Government On the Warpath

Jul 20, 2023

Greetings fellow Plebs & Peasants,

An often repeated criticism of a stateless society is that we would be overrun and controlled by violent warlords. Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the government, in particular the federal government, is in fact those violent warlords. How else could you describe an entity that claims a monopoly on violence, claims the right to steal your property, can harass, assault, extort, kidnap and murder you at will, under the flimsiest of pretenses and almost always resulting in no accountability for anybody? And if you think the Constitution, Bill of Rights or voting for the next clown to occupy the White House is going to make things right, clearly you haven’t been paying attention.

- jw

#DoNotComply #NoCompromise #NoSurrender #GallowsAndGuillotines2023

Source: The Rutherford Institute

Circle the Wagons: The Government Is On the Warpath

By John & Nisha Whitehead

July 05, 2023

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”—Harry S. Truman

How many Americans have actually bothered to read the Constitution, let alone the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (a quick read at 462 words)?

Take a few minutes and read those words for yourself—rather than having some court or politician translate them for you—and you will be under no illusion about where to draw the line when it comes to speaking your mind, criticizing your government, defending what is yours, doing whatever you want on your own property, and keeping the government’s nose out of your private affairs.

In an age of overcriminalization, where the average citizen unknowingly commits three crimes a day, and even the most mundane activities such as fishing and gardening are regulated, government officials are constantly telling Americans what not to do.

Yet it was not always this way.

It used to be “we the people” giving the orders, telling the government what it could and could not do. Indeed, the three words used most frequently throughout the Bill of Rights in regards to the government are “no,” “not” and “nor.”

Compare the following list of “don’ts” the government is prohibited from doing with the growing list of abuses to which “we the people” are subjected on a daily basis, and you will find that we have reached a state of crisis wherein the government is routinely breaking the law and violating its contractual obligations.

For instance, the government is NOT allowed to restrict free speech, press, assembly or the citizenry’s ability to protest and correct government wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the government continues to prosecute whistleblowers, persecute journalists, criminalize expressive activities, crack down on large gatherings of citizens mobilizing to voice their discontent with government policies, and insulate itself and its agents from any charges of wrongdoing (or what the courts refer to as “qualified immunity”).

The government may NOT infringe on a citizen’s right to defend himself. Nevertheless, in many states, it’s against the law to carry a concealed weapon (gun, knife or even pepper spray), and the average citizen is permitted little self-defense against militarized police officers who shoot first and ask questions later.

The government may NOT enter or occupy a citizen’s house without his consent (the quartering of soldiers). Nevertheless, government soldiers (i.e., militarized police) carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids on private homes every year, while maiming children, killing dogs and shooting citizens.

The government may NOT carry out unreasonable searches and seizures on the citizenry or their possessions, NOR can government officials issue warrants without some evidence of wrongdoing (probable cause). Unfortunately, what is unreasonable to the average American is completely reasonable to a government agent, for whom the ends justify the means. In such a climate, we have no protection against roadside strip searches, blood draws, DNA collection, SWAT team raids, surveillance or any other privacy-stripping indignity to which the government chooses to subject us.

The government is NOT to deprive anyone of life, liberty or property without due process. Nevertheless, the government continues to incarcerate tens of thousands of Americans whose greatest crime is being poor and not white. The same goes for those who are put to death, some erroneously, by a system weighted in favor of class and wealth.

The government may NOT take private property for public use without just compensation. Nevertheless, under the guise of the “greater public interest,” the government often hides behind eminent domain laws in order to allow megacorporations to tear down homes occupied by less prosperous citizens in order to build high-priced resorts and shopping malls.

Government agents may NOT force a citizen to testify against himself. Yet what is the government’s extensive surveillance network that spies on all of our communications but a thinly veiled attempt at using our own words against us?

The government is NOT permitted to claim any powers that are not expressly granted to them by the Constitution. This prohibition has become downright laughable as the government continues to claim for itself every authority that serves to swell its coffers, cement its dominion, and expand its reach.

Despite what some special interest groups have suggested to the contrary, the problems we’re experiencing today did not arise because the Constitution has outlived its usefulness or become irrelevant, nor will they be solved by a convention of states or a ratification of the Constitution.

No, the problem goes far deeper.

It can be traced back to the point at which “we the people” were overthrown as the center of the government. As a result, our supremacy has been undone, our authority undermined, and our experiment in democratic self-governance left in ruins.

No longer are we the rulers of this land. We have long since been deposed and dethroned, replaced by corporate figureheads with no regard for our sovereignty, no thought for our happiness, and no respect for our rights.

In other words, without our say-so and lacking any mandate, the point of view of the Constitution has been shifted from “we the people” to “we the government.” Our taxpayer-funded employees—our appointed servants—have stopped looking upon us as their superiors and started viewing as their inferiors.

Unfortunately, we’ve gotten so used to being dictated to by government agents, bureaucrats and militarized police alike that we’ve forgotten that WE are supposed to be the ones calling the shots and determining what is just, reasonable and necessary.

Then again, we’re not the only ones guilty of forgetting that the government was established to serve us as well as obey us. Every branch of government, from the Executive to the Judicial and Legislative, seems to be suffering this same form of amnesia. Certainly, when government programs are interpreted from the government’s point of view (i.e., the courts and legislatures), there is little the government CANNOT do in its quest for power and control.

We’ve been so brainwashed and indoctrinated into believing that the government is actually looking out for our best interests, when in fact the only compelling interesting driving government programs is maintain power and control by taking away our money and control. This vital truth, that the government exists for our benefit and operates at our behest, seems to have been lost in translation over two centuries dominated by government expansion, endless wars and centralized federal power.

Have you ever wondered why the Constitution begins with those three words “we the people”? It was intended to be a powerful reminder that everything flows from the citizenry. We the people are the center of the government and the source of its power. That “we” is crucial because it reminds us that there is power and safety in numbers, provided we stand united. We can accomplish nothing alone.

This is the underlying lesson of the Constitution, which outlines the duties and responsibilities of government. It was a mutual agreement formed by early Americans in order to ensure that when problems arose, they could address them together.

It’s like the wagon trains of the Old West, comprised of individual groups of pioneers. They rarely ventured out alone but instead traveled as convoys. And when faced with a threat, these early Americans formed their wagons into a tight circle in order to defend against invaders. In doing so, they presented a unified front and provided protection against an outside attack.

In much the same way, the Constitution was intended to work as an institutionalized version of the wagon circle, serving as a communal shield against those who would harm us.

Unfortunately, we have been ousted from that protected circle, left to fend for ourselves in the wilderness that is the American frontier today. Those who did the ousting—the courts, the politicians, and the corporations—have since replaced us with yes-men, shills who dance to the tune of an elite ruling class. In doing so, they have set themselves as the central source of power and the arbiters of what is just and reasonable.

Once again, we’re forced to navigate hostile terrain, unsure of how to protect ourselves and our loved ones from militarized police, weaponized drones, fusion centers, Stingray devices, SWAT team raids, the ongoing military drills on American soil, the government stockpiling of ammunition, the erection of mass detention centers across the country, and all other manner of abuses.

Read the smoke signals, and the warning is clear: the government is on the warpath.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we are to have any hope of surviving whatever is coming at us, it’s time to circle the wagons, folks.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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Source: The Rutherford Institute

Supreme Court Paves the Way for the Government to Circumvent Double Jeopardy Clause, Prosecute Individuals Twice for the Same Crime

July 07, 2023

DOCUMENTS
Smith v. United States
Supreme Court Opinion
Amicus Brief
Cert Petition

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A unanimous Supreme Court has refused to rein in the government’s power to indiscriminately pick and choose the laws by which it will abide, especially as it relates to the rights of the accused in criminal cases.

In a ruling that defies the very safeguards put in place by America’s founders to guard against prosecutorial misconduct, the Court held in Smith v. United States that a defendant who faced trial in the wrong location can simply be prosecuted again in another location without triggering the Double Jeopardy Clause, which prohibits the government from prosecuting someone twice for the same crime. In weighing in before the Supreme Court, a legal coalition made up of The Rutherford Institute, Cato Institute, and the National Association for Public Defense had warned that failing to hold the government accountable for filing criminal charges in improper locations could give rise to a situation in which the government is effectively allowed to circumvent Double Jeopardy protections by perpetually retrying an accused in one unfair district after another.

“The Fifth and Sixth Amendments are supposed to serve as an antidote to the abuses of the American police state,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “People have a constitutional right to not be prosecuted twice for the same crime, and when and if they are accused of a crime, they have a right to know what they’re being charged with and are given the opportunity to have a fair, speedy and public trial, an impartial jury, the right to a lawyer, and the chance to confront and question their accusers.”

Although Timothy Smith was convicted for theft of trade secrets due to acts he committed while in Alabama involving computer servers located in the Middle District of Florida, he was charged and tried in the Northern District of Florida. Prior to trial, Smith moved to dismiss the charge for being brought in the wrong district in violation of the Constitution’s Venue Clause in Section 2 of Article III and the Sixth Amendment. Smith’s motion was denied and he was tried by a jury in the Northern District of Florida. After being found guilty, Smith appealed and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Smith’s conviction because he had been tried in the wrong district, but held that Smith could be subjected to trial again for the same offense in the proper district without implicating the Double Jeopardy Clause.

On appeal to the Supreme Court, attorneys for The Rutherford Institute, Cato Institute, and the National Association for Public Defense argued that the Constitution requires a sufficient consequence to deter the government from selecting an unfair location and jury as the British Crown did by removing colonial defendants overseas to England for trial of charges like treason. While the Supreme Court acknowledged “there is no question that the founding generation enthusiastically embraced the vicinage right [to a jury from the district wherein the crime was committed] and wielded it as a political argument of the Revolution” by denouncing such violations in the Declaration of Independence, the Court nonetheless held that a defendant tried before a jury from the wrong geographic area can be prosecuted again for the same crime.

Michael Li-Ming Wong, Vladimir J. Semendyai, and Philip Hammersley of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP helped to advance the arguments in the Smith v. United States amicus briefs.

The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.