Pandora’s Box - Obama........

THOUGHT MUST PRECEDE ACTION
PART 1 of 3

By Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.
June 23, 2013

NewsWithViews.com

Recently, Mr. J.B. Williams published a commentary on NewsWithViews entitled “Can Obama Be Impeached?” Normally, I would not interject myself into matters other commentators address; but, in this case, Mr. Williams saw fit to refer to me by name, which prompts this response.

Mr. Williams’ contention is “that [Barack] Obama can only be removed from [the] office [of President of the United States] via impeachment”. Mr. Williams concedes that this position is controversial. But then he opines that “[w]ho is right in the debate [about whether Mr. Obama can be impeached] is much less important than reaching an actionable position of agreement. The endless debate on the subject only leaves all concerned citizens paralyzed by confusion and lack of coherent direction in how to solve the crisis.” Confronted by this rather amazing assertion, one is compelled to ask whether “concerned citizens” should ever agree to do what is (or at least may very well be) wrong simply because they experience difficulty in determining what is right? Can what is wrong become right because of some arbitrary agreement induced by sloth? Would not determining what is right terminate “endless debate” and remove the present “confusion and lack of coherent direction in how to solve the crisis”? But these questions answer themselves.

1. The first step in determining what is right in this case is to define the problem accurately. Mr. Williams says that he “agree[s] with the claim that Barack Hussein Obama (aka Barry Soetoro) gained access to the Office of President via massive fraud, including identity fraud, campaign finance fraud, just for starters”. That, however, is not really “the claim” at issue here. The actual charge is that, although Mr. Obama may have succeeded in gainingphysical access to the office-space a legitimate President of the United States occupies in the White House, he never acquired legal access to “the Office of President”, because, not being “a natural born Citizen”, he was neverconstitutionally eligible, and is not now eligible, for that “Office”. For Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 of the Constitution declares (in pertinent part) that “[n]o Person except a natural born Citizen * * * shall be eligible to the Office of President”. If words have any meaning, a “Person” whom the supreme law of the land declares not to be “eligible to the Office of President” can never “gain access to” that “Office” in the sense of legally holding it or asserting any claim to it. The question then becomes, can an individual who is not legally in that “Office” at all, because he is and always has been ineligible for it, be removed by impeachment and conviction from his non-existent position? (I shall leave aside whether Mr. Obama is actually not “a natural born Citizen”. If he were, he could and should establish that fact, which for some unfathomable reason he has so far refused to substantiate in any satisfactory manner. In the absence of proof on that score from the party in the best position to provide such proof, for the purposes of this commentary I shall assume to be valid the assertion that Mr. Obama is not “a natural born Citizen”.)

2. In support of his position, Mr. Williams marshals some quotations from James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Joseph Story. These, however, are quite beside the point, because each of them assumes that the party subject to impeachment is in fact and law actually the President or some other officer of the United States. Not one of them addresses the situation in which some individual, although wholly “[in]eligible to the Office of President”, nonetheless pretends to hold that “Office”.

3. Analysis must begin (and, as will become apparent, also end) with the actual pertinent words of the Constitution material to impeachment and related matters:

Article II, Section 1, Clause 4. No Person except a natural born Citizen * * * shall be eligible to the Office of President * * * .

Article II, Section 1, Clause 7. Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Article II, Section 4. The President * * * shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Article I, Section 3, Clause 7. Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 5. In Case of the Removal of the President from Office * * * the Same shall devolve on the Vice President * * * .

Plainly enough, the last three of these provisions refer to legal “removal” from a status (“the Office of President”), not physical removal from a place, and therefore apply only to an individual who as a matter of law is actually in that “Office” as “the President”, having first satisfied all of the constitutional prerequisites for that status. These provisions do not say (as they might have said, if Mr. Williams’ position were correct) that “an individual who claims to be the President”, or “an individual whom many people believe to be the President”, “shall be removed from Office”—for the self-evident reason that an individual who is not legitimately in that (or any other) “Office” at the relevant time cannot be removed from it, no matter what his claims or the beliefs of others may be.

An individual who is not “a natural born Citizen”, and therefore is constitutionally ineligible in principle for “the Office of President”, can never assume the status of “President” legally. The most obvious and consequential practical reason is that such an individual cannot possibly take the necessary “Oath or Affirmation” which is a prerequisite to his “enter[ing] on the Execution of [the] Office [of President]”, because he knows that, being ineligible for that “Office”, he cannot possibly “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution”. First, his imposture as “President” itself constitutes an affront to the Constitution—that is, his “tak[ing] the * * * Oath or Affirmation” is in and of itself a violation of the “Oath or Affirmation”. Second, not being eligible for “the Office of President”, he cannot ever legally fulfill the duty of the President, set out in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”. Were he legally capable of fulfilling that duty, and desirous of doing so, his very first step would have to be to turn himself in or order his own arrest as an imposter, thus refuting his own prior claim to be “President”.

One might describe this situation as involving “the principle of constitutional noncontradiction”. Both logically and legally the Constitution cannot demand as the condition sine qua non of eligibility for “the Office of President” that an individual be “a natural born Citizen”, on the one hand, but then, on the other hand, license an individual who is not “a natural born Citizen” to “enter on the Execution of [that] Office”. Similarly, both logically and legally the Constitution cannot deny “the Office of President” to an individual who is not “a natural born Citizen”, on the one hand, but then, on the other hand, require that such an individual who merely pretends to be the President must be “removed * * * on Impeachment” from an “Office” he could never possibly hold. Conversely, both logically and legally the Constitution cannot provide for “remov[al] from Office on Impeachment” of an individual who, being ineligible for that “Office” in the first place because he is not “a natural born Citizen”, never entered or could have entered it—for if that individual must be “removed from Office on Impeachment”, he must in some sense be legitimately in that “Office”, which would mean that his putative ineligibility was not an ineligibility at all, but instead a mere irrelevance.

To reduce this matter to “Dick and Jane” terms, assume that Mr. Williams postures as “the President of the United States”. He leases a large mansion, which he names “the White House”, and in which he sets aside a room he calls “the Oval Office”. From there, he issues executive orders, national-security directives, and other Diktats in the name of “the President”. He surrounds himself with a large Praetorian Guard of deluded myrmidons which he calls his “SS” (after the “Secret Service”). These jack-booted thugs then go about the country harassing people who challenge Mr. Williams’ eligibility to be “the President”. For reasons that are not clear, actual public officials in the General Government and in some of the States in significant numbers choose to obey Mr. Williams’ edicts and to treat him as “the President”. And great masses of “true believers” among the general public lend their fanatical support to Mr. Williams, too. Under these conditions, is Mr. Williams “the President”? Obviously not. How can this situation be corrected? Can Mr. Williams be impeached? Must Mr. Williams be impeached before any other remedy, such as arrest and trial, can be had? Well, no one in his right mind—including, I submit, Mr. Williams himself—would contend with a straight face that Mr. Williams was even capable of being impeached, let alone that he had to be impeached in order to suppress his imposture. What is the difference, then, between the real Mr. Obama (as we are assuming him to be arguendo) and the hypothesized Mr. Williams? That Mr. Obama twice stood for election to an office for which he was constitutionally ineligible? That Mr. Obama received large numbers of votes that had no legal effect, because they were cast for an ineligible candidate? That Mr. Obama twice took an “Oath or Affirmation” of “Office” that he was legally incapable, not merely of fulfilling, but even of taking in the first place? That Mr. Obama now physically resides in the real “White House”? Each of these distinctions between Mr. Obama’s case and Mr. Williams’ simply renders Mr. Obama’s position worse than Mr. Williams’, because the number of counts of fraud in the imposture are multiplied by several orders of magnitude.

Therefore, contrary to Mr. Williams’ conclusion, impeachment is not “the proper remedy to the crisis known as Obama”.

Nonetheless, it is barely possible that, although Mr. Williams is wrong in principle, he may be partially right in practice, in the same way a stopped clock accidentally tells the correct time twice a day. After all, if a bill of impeachment were introduced in the House of Representatives, Mr. Obama’s counsel would have only two choices: (i) to concede that impeachment is a proper remedy for the charge levied against Mr. Obama, while denying that Mr. Obama is in fact not “a natural born Citizen”—in which event that issue would be left wide open to a complete investigation in the House; or (ii) to deny that impeachment is a proper remedy precisely because Mr. Obama’s accusers claim him to be other than “a natural born Citizen”, while hoping that in no other forum could or would that at least tacit admission of his possible ineligibility be used against him. In addition, the intensive legislative debate, and perhaps extensive hearings, that would surely follow in the wake of whichever of these pleas Mr. Obama’s counsel launched would likely generate a tsunami of public interest in the matter. And who can say on what shore that wave would finally break? For Part two  below,

THOUGHT MUST PRECEDE ACTION
PART 2 of 3

By Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.
June 23, 2013

NewsWithViews.com

In any event, even if Mr. Williams is not completely wrong to assert that “Obama can only be removed from office via impeachment”, it would still be advisable to inquire as to whether any other remedy may be available.

4. Criminal prosecution would appear to be the obvious first choice. For example, Title 18, United States Code, Section 912 provides that “[w]hoever falsely assumes or pretends to be an officer * * * acting under the authority of the United States * * * , and acts as such, or in such pretended character demands or obtains any money, paper, document, or thing of value, shall be fined * * * or imprisoned not more than three years, or both”. Mr. Williams, however, asserts that “before any occupant of the Oval Office can be charged with or prosecuted for crimes, they [sic] must first be removed from office via impeachment, so that the business of the people can continue while the individual is being prosecuted for criminal activities”. In support of this contention, he cites a memorandum prepared by lawyers in the Department of Justice, of all people! As an outspoken critic of the General Government—and rightly so—Mr. Williams should have been more discerning. For the Constitution makes it plain as day that no such requirement exists.

The only provision in the Constitution for any immunity with respect to violations of criminal law for any public official while that official remains in office appears in Article I, Section 6, Clause 1: “The Senators and Representatives [in Congress] * * * shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same”. So, Members of Congress may be subjected to “Arrest”—and presumably thereafter tried, convicted, and imprisoned or otherwise punished—on charges of “Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace”, even “during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses”, and even while they are on the very floor of the House or of the Senate, engaged in their official business. Inasmuch as the category “Felony” includes a multitude of crimes, and inasmuch as it is not inconceivable (particularly today) that every Member of Congress might be implicated in some “Felony” or other at the same time, therefore the Constitution allows for the “Arrest” of any Member, and even the entire Membership, of Congress—with no concern whatsoever (in Mr. Williams’ words) that “the business of the people can continue while the[se] individual[s are] being prosecuted for criminal activities”. And this notwithstanding that the Constitution in Article I, Section 5, Clause 2 provides a means equivalent to impeachment, conviction, and removal from office which is applicable to Members of Congress: to wit, that “[e]ach House may * * * , with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member”. Thus, a Member of Congress whose criminal misbehavior comes to light may first be expelled and then subjected to “Arrest”. But he also may first be subjected to “Arrest”, and only thereafter expelled.

In Article II and Article III, the Constitution extends to the President and to the Judiciary not even the limited immunity it grants to Members of Congress, that “[t]hey shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest”. So, on the strength of this silence and the legal principle inclusio unius exclusio alterius, no immunity from “Arrest” (and thereafter from subsequent indictment, prosecution, trial, conviction, and punishment) for any sort of criminal misbehavior exists for a rogue President or any rogue judge.

Inasmuch as Article VI, Clause 3 of the Constitution requires that “[t]he Senators and Representatives [in Congress] * * * , and all executive and judicial Officers * * * of the United States * * * , shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution”, and inasmuch as the Constitution creates only a limited immunity from “Arrest” for Members of Congress and no immunity whatsoever for the President or for any judge, therefore Congress can enact no statute, the President can promulgate no policy (through executive orders or otherwise), and the Judiciary can hand down no opinion that creates, enforces, rules in favor of, recognizes, or otherwise treats as even arguably legitimate any more extensive immunity.

Article I, Section 3, Clause 7 of the Constitution does provide that “[j]udgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law”. This, however, is not because “Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment” of some rogue “Officer” of the United States must only follow his “Impeachment”. The Constitution confines the allowable penalties for “Impeachment” “to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States” in order to preclude Congress from legislating additional punishments, as had theretofore been allowed in “the method of parliamentary impeachment: wherein such penalties, short of death, are inflicted as to the wisdom of the house of peers shall seem proper; consisting usually of banishment, imprisonment, fines, or perpetual disability”. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Robert Bell, American Edition, 4 Volumes & Appendix, 1771-1773), Volume 4, at 121. In addition, by appending the qualification that “the Party convicted [upon Impeachment] shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law”, the Constitution deprives that “Party” of the ability to evade criminal liability by interposing a plea of double jeopardy. See U.S. Const. amend. V.

Although no legal reason exists why the criminal prosecution of a rogue “Officer” of the General Government cannot precede his impeachment, conviction, and removal from that “Office”, the practical political problem remains that, if not so removed, the offender might remain in “Office”, perhaps claiming a right to administer it from prison. Impeachment obviates that potential embarrassment. (Of course, the circumstances might be sufficiently serious to require immediate action with whatever embarrassments that might entail, rather than accept the consequences of abiding the time-consuming process of impeachment.) Impeachment also deals with the situation in which no actual crime has been perpetrated, but removal from “Office”is nonetheless warranted, because the individual has committed some “high * * * Misdemeanor” of a political nature. See U.S. Const. art. II, § 4. For example, under pre-constitutional English law, “[T]HE first and principal” “high misdemeanor[ ]” was “the mal-administration of such high officers, as are in public trust and employment”, of which Blackstone set out a long list, including “preferring the interests of a foreign potentate to those of our own” and “disobedience to any act of parliament, where no particular penalty is assigned” (both of which seem to be endemic in the General Government today). See Commentaries on the Laws of England, Volume 4, at 122-125. Interestingly, although Mr. Williams quite properly quotes Joseph Story as to these types of impeachable “political offenses, growing out of personal misconduct, or gross neglect, or usurpation, or habitual disregard of the public interests”, he does not draw what should be the obvious conclusion.

5. A civil action in the nature of the old common-law writ of quo warranto(“by what authority”) could also supply a remedy preferable to impeachment for what Mr. Williams denotes as “the crisis known as Obama”. The applicable statute is found in the Code of the District of Columbia, Division II, Title 16, Chapter 35, Subchapter I, Sections 16-3501 through 16-3503, the first section of which provides in pertinent part that “[a] quo warranto may be issued from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in the name of the United States against a person who within the District of Columbia usurps, intrudes into, or unlawfully holds or exercises * * * a public office of the United States, civil or military”. By its own terms, this law does not require for its invocation a prior successful impeachment of the “person who * * * usurps, intrudes into, or unlawfully holds or exercises * * * a public office of the United States”. Indeed, if that “person” is truly “usurp[ing], intrud[ing] into, or unlawfully hold[ing] or exercis[ing]” such an office, impeachment is supererogatory, because it is logically and legally impossible. It would appear, then, that the existence of this law by itself disproves Mr. Williams’ assertion that “Obama can only be removed from office via impeachment”.

6. So the question remains: Now what? What remedy can Americans hope someone in authority will invoke in order to vindicate their constitutional right to have “a natural born Citizen”—and no one else—in “the Office of President”?

With his usual keen sense for the vicissitudes of practical politics, Mr. Williams observes that “nobody wants to touch this matter with a ten foot pole, because the constitutional crisis created by Obama and the Democrat Party are of monumental proportions. The constitutional line of succession to the Oval Office will not hold in this case as every individual in that line of succession was one way or another, involved and complicit i[n] the most egregious fraud ever perpetrated on the American people.” The mere “constitutional line of succession to the Oval Office”, however, is not the half of it.

(a) Consider the remedy of impeachment. This depends entirely upon Congress. But Congress has already had two separate opportunities, each required by the selfsame statute, in which to address the issue of Mr. Obama’s ineligibility for “the Office of President”—and both times refused, to a man and woman, to take any action whatsoever. As I explained in detail in my NewsWithViews commentary entitled “In the Shadow of Nemesis” (8 December 2008), when Congress convened in 2008 to count the votes for President that had been cast in the Electoral College, only one Representative and one Senator needed to object to a single Elector’s vote for Mr. Obama on the ground of his possible ineligibility for “the Office of President” in order to compel some kind of immediate Congressional inquiry into the matter.Nevertheless, not one Member of Congress did so—even though each one of them could have interposed as many objections as there were Electors’ votes to be tallied. The same result obtained in 2012. Worse yet, many Members of Congress participated in that process in both 2008 and 2012 in the very same deaf, dumb, craven, and feckless manner. For part three click below.

THOUGHT MUST PRECEDE ACTION
PART 3 of 3

By Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.
June 23, 2013

NewsWithViews.com

If the entirety of Congress would do nothing to investigate Mr. Obama’s ineligibility in 2008 and 2012—which would have solved the problem at the outset, one way or the other—what percentage in the House will now support his impeachment, and what percentage in the Senate will support his conviction? In the light of this history, does zero percent seem too pessimistic a prognostication to be plausible?

Moreover, would such cowardly Congressmen dare, at this late date, to wrench open the lid on that Pandora’s Box? Who can possibly estimate how much damage has been done to the body politic by suffering this septic sore to fester for so long? Or how much damage will have to be endured in the future once the infected tissue is finally lanced and the pus drained away? If Mr. Obama is in fact not eligible for “the Office of President” because he is not “a natural born Citizen”, then all of his actions in that pretended status have been null and void ab initio, and now will need to be set aside, with whatever complex, costly, and perhaps calamitous consequences must inevitably follow. For such a disaster, every Member of Congress from 2008 to today would be personally responsible, because each and every one of them has been complicitous in preventing an investigation of Mr. Obama’s reputed ineligibility. Qui potest et debet vetare tacens iubet.

(b) Consider the remedy of a criminal prosecution. Unless Congress were to appoint a special prosecutor, which is as unlikely as impeachment for the same reasons, any criminal investigation would be conducted by Mr. Obama’s own cronies in the Department of Justice. Inasmuch as Attorney General Eric Holder has experienced no crisis of conscience to deter him from supplying absurd legalistic apologies for Mr. Obama’s on-going program of “official assassinations”, he should hardly be expected to shrink from defending Mr. Obama’s eligibility to commit those acts.

(c) Consider the remedy of quo warranto. The statute cited above requires either that the Attorney General of the United States institute a proceeding “on his own motion or on the relation of a third person”, or that if the Attorney General refuses to institute a proceeding the United States District Court for the District of Columbia grant leave for “the interested person” to prosecute a civil action in the name of the United States. Obviously, the present Attorney General will no more institute a proceeding in quo warranto than he will investigate a criminal charge against Mr. Obama. And, having stifled every inquiry by all sorts of plaintiffs into Mr. Obama’s ineligibility to date, the Judiciary can hardly be depended upon to take the initiative—along with the inevitable political heat—now, after immense and possibly irreparable injury has been done to this country, to a large extent because of the Judiciary’s own prior poltroonish defaults.

(d) Consider the remedy of honest public officials’ unwillingness to cooperate with Mr. Obama on the ground of his arguable ineligibility for “the Office of President”. Mr. Obama may reside in pharaonic pomp behind the All-Seeing Eye in the Great Pyramid of Chaos in the Disgrace of Columbia—but he can accomplish nothing whatsoever without the prosaic day-to-day cooperation (or collusion, if you will) of tens of thousands of underlings in the General Government’s civil bureaucracy and Armed Forces. Is it possible to conceive of a tacit rebellion in these ranks, if not inspired by the pangs of conscience then driven by the goad of self-interest—a rebellion which would manifest itself in those underlings’ continued performance of their mundane duties, but their refusal to participate in any constitutionally questionable activity (to use the phrase familiar to any union member, “working to rule”)?

In principle, this is not a possibility so implausible as to be dismissed out of hand, because (as pointed out above) “all executive * * * Officers * * * of the United States * * * shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support th[e] Constitution”—and therefore they should always consult the Constitution before they render blind obedience to anyone, especially an individual who claims to be “the President”, but whose arguable ineligibility for that “Office” has become a matter of national, and even international, notoriety. In practice, though, could any important, let alone large, segment of the contemporary bureaucracy be expected to take this legally scrupulous tack? Unfortunately, no. For here, Mr. Williams is brutally insightful: “The list of usurpations and administration crimes would require an encyclopedia to fully chronicle at this late stage. Recent breaking news of massive violations of American[s’] constitutional rights by nearly every federal agency which Obama has turned against the people of the United States eliminates any possibility that these events are just independent agency coincidences.” That is, the complicity of the bureaucracy is well-nigh complete. And although a few prominent “whistleblowers” can expose the pervasiveness of the rot, they will surely prove insufficient to overcome it.

No more is relief likely to be had at the hands of high-level personages in the Armed Forces. Except when it comes to convening a drumhead court-martial in order to convict an officer with the courage to question Mr. Obama’s eligibility—such as Lieutenant Colonel Terrence Lakin—these people are proving to be “rubber lions” indeed. None of them seems to be capable of discerning the danger, not just to this country but to themselves personally as well, of their remaining under the command of an individual impersonating “the President”—namely, that if such an individual will violate the Constitution with respect to both his eligibility for that “Office” and the veracity of the “Oath or Affirmation” required of him as “the President”, what grotesquely unconstitutional orders will he hand down in his pretended capacity of “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States” in order to maintain his power when he finds himself backed into a corner? This self-inflicted blindness is incredible, because the officer corps’ own self-interest, and even self-preservation, is at stake—inasmuch as Mr. Obama as the Armed Forces’ putative “Commander in Chief” might himself “pull the nuclear trigger”, or order them to pull it, with what devastating consequences can easily be imagined. Moreover, the officer corps’ own self-respect is at stake—inasmuch as Mr. Obama claims as “the President” a license to assassinate people anywhere in the world without any judicial process, and to call upon the Armed Forces to assist him in these homicidal ventures. See my NewsWithViews commentaries entitled “Where Is the Outrage?” (9 April 2012) and “Death Squads” (14 December 2010). Although no one should ever desire an actual revolt within the officer corps—for the simple reason that “government by junta” or even by the threat of a junta or golpe is utterly incompatible with a free society—one or two well publicized resignations by outspoken officers in high positions would go far towards making “Duty, Honor, Country” more than a mere slogan. Apparently, however, this is too much to expect, if it is not too much to ask.

Inasmuch as Mr. Obama’s policy of “official assassinations” evokes a direct parallel to no less than Adolf Hitler, every thinking American who imagines that the Armed Forces will come to this country’s rescue would do well to peruse, for example, John W. Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918-1945 (London, England: Macmillan and Company Limited, 1964). This book sets out some crucial historical lessons that confirm the wisdom of America’s Founding Fathers’ profound distrust of all “standing armies”—namely, that in the long run no country can rely upon professional “standing armies” to preserve its freedom from usurpers and tyrants; but that such establishments can be expected to aid and abet, or at least to countenance, and certainly not to challenge, a central government’s steady accretion, concentration, and ultimately abuse of power.

(e) Consider the remedy of “interposition”, under which rubric the States can reassert the sovereignty they have reserved pursuant to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. If any situations can justify “interposition”, the usurpation of “the Office of President” by an individual constitutionally ineligible for that “Office” must surely appear near the very top of the list. Nonetheless, the States’ Governors, the States’ legislators, and the States’ judges have done nothing, except to remain silent themselves or to suppress others’ inquiries into the matter.

(f) If all of the foregoing were not depressing enough, Americans find themselves inundated, especially on the Internet, with the strident warnings of lay preachers, divines, and assorted prophets and gurus that this country is fast losing, or even has already irretrievably lost, the decisive spiritual battles to the Demonic Forces of Darkness. Perhaps, then, the necessary remedy is a national exorcism!

(g) Patriotic Americans should remember, though, that it is always darkest before the dawn; that God helps those who help themselves; and that (in the words of Algernon Sidney) “[h]e that has virtue and power to save a people, can never want a right of doing it”—and, one must presume, will always be capable of fashioning some remedy to effectuate that right. What Mr. Williams calls “the crisis known as Obama” goes far beyond a lone individual in the Disgrace of Columbia. And it will not be overcome by the relatively few other individuals in Congress, in the Judiciary, in the General Government’s bureaucracy, in the States’ governments, or in the high commands of the Armed Forces—even if most of them were not consciously complicitous in the crisis or otherwise hopelessly compromised or confused. Instead, America must start what will prove to be an Herculean cleansing of her political stables “from the bottom up”, with her own people wielding the shovels. Not necessarily all of her people. Not necessarily even a majority of her people at first. Rather, America must identify, mobilize, organize, and put into the field those whom the Declaration of Independence denoted “the good People”. The people who desired the Colonies “to be Free and Independent States”, even in the face of resistance from domestic “loyalists” who were willing to support “the present King of Great Britain” in his “history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States”.

The people whom its Preamble identified as having “ordain[ed] and established this Constitution”. And, today, the people who recognize the impossibility of resolving the underlying political, social, and cultural corruptions which have spawned “the crisis known as Obama” through any means less comprehensive than the people’s own direct involvement.

And just what sort of “involvement” is that? I could offer a suggestion—although it would actually not be my own original suggestion, but instead the imperative the Constitution sets out in its most important thirteen words. Rather than supply Mr. Williams with my answer and risk being taken to task by him once again, though, I shall encourage him to search out these words for himself (perhaps in my forthcoming book, Thirteen Words), and report his findings back to the readers of NewsWithViews. When he does, I shall be among the first to agree with him that “[i]t’s time for the debate to end and action to begin”

© 2013 Edwin Vieira, Jr. - All Rights Reserved

Edwin Vieira, Jr., holds four degrees from Harvard: A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School).

For more than thirty years he has practiced law, with emphasis on constitutional issues. In the Supreme Court of the United States he successfully argued or briefed the cases leading to the landmark decisions Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, and Communications Workers of America v. Beck, which established constitutional and statutory limitations on the uses to which labor unions, in both the private and the public sectors, may apply fees extracted from nonunion workers as a condition of their employment.

He has written numerous monographs and articles in scholarly journals, and lectured throughout the county. His most recent work on money and banking is the two-volume Pieces of Eight: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution (2002), the most comprehensive study in existence of American monetary law and history viewed from a constitutional perspective. www.piecesofeight.us

He is also the co-author (under a nom de plume) of the political novelCRA$HMAKER: A Federal Affaire (2000), a not-so-fictional story of an engineered crash of the Federal Reserve System, and the political upheaval it causes. www.crashmaker.com

His latest book is: "How To Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary" ... andConstitutional "Homeland Security," Volume One, The Nation in Arms...

He can be reached at his new address:
52 Stonegate Court
Front Royal, VA 22630.

E-Mail: Not available