Free Republic

Subtitle: A Judicial Mess. The Framers considered and rejected a policy-making role for the Scotus. Despite James Madison’s repeated efforts, the federal convention defeated his attempts to attach the Scotus to the Executive Branch through a Council of Revision. Rufus King of Massachusetts noted that judges must “expound the law as it should come before them, free from the bias of having participated in its formation.” As if lawmaking by courts didn’t pose enough dangers to free government, what of the extreme danger of dressing up feel-good social justice in the drag of rights? The late Judge Robert Bork summed...

'Life, Liberty & Levin' host Mark Levin breaks down what it means for someone to believe in 'America First.'

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” - Amendment IX, The U.S. Constitution “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” - Amendment X, The U.S. Constitution “No position appears to me more true than this; that the General Govt. can not effectually exist without reserving to the States the possession of their local rights. They are the instruments upon which the Union must frequently depend...

Colorado has become the latest state to order residents to remain in their homes in the face of steadily rising coronavirus cases and deaths throughout the country.

Subtitle: A Judicial Mess. The Framers considered and rejected a policy-making role for the Scotus. Despite James Madison’s repeated efforts, the federal convention defeated his attempts to attach the Scotus to the Executive Branch through a Council of Revision. Rufus King of Massachusetts noted that judges must “expound the law as it should come before them, free from the bias of having participated in its formation.” As if lawmaking by courts didn’t pose enough dangers to free government, what of the extreme danger of dressing up feel-good social justice in the drag of rights? The late Judge Robert Bork summed...

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.1Background. Thanks to the assurances of James Madison and other Federalists, the draft Constitution made its way unscathed through a rough...

The Ninth Amendment, also known as the “silent” Amendment, says “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” What does this mean? What makes the Ninth Amendment unique is that it guarantees protection of all our rights even though they may not be specifically mentioned in the Constitution. Just because the document is silent on some natural rights does not mean they do not exist. The Ninth Amendment closes the loophole. James Madison was concerned that any attempt to enumerate fundamental liberties would be incomplete and might...

There is a new argument that progressives are cooking up, consider this a warning. Be prepared. In Original Intent and the Framers' Constitution, the following is written: (page 268) Oddly enough, those who advocate a constitutional "jurisprudence of original intention" and assert that the Constitution "said what it meant and meant what it said," are the ones who most vigorously deny content to the Ninth Amendment and to the concept of a "living Constitution." Presumably, they would not swear fealty to a dead Constitution, not even to a static one of the sort endorsed by Chief Justice Roger Taney in...

A stinging rejection of same-sex marriage bans in Wisconsin and Indiana, issued by a unanimous and unequivocal U.S. appeals court, has brought hope to those fighting the laws that the Supreme Court will feel pressure to rule soon in their favor. The ruling from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago came Thursday, the same day 32 states asked the Supreme Court to settle the issue once and for all. Fifteen states that allow gay marriage, led by Massachusetts, filed a brief asking the justices to take up three cases from Virginia, Utah and Oklahoma and overturn bans....

Bills 'nullifying' Washington overreach gaining momentum across the country It was called the strongest pro-gun bill in the country, and now it’s the law in Kansas. The law is designed to counter the push by liberal federal lawmakers for increased restrictions on gun rights. It nullifies any new limits on firearms, magazines and ammunition – whether enacted by Congress, presidential executive order or any agency. If Congress would have passed the Senate amendment expanding federal background checks, for example, the Kansas law would nullify it in the state. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, signed Senate Bill 102 into law...

This was posted on one of GaryNorth.com forums. The battle for America’s political soul is always fought on the battlefield of federal politics. That’s why conservatives lose, generation after generation.” Dr. North, would you please elaborate on this, why you believe the battle for America’s political soul is fought in Federal politics and why it is that conservatives continue to lose, generation after generation? From the time of the ratification of the United States Constitution, American politics shifted to the national level. One of the things that I realized late in my career, even though I had been trained as...

(Feb. 24, 2011) — As the battle for states’ rights heat up across the country, Montana and Arizona have leaped out into the lead by introducing the first broad-based State Nullification Reaffirmation Act designed to return the power to the people and their states and rein in federal government abuses of misinterpreted power. The Model Legislation was researched and created by the Constitutional Justice Division of Wyoming-based United States Patriots Union. This model legislation aims to reaffirm and reassert broad-based sovereign state’s rights under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution by providing both the constitutional grounds and...

Britain expels an Israeli diplomat on Tuesday to rebuke Israel for its alleged use of forged British passports in the assassination of a Hamas operative in a suspected Mossad hit, a UK government official said. Foreign Secretary David Miliband addressed Parliament over the issue, following an investigation into the use of 12 fake UK passports in the incident. The Foreign Secretary has said there are “compelling reasons” to believe Israel is behind the cloned British passports used by the alleged killers of a Hamas official in Dubai.

FEDERAL HEALTH CARE PLAN REMARKS March 22, 2010 It is not part of my job as the Attorney General of Colorado to weigh in on whether the Patient Protection and Affordability Health Care Act passed by Congress yesterday is good public policy. It is however, part of my job to defend the rights of the State of Colorado and its citizens from the exercise of federal power in violation of the United States Constitution. The U. S. Constitution gives the federal government only enumerated powers. All other powers are expressly left to the states and their people. One such enumerated...

COLUMBUS — President Barack Obama is expected to sign sweeping changes in the American health-care system on Tuesday, but a group of Ohioans Monday began the process of limiting its impact in this state. In a modern-day equivalent of declaring states' rights, the Ohio Liberty Council and the conservative Tea Party movement have launched an effort to amend the Ohio Constitution to declare that no law can force and individual, employer, or health-care provider in the state to participate in the national reforms. It would also prohibit anyone who refuses to participate, including those required to buy or provide insurance,...

We all predicted this would happen. In a move typical for that fear-mongering organization with an ever-swelling acronym, the BATFE has written gun dealers in the states of Montana and Tennessee to let them know the BATFE will be disregarding the states' sovereign gun laws. The "Montana Made" law, just like Tennessee's Firearms Freedom Act, is very simple. Much of the claimed federal authority to regulate firearm sales and transfers stems from a liberal interpretation of every American tyrant's favorite subterfuge, the "interstate commerce" clause. In essence, this is what gives the BATFE its nasty teeth. With this in mind,...

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

One reason that Roe v. Wade is still with us is that legal scholars and jurists argue about the wrong issue. The question isn’t whether the Constitution contains any reference to a right to privacy. Let’s assume it does. Let’s assume that the Ninth Amendment, as argued in Griswold v. Connecticut and some other cases, implicitly refers to the right to privacy every human being has. Why would this be relevant? Some might argue that if one has the right to privacy, a woman who has an abortion is doing something private, something no one else has the authority to...

No Clause for Celebration USA -- In its recent decision upholding the federal government's authority to pluck marijuana from the hands of desperately ill people who use it as a medicine, the U.S. Supreme Court noted in passing that "most domestic drug regulations prior to 1970 generally came in the guise of revenue laws." That's a puzzling fact if, as the Court now insists, the power to "regulate Commerce...among the several States" includes the power to ban certain plants and their products from backyards and dresser drawers throughout the nation. As the Court explained, the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937...

The Rights Retained by the People: The History and Meaning of the Ninth Amendment Volume 2 Edited by Randy E. Barnett   I. The Origins of The Ninth Amendment II. Why the Rights Retained by the People Are Unenumerable III. Implementing the Ninth Amendment IV. Replying to the Ninth Amendment Skeptics V.  Conclusion: The Equal Protection of Liberties and the Future of the Ninth Amendment             In this Introduction, I explain how the ninth amendment's protection of unenumerated rights "retained by the people" can be implemented in a practical fashion that is consistent with the views of its author, James...