The Battle of San Jacinto

“Remember the Alamo!”

On April 21, 1836, shortly before noon, Sam Houston held a council of war with Edward Burleson, Sidney Sherman, Henry W. Millard, Alexander Somervell, Joseph L. Bennett, and Lysander Wells.

Two of the officers suggested attacking the enemy in his position; the others favored waiting Santa Anna’s attack.

Houston withheld his own views at the council but later, after having formed his plan of battle had it approved by Rusk. Houston disposed his forces in battle order about 3:30 in the afternoon while all was quiet on the Mexican side during the afternoon siesta.

The Texans’ movements were screened by trees and the rising ground, and evidently Santa Anna had no lookouts posted. The battle line was formed with Edward Burleson’s regiment in the center, Sherman’s on the left wing, the artillery under George W. Hockley on Burleson’s right, the infantry under Henry Millard on the right of the artillery, and the cavalry under Lamar on the extreme right.

The Twin Sisters, (canon), were wheeled into position, and the whole line, led by Sherman’s men, sprang forward on the run with the cry, “Remember the Alamo!” “Remember Goliad!”

The battle lasted but eighteen minutes. According to Houston’s official report, the casualties were 630 Mexicans killed and 730 taken prisoner. Against this, only nine of the 910 Texans were killed or mortally wounded and thirty were wounded less seriously. Houston’s ankle was shattered by a musket ball.

The Texans captured a large supply of muskets, pistols, sabers, mules, horses, provisions, clothing, tents, and $12,000 in silver. Santa Anna disappeared during the battle and search parties were sent out on the morning of the 22nd.

The party consisted of James A. Sylvester, Washington H. Secrest, Sion R. Bostick, and a Mr. Cole discovered Santa Anna hiding in the grass. He was dirty and wet and was dressed as a common soldier. The search party did not recognize him until he was addressed as “el presidente” by other Mexican prisoners.

One of the eight inscriptions on the exterior base of the San Jacinto Monument reads: “Measured by its results, San Jacinto was one of the decisive battles of the world. The freedom of Texas from Mexico won here led to annexation and to the Mexican War, resulting in the acquisition by the United States of the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah, and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Almost one-third of the present area of the American nation, nearly a million square miles of territory, changed sovereignty.”

Battle of San Jacinto

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A Prayer for Saturday April 21, 2018

Woe to those who enact unjust decrees
and draft oppressive legislation

Prayer

 Woe to those who enact unjust decrees
and draft oppressive legislation
to deprive the impoverished of justice
and rob my people’s poor of their rights,
looting widows and preying on orphans!

-Isaiah 10:1-2

scripture-Justice and Rights

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Of Cabbages and Kings

So, the question remains, based upon the facts that we know, (no matter that they are commonly covered over and ignored), are the Reconstruction amendments Constitutional?

The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
      To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
      Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
      And whether pigs have wings.’
no justification for coercion

During Reconstruction the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were added to the Constitution. The circumstances under which the Reconstruction amendments were proposed and ratified were extremely unusual, and at the time serious objections were raised to the legality of the proceedings. The amendments’ lawfulness remain a nagging problem.
There are two important lines of objection to these amendments’ adoption.

One is that some or all of the southern state governments that participated in ratifying them were not legally competent to do so because of the irregular fashion in which those governments had been created.

The other objection is that some or all of the southern ratifications were extorted from the states through unlawful federal threats.

Article V of the Constitution seeks to capture, in the bottle of legal form, the lightning of American popular sovereignty.
Behind that complexity is the goal of determining whether a proposed change in the basic law has the consent of the governed. Rules and their reasons can lose touch with one another, and Article V is no exception to this principle.

If the stakes are low such slippage can produce puzzles that are of little practical importance. The leading example is the Twenty-seventh Amendment, proposed by the First Congress in 1789 and ratified, in 1992. Article V mentions no time limit yet two hundred and four years seems a bit of a stretch since there is the absence of a contemporary consensus that would truly reflect popular consent.

Sometimes the stakes are higher, as they were in the 1860s. According to the official documents, Congress proposed and three-fourths of the state legislatures ratified three constitutional amendments of considerable importance. The Thirteenth Amendment purported to eliminate slavery, the Fourteenth was intended to protect the freed slaves’ civil rights and sought to punish the former rebels, and the Fifteenth forbade race discrimination with respect to males voting.

During the period of Reconstruction, the Article V process was never truly being followed. Much of the country was not represented in the Congress that proposed the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.

State governments in the South were being made, unmade, and remade through extraordinary and extralegal processes by the federal government creating doubts as to whether the resulting political organizations were truly empowered to speak for their states in ratification.

Many of the Southern State governments were given strong and possibly unlawful incentives to ratify.

The most blatant such threat was the statement in the first Military Reconstruction Act that the ten southern states then excluded from representation in Congress would be restored when they had met a series of conditions, including ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1872 both major parties accepted all three albeint at the point of a military bayonet.

The claim that some or all of the southern state legislatures that ratified the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments lacked the legal power to act for their states can be logically made as the legislators seated were not freely elected by the citizens’ of the former secessionist states.

Secondly,those ratifications, even assuming if made by valid state legislatures, were void because they were made under unlawful political pressure from the national government.

The Reconstruction amendments may be considered “legally effective” by common usage but with the discrepancies in following Article V they were, and are, unconstitutional.

The argument that the Reconstruction amendments are “legally effective” is formalistic and poor logically: it does not deny that during Reconstruction Article V was, at best, circumvented and failed to serve its purpose of balancing the federal and national principles.

Moreover, the amendment process included illegal acts by Congress.

Since a contract is a legally binding agreement, once you enter into a contract with another party, you and the other party are both expected to fulfill the terms of the contract. But it’s possible for an otherwise valid contract to be found unenforceable in the eyes of the law.

It’s expected that all parties to a contract have the ability freely agree to exactly what it is they are agreeing to. If it appears that one side did not have this capacity, (as in lawful ability to enter into the contract), the contract may be held unenforceable

Duress, or coercion, will invalidate a contract when someone was threatened into making the agreement. A common example of duress is blackmail.

If one party used excessive pressure against the other during the bargaining process, and that for whatever reason that other party was overly susceptible to the pressure tactics the resulting contract might be found unenforceable on grounds of undue influence.

Unconscionability means that a term in the contract or something inherent in or about the agreement was so shockingly unfair that the contract simply cannot be allowed to stand as;
-whether one side has grossly unequal bargaining power
-whether one side had difficulty understanding the terms of the agreement (due to language or literacy issues, for example), or
-whether the terms themselves were unfair

So, the question remains, based upon the facts that we know, (no matter that they are commonly covered over and ignored), are the Reconstruction amendments Constitutional?

I will simply let my readers decide for themselves but will remind you of a quote often attributed to British Statesman Winston Churchill; “History is written by the victors.”

The really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits ‘atrocities’ but that it attacks the concept of objective truth; it claims to control the past as well as the future.

political freedom-no coercion

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Tin Foil Hat? Maybe… maybe not.

This is the story of OKC as told to you by the same truth-tellers behind the Benghazi story and Brian Williams and the Comey-Lynch tarmac meeting, and if you have questions about any part of their story you are a paranoid, wingnut, birther-truther-tenther-prepper conspiracy loon who should feel guilty for having been born.

On the morning of April 19, 1995, a decorated Gulf War combat vet blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City using a truck bomb that he didn’t build in a Ryder truck that he didn’t rent with the help of a passenger who didn’t exist.

Having just gotten away with the largest act of terrorism on U.S. soil to date the Fort Bragg-trained Special Forces  “dropout” blended in with the crowd by making his getaway in a car without a license plate and was immediately pulled over.

The ATF was the supposed target of the attack, but luckily all of their agents were out of the office that morning.

Later that day the president boldly declared “we will find the people who did this” and “when we do, justice will be swift, certain and severe” except for John Doe #2, who, according to the FBI, never existed.

In McVeigh’s unprecedented three and a half week trial the prosecution didn’t show the CCTV footage of him (and John Doe #2) parking the Ryder truck, didn’t explain why 24 separate witnesses mass hallucinated the existence of John Doe #2, didn’t explain why the government was testing truck bombs and the army was storing Ryder trucks at Camp Gruber right before the bombing, and didn’t talk to the FBI informants who blew the whistle on the plot, but they did collaborate with the CIA and they did convict McVeigh as the lone wolf bomber and Terry Nichols as his bomb constructing accomplice.

The FBI claims to have lost the footage showing McVeigh (and John Doe #2) parking the truck in front of the Murrah Building that morning, but that’s understandable because the Bureau has a lot of important evidence to store.

Terry Nichols insists the FBI was involved in the plot but thankfully a judge saved us the trouble of listening to him by preventing lawyers from deposing him.

There was a bomb squad truck parked across the street 2 hours before the blast, but that just shows the authorities were prepared for anything.

And “someone called the executive secretary’s office at the Justice Department in Washington and said the Murrah building had been bombed…but this was 24 minutes before the blast.” But that just shows the public was unusually vigilant that morning.

This is the story of OKC as told to you by the same truth-tellers behind the Benghazi story and Brian Williams and the Comey-Lynch tarmac meeting, and if you have questions about any part of their story you are a paranoid, wingnut, birther-truther-tenther-prepper conspiracy loon who should feel guilty for having been born.

If you love baseball, fluffy kittens, hot dogs, Barbie, Star Wars and freedom, you will never ever bring up any of these points ever again. Ever.

Just remember: “Then the face of Big Brother faded away again and instead the three slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals:  

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”
George Orwell

War is peace-freedom is slavery-ignorance is strength

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(c) 2018

COMING SOON: (publish date May 2018)

The Shot Heard ‘Round The World

Suddenly, a bullet buzzed through the morning air.

Britain’s General Gage had a secret plan.

During the early hours of April 19, 1775, he would send out regiments of British soldiers quartered in Boston. Their destinations were Lexington, where they would capture Colonial leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock, then Concord, where they would seize gunpowder.

But spies and friends of the Americans leaked word of Gage’s plan to the “Sons of Liberty”.

Two lanterns hanging from Boston’s North Church informed the countryside that the British were going to attack by sea. A series of horseback riders — men such as Paul Revere, William Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott — galloped off to warn the countryside that the Red Coats (British troops) were coming.

Word spread from town to town, and militias prepared to confront the British and help their neighbors in Lexington and Concord.

These Colonial militias had originally been organized to defend settlers from civil unrest and attacks by French or Native Americans. Selected members of the militia were called minutemen because they could be ready to fight in a minute’s time.

When the advance guard of nearly 240 British soldiers arrived in Lexington, they found about 70 minutemen formed on the Lexington Green awaiting them. Both sides eyed each other warily, not knowing what to expect. Suddenly, a bullet buzzed through the morning air.

It was “the shot heard round the world.”

Lexington and Concord

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The “Lost” Amendment

Moreover, after studying the Amendment’s language and historical context, they realized the principle intent of this “missing” 13th Amendment was to prohibit lawyers from serving in government.

This is a long read, but worth the effort.

Lawyer-Briefcase

In the winter of 1983, archival research expert David Dodge, and former Baltimore police investigator Tom Dunn, were searching for evidence of government corruption in public records stored in the Belfast Library on the coast of Maine.

By chance, they discovered the library’s oldest authentic copy of the Constitution of the United States (printed in 1825). Both men were stunned to see this document included a 13th Amendment that no longer appears on current copies of the Constitution.

Moreover, after studying the Amendment’s language and historical context, they realized the principle intent of this “missing” 13th Amendment was to prohibit lawyers from serving in government.

Additional copies of the Constitution with the “missing” 13th Amendment printed in at least eighteen separate publications by ten different states and territories over four decades from 1822 to 1860 have been uncovered.

Evidence has been uncovered that this missing 13th Amendment had indeed been lawfully ratified by the state of Virginia and was therefore an authentic Amendment to the American Constitution. If the evidence is correct and no logical errors have been made, a 13th Amendment restricting lawyers from serving in government was ratified in 1819 and removed from the U.S. Constitution during the tumult of the Civil War. Since the Amendment was never lawfully repealed, it is still the Law today. The implications are enormous.

The “missing” 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows:
“If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive, or retain any title of nobility or honour, or shall without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office, or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince, or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them.”

At the first reading, the meaning of this 13th Amendment (also called the “title of nobility” Amendment) seems obscure; unimportant. The references to “nobility,” “honour,” “emperor,” “king,” and “prince,” lead us to dismiss this Amendment as a petty post-revolution act of spite directed against the British monarchy. The U.S. modern world of Prince Charles, make anti-royalist sentiments seem so archaic and quaint, that the Amendment can be ignored.

Not so. Consider some evidence of its historical significance: First, “titles of nobility” were prohibited in both Article VI of the Articles of Confederation (1777) and in Article I, Sections 9 and 10 of the Constitution of the United States (1787);

Second, although already prohibited by the Constitution, an additional “title of nobility” amendment was proposed in 1789, again in 1810, and finally ratified in 1819. Clearly, the founding fathers saw such a serious threat in “titles of nobility” and “honors” that anyone receiving them would forfeit their citizenship. Since the government prohibited “titles of nobility” several times over four decades, and went through the amending process (even though “titles of nobility” were already prohibited by the Constitution), it’s obvious that the Amendment carried much more significance for our founding fathers than is readily apparent today.

To understand the meaning of this “missing” 13th Amendment, we must understand its historical context — the era surrounding the American Revolution.

We tend to regard the notion of “a Republic” as benign, harmless, and politically unremarkable. But at the time of the American Revolution, King George III and the other monarchies of Europe saw Republics and sovereignty of the common people as an unnatural, ungodly ideological threat, every bit as dangerously radical as Communism was once regarded by modern Western nations.

Just as the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia spawned other revolutions around the world, the American Revolution provided an example and incentive for people all over the world to overthrow their European monarchies.

Even though the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War in 1783, the simple fact of our existence threatened the monarchies. The United States stood as a heroic role model for other nations, that inspired them to also struggle against oppressive monarchies. The French Revolution (1789-1799) and the Polish national uprising (1794) were in part encouraged by the American Revolution.

Though we stood like a beacon of hope for most of the world, the monarchies regarded the United States as a political typhoid Mary, the principle source of a Representative Republic that was destroying monarchies around the world. The monarchies must have realized that if the principle source of that infection could be destroyed, the rest of the world might avoid the contagion and the monarchies would be saved.

Their survival at stake, the monarchies sought to destroy or subvert the American system of government. Knowing they couldn’t destroy us militarily, they resorted to more covert methods of political subversion, employing spies and secret agents skilled in bribery and legal deception — it was, perhaps, the first “cold war”. Since governments run on money, politicians run for money, and money is the usual enticement to commit treason, much of the monarchy’s counter- revolutionary efforts emanated from English banks.

The essence of banking was once explained by Sir Josiah Stamp, a former president of the Bank of England: ”The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin… Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again… Take this great power away from them, or if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.”

The last great abuse of the U.S. banking system occurred in the early 1900’s and caused the depression of the 1930’s. Today’s abuses may cause another. Current monetary and bank scandals illustrate the on-going relationships between banks, lawyers, politicians, and government agencies.

The systematic robbery of productive individuals by parasitic bankers and lawyers is not a recent phenomenon. This abuse is a human tradition that predates the Bible and spread from Europe to America despite early colonial prohibitions.

When the first United States Bank was chartered by Congress in 1790, there were only three state banks in existence. At one time, banks were prohibited by law in most states because many of the early settlers were all too familiar with the practices of the European goldsmith banks.

Goldsmith banks were safe-houses used to store client’s gold. In exchange for the deposited gold, customers were issued notes (paper money) which were redeemable in gold. The goldsmith bankers quickly succumbed to the temptation to issue “extra” notes, (unbacked by gold).

Why? Because the “extra” notes enriched the bankers by allowing them to buy property with notes for gold that they did not own, gold that did not even exist. Colonists knew that bankers occasionally printed too much paper money, found themselves over-leveraged, and caused a “run on the bank”. If the bankers lacked sufficient gold to meet the demand, the paper money became worthless and common citizens left holding the paper were ruined. Although over-leveraged bankers were sometime hung, the bankers continued printing extra money to increase their fortunes at the expense of the productive members of society.

If the colonists forgot the lessons of goldsmith bankers, the American Revolution refreshed their memories. To finance the war, Congress authorized the printing of continental bills of credit in an amount not to exceed $200,000,000. The States issued another $200,000,000 in paper notes. Ultimately, the value of the paper money fell so low that they were soon traded on speculation from 5000 to 1000 paper bills for one coin.

A few examples of the attempts by the monarchies and banks that almost succeeded in destroying the United States:
-According to the Tennessee Laws (1715-1820, vol. II, p. 774), in the 1794 Jay Treaty, the United States agreed to pay 600,000 pounds sterling to King George III, as reparations for the American revolution.

The Senate ratified the treaty in secret session and ordered that it not be published. When Benjamin Franklin’s grandson published it anyway, the exposure and resulting public uproar so angered the Congress that it passed the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) so federal judges could prosecute editors and publishers for reporting the truth about the government.

Since we had won the Revolutionary War, why would U.S. Senators agree to pay reparations to the loser? And why would they agree to pay 600,000 pounds sterling, eleven years after the war ended? It doesn’t make sense, especially in light of Senate’s secrecy and later fury over being exposed, unless we assume U.S. Senators had been bribed to serve the British monarchy and betray the American people. That’s subversion.

-The United States Bank had been opposed by the Jeffersonians from the beginning, but the Federalists (the pro-monarchy party) won out in its establishment. The initial capitalization was $10,000,000 — 80% of which would be owned by foreign bankers. Since the bank was authorized to lend up to $20,000,000 (double its paid in capital), it was a profitable deal for both the government and the bankers since they could lend, and collect interest on, $10,000,000 that didn’t exist.

However, the European bankers outfoxed the government and by 1796, the government owed the bank $6,200,000 and was forced to sell its shares. (By 1802, the U.S. government owned no stock in the United States Bank.) The sheer power of the banks and their ability to influence representative government by economic manipulation and outright bribery was exposed in 1811, when the people discovered that European banking interests owned 80% of the bank. Congress therefore refused to renew the bank’s charter. This led to the withdrawal of $7,000,000 in specie by European investors, which in turn, precipitated an economic recession, and the War of 1812. That’s destruction.

A book called “2 VA LAW” resides in the Library of Congress Law Library. This is an un-catalogued book in the rare book section that reveals a plan to overthrow the constitutional government by secret agreements engineered by the lawyers.

That is one of the reasons why this Amendment was ratified by Virginia and the notification was lost in the mail. There is no public record that this book exists. That may sound surprising, but according to The Gazette (5/10/91), “the Library of Congress has 349,402 un-catalogued rare books and 13.9 million un-catalogued rare manuscripts.” There may be secrets buried in that mass of documents even more astonishing than a missing Constitutional Amendment.

In seeking to destroy the United States, (and incidentally rule the world), bankers committed many crimes. Foremost among these crimes were fraud, conversion, and plain old theft. To escape prosecution for their crimes, the bankers did the same thing any career criminal does. They hired and formed alliances with the best lawyers and judges money could buy. These alliances, originally forged in Europe (particularly in Great Britain), spread to the colonies, and later into the newly formed United States of America.

Despite their criminal foundation, these alliances generated wealth, and ultimately, respectability. Like any modern member of organized crime, English bankers and lawyers wanted to be admired as “legitimate businessmen”. As their criminal fortunes grew so did their usefulness, so the British monarchy legitimized these thieves by granting them “titles of nobility”.

Historically, the British peerage system referred to knights as “Squires” and to those who bore the knight’s shields as “Esquires”. As lances, shields, and physical violence gave way to the more civilized means of theft, the pen grew mightier (and more profitable) than the sword, and the clever wielders of those pens (bankers and lawyers) came to hold titles of nobility. The most common title was “Esquire” (used, even today, by some lawyers).

In Colonial America, attorneys trained attorneys but most held no “title of nobility” or “honor”. There was no requirement that one be a lawyer to hold the position of district attorney, attorney general, or judge; a citizen’s “counsel of choice” was not restricted to a lawyer; there were no state or national bar associations.

The only organization that certified lawyers was the International Bar Association (IBA), chartered by the King of England, headquartered in London, and closely associated with the international banking system. Lawyers admitted to the IBA received the rank “Esquire” — a “title of nobility”. “Esquire” was the principle title of nobility which the 13th Amendment sought to prohibit from the United States.

Why? Because the loyalty of “Esquire” lawyers was suspect. Bankers and lawyers with an “Esquire” behind their names were agents of the monarchy, members of an organization whose principle purposes were political, not economic, and regarded with the same wariness that some people today reserve for members of the KGB or the CIA.

Article 1, Sect. 9 of the Constitution sought to prohibit the International Bar Association (or any other agency that granted titles of nobility) from operating in America. But the Constitution neglected to specify a penalty, so the prohibition was ignored, and agents of the monarchy continued to infiltrate and influence the government (as in the Jay Treaty and the US Bank charter incidents).

Therefore, a “title of nobility” amendment that specified a penalty (loss of citizenship) was proposed in 1789, and again in 1810. The meaning of the amendment is seen in its intent to prohibit persons having titles of nobility and loyalties to foreign governments and bankers from voting, holding public office, or using their skills to subvert the government.

The missing Amendment is referred to as the “title of nobility” Amendment, but the second prohibition against “honour” (honor), may be more significant.

According to Webster’s Dictionary, the archaic definition of “honor” (as used when the 13th Amendment was ratified) meant anyone “obtaining or having an advantage or privilege over another”. A contemporary example of an “honor” granted to only a few Americans is the privilege of being a judge: Lawyers can be judges and exercise the attendant privileges and powers; non-lawyers cannot.

By prohibiting “honors”, the missing Amendment prohibits any advantage or privilege that would grant some citizens an unequal opportunity to achieve or exercise political power. Therefore, the second meaning (intent) of the 13th Amendment was to ensure political equality among all American citizens, by prohibiting anyone, even government officials, from claiming or exercising a special privilege or power (an “honor”) over other citizens.

If this interpretation is correct, “honor” would be the key concept in the 13th Amendment.

Why?

Because, while “titles of nobility” may no longer apply in today’s political system, the concept of “honor” remains relevant. For example, anyone who had a specific “immunity” from lawsuits which were not afforded to all citizens, would be enjoying a separate privilege, an “honor”, and would therefore forfeit his right to vote or hold public office. Think of the “immunities” from lawsuits that U.S. judges, lawyers, politicians, and bureaucrats currently enjoy. As another example, think of all the “special interest” legislation the U.S. government passes: “special interests” are simply euphemisms for “special privileges” (honors).

If the missing 13th Amendment were restored, “special interests” and “immunities” might be rendered unconstitutional.

The prohibition against “honors” (privileges) would compel the entire government to operate under the same laws as the citizens of this nation.

Without their current personal immunities (honors), US judges and I.R.S. agents would be unable to abuse common citizens without fear of legal liability. If this 13th Amendment were restored, the entire U.S. Government would have to conduct itself according to the same standards of decency, respect, law, and liability as the rest of the nation.

If this Amendment and the term “honor” were applied today, U.S. Government’s ability to systematically coerce and abuse the public would be all but eliminated.

Imagine! A government without special privileges or immunities. How could we describe it? It would be … almost like … a government … of the people … by the people … for the people!

Imagine: a government … whose members were truly accountable to the public; a government that could not systematically exploit its own people! It’s unheard of … it’s never been done before. Not ever in the entire history of the world.

no lawyers-Thomas More

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(c) 2018

 

Amendment XV-Suffrage (Race)

“The ultimate objective of this strategy—to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income—will be questioned by some. Because the ideal of individual social and economic mobility has deep roots, even activists seem reluctant to call for national programs to eliminate poverty by the outright redistribution of income.”

Anyone can see the so-far successful implementation of this strategy through the vehicle of illegal immigration and “anchor babies” through “maternity tourism”. The question then becomes; “What can we do to combat this?”

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude —

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
–Amendment XV

Amendment XV-Right To Vote

Passed by Congress on March 3, 1869, and ratified in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was the last of the three Reconstruction Amendments. Though the language of the Fifteenth Amendment prohibits all race-based discrimination in qualifications for voting, the Framers were primarily concerned with the enfranchisement of African-Americans. As early as 1866, many of the Republicans were convinced of the need for a constitutional amendment that would require the states to allow African-Americans to vote. Indeed, at one point the Joint Committee on Reconstruction voted to report a version of the Fourteenth Amendment that explicitly embraced the principle of race-blind suffrage. However, many Northerners continued to oppose black suffrage in principle, and fears of a political backlash led the committee to abandon the issue before the proposed amendment came to the floor.

Congress had forced black suffrage on the ex-Confederate states by statute, and Republicans faced the charge that they were hypocritical in not imposing the same requirement on Northern states. Some also believed that if blacks were enfranchised in the states that had remained in the Union, they would provide critical support for Republican candidates in those states.

Republicans were, nevertheless, deeply divided over the question of what precise language should be adopted. A number of prominent Republicans complained that this narrow language would allow states intentionally to disfranchise most African-Americans by adopting qualifications that, although neutral on their face, would in practice be impossible for most freed slaves to satisfy. Responding to these and other concerns, the Senate proposed to eliminate not only discrimination on the basis of race, color, and previous condition of servitude but also discrimination on the basis of nativity, property, education, or creed in both the right to vote and the right to hold elective office.

In the complex parliamentary horse trading that followed, the Senate did not vote to enter into conference; instead, the entire drafting process began again in both houses. The House then produced a draft that tracked the original Senate version, except that it deleted the reference to discrimination on the basis of education.

The Senate, by contrast, now passed a simple prohibition on racial discrimination with respect to the rights to vote and hold office. A conference committee was convened, and it produced the current language of the Fifteenth Amendment, which embraced only the prohibition on racial discrimination in voting, omitting any reference to the right to hold office.

Because of the difficulty of agreeing to the precise language, the framers adopted a simple prohibition on discrimination on the basis of race, color, and previous condition of servitude even though there was a risk that a court could interpret the language narrowly and thereby allow deliberate evasion by facially neutral statutes. At first, the Supreme Court did exactly that and refused to inquire into the motives of those who adopted facially neutral statutes, such as literacy tests.

The Court has invoked both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to invalidate facially neutral restrictions on voting rights where the legislative history reveals an intention to exclude or hinder African-Americans. Rogers v. Lodge (1982), Hunter v. Underwood (1985). The Court also invoked the amendments in cases where there was evident racial gerrymandering designed to disenfranchise blacks. Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960). On the other hand, the Court has held that race may be considered in the redistricting process only so long as racial considerations do not predominate, and there is no effort to dilute the voting strength of minorities. Bush v. Vera (1996).

Similarly, the Court adopted variable views on the sweep of allowable congressional authority under the enforcement clause. One critical issue was whether the amendment armed Congress with the power to regulate purely private action. Many of the congressional Republicans, who were responsible for passing the Fifteenth Amendment, apparently believed they had such authority: a section in a statute passed in 1870 made private, racially motivated interference with voting a federal crime. Nonetheless, although Ex parte Yarbrough (1884) suggested that this statute was constitutional, in 1903 the Supreme Court reversed course and held that the Fifteenth Amendment did not allow Congress to regulate purely private activity. James v. Bowman (1903). This basic principle was maintained until at least 1941, United States v. Classic, although the Court preferred to take the route of expansively defining nongovernmental activity as state action for purposes of the Fifteenth Amendment, applied particularly to the institution of the white primary. Smith v. Allwright (1944), Terry v. Adams (1953).

Recent decisions have upheld the constitutionality of sweeping remedial measures adopted to combat government-imposed racial discrimination. For example, when Congress had evidence of widespread racial discrimination in state elections, the Court allowed Congress to place the entire state and local electoral apparatus under federal supervision and to forbid the adoption of measures that had even the effect of diluting the voting power of racial minorities. Thornburg v. Gingles (1986). The Court, asserting that enforcement power had the same breadth as a necessary and proper clause, has also upheld the power of Congress to forbid literacy tests. South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966).

As usual, where politicians are involved, in an attempt to remedy one perceived problem, the solution has created many more. And, in the process, the American taxpayer has been bitten in the ass by the law of unintended consequences.

The social reality is that pregnant women are traveling to the United States by the thousands using travel visas with the hope of giving birth in the country, which would make their child an American citizen under the Citizenship Clause of the United States Constitution.

This practice of birth tourism, common among Chinese,Taiwanese, and Turkish nationals, has continued to grow in recent years. While undocumented immigration into the United States across the Mexican border remains the main topic in U.S. immigration debates, birth tourism represents a new topic that many in the United States are ill -prepared to tackle. Birth tourists to the United States mainly come
from Pacific Rim countries like Taiwan and China. Some private companies even transport, house, and provide the necessary arrangements for birth tourists to enter the United States and remain until they are able to give birth.

For example, throughout the latter part of 2012 and early 2013, individuals in Chino Hills, California made national news for protests of apartment buildings alleged to be “maternity hotels.” In The Washington Post, longtime birth tourist business-owner Robert Zhou reminded Americans that his company does not “encourage moms to
break the law —just to take advantage of it.”

Following the abolition of slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, sought to grant all Americans born within the United States standing to file suit, partly in an effort to avoid outcomes similar to that of the notorious case of Dred Scott v. Sandford.

In an effort to address the “loophole” created by the Citizenship Clause, many states have implemented policies to prevent “anchor babies”—children born to undocumented parents in the country and used as an “anchor” into U.S. citizenship for the parents—but federal law, the ultimate authority on regulating immigration, is largely silent on birth tourism. This makes law enforcement problematic, since technically these “tourists” enter the country legally. However, birth tourism seems to strike many as unethical because it allows foreign citizens to take advantage of a “loophole” to gain U.S. citizenship for their children.

Jon Feere,  testified before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security; “between 350,000 and 400,000 children are born annually to an illegal-alien mother residing in the United States — as many as one in ten births nationwide. As of 2010, four out of five children of illegal aliens residing in the U.S. were born here — some 4 million kids”.

Reporting that finding, the Pew Research Center noted that, while illegal immigrants make up about 4 percent of the adult population, “because they have high birthrates, their children make up a much larger share of both the newborn population (8 percent) and the child population (7 percent) in this country.”

The cost of this is not negligible. Inflation-adjusted figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture projected that a child born in 2013 would cost his parents $304,480 from birth to his eighteenth birthday.

Given that illegal-alien households are normally low-income households (three out of five illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children live at or near the poverty line), one would expect that a significant portion of that cost will fall on the government. And that’s exactly what‘s happening.

71 percent of illegal-alien headed households with children received some sort of welfare in 2009, compared with 39 percent of native-headed houses with children. Illegal immigrants generally access welfare programs through their U.S.-born children, to whom government assistance is guaranteed. Additionally, U.S.-born children of illegal aliens are entitled to American public schools, health care, and more, even though illegal-alien households rarely pay taxes.

The short-term cost of “anchor babies” was revealed a decade ago in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. “‘Anchor babies’ born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income.

While perhaps humane, measures such as the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires hospital emergency departments to treat all patients with an “emergency” (an infinitely malleable term), regardless of documentation or ability to pay, have facilitated the abuse of American health care by illegal aliens.

There are long-term costs, too. U.S.-born children of illegal aliens can sponsor the immigration of family members once they come of age. At 18, an “anchor baby” can sponsor an overseas spouse and unmarried children of his own; at 21, he can sponsor parents and siblings. There may be a long waiting period before that legal benefit is of use. But it’s a fact that illegal aliens with American-born children are much less likely to be deported, and that policy has been effectively enshrined in law.

In 1966 American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven formulated “The Cloward-Piven strategy” which was a blueprint for making massive disruptions in the welfare system of the United States

Cloward and Piven had determined that many people in the U.S. were eligible for welfare, but were not receiving it. They believed that if all these people were to apply for welfare all at once, the local welfare offices would be overwhelmed and the states would be threatened with bankruptcy.

In advocating such disruptions, Cloward and Piven were making a deliberate attempt to incite racial, ethnic, and class tensions, setting whites against racial minorities and middle class liberals against working class immigrant groups.

They further wrote: “The ultimate objective of this strategy—to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income—will be questioned by some. Because the ideal of individual social and economic mobility has deep roots, even activists seem reluctant to call for national programs to eliminate poverty by the outright redistribution of income.”

Anyone can see the so-far successful implementation of this strategy through the vehicle of illegal immigration and “anchor babies” through “maternity tourism”. The question then becomes; “What can we do to combat this?”

Stopping illegal immigration at the border, and instituting an actually effective visa-tracking system to crack down on overstays, would do much to discourage efforts to take advantage of American largesse, (while there is still American largesse to take advantage of).

15th amendment-illegal immigrants

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Amendment XIV- Section 1 Citizenship & Section 3 Disqualification for rebellion

Obviously, to the more attentive reader, it is clear that the 14th Amendment was ratified by the Southern States under intense duress by the Northern States. In effect, the 14th Amendment was ratified by political thuggery and at the point of a gun, which is not unheard-of in politics ….. or war.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
Amendment XIV, Section 1

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Amendment XIV, Section 3

14th-Capitualation under duress

Before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, citizens of the states were automatically considered citizens of the United States. In 1857, the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision had held that no black of African descent (even a freed black) could be a citizen of the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment was thus necessary to overturn Dred Scott and to settle the question of the citizenship of the newly freed slaves. The Fourteenth Amendment made United States citizenship primary and state citizenship derivative.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 had previously asserted that “All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.” The immediate impetus for the Fourteenth Amendment was to constitutionalize and validate the Civil Rights Act because some had questioned whether the Thirteenth Amendment was a sufficient basis for its constitutionality. A constitutional amendment would also have the advantage of preventing a later unfriendly Congress from repealing it.

One conspicuous departure from the language of the Civil Rights Act was the elimination of the phrase “Indians not taxed.” Senator Jacob Howard of Ohio, the author of the Citizenship Clause, defended the new language against the charge that it would make Indians citizens of the United States.

Most revealing, however, was Senator Howard’s contention that “every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States.” Almost everyone certainly would have understood “natural law” to refer to the social compact basis of citizenship, the basis for citizenship articulated in the Declaration of Independence.

The argument of the Declaration grounded citizenship in consent. The natural law argument of the Declaration was a repudiation of the notion of birthright citizenship that had been the basis of British citizenship.

The disqualification of former rebels for federal and state office was the most controversial of the sections of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was blatantly vindictive and intruded on the President’s pardon power. It certainly made the ratification of new state constitutions in the South less likely—and this was a deliberate stratagem to keep the Southern states out of the Union until after the 1868 election. An original draft of the section would have disqualified all who had voluntarily aided the Confederacy until 1870, but the Senate adopted Senator Jacob Howard’s more permanent version.

Congress lifted the disqualification of many individuals, and in 1872 it did so for all but Members of the Thirty-seventh (1861–1863) and Thirty-eighth Congresses (1863–1865), federal judicial and military officers, heads of departments, and foreign ministers. In 1898, Congress removed all disqualifications for previous disloyal conduct. Despite being written in a particular historical context, the clause is still in operation and would apply in the case of future insurrections or rebellion.

The animosity between the inhabitants of the north and south did not soften after the civil war ended. The battlefield went silent, but not in the hearts and minds of the now disarmed combatants. Yes, amnesty was granted to both sides and the 11 Southern states assumed their lawful position in the now supposedly un-dissolvable United States. But there was a catch.

Despite the fact that the southern states had been functioning peacefully for two years and had been counted to secure ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act, which provided for the military occupation of 10 of the 11 southern states.  It excluded Tennessee from military occupation, and one must suspect it was because Tennessee had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment on July 7, 1866.  The Act further disfranchised practically all white voters and provided that no senator or congressman from the occupied states could be seated in Congress until a new constitution was adopted by each state which would be approved by Congress, and further provided that each of the 10 states must ratify the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment must become a part of the Constitution of the United States before the military occupancy would cease and the states be allowed seats in Congress.”

“By the time the Reconstruction Act had been declared to be the law, three more states had ratified the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, and two – Louisiana and Delaware – had rejected it.  Then Maryland withdrew its prior ratification and rejected the proposed Fourteenth Amendment. Ohio followed suit and withdrew its prior ratification, as also did New Jersey. California, which earlier had voted not to pass upon the proposal, now voted to reject the amendment. Thus 16 of the 37 states had rejected the proposed amendment.””By spurious, non representative governments, seven of the southern states, which had theretofore rejected the proposed amendment under the duress of military occupation and of being denied representation in Congress, did attempt to ratify the proposed Fourteenth Amendment.

Obviously, to the more attentive reader, it is clear that the 14th Amendment was ratified by the Southern States under intense duress by the Northern States. In effect, the 14th Amendment was ratified by political thuggery and at the point of a gun, which is not unheard-of in politics ….. or war.

In contract law, any contract signed under duress, especially under the threat of force or violence, can be declared null and void. So the question is, is a treaty, constitutional amendment, or a contract, entered into under the threat of force or violence, enforceable?

The 14th Amendment led to “anchor babies” which created a giant magnet for illegal aliens to invade the United States, due to an unconscionable perversion of the Amendment by the U. S. Supreme Court. The invasion and the cost of that invasion, continues to grow and magnify, especially with sanctuary jurisdictions defying federal immigration laws and adding to the magnets. Each producing American is paying for that invasion in the billions of dollars. But the 14th Amendment also seriously diluted state’s rights under the Constitution.

Sadly, the American people go on about their daily lives oblivious to the fact that they are quite likely being governed by laws and constitutional amendments that were passed in violation of that constitution.

anchor baby

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Amendment XIII-Abolition of slavery

Although the military conflict had ended, Reconstruction was in many ways still a war. This important struggle was waged by radical northerners who wanted to punish the South and Southerners who desperately wanted to preserve their way of life.

Under federal bayonets, blacks, including those who had recently been freed, received the right to vote, hold political offices, and become judges and police chiefs.

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Amendment XIII

Reconstruction Acts

In order to understand the background of the 13th,; 14th. & 15th. amendments to the Constitution, you must first understand the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 which were the precursor of them.

The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 began the period of time known as Radical Reconstruction. These laws included the following measures:

  • The South was divided into five military districts and governed by military governors until acceptable state constitutions could be written and approved by Congress.
  • All males, regardless of race, but excluding former Confederate leaders, were permitted to participate in the constitutional conventions that formed the new governments in each state.
  • New state constitutions were required to provide for universal manhood suffrage (voting rights for all men) without regard to race.
  • States were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment in order to be readmitted to the Union.

“Whereas no legal State governments or adequate protection for life or property now exists in the rebel States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida. Texas and Arkansas; and whereas it is necessary that peace and good order should be enforced in said States until loyal and republican State governments can be legally established: Therefore,
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That said rebel States shall be divided into military districts and made subject to the military authority of the United States as hereinafter prescribed, and for that purpose Virginia shall constitute the first district; North Carolina and South Carolina the second district; Georgia, Alabama and Florida the third district; Mississippi and Arkansas the fourth district; and Louisiana and Texas the fifth district.”

Although the military conflict had ended, Reconstruction was in many ways still a war. This important struggle was waged by radical northerners who wanted to punish the South and Southerners who desperately wanted to preserve their way of life.

Under federal bayonets, blacks, including those who had recently been freed, received the right to vote, hold political offices, and become judges and police chiefs. They held positions that formerly belonged to Southern Democrats.

President Johnson vetoed all the Radical initiatives, but Congress overrode him each time. It was the Radical Republicans who impeached President Johnson in 1868. The Senate, by a single vote, failed to convict him, but his power to hinder radical reform was diminished.

This was the atmosphere under which Amendment XIII was passed.

Military Reconstruction map

It could be argued that rather than preserve the union by re assimilating the break-away Southern States a literal “Shotgun marriage” was affected at the point of a bayonet. The former Confederate States were not treated as formerly estranged brothers reintegrated into the family circle but as a conquered adversary to be ground into submission.

It cannot be ignored that, in war, “to the victor goes the spoils.” The animosity between the inhabitants of the north and south did not soften after the civil war ended. In fact, they still simmer to this day, especially with the current push to remove Southern civil war icons, statues and monuments.

Confederate Statues New Orleans

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