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.
“Harlan Bible” Day – March 12 (1906)
It was on this date – March 12th – in 1906 that then-senior Justice John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911) donated a 
Bible to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) for the purpose of offering his colleagues an opportunity to sign the Good Book’s flyleaf pages. Down through the years, the “Harlan Bible” – maintained by the Supreme Court’s Curator – has been presented to each justice shortly after taking the oath of office and all have elected to sign. Justice Samuel Alito, the latest signatory, has acknowledged what an awesome experience it was for him to sign alongside every justice without fail for over 100 years. For those who would say that the Bible is irrelevant to America, I would ask, can you imagine any other book or writing that would evoke such unanimous approbation?
Retired Judges of America is replicating this venerable tradition in other courts throughout America. If you would like to help with the expenses associated with this noble undertaking, go to the donation page and become a friend of Retired Judges of America. After all, there are no innocent bystanders; only those guilty of bystanding!
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).
Judge-Made Law?
A California appellate court has ruled that parents without teaching credentials do not have a right to home-school their children.
Ironically, it was exactly fifty years ago this August that the chief justices of ten states joined together to issue a report critical of our federal judicial system with the following language: “It has long been an American boast that we have a government of laws and not of men.” That document, entitled “REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON FEDERAL STATE RELATIONSHIPS AS AFFECTED BY JUDICIAL DECISIONS” went on to complain that “… the Supreme Court too often has tended to adopt the role of policy-maker without proper judicial restraint.”
Gaining steam, they went on, “We do not believe that either the framers of the original Constitution or the possibly somewhat less gifted draftsmen of the Fourteenth Amendment ever contemplated that the Supreme Court would, or should, have the almost unlimited policy-making powers it now exercises. It is strange, indeed, to reflect that under a constitution which provides for a system of checks and balances and of distribution of power between national and state governments one branch of one government – the Supreme Court – should attain the immense, and in many respects, dominant, power which it now wields.”
Learn the Constitution!
A wonderful opportunity to learn why America is great
Americans who wish to accurately analyze current issues in the light of the Constitution – our “supreme law of the land” – now have a splendid opportunity just a click away. The National Center for Constitutional Studies (www.nccs.net) in cooperation with Heritage Academy, a public, charter high school in Mesa, Arizona, has put a semester-long study course on The 5000 Year Leap online for the whole world to study. Any student who completes the course will be given a transcript showing one-half credit from Heritage Academy. This school is accredited by North Central Association and Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement.
This course contains 27 lessons covering the 28 Principles of Liberty in great detail. Each lesson contains the elements as in the example below. The video instruction contains PowerPoint notes to help the student master the important points of instruction.
-
Reading assignment – Principle 1 -
Study questions to answer – Principle 1 -
Video instruction, Principle 1 (30 minutes) -
Quiz – Principle 1, Natural Law -
Find a current issue
The study questions, and current issue assignments are uploaded to the instructor for grading. The quizzes and two examinations are computer graded. A running grade of all assignments keeps the student aware of his progress through the course.
In order to further test this online course, Heritage is offering the opportunity for several students to enroll in the course, complete the assignments, and receive an accredited transcript for only the purchase of the textbook, The 5000 Year Leap. If a student already has the textbook, there will be no charge for the course during this test period. Heritage invites those who would like to participate on this basis to login to the website www.halearn.com to begin and, if necessary, to communicate with Earl Taylor at his email address, etaylor@mstar.net.
Kudos to Earl Taylor for this valuable contribution to the constitutional literacy of Americans!
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
Warm Oregonian Welcome Extended to Retired Judges of America
Retired Judges of America’s (RJA’s) Judge Darrell White (Retired) and Jason Stern were received with “northwestern” (U.S.A.) hospitality at Restore America’s third annual conference in Portland, Oregon held during February 22-23, 2008.
Hundreds of attendees expressed keen interest (and surprise) to learn of the 100-year old “Harlan Bible” tradition pursuant to which U.S. Supreme Court justices, upon being sworn in, each sign the flyleaf of a keepsake Bible in the custody of the Court’s curator. Judge White explained how this venerable tradition is being repeated in courts across America.
Of note: Christian Law Association Attorney David Gibbs, III, explained sad features associated with Terri Schiavo’s court-ordered dehydration, Judge White explained how Retired Judges of America was incorporated on the very day Schiavo died – March 31, 2005. Interest was keen over the subject of judicial activism especially in light of Oregon’s recent court-ordered nullification of petitions in favor of a statewide marriage protection amendment.
Retired Judges of America looks forward to helping Oregonians restore America–one court at a time!
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.
High Court’s Big Secret
This article appeared in the December 2006 issue of Citizen magazine.
High Court’s Big Secret
by Stephen Adams, Focus on the Family
Don’t tell the ACLU, but a recent discovery proves the U.S. Supreme Court is a faith-based organization.
One significant milestone totally unnoticed by the Washington establishment this year was the 100th anniversary of the Harlan Bible. Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of it. The Harlan Bible is a well-kept secret to virtually all but the 50-plus U.S. Supreme Court justices who have signed their names to its flyleaf since 1906, nearly half of all justices who have ever served.
The little-known Harlan Bible is named after John Marshall Harlan, a prominent Supreme Court justice, devout Christian and Sunday school teacher who started the tradition, bequeathing this English Bible to the generations of justices to come. Some of its mystery has been unwrapped by retired Louisiana City Judge Darrell White….
Judge White was on a law panel with Judge [Roy] Moore in Oklahoma City several years ago when a random question about the oath taken by federal judges sent him on a research project that turned up so many curious historical facts that he’s now working on a book about it. In particular, White wanted to know the origin of the phrase “so help me God” in the judicial oath prescribed by the original Judiciary Act of 1789.