Astronomical Debt: What is Constitutional?

One of the children of one of the friends of my family is a really smart guy. If my memory serves me correctly according to his Facebook posts he’s currently going for a PhD in astrophysics. Those of you who regularly read my posts know that I’m kind of a hard core guy when it comes to the Constitution. I think rather than any big government scheme to restrict the voters, like term limits for example, what we should do is create and enforce a system of punishment for people who are sworn to it, who violate it, or vote in favor of bills that violate it. Depending on the seriousness of the infraction it would be basically three levels of charges. There would be contempt of the Constitution for the more mundane violations. Perjury would be for the more serious ones, basically emphasizing that they are in violation of their oaths. And treason when it reaches the level of aiding the country’s enemies or endangering the United States.

This kid (I shouldn’t probably call him a kid, he’s an adult now but I’m getting older so I’ve earned the right) said that he would rather have the big government do term limits because, “who’s to decide what’s Constitutional?” I, being a rather fervent student of the Constitution, was rather seriously taken aback by this comment. “What’s constitutional? Who’s to decide what’s Constitutional? Duh! It’s right there written into the freaking Constitution! It’s already been decided! You’re going for a PhD in astrophysics and can’t take the hour or two to see for yourself what is constitutional?”

I dressed him down pretty hard and have some regret for doing so, on one hand, on the other hand, liberals, you know.

Anyhow one of my favorite hobbies is astronomy. Yep. Old guy with a telescope outside all night staring into space. That’s me. It gives you a lot of time to think.

One night I was out there looking at the Moon and wondered, “If we convert the national debt of the United States to one dollar bills I wonder how high it would stack.” So I went to it.

The average dollar bill is five thousandths of an inch thick. That’s 200 per inch. 12 inches per foot. 5280 feet to the mile. 238,855 miles average distance to the Moon. 30 trillion dollars in national debt. One stack of one dollar bills to the Moon is conveniently rounded to about three trillion dollars. So that’s ten stacks of one dollar bills that pile all of the way up to the Moon! Ten stacks!

(Side note here: Two presidents account for about 16 trillion dollars of that. Two presidents have racked up more national debt than all of the others combined. They account for five whole stacks of bills all of the way to the Moon, just between them. Those two presidents are Trump and Obama.)

I was quite shocked by this! Ten stacks of bills all of the way to the Moon! Wow! So I mentioned it to some of the people where I work at my day job. One of these guys has somewhat of a reputation as a wise guy. He suggested I should see how they stack up when recalculated into pennies. One of the other guys suggested that it might even reach some of the planets. Well, being into astronomy I found that quite hard to believe but what the hell? Might be fun. I’m thinking maybe half of the way to Mars or something like that. Planets are really pretty far out there in Earth based terms.

So, a penny is .0598 inches thick. Good. That’s 16.722 pennies per inch. A bit more than two hundred pennies per foot. 1,059,532 pennies to the mile. Miles to the Moon is 238,855, so it would take 253,074,461,538 pennies to make a stack all of the way to the moon. The national debt at the time (8/26/22) was 30,738,317,800,000. Multiply that times a hundred to convert dollars to pennies and we get a national debt of 3,073,831,780,000,000. Okay. What’s the number for that many decimal places? Okay…got it. Quadrillion. More than three quadrillion pennies in the national debt. So given that the pennies are significantly thicker than dollars, and that there are a hundred times more of them, it comes to 12,146 stacks of pennies all of the way to the Moon.

See, at this point I was still thinking Mars, so I calculated that out. It’s pretty easy to not understand just how big of a number three quadrillion is. Average distance to Mars is 140 million miles. The United States national debt would stack all of the way to Mars, in pennies, almost twenty-one times!

How about Jupiter? It certainly wouldn’t reach that far! No effing way man! What’s that quadrillion number again? Average distance to Jupiter? 444 million miles. Divide that out and we get…wait for it… 6.534 times. So the national debt, six and a half stacks of pennies all of the way to Jupiter.

Catching up with the numbers in my head a bit I started to be less surprised with each step. Average distance to Saturn 887 million miles, 3.27 stacks of pennies. Average distance to Uranus 1.7 billion miles, national debt to Uranus 1.7 times. Certainly not Neptune! (Oh Brett, you naïve and silly boy!)

Average distance to Neptune 2.703 billion miles. In one stack our national debt, in pennies, is 2,901,122,174. National debt to Neptune 1.07 times.

Yes! It made it! (I was feeling a bit delirious by this time. You see, I drank a shot for every planet I passed along the way, just to calm my nerves.) The United States national debt in pennies stacks all of the way to the average distance to Neptune with 198 million miles to spare! The change left over from this transaction exceeds the average distance to Mars!

Hmmm…this creates a problem. It’s more than I can fit in my penny jar. I’ll have to get a bigger jar.

How big would that jar have to be, assuming I stack the pennies very neatly? I’ll spare you the math. If we hollowed out the Moon it would fill about one third of it.

So the national debt is growing. I tracked it for a while and it came to a million dollars every forty seconds. If we were stacking pennies to keep up with it we would have to stack them at a rate of about 508 miles per hour. Good! At least we wouldn’t have to go any faster than the average cruse speed of a commercial jet to keep up with it. That makes it easier. At least we don’t need a rocket.

What’s that you say? The Constitution? What does this have to do with any of that? Ha! Thought I’d deviated from the subject did you?

Well my dear and loyal reader, here’s what it has to do with the Constitution.

Article One, Section Eight is one fairly long sentence. It includes a list that outlines all of the things that Congress is allowed to spend money on. I’m going to abbreviate it a bit here to emphasize the relevant parts.

First we have this clause; “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;”

Then we have a list of things they are allowed to do, relevant to the preceding clause:

1) To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

2) To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

3, 4) To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

5, 6) To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

7) To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

8) To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

9) To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

10) To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

11) To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

12, 13, 14) To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

15) To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

16) To provide and maintain a Navy;

17) To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

18) To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

19) To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

20, 21) To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;

22) To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

That list of twenty-two things is all that the federal government is allowed to do under the Constitution. Supporting this assessment is the Tenth Amendment, which reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

They are allowed to do twenty-two things and spend our money on them. They are allowed to do nothing else.

Those twenty-two things ARE what is constitutional for the federal government. Everything else is up to the States. Anything not listed among them that the federal government is doing is unconstitutional for them to do.

This is not an interpretation. It is what the Constitution literally says. Anybody sworn to uphold the Constitution who is doing anything other than the above is in violation of it and their oaths.

The current (2022) federal budget is six trillion dollars per year.

That’s two stacks of bills all of the way to the Moon that the federal government is sucking out of the economy. In pennies that would still be enough to stack clear out to Jupiter!

Every! Effing! Year! If you ever wonder why you don't seem to have enough money then right there it is.

Do you want to pay off the national debt? Is it ridiculous for the federal government to suck enough money out of our pockets that we could stack it to any celestial body, near or far?

Well, my friends, I very obviously think so. If you agree with me, or if you are just curious about it, then I kindly invite you to go through the budget with a highlighter and mark off the things that are not mentioned in the twenty-two powers listed above.

It would be enlightening to discover just how easy it would be to bring the national debt down to a more Earthly level.

All we have to do is follow the Constitution.

Brett for President...again

I originally posted this when I...ummm...formally announced that I was running for president in 2016. Sigh. I didn't win. And really, it was very unexpected. So I crossed out the 16 and ran again in 20. Sigh. Again my defeat was totally unexpected. So here I'm going to announce to the world that I'm running for president...again.

Time to update the original post so that it's more reflective of current times.

"That's all I can stands. I can't stands no more." — Popeye the Sailor

One of my all time favorite quotes; and very likely the most unique opening quote to formally announce any candidate for the presidency in this great nation's entire history. But that just about sums up the reasons why I've decided to run for the presidency of these United States. I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore—speaking of great quotes.

I would ask, politely and respectfully, that you turn off the, "third party candidates have no chance and a vote for this third party candidate is a vote for the Democrat/Communist/Socialist candidate!" machine and think about this for a minute. Ignore your gut feeling, which I know is there because I share it too, and actually think things through.

The purpose of the Constitution is to protect the freedoms of the People of the United States from an out of control federal government. This is the thing the Founding Fathers uniformly feared. This is why they made the president's oath of office what they did; to 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."

This oath is not to the United States themselves. It is not to the People of the States. It is not to the lobbyists or special interest groups. It is not to socialist ideologies or big government programs designed to gain support for political candidates and transform our country into a communist tyranny where the federal government dictates every aspect of life to the People according to their vision. It is not to big business for the purpose of increasing or decreasing their wealth by regulating them past their endurance or creating big government programs to influence their behavior according to the whims of the occupant of the White House. It is not to the Capitalists of Wall Street, Main Street or any other place in the world. It is not to lower gas prices, fight inflation and fix the economy by offering everybody a car in their garage, of their own house, with a refrigerator full of food and well educated, prosperous and healthy children. It is to the Constitution.

The Founding Fathers, in spite of all of their personal flaws, knew that big governments tend to run out of control and oppress, and sometimes kill, a lot of people. Their solution was to make the federal government as small and limited as possible and still be able to hold the nation together; assuming the States actually wanted to continue to be part of the country. They designed the Constitution to keep the federal government operating with only specific powers, and then added the 10th Amendment—the most important and most ignored law of the land—to be absolutely certain the federal government would not grow beyond those specific powers which are listed in Article One, Section Eight.

Our freedom as a People depends totally on this principle. It is only through ignorance or neglect of this fact that we can have presidential candidates debating and proposing things as outrageously unconstitutional as what Democrats and Republicans have been promoting all the way back to when dinosaurs roamed the ranges.

Sure, outside of the constitutional discussion, Trump's—who as of this writing I'm expecting to run again—policy would be better for many people in the country given the current likely options of candidates who might run and have a chance of winning. But that's my point. It's outside the Constitution. And my God! He sure did spend a LOT of money!

So again, to quote Popeye, "That's all I can stands. I can't stands no more."

Back in the day I used to be a straight ticket Republican. The damn began to break on that on March 27th, 2002, when George W. Bush signed the Campaign Finance Reform Act. I watched the signing ceremony live on C-SPAN as it happened, because I couldn't believe he was actually going to sign it. Here is a link to the full text of what President Bush had to say about it as he signed it into law. But the part that completely destroyed my faith was when President Bush said, "Certain provisions present serious constitutional concerns," and, "I also have reservations about the constitutionality of the broad ban on issue advertising, which restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import in the months closest to an election. I expect that the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions as appropriate under the law."

WHAT?! EXCUSE ME?! You're job, Mister President was, "to the best of my [your] ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," not to sign into law a bill that would overturn the 1st Amendment. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the president should sign any pile of crap act of Congress and leave it to the court system to sort out. You, Mister President, are supposed to be the person who stops that sort of thing from ever happening! That was your job. That was the oath that you swore in front of God and country.

As I said above, that's when the damn began to break for me. By the election of 2004, Kerry vs. Bush, I was in the same position as many of Trump's supporters were in 2016 and 2020; committed to vote for the lesser of two evils, because I care about the country that I swore to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic. And I too thought that he would pick Supreme Court justices who would only follow the Constitution. Now I know that this statement is ex post facto and as such is a little bit unfair, but how did Chief Justice Roberts working out for us on that whole Obamacare thing? Hmmm?

On one hand I have to say that for "W" to sign that bill was spitting in the face of everybody who swore to defend the Constitution with their life. On the other hand, at least he mentioned the Constitution and his concerns while he did it. Most of them wouldn't have even brought it up. In the bigger picture, however, it just shows the lack of concern in the part of the American People's constitutional protections, of almost every president who has ever served.

Well, here's the deal for me and why I've decided to run for president. There are all of the unconstitutional options, whether they be Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or otherwise. There needs to be a constitutional option; one who is already sworn by his life to defend it against all enemies foreign and domestic, and really freaking means it.

The only additional thing for me is to say that I, if elected, will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States. I promise that to you now, and additionally swear to you that I will do so or die in the attempt.

Even with all of the power of Congress gathered in the Oval Office, insisting with a gun to my head that I sign the bill to fund some several thousand pages piece of unconstitutional socialist crap, I swear to you now that I would VETO it and take the bullet. To do otherwise would be to slap the faces of everybody who ever served to defend this country's Constitution. To do otherwise would be to accept my place in hell as an oath breaker.

Of course there are some major obstacles for me to overcome in my bid for the presidency.

First of all is that I have absolutely no personal, individual, desire to be the president. Hell, I'm not really even seriously running. It just needs to be done and there is nobody else—apparently—that is going to do it. Sure, the salary and pension of the office is more money than I would currently hope to make in the rest of my lifetime. The benefits are really kind of sweet, but if you look at it from the standpoint of my almost total lack of concern for my own personal wealth, it works out to be a positive. I can't be bought. I have no desire to make even that much money—sure I'll take it but only because that's the pay for the job—but no special interest would ever hold any sway with me. As for reelection, I would be honored to serve two terms but since I've got no personal interest in being in the office—other than support of the Constitution—itself, why would I accept money from special interests for reelection campaigns? So there it is. I am as much of an outsider as anybody who ever lived; with no political or special interest connections whatsoever, so I cannot be bribed. The pay and benefits of the office itself far exceed my desire to spend money.

The next problem would be that I belong to no political party. So I have to form one for myself.

I've thought long and hard about this, (almost ten minutes, in fact) and what I've decided to do is form my own political party.  (To date I only personally know a small handful  of people—like three, or five, maybe six—who are part of this party.) Rather than taking some ambiguous term for a form of government, like "republic," and alter it to make it sound like an organization that would actually be attempting to bring about that form of government, I've decided to be more straight forward and use the actual words for what the party is supposed to do. So I'm going to call my party the, "I WILL FOLLOW THE CONSTITUTION PARTY." Or "IWFTCP" for short.

The platform is pretty simple. Let me explain this for those who still might not get it. I will follow the Constitution. If you support people who follow the Constitution you are supporting the platform of the I Will Follow the Constitution Party. If you vote for any candidate or law, which is unconstitutional, at any time or for any reason, this party is not for you. That's all there is to it. If you can honestly say it for yourself—I will follow the Constitution—and mean it, and back your intentions with actions consistent with that objective, then the IWFTCP is for you.

As a thought that naturally follows the above paragraph, I'm not going to set up any kind of committee or organization to run my campaign. Don't send me money! I don't want it! If you want to support me, because you support the Constitution, what you need to do is take it on yourself to spread the word about me.

The next thing is that I will not be on any ballot anywhere. I can guarantee that. So you have to write me in. And you have to do so knowing full well that as far as 2016 goes, there is an exactly zero percent chance of me winning. In fact my odds of winning are exactly the same odds that we would get a candidate that would be interested, even vaguely, in actually following the oath that they are sworn to. So, when you are there in the booth, just write in "Brett Ashton" and think for yourself that, "I will follow the Constitution." It is not the victory that we are after here. It is the principles on which the country was founded, and without which the United States of America would certainly meet her untimely demise.

It has been frequently said that America cannot fail from enemies outside of the country. That if we were to fail it would be from within. This is exactly what was being spoken of. When we abandon the Constitution our freedoms, along with everything America is, will simply cease to be. We, as individuals, have to swear to follow the Constitution, exactly as we would expect the president to do. The responsibility is ours if the government sucks. We elected them.

So that's basically it. I'm hoping, assuming that you have no desire to support any of the other candidates, and assuming that you would like to support the Constitution, that you would be willing to give me your support as a write in. Certainly it would be a protest vote for the 2024 election. And that's the only benefit I can offer you as a candidate at this time. It is up to your own integrity what to do. I will likely run again in 2028, depending on if someone who actually wants to fulfill the oath is running who actually has a chance to win.

If you can't find someone who you think would be 100% behind the Constitution, and you are tired of being forced into the lesser of two evils as a choice, please consider doing what I do, writing in my own name, Brett Ashton, for president. Because I am the only person I know for sure who will actually follow the Constitution.

A vote for me is a vote for the Constitution.

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous, Part 4: You Haven’t a Prayer!

Here in the fourth entry of my Supreme Court series, after making several seemingly minor points, we begin to come to the major point of it all.

I must confess that I struggle with this kind of thing on a day to day basis. It is a very difficult endeavor to undertake in explaining to someone who is obsessed with the battle of day to day political current events, that something which happened in 1868, more than a hundred fifty years ago, is the reason for his political struggles today. The answer to this lies in basic human nature. We tend to look at something. We evaluate it in that moment and set it up as a fixed idea, or premise.

Once adopted this fixed idea is not looked at again but we still evaluate current events from it. It doesn’t matter if the fixed idea is right or wrong. What matters is that we’ve ceased to question it. More than that what matters is that we pass it along to the next generation who adopts it and passes it to the next. A firmly entrenched fixed idea is a very difficult thing to overcome, as anybody who has ever had a conversation with someone on the other side of the political isle could attest. Only when someone looks at the original premise and understands why it is right or wrong, moving forward through every conclusion made as a result of it, is a person able to overcome this fixed idea.

So to this end the timeline is as follows:

1) Texas v. White (1868). The Supreme Court, faced with the possibility of the destruction of the entire country, not to mention the possibility of their own safety being compromised and the conflicts of interest, made a ruling based not on the text of the Constitution, but based on two words of the document—The Articles of Confederation—which preceded it. The ruling itself is a different subject. What’s important to this timeline is the understanding that they went outside of the Constitution to justify a ruling that the Constitution didn’t support, and then called it constitutional. There is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes this, even if it is The Articles of Confederation. It establishes a precedent, a fixed idea, that the Supreme Court can take quotes of people outside the Constitution and use it to justify their rulings.

2) Reynolds v. United States (1878). The Supreme Court continued the practice above in invoking a personal letter from Thomas Jefferson in their ruling, rather than sticking to citing the First Amendment, as is their duty. While they did not go as far as to use it in favor of their decision this is where they first brought it up. This is where the “wall of separation between church and state” first became precedent. Now, for or against, it is part of a Supreme Court decision. More than that though in ruling against Reynolds, they tossed aside entirely the idea of the Constitution and what it actually says and made their ruling based on the opinions of popular society with which they happened to agree. They just made up their ruling based entirely on what they thought the law should be. And we, as a country and people, have followed along right behind them ever since. According to the Tenth Amendment Congress had no authority to make the law that was being challenged.

3) Everson v. Board of Education (1947). Again the Supreme Court goes outside of the Constitution to invoke Jefferson’s quote regarding the “wall of separation between church and state.” Again they didn’t use it to support their ruling but they did mention it as if it were a legal precedent of some kind. And again they violated the Tenth Amendment by interfering with a matter at the State level which has nothing to do with their power as expressed by the Constitution.

I can just hear my readers out there saying, “Jesus Brett! Come to the freaking point would you!?”

Your wish is my command!

Why can’t you prey in schools? Is it because a bunch of intolerant leftists are attacking your religion? Is it because those intolerant jerks got the Supreme Court to rule against your point of view? Is it because the wrongly elected president nominated a bunch of communists to undermine your religion so that they could overthrow the country and turn it into some kind of atheist socialist utopia? Is it because in 1868 the Supreme Court created a ruling that allowed them to establish a precedent to go outside of the Constitution to create out of thin air whatever ruling they want?

The answer is, in order, no, no, no and no. Let me tell you this, my constitutional friends, that this has almost everything to do with you—as the American People—and very little to do with anybody that you might call “them.”

It is because in 1868 the Supreme Court created a ruling that allowed them to establish a precedent to go outside of the Constitution to create out of thin air whatever ruling they wanted, on that premise they adopted the “wall of separation” as precedent, on that they did it again and on that the American People agreed that they have the authority to do so even when they used it to rule against them.

They accepted the Texas ruling, whether you like it or not, because they believed the Court had the authority to make such decisions and they didn’t want the country to fall apart again. They accepted the Reynolds ruling, whether you like it or not, because they believed the Court had the authority to make such decisions and they didn’t like bigamy. They accepted the Everson ruling, whether you like it or not, because they believed the Court had the authority to make such decisions and they didn’t want the federal government to step on the funding for their busing systems in their own States.

Now what choice do they have in accepting the Court’s past rulings, in their apparent favor, in those kinds of issues, do they have when Engel v. Vitale (1962) comes along and the Supreme Court says that because of Everson, Reynolds and White they decide that it is no longer legal for you to pray in school?

Then, because We the People have previously accepted the rulings of White, Reynolds, Everson and Engel, what choice do we have but to accept the ruling regarding Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) when they decided against Bibles in school?

But in the Abington v. Shempp (really, wasn’t he one of the Three Stooges?) it gets worse than all of that. They did not refer to Thomas Jefferson’s wall of separation as a basis for the ruling. They instead referred to a book by some unheard of chuckle-head’s—Conrad Henry Moehlman—opinion of Thomas Jefferson opinion of the wall of separation which in itself was an opinion of the First Amendment….

(…Wait a moment here… …Let me get this straight in my head… …First Amendment… …Jefferson’s opinion of First Amendment… …Moehlman’s opinion of Jefferson’s opinion of the First Amendment… …That’s right.)

So in 1963 the Supreme Court’s ruling was not based on the actual text of the Constitution. It was based on the opinion of some idiot who had an opinion of a Founding Father, out of context, who was not in the country when the Constitution or First Amendment was debated, written or ratified.

And that’s what the American People accepted as law. Well…because the Supreme Court said so. And they did so in such voluminous, authoritarian and eloquent (LOL!) tomes that it must be true! Everybody knows…!

Sigh.

Now we come up to present time. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District is an interesting case. Of course it is, again, a lot more words than really anybody but the most lifeless, soulless, boring, dry, dull, tedious, uninteresting, monotonous, dreary… wait… what was I saying? Oh yeah! Too many pages, too many words, almost all gibberish, extremely soporific. Right. The worst of it is the dissenting opinion which astonishingly enough invokes the ruling of Abington and Engle, which invokes the ruling of Reynolds and a bajillion other rulings that the Court should have never been allowed to make.

On the more eloquent, pithy and constitutionally accurate side of life is the holding of the Court.

“Held: The Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect an individual engaging in a personal religious observance from government reprisal; the Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression.”

So, in fifty words or less, this high school coach, named Kennedy, prayed on school grounds. He didn’t force others to pray with him. The school didn’t like it and told him to stop. He refused to stop. They fired him. He sued.

The First Amendment does not say “nobody in government, anywhere, at anytime, for any reason, shall ever be allowed to pray.” It does not say that there is a wall of separation between church and state. It says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”

Is Coach Kennedy praying at a high school football game the same thing as Congress making a law establishing a religion? Nope. Then neither the Supreme Court nor anybody in the federal government has any say in it whatsoever. Is Coach Kennedy praying at a high school football game the same thing as Congress making a law that prohibits the free exercise of religion? Nope. Then neither the Supreme Court nor anybody in the federal government has any say in it whatsoever. Done.

I really like the second half of that ruling though. “…the Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression.”

It says that as the federal government whether someone prays or not, or where and when they pray or not, is none of their damn business.

And on that point I whole-heartedly agree.

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part One

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Two

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Three

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Four

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Five

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous, Part 3: Everson v. Board of Education (1947)

This, as it is titled above, is the third in the series of posts regarding how the Supreme Court makes its rulings. How they are not constitutional. How they do not have the constitutional authority to make many of their rulings. When they do have proper authority and don’t like the decision they have to make, as per the Constitution, they use sources of opinion having nothing to do with the actual text of the Constitution itself, choosing whatever source of opinion they think supports their own views on what they think the law should be. Also they frequently have personal and political conflicts that guide their decisions.

Let me recap the previous two posts.

In Texas v. White (1869) the Supreme Court didn’t like the idea that they had to rule—as per the text of the Constitution—that there was nothing that made it so a State couldn’t unilaterally secede from the Union. This was within four years of the end of the “Civil War” and had the justices—several of who had conflicts of interest, the Chief Justice particularly, served as Secretary of Treasury under Lincoln and another of the justices was Lincoln’s very own campaign manager—ruled according to the actual text of the Constitution they’d likely have started a second wave of States seceding. In order to make this ruling they had to invoke a grand total of two words, “perpetual union,” from the obsolete and no longer legally binding Articles of Confederation.

This landmark ruling established the idea that the Supreme Court can grab whatever they want; legally binding law, obsolete law or whatever quotes from whoever’s opinion happened to agree with their own, and call it constitutionally established law.

In Reynolds v. United States (1878) they continued this practice by invoking a personal letter, rather than debated and duly passed law, from a past president—Thomas Jefferson—who was a founding father but was not even in the country when the Constitution or the First Amendment was debated, written or ratified. This is the first time the Supreme Court mentioned Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and State.” While I agree with their decision, based on my own moral orientation, I don’t see under the Tenth Amendment where they, as part of the federal government, have any authority to decide what a marriage should be. The same applies to the law they were ruling in favor of—Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act—is a violation of the same Amendment. While I disagree with Reynolds’ actions I also think he was correct in saying it was also a violation of the First Amendment.

The thing that makes it a current issue is that the Supreme Court, in invoking Jefferson’s wall of separation between church and State, made the opinion of one man a precedent that following Courts would use to undermine religious rights across the entire country. The arguments courts keep making because of this arbitrary quote by one man, president and Founding Father though he was, continue to step on the religious rights of the People of this country to this very day. And I can’t help but notice that they picked Jefferson’s quote for this, rather than some of the quotes from a more religious Founding Father like John Adams.

So now we come to the case of Everson v. Board of Education. This case comes down to one simple thing, which again the Supreme Court took hundreds of pages of pure gibberish to explain. I can explain it in fifty words or less.

New Jersey passed a law providing funding for transportation of students to private schools. Many (96%) of those private schools were Catholic. Everson didn’t like this and thought it violated the First Amendment. It doesn’t. The First Amendment says “Congress shall make no law….” New Jersey isn’t congress.

There you have it. Forty-eight words. At least that’s how and why I think they should have ruled. I could expand on it a bit, should I feel so inclined, and point out that under the Tenth Amendment it is New Jersey’s business alone what they do with their money. I could also expand on the point that the First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” and that New Jersey is not the federal Congress of the United States, to which the discussed amendment applies.

My objection to this case, again, does not lie in the ruling itself; that New Jersey’s funding for transportation of students was not unconstitutional, even if the buses were taking kids to Catholic schools. My objections are that it should never have gotten to the Supreme Court to be ruled on in the first place because it is not a federal issue and it invokes the Jeffersonian “wall of separation between church and State,” making it again seem to some observers of the Court to be a legally binding constitutional precedent which has to be followed as if it were law.

To provide proof and demonstrate this line of reasoning we need only to look at the Reynolds v. United States ruling invoked within this ruling itself.

“Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups, and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and State.’ Reynolds v. United States, supra, at 98 U. S. 164.”

Again we have the Supreme Court going outside of the Constitution citing one man’s undebated opinion as if it were law. By citing the previous ruling they establish a line of precedent to it which later courts are inclined to follow.

Now let’s, just for the fun of it, set all of that aside for a moment. There is nothing within the Constitution that gives the Supreme Court the authority over the courts, legislators, governors and People of the States regarding a State level issue. The idea that the votes of nine, eight, seven, six or five people can decide, over and above everybody else, what is or is not a valid law, is laughable in its level of absurdity. That this small handful of people can determine the fates of the country and everybody in it based on their own political prejudices and misunderstanding is a travesty of justice of the worst kind.

When they make irrational decisions outside of their authority they should be ignored by the States and the other two branches of the federal government. They have no independent power to enforce their rulings.

Outside of that one specific case that they are ruling on their opinions should be ignored. That they ruled something once a long time ago should have no bearing on anything outside of that specific case, now or in the future.

That’s the only authority the Constitution actually grants them. Their authority is to rule on individual cases, not the entire country because of a case.

I would say that so many in the country thinking otherwise, being willing to follow them blindly off the edge of a cliff, is reminiscent of lemmings but it's much worse than that. It is the willingness to follow them knowing full well, and with eyes wide open, that it is wrong and can only lead to destruction, based on nothing more than the idea that because they said so, it must be so, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part One

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Two

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Three

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Four

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Five

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous, Part 2: Reynolds v. United States (1878)

I suppose I should give some credit where credit is due. Recently the Supreme Court has been really slapping the liberal idealism around. This season they have overturned so many ideas that have been accepted and recited over the years as standards for American living that one has to wonder if the said liberals are beginning to think that the country isn’t what they thought it is.

This is a good thing and a bad thing.

The good thing is the fact that liberalism, the idea that the One Big Government should control, regulate and define everything in everybody’s life, to within an inch of their lives, and their definitions of what is right and wrong for everything and everybody should be applied to everything and everybody—by force if voluntary cooperation with their insanity cannot be voluntarily achieved—as a really big steaming pile of suckyness, is beginning to be recognized as such.

The very bad part of it is that the American People have accepted the false narrative that nine people in black robes—there has got to be a Lord of the Rings connection here—have the supreme authority to decide what ultimate truth is for all of us. And that they can do it using quotes from people, out of context, having nothing to do with what is actually written in the Constitution as the highest law of the land.

The most grossly misinterpreted of these rulings is based on a quote by Thomas Jefferson regarding “a wall of separation between church and State.”

If you have never read a Supreme Court ruling I very highly recommend that you give it a try sometime…if you ever find yourself afflicted with insomnia. If irrelevant data could be turned into a two-by-four, which someone could repeatedly club you in the head with until you become a babbling pile of semi-conscious and incoherent flesh, then you could build entire cities of houses with any single Supreme Court ruling. I mean really, they are a level of gibberish on an order of magnitude equivalent only to the writings of Al Gore.

Usually there is only a sentence or two that has anything to say that is of any importance at all. Now you can imagine the magnitude of my surprise when I found in the SCOTUS case, Reynolds v. United States (1878), four contiguous paragraphs which were not only historically significant but actually helpful in making up my mind about this whole “wall of separation” thingy that everybody keeps talking about.

The first thing to understand about this case is that George Reynolds was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At the time that religion still widely accepted that it was okay for a guy to be hitched to more than one woman at a time. The feds burst in and clapped the guy in irons. He was dragged off and thrown in the hoosegow, charged with violating the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act after marrying Wife #2 while still married to Wife #1. Reynolds argued that the law was unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

I’m not going to agree or disagree with Reynolds, although I must, as a guy, applaud his ambition and energy. Two wives? Seriously? Must be a better man than I am.

Anyhow here are the relevant paragraphs from the ruling, (interspersed with comments from yours truly, and I’m going to (bleep) out the sailor language.);

“(1 Jeff. Works 79.) (The preceding reference is from the works of Thomas Jefferson.) (Also it is appropriate to note that Thomas Jefferson, while his opinion is highly valued, was not in the country while the Constitution was debated, written or adopted, then serving as ambassador in France.) Five of the States, while adopting the Constitution, proposed amendments. Three -- New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia -- included in one form or another a declaration of religious freedom in the changes they desired to have made, as did also North Carolina, where the convention at first declined to ratify the Constitution until the proposed amendments were acted upon. Accordingly, at the first session of the first Congress, the amendment now under consideration was proposed with others by Mr. Madison. It met the views of the advocates of religious freedom, and was adopted. (Yay! They actually give relevant history!) Mr. Jefferson afterwards, in reply to an address to him by a committee of the Danbury Baptist Association, (You should read the whole thing, the letter from the Danbury Baptists and Jefferson’s reply, for context. Just Google it.) took occasion to say:

“‘Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions -- I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State. (Note: there is no phrase within the text of the Constitution that says anything about a wall. That’s just Jefferson’s analogy for his own personal ideas.) Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore man to all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.’

“Coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment thus secured. Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere opinion, but was left free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order. (Okay. Here’s the first problem. Jefferson is adopted as an authority. But Jefferson is not the text of the Constitution! The SCOTUS is sworn to uphold the Constitution, not the writings or personal opinions of Thomas Jefferson.)

“Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people. At common law, the second marriage was always void (2 Kent, Com. 79), and from the earliest history of England, polygamy has been treated as an offence against society. After the establishment of the ecclesiastical courts, and until the time of James I, it was punished through the instrumentality of those tribunals not merely because ecclesiastical rights had been violated, but because upon the separation of the ecclesiastical courts from the civil the ecclesiastical were supposed to be the most appropriate for the trial of matrimonial causes and offences against the rights of marriage, just as they were for testamentary causes and the settlement of the estates of deceased persons.” (Here’s the second problem. Just where in the text of the Constitution does it give SCOTUS the (bleeping) authority to uphold (bleeping) world history according to their own (bleeping) personal value system and call that constitutional?! So (bleeping) what if the Pharaohs of Old believed some (bleeping) thing about some (bleeping) thing! As “odious” as they, or you, or I, or Sir Dingbat the Monk in England in the year 1292, might think it might be, none of that has anything to do with their authority under the Constitution.)

Okay. I just know someone out there is going to do their best to misconstrue what I just said as an endorsement for polygamy. That’s not the argument I’m making. The argument I am actually making is based on a demonstration that the Supreme Court, in order to reach this ruling, had to pull something from outside of the Constitution and say that it is constitutional.

 I know that there are people out there who think I’m way off base in saying that things that are constitution have to be included in the actual text of the Constitution. Look. If the standard for “constitutional” is “I am a Supreme Court Justice and I agree with someone outside of the Constitution—although what I think is nowhere within the Constitution, and I can find some quote that someone, preferably a Founding Father expressed it, out of context—then I can call it constitutional and everybody has to obey,” then the Supreme Court rules over us all without any regard to anything that is written or adopted as law.

And again, just as in my previous blog post, Texas v. White, the Supreme Court makes a “constitutional” landmark decision changing the course of the country based on something that has nothing to do with the actual text of the Constitution.

So the Supreme Court went way outside of the Constitution in order to make the ruling they wanted. The evidence is right there. For this post I just wanted to point out the source of the “wall of separation between church and state” and the simple fact that it has nothing to do with the actual written Constitution. From this point out in this post I’m going to go on into some of the other points of the case. They are important too as they show the degree which the Constitution has been violated at the level of the Supreme Court and that since the ruling happened in the 1800s it’s not a new thing.

Did they have any authority to rule on the case in the first place? I don’t think that they did. We have five things to consider: 1) we have a federal law; Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act. 2) We have a challenge to that law based on the First Amendment; “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” 3) We have the Tenth Amendment; “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” 4) Article Three, Section Two; “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution.” 5) Article One, Section Eight is a list of all of the powers of Congress.

Let’s take the First Amendment point first. This is how Reynolds chose to challenge the law. Again I’m not supporting bigamy here but the decision does even point out within itself that there have been and are cultures that do hold with the practice. I’m not a guy to have two or more wives; one is quite enough, thank you! But I’m also not a guy that is compelled to tell everyone else who or how many they should or shouldn’t marry. There is a right and wrong here, in my opinion, but my opinion is not a matter of constitutional law. So I think the case, if ruled upon by the court at all, should have been ruled that it was a violation of Reynolds’s religious rights.

I call your attention to point #4 above, the Supreme Court can rule in all cases “arising under this Constitution.” This means that if it is unconstitutional the Supreme Court has no authority to rule on the case. At all.

Now for the thing that everybody missed which considers all of the rest of the points and isn’t even mentioned in the case. The subject of Point #5 above is a list of all of the powers of congress. It is strange that I see no power listed there for Congress or the federal government to define what a marriage is. Congress has no authority to write the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act in the first place and it never should have been signed into law by any president upholding his oath to the Constitution. Thus the Tenth Amendment applies. Marriage between one person and another, and another, and another, or any combination of consenting people is not a federal issue. It is a State’s issue.

As I’ve said previously this is not an endorsement of bigamy or any other unusual combination of people who consider themselves to be married. I believe a marriage is between one man and one woman, consenting, of course. But it is simply not up to the federal government to tell me that under the Constitution.

That’s all a deviation from the main subject of this post though. The main idea is that there is, under the actual written Constitution, no “wall of separation between church and state”  inside of the Constitution. True, that they didn’t use that to rule the way they wanted to in this case but they did mention it which does make it precedent for later cases.

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part One

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Two

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Three

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Four

Why the Supreme Court is Dangerous: Part Five