Say Hello To Taliban America And Goodbye To Godless Judges, Courts And Law

[Guest guest]

K

Mon, 4 Apr 2005 19:12:10 -0700 (PDT)

Subject:] Say Hello To Taliban America And Goodbye To Godless Judges,

Courts And Law

 

This is one of the scariest pieces of legislation in yrs.... Quite

possibly worse than the Patriot Act.

 

Capitol Switchboard: 1-800-839-5276

 

S.520

Title: A bill to limit the jurisdiction of Federal courts in certain

cases and promote federalism.

Sponsor: Sen Shelby, Richard C. [AL] (introduced 3/3/2005)

COSPONSORS(4), ALPHABETICAL

 

Sen Brownback, Sam [KS] - 3/3/2005 Sen Burr, Richard [NC] - 3/3/2005

Sen Craig, Larry E. [iD] - 3/8/2005 Sen Lott, Trent [MS] - 3/8/2005

 

http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=7569 & sectionID=104

 

ZNet | Criminal Justice System

 

Introducing The Constitution Restoration Act

Say Hello To Taliban America And Goodbye To Godless Judges, Courts And Law

by W. David Kubiak; April 03, 2005

 

Tired of waiting for the Second Coming to enforce Christ's rule on

Earth? Fortunately, so is your Congress and they know how to " bring it

on. "

 

Just when you thought the corporatist/Christian Coalition had

milked the 9/11 " surprise " for all it was worth in powers, profits and

votes, we regret to report that you may have to think again. Just in

case you've briefly fallen behind on your rightwing mailing lists, you

might have missed the March 3rd filing of Senate bill S. 520 and House

version is H.R. 1070, AKA the " Constitution Restoration Act " (CRA).

 

In the worshipful words of the Conservative Caucus, this historic

legislation will " RESTORE OUR CONSTITUTION! " , mainly by barring ANY

federal court or judge from ever again reviewing " any matter to the

extent that relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or

local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or

local government (whether or not acting in official or personal

capacity), concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's

acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or

government. " [Emphasis demanded - see full text here.]

 

In other words, the bill ensures that God's divine word (and our

infallible leaders' interpretation thereof) will hereafter trump all

our pathetic democratic notions about freedom, law and rights -- and

our courts can't say a thing. This, of course, will take " In God We

Trust " to an entirely new level, because soon He (and His personally

anointed political elite) will be all the legal recourse we have left.

 

This is not a joke, a test, or a fit of libertarian paranoia. The

CRA already has 28 sponsors in the House and Senate, and a March 20

call to lead sponsor Sen. Richard Shelby's office assures us that " we

have the votes for passage. " This is a highly credible projection as

Bill Moyers observes in his 3/24/05 " Welcome to Doomsday " piece in the

New York Review of Books: " The corporate, political, and religious

right's hammerlock... extends to the US Congress. Nearly half of its

members before the election-231 legislators in all (more since the

election)-are backed by the religious right... Forty-five senators and

186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval

ratings from the most influential Christian Right advocacy groups. "

 

This stunning bill and the movement behind it deserve immediate

crash study on at least 3 different fronts.

 

1. Its hostile divorce of American jurisprudence from our

hard-won secular history and international norms. To again quote the

Conservative Caucus: " This important bill will restrict the

jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court and all lower federal courts to

that permitted by the U.S. Constitution, including on the subject of

the acknowledgement of God (as in the Roy Moore 10 Commandments

issue); and it also restricts federal courts from recognizing the laws

of foreign countries and international law [e.g., against torture,

global warming, unjust wars, etc. - ed.] as the supreme law of our land. "

 

Re the last point, envision some doddering judges who still

revere our Declaration of Independence's " decent respect to the

opinions of mankind, " and suppose they invoke in their rulings some

international precepts from the UN's Universal Declaration of Human

Rights, the Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination

against Women or, God forbid, the Geneva Conventions. Well, under the

CRA that would all be clearly illegal and, thank God, that's the last

we'd ever hear from them.

 

2. The political implications of replacing " we the people "

with a Christian deity as the " sovereign source " of all our laws.

 

Imagine hyper-zealous officers or " entities " of the Federal,

State, or local government (like a governor, legislature or school

board) that mandate Christian prayers, rituals and/or statuary in

public buildings under their control. Were this to happen, some local

Jews, Muslims and/or Buddhists might be moved to hire a lawyer and

legally object. But if the CRA passes, their objection would be beyond

any court's jurisdiction and that's the last we'd ever hear of that.

It in fact demands " impeachment, conviction, and removal of judges "

who dare to even hear a case that challenges its " Last Days " morphing

of Christian church and state. (Just how our new Sovereign Source of

Government's advocacy of public executions for adultery, gay-ness,

contraception and blasphemy will fit into our current corrections

system still remains to be seen.)

 

3 The incessant mainstream media blackout on the bill's

existence and import.

 

The potential impact of the Constitution Restoration Act on

American life, law and politics is so radical and vast that you would

expect a boiling national debate. Yet just as with the crimes and

questions of 9/11, everyone in the media seems terrifically busy

looking the other way. If you want yet another dramatic metric of US

journalistic dysfunction, try Googling " Constitution Restoration Act "

in their News category and see what you get. Today, three weeks after

the bill was filed, I find a grand total of three throwaway mentions

in Alabama's Shelby County Reporter, the Decatur Daily, and the

Massachusetts Daily Collegian. ( " Terry Schiavo " in contrast will net

you over a thousand news hits, and " Michael Jackson " just passed

36,000 with a bullet.)

 

If the Alabama paper interest seems a little odd or sponsor

Shelby's name a bit familiar, you should recall that this old boy AL

senator was high among those same wonderful folks who kicked off the

9/11 cover-up. As his Senate bio proudly relates:

 

" From 1995 to 2003, Senator Shelby served on the Senate Select

Committee on Intelligence. In this capacity, he and the other

committee members provided oversight of the intelligence community,

and following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Senator Shelby

served diligently to investigate the intelligence failures that led to

those attacks. " [Emphasis demanded again.]

 

Got that? First he " oversees " intelligence for six years before

9/11, then " diligently investigates " its bizarre " failures " for two

years more, and finally finds--in a no-fault judgment--it was all due

to " deep institutional defects " and " systemic miscommunication " that

he'd apparently never noticed or heard about before. Having so

brilliantly defended the country before 9/11 and the official story

since, some seem to find it comforting that he's now busy defending

our court-harassed Constitution with a legally bulletproofed God.

Some, alas, do not -- feel comforted, that is, either by Shelby's

blurry oversight or fundamentalist agenda, not to mention the

Orwellian performance of our autistic corporate press.

 

In the meantime, however, before the CRA takes force and reduces

legal education to a Bible study course, what say we undertake a

little Constitutional defense of our own? To get up to speed on the

current Christian right agenda, Moyers' " Welcome to Doomsday " ,

Katherine Yurica's " The Despoiling of America " and John " The 9/11

Truth Candidate " Buchanan's " Fixing America " are excellent places to

start.

 

None of these analyses offer a silver bullet or paint a pretty

picture, but as students of 9/11 now know, spreading the courage to

face the truth is really the only hope we've got.

 

W. David Kubiak is a Project Censored award-winning journalist and

executive director of 911truth.org. He can be reached at

david(at)911truth.org. (He is indebted to John Buchanan for the latest

heads-up on this story and the Shelby office call.)