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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fOaCemmsnNk
By: Andrew P. Napolitano
Date: 2012-01-11
The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fOaCemmsnNk
By: Andrew P. Napolitano
Date: 2012-01-11
What
if Democrats and Republicans were two wings of the same bird of prey?
What if elections were actually useful tools of social control? What if
they just provided the populace with meaningless participation in a
process that validates an establishment that never meaningfully changes?
What if that establishment doesn’t want and doesn’t have the consent of the governed? What if the two-party system were actually a mechanism used to limit so-called public opinion? What if there were more than two sides to every issue, but the two parties wanted to box you in to one of their corners? What if there’s no such thing as public opinion, because every thinking person has opinions that are uniquely his own? What if public opinion were just a manufactured narrative that makes it easier to convince people that if their views are different, there’s something wrong with that – or something wrong with them?
What if the whole purpose of the Democratic and Republican parties was not to expand voters’ choices, but to limit them? What if the widely perceived differences between the two parties were just an illusion? What if the heart of government policy remains the same, no matter who’s in the White House? What if the heart of government policy remains the same, no matter what the people want? What if both parties just want power and are willing to have young people fight meaningless wars to enhance that power?
What if that establishment doesn’t want and doesn’t have the consent of the governed? What if the two-party system were actually a mechanism used to limit so-called public opinion? What if there were more than two sides to every issue, but the two parties wanted to box you in to one of their corners? What if there’s no such thing as public opinion, because every thinking person has opinions that are uniquely his own? What if public opinion were just a manufactured narrative that makes it easier to convince people that if their views are different, there’s something wrong with that – or something wrong with them?
What if the whole purpose of the Democratic and Republican parties was not to expand voters’ choices, but to limit them? What if the widely perceived differences between the two parties were just an illusion? What if the heart of government policy remains the same, no matter who’s in the White House? What if the heart of government policy remains the same, no matter what the people want? What if both parties just want power and are willing to have young people fight meaningless wars to enhance that power?
Note:
The speaker on this Fox news clip, Andrew P. Napolitano, is a former
judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey. His most recent book is It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/12/01/can-congress-steal-your-constitutional-freedoms/
By: Andrew P. Napolitano
Date: 2011-12-01
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/12/01/can-congress-steal-your-constitutional-freedoms/
Can Congress Steal Your Constitutional Freedoms?
By: Andrew P. Napolitano
Date: 2011-12-01
Can the president use the military to arrest
anyone he wants, keep that person away from a judge and jury, and lock
him up for as long as he wants? In the Senate’s dark and terrifying
vision of the Constitution, he can.
Congress is supposed to work in public. That requirement is in the Constitution. It is there because the folks who wrote the Constitution had suffered long and hard under the British Privy Council, a secret group that advised the king and ran his government.
Congress is supposed to work in public. That requirement is in the Constitution. It is there because the folks who wrote the Constitution had suffered long and hard under the British Privy Council, a secret group that advised the king and ran his government.
We know from the now-defunct Super
Committee, and other times when Congress has locked its doors, that
government loves secrecy and hates transparency. Transparency forces the
government to answer to us. Secrecy lets it steal our liberty and our
property behind our backs.
Last week, while our minds were on family and turkey and football, the Senate Armed Services Committee decided to meet in secret. So, behind closed doors, it drafted an amendment to a bill appropriating money for the Pentagon. The amendment would permit the president to use the military for law enforcement purposes in the United States. This, of course, would present a radical departure from any use to which the military has been put in the memory of any Americans now living.
The last time the federal government regularly used the military for domestic law enforcement was at the end of Reconstruction in the South, in 1876. In fact, the deal to end Reconstruction resulted in the enactment of federal laws forbidding the domestic use of American military for law enforcement purposes. This has been our law, our custom and our set of values to which every president has adhered for 135 years.
It is not for directing traffic that this legislation would authorize the president to use the military. Essentially, this legislation would enable the president to divert from the criminal justice system, and thus to divert from the protections of the Constitution, any person he pleases. And that person, under this terrifying bill, would have no recourse to a judge to require the president either to file charges against him or to set him free.
Can you imagine an America in which you could lose all liberty -- from the presumption of innocence to the right to counsel to fairness from the government to a jury trial -- simply because the president says you are dangerous?
Nothing terrified or animated the Founders more than that. The Founders, who wrote the Constitution, had just won a war against a king who had less power than this legislation will give to the president. But to protect their freedoms, they wrote in the Constitution the now iconic guarantee of due process.
Last week, while our minds were on family and turkey and football, the Senate Armed Services Committee decided to meet in secret. So, behind closed doors, it drafted an amendment to a bill appropriating money for the Pentagon. The amendment would permit the president to use the military for law enforcement purposes in the United States. This, of course, would present a radical departure from any use to which the military has been put in the memory of any Americans now living.
The last time the federal government regularly used the military for domestic law enforcement was at the end of Reconstruction in the South, in 1876. In fact, the deal to end Reconstruction resulted in the enactment of federal laws forbidding the domestic use of American military for law enforcement purposes. This has been our law, our custom and our set of values to which every president has adhered for 135 years.
It is not for directing traffic that this legislation would authorize the president to use the military. Essentially, this legislation would enable the president to divert from the criminal justice system, and thus to divert from the protections of the Constitution, any person he pleases. And that person, under this terrifying bill, would have no recourse to a judge to require the president either to file charges against him or to set him free.
Can you imagine an America in which you could lose all liberty -- from the presumption of innocence to the right to counsel to fairness from the government to a jury trial -- simply because the president says you are dangerous?
Nothing terrified or animated the Founders more than that. The Founders, who wrote the Constitution, had just won a war against a king who had less power than this legislation will give to the president. But to protect their freedoms, they wrote in the Constitution the now iconic guarantee of due process.
The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution
says, “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law.” Note, the Founders used the word “person.”
Thus, the requirement of due process must be accorded to all human
beings held by the government -- not just Americans, not just nice
people, but all persons.
When Lincoln tried to deny this during the Civil War, the Supreme Court
rejected him and held that the Constitution guarantees its protections
to everyone that the government restrains, no matter the crime, no
matter the charge, no matter the evidence, no matter the danger.
If this legislation becomes law, it will be dangerous for anyone to be right when the government is wrong. It will be dangerous for all of us. Just consider what any president could get away with. Who would he make disappear first? Might it be his political opponents? Might it be you?
If this legislation becomes law, it will be dangerous for anyone to be right when the government is wrong. It will be dangerous for all of us. Just consider what any president could get away with. Who would he make disappear first? Might it be his political opponents? Might it be you?
Andrew P. Napolitano, is a former judge
of the Superior Court of New Jersey. He is the senior judicial analyst
for Fox News Channel and anchor of "FreedomWatch" which airs weeknights at 8 and 11 p.m. ET on Fox Business Network. His most recent book is "It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom."
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The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
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