Exchanging the Greed on the Street for the Greed in DC

President-Elect Obama today announced his choice to head the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"A top priority of his administration will be to “crack down on the culture of greed and scheming that’s led us to this day of reckoning,” Obama said this morning at a Chicago news conference where he also named Gary Gensler, a former U.S. Treasury undersecretary, to be chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and economic policy adviser Daniel Tarullo to fill an open seat on the Federal Reserve Board."

No doubt there is greed on Wall Street. But there is a whole lot more greed in Congress and the White House. There is not the slightest commitment to adhering to the Constitution, slashing government spending, muchless reducing the scope, size, and power of the federal government.

The individuals in Congress and the incoming administration are hands down the greediest people in the country. Obama campaigned on a platform of envy, greed, dissatisfaction, discontent, class warfare, and coveteousness.

Obama and his White House/Chicago thugs are going to shake down Wall Street for whatever they can get and then they are going to shake down the American citizenry.

It may very well be that by the time Americans see the mess that is about to come our way, President Obama may end up being the most hated president in history.

Gun Owners: Prepare for the New Reality of DANGEROUS ID – The So-Called Real Scheme

Here is your future:

You walk into a gun store, fill out your 4473, and show your government ID just as you now do. But instead of looking at your license and taking down some information, the clerk runs the license (which is likely to contain a Spy Chip (i.e. RFID - radio-frequency ID chip) through a scanner. Your purchase is instantly recorded in your state drivers’ license registry. The federal government isn’t currently allowed to keep a gun registry. But no problem; the Dangerous ID Act of 2005 gives them an open door into your state records.

Complete information on every firearm you buy will be instantly available to every police officer (and possibly every government employee, store clerk, or computer hacker) you ever encounter. You’ll be an instant criminal suspect every time you deal with someone who has access to the database.

Just as travelers are encouraged to get background checks and give fingerprints to avoid some of the worst excesses of TSA screening, gun owners will be encouraged to get background checks and give whatever biometric ID the Department of Homeland Security requires. This will be sold as a “benefit,” ensuring you’ll never again experience an “instant-check” delay. In fact, Congress, the ATF, or the FBI might even “mandate” 5-day or 15-day delays for anyone not enrolled in the “Trusted Firearms Buyer” program.

The private purchase “loophole” will be closed, so that all gun buyers must make tractable purchases. (The ultimate goal is for every purchase of every kind to be track able.) Buying ammo? The store scans your national ID card and — bingo! — your purchase is registered in the state database.

The federal government or state governments can now also _effectively_ legislate limits on the amount or kind of ammunition you’re “allowed” to purchase. Try to buy more and the database instantly rejects you. The federal government or state governments can now also effectively legislate limits on the number of guns you may own. Try to buy more, and the database rejects you.

Eventually — after the federal government “discovers” the obvious, that national ID won’t stop either illegal immigration or terrorism — the old attack on “evil guns” will resume.

When they want your .50 BMG they’ll know just where to find it (because the Dangerous ID act says your home address must be revealed). When they want your evil “scoped sniper rifle” (you know, the one you hunt deer with), they’ll know just how to get it. Ditto with you “Saturday Night Special” or your “semi-auto rifle.”

If you don’t surrender your guns, well, then the Department of Homeland Security will cut off your driving “privilege,” as well as your right to escape the growing police state via plane.

You will be a prisoner in your own home, in your own country. Or you’ll be forced to function as an outlaw, operating and living a precarious existence beneath the government radar.

It No Longer Matters

Today I received an e-mail about Obama's birth certificate. The letter writer commented that he still believes that the Constitution is relevant.

He's wrong.

The Constitution no longer matters.

The US Constitution died definitively in 1865 with the defeat of the South. It has died progressively through Reconstruction, the 14th, 16th, 17th, 19th Amendments, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, The New Deal programs under FDR, the Great Society Programs under Johnson, and numerous Supreme Court rulings creating rights and powers that the founders never imagined.

The Constitution died finally under the current president.

It does not matter what the Constitution says about being a natural born citizen. The constitution is a dead document...thrown away in the ash bin of history.

Chicago Scandel

I have to ask, "What did the President-Elect know, and when did he know it?"

It has been asked, "Why did the US Attorney stop the investigation before the crime of selling the Senate seat actually occurred?"

I submit that there are two possible reasons. One, the President-Elect was about to commit a criminal act and needed to be saved by the Democratic US Attorney. Or two, USA Patrick J. Fitzgerald now has dirt on Mr. Obama. And Mr. Obama can now be manipulated or blackmailed.

Why Doesn't Ron Paul Ask Crucial Questions?

Chris Powell of GATA writes a very good article about how Congressman Ron Paul could be more productive in his time allotment on the House Banking Committee. It is posted below.

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

As grateful as many of us are to U.S. Rep. Ron Paul for articulating, almost alone in the federal government, the monetary issues at the center of the international financial catastrophe, we might be even more grateful to him if he could sharpen his performance at the hearings of the House Banking Committee, at which he has not made the most of his many opportunities to interrogate Federal Reserve and Treasury Department officials.

Time for each committee member to speak at these hearings is very limited, and unfortunately Paul usually spends most of his time making speeches rather than asking crucial questions, even as those crucial questions must be well known to him. Just watch again his exchange at Tuesday's hearing with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, which GoldSeek posted here:

http://news.goldseek.com/RonPaul/1227028538.php

The exchange is 5 minutes and 15 seconds long and Paul uses 4 minutes and 9 seconds of it, most of that time just speechifying, only a few seconds of it asking questions. Too bad, because Paul still got a couple of important disclosures out of Bernanke -- that the prospect of a new international reserve currency never comes up in Bernanke's discussions with the central bankers of other countries, and that the only mention of gold in those discussions involves the plans of central banks to sell their gold reserves.

Of course those who follow these issues long have known what Paul thinks and don't really need to hear it again at these hearings. What is most important at these hearings is what the Fed, the Treasury, and other central bankers are doing and what they are trying to conceal from the public and the markets.

Imagine if, instead of speechifying for 4 minutes and 9 seconds on Tuesday, Paul had sought to press a few more questions, like:

1) Are the Fed or the Treasury intervening or encouraging or subsidizing certain actions by others in the precious metals and general equities markets, just as the Fed and Treasury commonly intervene in the currency and bond markets?

2) Does the U.S. government have any connection to the derivative positions in gold, silver, and interest rates built up at JPMorganChase and other financial houses?

3) Why is the Federal Reserve refusing to disclose all its records involving the U.S. gold reserve?

4) How often does the President's Working Group on Financial Markets meet? What does it do? Does it intervene in the stock market or encourage certain actions in the market by third parties? Does it keep records of its proceedings? Are those records available to the public? If not, why not?

5) Do the Fed and the Treasury convey to certain financial houses information that is not simultaneously available to all other market participants? Exactly what private communications do Fed and Treasury officials have with financial houses? What is the necessity of that privacy? How does that privacy not confer a favoritism that is potentially very lucrative?

Surely Paul himself could frame all these questions and many better ones without any help. Instead he always digresses and then at the last minute tiptoes up to a big issue only to have time run out with the Fed and the Treasury witnesses saved by the bell. Even as Paul knows better than nearly everyone else in Washington, it is hard not to wonder if he is afraid of being the one to prompt the answers he very well might get.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

The Beginning of the End

On this day in 1647 Massachusetts passed the first compulsory school law in the colonies. That was the beginning of the end. Of all the ills and woes this country has suffered, most of them can be laid at the door of public education.

Liberty

On this day in 1781 Lord Cornwallis surrendered at
Yorktown to the combined French & American
Revolutionary forces under Genl. Washington.
It was the beginning of the great American republic
that lasted eighty years. When the British troops
left their trenches to stack arms, their bands
played "The World Turned Upside Down." General
Washington ordered worship services of thanksgiving
to God for his army.

Today in History

On this date in 1918 Sergeant Alvin C. York single-handedly killed 25 German soldiers, captured 132 more, and confiscated 35 machine guns while separated from his patrol. He hailed, of course, from Tennessee.

Day of Reckoning

Day of Reckoning. - How did the United States of America, the richest nation on earth, whose economy represents 30 percent of the Global Economy, arrive at the precipice of a financial panic and collapse?

The answer lies in the abject failure of both America's financial elite and the political elite of both parties – the same elites now working together to determine how much of our wealth will be needed to bail the nation out of the crisis of their own creation.

Big Government is riding to the rescue – saddlebags full of our tax dollars – to save us from the consequences of the stupidity and folly of Big Government. New York and Washington, the twin cities responsible for the crisis, are now being hailed by the media as the 7th Cavalry, coming to rescue a beleaguered nation.

Ron Paul Response to the President

Dear Friends:

The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.

We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and
other assets.

Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.

Still, at least a few observations are necessary.

The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?

We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.

Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).

Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."

Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?

Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.

It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.

The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.

F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:

Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.

To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.

The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.

The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?

Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.

The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.

I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.

H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.

In liberty,

Ron Paul

Time is Running Out

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Dear Friends,

Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike.

The events of the past week are no exception.

The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress' throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect. It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder. Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! "This is welfare for the rich," he said. "This is socialism for the rich. It's bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters."

That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we're being told it's unavoidable.

The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences - predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics - are being let off the hook. The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess!

• The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us.

• Financial institutions are "designated as financial agents of the Government." This is the New Deal to end all New Deals.

• Then there's this: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process.

There goes your country.

Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this "sadly necessary." Sad, yes. Necessary? Don't make me laugh.

Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people. The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind - another example of the big choice we're supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they're not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really.

Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we'll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.

The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care?

When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media?

Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.

In liberty,

Ron Paul

The Nightmare to Come

Christendom began to fall with the French Revolution. Her last bastion fell with the South in 1865. Thereafter technology became the West's post-Christian religion. For the first five decades of the 20th century, the remains of post-Christian Christendom spent destroying itself.

Technology is not only a cruel and bloodthirsty god, but it is also not self-sustaining. It is a net consumer, not a net producer. Only agriculture is a net producer, but now technology has seized even agriculture so that it, too, is a net consumer. Now technology and its ruler, fiat money and usury finance, have reached another fevered crisis. They will die, choking on their own excess, if not this time, then the next or the next. The new god will fall on its face, like Dagon.

But I am not as much concerned with its collapse, as I am with the new world to be built, and now a-building. It is springing up even before the ruins of the old fall to the ground.

Dangerous Americans

The British government is protecting itself and the British people from an exceedingly dangerous American.

The Brits have refused to allow Martha Stewart into Britain.

"The lifestyle guru, convicted four years ago in the US for obstructing justice, was planning to speak at the Royal Academy and to hold meetings with several figures in the fashion and leisure industry, including Jasper Conran, and was due to travel within the next few days."

Apparently though, the Brits are comfortable with allowing US President Bush into the country! A man guilty of great violations of law and human rights.

State of Okalahoma House Joint Resolution 1089

STATE OF OKLAHOMA
2nd Session of the 51st Legislature (2008)
HOUSE JOINT
RESOLUTION 1089 By: Key
AS INTRODUCED

A Joint Resolution claiming sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over certain powers; serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates; and directing distribution.

WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”; and

WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more; and

WHEREAS, the scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states; and

WHEREAS, today, in 2008, the states are demonstrably treated as
agents of the federal government; and

WHEREAS, many federal mandates are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and

WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S. Ct. 2408 (1992), that Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; and

WHEREAS, a number of proposals from previous administrations and some now pending from the present administration and from Congress may further violate the Constitution of the United States.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND THE SENATE OF THE 2ND SESSION OF THE 51ST OKLAHOMA LEGISLATURE:

THAT the State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States. THAT this serve as Notice and Demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.

THAT a copy of this resolution be distributed to the President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate of each state’s legislature of the United States of America, and each member of the Oklahoma Congressional Delegation.

Right Issue, Wrong Commodity

High oil prices reflect a supply and demand problem in the market. The only problem is people pick on the wrong commodity. There don't seem to be shortages of oil.

The problem is that the dollar under the Bush Administration has fallen about 50 percent. There are an over supply of dollars in the market with no comparable demand for dollars.

To reduce the price of oil the dollar needs to be strengthened. That means Congress needs to stop deficit spending and the Federal Reserve needs to raise interest rates to at least 25%.

This would drive the economy into a deep recession and dry up easy credit as we know it. The only other plan of attack is to hyper-inflate the currency...which will drive prices to unbelievable levels. But this is the most likely exit that the Federal Reserve and Congress will take. "Inflate of Die!" is the unspoken motto of the Fed.

Remember the Fed has only two weapons in its arsenal: Inflation and Blarney. Every fiat currency system ends in hyper-inflation. The dollar won't be any different. What a joke our nation has become.

The Federal Reserve's Two Weapons

According to Franklin Sanders, the Federal Reserve has only two weapons to manipulate the dollar: "Inflation and Blarney."

The Income Tax

There is no reason for an income tax. All Congress has to do is pass a budget and have the President sign the budget into law. The Treasury issues bonds and the Federal Reserve creates the currency for the Treasury.

The budget is monetized.

So if the government can create limitless amounts of currency anytime it wants and for any purpose, why enforce an income tax? After much thinking for the last year or so, I've realized that there are two reasons why the income tax is enforced.

First, the income tax is enforced to keep people in submission to the government. It is designed to make certain that we know who our masters are. It is enforced to create a system of slavery.

Second, the income tax is enforced to keep inflation under "control". Inflation is the increase in the money supply. Congress know this. As does the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. If the income tax were not enforced, inflation would quickly get out of control and the government would lose credibility pretty quickly. So the government siphons off significant amounts of currency through the income tax. We think were doing our patriotic duty by supporting the government. In reality were being snookered by one of the greatest frauds in history. Shame on us.

Memorandum of Law on the Money Issue

Larry Becraft has written a very interesting Memorandum
of Law: The Money Issue.

"This brief discusses this issue at length for the purpose of conclusively demonstrating the premises that constitutional money in our country can only be gold and silver coin and that the States are constitutionally compelled to operate on a specie basis. It is the contention herein that Article 1, § 10, clause 1 of the U. S. Constitution is an absolute prohibition upon the States which cannot be circumvented by permission or command of the federal government, and that such provision prohibits the States from utilizing any paper note or credit issued by any private banking institution, whether the same be Federal Reserve Notes, bookkeeping entries of liability or otherwise."

Ted Kennedy: Sewer of the Senate

US Senator Ted Kennedy has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.

Senator Kennedy has served the gods of power, money, and pleasure during his 76 years. He has supported abortion, theft of money, expansion of the state, blocked conservative judges, and more.

He has pursued every reprobate cause to the utmost. Senator Ted Kennedy is the sewer of the Senate.

God has been very patient with this wicked man.

It is my hope and prayer that in these final months or years of his life that he will reflect upon the great wickedness that he has brought about and that he will be moved to repentance and live out his last days by serving the one true God.

Senator Ken Cuccinelli has endorsed rabid anti-gun Congressman
Frank Wolf over his Republican challenger Vern McKinley even
though McKinley has received a 100% rating from VGOC and
promised to sponsor the repealof the D.C. Gun Ban and National Park
Gun Ban.

Wolf as you know, even voted against being able to OWN a gun in
crime infested D.C. Wolf would rather guzzle tax payer dollars.  He is
calling on the President to spend millions of dollars to study the
problem of crime.

Senator Cuccinelli clearly has sold out for Wolf's endorsement in his run
for AG in 2009.

Please take a moment and wipe the vomit off your shirt so that I can
suggest a course of action.

First, Ken has been a friend to gun owners in the past but is on a
predictable trajectory that is taught in the school of politics I attend
about how good guys are ALWAYS tempted to sell out  in their quest
for higher office.  If Senator Cuccinelli did not take gun owners for
granted and wanted to be politically wise he would have stayed neutral
and not have endorsed either Wolf or McKinley.  He clearly fears Mr. Wolf's
wrath more than the wrath of gun owners.

Second, you and I will share the blame if we let Mr. Cuccinelli sell us
out without any action.

Third, this is not the first time Mr. Cuccinelli has attempted to sell
out gun owners.

Fourth,  Mr. Cuccinelli backed off when Larry Pratt at Gun Owners of
America and I played Good Cop/Bad Cop and mobilized gun owners
to tell Mr. Cuccinelli to drop his plans to sponsor anti-gun legislation.
He listened and did so.

Fifth, Mr. Cuccinelli is taking your support for granted and assumes
you will do  nothing as he sells us out to get Wolf's support.


Action Items:

1.  Email Senator Cuccinelli at ken@cuccinelli.org with a
CC: to president@vgoc.org and tell the ambitious Senator that
unless he withdraws his endorsement of anti-gun Congressman Wolf
in the same venue he gave it that he cannot expect any money or
support from you in the future.  If you have never given money or
supported him tell him he will not have it unless he stops his anti-gun
charade.

2. Please email this email to all your family and pro-gun friends and
ask them email me at president@vgoc.org asking to join our email list.
We are headed into some VERY tough years.  We need to grow
dramatically to do our part in mobilizing our lines of defense to STOP
an anti-gun President Obama or McCain - not to speak of the sell outs
of our so-called friends.

For Liberty,
Mike McHugh  President, Virginia Gun Owners Coalition
www.vgoc.org

TO DONATE GO TO:
https://va.eftsecure.net/eftcart/products.asp?M_id=467112673452

P.S. It is not a pleasant task to confront politicians, especially
when they have been our friends in the past but the unwillingness
to do so is part of why we are losing our liberties at an increasing speed.

Duty belongs to us, the results belong to God - -
quote by John Quincy Adams, U.S. President and Congressman after
being arrested on the floor of the House for breaking the House
gag rule forbidding any discussion of slavery.

Government Schools Have Succeeded

"It's not the Internet that's killing journalism, it's illiteracy. The idea that the Internet is replacing print journalism as a news source is an illusion. There is no one-to-one exchange of people canceling newspaper subscriptions and people logging onto the Internet. There is, instead, a shrinking readership of news, period, regardless of whether the news is delivered by computer or by print," says Robert Stacy McCain of The Other McCain.

This is not surprising.

Government schools in America have dumbed down the last few generations of people. Bureaucrats have felt it more important to give students sensitivity training than any type of ability to read, think, or critically analyze.

America is reaping what it has sown for the last several decades. We have a bunch of confident incompetents.

Muslim Threatens Service Dog

SCSU Student Leaves Training at Technical High School:

A St. Cloud State University student in a teacher-training program at Technical High School left the school in late April because he says he feared for the safety of his service dog.

The school district calls it a misunderstanding, and officials there say they hoped Tyler Hurd, a 23-year-old junior from Mahtomedi who aspires to teach special education, would continue his training in the district.

Hurd said a student threatened to kill his service dog named Emmitt. The black lab is trained to protect Hurd when he has seizures.

This June 5th

It's time to withdraw from the banking system.

Are you in or out?

This June 5th.

McCain Debates Bush on Abortion in 2000

John McCain supports abortion and abortion funding.

On April 14, 2007 in Des Moines, Iowa, McCain publicly stated he
wanted to change the GOP platform regardig abortion.

And if a baby is conceived in a way McCain doesn't like, he
supports abortions to let women destroy its pre-born life.

McCain regularly votes to fund pro-abortion groups with your
tax  dollars.

These groups include the so-called Planned Parenthood, which
advocates for and provides abortions to women of all ages.

So please don't be fooled.

Call the MCCain campaign before it is too late. Tell John McCain to
knock it off and defend unborn babies no matter the
circumstances of their conception.  Call his close advisor,
Del. Chris Saxman and tell him to renounce his support and funding
of pro-abortion groups.

Call 540-886-8284.  That's 540-886-8284.

Watch the videos below.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4824779&page=1

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4823197 

Reigning in the Power of the Federal Judiciary

Judges in the Federal Judiciary consistently decide cases over which they have absolutely no constitutional jurisdiction. Roe v. Wade is probably one of the best examples.

Ron Paul, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has written, "If the federal courts refuse to abide by the Constitution, the Congress should employ this constitutional remedy. By a simple majority, Congress could strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over abortion, thereby overturning the obviously unconstitutional Roe. At that point, the issue would revert to the states, where it constitutionally belongs, since no appeal to federal courts on the matter could be heard." (The Revolution A Manifesto).

Such legislation won't be forthcoming anytime soon. The great majority of our Senators and Congressmen are "sea anemones of virtue who can hardly wobble an antennae in the waters of negativity."

The Lesser of Two Evils

Once again we conservatives and Christians are being asked to vote for the lesser of two evils. The problem with this argument is that we keep getting more and more evil. The federal government grows larger and more powerful. Our liberties become fewer and fewer.

There is not a shred of difference between John McCain and the two Democrats fighting it out in the primaries. John McCain is a lap-dog of the Democratic Party. He loves being loved by the press and the approving words that dribble out of the mouths of liberals like Ted Kennedy.

The Republicans are good at scaring Christians and conservatives every election cycle. And they keep falling for it. This time around the scare tactics will be judicial appointments, the war in the Middle East, taxes, and whatever else windbags such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others can create.

Well I have personal experience with some of the Republican judicial appointments. And Republican judicial appointments are just as intellectually lazy, fraudulent, ignorant, ruthless, and tyrannical as the Democratic appointees. "Conservative" judges often want to use their power to remake society in their own image. They have exactly the same proclivities towards judicial activism and lawlessness as liberal judges.

Republicans have no problem taking YOUR money through taxation. They have done nothing during their stint in power to reduce the size of the federal government or spending. They talk a good talk but never deliver.

It's time to call the Republican's bluff. They have no intention of reducing government and restoring and protecting the liberties of the American people. They have no intention of restoring the Republic.

It is time to leave the Republican party in the ash bin of history.

Patty-Cake McCain

Senator John McCain is obsessed with running an "honorable campaign" this fall against the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barak Obama. He does not want to be accused of racism or of throwing mud.

This is exactly why John McCain will lose in November. The Senator wants to play the children's game of patty-cake. John McCain does not have the guts to fight a winning campaign.

He has no idea of the force with which operatives from the Obama campaign will attack him. He's in for a surprise.

Obama is beatable, but Senator McCain won't go on the offensive.

Senator McCain is no conservative. He's an establishment Republican that enjoys his access to the media, the powerful elite, and his friends in the Democratic Party. The great thing about this election is that it means McCain's political career is about over. He may serve a term or two yet in the Senate but his days as a politician are effectively over.

Terrorist Chickens and Proletarian Pigs

A friend of mine points out that in 2002 the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) was cooked up by Agra Business and handed to the US Government to do its bidding.

The government wants an RFID chip in your pet goat, your pet chicken, and any other farm animal.

My friend points out that this is nuts. But it is the logical result of the empire wanting to be God. If the empire wants to be God, they want to know everything.

They want to know where you are, what you are doing with your time, where your children are, and where your animals are.

My friend adds, this is arrogance. Arrogance that takes no account of what the actual physical realities are indicates that these people are on their way out.

The Case for American Secession: Still a Good Idea

Kirkpatrick Sale:

The Case for American Secession: Still a Good Idea - There has always been talk about secession in this country by those variously disgruntled on both the right and left, but, since the last presidential election, which revealed deep-seated divisions in American society over a variety of fundamental issues, that talk has grown exponentially. Such talk is not likely to lead to a dissolution of this country into separate states or regions, but that is by no means inconceivable. The issue should be taken seriously and examined carefully.

Other articles that might be of interest: Collapse of the American Empire, The American Secession Movement Today, You Know Your Empire's Collapsing When...

The State of the American Empire

A friend of mine had a pair of scissors confiscated by the Transportations Security Authority (TSA) before he could board his flight.

Think about this for a moment. What does this tell us about the state of the American Empire?

Aside from being pretty ridiculous, I think it says that these people are on their way out. It tells us how bad of shape the American Empire really is in. If the TSA is so afraid of a person with a pair of scissors, they are really so paranoid that they have lost control of themselves.

Native Hawaiians blockade historic palace

A group of native Hawaiians occupied the grounds of the old Hawaiian monarchy's royal residence Wednesday, vowing to stay and do the business of the kingdom's government.

"It is through a greater realm than ours" that the group took this action, said Mahealani Kahau, elected leader of the group, called Hawaiian Kingdom Government. "Today and every day, we will be here to assume our role."

Read the rest of this story.

A Short Numismatic History of the United States

Edward Elmer:

A Short Numismatic History of the United States - Governments are inveterate despoilers of the freedom, wealth, and lives of their citizens. As consolation, the citizens usually receive little more than lofty words and pretentious sentiments from the political leaders in charge of the looting, murder, and enslavement. Less commonly, governments produce something concrete, such as a marble palace for the ruler or an alabaster temple for the commemoration of some supposedly noble public goal.

Inflate or Die!

Today may very well mark the date as to when the Federal Reserve began to hyper-inflate the money supply.

A rate cut of seventy-five basis points is going to pump a lot of liquidity into the system.

The stimulus package that is most likely going to pass Congress will do nothing long-term to restore fundamental soundness to the American economy. Rather the general price level will increase. Those rebate checks will mean nothing in a few months. We'll all be paying for it with higher prices.

The Federal Reserve has two tools at its disposal: Inflation and Blarney.

Today was an example of both of them. Secretary Paulson spoke about the strong fundamentals of the economy and the Mighty Bernanke Superbanker opened the floodgates of currency by lowering the fed funds rate by seventy-five basis points.

These people are nuts.

Korean Airlines Flight 007

Korean Airlines Flight 007 was shot down in 1983 by the Soviet Union. The United States Government closed the book on a complete investigation.

Rumors have circulated for years that there are survivors of that flight and that Congressman Larry McDonald survived and may survive to this day.

Rescue007 is an extensive site that investigates this story and a lot more links can be found on this page. Check it out.

Ron Paul vs. Giuliani

Ron Paul is correct in his observations of American foreign policy.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were motivated in large part by American foreign policy in the Middle East and America's unwavering support for Israel.

American politicians are woefully ignorant of the history, divisions, fractures, schisms, and other problems of the Middle East. These problems extend far back into history and will not be understood, much less solved by uninformed, short-term thinking politicians.

The current generation of Americans have inherited many wonderful liberties and freedoms. However, the problem is that Americans are so radically divorced from any substantive knowledge of the history of America's founding that Americans have no idea how these liberties and freedoms were won, much less the context of their genesis.

My presupposition is that liberty and freedom in America have worked because of Christianity. It is Christianity that has given the West stability, the rule of law, political liberty, and economic freedom.

As I said above, Americans have inherited these wonderful gifts. And America quite naturally wants the rest of the world to enjoy them. However, several generations of government (public) schooling have birthed a generation of confident incompetents...a generation so dumbed down that Americans for the most part they have no idea how these gifts were won.

My observation is that many American politicians think that the rest of the world needs to have these liberties and freedoms and that they will be naturally embraced by the peoples of the world.

In reality, I presuppose that people generally like slavery. People like being told what to do, how to think, etc. Slavery is the natural state of sinful mankind.

So American foreign policy becomes bungled, foolish, incompetent, unwise, and dangerous when it proposes to force political freedom on a people.

When six or seven generations of Iraqis have been Christianized and the reformed faith runs deep in the heart of Iraqis, then I think political liberty and economic freedom will quite naturally flow forth.

America should fully embrace diplomatic relations, trade, exchange, and friendship, shining forth like a city on a hill; but the entangling alliances and wars that America so easily entangles herself should be rejected.

Ron Paul Said It

Lew Rockwell:

Ron Paul Said It. - Ron is such a wonderful person that I'm sorry that he had to be the one to tell the truth. One could sense in the debate that he was making an enormous sacrifice here. After Giuliani spoke, the red-state fascists in the audience all started whooping up the bloodlust that the politicians have been encouraging for the last six years – a mindless display of Nazi-like nationalism that would cause the founding fathers to shudder with fear of what we've become. These people are frantic about terrorism and extremism abroad, but they need to take a good hard look in the mirror.

Unconstitutional Legislation Threatens Freedoms

Last week, the House of Representatives acted with disdain for the Constitution and individual liberty by passing HR 1592, a bill creating new federal programs to combat so-called “hate crimes.” The legislation defines a hate crime as an act of violence committed against an individual because of the victim’s race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Federal hate crime laws violate the Tenth Amendment’s limitations on federal power. Hate crime laws may also violate the First Amendment guaranteed freedom of speech and religion by criminalizing speech federal bureaucrats define as “hateful.”

There is no evidence that local governments are failing to apprehend and prosecute criminals motivated by prejudice, in comparison to the apprehension and conviction rates of other crimes. Therefore, new hate crime laws will not significantly reduce crime. Instead of increasing the effectiveness of law enforcement, hate crime laws undermine equal justice under the law by requiring law enforcement and judicial system officers to give priority to investigating and prosecuting hate crimes. Of course, all decent people should condemn criminal acts motivated by prejudice. But why should an assault victim be treated by the legal system as a second-class citizen because his assailant was motivated by greed instead of hate?

HR 1592, like all hate crime laws, imposes a longer sentence on a criminal motivated by hate than on someone who commits the same crime with a different motivation. Increasing sentences because of motivation goes beyond criminalizing acts; it makes it a crime to think certain thoughts. Criminalizing even the vilest hateful thoughts--as opposed to willful criminal acts--is inconsistent with a free society.

HR 1592 could lead to federal censorship of religious or political speech on the grounds that the speech incites hate. Hate crime laws have been used to silence free speech and even the free exercise of religion. For example, a Pennsylvania hate crime law has been used to prosecute peaceful religious demonstrators on the grounds that their public Bible readings could incite violence. One of HR 1592’s supporters admitted that this legislation could allow the government to silence a preacher if one of the preacher’s parishioners commits a hate crime. More evidence that hate crime laws lead to censorship came recently when one member of Congress suggested that the Federal Communications Commission ban hate speech from the airwaves.

Hate crime laws not only violate the First Amendment, they also violate the Tenth Amendment. Under the United States Constitution, there are only three federal crimes: piracy, treason, and counterfeiting. All other criminal matters are left to the individual states. Any federal legislation dealing with criminal matters not related to these three issues usurps state authority over criminal law and takes a step toward turning the states into mere administrative units of the federal government.

Because federal hate crime laws criminalize thoughts, they are incompatible with a free society. Fortunately, President Bush has pledged to veto HR 1592. Of course, I would vote to uphold the president’s veto.

Will Ron Paul Be the Candidate of the Christian Right?

Laurence M. Vance:

Will Ron Paul Be the Candidate of the Christian Right? - As a Christian, I admire Dr. Paul’s principled stand on many issues, but I don’t believe the leadership of the Christian Right will embrace him. I think they love centralization more than federalism. I think they love political power more than liberty. I think they love war more than peace. I think they love politicians more than principles. I think they love faith-based socialism more than the free market. And I think they love the state more than God Almighty.

One Gun Too Few

Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.:

One Gun Too Few: Virginia Tech has long been a “gun-free zone” for the purposes of its students’ self-defense. In the name of preventing violence, the university has prohibited every student with a Virginia license to carry a concealed firearm from doing so on campus. Surely debatable is whether such a regulation is even legal—given that such a license is a Virginia statutory right of any individual who qualifies for it (and, I should argue, a constitutional right as well) that no mere administrative body has any authority to deny. Beyond dispute is that events have written in blood just how disastrously that idea worked on Monday, 16 April 2007: Apparently everyone among the student body obeyed the edict, except the killer. The regulation perhaps disarmed students who might otherwise have legally been carrying a firearm with which they could have stopped the killer in his tracks. And the police, who were armed and on the campus, proved ineffective, because they were not on the scene.

April Fools Day is Really April 17th

According to one reader, "Monday is 'April Fool's Day.' Here's a question you'd better not ask, or your masters will become red in the face and take a dislike to you: 'What statute makes anyone other than a foreign withholding agent liable for the income tax?' Be prepared for the silence. The income tax is the greatest hoax in history, and yet the yankee government continues to
enforce it.

Folks, these are not serious people. People who build their lives and their governments around lies, and then try to kill the people who expose their lies, are not serious people. They're pathetic, but not serious. Thanks be to God Almighty who delivered my brothers and sisters and my children and my wife and me from their hands."

Lacrosse Players Vindicated!

Finally justice has been done.

The North Carolina State Attorney General has dropped the charges against Reade Seligmann, 21, of Essex Fells, N.J., Collin Finnerty, 20, of Garden City, N.Y., and David Evans, 24.

This is a very rare case of justice being done. It is unfortunate that it has taken so long for it to happen.

Michael Nifong, the prosecutor that brought the charges, needs to be prosecuted for the fraudulent charges that he brought against these young men. Additionally, Duke University needs to be held accountable for its part in the case.

How the US Government Makes YOU Less Secure

The US Government decided to create secure passports and insisted that a good number of other countries do the same thing, using the same technology.

These new passports use RFID technology. The RFID chips store lots of personal information, including a digitized photograph and, in the future, a fingerprint.

When passed in front of a reader, the chip is activated and transmits a radio signal.

Unfortunately these RFID-enhanced e-passports can be easily hacked, attacked, and cloned. There have been several high profile demonstrations of this ability.

The US Government has made Americans and their personal information LESS secure.

Congressman Goodlatte Tries Again

It is interesting to see whom Congressman Goodlatte of Virginia seeks to honor.

The Congressman has reintroduced legislation (H.R.1664) to give government grants to a yet to be presidential library for President Woodrow Wilson.

Remember that President Wilson gave us the federal income tax and the Federal Reserve.

The Fed has destroyed the value of the dollar by creating excessive amounts of money and credit out of thin air. This has enabled greedy politicians like Congressman Goodlatte to spend foolishly and expand the scope and power of the federal government well beyond its Constitutional boundaries.

Congressman Goodlatte is no friend of taxpayers.

Write your Congressional Representatives and ask them not to support this legislation.

Jury Nullification

The Fully Informed Jury Association provides an important educational service. This association is working to inform citizens of their rights to decide the merits of the law and the application of the law in each case.

Jurors have the power to judge the law.

"The role of our jurors is to protect private citizens from dangerous government laws and actions. Many existing laws erode and deny the rights of the people. Jurors protect against tyranny by refusing to convict harmless people. Our country's founders planned and expected that we, the people, would exercise this power and authority to judge the law as well as the facts every time we serve as jurors. Juries are the last peaceful defense of our civil liberties.".

Unfortunately, few jurors are aware of this power. Many times jurors blindly follow whatever the judge instructs them as to what the law is. This results in the convictions of innocent defendants or defendants that have innocently followed the law without the requisite evil intent.

Inform yourselves as to what your authority is as a juror!

Evil Schemes And The Merchants Of Debt

Hans Schicht

Evil Schemes And The Merchants Of Debt - In the light of the mention on the web of possible nationalization of the US precious metal mines, there are easier ways for a government to get possession of the nations gold rather than by expensive, inefficient, bureaucratic, and cost inflating nationalization.

In order to make good for the "deep storage" bullion of Fort Knox, not accounted for, the most subtle course of action for the US government will be to establish a Federal Gold Bank, under the Federal Reserve, to which all the US gold mines will be obliged to surrender their production against a, by the government established, price.

Internationally, in order to protect their own respective gold hoards in their national interest, most other nations, "guided" by their Central Banks, will most likely replicate the US action. In such way the Central Bank Cartel will keep the bulk of the world's gold stock under its control. Against freely competing gold outside their control the Central Banker's fiat paper scam would not survive for long and they know it!

The Once and Future Republic of Vermont

Ian Baldwin and Frank Bryan:

The Once and Future Republic of Vermont - The winds of secession are blowing in the Green Mountain State.

Vermont was once an independent republic, and it can be one again. We think the time to make that happen is now. Over the past 50 years, the U.S. government has grown too big, too corrupt and too aggressive toward the world, toward its own citizens and toward local democratic institutions. It has abandoned the democratic vision of its founders and eroded Americans' fundamental freedoms.

Vermont did not join the Union to become part of an empire.

Global Hot Air: Part III

Thomas Sowell:

Global Hot Air: Part III - If you take the mainstream media seriously, you might think that every important scientist believes that "global warming" poses a great threat, and that we need to make drastic changes in the way we live, in order to avoid catastrophes to the environment, to various species, and to ourselves.

The Shearing is Nearing

Dr. Edwin Vieira, Ph.D.,JD:

The Shearing is Nearing - One reason why patriotic Americans are accomplishing precious little in reasserting control over their country, while the Establishment steadily advances its agenda on almost all fronts, is that patriots are not taking advantage of their overwhelming numerical superiority in the places where they can best bring it to bear. Instead of joining together for effective ­indeed, potentially unstoppable -political, and particularly legislative, action in favorable venues at the State and Local levels, all too many of them are sitting out the contest as mere spectators.

The World Can Halt Bush’s Crimes by Dumping the Dollar

Paul Craig Roberts:

The World Can Halt Bush’s Crimes by Dumping the Dollar — - "The US is totally dependent upon foreigners to finance its budget and trade deficits. By financing these deficits, foreign governments are complicit in the Bush Regime’s military aggressions and war crimes. The Bush Regime’s two largest lenders are China and Japan. It is ironic that Japan, the only nation to experience nuclear attack by the US, is banker to the Bush Regime as it prepares a possible nuclear attack on Iran.

If the rest of the world would simply stop purchasing US Treasuries, and instead dump their surplus dollars into the foreign exchange market, the Bush Regime would be overwhelmed with economic crisis and unable to wage war. The arrogant hubris associated with the "sole superpower" myth would burst like the bubble it is.

The collapse of the dollar would also end the US government’s ability to subvert other countries by purchasing their leaders to do America’s will."

Ron Paul is Running for President

I was delighted to read that Congressman Ron Paul has established an exploratory committee to seek the presidency of the United States.

Ron Paul actually appeals to the US Constitution for his explanations of his positions. Every proposed bill is tested by asking if it exercises a power granted by the Constitution. Of course very few bills meet this basic requirement. He usually votes, NO.

Ron Paul is a fearless defender of the US Constitution. He is not brash, loud, or in your face about it. He is humble, quiet, and well reasoned in his explanations.

Support Ron Paul for President. Here is his web site: http://www.ronpaulexplore.com/

Financial Discipline Demanded

It is high time that financial markets reign in the American government's profligate spending.

Foreign investors must begin to demand an interest rate premium for owning dollars.

Better yet, perhaps foreign investors, saddled with increasingly worthless dollars, ought to dump them on the open market.

Racial Diversity and Elite Educational Institutions: Duke’s Meltdown

William L. Anderson:

Racial Diversity and Elite Educational Institutions: Duke’s Meltdown - Although Michael B. Nifong is out of prosecuting the Duke non-rape, non-kidnapping, and non-sexual assault case, the monster remains in the hands of the entity that helped to make it a monster: the State of North Carolina. Thus, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans are not safe until someone finally drives a stake into the heart of this thing, but that moment surely is coming, although I might add that it cannot come soon enough.

In one sense, this could have happened anywhere. False rape accusations have landed men into prison before, and college campuses tend to be ground zero of the "take back the night" culture in which all Caucasian men are considered to be rapists or about-to-become-rapists and secret members of the Ku Klux Klan. Yet, I would add that the volatile mix of people at an elite university like Duke is a much more fertile ground for a major hoax than would be a typical lower-tier state university. There is a special situation at these types of institutions that plays well to the kind of moral theater we have witnessed this past year.

To further stress this subject, I first need to point out some the social and academic dynamics of an elite university like Duke. Like many other academically elite universities, Duke’s student body is overwhelmingly white and Asian. (The dominance of Asian students is a relatively new phenomenon, as they tended to be excluded in the past, as well as non-white students.) Once upon a time, the demographics of the students did not bother the powers that be at elite institutions. Some, like Duke until 1961, did not admit blacks at all, while others admitted them, but did not have very many black applicants and even fewer black students...

The Cost of the Lie: Duke, the Courts, and Hoaxes

William L. Anderson:

The Cost of the Lie: Duke, the Courts, and Hoaxes — I recently received an email from someone who was a member of last year’s lacrosse team at Duke University, a young man who has had to watch the travesty suck three of his teammates and friends into North Carolina’s maw of injustice. What he said in the email made my jaw drop, and this is a case which has hardened my jaw line more than any other.

His email said that so far, the estimated cost of defense to the three families is exceeding five million dollars. That is correct. Three families are having to shell out five million dollars in total to deal with the lies perpetuated by the State of North Carolina.

No doubt, many readers will not care at all. Two of the three families are wealthy, and the other is well-off, although the third family is having some difficulty paying the legal bills, from what I hear. I already have heard a number of black commentators and assorted leftists declaring that they see nothing wrong in having to force wealthy whites to pay millions of dollars to protect their sons against wrongful prosecutions....

What Thomas Jefferson learned from the Muslim book of jihad

Democrat Keith Ellison is now officially the first Muslim United States congressman. True to his pledge, he placed his hand on the Quran, the Muslim book of jihad and pledged his allegiance to the United States during his ceremonial swearing-in.

Capitol Hill staff said Ellison's swearing-in photo opportunity drew more media than they had ever seen in the history of the U.S. House. Ellison represents the 5th Congressional District of Minnesota.

The Quran Ellison used was no ordinary book. It once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and one of America 's founding fathers. Ellison borrowed it from the Rare Book Section of the Library of Congress. It was one of the 6,500 Jefferson books archived in the library.

Ellison, who was born in Detroit and converted to Islam while in college, said he chose to use Jefferson's Quran because it showed that "a visionary like Jefferson " believed that wisdom could be gleaned from many sources.

There is no doubt Ellison was right about Jefferson believing wisdom could be "gleaned" from the Muslim Quran. At the time Jefferson owned the book, he needed to know everything possible about Muslims because he was about to advocate war against the Islamic "Barbary" states of Morocco , Algeria , Tunisia and Tripoli .

Ellison's use of Jefferson's Quran as a prop illuminates a subject once well-known in the history of the United States, but, which today, is mostly forgotten - the Muslim pirate slavers who over many centuries enslaved millions of Africans and tens of thousands of Christian Europeans and Americans in the Islami c "Barbary" states.

Over the course of 10 centuries, Muslim pirates cruised the African and Mediterranean coastline, pillaging villages and seizing slaves.

The taking of slaves in pre-dawn raids on unsuspecting coastal villages had a high casualty rate. It was typical of Muslim raiders to kill off as many of the "non-Muslim" older men and women as possible so the preferred "booty" of only young women and children could be collected.

Young non-Muslim women were targeted because of their value as concubines in Islamic markets. Islamic law provides for the sexual interests of Muslim men by allowing them to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as their fortunes allow.

Boys, as young as 9 or 10 years old, were often mutilated to create eunuchs who would bring higher prices in the slave markets of the Middle East . Muslim slave traders created "eunuch stations" along major African slave routes so the necessary surgery could be performed. It was estimated that only a small number of the boys subjected to the mutilation survived after the surgery.

When American colonists rebelled against British rule in 1776, American merchant ships lost Royal Navy protection. With no American Navy for protection, American ships were attacked and their Christian crews enslaved by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the "Dey of Algiers "--an Islamist warlord ruling Algeria

Because American commerce in the Mediterranean was being destroyed by the pirates, the Continental Congress agreed in 1784 to negotiate treaties with the four Barbary States . Congress appointed a special commission consisting of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, to oversee the negotiations.

Lacking the ability to protect its merchant ships in the Mediterranean, the new America government tried to appease the Muslim slavers by agreeing to pay tribute and ransoms in order to retrieve seized American ships and buy the freedom of enslaved sailors.

Adams argued in favor of paying tribute as the cheapest way to get American commerce in the Mediterranean moving again. Jefferson was opposed. He believed there would be no end to the demands for tribute and wanted matters settled "through the medium of war." He proposed a league of trading nations to force an end to Muslim piracy.

In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and Adams, then the American ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the "Dey of Algiers" ambassador to Britain.

The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress' vote to appease.

During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the Dey's ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America , a nation with which they had no previous contacts.

In a later meeting with the American Congress, the two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja h ad answered that Islam "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."

For the following 15 years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800.

Not long after Jefferson's inauguration as president in 1801, he dispatched a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean , and informed Congress.

Declaring that America was going to spend "millions for defense but not one cent for tribute," Jefferson pressed the issue by deploying American Marines and many of America 's best warships to the Muslim Barbary Coast

The USS Constitution, USS Constellation, USS Philadelphia, USS Chesapeake, USS Argus, USS Syren and USS Intrepid all saw action.

In 1805, American Marines marched across the dessert from Egypt into Tripolitania, forcing the surrender of Tripoli and the freeing of all American slaves.

During the Jefferson administration, the Muslim Barbary States , crumbling as a result of intense American naval bombardment and on shore raids by Marines, finally officially agreed to abandon slavery and piracy.

Jefferson's victory over the Muslims lives on today in the Marine Hymn, with the line, "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli , we will fight our country's battles on the land as on the sea."

It wasn't until 1815 that the problem was fully settled by the total defeat of all the Muslim slave trading pirates.

Jefferson had been right. The "medium of war" was the only way to put and end to the Muslim problem. Mr. Ellison was right about Jefferson . He was a "visionary" wise enough to read and learn about the enemy from their own Muslim book of jihad.

The Mechanics of How the Dollar Became the World's Reserve Currency

During WWII, I guess around the time of the Bretton Woods agreement, the US government decided to make the US Dollar the reserve currency of the world. The Treasury or Fed shipped out two types of huge boxes the size of refrigerators, Federal Reserve Boxes and Wells Fargo Boxes. Their destination were the governments/central banks of post war nations. The former were full of Federal Reserve notes and the latter were full of Federal Reserve notes, gold, and diamonds. These Federal Reserve notes were printed in exceptionally large denominations. The purpose of these contents was to serve as bank reserves for the world financial system after the war. They were never meant for general circulation.

Some boxes were lost because planes crashed in the mountains, ships sank at sea, or were captured. Several of these have been found over the years, some legitimate and many fake. People have tried to cash these in, mostly unsuccessfully.

Supposedly the Federal Reserve has seven men who are assigned the task of dealing with these as they come to light. Redeeming them is a complicated process. You cannot just fly these into America on a commercial plane or they will be seized. They have to be brought into the US via private aircraft.

If redeemed, they are currently being redeemed for 2% of face value, it used to be higher, 10%! But this still results in a huge amount of Federal Reserve Notes, a few billion worth. And they won't just hand you the cash, they will fund a charity.

The reason why the government does not just ignore the whole issue is because of embarrassment. They are embarrassed that these boxes are out there and still circulating and getting attention. I guess payments are hush money!

The problem with such treasure hunts, even if people find the high value notes, is that they rely on the U.S. Treasury or Federal Reserve to pay up at the end. Not a likely scenario. They are worth the same as all other Federal Reserve Notes in the end... worthless paper, zero.

The Silliness of the Iraq Study Group

In going through the Iraq Study Group Report, recommendation number 19 is pretty silly...something that a high school student might come up with for a current events report.

To have learned men suggest that the President and National Security team stay in close and frequent contact with the Iraqi leadership is amazingly simplistic.

Of course that is being done currently.

To make this a serious and grave recommendation is just silly.

More Prisons....

During Robert Gates' testimony for Defense Secretary this week, Senator Sessions of Alabama asked about the need for more prisons in Iraq.

Now isn't that just typical of the federal government to broach the subject of a prison building scheme?

They truly want to turn Iraq into another America...a land of prisons.

The White House Can’t Put Out the Mideast Fires It Ignited

"Remember when narrow-minded Republican know-nothings launched a hate campaign against French President Jacques Chirac and everything French because Paris would not go along with George Bush’s jolly little war in Iraq?

Well, it turns out that Chirac’s warnings in 2003 that a US invasion of Iraq would set the Mideast on fire, encourage terrorism, and produce a disaster have been tragically born out by events.

Iraq is falling ever deeper into chaos and sectarian conflict. Outgoing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan calls it “worse than a civil war.” Lebanon is teetering on the brink of civil war. The agonies of Palestine – now the world’s largest outdoor prison – continue without relent. Iran’s power and influence are surging, scaring the daylights out of Washington’s Sunni clients in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Gulf.

For the latter, thank George Bush. He overthrew two of Iran’s bitterest enemies, Taliban and Saddam Hussein, then stuck US ground forces in the $250 million per day Iraq quagmire that is now estimated to cost at least $1 trillion before the United States admits defeat and pulls out."

Click here for the rest of the article.

Ron Paul Interview

Congressman Ron Paul of Texas was recently interviewed by Al Korelin.

Ron Paul sits on the Banking Committee in The House of Representatives. He makes an interesting comment. Members of the committee actually believe that the US Dollar is backed by gold. This is incredibly naive thinking.

The dollar has not been attached to gold since Nixon closed the gold window in the early seventies...and even then it was only superficially associated with gold.

Here is a link to the interview with Ron Paul.

The Future

"The image of the future of this country is in the books, in the great prophecies of the twentieth century, that did not come from our pseudo-Christian leaders but came from the pen of Orwell and Huxley, and came from the filmic talent of Ridley Scott in "Bladerunner," that is the future. It is the totalitarian future, it is a future that works, it is a future that is efficient, it is a future in finally which our welfare, health and education problems will be solved, not by persuasion but by that gentle tyranny that is provided today to the one-child policy in China which Planned Parenthood supports, in which women are forced to abort the unwanted, the unwanted children which they themselves wish to bear. That is the future.

The future, the future of this country, is a geneticists, is a geneticists plaything, and is a nightmare to those who have any conception however vague or remote, however vague and distant, of ideas which once rang in our republic, of freedom, and dignity, and equal rights before the law; due process, and representation before the court system." -Frank Schaeffer, 1992

Today in History

"On this day in 1777 the Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation after 16 months of debate. Although much maligned by modern historians, the Articles were in many ways
superior to the constitution that succeeded them. They certainly did a better job of preserving the rights and sovereignty of the states, but the economic stagnation spawned by the states' issuing paper monies, and the tariffs they wanted to impose on intrastate commerce, stalled American development & prosperity." -Franklin Sanders

The Elections of 2006

I am delighted that the Republicans have finally lost power. I am however, very saddened that the Democrats have won control of Congress.

The Republicans have been an embarrassment to this nation and the world. They have spent this country deeply into debt. They have not been a check on President Bush who is a dictator and a scofflaw. Republicans have greatly increased the size, power, and scope of the federal government.

They were elected in 1994 to reduce the size of government. They have not done so. Shame on the Republicans.

The Democrats will be no better. They will continue to promote envy and coveteousness. They will steal from one class of people and redistribute it, first to themselves and finally to their constituencies.

Both political parties in this country are corrupt. Unfortunately they merely reflect the values of the people of this country who are just as corrupt and immoral.

A Point to Ponder

Attorney General Gonzales is quoted on the website of the Whitehouse, regarding the Military Commissions Act of 2006, as saying, "I want to make one thing clear: The Military Commissions Act does not apply to American citizens. The military commissions established under the Act may try only alien unlawful enemy combatants, and the new law does not restrict the rights of United States citizens to file writs of habeas corpus in federal court."

In 1978 the Temporary Emergency Court of Appeals proclaimed that they could "find no basis in constitutional history, judicial interpretation, political history, legal scholarship, or persuasive argument to conclude that...a right ['to trust the federal government and to rely on the integrity of its pronouncements'] exists under...any...provision of the Constitution". Mapco Inc. v. Carter, 573 F.2d 1268, 1278 (Temporary Emergency Ct. App.)

So in light of the ruling, quoted above, by the Temporary Emergency Court of Appeals (which has never been overturned by the US Supreme Court), why should I believe Mr. Gonzales' statement that I have not lost my right to Habeas Corpus in the federal courts?

The War in Iraq

Here is my prediction on the outcome of the war in Iraq.

The United States Government will spend itself further into debt in its efforts to stabilize Iraq.

In time, Congress and the American people will realize the futility of fighting this war and pull out.

Within five years or less after American troops leave, a dictator as bad or worse than Sadam Hussein will rise to power. US efforts will have been in vain.

The Totalitarian State is Here to Stay

Congratulations!

Yesterday in history, 17 October 2006, y'all lost your ancient right to habeas corpus. Your government can now detain you indefinitely, without cause or charge, and, as an extra bonus, your government can now torture you as a prisoner, legally.

You now live in certified totalitarian tyranny.

Don't be caught clapping too softly for Comrade Stalin.

For more information, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igycXBseoAg&eurl.

The Ring of Power

I have been recently rereading Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. The following passage in Fellowship of the Ring got me thinking:

"We of Minas Tirith have been staunch through long years of trial. We do not desire the power of wizard-lords, only strength to defend ourselves, strength in a just cause. And behold! in our need chance brings to light the Ring of Power. It is a gift, I say; a gift to the foes of Mordor. It is mad not to use it, to use the power of the Enemy against him. The fearless, the ruthless, these alone will achieve victory. What could not a warrior do in this hour, a great leader? What could not Aragorn do? Or if he refuses, why not Boromir? The Ring would give me power of Command. How I would drive the hosts of Mordor, and all men would flock to my banner!"

Like Boromir's desire for the Ring of Power, Christians have desired positions of power and influence in our Federal government. This caused me to think, what if Christians suddenly found themselves in positions of power tomorrow? What mess would we then have on our hands?


Far too many Christians on the right have desired their own precious: the power of big government. They see the good that they could do with the power if they had it. I have no doubt that Christians could and would do a lot of good. Many bad bills would be vetoed and maybe even some good legislation passed.

But like the Ring of Power that did so much evil in Middle Earth and yet was so terribly difficult for Isildur and Frodo to destroy, the power of the Federal government that has done so much evil in our own country and the world would be very difficult to destroy. It would be so difficult because so much good could be done with that power.

The Federal government ought to be completely dissolved and all power returned to the States and to the People.

Congressman Ron Paul has recently said, "The notion that an all-powerful, centralized state should provide monolithic solutions to the ethical dilemmas of our times is not only misguided, but also contrary to our Constitution. Remember, federalism was established to allow decentralized, local decision-making by states. Today, however, we seek a federal solution for every perceived societal ill, ignoring constitutional limits on federal power. The result is a federal state that increasingly makes all-or-nothing decisions that alienate large segments of the population."

So far the record of Christians in power is not a good one.

Look at John Ashcroft. For four years he served as President Bush II's Attorney General. He had the authority and the power to greatly reign in the power and tyranny of the United States Department of Justice. Rather than honestly review every law and statute for their constitutionality, Ashcroft and his US Attorneys went on a fishing expedition. They have used their power to go on a search and destroy mission for every violation, real or imagined, of federal law that they could find.Furthermore under Ashcroft, The Patriot Act was hurriedly pushed through Congress in the name of fighting terrorism. This evil legislation has given even more power to the Federal government's jackbooted thugs in their war on the liberties of the American people.

Ashcroft did at least two things wrong. First, John Ashcroft often used the courts to his political advantage to advance the power of the federal government. Second, there is no right for Federal judges to hear questions regarding abortion (and a host of other issues). Ashcroft tacitly agreed with the enemies of liberty and life that the courts did have jurisdiction in areas like abortion. He did so by not standing up to the Federal Courts and prosecuting judges that usurped their constitutional powers.

I think a Christian in the position of Attorney General could have done much to advance the cause of liberty. A Christian could have done an honest review of the laws and statutes and refused to enforce unconstitutional laws. And a Christian would be well within his rights and duties to do so. "An unconstitutional act is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; it affords no protection; it creates no office; it is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed." Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425, 442 (1886).

I am all for Christian involvement in politics. But the power to do good can often be used for destructive purposes later. The power of the Federal government, like the Ring of Power, is a power that nobody can wield rightly. This leads me to conclude that if Christians were to obtain power tomorrow, they would be twice the sons of hell that the pagans (who currently run the political system) are today.

Dictatorship Is Here

"BURIED IN THE complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights," write Bruce Ackerman. BRUCE ACKERMAN is a professor of law and political science at Yale and author of "Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism." Published September 28, 2006 at the Los
Angeles Times website.

America: Freedom to Fascism

I highly recommend the movie America: Freedom to Fascism. You may find more information at the following website: America: Freedom to Fascism

Apparently, there is no law that requires an individual to file an income tax return. Unfortunately most people don't know this and the IRS makes sure that you won't know this.

Aaron Russo exposes the lies, fraud, and deceit of the IRS and the US government. There are some funny episodes as Aaron Russo tries to track down answers to his very simple questions.

An Excellent Observation

"The fiscal conservatives are enraged at six years of the President’s financial recklessness. The nationalists are incensed, betrayed by the President’s lack of concern over border security. The Religious Right has begun to wonder what Jesus would do, and find that His righteous anger is directed not at Muslims or terrorists, but at a faithless flock that built idols of war and created their own Caesar." -Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. For the full article go to: Cutouts
and Paper Tigers, and What To Do With Them

On Secession

It is high time that serious thought and action be given to secession.

Americans no longer share common values, goals, and religious faith. It does not make sense to stay together as a nation.

This division has become quite apparent with the division of the country into blue and red states. Both divisions really don't like each other.

So I propose that the national government be dissolved and the states allowed to reclaim their sovereignty.

On Liberty

Americans for the most part LOVE the current system. So long as they have access to easy credit, keep the credit card payments up to date, abort their children, keep the bribes (taxes) to the US Treasury paid up, keep fuel in their fancy cars, and stay off the radar screen of the US Attorney's Office, absolutely NOTHING is going to change.

And why should there be any change? Our social engineering program "works" because it is tied to the free market and gives the illusion of prosperity.

Change won't happen until the whole house of cards comes crashing down. So I say let it come crashing down.

I don't want to save or reform the current system. It needs to be trashed thoroughly.

The final nail in the coffin of the US Constitution was hammered in with the defeat of the South in 1865. I don't think that the American people could live under such a system of freedom as the US Constitution affords them. It requires too much responsibility and character to maintain those freedoms.

Rebellion to Law

There is a fundamental rebellion to law in our culture. The old republic fell apart in 1865 because of rebellion to law. A new nation was founded on the ash heap of that war, but it was founded on rebellion to law and today we are seeing the whole culture being pulled apart by rebelling to law yet again.