Free Republic

Standing over and looking down at the remains of the US Constitution, retired Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy recently admitted in an interview why he provided the fifth vote in Obergefell v. Hodges. “It seemed to me just wrong that under the Constitution, over 100,000 adopted children of gay parents could not have their parents married. I just thought this was wrong.” Well, there you have it. Kennedy admitted an open secret; he let his passions rule his reason and in so doing imposed radical change on an unwilling society. Obergefell was a judicial charade and fraud. It had nothing to...

Among the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation was the near impossibility of amending them to meet pressing needs regarding taxation and commerce. In 1787-1788, the lower threshold to amend the Constitution per Article V overcame Anti-Federalist reluctance to form a new Union. From the time the federal convention sent the draft Constitution to the Confederation Congress and states, many Anti-Federalists demanded a second convention, preferably before federal elections and the establishment of a new government.Not only the Anti-Federalists, but few Federalists were entirely satisfied with the Constitution as written. The difference was that Federalists were satisfied that Article V...

Over the next few squibs I will show why Scotus has no Constitutional business fabricating rights. As opposed to its assumed authority to invent rights, it is instead duty-bound to defend the Constitution. Like the rest of the Bill of Rights, the Ninth Amendment deserves equal protection from the Scotus. Despite this presumption, Scotus has generally interpreted the Ninth Amendment in a manner that denies the sovereign people’s prerogative to assert the rights that Scotus is Constitutionally bound to accept.1 Background. Thanks to the assurances of James Madison and other Federalists, the draft Constitution made its way unscathed through a...

There’s only one movement standing up to the destruction of America, and that’s Convention of States, Mark Levin told a packed room of Convention of States activists over the weekend. We’re losing our country to people who don’t even believe in the Constitution. We’re sliding into the abyss and being attacked from within by those who don’t believe in individual liberty. The COS Reclaiming Liberty Leadership Summit was held in Orlando Thursday through Sunday and featured some of the nation’s top leaders in the fight against government overreach. With hundreds of COS involved patriots in attendance, the event sold out...

Beginning with “We the People” the Constitution is a compact, an agreement among equals, the people of the American civil society. The events of 1787-1788 could have been scripted straight out of John Locke’s Second Treatise. A preexisting civil society came to the conclusion that its current form of government was inadequate to secure its unalienable rights, which, per the Declaration is the broad purpose of government. Through state sponsored conventions special delegations of the sovereign people debated the pro/con of establishing a new government. Just as Locke described the steps that men emerging from the State of Nature naturally...

Sovereignty: Use it or lose it. Sovereignty unattended is sovereignty lost, and We the People have precious little of it left. I challenge anyone to argue that our sovereignty isn’t slipping away. Oh, it is ultimately still ours, and we can always reclaim it through revolution, but the outcome of revolution is far dicier than the minimal risk of holding an Article V COS. What is certain is government officials and institutions are exercising sovereign powers never granted. Through quiet acceptance of rogue federal court decisions and the regulatory and administrative states, We the People silently abandon that which is...

I can almost see Tacitus (55-117AD) weep as he wrote of Rome’s transition from a free republic to a despotic empire. Tacitus: After Augustus won over the soldiers with gifts, and the people with cheap corn, he slowly concentrated in himself the powers of the senate, the magistrates, and laws. In this, he was unopposed for the boldest spirits had fallen in battle or been murdered in the proscriptions. The remaining nobles, the readier they were to be slaves; they were raised the higher by wealth and promotion. So aggrandized were they by revolution they preferred the safety of the...

In the clip, Beck says: “I have been a supporter of the Article V Convention of States. I have been a pretty big supporter, a vocal supporter. I am reversing that today because after some real thought and prayer, we are not the people to open up this sacred document. We are not the people. That was a God inspired document that was divinely written. You can read that from I don’t know how many founders. The very hand of God was involved. Benjamin Franklin even said that. The very hand of God was involved in writing that document. Do...

Ever expanding democracy has long been the Progressive’s means to their fuzzy, yet dangerous social justice ends. Our national experience has shown that the explosion of the democratic element since the direct election of senators, voting by women, repeal of Jim Crow, abolition of poll taxes, lowering the voting age to eighteen, extension of voting from a single day to a couple of weeks, same day registration, motor voter, voting rights for ex-convicts, and judicial overthrow of state voter ID laws . . . have all served to extend the franchise to an ever expanding portion of the public. But,...

Among the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation was the near impossibility of amending them to meet pressing needs regarding taxation and commerce. In 1787-1788, the lower threshold to amend the Constitution per Article V overcame Anti-Federalist reluctance to form a new Union.From the time the federal convention sent the draft Constitution to the Confederation Congress and states, many Anti-Federalists demanded a second convention, preferably before federal elections and the establishment of a new government.Not only the Anti-Federalists, but few Federalists were entirely satisfied with the Constitution as written. The difference was that Federalists were satisfied that Article V was...

Conservatives are just 15 states away from an unprecedented gathering that could rewrite large parts of the US Constitution and fundamentally change American life.

The conservative movement isn't done reshaping the Constitution from the ground up. Conservatives are now pushing an unprecedented convention to re-write the US bedrock text since 1788. So far, 19 GOP states have joined a rapidly-growing conservative movement to call a new convention. As former Republican senator Rick Santorum addressed Republican lawmakers gathered in San Diego at the American Legislative Exchange Council policy summit, he detailed a plan to fundamentally remake the United States. It would become a conservative nation. And the transformation, Santorum said, culminates with an unprecedented event: a first-of-its-kind convention to rewrite the Constitution. "You take this...

A large and growing number of Americans are coming to recognize that the federal government is out of control. Our national debt currently stands at over $30 trillion. Just 2 lonely Democrats stood between us and another $5 trillion in government spending. If we lined up 100-dollar bills end to end, that debt would reach to the moon and back – over 60 times! The average family of 4 is paying more interest (via their taxes) to service the national debt than they are for their own home mortgage. Our federal government behemoth now reaches into every aspect of our...

This Fourth of July, watching people fight over what the Constitution means, I ask people, if you could change the Constitution, what would you change?"The forefathers knew what they were doing," said one woman.But the Constitution originally accepted slavery. It's good that we can amend it.So what should we change?"Add a balanced budget amendment," suggests Glenn Beck.David Boaz of the Cato Institute recommends 18-year terms for the Supreme Court. "Maybe confirmation fights would be less bitter and partisan."Others suggest term limits for Congress. Stossel TV's Mike Ricci takes the idea further. "If your father, mother, siblings, uncle, cousins were elected...

A Georgetown University law professor says Americans are “slaves” to the U.S. Constitution as their adherence to that document — written by a “tiny group of white slave-owning men” — has turned the country into a “war zone.” Rosa Brooks made the comparison yesterday on MSNBC’s Joy Reid show and highlighted the recent mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois. “[T]here are people all over the world who have lived during armed conflicts, and when does the mortar fall on your house, when does the soldier or the tank come down the street and just kill you,” Brooks said. “We are...

Independence Day makes Progressives squirm. They despise the principles of the American Revolution. If they could, their scotus judges would gut the Declaration as thoroughly as they have the Constitution. To them, our Noble Declaration, this expression of God-given reason subverts social justice; they are right. Since the Declaration is indeed hostile to their moral relativism, the Left has long attempted to minimize our founding to a fuzzy faith in the people. The “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and “all men are created equal,” translates in their Marxist minds as widespread democracy accompanied with equal...

Must revolution be violent? Must revolution upend an older society and replace it with a new one? Wouldn’t a 21st century restoration of free American government without resort to violence be revolutionary?Pennsylvania’s Framer James Wilson thought so:This revolution principle--that, the sovereign power residing in the people, they may change their constitution and government whenever they please--is not a principle of discord, rancor, or war: it is a principle of melioration, contentment, and peace. It is a principle not recommended merely by a flattering theory: it is a principle recommended by happy experience. To the testimony of Pennsylvania--to the testimony of...

To most historians of the 17th Century Stuart era, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government rationalized the Glorious Revolution of 1688. At least one historian, Peter Laslett, disagrees. To Laslett, Locke’s texts were instead a call for revolutions yet to come. Not only did Locke’s philosophy call for our 1776 revolution, it reaches out to us today . . . but with a twist. Where Locke gave little attention to the nuts and bolts of how a community goes about restoring free government after its dissolution, our Framers provided the solution in Article V of their Constitution. Locke didn’t conceptualize...

The Nebraska legislature passed a resolution on Friday calling for an Article V convention of states, making it the 17th state to do so. After considering it for the past year, the unicameral body approved the measure in a 32-11 vote, with six senators abstaining or absent. According to the resolution, the Nebraska legislature seeks to call a convention “limited to proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of...

For the past several years, the Convention of States Project has been gathering concerned citizens from every pocket of the country to urge state legislators to use this long-neglected constitutional “check” on the power of Washington. With Republicans in control of 33 state legislatures and Trump in the White House, now is the time to make this happen. The Project’s model resolution, which has been introduced in 48 states, to date, calls for a meeting of the states to consider, and potentially propose, amendments that would achieve one or more of three objectives Impose fiscal restraints on the federal government,...