If this judicial decision stands, we lose the First Amendment along with the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution
That America has enemies, foreign and domestic, surprises no one. If anything about this is new, it is how crystal-clear domestic enemies have become lately. All along they have been gathering force but in ways not so obvious to most of us. At last, they have become almost obvious enough for teenagers and college students to grasp. Topping the list of domestic enemies are the federal and state courts of the United States of America. Our judges and courts no longer wage covert war on America through their anti-American activism. It is quite overt now.
The 23 June 2005 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States (Kelo vs New London, Ct.) literally tore asunder the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, one of the vital ten on our Bill of Rights, by declaring open season on Americans' private property.
A recent decision in western Washington State sets the precedent to shut down and scrap the First Amendment to our national Constitution. No one can afford to remain ignorant about what is going on out there.
Perhaps those unfamiliar with western Washington State do not know what a cauldron of Leftist activism boils there all of the time. There are quite literally two populations in that state: the Haves and the Have-Nots. And, these terms do not mean what they have meant historically.
The Haves are Democrats who dominate state government and courts, backed by flaming liberal labor, business, and countless pressure groups. Democrats occupy the seats of the governor, the majority in both state legislative bodies, the courts at all levels, those elected to the House of Representatives and the Senate, all media, and so on. This Leftism comes from the counties lining only eastern Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands. Overwhelmingly, Seattle and its King County have exerted a mafia-like control on state politics for decades. Corruption goes far beyond having influence on dispensation of power and special favors; the corruption is as bad philosophically as blue state Democrat Party machinery anywhere, and Washingtonians and Washington have suffered mightily.
The Have Nots are Washingtonians in eastern Washington, one of the bread baskets of the nation, and those west of the Cascade Mountains who are overregulated, overlegislated, overtaxed, and almost completely not represented in state and national government. Boeing boogied out of the state in which it was born and thrived for decades to get away from state government piranhas.
Change, possibly revolutionary change, has come to Washingtonians. The best example comes from the Initiative 912 drive, the No New Gas Tax Initiative, which we reported on this site on 8 July 2005. Citizens are rebelling, all quite legally, against extreme autocracy in their state government. Democrats, with cowardly Republican acquiescence, recently passed a humungous gasoline tax for "transportation projects" over citizen protest, to support projects not even defined, except to say that the money will not be used to reduce traffic congestion, and they will eventually develop plans to use the rest of the money. (Sounds like the United Nations). Citizens were also denied the right of referendum by the Democrats and spineless Republicans about this tax increase. So, a grass roots rebellion arose to get enough petition signatures to place the matter before the public this November.
What a court did in response shows more philosophical corruption than most Americans can imagine, and we hope will tolerate any longer.
Infuriated Washingtonians privately launched a drive to gather enough signatures to put an intiative on the November 2005 ballot to throw out the 9.5% gasoline tax, the No New Gas Tax Initiative. A conservative Seattle talk radio station, KVI, 570 A.M., lead by two hosts, Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson, found out about the initiative drive and began getting the word out about its existence and its progress. Neither they nor their station, owned by Fisher Broadcasting, originated the petition drive nor had any financial stake it the drive. These talk radio hosts strongly supported the drive on air, but they used personal funds and personal time off air to help get the word out from a small ripple in a pond in western Washington, to a storm reaching the most rural sections of eastern Washington. Opponents of the initiative were invited to their talk shows over and over to give their views why the No New Gas Tax Intiative should not be signed or passed. They refused to appear, over and over.
At first, the opposition to the initiative drive did not take the petition drive seriously for reasons we documented in our 8 July blog. However, the ground swell of support became obvious even to the most extreme cynic, and fright set in among the Left. Big labor, big money, big business, big media,and big government arose in opposition. Suits were filed. Even petitions were stolen. These efforts only infuriated a populace made of Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and absolutely everyone else fed up with being stepped on all of the time by special interests in Washington.
Enter activist judgeshiping.
The Seattle Times, one of two Leftist newspapers in Seattle, published an astonishing editorial on 8 July 2005. What that editorial had to say must not be lost on every American across America. The ripple set in motion by a judge in western Washington State has the capability to become a tsunami across America.
This judge, Christopher Wickham, of the county holding the Washington State capital and its functions, forced radio station KVI and Fisher Broadcasting to declare the on-air time spent discussion the No Gas Tax Initiative by Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson as political advertising. (Recall that neither broadcaster either started or had any sort of financial, organizational, or operational interest in the initiative. They offered facts about progress, gave opinions, and provided opportunites for those for and those against to call in to sound off.) The judge ordered that the No New Gas Tax Initiative campaign must convert the value of their time discussing the initiative into dollars and report this as support as a political contribution.
The Seattle Times editorial, Editorial In support of free speech, and KVI, Friday, July 8, 2005, said it all accurately and chillingly:
The Times went on recall the heinous federal campaign-finance law of McCain and Feingold. Dissenting Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas had warned about the assault on the First Amendment from McCain-Feingold The newspaper acknowledge that at the time they had doubted the warning given by Scalia and Thomas because it seemed to apply only to ads and not to editorial content. Judge Wickham in Thurston County, Washington, carried the consequences to their logical conclusion. A contrite Seattle Times now said,
It takes some good moral qualities to acknowledge an error, and to do on right on the editorial page. For that, the Seattle Times deserves commendation. They see the consequences of Judge Wickham's ruling and the need to have this decision reversed A.S.A.P.
By contrast, the haughty Seattle Post-Intelligencer maintains its "gotcha" position, so characteristic of the Washington State Left.
It is time to dust off the prophetic and widely applicable words of Pastor Neimoeller to the U.S. Congress in 1968 (which appears in the Congressional Record, October 14, 1968, page 31636):
Pastor Niemoeller spent 8 and 1/2 years in a Nazi concentration camp. Don't lose sight of his message to the world: In short, if the ripple effect has not yet reached you, get concerned now.
And, in case that seems too abstract and tangential, let's apply Winston Churchill's metaphor about Soviet expansionism. Our court systems are doing this to us, and we must stop them now.
Churchill said that the Soviet communists' swallowing up of free countries was like eating a roast beef. They took a slice here, and no one objected over that small slice. Then they took another. Who could object over such small slices? Little by little, slice by slice, they took the whole roast. All that was left was the string used to bind the roast for cooking, and they took that.
It is up to you and to me, ordinary Americans, living out here in fly-over country. And, as we have showed time and time again, we are up to the job. Let's "Git-R-Done."
The 23 June 2005 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States (Kelo vs New London, Ct.) literally tore asunder the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, one of the vital ten on our Bill of Rights, by declaring open season on Americans' private property.
A recent decision in western Washington State sets the precedent to shut down and scrap the First Amendment to our national Constitution. No one can afford to remain ignorant about what is going on out there.
Perhaps those unfamiliar with western Washington State do not know what a cauldron of Leftist activism boils there all of the time. There are quite literally two populations in that state: the Haves and the Have-Nots. And, these terms do not mean what they have meant historically.
The Haves are Democrats who dominate state government and courts, backed by flaming liberal labor, business, and countless pressure groups. Democrats occupy the seats of the governor, the majority in both state legislative bodies, the courts at all levels, those elected to the House of Representatives and the Senate, all media, and so on. This Leftism comes from the counties lining only eastern Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands. Overwhelmingly, Seattle and its King County have exerted a mafia-like control on state politics for decades. Corruption goes far beyond having influence on dispensation of power and special favors; the corruption is as bad philosophically as blue state Democrat Party machinery anywhere, and Washingtonians and Washington have suffered mightily.
The Have Nots are Washingtonians in eastern Washington, one of the bread baskets of the nation, and those west of the Cascade Mountains who are overregulated, overlegislated, overtaxed, and almost completely not represented in state and national government. Boeing boogied out of the state in which it was born and thrived for decades to get away from state government piranhas.
Change, possibly revolutionary change, has come to Washingtonians. The best example comes from the Initiative 912 drive, the No New Gas Tax Initiative, which we reported on this site on 8 July 2005. Citizens are rebelling, all quite legally, against extreme autocracy in their state government. Democrats, with cowardly Republican acquiescence, recently passed a humungous gasoline tax for "transportation projects" over citizen protest, to support projects not even defined, except to say that the money will not be used to reduce traffic congestion, and they will eventually develop plans to use the rest of the money. (Sounds like the United Nations). Citizens were also denied the right of referendum by the Democrats and spineless Republicans about this tax increase. So, a grass roots rebellion arose to get enough petition signatures to place the matter before the public this November.
What a court did in response shows more philosophical corruption than most Americans can imagine, and we hope will tolerate any longer.
Infuriated Washingtonians privately launched a drive to gather enough signatures to put an intiative on the November 2005 ballot to throw out the 9.5% gasoline tax, the No New Gas Tax Initiative. A conservative Seattle talk radio station, KVI, 570 A.M., lead by two hosts, Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson, found out about the initiative drive and began getting the word out about its existence and its progress. Neither they nor their station, owned by Fisher Broadcasting, originated the petition drive nor had any financial stake it the drive. These talk radio hosts strongly supported the drive on air, but they used personal funds and personal time off air to help get the word out from a small ripple in a pond in western Washington, to a storm reaching the most rural sections of eastern Washington. Opponents of the initiative were invited to their talk shows over and over to give their views why the No New Gas Tax Intiative should not be signed or passed. They refused to appear, over and over.
At first, the opposition to the initiative drive did not take the petition drive seriously for reasons we documented in our 8 July blog. However, the ground swell of support became obvious even to the most extreme cynic, and fright set in among the Left. Big labor, big money, big business, big media,and big government arose in opposition. Suits were filed. Even petitions were stolen. These efforts only infuriated a populace made of Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and absolutely everyone else fed up with being stepped on all of the time by special interests in Washington.
Enter activist judgeshiping.
The Seattle Times, one of two Leftist newspapers in Seattle, published an astonishing editorial on 8 July 2005. What that editorial had to say must not be lost on every American across America. The ripple set in motion by a judge in western Washington State has the capability to become a tsunami across America.
This judge, Christopher Wickham, of the county holding the Washington State capital and its functions, forced radio station KVI and Fisher Broadcasting to declare the on-air time spent discussion the No Gas Tax Initiative by Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson as political advertising. (Recall that neither broadcaster either started or had any sort of financial, organizational, or operational interest in the initiative. They offered facts about progress, gave opinions, and provided opportunites for those for and those against to call in to sound off.) The judge ordered that the No New Gas Tax Initiative campaign must convert the value of their time discussing the initiative into dollars and report this as support as a political contribution.
The Seattle Times editorial, Editorial In support of free speech, and KVI, Friday, July 8, 2005, said it all accurately and chillingly:
See what is being done here.
The judge is following a simple syllogism:
All political contributions may be regulated;
Speech is a political contribution;
Therefore, speech may be regulated.
The Times went on recall the heinous federal campaign-finance law of McCain and Feingold. Dissenting Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas had warned about the assault on the First Amendment from McCain-Feingold The newspaper acknowledge that at the time they had doubted the warning given by Scalia and Thomas because it seemed to apply only to ads and not to editorial content. Judge Wickham in Thurston County, Washington, carried the consequences to their logical conclusion. A contrite Seattle Times now said,
We thought Thomas was over the top when he said campaign-finance law was leading toward "outright regulation of the press."
It takes some good moral qualities to acknowledge an error, and to do on right on the editorial page. For that, the Seattle Times deserves commendation. They see the consequences of Judge Wickham's ruling and the need to have this decision reversed A.S.A.P.
By contrast, the haughty Seattle Post-Intelligencer maintains its "gotcha" position, so characteristic of the Washington State Left.
It is time to dust off the prophetic and widely applicable words of Pastor Neimoeller to the U.S. Congress in 1968 (which appears in the Congressional Record, October 14, 1968, page 31636):
"When Hitler attacked the Jews
I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned.
And when Hitler attacked the Catholics,
I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned.
And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists,
I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned.
Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church --
and there was nobody left to be concerned."
Pastor Niemoeller spent 8 and 1/2 years in a Nazi concentration camp. Don't lose sight of his message to the world: In short, if the ripple effect has not yet reached you, get concerned now.
And, in case that seems too abstract and tangential, let's apply Winston Churchill's metaphor about Soviet expansionism. Our court systems are doing this to us, and we must stop them now.
Churchill said that the Soviet communists' swallowing up of free countries was like eating a roast beef. They took a slice here, and no one objected over that small slice. Then they took another. Who could object over such small slices? Little by little, slice by slice, they took the whole roast. All that was left was the string used to bind the roast for cooking, and they took that.
It is up to you and to me, ordinary Americans, living out here in fly-over country. And, as we have showed time and time again, we are up to the job. Let's "Git-R-Done."
posted by George Mason @ 7/10/2005 09:00:00 AM
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