is there even a diminutive amount of subjectivity to their concept of the personal ownership of firearms, for any reason?

The Whiskey Rebellion started when four counties in western Pennsylvania refused to pay an excise tax on whiskey that had been levied by Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton in the Spring of 1791. In 1794 the civil protests turned into an armed rebellion known as the Whiskey Insurrection. As word of this spread, many forms of many loosely organized revolts began in the region by robbing the mail, interrupting courts, assaulting tax collectors, etc. Washington raised a militia force of 13,000 men. Under the command of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and General Henry Lee, the militia marched into Western Pennsylvania in October of 1794 to quell the insurrection. The rebels were never found but the militia did arrest 20 people. They were all pardoned by Washington.

Why is the Whiskey Rebellion relevant to the Second Amendment? The Whiskey Rebellion happened five years after the ratification of the constitution and its amendments. A militia, under Washington’s lead, marched to engage armed individuals. With the ink on the Second Amendment not fully dried when the armed insurrection happened, and if the amendment’s original intent was as the current day anti-gun liberals claim it was, then where was the outrage at individuals being armed– especially when attacking government officials? Why did Washington, upon his return to the capital not try to enforce the lack of an individual’s right to bear arms? Why did he not encourage legislation for gun control? Because it was a right that he, and the government, knew was off limits.

From the date of the ratification of the Constitution and its amendments, there was not a law abridging the rights of individuals to possess arms until 1934 with the National Firearms Act. The reason there was not a firearm’s law was simple– it would have been unconstitutional. FDR’s National Firearms Act, along with a plethora of unconstitutional acts and laws by his administration, came after 147 years void of challenges to the Second Amendment at the Supreme Court level.

As Jefferson stated in the quote at the beginning of this article, the spirit and intent of any clause in the Constitution and its amendments can be found by reading the debates and the author’s explanation of their text and thoughts. Starting with the Roosevelt administration, liberal, anti-gun zealots have been the source of the most dishonest constitutional scholarship against the right to own a gun. The Constitution and its amendments have either been so broadly interpreted as to be unrecognizable to their original intent, or in the case of the Second Amendment, so narrowly and dishonestly interpreted to have, as Jefferson stated, the text ”squeezed and re-invented” to conform to the whimsical ideology of the day.

Historical arguments and evidence to support that an individual does not have the right to be armed: Sorry, no credible information on record.

I previously published an article, on Oct. 10, 2007, addressing the Supreme Court’s hearing arguments in the case Medellin v. Texas. The case, in its most fundamental state, involved the matter of whether or not the U.N.’s International Court of Justice could surmount jurisdiction over a U.S. court.

I noted in the original article, with prejudiced apprehension, that the vote would be Scalia, Roberts, Alito and Thomas siding with the U.S. Constitution and Texas, while most assuredly, Ginsberg, Breyer, Stevens, and Souter would side, as customary, on the side of international law trumping U.S. law. Kennedy would be the swing vote, but more than likely vote with the constructionist given his line of questioning during oral arguments.

With another 5-4 ruling on the horizon, and with an almost perfunctory process involving U.S. sovereignty, Justice Stevens, although seeming torn, sided with the majority.

In writing for the majority, Justice Roberts wrote, “Neither a World Court decision requiring U.S. states to provide new review of criminal cases involving foreign nationals, nor a memo by President Bush seeking to enforce the World Court ruling, preempts state law restrictions on challenges to convictions.”

The court in summary, completely rejected Bush’s argument that the President has the power to make an international treaty a law within the United States and the President does not have the power to subject a state to an international court. The court additionally emphasized that only the Congress can make a treaty law.

Below is the original article, which prefaces the above conclusion, addressing the highly plausible concerns if the ruling had been in favor of the International Court of Justice.

If the treaty power is unlimited, then we don’t have a Constitution-Thomas Jefferson

Antonio de Padua Maria Severino Lopez de Santa Anna y Perez de Lebron died on June 21, 1876. He was reincarnated on July 6, 1946. The exact same month, day and year George W. Bush was born. This is the only plausible explanation left for Bush’s pathological obsession with Mexico and its citizens–especially those of the illegal persuasion, at the abnegation of America’s sovereignty and national security. George Bush might well be Santa Anna reincarnated. That would explain a lot.

If you can indulge in a moment of fantasy and imagine the Alamo being fought today and Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and Colonel Travis et al survived, it would be just a matter of weeks before Bush and his henchman Johnny Sutton, a puppet for the Mexican Consulate, would have them facing the same fate of Ignacio Romos, Jose Compean, Gary Brugman, Noe Aleman and Gilmer Hernandez. If you are unfamiliar with these names, they are just a few of the Border Patrol agents U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, under the command of the Mexican Consulate, prosecuted and sent to prison. Alberto Gonzales and George Bush turned a blind eye to their plight and refused to intervene and allowed the Mexican government to manipulate our justice system.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments today about whether a state court should be subordinated to the International Court of Justice. President Bush believes it should be and was represented at the Supreme Court on the opposite side from the state of Texas. The case concerns the case of Jose Ernesto Medellin, the details of the case:

Bush, Texas at odds over death case

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – To put it bluntly, Texas wants President Bush to get out of the way of the state’s plan to execute a Mexican for the brutal killing of two teenage girls.

Bush, who presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas, wants to halt the execution of Jose Ernesto Medellin in what has become a confusing test of presidential power that the Supreme Court ultimately will sort out.

The president wants to enforce a decision by the International Court of Justice that found the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners violated their rights to legal help as outlined in the 1963 Vienna Convention.

That is the same court Bush has since said he plans to ignore if it makes similar decisions affecting state criminal laws.

“The president does not agree with the ICJ’s interpretation of the Vienna Convention,” the administration said in arguments filed with the court. This time, though, the U.S. agreed to abide by the international court’s decision because ignoring it would harm American interests abroad, the government said.

Texas argues strenuously that neither the international court nor Bush, his Texas ties notwithstanding, has any say in Medellin’s case.

Ted Cruz, the Texas solicitor general, said the administration’s position would “allow the president to set aside any state law the president believes is inconvenient to international comity.”

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case Wednesday.

Medellin was born in Mexico but spent much of his childhood in the United States. He was 18 in June 1993, when he and other members of the Black and Whites gang in Houston encountered Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena on a railroad trestle as the girls were taking a shortcut home.

Ertman, 14, and Pena, 16, were gang-raped and strangled. Their bodies were found four days later.

Medellin was arrested a few days after the killings. He was told he had a right to remain silent and have a lawyer present, but the police did not tell him that he could request assistance from the Mexican consulate under the 1963 treaty.

Medellin gave a written confession. He was convicted of murder in the course of a sexual assault, a capital offense in Texas. A judge sentenced him to death in October 1994.

Medellin did not raise the lack of assistance from Mexican diplomats during his trial or sentencing. When he did claim his rights had been violated, Texas and federal courts turned him down because he had not objected at his trial.

Then, in 2003, Mexico sued the United States in the International Court of Justice in The Hague on behalf of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row in the U.S. who also had been denied access to their country’s diplomats following their arrests.

Mexico has no death penalty. Mexico and other opponents of capital punishment have sought to use the court, also known as the World Court, to fight for foreigners facing execution in the U.S.

The international court ruled for Mexico in 2004, saying the sentences and convictions should be reviewed by U.S. courts.

Medellin’s case was rejected by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal. While it was pending in Washington, Bush issued a memo to his attorney general declaring that state courts must enforce the international court’s ruling.

Two weeks after the memo, Bush said the U.S. was withdrawing from an international accord that lets the world court have the final say when citizens claim they were illegally denied access to their diplomats when they are jailed abroad.

The treaty had been used by the United States in its lawsuit against Iran for taking Americans hostages in 1979.

The Supreme Court weighed in next, dismissing Medellin’s case while state courts reviewed Bush’s order. Texas courts again ruled against Medellin, saying Bush overstepped his authority by intruding into the affairs of the independent judiciary.

In April, the Supreme Court stepped in for a second time, putting Bush and the state he governed on opposite sides and setting up an unusual alliance of interests.

Foreign inmates on death rows in California, Florida,Texas and up to a dozen other states could be affected by the outcome.

Four of Medellin’s fellow gang members also received the death penalty and one, Sean O’Brien, was executed last year. Two others had their death sentences commuted to life in prison in 2005 when the Supreme Court barred executions for those who were age 17 at the time of their crimes. Another defendant does not have an execution date.

A sixth participant, Medellin’s brother, Vernancio, was 14 at the time. He was tried as a juvenile and is serving 40 years in prison.

Ertman’s parents said they want to see the older Medellin brother put to death, pointing out in court papers that his case has been going on longer than their daughter lived.

The case will be decided sometime in Spring. Until then, there were a few noteworthy comments by the justices today. Keep in mind that Kennedy is the court’s swing vote:

Justice Antonin Scalia, said he saw a constitutional problem with “giving an international body the authority to determine U.S. federal law. I am rather jealous of that authority. I don’t know on what basis we allow an international court to decide the content of American law.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., said the effect of the Bush Administration’s defense of the presidential order that states obey a World Court ruling would be that “the President can take any treaty that is not self-executing and make it binding under federal law.”

If the World Court’s judgment on the Mexican nationals’ legal rights here were binding federal law inside the U.S., Roberts wondered, would the Justices have any authority to second-guess the content of that law? “We would have no authority to review the judgment itself?” he asked with notable skepticism.

And Kennedy twice raised concerns about whether the President could “displace the authority” of the Court to interpret judgments of the World Court.

Who is this International Court of Justice and what are the consequences if Bush wins this case at the Supreme Court? The International Court of Justice is the judicial arm of the highly ethical, incorruptible and unreproachable United Nations. If Texas loses this case, it would transfer our judicial sovereignty to the U.N. and the U.S. would be under the control, in a judicial capacity, to the corrupt third world countries that dominate the U.N. The consequences are innumerable. Not only would our laws have to pass constitutional muster, but also be subjected and subordinated to the corrupt ideology that infects the U.N. and its tentacles, especially the International Court of Justice.

As usual with Bush, his conservative hypocrisy runs deep in his latest dissolution of national sovereignty. Bush issued a memorandum in 2005 to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales demanding that all states submit to the decision of the International Court of Justice in regards to cases involving citizens of foreign countries. Within two weeks Bush had rescinded that order and stated that the U.S. was withdrawing from the accord that would allow the International Court of Justice to have the final say when another country’s citizen claims they were denied access to their country’s diplomats. He has since stated that he plans to ignore any similar situation concerning state courts and the International Court of Justice because he does not agree with their interpretation of the Vienna Convention.

He wants to make an exception with the case of Medellin, most assuredly because of his Mexican nationality, because he fears by not doing so it will harm American interests abroad. No group, organization or assemblage of humanity could possibly do as much damage as Bush has singlehandedly done to harm American interests abroad.

Bush presided over 152 executions while Governor of Texas–32 during 1999. If he could be compared to anyone from the formative years of Texas justice, it would have to be “Hanging Judge Roy Bean.” This is not meant to impugn Bush and the death penalty during his tenure as Governor of Texas. It is what it is and the law is the law. That should be good enough for anyone who believes in the rule of law. The problem is Bush’s inability to follow the rule of law since becoming president.

Again he parallels Judge Roy Bean in regards to a murder case that Bean presided over. An Irishman killed a Chinese worker. After perusing his law book, Bean who used his pistol as a gavel, rapped the bar, he stated to the court, “Gentlemen, I find the law very explicit on murdering your fellow man, but there’s nothing here about killing a Chinaman. Case dismissed.” This encompasses Bush’s view on Mexico, illegal aliens and the rule of law.

The one case that stood out from all the 152 executions was the case of Karla Faye Tucker. On February 3rd of 1998, the State of Texas executed Karla Faye Tucker for her part in two extremely brutal murders she committed in 1983. The Supreme Court rejected last minute appeals for clemency or stays and George Bush ordered the execution to proceed on time. He stated that her case had been reviewed to his satisfaction. He stated that, “I have concluded judgments about the heart and soul of an individual on Death Row are best left to a higher authority.”

I am not a hand wringing, anti-death penalty proponent. The current court cases alleging that lethal injections are cruel and unusual punishment are baseless and nothing more than last ditch efforts for the anti-death penalty defects to abolish it. But the case of Karla Faye Tucker was different. The execution of Karla Faye Tucker was the execution of a different person than the one who committed the crimes. She was a genuinely changed person. Bush received thousands of messages urging clemency for Tucker, including one from one of his daughters. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, strong advocates of execution, urged him to commute Tucker’s sentence. Pope John Paul II urged Bush to grant mercy to Tucker.

There are no excuses for her crimes, but if anyone deserved to have their sentence commuted to life without parole, it was her. Bush never considered it. He balked at granting a 30 day stay of execution so the death penalty in this case could be reconsidered. Perhaps Karla Faye Tucker’s fate to be executed, rather than spending the rest of her life in prison, was one of nationality. If she had been an illegal alien from Mexico her fate might have ended up differently.

This is not an apologetic discourse for Karla Faye Tucker nor is it an admonishment of the death penalty in Texas under Bush’s watch. It merely manifests the phrase he stated, “I have concluded judgments about the heart and soul of an individual on Death Row are best left to a higher authority.” Conventional wisdom would have thought he was referring to God, but he was obviously referring to the U.N.