Board (Of Education) Attorney Responds

by Jennipher Dickens - May 28, 2008 - Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald

According to Waller, school officials have concerns as to the appropriateness of Judge Lewis' action.

"The board has concerns as to whether or not this has merit... there is an avenue for the judge to issue subpoenas, but in these circumstances the board has asked me to look into whether or not they were meritorious," Waller noted.

She continued, "Another concern is that he (Lewis) called them into another chamber aside from where court was taking place and said that he would continue to issue subpoenas until he was satisfied the concerns were met as to a change in policy. At this point we're trying to gather more information to find out exactly what his concerns are."

Waller further remarked that charges being brought against students in the school system is not the responsibility of the school administrators.

"To the extent that cases are brought (to court), the DA has the authority to dismiss any action, so to the extent that there are lots of cases going before any particular court, the DA makes the decision to bring those cases and has the ability to dismiss any case in which charges are brought," she noted.

Waller added, "Once the charges are brought in a decision by the sheriff, the DA has the authority to determine whether they're going to dismiss those charges... not the school board. I don't know why the charges are brought and I don't know statistics as compared to other counties but we can certainly find that out and we will be looking into that."

Several court officials have also reportedly questioned whether a judge should have the authority to subpoena elected officials and school administrators to court for the purpose of a lecture.

The actions of this judge were an incredible abuse of judicial authority. The only question is whether his abuse will be dealt with, or whether it will be covered up. I am outraged at the attitude of a couple of the people involved in the court system who said of this judge, "He can do anything that he wants. In our system, Judges are all powerful."

I don't think most citizens want to believe this. If true, we need to bring down some of these people to create a little more humility. Bringing down this judge, Rob Lewis, would be a good start.

Legal Lawlessness

by Donald Devine - May 28th, 2008 - The American Conservative Union Foundation

The first principle of the English jurisprudence from which American law evolved is that everyone is subject to the law, king, commons and courts. The philosopher who most influenced both, John Locke, defined real law as “established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong and the common measure to decide all controversies between them.” It is set by a representative legislature that "neither must or can transfer the power of making laws to anybody else." The whole point of a rule of law is that it is based on the settled, common beliefs of the people and their legislature, not to be invented by judges—or anyone else--as fashion dictates.

This view of law as based on common beliefs was uncontested in America until the early 20th Century, when it was challenged by the legal-positivist progressives under the leadership of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the most influential jurist of “law without values” utilitarianism, Malthusian economics, state-regulated eugenics and compulsory sterilization, and judicial supremacy. Substituting expert pragmatism for common consent, progressivism is forced to create positive law on every subject based on the specific facts of every case, unguided by tradition or common morality. As Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek, following Locke, demonstrated, this violates the rule of law because law must have general rules that all people in general circumstances can understand beforehand. Progressivism even at its best produces too many rules for people to follow. There is a law on everything so that no one can know the tax code, business regulations or even the criminal law so no one can understand and follow them. At its worst, progressivism produces so many conflicting rules on so many specifics that the laws produce nonsense.

It is truly sad that America today has abandoned the best court system that ever existed for a system defined by a man who believed in the right of the state to determine who could breed. If Olver Wendel Holmes Jr. had his way, blacks would not be permitted to breed. Yet blacks overwhelmingly support the kind of law this man directed. How can this be a sane reaction to an insane system?

Our courts are a joke. We have abandoned the rule of law and replaced it by the rule of Judges.

Ex-lacrosse Players Can Pursue Lawsuit Against Nifong

by Anne Blythe - May 27th, 2008 - News & Observer

Former District Attorney Mike Nifong will not be able to hide from a lawsuit in bankruptcy court, a federal judge ruled today.

The three exonerated lacrosse players who filed suit against the fallen prosecutor in October will be able to pursue their claims in federal civil court, Judge William L. Stocks ruled.

This is an interesting situation. The courts are essentially ruling that Nifong cannot use the standard copout permitted to most criminals to avoid responsibility for his crimes by hiding in bankruptcy court. This has been such a standard dodge for so long, that most attorneys just assumed Nifong could get away with it. While it is encouraging that the courts are not protecting Nifon, I wonder whether this is a special exception for Nifong (who embarrassed the court system) or whether it will apply to other people in the future who try to hide their money from those they have damaged by filing for bankruptcy?

It almost looks like equal protection of the court doesn't mean anything if you screw the courts.

Personally, I love it. Nifong deserves it. I would just like to see this apply to some of the other evil people who have used bankruptcy court to hide. Like O.J. Maybe?

Judge Berates School Officials

by Jennipher Dickens - May 26th, 2008 - Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald

In a highly unusual move, the entire Bertie County Board of Education and the superintendent of schools were summoned to appear in court here Thursday.

[snip]

"I'm sure the school board members have the best interests of children at heart, so I just wanted to make them aware of the problem," Lewis noted.

He continued, "I hope we'll be able to continue to work together... I'm just so frustrated by the amount of kids we have coming through the court system in Bertie County."

This is not about cursing on a bus. The Judge is lying when he tries to claim it is. The gang members who were arrested and who were being tried when he issued subpoenas to the school system officials . . . had guns, as proven by the fact that one fired his weapon. That is what the currrent case is about.

As you can see from the comments made by this Judge during the hearing (reported in the article below), this Judge is not trying to "work together" and ordering the officials into court by issuing subpoenas was not an appropriate way to make them "aware of the problem". It was typical judicial power, more and more common in our current court system. It is based on the idea of "the rule of judges".

This Judge is telling the school system officials that he demands they do as he says. His action of issuing subpoenas was an absolutely unbelievable abuse of judicial power. This Judge does not run the school system nor even determine how kids are to be disciplined if they have not committed crimes. Since he is not a federal Judge, he cannot even influence the numerous stupid court decisions that have made it almost impossible for teacher's to maintain discipline. Those rulings are all federal court rulings. All Judge Lewis seems capable of is the kind of childish humiliation he practiced Thursday, ordering Bertie children to parade around Windsor streets carrying signs that say "DON'T I LOOK STUPID".

As far as I am concerned, the only one who looks stupid in this whole incident is Judge Rob Lewis. Stupid and demagogic at the same time. In both his actions, the punishment leveled to the kids and the subpoenas issued to the school officials, Lewis is trying to humiliate others. There is nothing about either which indicates he has the temperament to be a Judge.

Judge Rob Lewis Threatens Bertie School Board

As abusive as our court system can get, few Judges have equaled the standard set by District Judge Rob Lewis in abusing the power of the court to subpoena. Judge Lewis subpoenaed officials from another branch of government, the Bertie County School System and threatened them if they did not act as he wishes.

This abuse was triggered by a situation where some local gang members who attended a school dance here in Bertie County, continued an altercation that had originally started away from the school in downtown Windsor. At the end of the altercation, one gang member fired a pistol to try and intimidate the other gang as he left the school in his car. The local Sheriff's officials at the school felt they had to make an issue because of the discharge of the pistol. First they called the Windsor Police and had the car with the kid who had fired the gun stopped as it fled towards Windsor. Since most of the other kids involved had already left, they obtained arrest warrants and charged the kids with various crimes, some for fighting, and some for failure to disperse.

The school system expelled the kid who fired the pistol.

Judge Lewis decided with some kind of bizarre logic that the incident was the fault of the school system. How he came to the conclusion that the school board and school officials were at fault is still not clear since the Judge refused to respond to my request for clarification. However he made it clear he held them accountable.

The following people were subpoenaed from the school system, Board of Education Chairman Rickey Freeman, Board Member Emma Johnson, Board Member Gloria Lee, Board Member Melinda Eure, Board Member Alton Parker, School Superintendent Chip Zullinger, Assistant Superintendent Thomas Ruffin, Principal Rick Eley, Principal Sharon Bond and Ernestine Byrd, who was formerly in charge of the temporarily suspended teen court. The Judge also issued subpoenas for the two deputy sheriff officers involved, who though assigned to the school, report to Sheriff Greg Atkins, not the school system. All were ordered to appear in court Thursday morning at 9:00 AM with last minute subpoenas that drug all away from their jobs and school duties.

After almost 2 hours of waiting while the Judge conducted regular court, the Judge ordered the school officials to go to a separate courtroom, where he then verbally berated them. As I tried to enter the smaller courtroom I was asked who I was and why I was trying to enter. I asked the court officer if the press was allowed. The officer did not think that I could attend. I asked the officer to please verify with the Judge whether I could enter and one officer went up to do so while another kept me standing in the doorway.

It is interesting that 3 attorneys I talked with said the same thing. The court officer who initially tried to keep me out was playing with fire. When the officer went up and spoke to the judge he appeared to nod his head that I could enter, and the officer detaining me in the door stepped aside reluctantly after the other motioned for me to enter. Excluding me would have been illegal because one of the few things that a judge cannot do is hold a private hearing that is not statutorily permitted and this meeting would never have been covered by the statute.

As I was entering the Judge ripped into the people present, but because of the delay at the door I missed the first few sentences. The following are what I was able to write down when I got to a seat. For the record, these are the quotes of what Judge Rob Lewis said to humiliate the Bertie County School personnel.

"Schools must have discipline. You have to have a different policy. I order you to adopt a difrerent policy. If you choose to dump everything on this court, I will subpoena you people every time a student is arrested. You are wasting court time. You need to step up and do something so these kids are not subject to criminal records. I will continue to subpoena you for every case until you convince me you have a policy."

It was not clear exactly what policy the Judge was referring to since only the two officers were involved in the arrests. It does not matter. No Judge has the right to dictate education policy to our elected officials. He most assuredly has no right to subpoena them to try and dictate through threat what those policies should be.

One of the attorneys that I spoke with (all of them only willing to speak off the record for fear of the Judge) said, "Lewis' action was an abuse of judicial process and he should be reported to the judicial standards commission." Another said, "Lewis thinks because he was recently re-elected to his office for 4 years that no one can touch him because anything he does now will be forgotten by the time he comes up again."

It sure seems to me this is one more Judge who prefers "the rule of judges" to "the rule of law".

Anheuser-Busch Offers $21M In Club Fire

by By Eric Tucker - May 23rd, 2008 - signonsandiego.com (AP)

Anheuser-Busch Inc. and a distributor have offered $21 million to settle lawsuits brought by survivors and family members of those who died in a 2003 nightclub fire that killed 100 people, according to court papers filed Friday.

The ongoing extortion racket, jokingly referred to as the American justice system, has once again encouraged an innocent company to pay out millions to avoid the blackmail of outrageous court judgements.

Anheuser-Busch, Home Depot and Clear Channel Broadcasting had nothing to do with the dangerous conditions of the night club. It is typical of the modern concept of blackmail practiced by our corrupt court system. However $120 million of their money will now go to the relatives of the people who died. In America today, having a relative die is like hitting the lottery Whoopee.. Find a lawyer and sue everyone who was standing nearby, especially any company even vaguely involved in the location of where they are killed. Feeling sorry for the victims is no excuse to make the relatives rich, but then that is what passes for justice in a system where "the rule of law" has been abandoned and "the rule of judges" has taken hold.

There is no justice in America. The courts are a joke.

Texas Had No Right To Take Polygamist Sect Kids

by Staff - May 22nd, 2008 - Brietbart.com

The state of Texas had no right to remove hundreds of children from a polygamist sect because it has not proven they were in imminent danger, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

Officials raided the sprawling compound of the reclusive sect on April 3 and took 250 girls and 213 boys into state custody amid allegations of systemic sexual and physical abuse.

[snip]

"The Department did not present any evidence of danger to the physical health or safety of any male children or any female children who had not reached puberty," the nine page ruling said.

Investigators were also unable to prove that the teenaged girls who had become pregnant had been married to older men.

"The Department conceded at the hearing that teenage pregnancy, by itself, is not a reason to remove children from their home and parents."

It is now clear that the original report of a teenage girl being abused was a fraud and a lie.

The court also said the state was wrong to consider the entire ranch as a single household. and to seize all the children on the grounds that some parents in the home might be abusers.

Of the 31 girls the state initially said were underage mothers, 15 have already been determined to be adults. One of them is 27. The rest are not yet proved to be underage but investigation continues.

The bureaucrats deny they did anything wrong and continue to defend removal of the over 400 children. They reject that this removal has done more harm than any harm that was possible by leaving all but the teenage girls with their parents. Being bureaucrats, they never will. This entire episode is indicative of the egregious results of a socialist society. The abuse by these bureaucrats is typical of people who have the power of government and the arrogance of self righteousness.

Next Stop, Supreme Court?

by James Andrew Miller - May 21st, 2008 - Washington Post

It's likely that the next President will face at least one Supreme Court vacancy. Obama should promise Hillary Clinton, now, that if he wins in November, the vacancy will be hers, making her first on a list of one.

Obama and Clinton have wound up agreeing on nearly every major issue during the campaign; at the end of the day, they share many orthodoxies. Unless the Supreme Court were to get mired in minuscule details of what constitutes universal health care, Obama could assume that he'd be pleased with most Clinton votes, certainly on major issues such as abortion.

Obama could also appreciate Clinton's undeniably keen mind. Even Clinton detractors have noted her remarkable mental skills; she would be equal to any legal or intellectual challenge she would face as a justice. The fact that she hasn't served on a bench before would be inconsequential, considering her experience in law and in government.

If there was ever any doubt that liberals see the Supreme Court, not as a enforcer of the rule of law, but merely one more poltical force promoting the liberal agenda, this article should put that delusion to rest.

I love the quote "considering her experience in law and government".

What experience in law? Hiding evidence of the Rose Law Firm billing records? Illegally reviewing the FBI records of political opponents? Going before a judge and repeating ad infinitum "I don't recall?" There is the little issue that her husband has been disbarred for his conduct in the cases involved in his mysoginist sexual escapades.

Hillary has lots of experience in government promoting the concept that there is a vast right wing conspiracy . . . out to get her and her husband. Hillary promoted the most oppressive socialized medicine plan the world has ever seen. Is this the government experience we are supposed to admire?

To turn this paranoid, arrogant, self righteous socalist into a Supreme Court Justice would be the final proof that our courts are a corrupt farce.

Overturning California's Gay 'Marriage' Ban

by Chuck Colson - May 16th, 2008 - Townhall.com

A decision by the California Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional any ban on gay “marriage” is sending shock waves across the nation. The 4-3 decision announced Thursday not only legalizes gay “marriage” in the largest state in America, but it also overturns both the referendum of the people and the representatives of the people.

The only way the California Supreme Court could override the people is by saying that gay “marriage” is a natural right. But nowhere do we see this in the federal or state Constitutions. While the founders of this country wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men were created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” they never would have intended or imagined that those noble words would be used to support something like gay “marriage.”

In essence, these judges have created a new right out of thin air.

There is no noticeable difference in the arrogance of this decision and the Roe v. Wade decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Both are rulings by judicial tyrants jamming their personal opinions down the throats of the people simply because they can.

The choices of how to overturn this are of concern as well. Having this issue dealt with by the federal congress does not give me much confidence since it is dominated by the wrong party. The current party in power is more in tune with the gay rights special interest group that is opposed to this legislation than with the average American. Appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court is equally frightening with Justice Kennedy holding the balance of power. Who knows how that suck up to liberal orthodoxy will come down on any issue?

The reality is that more and more my long term proposal to fix America's courts is the only rational answer. Mass impeachment. If the people of California would organize a mass impeachment of the justices that approved this outrage, it would give pause to the judicial arrogance that spawned the problem. When I lived in California we successfully impeached Chief Justice Rose Bird, ultimately driving her into becoming a recluse. The power of impeachment is the real power of the people. We need to use it more often.

Automatic Gun Transfer Nets Prison Sentence

by John Diedrich - May 13th, 2008 - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A Wisconsin man whose federal conviction for illegally transferring a machine gun drew national attention on CNN and the Internet was sentenced Tuesday to 30 months in prison.

Some excerpts from an article by NFA Owners Association, a gun owners group, gives the details of this case.

. . . Mr. Olofson had lent an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to a person who was interested in joining the National Guard. While firing the rifle at a public gun range -- he had previously fired some 800 rounds through the rifle without any problems -- the gun malfunctioned, fired two rounds and then jammed. Law enforcement officers at the range questioned the man, referred the case to ATF, and ATF charged Mr. Olofson with the illegal transfer of a machine gun; the Assistant United States Attorney argued that a "malfunction" was no defense . . .

. . . when ATF tested the AR-15, ATF reported that the AR-15 was not a machine gun [that is it passed the test and did not fire automatically!]; however, the ATF Special Agent in charge of the case requested that ATF re-test the AR-15 using ammunition with more sensitive primers, and after the AR-15 fired multiple rounds and jammed, ATF took the position that the AR-15 was a machine gun.

. . . Mr. Olofson was convicted by a jury (click here to view the report).

. . . firearms expert Len Savage, President, Historic Arms LLC of Franklin, Georgia, a expert witness in two recent federal prosecutions involving firearms, stated that the reason for this problem is that ATF has no firearms testing standards; that each firearms test is done individually; and that the lack of scientific testing standards is a serious problem.

. . . Mr. Dobbs [of CNN] noted that proposed legislation under H.R. 1792 would require ATF to videotape all firearms tests, and showed a clip of ATF firearms examiner Michael J. Cooney testing a rifle under similar conditions (that particular firearm had broken internal parts and had malfunctioned; defendant John Glover's conviction was ultimately dismissed with prejudice for that reason, following its exposure by Mr. Savage; click here to read about the Glover case).

. . . Mr. Dobbs stated that future reports will feature interviews with or about ATF so that questions about why Mr. Olofson was targeted for prosecution inappropriately can be answered, as well as what the Congressional delegation from Wisconsin and the National Rifle Association has to say about the injustice perpetrated against Mr. Olofson, and how the problem of inappropriate prosecutions involving malfunctioning firearms can be corrected.

You can see Lou Dobbs video about this case here and here.

My problem with this case is the usual socialist goon habit of trying to twist evidence and make the person charged seem to be more evil than his actions would indicate are true. This is a man who has never committed a crime. One of the so-called crimes he committed was merely carrying a gun for protection while his kids went "trick or treating". The government also introduced so-called evidence that Mr. Olofson had been reprimanded for things which would have denied him an honorable discharge. However he got an honorable discharge because an investigation of that earlier incident had cleared him and he had not been reprimanded.

The liberal anti-gun Judge, Clevert, bent the rules to admit this irrelevant and questionable evidence and made statements that persuaded some gullible jurors to convict. However voire dire allows Judges to rig juries to be dominated by those likely to follow judicial dictates, so the jury convicting means nothing.

In my opinion the ATF Agent, the prosecutor and the Judge should all be tried for malfeasance of office and abuse of power.

This is typical of modern court corruption. There is no justice when the courts practice the "rule of judges".