Every now and then, democracies, like people, get tired. And when they do, they cut corners; commit missteps; let their guard down. It happens most often after wars, when vigilance seems no longer necessary and the country wants nothing more than to relax and forget conflict. After the Civil War, the Gilded Age. After World War One, the Roaring Twenties. at the close of the Vietnam War, Watergate, and after the Cold War, this period in which we find ourselves, and for which we do not yet have a name, except, perhaps, Whitewater.
In such times it is the function of our great and durable institutions to transcend our failures and weaknesses; to reassert the rule of law by which we must live or count ourselves as nothing. Without the rule of law, no matter what our successes and despite all our wealth, we have fortified everything, betrayed our history, mocked those who fell in so many battles, given up our birthright.
I am introducing today a Resolution to vindicate the rule of law. The rule of law is threatened when a high public official stretches, abuses, and breaks the law. By all accounts, this official, President Clinton, is a master of evasion, but though he may evade the consequences he cannot evade the truth. Though he may seek shelter in his high position and hide behind his subordinates, he is as responsible for their conduct as if it were his own, which, in truth and it fact, it is.
I believe it is time to establish whether, and if so what, consequences flow from evidence that the president has engaged in numerous instances of obstruction of justice. It is the privilege of neither the most ordinary of citizens nor the President of the United States, to withhold, destroy, or delay the production of lawfully subpoenaed evidence. House and Senate investigations into the conversion of government property, the illegal use of confidential government records, the selling of influence, and the abuse of power clearly point to what a prosecutor would call a pattern, or course of conduct.
Special prosecutors, grand juries, and Congressional investigations into Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, INS investigations, and White House Database investigations, have produced so many charges that even experts are confused. The unavoidable heart of the matter, however, is that the President of the United States, while receiving from numerous sources illegal campaign contributions that flowed from agents and surrogates of the People's Republic of China, made decisions in the direction of American foreign, military, and trade policy in regard to the People's Republic of China; decisions of the gravest character, concerning nuclear weapons technology, the direction of the Fleet, and the extent to which the United States will defend the idea of democracy and press for the universal application of human rights.
This goes to the very heart of the integrity and security of our government and, considered with these other serious issues of misconduct, warrant examination in accordance with the tools that the Founders of our Constitutional structure designed for this very purpose: impeachment.
That is why I am submitting to the Congress today a resolution requesting an Inquiry of Impeachment. If adopted, it will result in an investigation by the Judiciary Committee of this House ( the only body with the authority to hold a president accountable to the law ) to determine if the issues I have outlined above, and others, are substantive and therefore worthy of conversion into articles of impeachment. If they are not substantive, they will not be converted, and if they are, they will; as they should be.
I ask for support in this not from Republicans or Democrats but from those that would defend the rule of the law. I am a Republican who, as the United States Attorney in Atlanta, prosecuted and sent to prison a sitting Republican member of this House. We all owe our allegiance not first to our parties, or causes, or our affections, but to the law as it has been made by both parties over time. No party and no program is worth a loyalty that undermines the role of law. And if the president of the United States is not made accountable to the law, there is no law. Too many generations have made too many sacrifices for us casually to abandon the heart of our jurisprudence simply because it leads to a difficult place.
His parents stood by him, and fought school officials to the state Supreme Court, where arguments were heard last week. A ruling is expected in several months.
``We want to make sure something like this doesn't happen to some other student,'' said Larry Wood, Brian's father.
Brian's father gave him the 2 1/2-inch blade knife - a promotional item from a snuff maker - in March 1996. He put it in his jeans pocket, left it there and the next day wore the same jeans to Bassett High School, about 30 miles south of Roanoke.
Brian was told he would be suspended for 10 days and his mother, Lavonne Wood, said school officials assured her Brian would be back in school soon.
Instead, he was called in for a disciplinary hearing for what officials called a ``severe act of misbehavior.'' The panel recommended a yearlong expulsion.
The school board ruled the boy violated its weapons policy and state code that allows students to be expelled for carrying a firearm to a school-sponsored event. The board expelled him for the semester and provided him with a teacher at home.
They didn't allow Brian to attend his sister's high school graduation that June.
``I feel like the student was given due process and appropriate discipline according to school board policy,'' said David Martin, the Henry County school superintendent.
The Woods' lawsuit alleged that the school board did not afford Brian due process or give him a proper chance to defend himself. Brian was punished twice, they said - first with a suspension, and then the expulsion.
Circuit Judge David Williams ruled in June 1996 that the knife could not be considered a firearm, but that Brian had violated the school district's knife policy. He sent the case back to the school board, which upheld the expulsion.
Brian has since transferred to Patrick County High School, 22 miles away, where he is a senior honor student.
The following article written by the President of the Lincoln Heritage Institute, is being submitted for publication by C-News. The article covers the potential legacy of President Clinton and VP Gore. Could it be the undoing of the Bill of Rights? For additional information please contact the Institute by e-mail or by fax at 1-517-663-5909. All or part of this article may be reproduced - please credit the Lincoln Heritage Institute and the Author.
I can not recall a time in the history of America when individual rights and the Sovereignty of U.S. territory have been more under attack or in question than they are now except as pertains to individuals immediately preceding the revolutionary war.
The growing fear and mistrust of government, particularly this administration, that is expressed by individuals and community and local organizations is not based upon "paranoia" or "wild imaginations", nor is it based on "conspiracy theories". The fear is based on the endless direct and indirect assaults on individual privacy and property rights, and the giveaway of sovereignty over domestic lands by this Administration. Americans are frustrated at what amounts to cannibalism. Whatever happened to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
The methods of enforcement of regulations by the federal government has not only eroded our property rights, but is driving natural resource production and manufacturing out of America along with all of the jobs and capitol creation that goes with them. In addition, with the blessing and active implementation and support of the President and Vice President Gore, phony scientific data and falsified environmental reports are being used as the excuse to return the US to an agrarian society, put much of the US coastal areas and inland waterways under the dictates of the UN., and make personal property rights the jurisdiction of an agency of the UN.
Thanks to President Clinton's crime bill, local law enforcement agencies were forced to work for the federal government until a recent Supreme Court decision declared that action unconstitutional, and approximately 40 crimes that once were the jurisdiction of the state, are now the jurisdiction of the federal government. The Department of Education now has the authority and tools to take over the curricula of local school boards, as they already have in many areas of Massachusetts and in Illinois through the Goals 2000 progress. If we add to this national testing standards, which like Goals 2000 would not interfere with local control of curricula according to President Clinton and Al Gore, we will give away all control of local school boards to the elitists in Washington. This administration has outstripped all previous administrations in implementing behind close doors through Executive Orders and Regulations what the American public would not give them through legislation because it would not stand the bright light of public scrutiny. These are but a few examples.
There are other areas that show this administration's complete disregard for the public trust and interest, as outlined by Congressman Bob Livingston, and Congressman Don Young.
Congressman Bob Livingston (Chairman of House Appropriations Committee), in a recent article, shed some light on activities of this Administration that threaten freedom, and that centralize increasing powers in the federal government. His comments are particularly pertinent in light of the recent court decision concerning the legality of actions by White House lawyers.
Excerpts from that article follows:
"If there is any question that the FBI leadership have become political tools of the White House, look no further than the bureau's number two man, FBI general counsel Howard Shapiro. It was Shapiro who tipped off the White House to the fact that information in Craig Livingstone's own background file would be damaging to Hillary Clinton and former White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum. In the file was a 1993 interview with Mr. Nussbaum by FBI agent Dennis Sculimbrene in which Nussbaum says Livingston came highly recommended by Hillary Clinton.
It was Mr. Shapiro who sent some top FBI agents to the home of Agent Sculimbrene to confront him about his notes on Livingstone, Nussbaum and Hillary Clinton. Despite these obvious transgressions, Mr. Shapiro remains the FBI general counsel.
Buried under the veritable two-year avalanche of White House scandals -- campaign fundraising being only the latest -- "Filegate" has been all but forgotten by the press and the general public. And that is extremely troubling.
What concerns me is not just that over 1,000 private citizens have had their privacy invaded, but that because of political pressure, the nation's premier law enforcement agency apparently has been compromised. Worse, nobody in the mainstream media seems to care!" Added to this, is the recent visit of the Chinese President while the investigation in attempts of China to influence U.S. foreign policy through illegal campaign contributions is still under investigation.
In an article written for the current issue of the Lincoln Log Titled, The Globalization of United States Domestic Land Use Policy, Congressman Don Young, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Resources Committee stated in connection with actions of this Administration, "Federal agencies use international land reserves to control and orchestrate local and state land use policy and steamroll the property rights of private land owners. This problem is illustrated by the New World mine project located three miles beyond Yellowstone National Park, a World Heritage Site.
The boundary of the World Heritage Site coincides exactly with the national park boundary, The Department of Interior (DOT), which wanted to stop the mine, brought in the World Heritage Committee to "inspect" the project, parading the Committee around Montana and Wyoming as if they had an important say in the development of the mine.
Ninety percent of the New World project is located on private land and the remainder is in a national forest. Under US law, private land cannot be included in a World Heritage Site without the consent of the owner, and the owner of the mining project never consented to be included in the World Heritage Site. DOI's action also trampled on the decision made by Congress to manage Federal lands included in the project as part of the multiple-use National Forest System -- not as protected land in Yellowstone National Park.
DOI had no authority to invite a foreign entity to interfere with a domestic land use decision. DOI bureaucrats ignored US law and infringed on personal private property rights by involving the World Heritage Committee in a project located on private land. They exhibited no concern or interest about protecting rights of US citizens or respecting the decisions of Congress. These bureaucrats were incapable of seeing how these actions compromised US sovereignty.
Why should we even think about involving an international body in making land policy decisions for lands within the United States? Congress must act to keep international commitments from interfering with Constitutional constraints. Otherwise, the rights of our citizens and the boundary between public land managed by government and private property can be too easily ignored."
A logical explanation for these giveaways of sovereignty and the protection and preservation of individual rights by the President and Vice President is difficult to come by. Speculation of their deliberate actions is unlike actions by any preceding administration in memory, unless perhaps it is hidden in the statement made by President Clinton while out of this country in Argentina, "What I'm trying to do is to promote a process of reorganization of the world ..." You are Mr. President, and you appear to have the concern of the American public at the bottom of your list.
NOVEMBER 9--For several years now many good liberty-minded people have been trying to inform a largely apathetic public about the dangers of losing our national sovereignty. A worthy cause, to be sure, but I'm afraid so far it has been all for naught; in my tempered opinion, it's already been lost and the focus now ought to be on how to regain it.
Witness the latest hand-wringing over Iraqi defiance to continued UN weapons inspections. The Clinton administration, in it's tawdry quest for greatness, can't seem to make a move without the express "approval" of the United Nations, and yet we're told that 'vital American interests' are at stake in Saddam's little corner of the world. A prudent -- and sovereign -- government would have already taken action in response to defiance of that country's wishes, and would have sought neither permission nor 'approval' from anyone. This is especially true if that country were a superpower.
And, a sovereign country would not let it's foreign policy be dictated by anyone who didn't directly have a stake in any foreign policy decision. In other words, in our case, if the decision affects only Americans, then only Americans need to make those decisions.
Without alluding to stories about 'black helicopters' and hordes of UN troops poised within our country, it should be patently obvious to anyone who cares to pay attention that when a government forces it's people to pay for military missions not sanctioned by Congress, to force it's soldiers to wear uniforms not approved by Congress, to participate in military actions not sanctioned by Congress, and to base all of its foreign policy decisions on prior approval of another governing entity, the issue of sovereignty is no longer valid. Instead, the transition has already taken place and it becomes more important to figure out how to reverse this destruction of nationalism.
The United Nations concept is a good one. It provides a ready forum for all the world's nations to come together and to peacefully discuss ways to reduce tensions among neighbors. Anytime this can be accomplished without resorting to bombs and bullets first, that is an admirable goal. After seeing two major world wars in this century, most people would agree that diplomacy is preferable to armageddon.
But somewhere along the way, that lone objective was hijacked by people who are not interested in the concerns of individual nations. Their concerns are about power -- how they can get more of it, how they can convince everyone they need it, and how they can keep it.
It's easy to see why poorer nations would flock to any entity who promised them billions of dollars in aid, promised to run their internal affairs and absolve them of the tedious responsibilities of government, and promise to solve all of their problems for them. But it's impossible to see why a nation like the United States, full of capable and responsible people who are used to tending their own affairs and who possess the capability to defend themselves and maintain a good economically stable society, would choose to surrender the right to govern itself.
Unless that deciding factor was a simple desire to exercise more power. Apparently globalists like Bill Clinton, Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich don't think running the most powerful country on earth is enough for them.
Americans must be made to understand that without such an entanglement like the UN, problems like Iraq would not exist today for us. We would not have already spent billions of dollars in places like Bosnia and Haiti, nor would we have lost one single soldier in places like Korea and Somalia. Hard-working Americans would not have to endure the insults of ungrateful UN diplomats who claim that we're pikers and irresponsible freeloaders because we're behind on our 'dues'. Never mind that this country hosts and guards the UN facilities, provides over 50 percent of UN expenditures and military hardware, and takes the lead in virtually every request for help the UN receives from the real freeloaders of the world.
The United Nations has long since ceased to primarily function as the world's debating forum, and instead now possesses almost every quality of an independent government. Lacking only it's own military and the authority to tax -- two concepts which are currently being promoted by UN powerbrokers -- this bastion of reconciliation is slowly solidifying into a global power unto itself, to be served by every other nation on earth -- who will function only as feudal serfs.
While the globalists in US government currently control the direction we are headed regarding the growing loss of our sovereignty, they are numerically challenged. There are not enough of them to maintain a grip on the reins of power, but in order to dethrone them there has to be enough interest in doing so from the country's 200 million-plus registered voters. And since the two major parties are so slanted towards globalism, the only viable answer is to fracture their importance by seeking out and electing candidates who belong not to particular political parties but instead to political principles of American government.
But that's not going to take bombs and bullets to accomplish either. It's going to take something that requires much more bravery -- it's going to take voting.
In a ruling handed down October, 20, 1997, U.S District Court Judge Claudia Wilken refused to grant immunity from prosecution to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Oakland Police Department (OPD).
Wilken's ruling stated plaintiffs have made an adequate showing that the FBI and Oakland Police deliberately misrepresented clear evidence regarding the location and makeup of a bomb that injured two Earth First! activists, in order to justify their false arrest. Wilken also upheld the right to sue individual officers and agents for illegal searches, and a conspiracy to "chill plaintiffs' advocacy on behalf of Earth First!" in violation of their first amendment rights.
On May 24, 1990, a sophisticated, motion triggered, anti-personnel bomb exploded beneath environmental/labor activist Judi Bari's car seat as she drove through Oakland, California, with fellow activist Darryl Cherney. Bari & Cherney were the two most prominent organizers for Earth First! Redwood Summer, a campaign of non-violent protests targeting corporate logging practices. Instead of trying to find the bomber, the FBI and Oakland Police had the activists arrested and then attempted to frame them on charges of transporting the very explosives that were used to try to kill them. The arrest directly contradicted the physical evidence, and ignored previous death threats against the pair. The bomber remains at large.
Judge Wilken found that FBI special agents Frank Doyle, John Reikes, Stockton Buck, John Conway, Walter Hemje, and Philip Sena and Oakland Police Lt. C. Michael Sims, Sgt. Robert Chenault, and Sgt. Michael Sitterud must stand trial for what Earth First members Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney assert were deliberate attempts to disrupt, discredit and intimidate Earth First!
"Every citizen must clearly understand the threat that is being increasingly imposed upon them by their own government, and by our law enforcement agencies upon whom we depend so much," charged Kubby. "I urge everyone to look past any differences they might have with the Earth First Organization, and see the government's actions for what they are; the abusive use of illegal power by those entrusted with our protection."
"Actions of government in recent years have destroyed parts of our Constitution," said Kubby. "For all intents and purposes, the Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth amendments to the Constitution have been gutted, by a government that claims that in order to save us from great peril, we must first be shackled by the elimination of these previously guaranteed, and now "inconvenient" to some, rights and freedoms."
Kubby said, "The FBI appears to have directly violated Congressional dictate which ordered the FBI to disband its COINTELPRO, the FBI's notorious counterintelligence program of 1970's, after the Church hearings by the U.S. Senate found the practice unconstitutional.
COINTELPRO is an FBI program designed (in the words of J. Edgar Hoover) to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize" activists and groups advocating social change in the U.S. Judge Wilken found strong evidence that the FBI had conducted a COINTELPRO-style operation against Earth First! How can we trust the FBI to investigate the Pepper Spraying of Earth First activists, now that it has been exposed as a rogue agency, which is ignoring a direct order by Congress?"
"In the weeks ahead I will be presenting a simple plan to stop this illegal erosion of our freedom and liberty," stated Kubby. "My plan to return control of government to the people in such a way that it can never be removed again, is easy to understand, and easy to implement.
Action is required now, before it is too late."
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