Tag Archive for: U.S. Constitution

What Can the Government Steal? Anything It Pays For! by Daniel Bier

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“…Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” – Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution 

On Monday, I wrote about the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Horne v. USDA, in which the Court ruled almost unanimously against the government’s attempt to confiscate a third of California raisin farmers’ crops without paying them a dime for it.

The confiscation was part of an absurd FDR-era program meant to increase the price of food crops by restricting the supply; the government would then sell or give away the raisins to foreign countries or other groups.

Overall, this ruling was a big win for property rights (or, at least, not the huge loss it could have been).

But there’s one issue that’s been overlooked here, and it relates to the Court’s previous decision in Kelo v. City of New London, the eminent domain case that also just turned 10 horrible years old yesterday.

In Horne, eight justices concluded that physically taking the farmers’ raisins and carting them away in trucks was, in fact, a “taking” under the Fifth Amendment that requires “just compensation.”

That sounds like common sense, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that the seizure wasn’t a taking that required compensation because, in their view, the Fifth Amendment gives less protection to “personal property” (i.e., stuff, like raisins or cars) than to “real property” (i.e., land).

The Court thankfully rejected this dangerous and illogical premise.

But while eight justices agreed on the basic question of the taking, only five agreed on the matter of just compensation.

The majority concluded that the government had to pay the farmers the current market value of the crops they wanted to take, which is standard procedure in a takings case (like when the government wants to take your home to build a road).

Justices Breyer (joined by Ginsburg and Kagan) wrote a partial dissent, arguing the federal government’s claim that the question of how much the farmers were owed should be sent back to the lower court to calculate what the farmers were owed.

Their curious reasoning was that, since the government was distorting the market and pushing up the market price of raisins, they should be able to subtract the value the farmers were getting from the artificially inflated price from the value of the raisins that were taken. The government argued that the farmers would actually end up getting more value than was taken from them, under this calculation.

Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, derided this argument: “The best defense may be a good offense, but the Government cites no support for its hypothetical-based approach.”

But the most interesting part of this subplot came from Justice Thomas. Thomas fully agreed with Roberts’ majority opinion, but he wrote his own a one-page concurrence on the question of how to calculate “just compensation,” and it went right at the heart of Kelo.

In Kelo, a bare majority of the Court ruled that the government could seize people’s homes and give them to private developers, on the grounds that the government expected more taxes from the new development.

Marc Scribner explains how the Court managed to dilute the Fifth Amendment’s “public use” requirement into a “public purpose” excuse that allows the government to take property for almost any reason it can dream up.

Thomas’s concurrence disputes Breyer’s argument about calculating “just compensation” by pointing out that, had Kelo had been correctly decided, the government wouldn’t be allowed to take the farmers’ crops at all — even if it paid for them.

Thomas wrote (emphasis mine),

The Takings Clause prohibits the government from taking private property except “for public use,” even when it offers “just compensation.”

And quoting his dissent in Kelo:

That requirement, as originally understood, imposes a meaningful constraint on the power of the state — ”the government may take property only if it actually uses or gives the public a legal right to use the property.”

It is far from clear that the Raisin Administrative Committee’s conduct meets that standard. It takes the raisins of citizens and, among other things, gives them away or sells them to exporters, foreign importers, and foreign governments.

To the extent that the Committee is not taking the raisins “for public use,” having the Court of Appeals calculate “just compensation” in this case would be a fruitless exercise.

Unfortunately, Chief Justice Roberts is already writing as though the “public use” requirement was a dead letter, writing at one point in his opinion: “The Government correctly points out that a taking does not violate the Fifth Amendment unless there is no just compensation.”

But that isn’t true. A taking violates the Fifth Amendment, first and foremost, if it is not taken for “public use.” And confiscating raisins and giving them to foreign governments in order to keep the price of raisins in the United States artificially high does not, in any sane world, meet that standard.

What Thomas didn’t say, but clearly implied, was that the Court should have struck down the raisin-stealing scheme entirely, rather than just forcing the government pay for the crops it takes.

The Horne decision was good news, but it didn’t go far enough by actually imposing a meaningful limit on what counts as “public use.” The Court could have done that in this case, by overturning Kelo or at least adding somelimitations about what governments can lawfully take private property for.

Happily, Justice Thomas isn’t throwing in the towel on Kelo, and Justice Scalia has predicted that the decision will eventually be overturned.

So can the government still take your property for no good reason? Yes, for now. But at least they have to pay for it.

That’s not nothing. And for raisin farmers in California, it’s a whole lot.


Daniel Bier

Daniel Bier is the editor of Anything Peaceful. He writes on issues relating to science, civil liberties, and economic freedom.

Rep. Scott G. Perry (R-PA): It Takes ‘Moral Courage’ To Stand Against the GOP Leadership

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Yet another courageous lawmaker, endorsed and elected by the Combat Veterans For Congress, U.S. Representative Scott G. Perry (Colonel PA-ARNG) is opposing the SECRET 800 page unconstitutional Fast Track Trade legislation that no member of Congress has read, which will give President Obama the power to eliminate all Federal Immigration Laws and keep the wide open southern border permanently open for Radical Islamic Terrorists to continue to enter the United States. The SECRET bill that Boehner, McConnell and Obama refuses to let the American people see, before it is passed will erode the sovereignty of the United States.

Representative Perry was interviewed by the Daily Caller. Please watch and listen to his revealing statements:

The Republican leaders in Congress are saying it is necessary to pass this SECRET 800 page unconstitutional bill that no one has read be involved in “Free Trade” in Asia; this bill is not about “Free Trade.” Asia is desperate to trade with the U.S., and Oval Office currently has the ability to negotiate “Free Trade Treaties” with every country in Asia and the world without violating the U.S. Constitution, violating Federal Immigration Laws, and damaging the Free Enterprise System—that is exactly what this SECRET 800 page Unconstitutional legislation does—more importantly it is a nail in the coffin of the Free Enterprise System, and advances Obama’s Socialist policies with the willing and aggressive help of the Republican leadership in Congress.

When the current leadership of the Republican Congress didn’t have to, they intentionally funded Obama’s illegal immigration policies in violation of Federal Immigration Laws and the U.S. Constitution thru September 2015. Now by jamming Obama’s SECRET 800 page unconstitutional Fast Track Trade Legislation through the Congress, that no one has read, they will be responsible for effectively eliminating “all U.S. borders”. They learned their lesson well from Pelosi, when she said “we have to pass it to see what is in it.”

This SECRET 800 PAGE unconstitutional bill will allow millions of non-Christian illegal aliens from 12 Pacific Rim countries, including Mexico, to enter the United States, in order to have Obama give them work permits, and he will facilitate their ability to take very scarce jobs away from over 104 million unemployed Americans who couldn’t possibly work for such low wages; many of the U.S. unemployed are minority and low income workers. This SECRET 800 page Unconstitutional bill that no one has read is against the Free Enterprise System, and advances Obama’s Socialist Agenda.

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Why Is Snapchat More Secure than the Federal Government? by Andrea Castillo

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Cyberhawks have seized upon this year’s massive hack of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to shove a wolfish surveillance bill in a sheepish cybersecurity bill’s clothing down America’s throat.

But the “Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015” (CISA) would have done nothing to stop the hack that exposed as many as 14 million federal employees’ personnel records. The pro-NSA crowd’s arguments are obvious nonsense — if anything, the OPM hack clearly demonstrates the danger of trusting incompetent government bureaucracies to manage huge datasets of sensitive personal information.

But amid all of the hubbub, these self-styled champions of strong cybersecurity — who also just happen to be anti-private encryption and pro-surveillance — have neglected to raise one important question: Why did a goofy picture-sharing app implement basic security measures before the central repository for all federal personnel data did?

This week, Snapchat announced that the private picture messaging service was offering two-factor authentication for its users. This basic measure of security helps to verify that the person logging in is indeed the legitimate owner of their account by sending out a text message with a special access code to the owner’s cell phone.

That way, a hacker must obtain both your password and your mobile phone to access and control your account. It’s simple, but simple security solutions can sometimes mean the difference between a foiled infiltration and a very, very bad day for a Snapchat user.

Of course, it is too much to expect the chief steward of federal employee information to implement such a simple policy. As the beleaguered office’s Inspector General reported last fall, OPM does not require multi-factor authentication to access its information systems.

If a careless OPM employee chose a weak and easy-to-guess password, or emailed it in plain text across an insecure channel, or merely left it on a sticky note on his or her desk (as is common practice in the federal government), than any common hacker could potentially access vast amounts of federal data.

In other words, an application for sharing pictures of wild parties and funny cats has better authentication standards than the federal government’s primary steward of millions of current and former federal employees’ and contractors’ addresses, Social Security numbers, financial information, and health records. Oh, and that of our military leadership and intelligence contacts — several of which are embedded deep undercover in dangerous missions — as well.

Hackers also accessed the feds’ cache of Standard Form 86 files for the aforementioned groups, dragging countless family members, friends, and colleagues into the databreach crossfire.

To call this a huge mess would be the second biggest understatement of the year. The biggest? That OPM’s substantial information security vulnerabilities are entirely unacceptable and directly at fault for the hack.

The OPM’s annual information security reports to Congress have admitted “material weaknesses” and “significant deficiencies” for years. The department lacked an IT team with “professional security experience and certifications”until 2013. Disgruntled employees could have merely walked off with this data if they wanted to, since OPM does not “maintain a comprehensive inventory of servers, databases, and network devices.” Nor did the OPM encrypt any of the data that the hackers stole — they might as well have just invited our forward friends in China to sweep in through the front door!

As Ars Technica’s Sean Gallagher concludes, “Considering the overall condition of OPM’s security, it’s no surprise that an attacker — almost any attacker — could gain a foothold inside the agency’s network. But attackers didn’t just gain a foothold, they had practically a free run of the networks.”

It’s true that Snapchat has hardly been a paragon of good cybersecurity in the past, as previous security vulnerabilities, breaches, misleading marketing, and the infamous “Snappening” testify. However, there is another important difference between Snapchat and the OPM that puts the humble app ahead of the mighty federal office: Snapchat has to learn from its mistakes.

As a private service provider in a hotly-competitive market that must keep its users happy to stay afloat, Snapchat moved quickly to get its security house in order after their big mistakes. They hired the former social network security leader for Google and started to build a “culture of security” within the firm.

They may still have a long way to go, but these investments and cultural prioritization are important first steps that demonstrate a proactive sense of ownership in their platform’s security. And of course, if they keep screwing up, they’ll be sued out the nose and go out of business for good.

We see no such sense of urgency with OPM. The agency received what could have been a saving wakeup call in last year, when it was discovered that Chinese hackers had accessed OPM databases in March of 2014.

OPM had the opportunity to implement simple encryption and authentication measures, tighten up their ship, and increase employee education about good data and security practices. No such luck! The office more or less continued on its merry way.

No one was fired back then and it looks like no one will get fired now. It’s government work, after all.

Unfortunately, OPM is hardly the only sucker on cybersecurity in the federal government, as my research for the Mercatus Center has found. This kind of unbelievably poor cybersecurity posture is the norm rather than the exception.

In fact, it’s hard to pick what is scarier: that the federal government operates under the digital equivalent of leaving all of their doors and windows unlocked and wide open, or that these same federal agencies want more power to manage your personal data through CISA.


Andrea Castillo

Andrea Castillo is the program manager of the Technology Policy Program for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and is pursuing a PhD in economics at George Mason University.

Airport Pirates Loot a College Student’s Life Savings by Trevor Burrus

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Today, our friends at the Institute for Justice launched a new challenge to yet another instance of egregious civil asset forfeiture abuse.

Charles Clarke is a 24-year-old college student who found out the hard way that government officials can confiscate property on the mere suspicion that it has a “substantial connection” to a crime or is the proceeds of a crime. No underlying conviction is required.

Functionally, this means that officers can claim that “something was a little off” about your behavior, or that “something smells a little like drugs” and then have carte blanche to take whatever cash you have on you. After that, your cash is presumptively guilty, and it is up to you to prove its innocence.

In the winter of 2013, Charles was stopped at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport based on the officers’ assertion that his bag smelled like marijuana. Actually, it was based off of a drug dog’s “signal” that his bag smelled like marijuana. By claiming that a dog “alerted” an officer can obtain probable cause, but in reality the dogs are about as reliable as Clever Hans.

After searching his bag, the officers found no drugs or other illegal substances. They then asked him if he was carrying any cash. Charles volunteered that he was carrying $11,000–clearly thinking, not unreasonably, that in a just world there is no way the officers could just take his money. Charles’s mistake, however, was thinking that he lives in a just world, and the officers walked away with his life savings.

Charles had saved the $11,000 over the previous five years, from work, financial aid, educational benefits, and gifts from family. Now he must overcome the officers’ hunches by proving that his money came from legal sources.

By now, hopefully you’re familiar with civil asset forfeiture. Thanks in part to the excellent work of the Institute for Justice, as well as biting commentary from John Oliver and dogged investigative journalism from the Washington Post and the New Yorker (as well as Cato’s own work), civil asset forfeiture no longer exists in the shadows, where the perpetrators would have preferred it to remain.

In a time of sharp political divides, there’s one thing we all should agree on: police and other law enforcement officials should not be allowed to take assets based only on the suspicion of criminal activity and then be permitted to use those assets to purchase needed things for the department, like margarita machines.

Charles – who admittedly smoked marijuana on the way to the airport – lost his life savings to what amounts to legalized piracy. It seems Mancur Olson was on to something when he described the government as “stationary bandits.”

Thankfully, Charles has the saintly lawyers at the Institute for Justice on his side, who use the money from IJ’s generous donors to defend people like him from the most powerful organization in human history – the United States government.

Otherwise, Charles would be out of luck. His confiscated $11,000 is just small enough to make it almost not worth it to pay thousands in attorney’s fees in order to possibly get some of it back. It’s almost as if the officers who confiscated his money thought that Charles would be unlikely to have the resources to fight the seizure.

Last year, the officers at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport had a “good” year taking things from people who haven’t been convicted of a crime, raking in $530,000 from travelers similar to Charles. Under the federal “equitable sharing” program, the departments of the deputized airport police are allowed to keep up to 80 percent of that money.

The Institute for Justice is not only seeking to recover Charles’s money, they are challenging the constitutional deficiencies of the civil asset forfeiture program in general.

For more on Charles’s case, see Vox’s story.

For more on civil asset forfeiture, see our episode of “Free Thoughts” featuring Scott Bullock from the Institute for Justice.


Trevor Burrus

Trevor Burrus is a research fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies. His research interests include constitutional law, civil and criminal law, legal and political philosophy, and legal history.

EDITORS NOTE: This post first appeared at Cato.org.

Eco-Catholics, Eco-pessimism and the Decline of Confidence in Religion

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Cathy Lynn Grossmann in USA Today writes:

Americans have less confidence in organized religion today than ever measured before — a sign that the church could be “losing its footing as a pillar of moral leadership in the nation’s culture,” a new Gallup survey finds.

“In the ’80s the church and organized religion were the No. 1″ in Gallup’s annual look at confidence in institutions, said Lydia Saad, author of the report released Wednesday.

Confidence, she said, “is a value judgment on how the institution is perceived, a mark of the amount of respect it is due.”

Why has respect for the moral leadership of the Church declined?

Perhaps religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular, under the leadership of Pope Francis, are to blame?

Mitchell C. Hescox in the National Catholic Reporter wrote:

Pope Francis’ increasingly powerful statements on global warming highlight that climate action is becoming a growing moral imperative for all people of faith. Why? Because climate action is about saving people.

[ … ]

Every child, born and yet-to-be born, deserves the promise and holy covenant of clean air and a healthy climate. What’s more, every child deserves to reach the fullness of his or her God-given intellectual abilities. If we continue to rely on toxic mercury-emitting, coal-burning power plants, we risk harming our children’s achievements.

[ … ]

Action to slow warming will protect future generations’ mental development and potential, by assuring that human development is healthy and sustainable as we move from dangerous, polluting and highly subsidized fossil fuels to clean, affordable renewable energy. This transition will turn energy poverty into energy prosperity.

The Catholic Church, aligning itself politically with the Obama administration, has declared war on coal, oil and natural gas. But will eliminating coal, oil and natural gas as energy sources truly help children “reach the fullness of his or her God-given intellectual abilities”? Will the move away from fossil fuels “turn energy poverty into energy prosperity”?

The short answer is no.

Julian Simon nailed his theses to the door of the eco-pessimist church by publishing his famous article in Science magazine: “Resources, Population, Environment: An Oversupply of False Bad News.” Thirty five-years ago Simon recognized the dangers of eco-pessimism. In his article he wrote:

False bad news about population growth, natural resources, and the environment is published widely in the face of contradictory evidence. For example, the world supply of arable land has actually been increasing, the scarcity of natural resources including food and energy has been decreasing, and basic measures of U.S. environmental quality show positive trends.

The aggregate data show no longrun negative effect of population growth upon the standard of living. Models that embody forces omitted in the past, especially the influence of population size upon productivity increase, suggest a long-run positive effect of additional people.

Prosperity is based on the availability of cheap reliable power. There are no such things as wind and solar power. There is wind-fossil fuel power and solar-fossil fuel power. This is because wind and solar are costly and unreliable sources of energy and require backup power generation, e.g. when the wind stops blowing and the sun sets.

In his column “The Poor Need Affordable Energy” Iain Murray writes:

Affordable energy is fundamental to what economist Deirdre McCloskey calls the “Great Fact” of the explosion of human welfare. It remains central to the reduction of absolute poverty. Yet, some Western governments are working to increase energy costs, purportedly to combat global warming.

What they are really combating is prosperity.

This is perverse and regressive. In America and Europe, energy takes up a much larger share of poor households’ budgets compared to other income brackets. For instance, a household with an annual income between $10,000 and $25,000 spends well over 10 percent of its budget on energy, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And a January 2014 study for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity found that “households earning $50,000 or less spend more on energy than on food, spend twice as much on energy as on health care, and spend more than twice as much on energy as on clothing.”

Increasing the cost of energy also harms people’s health. That’s because energy use is so fundamental to modern life that it can take precedence over other household expenses — including health care. The National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association found that an increase in energy costs led 30 percent of poor households to reduce purchases of food, 40 percent to go without medical care, and 33 percent to not fill a prescription.

As Erick Erickson notes in his column “Ecology Theology“:

[T]he Bible does have an ecology theology in it.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Gen. 1:28 (ESV)

There are five imperatives in Genesis 1:28

(1) Be fruitful and (2) multiply and (3) fill the earth and (4) subdue it, and (5) have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

  1. Procreation. Man is told to be fruitful and multiply again after the flood.
  2. Colonization. There is a frontier mentality. Don’t simply stay in paradise or within sight of it, but go to every corner of the earth. There is a civilization component.
  3. Fill the earth.
  4. Work and keep the earth.
  5. Subdue and have dominion. This is a royal figure of speech “to have dominion, to subdue, and to rule.” Man is a representative of God. This is a world and life directive including culture and spiritual realms. Man is to be the earthly overseer.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Gen. 2:15 (ESV)

The great danger is when the church and state become one and the same. When the Church mimics the policies of the state confidence in both organizations declines.

If the Catholic Church wants to truly reduce poverty, then it will support efforts to provide cheap and reliable energy to every child. That means using more, not less, fossil fuels.

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There Is No “Nationwide Crime Wave” — But Baltimore Is in Trouble by Daniel Bier

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Heather McDonald’s Wall Street Journal op-ed “The New Nationwide Crime Wave” has exploded into the debate over police misconduct and criminal justice reform like a flash-bang grenade. It’s been discussed on numerous talk radio and cable news shows, and it’s been shared nearly 40,000 times on social media.

It’s a story engineered to go viral: It has a terrifying premise (crime everywhere is spiraling out of control!), a topical news hook (it’s all because of protesters!), a partisan bad guy (it’s all liberals’ fault!), and a weapons-grade dose of confirmation bias.

But there is no nationwide crime wave. It is completely manufactured by cherry picking data and misleading stats.

McDonald selects a handful of cities and quotes statistics to show that crime is exploding in “cities across America” this year:

In Baltimore… Gun violence is up more than 60% compared with this time last year, according to Baltimore police, with 32 shootings over Memorial Day weekend. May has been the most violent month the city has seen in 15 years.

In Milwaukee, homicides were up 180% by May 17 over the same period the previous year. Through April, shootings in St. Louis were up 39%, robberies 43%, and homicides 25%. …

Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.

Does this blizzard of numbers show a “nationwide crime wave”? No.

As John Lott points out at FoxNews.com,

Overall, the 15 largest cities have actually experienced a slight decrease in murders. There has been a 2 percent drop from the first five months of 2014 to the first five months of this year. Murder rates rose in eight cities and fell in seven. There is no nationwide murder wave.

Murder rates fell dramatically in some of these cities. Comparing this year’s January-to-May murder data with last year’s, we find that San Jose’s murder rate fell by a whopping 59 percent; Jacksonville’s fell by 31 percent; Indianapolis’ by 28 percent; San Antonio’s by 25 percent; and Los Angeles’ by 15 percent.

Even in the cities where murder is up compared to 2014, other categories of crime are down. New York, for instance, has had more murders but fewer burglaries and robberies. LA’s other violent crimes may be up, but murder is down.

She also implies that police are being attacked and killed more than ever: “Murders of officers jumped 89% in 2014, to 51 from 27.”

This 89% statistic is a deeply misleading view of the facts. Yes, 51 officers were murdered in 2014, compared to 27 in 2013. But 2013 was the safest year for police since World War II. It had the fewest shooting deaths for police since1887.

If you compare 2014’s 51 murders to other recent years, it’s not exceptional. In 2012, there were 48 officers killed. In 2011, it was 72. Over the last couple decades, the rate of police murders (and indeed work-related deaths from all causes) have fallen by nearly half, as have assault and injuries of police.

There’s another reason why McDonald quoted last year’s statistics for officer deaths when all of her other figures come from this year: officer shootings are down 27% so far this year.

Just like her other statistics, if she had given any context at all to the 89% figure, it wouldn’t have fit with her narrative of rising violence.

But never mind — as the author of this story, McDonald knows the cause of this fictitious trend: the “Ferguson Effect.”

The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months.

By her account, an “incessant drumbeat against the police” is behind the nonexistent “wave” of crime and violence against cops.

But this is also a myth. Public support for police has not waned. Gallup’s polling shows that confidence in law enforcement has been steady since the early 1990s.

That hasn’t changed, even after the protests against police abuse around the country. A Huffington Post/YouGov survey from April 2015 showed that 61% of Americans have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in their local department; 21% said “not very much,” and only 14% had “none.”

There is no national crime wave. Big cities are not facing a “surge of lawlessness.” There is no “war on cops.” The public hasn’t turned against the police.

So what’s going on in Baltimore? McDonald isn’t wrong about the spike in crime there. Baltimore City really is facing a breakdown in law and order.

Alex Tabarrok notes that police have made 40% fewer arrests since the start of the protests and the filing of criminal charges against six cops involved in Freddie Gray’s death.

As arrests have declined, crime has soared.

Tabarrok writes,

Not all arrests are good arrests, of course, but the strain is cutting policing across the board and the criminals are responding to incentives.

Fewer police mean more crime. As arrests have fallen, homicides, shootings, robberies and auto thefts have all spiked upwards.

Homicides, for example, have more than doubled from .53 a day on average before the unrest to 1.35 a day after (up to June 6, most recent data) – this is an unprecedented increase – and the highest homicide rate Baltimore has ever seen.

It’s not just murder. Shootings are up over 250%. Robberies are up 64%. Car thefts are up 42%.

It’s reasonable to assume that the increase in crime is at least partially related to the decline in police activity — criminals respond to incentives just like everyone else — but why aren’t police making arrests?

The answer might be found in the “De Blasio Effect.”

New York saw a similar “work stoppage” — that is, an unofficial strike — by the NYPD during its feud with Mayor De Blasio over his critical comments about the death of Eric Garner.

The NYPD retaliated: Arrests fell by 56% and criminal summonses fell by 92%, until the mayor made up with the department and police work resumed.

Kevin Drum speculates that BPD’s precipitous decline in arrests is a similar reprisal against the indictment of the officers involved in Freddie Gray’s death.

It’s certainly possible that has something to do with it, but officers appear to be genuinely spooked. About 130 cops were injured in the riots — that’s about 4.5% of the city’s officers down over the course of a week. That’s almost twice the rate of injury the average department sustains in a whole year.

Cops are understandably worried. Peter Moskos, a former BPD officer, says, “In Baltimore today, several police officers need to respond to situations where formerly one could do the job. This stretches resources and prevents proactive policing.”

There’s another issue: when crime spikes, police can be overwhelmed. Cases build up, and as new reports pour in, less and less time can be devoted to the old ones.

Most murders in Baltimore this year have gone unsolved. BPD’s clearance rate for homicides has fallen to just 40%, and the surge in killings can only make things worse.

Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts said the rise in killings is “backlogging” investigators, just as the community has become less engaged with police, providing fewer tips.

Tabarrok is worried that a new equilibrium for crime could emerge in Baltimore. If crime continues to rise, clearance rates will fall further, detectives will get more backlogged, and it gets even harder to solve the next case. And if the probability of being caught and punished goes down, criminals will commit more crimes.

With luck the crime wave will subside quickly but the longer-term fear is that the increase in crime could push arrest and clearance rates down so far that the increase in crime becomes self-fulfilling. The higher crime rate itself generates the lower punishment that supports the higher crime rate…

It’s possible that a temporary shift could push Baltimore into a permanently higher high-crime equilibrium. Once the high-crime equilibrium is entered it may be very difficult to exit without a lot of resources that Baltimore doesn’t have.

Some people see criminal justice reform as being anti-cop or “soft on crime,” but it’s not. Reform enables police to do a better job, which reduces crime — and that makes them and their citizens safer.

The best thing that Baltimore can hope for is that cops get back to work and start solving crimes. The best way to do that is for the community to engage with law enforcement.

Communities’ trust in police is key to fighting crime, and right now the BPD doesn’t have it. The Baltimore Sun has documented in excruciating detail the department’s history of corruption and excessive force, writing: “The perception that officers are violent can poison the relationship between residents and police.” And that leads to tips not given, 911 calls not dialed, and witnesses failing to come forward.

Real, credible reform, combined with accountability for misconduct and a strong commitment to community safety, is the best and probably only way to rebuild the relationship between citizen and cop and to turn crime around in Baltimore. The city and the police must embrace the task; they won’t accomplish it without each other.


Daniel Bier

Daniel Bier is the editor of Anything Peaceful. He writes on issues relating to science, civil liberties, and economic freedom.

The Feds vs. Reason.com Commenters by Ryan Radia

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Our friends over at the Reason Foundation, a venerable libertarian think tank and publisher of Reason magazine, recently received a grand jury subpoena from a federal prosecutor in New York, reports Ken White at Popehat.

The subpoena demands that Reason disclose “all identifying information” it has regarding six pseudonymous users who posted comments about the death and afterlife of a federal judge on Reason’s Hit & Run blog.

These comments came in response to a May 31 post by Nick Gillespie about the trial and sentencing of Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted in February of running an Internet-based narcotics and money laundering platform known as Silk Road.

In late May, Judge Katherine Forrest, who sits on the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, sentenced Ulbricht to life in prison. This sentence was met with mixed reactions, with many commentators criticizing Judge Forrest for handing down what they perceived as an exceedingly harsh sentence.

A few Reason users, some of whom may have followed Reason’s extensive coverage of the fascinating trial, apparently found Ulbricht’s sentence especially infuriating.

One commenter argued that “judges like these … should be taken out back and shot.” Another user, purporting to correct the preceding comment, wrote that “it’s judges like these that will be taken out back and shot.” A follow-up comment suggested the use of a “wood chipper,” so as not to “waste ammunition.” And a user expressed hope that “there is a special place in hell reserved for that horrible woman.”

Within hours, the office of Preet Bharara, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, sent Reason a subpoena for these commenters’ identifying information “in connection with an official criminal investigation of a suspected felony being conducted by a federal grand jury.”

This doesn’t mean a grand jury actually asked about the commenters; instead, in federal criminal investigations, it’s typically up to the US Attorney to decide when to issue a subpoena “on behalf” of a grand jury.

The subpoena demands from Reason information about the six users, including their email and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses — which, if disclosed, could enable the government to uncover the true identities of the commenters, perhaps after another round of subpoenas are sent to the users’ respective Internet Service Providers.

Popehat’s Ken White is quite troubled by the government’s decision to issue this subpoena. Ilya Somin, writing at The Volokh Conspiracy, also objects to the subpoena. So do the Cato Institute’s Tim Lynch and Techdirt’s Mike Masnick, among many others.

I too find it quite concerning. Even if this subpoena is valid under current law — more on that angle in a bit — the government made a serious mistake in seeking to force Reason to hand over information that could uncover the six commenters’ identities.

Unless the Department of Justice is investigating a credible threat to Judge Forrest with some plausible connection to the Reason comments at issue, this subpoena will serve only to chill hyperbolic — but nonetheless protected — political speech by anonymous Internet commenters.

And if Reason decides to stand up for its users’ rights, the resulting court battle will amount to a waste of federal law enforcement resources that could instead help bring actual criminals to justice, as Tim Lynch reminds us.

To be sure, I have no problem with the feds seeking to locate and prosecute people who actually threaten to commit murder — which, if transmitted in interstate commerce, is a federal crime under Title 18 USC. § 875.

Threatening to kill a federal judge is especially problematic; assassinations of federal judges do happen from time to time. As such, it’s only natural that law enforcement takes such threats seriously.

Yet, while the comments identified in the subpoena are undeniably vile, they’re also protected by the First Amendment, and rightly so. Hyperbolic political statements have a long history in the United States.

For instance, Ken Shultz notes that Martin Luther King, Jr., once said that “the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.” Sound familiar?

As for the comments about shooting a federal judge, consider the Vietnam War-era prosecution of Robert Watts for “knowingly and willfully threatening the President.”

At age eighteen, Watts said that if he were forced to join the military and “carry a rifle,” then the “first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.” The Supreme Court reversed his conviction, finding that Watts had merely “indulged” in a “kind of political hyperbole.” Id. at 708.

Although these statements, like the Reason comments quoted above, are understandably offensive to many listeners, causing offense alone is no basis for outlawing speech. To the contrary, “a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute,” as the Supreme Court has noted. Indeed, speech can sometimes “best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.”

As for the hyperbolic comments posted on Reason about Judge Forrest, they are plainly not “true threats,” but mere “angry bluster,” as Ken White explains in detail.

The remarks, he notes, were not directed to the Judge, or reasonably calculated to reach her; instead, they appeared on a libertarian political blog notorious for its trash-talking commentariat. The comments lacked any specifics about a specific person’s plans to actually carry out an act of violence; instead, they merely expressed a general desire that a particular person be killed.

And while courts have held on occasion that hoping for someone’s death without evincing a desire to personally kill them can be a true threat, this requires some “causal connection” between the statement and the desired outcome. Again, the Reason comments don’t come close to meeting this threshold.

In short, even if the six Reason users are indicted on federal criminal charges, the First Amendment means the government is all but guaranteed to lose (barring the unlikely scenario the US Attorney’s office is sitting on some damning evidence it hasn’t disclosed).

If the commenters didn’t break the law, then, why can the government use its subpoena power to force Reason to hand over whatever personal information it’s collected about them? Because, as Ken White frets, the US Attorney’s power to issue grand jury subpoenas is so broad that, in most cases, they can be quashed only “when they are irrationally burdensome … or for an improper purpose.”

Moreover, a grand jury — which, again, is typically just another word for “federal prosecutor” — is afforded “wide latitude” in investigating potential crimes, and the “law presumes, absent a strong showing to the contrary, that a grand jury acts within the legitimate scope of its authority.”

And when a grand jury subpoena is “challenged on relevancy grounds the motion to quash must be denied unless the district court determines that there is no reasonable possibility that the category of materials the Government seeks will produce information relevant to the general subject of the grand jury’s investigation.”

What about a grand jury subpoena that implicates First Amendment interests?

In theory, “where values of expression are potentially implicated,” a district court should act with “special sensitivity” to “prevent the chilling effect” of “prosecutorial abuse,” in the words of the Fourth Circuit.

In practice, however, courts are extremely reluctant to quash a federal grand jury subpoena on First Amendment grounds. For instance, the District Court for the District of Columbia held in 2011 that “merely issuing a subpoena to uncover the identity of the speaker so that the police can ascertain whether a threat is valid cannot be deemed a Constitutional violation.”

Where does all of this leave us? Reason could move to quash the subpoena — or at least petition the court to limit its scope to identifying information about the more threatening commenters — on the basis that, absent additional evidence that its commenters’ identities are related in any way to some criminally actionable threat, enforcing the subpoena would undermine Reason commenters’ constitutional interest in anonymity while generating information of “negligible value to the government.”

However, because Reason probably could not show the US Attorney is acting in bad faith, or that complying with the subpoena would be unduly burdensome, Reason’s chances of prevailing if it chooses to fight back are not good. That’s a problem for all of us.

This piece first appeared at CEI.org.


Ryan Radia

Ryan Radia is an Associate Director of Technology Studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He focuses on adapting law and public policy to the unique challenges of the information age.

Kelo: Politicians Stole Her Home for Private Developers and Started a Legal War by Ilya Somin

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Most of my new book, The Grasping Hand, focuses on the broader legal and political issues raised by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Kelo v. City of New London.

As explained in the first post in this series, I wrote the book primarily to address these big-picture issues.

But the story of how such a momentous case arose from unlikely origins is interesting in its own right.

The case originated with a development project in the Fort Trumbull area of New London, a small city in Connecticut. The neighborhood had fallen on difficult economic times in the 1990s after the closure of a naval research facility.

City officials and others hoped to revitalize it. The administration of Republican Governor John Rowland hoped to expand his political base by promoting development in New London; but to avoid having to work directly through the heavily Democratic city government, they helped resuscitate the long-moribund New London Development Corporation, a private nonprofit organization established to aid the city with development planning.

The NLDC produced a development plan that would revitalize Fort Trumbull by building housing, office space, and other facilities that would support a new headquarters that Pfizer, Inc. – a major pharmaceutical firm – had agreed to build nearby.

The development plan produced by the NLDC was in large part based on Pfizer’s requirements, which NLDC leaders (some of whom had close ties to Pfizer) were eager to meet. Pfizer would not be the new owner of the redeveloped land, but did expect to benefit from it.

I believe that NLDC leaders genuinely thought the plan would serve the public interest, as did the city and state officials who supported it. But it is also true, as one of those who worked on the plan put it, that Pfizer was the “10,000-pound gorilla” behind the project.

In order to implement the plan, the NLDC sought to acquire land belonging to some ninety different Fort Trumbull property owners.

In 2000, the New London city council authorized the NLDC to use eminent domain to condemn the land of those who refused to sell. Some defenders of the takings emphasize that all but seven of the owners sold “voluntarily.”

But as New London’s counsel Wesley Horton noted in oral argument before the Supreme Court, many did so because there was “always in the background the possibility of being able to condemn… that obviously facilitates a lot of voluntary sales.”

Moreover, owners who were reluctant to sell were subjected to considerable harassment, such as late night phone calls, dumping of waste on their property, and locking out tenants during cold winter weather.

Seven individuals and families, who between them owned fifteen residential properties, refused to sell despite the pressure. One was Susette Kelo, who wanted to hold on to her “little pink house” near the waterfront.

Some of the other families involved had deep roots in the community and did not want to be forced out. Wilhelmina Dery, who was in her eighties, had lived in the same house her whole life, and wished to continue living there during the time left to her.

The Cristofaro family were also strongly attached to their property, which they had purchased in the 1970s after their previous home had been condemned as part of an urban renewal project.

Susette Kelo’s famous “little pink house” in 2004 (photo by Isaac Reese)The resisting property owners tried to use the political process to prevent the takings. They managed to attract the support of a wide range of people in the community, including many on the political left who believed that it was wrong to forcibly expel people from their homes in order to promote commercial development.

But the Coalition to Save Fort Trumbull organized by the resisters and their allies had little, if any, hope of prevailing against the vastly more powerful forces arrayed against them.

The owners also tried to hire lawyers to fight the taking in court. But the lawyers they approached told them that there was little chance of success, and that – in any event – they could not afford the necessary prolonged legal battle.

The owners would almost certainly have had to capitulate, if not for the intervention of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm. IJ had long been interested in promoting stronger judicial enforcement of “public use” limitations on takings, and one of the members of the Coalition reached out for help.

As IJ lawyer Scott Bullock put it, the Fort Trumbull situation was an “ideal public interest case” for the Institute. Legally, the case was a good one because the city did not claim that the property in question was “blighted” or otherwise causing harm, thereby making it harder to prove that condemnation would genuinely benefit the public.

The case also featured sympathetic plaintiffs who were determined to fight for their rights. That made it likely that it would play well in the court of public opinion, and that it would not be settled before it could lead to a precedent-setting decision.

IJ hoped to achieve a ruling holding that takings that transfer property from one private individual to another for “economic development” do not serve a genuine “public use” and are therefore unconstitutional.

Thanks to IJ’s pro bono legal representation, the case went to trial. In 2002, a Connecticut trial court invalidated the condemnation of 11 of the 15 properties because the city and the NLDC did not have a clear enough plan of what they intended to do with the land.

Both sides appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court, which upheld all fifteen takings in a close 4-3 decision. The majority ruled that almost any public benefit counts as a “public use” under the state and federal constitutions, and that courts must generally defer to government planners.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Peter Zarella argued that “the constitutionality of condemnations undertaken for the purpose of private economic development depends not only on the professed goals of the development plan, but also on the prospect of their achievement.”

Presciently, he warned, “The record contains scant evidence to suggest that the predicted public benefit will be realized with any reasonable certainty,” and that it was “impossible to determine whether future development of the area… will even benefit the public at all.”

At this point, most legal commentators (myself included) believed that the case was almost certainly over. Few thought that the federal Supreme Court was going to take a public use case.

Supreme Court precedent dating back to 1954 held that virtually any possible public benefit counts as a public use, and the Court had unanimously reaffirmed that view in 1984. Most experts thought that the debate over the meaning of “public use” had been definitively settled.

But Scott Bullock and Dana Berliner – the IJ lawyers who represented the property owners – thought the conventional wisdom was wrong. And they were vindicated when the Supreme Court unexpectedly agreed to take the case. At that point, much new national media attention was focused on the New London condemnations.

Property law experts were well aware that longstanding Supreme Court precedent permitted the government to take property for almost any reason. But very few members of the general public knew that. Many ordinary Americans were shocked to learn a city could condemn homes and small businesses in order to promote private development – a reality they were unaware of until the publicity surrounding Kelo drove it home to them.

The Supreme Court upheld the takings in a 5-4 ruling. But the resulting controversy created a major political backlash and shattered the seeming consensus in favor of a broad approach to public use.

As for the City of New London, Justice Zarella and other skeptics turned out to be right. The NLDC’s flawed development plan fell through, as did a number of later efforts. Richard Palmer, one of the state supreme court justices who voted with the majority, later apologized to Susette Kelo, telling her he “would have voted differently” had he known what would happen.

Today, the condemned land still lies empty, though city officials now plan to build a memorial park honoring the victims of eminent domain, on the former site of Susette Kelo’s house.

The former site of Susette Kelo’s house – May 2014 (photo by Ilya Somin)

In the meantime, feral cats have been using the property. So far, at least, they have been the main local beneficiaries of the takings.

Feral cat near the former site of the Kelo house – March 2011 (photo by Jackson Kuhl)

(I should point out that the events in New London leading up to the Supreme Court case are the subject of an excellent earlier book by journalist Jeff Benedict. My book primarily focuses on the broader legal and policy issues raised by the Kelo case, which Benedict touched on only briefly. But I also cover the origins of the case in Chapter 1, and post-decision developments in New London in the conclusion.)

This post first appeared on the Volokh Conspiracy, where Ilya Somin is a frequent blogger.

You can buy The Grasping Hand on Amazon here.


Ilya Somin

Ilya Somin is Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law. He blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy.

It Is Time ­to Get Back To Basics

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With everything in life, there are basic rules, instructions, directions, etc.  If one wants to participate in team sports such as rugby or football there are basic rules of engagement.  In other words, there are specific instructions on how different positions are played and how many team members can be on the field.  Also, referees are available to make sure that the games run smoothly, maintain law and order and to establish fair play and opportunity for both teams to do their best to obtain victory.

When I was in high school and played sports, our coaches were very tough, but fair.  One of the things our instructors stressed to the hilt, was knowing the fundamentals of the game.  Our head coach believed that the best teams were well versed in the fundamentals.  It was those fundamentals that kept us on the same page as a successful team.  They kept us disciplined, so that if we had to veer away from the playbook in order to outwit a more formidable opponent we would not falter.

Our teams consistently were in competition for the state championship of Ohio, thus proving our hard-nosed disciplinarian coaches to be correct in their thinking and approach.  They were not politically correct Mr. Rogers types.  We always expected to win and did win.  To this day, I have nothing but high regard and respect for our rugged coaches who taught that without the basics we could unravel as a team and individually.

Let us take a look at one of the world’s leading automakers, The Ford Motor Company.  During the days of Henry Ford, he demanded high quality automobiles at a reasonable price that most working class Americans could afford.  The Blue Oval Company has experienced a long history of many ups and a few downs as well.  During the 1970s and 1980s, Ford drifted away from the higher quality of vehicles the company had been known for.  Ford could have folded up and closed, leaving Americans with nothing more than memories of yet another manufacturer that bit the dust.

But in recent years, individuals like Bill Ford and a host of others believed that Ford could once again be on the leading edge of auto manufacturing.  They threw caution to the wind and put the company up for collateral in order to receive a substantial private sector loan.  Even the famous Blue Oval was part of the loan agreement.  It was do or die time for the company that had been known for better ideas. So, the insightful leaders at Ford spearheaded a two pronged approach to that company’s revival.

The Ford deciders pursued more innovations and more creative product designs and a much better quality of motor cars overall.  Thus the greatly improved quality and look of Ford automobiles has reestablished Ford as a global leader in auto production. One of the factors insuring Ford’s ascension has been a return to basics such as focusing on customer satisfaction and creating cars that customers enjoy looking at and driving.

Speaking of basics, let us turn our attention to the United States of America.  In the beginning, there was a struggle to disengage the colonies from the brutal iron grip of the tyrannical King George.  Thing really began to get underway soon after the Boston Massacre.  That is where Crispus Attucks a black colonist was shot and killed by the red coats. He was the first casualty of the Revolutionary War.  Soon after, more and more colonists began to catch the vision of liberty. They also came to realize that our rights come from God, not a king or government.

When the Founding Fathers and all of the liberty seekers set out to form a more perfect union, it was to be a constitutionally limited republic.  The government was to be of by and for the people.  America was founded to be a nation of sovereign individuals enjoying the blessings of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  “We the People” were to live our lives as self- governed moral individuals who didn’t need a nanny government to rule over us from cradle to grave, according to the fundamental or basics enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

The Founders repeatedly warned us about what would occur if we as a nation would drift away from the basics that were part of the framework our freedoms rested upon.  Samuel Adams said it best, in this letter to his colleagues.  “The sum of it all if we would most truly enjoy the gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.  Then shall we both deserve it and enjoy it.  Whole on the other hand, if we are universally vicious and debauched in our manners, though he form of our constitution carries the face of the most exalted freedom, we shall in reality be the most abject slaves.

So here we are today, a nation decreasing freedoms, unraveling as we drift further away from the basic principles and fundamentals once utilized to help make America the envy of the world.  So the question is, will “We the People” prevail and reignite the basic fundamental principles that set this republic on the path to greatness, or settle for the sinking ship we are experiencing today?  The choice is ours.  Let us choose Providential guidance and true liberty, not tyranny.

© 2015 Ron Edwards – All Rights Reserved

EDITORS NOTE: Please join Ron Edwards on his new talk show every Saturday @ 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM EST on Philadelphia’s AM 1360 WNJC Radio and everywhere www.wnjcradio.com Also, AM 1360 WNJC is the newest affiliate outlet of The Edwards Notebook Syndicated commentary weekday afternoons @ 4:57 PM EST.

Republican Congressional Leaders Grant Obama “Unconstitutional” Authority to By-Pass Congress in Approving Treaties

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On Tuesday the Republican leadership will encourage the House and Senate to vote to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Initiative; the bill is known as “Trade Promotion Authority” or TPA—when no one has even seen thousands of pages of Obama’s Secret Trade Bill —now the Republican leadership is saying “we will have to pass it to see what is in it”.  The Republican leaders are planning to give Obama “Carte Blanche” to enter into “Fast-Track Trade Treaties” in “total secrecy” eventually with future countries like Cuba, Iran, China, Russia, etc., because Obama will be able to add other countries to this agreement, which is UNCONSTITUTIONAL, because it “short circuits the legislative process” which requires a two thirds majority vote of the US Senate to approve Treaties.  Republican leaders are planning to give Obama unprecedented power to curtail Congressional checks and balances on Treaties, even while they have been watching him for 6 ½ years, violate Federal Immigration Laws, the U.S. Constitution, and Freedom of Religion for members of the U.S. Armed Forces.

The TPA Bill has many damaging provisions, among them, it will allow millions of foreign workers to be given visas to enter the US at a time when 104 million Americans are unemployed, the TPA will open the way to import dangerous foods products that will negatively affect the health of unsuspecting Americans, according to Congressman Alan Grayson (R-FL-9) it will ship millions of American jobs overseas, it will “force the U.S.” to abide by UN & EPA business destructive unproven climate change regulations, will “force the US” to abide by the UN’s Small Arms Trade Treaty(ATT) which was voted down by the US Senate & violates the 2nd Amendment’s provision that allows American citizens to purchase and sell their small arms, and it will force the US Congress to abide by every UN Treaty that undermines the sovereignty of the United States.

The TPA initially embraces 12 nations including the U.S., Peru, Chile, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Vietnam, Australia, Brunei, Darussalam, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Singapore; however there is a provision in the agreement that allows Obama to add other countries in the future, like Cuba, China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Libya, Syria, etc.  The TPA is a secret Obama Law, like the secret Obamacare Law, that will allow the free flow of Mexican, South American, and Asian workers to enter the US (not only will the southern border remain wide open, but the U.S. will no longer have any borders “at all”, or any barriers to entry), the millions of new entering foreign workers will willingly work for exceptionally lower wages under substandard conditions.  Details in thousands of unread pages of this law have not been read or worked out, yet the Republican leadership is giving Obama “Fast-Track” authority to make any and all decisions in all and every treaty with the initial 12 countries and as many additional countries he decides on in the future without Senate ratification (all future trade treaties will no longer be subject to the Constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority of the US Senate for ratification).  Republican leaders are enhancing Obama’s control of foreign policy, while making the Congress irrelevant.

In order to deal with the millions of Americans who will be losing their jobs because of the TPA Bill, under the radar, the Republican leadership of the House and Senate is crafting a bill to go along with TPA, known as the Trade Adjustment Assistance Bill to be passed on the same day the TPA Bill is passed—-it should more appropriately be entitled the “Put all American Workers on Welfare Bill Because of the TRPA Bill”.   That new Trade Adjustment Assistance Bill specifically targets workers and farmers who lose their livelihood, because of this “Stupid TPA Bill” being promoted by the Republican leadership in Congress, which result in millions of Americans losing their jobs because of what Obama will authorize in secret “Trade Treaties” with foreign countries that will effectively be devastating to the labor movement and jobs in the United States.

Once Obama uses his “Fast-Track” authority to agree with UN Regulations, Congress would not be able to modify or amend those TPP provision entered into solely  by Obama by himself, without Congressional involvement at all, and Obama’s individual decision would have the force of the “law of the land” under the U.S. Constitution.   This proposed “living agreement” by Republican leaders in Congress will seriously undercut the re-employment of 104 million unemployed Americans, because as a “living agreement“, it would leave the southern border of the U.S. to be even more porous than it is today, and will allow Obama to change immigration policy “at will” without Congressional approval—those proposed provisions of the TPA are absolutely UNCONSTITUTIONAL.  Republican leaders are approving the massive immigration of Illegal Aliens from Mexico and 12 other countries.

The Republican leadership will surrender its authority to write Federal Immigration Laws by passing TPA, thus enabling Obama to use his pen to simply authorize the importation of millions of non-Christian Asian, Japanese, Malaysian, Brunei, Darussalam, Singapore, and eventually Chinese and Iranian workers.  According to the Greek Catholic Relief Agency, for over 6 years, Obama has refused to allow any of the 300,000 Syrian and Assyrian Christian refugees in the Middle East to enter the US, while Canada has been resettling those Syrian and Assyrian Christians.  Obama’s has only been allowing the entry of Muslim refugees thru the UN Muslim Refugees Resettlement Program, and has been intentionally excluded Christians.  Now the Republican leadership is giving Obama the right to bring in millions of Asian immigrant workers who are also not of the Christian faith.

Obama has been resettling hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees in 195 cities across the nation without elected state and city officials being provided with specific details on who is being resettled in their cities, and without informing them who is going to pay for the health care, resettlement costs, transportation costs, education of refugee children, the welfare costs of refugee families, food stamps, and housing costs for hundreds of thousands of those Muslim refugees being brought into their communities.

Supporters of this aggressive secret Obama initiative include Democratic Progressives in Congress, Democratic Congressman Danny K. Davis who received an award from the Communist Party in 2012, David Cortright who is Obama’s close Chicago associate on the Committee for a Sane Nuclear policy (SANE), Communist Tom Hayden who is a member of “Progressives for Obama”, Democratic Congressmen in the “Hanoi Lobby” who are aggressively supporting normalization of relations with Cuba, Cora Weiss who is a strong supporter of Communism & a member of the Anti-War Movement, Adam Hersh from the liberal Center for American Progress, the left of center liberal media establishment, and the Democratic Progressive Caucus.  Those Leftists, Marxists, Progressives, and Communists, have been getting the very aggressive support of the Republican leadership in the House and Senate, who have been working with the Democratic Progressive Caucus in Congress to pass the TPA (the 70 member Caucus  includes Socialists, Progressives, Marxists, and Communists members of Congress).

The AFL-CIO Unions are on solid footing in their opposition to this “Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority”.  Responsible and clear thinking Democrats in Congress are against giving Obama  “Fast-Track” authority over this labor damaging bill, which will allow millions of new workers to enter the US, will force the Congress to abide by environmental protection standards that will restrict business development & job growth, will allow currency manipulation, and will allow millions of new Mexican Illegal Alien workers to legally enter & work in the United State.   The Republican leaders in Congress should use some degree of “Common Sense” and wait for 19 months, before they give the occupant in the Oval Office any trade promotion authority, and only if that trade authority is very limited.  Hopefully the new occupant of the Oval Office, unlike Obama, will be a pro-American president who supports and abides by the provisions of the US Constitution.

Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions has alerted the American people about the dangers of the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) speeding through Congress and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal that TPA would help push.  Senator Sessions said, “The president has circumvented Congress on immigration with serial regularity. But the TPA would yield new power to the executive to alter admissions while subtracting Congressional checks against those actions,” said in a “critical alert” dispatched by Senator Session’s office. Senator Sessions and several outside groups said Obama could change immigration policies between trading partners“at will” without any Congressional oversight.   “The plain language of TPA provides avenues for Obama and trading partners to facilitate the expanded movement of foreign workers into the U.S. — including issuing visitor visas that are used as worker visas,” said Senator Sessions.  The bases of that charge is a phrase in TPA calling it a “living agreement.” Sessions said that means that they can be changed after Congress approves them, and also that countries can be added in the future, including China.  “It leaves it open for a president to change it without Congressional approval,” warned Jessica M. Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies. “Congress should not surrender its authority to write immigration laws to either the executive branch, to trade negotiators, and definitely not to international trade tribunals,” she added.

The Republican Leadership of the House and Senate are planning to give Obama free rein with “Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority”, with full the knowledge of Obama’s very dangerous anti-American track record, and his pro-Marxist/Communist initiatives.  Even the most casual observer of Obama’s dangerous foreign policy initiatives can’t help but understand that, in the past 6 ½ years, Obama foreign policy decisions have consistently favored the enemies of the Republic like Radical Islamic Terrorists in Libya, Communist China, Communist North Vietnam, ant-America Iran, The Muslim Brotherhood, Chavez’s Socialist Venezuela, Castro’s Communist Cuba, and Putin’s Russia—they have all collectively and repeatedly expressed their intent to destroy the Republic as it was created by the Founding Fathers.

A newly elected pro-American Patriotic U.S. President would judiciously apply trade promotion authority negotiating by entering into separate Trade Treaties with 12 Asian and South American countries, while abiding by the provision of the U.S. Constitution that requires a two thirds majority vote of the U.S. Senate to approve each treaty.  The American people need to rise up and oppose Obama’s secret TPA Bill by calling their Senate representatives at (202) 224-3121 and by sending FaxGrams to their Senate and Congressional representatives telling them to reject Obama’s “Fast-Track” authority which will permit Obama to enter into and force the Congress to abide by all UN Treaties, and will also permit Obama to enter into future secret treaties with countries such as Cuba, China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Iraq, Syria, etc.—this most recent initiative by Republican leadership in the House and Senate, following their unwise funding of Obamacare and illegal Immigration & wide open border policies thru September 2015, is approaching insanity and would be akin to allowing the fox into the chicken coop.

Don’t Give Up On Our Republic Yet

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It’s not over America, or at least it doesn’t have to be.  The United States is currently at a perfect tipping point.  Imagine if you will, a giant scale where our Republic is teetering ever so slightly between two points.  If she veers in one direction (to the right) our nation will be revived.  God’s wisdom will be sought as in times past and real solutions to the abysmal problems plaguing America will be applied.  Our Constitution and Bill of Rights shall once again be the written standard by which the government conducts it’s business on behalf of “We the People.”  Our cities will once again be renowned as centers of innovation, commerce, and civility.

The original or traditional family structure has served mankind very well for thousands of years as a stabling force and nurturing environment for future generations.  In addition, the traditional family will remain unchallenged by those seeking to overthrow our blessed way of life.  No longer will the Constitution, Bill of Rights, true American history, or even Jesus Christ be diminished in the minds of students attending government schools.

If America tips in the right direction, there will be a return of free market economics and the elimination of draconian taxes and regulations. As a result, Americans will be able to participate in a new era of untold innovation, creativity, and equal opportunities for those willing to exercise their God given abilities.  I firmly believe, that despite the present day darkness and lack of beneficial leadership in both the government and a significant portion of the church, new and authentic leadership shall soon arise from the ashes of today’s corruption.

If on the other hand, the choice is made to stay the present course and our republic turned mob rule democracy tips further in the direction of spiritual, political, moral and economic darkness, our exceptional nation could be fundamentally changed for the worse forever.  Not only America, but the world would be plunged into an even darker season of instability and drama that would dwarf today’s worldwide upheavals.

For starters, President Obama’s dream or nightmare to change America into a more vulnerable, less Christian, weaker immoral nation of non-importance would continue unchanged.  In addition, America’s tipping further into the wrong direction would aid the all out effort to wipe out your ability to freely function within the unalienable rights that come from God and ae recognized in the Bill of Rights.

One cannot expect life to spring forth out of death.  Thus the forces and supporters of the utter death and darkness of progressivism, open borders, agenda 21, disharmony amongst all Americans, Keynesian economics, abortion, and family instability, plus the evil prejudice against Providential guidance must not be allowed to prevail.  The fate of our republic does not rest in the hands of some far away entity, the United States government, or our beloved creator.  But ultimately, it rests in your hands.

We are plainly instructed to individually choose life or choose death.  Thus if you desire a restored America as a land of the free and home of the brave, then by all means please choose life. For yourself, then for our nation.  Throughout the years, I have stated in my radio commentary The Edwards Notebook that it is not yet over for the United States of America.  The prayers of great Americans from all throughout the republic are being heard by the ONE who shed his grace upon our nation.

The wisdom of God that years ago took wing and flew back to the Father is starting to return.  Soon the upheavals of today will be overcome by clear thinking and the decision to no longer settle for destruction.  We must also never forget that what is taught to one generation dictates the direction the nation takes in the next.  Shamefully, the rino republican appeasement approach to problems and problem makers cannot, will not, and must not be tolerated any longer.

My fellow Americans, there is life and there is death. I suggest you choose life.  It worked for the Founding Fathers and it can and will work for us today as we together rebuild the Seven Pillars of Society.