Thursday, November 22, 2007

The ACLU and Its Allies:
Standing in Need of Prayer

by Jared Lorence - November 22nd, 2007 - Townhall.com

In July, the federal appeals court for Louisiana, the 5th Circuit, rejected a lawsuit by the ACLU, which represented “offended observers” who challenged the practice of the Tangipahoa Parish School Board to open its meetings with prayer. The ACLU claims it forgot to mention in its legal pleadings that its clients had attended the meetings when there was prayer. Oops! It’s kind of hard to be offended by the prayers when you aren’t even present to hear them. The federal appeals court rightly dismissed the lawsuit with such a cotton candy foundation.

New enforcement of the requirement that the ACLU bring clients to court who have standing–that is, who have actually been injured by the government’s actions–will not totally stop the extreme lawsuits. But if the ACLU has difficulty finding people actually suffering from government actions that acknowledge America’s religious heritage, then maybe that says something about the validity of its assertions

Of course it does. There never was any justification for these lawsuits or the underlying premise of a "separation of church and state". The meaning of this phrase is not even relevant because that is not the law. It is an explanation of the intent of the law, which is that government shall not "establish" a religion. Though the prohibition of establishing a religion is one part of our Constitutional rights, it is first and foremost the right to have freedom OF religion, which is what the Constitution guarantees. There is no Constitutional guarantee to be free FROM religion. That is the right that unelected tyrannical judges have created under their "rule of judges" doctrine and the resultant war against Christianity. It is time we went back to the "rule of law" doctrine as the "rule of judges" is totally corrupt.


Sunday, November 18, 2007

A Trial Lawyer's Campaign To
Clean Up Washington

by George Will - November 18th, 2007 - Townhall.com

John Edwards launched his slight public career -- one Senate term, two presidential candidacies -- with the money and reputation he made as a trial lawyer. Today he is the candidate of a small fraction of the electorate but a sizable portion of America's trial lawyers. Edwards says Washington is "corrupt." Well.

Within Edwards' lucrative trial bar constituency, there has been a flurry of criminal indictments. Their target has been what Fortune magazine calls the law firm of Hubris Hypocrisy and Greed. (See Peter Elkind's
jaw-dropping report in the issue of Nov. 13, 2006.) The real name of the nation's foremost securities class-action firm is Milberg Weiss.

It has been indicted as a "racketeering enterprise" that obstructed justice and committed perjury, bribery and fraud while collecting about $250 million in fees from about 250 cases using paid plaintiffs, which is illegal. Several of the firm's members, past and present, also have been indicted.

Since 1965, the firm has won, often by tactics indistinguishable from extortion, $45 billion from corporations -- more than $1 billion a year . . .

One of the truly corrupt practices of our corrupt law system is the use of our court system for extortion of businesses by the trial lawyers. Rarely do the practices get exposed since the trial lawyers do not often meet defendants who are willing to fight. Thus the extortion goes unreported. However some people are starting to fight, like the banks in the case that started the campaign to expose the corrupt practices of the huge law firm referenced in this article.

The Fortune report by Peter Elkind mentioned and linked in the article above is an education in itself. It repeatedly describes the "cover stories" used by lawyers who practice the same kind of corruption. The "cover stories" protect all of these criminals from being held accountable. It is especially outrageous that the justice department did not really want to prosecute this case and tried to make a deal. Only stupidity and stubbornness by the criminals forced them to proceed.

Note the amount that has been extorted. $45 billion. Does anyone have a shadow of a doubt that they have personally paid a few hundred of those extorted fees? Just remember that businesses always pass along their costs. You the reader have been extorted for a few hundred in the last few years through the practice of this law firm and all the others that are doing the same thing. How does it feel knowing that you have been robbed by the trial lawyers of America?


Saturday, November 10, 2007

The Nation’s Top Ten Worst
State Attorneys General

by Hans Bader - January 24th, 2007 - Competitive Enterprise Institute

Like other government offices, the office of attorney general was designed to have limited powers, set forth by statute and constitution. Under all state constitutions, it is the legislature, not the state attorney general, which is vested with the authority to make laws and prescribe remedies for violations of the law. State constitutions give the attorney general no power to make or rewrite law. In fact, if the legislature has not conferred the authority on an attorney general to enforce a particular law, then the attorney general may well be exceeding his authority by bringing suit under it, violating constitutional checks and balances.

Federal law also limits attorney general power. If he attempts to regulate conduct in another state, that may violate not only state law, but also the due process and commerce clauses of the U.S. Constitution, which forbid any state to impose its laws on another state, or to regulate commerce among states.

Unfortunately, many state attorneys general today find those constraints inconvenient. Over the past decade, attorneys general have increasingly usurped the role of state legislatures and Congress by using litigation to impose interstate and national regulations and to extract money from out-of-state defendants who have little voice in a state’s political processes. The worst offenders flaunt such abuse of power, with the most notorious of the lot, Eliot Spitzer, boasting that he “has redefined the role of Attorney General.”

This sort of activism may benefit the political and policy ambitions of the office holder and his allies, but it imposes real costs on consumers, businesses, the economy, and our democratic system. The wave of lawsuits brought by state attorneys general has fostered corruption, circumvented legislative checks on regulation, taxes, and government spending, made the workings of government less transparent, and diverted attention away from their core responsibilities—enforcing state laws, defending state agencies against lawsuits, and providing legal advice to public officials.

Of course the problem is we no longer have a separation of powers. Tyrannical judges allow these abuses of power to go unchecked since they increase the power of judges too. Plus, legislatures are dominated by lawyers who also see no reason to rein in the Attorney Generals and judges as long as they are increasing the power of lawyers overall. That benefits their pockets long term. There is no balance of power any more. Lawyers have all the power and use it to extort outrageous sums from the rest of us.

Welcome to the "rule of judges".


Friday, November 09, 2007

Money Violates Civil Rights Laws,
Court Rules

by Hans Bader - November 28th, 2006 - openmarket.org

A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has just ruled that America’s money bills, such as $1, $10, and $100 bills, discriminate against the blind, in violation of the federal Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits the federal government and recipients of federal funds from discriminating against the disabled.

The reasons for this ruling are so ridiculous that the judge recommended that his ruling be appealed immediately. The "rule of judges" is getting so out of hand that we are rapidly approaching the situation where our form of government will collapse into a judicial dictatorship. It is arguable that we have already reached that point.