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Jeffrey Tucker at The Daily Reckoning wonders about all those Presidential Executive Orders that make Law while by-passing the Congressional process and making mockery of the USA Constitution.  He ends up referencing the great libertarian, Frederick Bastiat's seminal work, The Law - written in 1849.    
excerpt: One party gets annoyed when the other party's president enacts laws without regard to any constitutional conventions.
But what is the law, and what should it be? These are the bigger questions that are not part of public consciousness.
The same was true in the time of Frédéric Bastiat (1801-50). At the very end of his life, he wrote an impassioned plea on the topic. He tried to get people to think hard about what was happening and how law had become an instrument of plunder, rather than a protector of property.
He writes:
...... "It is not true that the function of law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our wills, our education, our opinions, our work, our trade, our talents or our pleasures. The function of law is to protect the free exercise of these rights, and to prevent any person from interfering with the free exercise of these same rights by any other person." .......
This is from Bastiat's The Law, one of the great political essays to emerge from the whole Continental world of the 19th century. It vanished into obscurity in France, was resurrected in late 19th century English, and then disappeared again, only to reappear in the United States in the 1950s, thanks to the efforts of the Foundation of Economic Education.
This essay asks fundamental questions that most people go through life never having thought about.
The problem is that most people accept the law as a given, a fundamental fact. As a member of society, you obey or face the consequences. It is not safe to question why. This is because the enforcement arm of the law is the state, that peculiar agency with a unique power in society to

"'Failing Expectations: Fourth Amendment Doctrine in the Era of Total Surveillance' is a thought-provoking essay written by a Fordham University law professor about how the reasonable expectation test for privacy is failing to protect us. Add into our networked world the third-party doctrine and we have little protection against unreasonable searches and seizures."

It doesn't detract substantially from the essay's central thesis, but an important part of the learned professor's heartfelt desires were delivered in a Supreme Court decision just decided, after the essay was published, Reilly v. California, http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-132_8l9c.pdf The Court held in relevant part: "We also reject the United States' final suggestion that officers should always be able to search a phone's call log, as they did in Wurie's case. The Government relies on Smithv. Maryland, 442 U. S. 735 (1979), which held that no warrant was required to use a pen register at telephone company premises to identify numbers dialed by a particular caller. The Court in that case, however, concluded that the use of a pen register was not a "search" at all under the Fourth Amendment. See id., at 745-746. There is no dispute here that the officers engaged in a search of Wurie's cell phone. Moreover, call logs typically contain more than just phone numbers; they include any identifying information that an individual might add, such as the label "my house" in Wurie's case." The effect there was to confine Smith v. Maryland, the foundation of the third-party doctrine, to its particular facts. In other words, the third-party doctrine is now confined to connected telephone numbers, the connect time, and the duration of the call. If any other metadata is gathered, such as location data, the third-party doctrine no longer applies. When you read the rest of the Reilly decision, you see a unanimous Supreme Court shooting down one government defense after another that have been used in the NSA's defense to mass telecommunications surveillance. But most interestingly, the Court unmistakably has laid the groundwork for a later decision drastically cutting back on digital surveillance without a search warrant based on particularized probable cause to believe that evidence of a specific crime has occurred and that the requested sear

Heritage Foundation white paper: Forward: The commemoration of the bicentennial of the United States Constitution should be an occasion of festivity tempered by solemn gratitude for the gift our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us. But if the Constitution is to survive as something more than an abstract symbol - a parchment counterpart of the Statue of Liberty - the celebration must also be the occasion for broadened public awareness of the principles of constitutional government. For the anniversary comes at a time of grave crisis in our constitutional history. The federal judiciary, originally designed as part of a carefully balanced mechanism in which it shared guardianship of the Constitution with the executive, the two houses of Congress, and the state governments, has gradually taken sole custody unto itself, proclaiming that its decisions and not the Constitution are the supreme law of the land. What is even more dangerous, the Supreme Court has, during the last two or three decades, become progressively more blatant in disregarding the Constitution and arriving at decisions on the basis of the justices' ideological predilections in regard to "social progress" and "human dignity." These usurpations are compatible neither with the idea of constitutional government nor with the ideal of a government of laws. All the essays in this volume are, in one way or another, addressed to this problem, its ramifications, and its implications. They are the product of long, deep, and careful research and reflection; but, though they are appropriately cast in the muted tones of scholarship, collectively they sound an alarm bell in the night. Every thinking and public-spirited American can learn from their message. For two centuries the Constitution has provided the American people with a framework of limited government, designed for liberty. It is up to us to preserve that framework for our posterity, even as the Founders created it for theirs. Next year we will celebr

I caught Paul McGuire's recent essay, "ObamaCare and the Mark of the Beast". It is making the rounds within the Tea Party movement. Stunning stuff. Paul identifies a passage in the ObamaCare tax bill authorizing the forced embedding of microchip devices, likely an RFiD, that will track ALL Americans: section titled: Subtitle C-11 Sec. 2521 - National Medical Device Registry which states: "The Secretary shall establish a national medical device registry (in this subsection referred to as the 'registry') to facilitate analysis of postmarket safety and outcomes data on each device that-''(A) is or has been used in or on a patient; and ''(B) is a class III device; or ''(ii) a class II device that is implantable." The essay was written really well. So i visited Paul McGuire's website and found the motherload of documentation and comment describing the collision between biblical prophecy and current events. "The Mark of the Beast" is just the tip of the iceberg. Good stuff. Frightening conclusions.

"Free Google Book Search (360 B.C.) The Republic - Plato (46 B.C.) Cicero's Brutus - Cicero   (1517) Discourses on Livy - Machiavelli (1553) The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude - Étienne de La Boétie (1690) Two Treatises of Government - John Locke   (1698) Discourses Concerning Government - Algernon Sydney Sidney's Discourses and Locke's Second Treatise were recommended by Jefferson and Madison as containing the "general principles of liberty and the rights of man, in nature and society" (1748) The Spirit of Laws  - Montesquieu (1748) The Principles of Natural and Politic Law - Burlamaqui   (1755) Old Family Letters - John Adams (1758) The Law of Nations- Vattel   (1764-1769) The Writings of Samuel Adams (1765-1769) Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1766) The Declaratory Act (1770) The Writings of John Adams V1-2              The Writings of John Adams V3-4              The Writings of John Adams V5-7              The Writings of John Adams V8-10   (1771-1788) The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1772) The Votes and Proceedings of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants (1774) A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress - Hamilton (1774) Novanglus - John Adams Principle Controversy between Great Britain and Her Colonies (1776) Common Sense- Thomas Paine One Incident which gave a stimulus to the pamphlet Common Sense was, that it happened to appear on the very day that the King of England's speech reached the United States, in which the Americans were denounced as rebels and traitors, and in which speech it was asserted to be the right of the legislature of England to bind the Colonies in all cases whatsoever. (1776-1783) The Crisis- Thomas Paine (1780) Journal of the Convention for Framing the Massachusetts Bay Constitution (1785) Remarks concerning the Government and Laws of the United States of America: in Four Letters addressed to Mr. Adams (1787) The Anti-Federalist (audio) (1787) The Federalist

Ray McGovern, of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) fame, administers some serious whup-ass on editors of The Washington Post for its editorial reviving neocon ambition for the U.S. to go to war against Syria, as in American boots on the ground and handing over air-to-ground missiles to the Jihadi-dominated Opposition. As though the U.S. were not already heavily involved in a war-by-proxies against Syria. McGovern dumps gallons of cold water on wild new claims that the Assad government waged chemical warfare in mid-April. Then he bluntly confronts the neocon nature of the Post editorial, which by the way can be found at http://goo.gl/DNg7BL This is McGovern at his finest, a well-written essay that goes right to the heart of the matter, usefully defining a "neocon" as "one who has difficulty distinguishing between the national interests of Israel, on the one hand, and those of the United States, on the other." For as he explains, it is in the psychotic Israeli government's interest, not in the U.S. interest, to prolong the violence in Syria, but sadly the U.S. State Department, and now The Washington Post, are dominated by neocons. All in all, a truly inspired essay by a Citizen who dares to tell the crowd that the Emperor wears no clothes.  Buck naked, caught in the act. A must-read.    

Eloquent essay on the 60 Israeli "students" swept up by the FBI right after 9/11 then as swiftly shuttled onto airliners bound for Israel. It's a plea for the declassification of the 28 pages censored from the public version of the Congressional Intelligence Committees joint report on "Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001." The essay's theme is wrapped around the preface to the censored pages mention of plural "sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers[.]" And it uses reported information about the  60 "students" and some statements by members of Congress who have read the 28 pages to argue there is a strong whiff that Israel was one of those plural sources of support. But the essay otherwise does not address the large mound of circumstantial evidence of Israel's involvement. I've got a lot of notes and links on that issue, so may blog about that later.

Excellent essay that laces together the history of the security state and national "defense."

Ed Snowden's father delivers a powerful essay on what happened to his son. It's a must-read

Jaw dropping libertarian analysis.  Hoppe argues that democracy, or more correctly called "mobocracy" results in "The Competition of Crooks".  Fascinating stuff.  I've highlighted some of the more resounding libertarian bites. excerpt: "Are taxes nothing but protection money? The state a kind of mafia? Democracy a fraud? Philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe is not only considered one of the most prominent pioneering intellectuals of the libertarian movement, but also perhaps the sharpest critic of the Western political system. Professor Hoppe: In your essay collection 'Der Wettbewerb der Gauner' ('The Competition of Crooks') you write that '99 percent of citizens, asked if the state was necessary, would answer yes.' Me too! Why am I wrong?"

""It is manifest, therefore, that the jury must judge of and try the whole case, and every part and parcel of the case, free of any dictation or authority on the part of the government. They must judge of the existence of the law; of the true exposition of the law; of the justice of the law; and of the admissibility and weight of all the evidence offered; otherwise the government will have everything its own way; the jury will be mere puppets in the hands of the government; and the trial will be, in reality, a trial by the government, and not a "trial by the country." By such trials the government will determine its own powers over the people, instead of the people's determining their own liberties against the government; and it will be an entire delusion to talk, as for centuries we have done, of the trial by jury, as a "palladium of liberty," or as any protection to the people against the oppression and tyranny of the government." Lysander Spooner, Essay on the Trial By Jury, 1852"

Breezy but very enlightening libertarian discussion about money, how it came to be and where it's going.  Excellent writing and research from the Casey Group - as usual. excerpt: The study of money is an ancient affair. Aristotle discusses it extensively, and the Books of Wisdom are filled with proverbial counsel on the matter. People spend time and effort accumulating money in hopes of establishing conditions for a better future. Because humans can paradoxically harbor laziness and ambition in their heart at the same time, they have reached two irrefutable and rather obvious conclusions about money: they would rather have more than less, and they would rather have it sooner than later. Because of these observations, humans go about three tasks: obtaining money, protecting money, and growing money. Before seeking to achieve those three objectives, it is important to define money. It is impossible to consistently do all three tasks if one does not understand the nature of money. An academic definition that sounds reasonable is that money is an agreed-upon medium of exchange that overcomes the limitations of barter and coincidence of wants. For money to be useful, it must be widely recognized and accepted by various market participants. Wide acceptance is among the most considered and sought characteristics of money, a trait known as liquidity. Until recently, money was either established by market discovery or by decree. The Laws of the Network have introduced a third mechanism, money established by network consensus. Honest Weights and Measures Gold has served as money since the beginning of recorded human history. Desired for its beauty and scarcity, gold is easy to divide and difficult to counterfeit. While many other commodities including tobacco, salt, pepper, and even sea shells have been used for settling accounts, natural discovery and social interaction have repeatedly established gold as a medium of choice, leading to the phrases "good as gold" and "the

Is the Constitution the Law of the Land? excerpt: "Article VI, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, known as the Supremacy Clause, establishes the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes, and U.S. Treaties as "the supreme law of the land." The text provides that these are the highest form of law in the U.S. legal system, and mandates that all state judges must follow federal law when a conflict arises between federal law and either the state constitution or state law of any state. The "supremacy clause" is the most important guarantor of national union. It assures that the Constitution and federal laws and treaties take precedence over state law and binds all judges to adhere to that principle in their courts. - United States Senate[1] The Supremacy Clause only applies if Congress is acting in pursuit of its constitutionally authorized powers. Federal laws are valid and are supreme, so long as those laws were adopted in pursuance of-that is, consistent with-the Constitution. Nullification is the legal theory that states have the right to nullify, or invalidate, federal laws which they view as being unconstitutional; or federal laws that they view as having exceeded Congresses' constitutionally authorized powers. The Supreme Court has rejected nullification, finding that under Article III of the Constitution, the power to declare federal laws unconstitutional has been delegated to the federal courts and that states do not have the authority to nullify federal law.[2]" quote: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.  Article II

"If Hillary Clinton becomes the President of the United States, then liberal billionaire George Soros becomes the most powerful person on the planet.  EARLIER TODAY, DML POSTED A VIDEO OF SOROS STATING HE WANTS ONE-WORLD-GOVERNANCE (SEE IT WITH YOUR OWN EYES BY CLICKING HERE). That said, WikiLeaks has unleashed another flood of emails showing Soros was the VIP to be pleased by all Clinton aides and team members, almost at any cost. A new batch of John Podesta emails show Clinton was advised to do fundraisers and profiting events for one simple reason: to make Soros "happy." Example 1: On Oct. 7, 2014, top aide Huma Abedin wrote an email to campaign manager Robby Mook that Soros is expecting Clinton to appear at a fundraiser for America Votes, a liberal Soros-funded organization. "I would only do this for political reasons (ie to make Soros happy)," Mook replied. Example 2: On Jan. 23, 2011, Soros wrote a specifically scripted email to Clinton regarding a "a serious situation" in Albania, claiming certain actions needed to be done "urgently." He suggested appointing a mediator, Miroslav Lajcak. The next day, Lajcak met Albanian leaders for a mediation effort. Example 3: This one is downright sinister in nature. Hours after Justice Antonin Scalia was reported dead on Feb. 13, 2016, Chris Stone, the president of the Open Society Foundations that Soros funds, cryptically emailed Podesta the following: "Remember our discussion of Wallace Jefferson, [former] Chief Justice in Texas?" Podesta's simple response: "Yup." Other examples of emails show a plethora of Soros' policy beliefs and suggestions being passed on to Clinton and Podesta: An invitation to the screening of a film about climate change at Soros' house in July 2015; a short documentary based on Soros' essays about Ukraine in January 2015; a Soros-authored piece titled "Recapitalize the Banking System" in October 2008; the crisis in Malaysia and TPP. In the en

Thanks to Marbux, i now have some serious libertarian reading to do :) Bastiat, Frédéric, 1801-1850 ..... Wikipedia ..... Essays on Political Economy (English) (as Author) ..... Oeuvres Complètes de Frédéric Bastiat, tome 1 mises en ordre, revues et annotées d'après les manuscrits de l'auteur (French) (as Author) ...... Sophisms of the Protectionists (English) (as Author) ...... What Is Free Trade? - http://goo.gl/BDRfz An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Éconimiques" Designed for the American Reader (English) (as Author)

Ron Paul racks up another near win, as conservative writer Alan Caruba smells the coffee and starts paying attention to the criminal enterprise known as the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel.  It's about time.  But sadly there are too few conservatives paying attention to the money.  Sadly, conservatives choose to wallow in 1980 political issues where conservative social values and national security - military buildup were the concerns of the day. The truth is that it's always the money.  Follow the money!!  And all things will become clear.  Including how to get America back on track. excerpt: Anyone taking notice of Obama's latest budget has to conclude that his mission is to crash the nation's economy and turn America into a Socialist worker's paradise. The only problem is that Socialism has been a dismal failure everywhere it has been tried. One only has to look at the collapse of the Soviet Union for confirmation of that, the Chinese abandonment of Communist economic theory, and Obama's odd notion that a nation can spend itself out of ever-increasing debt. I am not a fan of Paul's isolationism, but he is absolutely right about getting rid of the Federal Reserve. Established in 1913, the same year income taxes were instituted, the Reserve is not part of the federal government. It is, in fact, privately owned by a consortium of banks and that might include foreign banks as well. In a remarkable essay, "10 Things That Every American Should Know About The Federal Reserve" by Michael T. Snyder, it is clear that the Constitution intended to have the U.S. Treasury to be soley responsible to "coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures." Synder points out that the Federal Reserve System (the Fed) is a privately owned banking cartel and one granted the right to create money out of thin air. It is, says Synder "a perpetual debt machine because "whenever more money is created, more debt is creat

Hat tip to marbux for this catch.  Tim Kelly walks us through the increasingly rapid decline of American liberty, and our fall into the clutches of an ever growing police state.  Nicely written.  No solutions given.  I suggest we declare any effort,that violates the Constitutional rights of an American citizen as an act of treason,  especially if committed, unknowingly or knowingly authorized, or voted on by a public servant sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution.   excerpt: The intent of this short essay is not to provide a "list of horribles" committed by the government (although such an accounting is useful) but to point out that the much-feared police state has come into being. Its growth had been gradual, which contributed to the public's indifference, but it metastasized after 9/11, when the remaining legal barriers to the state's expansion were taken down in the name of "national security." A large portion of the public appears to be appropriately alarmed, but it remains to be seen whether this will reach a critical mass in time to reverse the country's destructive course.

Excellent essay by John Marini of the Libertarian Claremont Institute. The "brutal good" of both Batman and Tom Doniphon, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" are once again on display. Awesome stuff! John first discusses Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive movement; emphasising how progressives, and particularly social scientists, dismissed the past as inferior to the glorious future their progressive thinking would usher in. Yeah, "those" progressive's whose legacy might well be the collapse of civilization! "For progressive historians, the past was not intelligible in its own right, but only with reference to the future, that is, to some form of the idea of progress which, although "almost synonymous with life itself," was wholly unknown to past generations. What had seemed to Abraham Lincoln, for example, to be the American Founders' heroic virtues and tragic limitations appeared to the sophisticated historian as mere reflections of outdated attitudes and beliefs-prejudices of a less enlightened time." Then John goes on to contrast the poetry and truth portrayed in the genre of the American Western Movie. He choses John Ford's classic, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" to make his point. And beautifully so. excerpt: "The old West was situated in the Godforsaken wilds of the desert or wilderness, without community, without law, without civilization. It was a place where simple survival was difficult, a place where nature was uncompromising, just as society had been in the places left behind. The West offered the possibility of a new beginning, of re-founding, of establishing governments form reflection and choice, rather than mishaps of birth and tradition. In the West, men seemed to have it in their power to make the world over again, and this made it necessary or possible to think again about the conditions, purposes, and limits of human community. But the western movie showed that even in a new land with a fresh start, the law was not easily

More great charts, this time courtesy of the US Treasury Department. The charts use select areas of measurement to show a slowly improving economy, with the private sector leading the way. What the charts don't show or discuss is that the Obama economy has been assisted by $3 Trillion in Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel "quantitative easing", and the $5 Trillion in debt that Obama spending has racked up. Throw in the secret $16.1 Trillion the Federal Reserve pumped into the international bankster system, and the question becomes, "Where is all this money going? And why isn't the economy jumping?" The numbers are staggering. One chart provided by Treasury shows a successful TARP program where the Banksters have paid back in full the massive bailout funds. One has to wonder though, are they paying back the taxpayer bailout with newly generated profits? Or are they simply using freshly printed Federal Reserve dollars ($19.1 Trillion by the Federal Reserve's count), passed to them at zero interest? The shell game Obama, the ruling establishment, and the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel have been playing may be running out of steam. We're now in the money laundering stage where Banksters and trading partners like China are dumping their digital-ions of dollars for real property, corporate assets and hard currencies. The St Louis branch of the Federal Reserve Cartel says as much in their most recent economic study. From the article: ....... The nation's debt load has grown to the point where the U.S. is now threatened with bankruptcy but the economy is not likely to grow fast enough to reduce the need for additional government borrowing. Empirical studies have shown a strong correlation between high levels of debt and reduced economic growth which results in decreased government revenue as explained below.......... An essay published by the St. Louis Federal Reserve on the Federal debt poised the question, "Too Little Revenue or Too Much Spe

Masterful essay on the politics of fear within the context of U.S. national politics.