Here's a question for anyone who is a citizen of the United Kingdom? Whats the highest law in the land? The answer is: It depends. In Britain, the nation's top judge, Justice Lord Phillips, asserted recently that Islamic Sharia law should be used in a variety of capacities insofar as it relates to Britain's Muslim subjects.

'It is possible in this country for those who are entering into a contractual agreement to agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.'
-Justice Phillips

Herein lies the danger of nation's without a written constitution. We have already seen other nations (e.g., Canada) make exceptions for Islamic communities. Exceptions which do not apply to the larger population. Imagine if a Christian couple wanted a marriage or business contract to be based on the Bible, rather that the nation's applicable laws, or a Jew using the Torah or Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, etc...using their respective parochial systems rather than a universal code of justice. To what do certain individuals (i.e., Muslims) deserve such exceptionalism and where does it end.

Link:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1031611/Sharia-law-SHOULD-used-Britain-says-UKs-judge.html

Rarely in law enforcement do police have the opportunity to stop a murder or rape in progress. Its an extremely poor argument when we tell people to 'get raped, get assaulted, get robbed or better still get murdered. The police will come by soon to take pictures and complete a crime report, maybe even find the perpetrator,' meanwhile the victim is no less traumatized, if not dead.

One has to wonder what type of bizzaro world we have entered when an Obama surrogate can assail the executive qualifications of John McCain. Albeit true, Senator McCain is no poster-boy for those of us who truly value freedom its pureist forms, but few can assert with any degree of seriousness that Senator McCain served with honor, indeed heroically in the face of unimageaable pain and torture. Regardless of this, Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander and failed 2004 presidential candidate has assailed McCain in a matter that can only be interpretted as a slight against all Americans who have served their country, and even those of us who haven't.

According to Clark, McCain's credits are of no great importance:

"I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."
-Wesley Clark

Perhaps General Clark is right, being shot down while flying combat missions in the service of your country is no great feat and apparently refusing to bow to almost un yielding pressure while captive in an enemy POW camp speaks nothing to a person's character either...what exactly is the message to all the other former POWs out their?

General Clark also derided McCain's experience on the grounds that his military service encompassed no executive responsibility and thus can be completely discounted. By General Clark's own reckoning only those military personal who held executive authority have experience that would qualify for the presidency. By this manner of circular logic only three president's in American history (Washington, Grant, Eisenhower and maybe Jackson) were qualified for the office.

Anyone who is a champion of the Constitution and liberty knows that there is no shortage of material upon which to attack the lackluster John McCain, yet this is best Obama's generals can muster? An attack which can only boomerang on the equally unqualified and unspectacular Barack Obama.

Links:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/29/america/campaign.php

In a recent Washington Post article , Professor Arthur Kellerman takes issue with the recent Supreme Court decision concerning the 2nd Amendment (big surprise).

While Professor Kellerman, does not hesitate to criticize Justice Scalia for his conclusion, the same arguments can be made in critiquing the esteemed professor. The professor’
Such arguments, as those posed by Kellerman are conspicuously absent when answering the question: what do you do if the unthinkable takes place and your home is terrorizes by a knife (or gun wielding) bandit intent on doing you harm. Should we simply wait and hope the police arrive before the assailant is finished robbing raping or murdering his intended victim? Why exactly is Professor Kellerman so opposed to the principle of self –defense? Since when did being a citizen of the United States entail surrendering certain basic human rights to the state? Indeed, 74% of all violent crimes committed in the United States do not involve firearms, yet we are to believe that barring law abiding citizens will save us from crime. Such a premise is purely beyond the pale of reason. Nor does it explain why countries like Australia and Britain have seen increases in violent crime as firearms have become all but impossible to acquire, nor does it explain how violent crime has increased as gun restrictions have become more ubiquitous in the United States.

As Kellerman notes, there are incidents in which firearms have caused accidental deaths or been the instrument by which suicides have been committed. In Japan, where firearms, are virtually unknown by the general populace, suicide far outpaces anything seen in the US or anywhere else in the industrialized world. The assertion that suicide is a result of the presence of firearms is as spurious as the assertion that the presence of cutlery leads to stabbings.

Yes accidents can and will happen but does this realty lead to the draconian decision to ban all firearms? Verily, 55000 annual deaths on American roads certainly hasn’t lead to Kellerman’s call for a ban on motor vehicles, nor has it lead to a call to ban home swimming pools, even though statistics clearly show that more accidental deaths occur in homes with swimming pools than they do in homes with firearms.

Then there is the subject of concealed weapons permits, while this is not addressed directly by the professor, it warrants such attention. Perhaps Kellerman refuses to address this matter because such data would reveal that less than 1% of firearms related crimes involve those citizens who have met the requirements to obtain a firearms license. The point being that law abiding citizens meeting certain reasonable requirements before they acquire firearms present no danger to themselves, only ne'er do wells who show no respect for the law in the first place. And it also begs the question, of those homes the professor supposedly studied in which the presence of firearms was related to some unjustifiable homicide, in how many of those homes were the owners legally able to obtain or possess a handgun?

Link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062702864.html

The fallout from yesterday's Supreme Court decision will likely continue for some time and as the dust settles we have the opportunity to take a closer look at the decision.

According to Justice John Paul Stevens, the 2nd Amendment applies only to militias (and thus the second half of the amendment is purely superfluous) though in every other instance when the framers mentioned the people, such as the 10th amendment, it did indeed refer to the "people."

In any regard Stevens' contends that the true purpose of the amendment was to prevent congress from disarming the various state militias and replace them with a standing army.

Using Stevens' own logic, can it not be argued that this has already been done? After all, the Militia system was eleminated nearly 100 years ago, replaced by the National Guard, which is very much an arm of the national army bearing little resemblance (or automomy) to the
former militias they replaced.

Stevens further asserts that their is no indication that the framers ever intended to enshrine the right of self defense in the constitution. Indeed even if that were true, which it certainly is not, the 9th amendment would surely protect this long held right from the intrusion of the statists. But of course the 2nd amendment most certainly does enshrine the principle of self defense, as this was the purpose of the militia and as these bodies were composed of private citizens who regularly furnished their own weapons it would be extreemly difficult to fathom any other rational argument that is not tainted by the stain of statist thought.

Today in perhaps the most anticipated of the US Supreme Court, the justices, have ruled that the Washington DC gun ban is unconstitutional. The 5-4 decision declared (rightly) that the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution, protects the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms.

For some time now, those who have opposed individual gun rights have argued that the 2nd amendment only applied to militias, this argument is without merit given the entire wording of the amendment and when one takes into account the circumstance of 18th century America. The militia has no modern equivalent. The militia of the 1700s and beyond was an informal all volunteer group of citizens dedicated to protecting themselves, their families and communities. The modern National Guard, while similar in function is a fully integrated component of the US military command structure, unlike the militias of yore.

The courts decision, uploads the rights of individuals to protect themselves, their families and their property. yes there are some that believe only the state should have that function, but I suppose their tune would be quite different if suddenly a bandit chose their home as the next home invasion target, perhaps they could just tell the criminal to wait 15-20 minutes until the police arrive.

Naturally this decision will be vilified by the left who will site erroneous gun facts, that reward criminals by disarming law abiding citizens and providing them with easy prey to fall on.


Previous Articles on Gun Ownership:
Another word on Gun Violence

The VT Massacre and the inevitable Gun Control Debate

Right to bear arms faces the high court

Why they voted no


Links:
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSWBT00928420080626?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true

It is a well documented fact that the US border with Mexican is both extremely porous, and dangerous. General Pershing could have attested to this fact nearly a century ago. Sadly in the intervening century little has changed. Instead of Pancho Villa, we have a never ending tide of illegal immigrants, and while many (if not most of them) are benign seeking only better opportunities, others are far from innocent. In fact some are quite dangerous.

In addition to this ever growing flow of illegal immigrants there is a growing amount of crime being committed in the border states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. These crimes have been committed by Mexican drug lords and now apparently they are being committed by the Mexican army itself. While the Mexican army is not formally at war with the United States, the corrupt nature of certain Mexican officials, including soldiers does give reason for concern.

Perhaps even more disconcerting is the realization that our political leaders in Washington on both the left and the right display not even the slightest bit on concern for our national security interests, much less the rule of law, both of which are threatened when a sovereign nation refuses to protect its own borders as we have done. Are political leaders appears more concerned with winning elections and scoring political points with various interest groups rather than upholding the Constitution, but then again why should this come as a surprise? Our leaders have been ignoring the very laws they have been swoen to uphold for generations.

Links:
http://kfyi.com/pages/local_news.html?feed=118695&article=3875223

Would not a return to the Articles of Confederation be preferable for all those Americans who cherish freedom (granted this is a ever shrinking minority group).

In theory the US Constitution is the preeminent symbol of effective government, one that recognizes the needs of the majority, while securing the rights of even the smallest groups. In theory the Constitution limits the reach and scope of the national government, guaranteeing our basic individual freedoms, including above all self determination. The 10th Amendment to the Constitution, for example, should, in theory, enshrine the sovereign rights of the various states which make up this republic.

This premise, however, is sound insofar as future generations remain dedicated to the principle and letter of the Constitution, in reality in over 230 years of history we have seen this is far from the truth. No sooner was the ink dry on the much heralded Constitution had Congress passed laws restricting free speech and during the 20th century a continuous erosion of state sovereignty occurred, first during the so-called Progressive era, continuing during the New Deal, the Great Society and right up to present day abominations like the No Child Left Behind Act.

Today the Constitution is little more than a guideline, to be conveniently ignored whenever possible. Today our courts have deemed it a proper function of the state to seize property in order to raise money and regularly site foreign law (rather than the Constitution) in rendering decisions. When we have arrived at such a state, we must recognize that the Constitution is no longer in force. Sadly the very document that gave birth to our republic contains the seeds of its destruction. Our Constitution, which includes such flexible language like the "elastic clause' has allowed our federal government to continually erode the rights of both the states and its citizens, while paying only lip service to the concept of federalism.

Under the now defunct Articles of Confederation, the powers of the federal government were greatly limited, and the sovereign powers of the individual states were greatly enhanced. If we are defenders of liberty we must recognize the power hungry have made a mockery of our constitution and so long as the current system remains in place, we can expect nothing less than the unchecked expansion of the federal government.

In a previously referenced article, Senator Barack Obama, addressing a meeting of Democratic Governors, outlined some of his plans for the economy. In reality, it was little more than an insane political prescription for economic stagnation:

Obama said he would work with them on policies that would help, including a plan to spend billions in taxpayer dollars to build roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects that could create jobs and improve transportation routes. Obama asked if they have projects that were ready to go if they had the money, and there were nods and calls of "Absolutely!" around the table.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D91DVH680&show_article=1

After reading this can anyone truly believe that Obama or the 16 Democratic governors present are fans of economic liberty. Is this the 1930s or the 21st century. Does Barack Obama truly believe that the path to economic recovery is to levy massive (and historic) tax increases to finance vast public works projects. And exactly who will fill these jobs? And are these the types of jobs that Obama wants to create in modern day America?

Is this how Obama envisions America will be able to compete with the emerging economies of China, India and Eastern Europe? It must be, after all he favors the status quo when it comes to our under-performing, outclassed schools, that produce students who lag far behind the rest of the developed world. And with out world class education, digging ditches and laying pavement is about all the next generation of Americans will be qualified to do. Already American companies are forced to import an ever growing number of engineers and scientist to fill their employment needs

Its a tired saying when one argues that the left favor nothing but "tax and spend" policies but it sadly continues to ring true. So much for the "New Democratic Party" of the Clinton era. Obama's planned re-birth of the WPA is no recipe for America's long term economic vitality (further highlighting his economic ignorance).

What this country needs, first and foremost is an energy plan that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, thereby reducing inflationary pressures, something the left (and the right) have failed to enact in the nearly 40 years since the first oil shock. Secondly we need a climate that encourages economic growth and entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama and his leftist friends favor a punitive tax structure that punishes success and rewards idolatry while simultaneously re-invigorating the modern American welfare state. Does anyone actually believe the farce of a "windfall profits tax" will lead to lower costs for the American consumer, to say nothing of job growth?

Today in a Florida speech that would surely make Dr. Joseph Goebbels blush, the esteemed in-experienced, weak-minded smoker, and collectivist-leaning Senator from Illinois decried proposals to open the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to oil exploration.

According to Senator Obama, the savings would be minuscule and would be non-existant for over 20 years. This pronouncement alone should automatically disqualify Obama for the role of chief executive. Either teh presumptive Democratic nominee is knowingly distorting the facts, is ignorant or is seeking to ensure our continued dependence upon a band of oil rich tyrants from Venezuela to Saudi Arabia, whatever the motivation, if it were anyone other political leader would we not argue that that individual has no business leading the United States of America.

America can ill afford such misguided and foolish leadership mentality. With each passing day, Barack Obama further demonstrates why he should never occupy the White House, or any other leadership position in government.

Every American desrvesto know the answer to this question: Mr. Obama, what is your motivation for endorsing an energy policy that enshrines American subservience to Middle Eastern dictaors? Why do you cling to a policy of ignorance and champion that policy to your equally ignorant followers?

Previous Post on Oil Exploration Proposals:
http://www.thephalanx.com/2008/06/american-left-and-energy-dependence.html

Link:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D91DVH680&show_article=1