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Blog postImpeachment based on Mueller Report? Mueller was not authorized to present a bill of indictment based on reported findings of fact in his report. However, we can create a bill of indictment or impeachment based on those findings.
The “fact” elements in the Report are stated in biased language, which is normal for prosecutors seeking grand jury indictment. But if restated without the spin, do they describe obstruction of justice or any constitutional federal crime? No they do not.
Fir11 months ago Read more -
Blog postA jubilee event is a general cancellation or repudiation, either of all debt, or of all national debt. The current accounts national debt in the US. is about $25 Trillion. The unfunded obligations debt exceeds that by an order of ten or more.
A jubilee is based on the ancient Jewish law (halakah) of shmita, according to which personal debt is to be collected or cancelled every seven years, the land left fallow for a year, and slaves freed. The "jubilee is a more severe ver1 year ago Read more -
Blog postWhat follows is speculative and philosophic, not firm empirical science. It is presented with the prospect that it might lead to empirical science.
Akashik is a word from ancient Vedic, the language of the people, sometimes called Aryans, who moved in from Iran and countries north of it about 1000 BC into what is now India, bringing the Sanskrit language and the moral literature, such as the Mahabharata and the Upanishads, that became the basis for the Hindu religion. (Another migra1 year ago Read more -
Blog postI recommend the following planks in the platform of any 2020 presidential candidate:Strict construction of the Constitution, more strict than is likely from any of the Trump-nominated judgesDisclosure — Anyone who does not understand what this means is not likely to benefit from an explanation. It is critical to solving the problem of the "shadow government".Monetary Reform Act. To be proposed to Congress. Necessary to avoid economic collapse.1 year ago Read more
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Blog postJustice Clarence Thomas has called for "revisiting" New York Times v. Sullivan, which "incorporated" the First Amendment to the states, through the 14th Amendment, because by its language it applies only to Congress: "Congress shall make no law ..." Other rights amendments are not thus limited.
As written, the First Amendment was indeed restricted to Congress: “Congress shall make no law …” That led some judges to leap to the wrong conclusion tha1 year ago Read more -
Blog postThe U.S. Constitution states:[Congress shall] provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; Art I Sec. 8.
Section. 2. The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;This last clause is key. The President has authority to call up the militia, and call-ups of militia are for1 year ago Read more -
Blog postReport on Calendar Reform
We hereby submit this report to the nations and churches of the world. Our findings are as follows:
Months
The actual length of a month is 28 days. That means there are approximately 13 months in a year. 28 x 13 = 364, or one day short of a year. The ancient custom of only counting 12 months in a year needs to be abandoned.
We propose the following names for the months, taken from Attic Greek, with abbreviations:Hekatombaion - Ἑκατομβαιών - Hek (1 year ago Read more -
Blog postI tend to be averse to using executive orders to get around lack of legislation or amendment, but here are a few that might improve things. It is a work in progress, so check back often.Nomenclature. Those who administer investigations and prosecutors shall be termed "procurators". The term "prosecutor" shall be reserved to those who actually prosecute cases in court.Access to grand jury. No person shall be barred or impeded from taking a complaint to a grand jury. Delivery o1 year ago Read more
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Blog postSolar proton flares appear to be fairly rare. The last ones to cause severe injury to life on Earth seem to have occurred 12,900 tears ago, producing what some call the Rancholabrean (or Labrean for short, for the La Brea tar pits) extinction, that wiped out most megafauna, such as mastodons, mammoths, and giant ground sloths (megatherium) from North America, Northern Europe, and northern Asia. It was not a complete, worldwide, extinction event. It is discussed in a companion article, Earth Cha1 year ago Read more
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Blog postWhere aren’t they?
Enrico Fermi once conducted a thought experiment (gedankenexperiment) in which he found that even with only sublight travel technology, it should be possible for the first starfaring civilization able to build more starships at each stop to occupy every habitable niche in the galaxy in only a million years, which is a blink in galactic time. His question is, if this has happened, why aren’t we being visited every day by many of them? The obvious answer is that perhaps w1 year ago Read more -
Blog postThe phrase "earth changes" is often used to refer to some kind of disastrous event that will adversely affect much if not most life on Earth, including human life. There is thought about preparing ourselves for it, but the phrase is vague about what it could be.
CMEs, SPEs
Among the kinds of CMEs that can severely threaten much of the life on Earth are the coronal proton ejections (CPE) or Solar Proton Events (SPEs) that have occurred several times1 year ago Read more -
Blog postWritten constitutions better
For forms of government let fools contest. That which is best administered is best.~ Alexander Pope
That seems to be the guiding constitutional doctrine in the few countries without written constitutions, most prominently the United Kingdom. Those who have viewed the British comedy series, Yes Minister, and Yes Prime Minister, should have gotten some insight into some of the problems with a government of a few elected officials, dominated by a profes2 years ago Read more -
Blog postAre disparate outcomes always the result of discrimination against protected groups? Many on the left claim claim that, but are they factually correct? They seem to want to deny all evidence that discrimination is not a significant cause, and to attack anyone trying to present such evidence of differences in merit as "racist", "sexist", "homophobic", or "xenophobic" to shame them into withdrawing their evidence. But do such attacks have any merit themselve2 years ago Read more
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Blog postThe four current contenders for the U.S. Supreme Court, including the nominee, Brett Cavanaugh, do present some constitution issues.
Unenumerated rights
The first issue is presented by the statement by nominee Brett Cavanaugh in his acceptance speech, that he would not find rights not explicitly recognized in the main Constitution.. This has been an issue since the nomination of Robert Bork, who considered the Ninth Amendment, which calls for the nondisparagement2 years ago Read more -
Blog postThe word “collusion” is much in use today, not because it is a crime (it is not), but because it sounds sinister. It has generally been used in attempts to investigate whether Trump colluded with Russia in a way that would be grounds for inpeachment and removal of Trump from office. That would not put Hillary Clinton in that office. It would put Mike Pence there, and Trump would undoubtedly continue to rule by telling Pence what to do, in much the way the Communist Party ruled the S2 years ago Read more
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Blog postArticle II §2 of the Constitution states that the President "shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." It also states in §3 "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." This defines his power with respect to law. He may not make, suspend, or repeal laws, but only execute them. He is not a monarch, and it is a source of confusion to take a term out of British monar3 years ago Read more
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Blog postMuch is being made about Russian "interference" in the 2016 presidential election, and about possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to interfere to win the election for Trump. However, the suspicions are lacking in evidence.
However, we do have a classified report from the Director of National Intelligence, the declassified version of which is linked below. It Seems to have at least tacit support from other agencies, and it can be expected to be the basis3 years ago Read more -
Blog postI shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [hard-core pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
Concurring, Potter Stewart, Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964).American jurisprudence has strayed in response to demands from some social justice advocates who perceive an undesirable situa3 years ago Read more -
Blog postNorman Mattoon Thomas (November 20, 1884 - December 19, 1968) was a leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America. He said this in a 1944 interview: The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of "liberalism," they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.... I no longer need to run as a Presidentia3 years ago Read more
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Blog postTo my 2000 article on the Intent of the 14th Amendment I make the following clarifying points:
1. The 14th Amendment did not confer U.S. citizenship on individuals born on U.S. soil, whose parents were not subject to the jurisdiction of a foreign power. That was already the established rule, inherited from English law, and U.S. citizenship arguably began on non-state territory with adoption of the Articles of Confederation (ratified 1781) and the adoption of the Northwest and Southw3 years ago Read more -
Blog postMany complain about judicial corruption and call for judicial accountability, but generally fail to propose effective processes for achieving it.
In an effort to make judges independent of political pressures, they are generally left with great discretion to be used justly or not. In some states they are elected, and come under they sway of the law firms that support them. They are generally under the loose supervision of an "administrative" judge, who has his own docket a3 years ago Read more -
Blog postIn 1970 I attended the First National Congress on Population and Environment, with mostly scientifically-trained people. I was impressed by how the scientists abandoned their scientific training when they went into policy analysis, and resorted to intuitive leaps that they then tried to justify with seemingly scientific reasoning. I was coming from a background in computer systems, so was skeptical of this kind of unsystematic thinking. So was Jay Forrester, of MIT, who wrote “The Counterintuiti3 years ago Read more
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Blog postHaving been asked for a quote of a prominent legal figure on prosecutorial corruption, especially the kind that results in wrongful convictions, it is difficult to find something pithy.
There is nothing new about prosecutorial corruption. It is as old as prosecutors. We can see it in the prosecution of John Lilburne, in the prosecution of Penn and Mead, and the subsequent prosecution of the jury foreman, Edward Bushell, for acquitting them. Those are the classic cases. Everyone knew3 years ago Read more -
Blog postCIA Director Mike Pompeo has announced that they have "found" a legal basis for arresting Julian Assange for his handling of classified information, and he seems to be supported in this position by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Both men are constitutionally illiterate, and should never have been appointed to those positions.
Some constitutional background on the Assange situation.
First, there are only two bases for charging someone under the Espionage Act.3 years ago Read more -
Blog postMany if not most of Chemerinsky’s complaints are valid, just misattributed. Judicial abuses are not a matter of conservative vs. progressive judges, as you point out, or of Art. III, which were corrected by thew 14th Amendment.The Eleventh Amendment, properly interpreted did not confer sovereign immunity on the states, and if it did the 14th overrode that. The Eleventh was about getting money judgments against states that could be collected by executing on assets of the judgment debtor’s choice,3 years ago Read more
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Blog postNew Amazon Kindle book by Jon Roland
Wayward World: A new kind of hero must set history on a different course to save Earth from destruction a thousand years in the future.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MPW3Y10
You don't need a Kindle device to read it. Almost any browser will do, with a plugin, or get the app.
This is a fundraising project for the Constitution Society. All the revenues go to it.
Still making some minor edits to it that should be live i4 years ago Read more -
Blog postThis post is about mental ability, not information about potential enemies.
Growing up, we all knew students, some of whom were "clever"or "bright" and others who were "slow" or "dim". We could arrange them on a scale, and their positions on the scale were probably still much the same as senors in high school. The ones at the lower end of the scale probably dropped out before getting to high school. We said the ones at the upper end of the sca4 years ago Read more -
Blog postMuch has been written about the incivility and unpresidential demeanor of Donald Trump, but not enough about whether he or anyone can deliver on any of his promises. Polls show that many of his supporters realize he can't deliver, but support him anyway, because he is saying what they want to say or hear said. That is irresponsible. You wouldn't responsibly engage a brain surgeon who promised complete success but had no knowledge of brain surgery. Executing the duties of president is vastly mor4 years ago Read more
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Blog postA candidate for the presidency has promised that if he is elected, he will ban Muslims from entering the United States (until "we can figure it out") , a proposal that has been denounced as racist, improperly discriminatory, or impractical. But it addresses a real problem of infiltration of Muslim "terrorists", many of which are already on U.S. soil. Is there a way to exclude the dangerous ones?
Excluding U.S. citizens is in conflict with the right of denizenship4 years ago Read more -
Blog postThough it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the5 years ago Read more
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Blog postThe defining issue for the Tea Party has been and must remain excessive government taxing, borrowing, and spending. Excessive immigration is largely the result of other countries failing to manage their own taxing, borrowing, and spending, and consuming on credit more than they can produce enough to pay for. We need to take advantage of Greece as a warning of what will happen here if we fail to manage our finances (although we may already be beyond the point at which we can).
Greece5 years ago Read more -
Blog postMuch has been written about the causes of crime, and why crime rates are higher in some countries than in others.
Individual or collective responsibility?It's not about "income inequality", "poverty", or "diversity" of race or nationality, but of class and culture. It has been studied as the "culture of poverty", but technical poverty is not the key factor. It is more like the "culture of depravity", and yes, some are depraved becaus5 years ago Read more -
Blog postThe founding principles of the Tea Party Movement have been to restrain government taxing, spending, and borrowing, first within constitutional bounds, and next, within what is sustainable over the span of generations, and that avoids economic collapse and the tragedies that accompany such collapse. That means not spending more than we produce, or borrowing more than we can pay back or that will impair our productivity. It also means eliminating the fiat currency that makes unsound fiscal and mo5 years ago Read more
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Blog postMost people who imagine the rise of superintelligent machines think in terms of something like a single compact object with superintelligence, or perhaps a single master control unit that directs other machines, but that is not how it is most likely to emerge.
The machine exists today. It is the semicomputerized global economy. For the moment, most of its components are human beings, but they are progressively being replaced by machines, and eventually we can expect they all will be5 years ago Read more -
Blog postSeveral states have proposed amendments to their state constitutions that would redefine the commencement of personhood to some point earlier than exit from the birth canal or extraction through a caesarian section, but some legislation has also included provisions to have courts appoint guardians ad litem to represent the unborn and protect their interests, especially in being born.
Alabama is one of 38 states that requires minors seeking abortions to either obtain their paren5 years ago Read more -
Blog postAt present Texas vests authority for prosecuting cases of official misconduct in the district attorney of one county, now Travis County, which contains the capital city of Austin, and until recently, the additional work was funded by an appropriation by the State Legislature. This is done because the Texas Constitution vests authority for criminal prosecutions in local county and district attorneys. Neither the State Attorney General nor any state-level official has such authority.
5 years ago Read more -
Blog postUC has had a Department of Computer Science since 1983, offering MS and PhD degrees. The focus is more theoretical than applied, but a student will come out with skill in some computer languages.
In 1966-67 I was the very first student in what was then called the "Committee on the Information Sciences", which people in the Math Department looked down on as "systems". It was a precursor to the CS Department I remember the conversation I had with my faculty adviser5 years ago Read more -
Blog postThe outcome of the Supreme Court arguments about the new health-care law could turn on how to interpret a single hotly contested phrase in the massive bill.
The statutory language at issue in this case was almost certainly not an instance of sloppy drafting, but one of many provisions that were designed to get citizens of each state to put pressure on their state governments to participate in setting up their own exchanges, at great expense that would break the budgets of most of them. The5 years ago Read more -
Blog postMedia and cyberspace is being flooded with propaganda on Russia, Putin, and the crisis in Ukraine, and some people seem to have trouble deciding what to believe, if any of it.
People need to learn how to recognize propaganda. Of course, almost all messages are attempts to sell the reader on something, but some are more dishonest than others. My advice is to put aside any disposition to agree or disagree and just analyze it. Identify and delete all of the facts that don't lend5 years ago Read more -
Blog postThis is a comment to a post on another forum.
It is a fundamental analytic error to attribute all productivity to workers. Other factors of production can each have their own productivity apart from labor.
Consider a car factory in which 100% of the work of fabrication is done by robots. The only job for a human is to put gas in the tank and drive it out of the factory into the parking lot. Do we attribute all the productivity of those robots to that one human worker? We might5 years ago Read more -
Blog postThis is a response to a post on another blog.
The essence of personhood is that it is a role one might play in a legal case, not the actor who might play the role. Historically and legally, it has not begun with conception, and sometimes not even at birth. The usual custom in England before American independence was to regard it as beginning at the time of baptism or registration, either with the Church or with secular authorities. The risk of infant mortality was so high that it wa5 years ago Read more -
Blog postThis is a response to a post on another blog.
There are three clauses that, usually in combination, give rise to this kind of usurpation: Commerce, General Welfare, and Necessary and Proper.
The original meaning of the Commerce Clause is discussed at http://constitution.org/col/02729_fed-usurp.htm Particularly interesting is the article on "Commerce" in the very first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, from which we can summarize that commerce originally5 years ago Read more -
Blog postThis is a response to a post on another blog.
The origin of state restrictions on concealed (but not open) carry was the Constitution of Tennessee, which affirmed the RKBA but allowed the legislature to restrict the mode of "wearing" firearms (which implies handguns, as long guns are not "worn"). The intent, from the legislative history of that clause, was to allow banning or licensing of concealed carry, not open carry, as has been discussed elsewhere in these c5 years ago Read more -
Blog postThis is a response to an article on another blog.
When I founded the Constitution Society in 1994 and put up its website http://constitution.org in 1995, originalist construction was considered "fringe". It is not yet mainstream in the courts, but it certainly has become mainstream among constitutional activists, and there have been a few inroads in the courts.
However, although most of the differences from standard jurisprudence can be lumped under the banner5 years ago Read more -
Blog postThis is a response to another blog article with the same title.
In the UK it's easy. The House of Commons sits as an ongoing constitutional convention and can change the constitution from one vote to the next.
In the U.S the question gets more interesting.
1. Presidency. The Constitution requires that each state select a number of electors, who then cast ballots for president and vice-president, but it does not prevent each state from using sortition5 years ago Read more -
Blog postWhat do we do to end the threat presented by Daesh, also known as ISIS, ISIL, or the "Islamic State"? Most westerners are agonizing over that manifestation of brutal barbarism, which grows daily because it acts more brutally than any of their adversaries. We try to restrict our methods to those we would use on domestic criminals or national armed forces, because we don't want to lower ourselves to that level, to become what we are trying to suppress.
That might work if suc5 years ago Read more -
Blog postMuch is being made by pundits of all kinds of "income inequality" being a problem that needs to be solved. Discussions of it seem to rather be about consumption inequality, which is an entirely different thing. Most high-income people don't consume all that much more than low-income people do in terms of nutrition, health, or comfort. Many low-income people actually consume much more, usually in the form of medical services, than most high-income people.
Most of those &quo5 years ago Read more -
Blog postOverlooked in the controversy over the Sony cave-in to a terrorist threat from what is obviously the Kim Jong Un regime in North Korea is the way the effectiveness of this tactic was only made possible by litigators and judges.
The main cause of the decision to suspend the release of the movie The Interview by theaters is not the terrorist threat from the Kim regime. It is the terrorist threat from legions of lawyers who can be expected to sue the theaters or Sony Pictures if a phys5 years ago Read more -
Blog postEnrico Fermi, a physicist who emigrated from Italy to the United States to play a major role in the Manhattan Project, once gazed at the starry sky, having done a rough feasibility analysis of interstellar travel, concluding that there was no obvious explanation for why we are not being visited often by aliens, and asked, "Where are they?" His question has become known as the "Fermi Paradox", although it is not, strictly speaking, a "paradox", but a question that be6 years ago Read more
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Blog postWhy aren't we already exploring the stars? Why couldn't the industrial revolution have begun in ancient Greece, or perhaps ancient Rome? What are some of the great wrong turns taken in history, such that if events had happened differently, we might have come much farther and faster than we did?
Many have speculated about what might have been. Some have written alternative histories that, if done right, can provide some illumination of where we are and how we got here. The misses are6 years ago Read more
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by
Jon Roland
$5.99
In the year 1264 three young people come into information that the Earth will be destroyed by collision with an interstellar planet in a thousand years. They also learn that in the next year a leading reformer, the father of one of the three, will die in battle, setting back the progress of human history by 400-500 years, a margin great enough to enable people a thousand years later to save Earth. They must cause the battle to go the other way, and use that to launch still greater reforms that will set history on a fast course to planetary defense.
Thereafter they must build on the reforms that had been begun, introducing new laws, public and private institutions, customs, and practices, making new discoveries, and advancing human progress from the 13th century, through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, industrialization, and the information age. They have to do that, however, not by just giving the world what they had learned, but by leading teams of people into discovering it anew.
In the course of this they have to overcome resistance from conquerors, entrenched tradition, ignorance, and fear of change. They make many enemies who try to destroy them. they must also prepare people to survive several major calamities that cannot be avoided.
Two of the three have superior abilities, but not superpowers. They have revelations, but must work out the details for themselves. However, they do win the support of loyal followers, who make everything else possible. They also have opportunities that existed in their time and never before.
If all of this reads like the design for a computer simulation game, or a plot for a multi-part television mini-series, it is not an accident.
In this book the reader will meet many interesting characters, many from history, although as history takes a different course, it also changes the characters and the roles they play.
Thereafter they must build on the reforms that had been begun, introducing new laws, public and private institutions, customs, and practices, making new discoveries, and advancing human progress from the 13th century, through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, industrialization, and the information age. They have to do that, however, not by just giving the world what they had learned, but by leading teams of people into discovering it anew.
In the course of this they have to overcome resistance from conquerors, entrenched tradition, ignorance, and fear of change. They make many enemies who try to destroy them. they must also prepare people to survive several major calamities that cannot be avoided.
Two of the three have superior abilities, but not superpowers. They have revelations, but must work out the details for themselves. However, they do win the support of loyal followers, who make everything else possible. They also have opportunities that existed in their time and never before.
If all of this reads like the design for a computer simulation game, or a plot for a multi-part television mini-series, it is not an accident.
In this book the reader will meet many interesting characters, many from history, although as history takes a different course, it also changes the characters and the roles they play.
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Law versus Tyranny: Volume 1
Jan 9, 2017
by
Jon Roland
$9.99
Collection of articles on constitutional violations and possible remedies.
Other Formats:
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includes VAT*
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