JLS
Retired Judges of America Helps Make History!
DeSoto’s district attorney, judges make history today
History was made and remembered today as the first district attorney and first judges to represent the newly created 42nd Judicial District of DeSoto Parish received their formal oaths of office.
District Attorney Richard Z. Johnson Jr. and District Judges Robert E. Burgess and Charles B. Adams [see letter of acknowledgment here] got a head start on their swearing in to get it out of the way of the upcoming holidays. And also because the legislation this year that created the 42nd Judicial District calls for them to begin their terms Jan. 1.
The DeSoto courtroom was full of family, friends, local and visiting elected officials and even three classes of elementary schoolchildren from Pelican All Saints High School.
With the new district came a new tradition for Burgess and Adams. Darrell White, a retired city judge and former military judge for the Louisiana National Guard, presented the judges with a leather Thompson Chain Reference Study Bible. Continue reading
Congress Should Impeach Kozinski!
By Retired Judge Darrell White
It has been reported that Judge Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge of the Ninth Federal Circuit Court of Appeal, posted – on his publicly accessible web site – content that included sexual-fetish videos and bestiality images. Meanwhile, this judge had been presiding over a highly publicized obscenity trial, which was suspended when the prosecutor handling the case detected a potential conflict of interest for a judge with a sexually explicit website to hear this case. When confronted by the media, Kozinski said that the photos were for his private use and he was unaware the content could be viewed by the general public. Apparently unrepentant, Kozinski explained, “It’s part of life.” California U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein has remarked, “If this is true, this is unacceptable for a federal court judge.”
Celebrate Law Day with Retired Judges of America!
It was in 1906 that America’s 45th Supreme Court Justice – John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911) – donated a Bible to the Supreme Court of the United States, and its flyleaf pages have been signed by every justice without fail since that date. Retired Judges of America (RJA) has begun replicating that venerable tradition by donating signatory presentation Bibles to courts throughout our nation. Each of the Bibles dedicated by RJA contain the gold-imprinted date on the cover of May 1st.
Why is that? Because since 1958, May 1st has been set aside as “Law Day” – a special day of celebration by Americans to appreciate our liberties and reaffirm our loyalty to the United States. By statute (36 U.S. Code Section 113), it is set aside to cultivate respect for law.
On May 1st of 2008, America will celebrate the 50th anniversary of “Law Day” with the following theme: The Rule of Law: Foundation for Communities of Opportunity and Equity.
What better way to celebrate Law Day this year than to give your local court a presentation Bible so that its judges now and in perpetuity may 
have a tangible reminder that, as Justice Story wrote in 1833 (the same year Harlan was born) that: “I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil society. One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law. . . . There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying its foundations.”
‘Harlan’ Bibles to create new tradition in local courts
By Tom Bonnette
tbonnette@thetowntalk.com
(318) 487-6340
PINEVILLE — Local judges Tuesday signed their “John Hancocks” at a Pineville Kiwanis Club meeting in replicas of the Bible that holds the signature of every U.S. Supreme Court Justice since 1906 to start a new tradition in local courts.
Judges who received “Harlan Bibles” for their courts said they will follow the lead of the U.S. Supreme Court by inviting all judges who serve to 
sign their names in the inside leaflets of the same Bible. The four Bibles, copies of the Harlan Bible held by the U.S. Supreme Court Curator, is similar to the Bible donated to the U.S. Supreme Court by Justice John Marshall Harlan in 1906. That bible has been signed by justices joining the Supreme Court for more than 100 years.
The Bibles were donated by Retired Judges of America and presented by retired Baton Rouge City Judge Darrell White. White said he has presented 20 to 30 similar Bibles on behalf of RJA since the organization began a campaign last year to distribute them.
The campaign, White said, is designed to encourage judges to hold fast to principles inherit in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
Davy Crockett On Congressional “Earmarks”
One day in the U.S. House of Representatives, a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Congressman Davy Crockett arose to object.
Citizens “Indignant” at California Judge’s Ruling
A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution. The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming.”At first, there was a sense of, ‘No way,’ ” said homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) who is active with a homeschool association. “Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation.”
One of the purposes of Retired Judges of America is to call into question the rulings of courts that violate the principles of the American Experiment. This case is a clear example of judicial tyranny over civil liberty. Parental choice in education strikes at the heart of the American pioneering spirit. The argument could be made that educational choices that families make are guaranteed by the birth certificate of our nation, the Declaration of Independence and that home educating one’s students is both a God-given right to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness*.
RJA’s mission is to illuminate how these “organic” foundational laws of our nation still apply and to promulgate them to the next generation.
Dissenting in Moore v. City of East Cleveland, Justice Byron White wrote, “The Judiciary, including this Court, is the most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or even the design of the Constitution.”
We, the Retired Judges of America, condemn this act of judicial activism and call on the California Supreme Court to overturn the Appellate Court’s ruling.
*In 1920 the Supreme Court asserted that parent’s rights to raise and educate their children was a “fundamental” type of “liberty” protected by the Due Process Clause. See generally, Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 535 (1925). This liberty includes the “right to the care, custody, management and companionship of [his or her] minor children” which is an interest “far more precious than property rights” May v. Anderson, 345 US 528, 533 (1952).
Internet First Amendment Rights Challenged
In a move that legal experts said could present a major test of First Amendment rights in the Internet era, a federal judge in San Francisco
on Friday ordered the disabling of a Web site devoted to disclosing confidential information.
The site, Wikileaks.org, invites people to post leaked materials with the goal of discouraging “unethical behavior” by
corporations and governments. It has posted documents said to show the rules of engagement for American troops in Iraq, a military manual for the operation of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and other evidence of what it has called corporate waste and wrongdoing.
Constitution May Hinder McCain Presidency
This just in from the New York Times… It really is an interesting Constitutional Question! Could McCain be eliminated from the competition because he is not a “natural born” citizen? Words do matter!
The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.
Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.
Almost since those words were written in 1787 with scant explanation, their precise meaning has been the stuff of confusion, law school review articles, whisper campaigns and civics class debates over whether only those delivered on American soil can be truly natural born. To date, no American to take the presidential oath has had an official birthplace outside the 50 states. Continue reading
Constitutional Shots Fired in Montana!
Montana officials are warning that if the Supreme Court rules in the D.C. gun ban case that the right to keep and bear arms protects only state-run militias like the National Guard, then the federal government will have breached Montana’s statehood contract.Nobody is raising flags for the Republic of Montana, but nobody is kidding, either. So far, 39 elected Montana officials have signed a resolution declaring that a court ruling of the Second Amendment is a right of states and not of individuals would violate Montana’s compact.
“The U.S. would do well to keep its contractual promise to the states that the Second Amendment secures an individual right now as it did upon execution of the statehood contract,” Montana Secretary of State Brad Johnson said in a Feb. 15 letter to The Washington Times.
The dispute goes back more than a century. Back in 1889, the settlers of the Montana territory struck a deal with the federal government: They agreed to join the union, and the government agreed that individuals had the right to bear arms.
That has worked fine for the past 118 years, but the Supreme Court is expected next month to hear oral argument in District of Columbia v. Heller, the appeal of a federal court decision striking down the District’s gun-ownership ban on Second Amendment grounds.
Advance on Retired Judges of America
Welcome AdvanceUSA readers!
Retired Judges of America is pleased to be the first featured subject of the AdvanceUSA Spotlight.