Free The Law

Asparagus Grower Welfare Subsidies!

2011-03-14T21:53:00.001-04:00

Calamity looms for those farmers who miss the deadline for applying for Asparagus Revenue Market Loss Assistance Payment Program. In the same spirit as cowboy poetry festival subsidies, the Asparagus-Growing-American community has now become a welfare group, apparently like most farmers.

Asparagus Revenue Market Loss Assistance Payment Program (ALAP)

Asparagus Revenue Market Loss Assistance Payment (ALAP) Program compensates producers for revenue losses resulting from imports during the 2004 through 2007 crop years. Eligible asparagus producers will receive a market loss payment based upon the marketing category of their 2003 crop of asparagus. The 2008 Farm Bill provides up to $15 million in market loss payments to 2003-crop asparagus producers.

To qualify for ALAP, producers must: Have produced and marketed asparagus in commercial quantities in the U.S. during both crop years 2003 and 2007, and; Meet highly erodible land and wetland provisions. Additional ALAP payment eligibility requirements will apply for the applicable marketing category that exceeds available funding. ALAP payments will be calculated based upon an eligible producer’s 2003 asparagus production quantity for fresh marketed and/or process or frozen market asparagus.

Maximum payment rates have been determined according to the following:

Marketing Category - Processed or Frozen Market Crop Asparagus - Maximum Payment Rate - $1.08 per pound. Fresh-Crop Asparagus - $1.06 per pound

Sign-up for the ALAP ends on April 8, 2011. Please contact County Executive Director, Ted C. Smiarowski, Jr. at the Hampshire/Hampden County FSA Office 413-585-1000 extension 2 or your local County FSA Office for further information.

Seven (Plus One) Glaring Omissions From the U.S. Constitution

2011-02-28T22:26:00.002-05:00

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

- James Madison, Federalist No. 51.

Recent presidents and supreme courts have been leaping over, tunneling under, and bolting around the restraints on government power set out in the United States Constitution. They ignore and routinely exceed its enumerated powers, and disregard the personal rights which it protects.

So we scratch our heads wistfully and search for the root cause of the problem. Is the constitution itself wanting in some respects, or is the tendency to grow government inherent in the human condition? Or, is the problem an amalgam of the two ideas, namely that the founders underestimated the ferocity with which American leaders of the last one hundred years would transgress the limits of the constitution. Perhaps they failed to erect strong enough barriers in the constitution to withstand the expansion of government by the likes of Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Bush and Obama.

Perhaps modern politicos feel contempt for the small government envisioned by the founders and set out in the constitution. Those of that turn of mind may also be inclined to exploit ambiguities and loopholes in the Constitution itself, interpreting its words in light of their proclivity for enlarging their own power.

Those who make it to the top of any field rarely shrink from an opportunity for self-aggrandizement. Amoral American leaders have found a well-trodden road to enhance their power at the expense of the freedom of others, using the constitution as a fig leaf and even disguising their actions as patriotic or compassionate. (e.g., "It's for the children".)

Is the constitution itself to blame for exploding debt, unchecked regulations, vast expansions of government powers, or is it just human nature? The growth of government, starting almost once the ink was dry in 1787, has motivated any number of persons to fish around for some first causes. James Monroe, the sixth U.S. president, lamented that entropy was a natural process:

How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve. How difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism.

Jefferson said it even more succinctly: "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." Judge Learned Hand, a brilliant and complex figure who served in the state and federal courts during the first half of the twentieth century (and who definitely has the best judge name of all time), opined,

I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon law and upon courts. These are false hopes.... Liberty lies in the hearts of men and woman. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it... While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no courts to save it.

In Judge Hand's view, no constitution, no matter how well constructed, and no judiciary, no matter how wise, can substitute for a people with an internal conscience which disposes them to liberty and to respect the person and property of others. In fact, such persons don't need a constitution, because no one needs to tell them not to plunder their neighbors. Note that the constitution is written to restrain politicians from doing that to us.

If men were angels, said Madison, we would not need government. The problem of government, however, is that it devolves rather quickly into becoming an overlord, a tyrant. As it states in The Book of Common Prayer: "There was never anything by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted."

So there you have it. The best system of government devised by the finest thinkers will only operate properly with a people already predisposed to liberty. No document will restrain those who are not intent on preserving their freedom. And any such system will deteriorate over time, giving way to tyranny and corruption. This is not a heartening prospect.

Given those realities, any attempt at drafting a durable constitution which intends to preserve liberty for the longest term possible, must be virtually bullet-proof, fool-proof, and tamper-proof. Quite a tall order.

In light of current developments in our governance, our founders didn't lock the U.S. Constitution down adequately to protect it from those who would either disregard it or would re-interpret it in light of their own political agendas. It is time to take a cold and clinical look at the limitations of our founding document to see where it is wanting in some respects. By underestimating the ravages of time and human nature, even though they were attentive to these dangers, our founders may have unwittingly invited the current state of affairs.

Herewith are seven (plus an extra) gaping, glaring, gargantuan omissions from the U.S. Constitution, with the benefits of 21st Century hindsight, and my suggested fixes:

1. The Constitution does not protect property rights.

The foundation of liberty is the ownership of property, and the most fundamental duty of government is to protect that ownership from all other claims. One of the clearest distinctions between countries in which it is possible to have a "civilized" life and one in which it is not, is the extent to which government protects property.

Why did our Bill Of Rights omit the most important right of all? Perhaps it was assumed that all property rights would be protected at the state level, and that current interference with property by the federal government would have been inconceivable.

We surely need protection for our property now, at both the federal and state levels. Federal encroachment on property has intensified on many fronts in the last few decades. The government now justifies the taking of property for wetlands violations, for environmental or endangered species preservation, for taxes, for possession an unapproved herb, and even for private development projects. State and local governments disrespect the privacy of property with just as much impunity, and they are sometimes worse.

The constitution has only a paltry protection for property rights, and that operates only when government takes land for a public purpose, called "eminent domain." Under the Fifth Amendment to the constitution, government is required to pay a fair compensation for any land so taken. It often does not do that, especially when it can deem the taking to only be partial, rather than entire.

THE FIX:

Make all land title "allodial", or absolute and total, rather than continue in our current "feudal" system of title records.

Under our current title system, an owner only gets a partial title to land when they receive a deed, but government retains a superseding power over the land, which allows it to take the land for taxes or other bad reasons. We imported this quirky land title system from England at our founding, which vests the ultimate ownership of land in the "lord", the government, rather than in the record owner. As incredible as it seems, government lord owns your land, and allows you to occupy it only so long as you pay the lord all of the fees he demands.

This system originated with William the Conqueror (in 1066), when he conquered England, and retained ultimate title to all land. He let a few barons have a lesser quantum of title to vast tracts of land, as long as they gave him compensation by use of their knights to fight battles for him. Over time, the system refined and developed. Feudal serfs could then have a leasehold tenancy, which required them to pay a percentage of crops from the land to the "landlord". I'm greatly simplifying a much more complicated and evolved system, but either the ultimate right to control the land is vested in the government or in you, the guy who thinks he owns it, but really doesn't.

Things have not changed much. We need to jettison this thousand year old system, and grant full, absolute "allodial" title to land, which cannot be re-taken by the government if you don't pay taxes, or there is a puddle on it that runs afoul of some environmental law, or if a greedy politician has been greased by a land developer who wants the land by eminent domain.

Right now, when you buy a house, your deed contains the statement that your ownership is "in fee simple". That means you are subject to a fiefdom, being a serf on your own land, a servant of the real lord, the government.

The fix is simple: Grant full allodial title to land, which will eliminate all kinds of mischief by government.

2. The Constitution does not protect family rights.

The founders would never have suspected, thought or dreamed that they would need to protect families from federal government intrusion on a personal level. That would have been as superfluous as including a clause to protect us from Martians.

Nonetheless, the feds have recently marched into the business of direct intervention into families, and in a massive way. The worst, but by no means the only one is by extravagant funding of state child protective services agencies, by writing their laws, and by maintaining a massive federal bureaucracy, called the "Administration of Children and Families", to ensure its continued tyranny in this area.

Since 1974, when Walter Mondale got the "Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act" passed into law, government now has prior rights over your children, just like feudal land title system gives them prior right to ownership in your land.

The U.S. Supreme Court has pretended that you have a fundamental interest in the care and upbringing of your children. However, that has given way to a competing principle: That the government has a "compelling state interest" in interfering with your family when its agents decide to do so. It must educate your children, it must protect your children from abuse and neglect, it must make you use car seats, use only toothbrushes with so many bristles, and so on.

In theory, in order to interfere with parental rights, the government must show that this compelling state interest requires them to override your rights if they are to take your children. In practice, courts let them do it virtually without stint.

This protection of children by government may seem sensible, until you consider the unintended consequences. In practice, all a social worker has to do to take your child legally is to - correctly or falsely, it doesn't matter - accuse you of neglect, of keeping your child out of government school, of spanking your child, of possessing a forbidden herb, of having the wrong religion, of not getting enough medical attention, of getting too much medical attention. Then, their goon squad enters your home, pries your screaming, terrified child right out of your arms at gunpoint, and kidnaps him or her. After a trial held after a year or longer, they terminate your parental rights and keep the child permanently.

These social workers are typically in their twenties, childless, clueless, and trained at a university which has taught them that you are part of a repressive patriarchy, and that your child should be liberated to be with his or her proper parent, the state. And they usually cannot be held liable, due to the hideous doctrine of government immunity, another dreadful legal abomination that we inherited from the English. (More on that below.)

Won't happen to you? Hah. At any one time, 500,000(!) children are in state custody in the United States, many of whom will never see their parents again.

The federal government also funds a massive educational bureaucracy which will take your child if thwarted. Try keeping your child in your care, instead of turning him or her over to your masters in the government school. Officers of the law will pay you a visit and file court action. The state child protective services will get involved. Life will not be good.

THE FIX:

We need a parental rights amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing no government interference with families without a warrant, after proof of probable cause that a parent has committed an actual crime against the child. Thus, genuine abuse will be confronted.

This should not be the hackneyed, bogus, proposed parental rights amendment that has been circulated heavily by an organization called parentalrights.com. That one still defers to the 'compelling state interest' in the child, and thus does not impede the "child protectors". All they have to do to get around it is simply declare that in this case, it is necessary and compelling to take the child, and the court will defer to the experience of the agency.

We need the equivalent of "allodial title" to our children built into the constitution, so over-ambitious social workers cannot fulfill their kidnapping quotas on the backs of your family, like a police officer writing tickets on the last day of the month.

3. The Constitution does not eliminate immunity from prosecution for government agents.

A recent CNN article illustrates the problem:

An Arizona state senator involved in an apparent freeway-shoulder scuffle with his girlfriend was not detained because he has immunity from arrest while the legislature is in session, police said.

The girlfriend, not being a privileged tax eater, was not so lucky. She went to jail.

When a government thug steals your land, your money, your child or your guns without due process, you will have a terrible time holding said thug accountable, because of the vile doctrine of immunity, which we inherited from our forbears across the pond.

In England, the king could do no wrong. He was the sovereign, and he was immune from lawsuits. So were his henchmen, er, assistants, since they worked for the king. Based on that historical precedent, sovereign immunity is now granted to judges and prosecutors and a number of other favored professions in this country. The immunity means that they cannot be sued for any action done in the official performance of their duties, no matter how dishonest, corrupt, or even in-your-face fraudulent that action is.

The argument for such protection has a superficial logic. We do not want judges tormented by lawsuits from every low-life perp whom he sentences to jail, because the defendant just didn't like the verdict. The judge or prosecutor would spend large amounts of time and resources defending against such suits, rather than attend to their duties.

In reality, judges and prosecutors hide behind this shield of immunity to defend bad behavior. Whenever there is no accountability you will find corruption. Since a judge cannot be held liable for anything done on the bench, they have no fear of over-reaching, imposing personal agendas, carrying out vendettas, taking bribes, and other somewhat ignoble acts. Only if the judge does something not related to the actual functioning of the office, is he or she subject to civil suit. This would be rare, such as if a judge slugged a defendant. Run-of-the-mill bribery and judicial bias, however, are totally protected.

There is almost no law in any jurisdiction granting this immunity. It has been illegally enacted by judges, acting as legislators, giving themselves this protection. Only the legislature can rightfully pass laws, but this has not deterred judges from doing so, up to and including those on the U.S. Supreme Court, from acting like one-man legislatures, and enacting immunity laws for themselves.

Judges have also extended a slightly less potent version of this immunity protection to a number of other favored insider professions, again without legislative permission, to include court guardians, social workers, psychologists on court evaluations, police officers, and to other legal and police-state categories. This version of immunity is called "qualified immunity", and requires dismissal of any civil lawsuit against a government agent acting in their official capacity in one of these professions, unless their conduct was clearly unconstitutional. It rarely is found to be so.

THE FIX:

Eliminate governmental immunity at every level of government, federal, state and local, for all but core functions of judicial work. Every other act by every other government operative, no matter in what capacity or profession, should be accountable to the public by way of a civil lawsuit.

Article V of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, written by John Adams in 1780, puts it perfectly:

All power residing originally in the people, and being derived from them, the several magistrates and officers of government, vested with authority, whether legislative, executive, or judicial, are their substitutes and agents, and are at all time accountable to them.

You just can't improve on that wording. Any persons living in Massachusetts should be asking, "How can ANY government employee have immunity, given that clear language?" Indeed.

4. The Constitution has no means to enforce violations of its terms.

With the rare exceptions of impeachment for treason or other "high crimes or misdemeanors", the constitution has no enforcement mechanism for violations of its terms. It is not self-enforcing at all. Impeachment is a lengthy, cumbersome and difficult remedy, and can only be used for the most serious infractions, such as Bill Clinton's relationship with an intern. Well, maybe that isn't a good example. Or maybe it is, illustrating that mundane transgressions can be the subject of ruthless witch hunts, while glaring treason and corruption often go unpunished.

In reality, the document needs a simple, clear procedure to enforce itself against any government agent who exceeds its enumerated powers, or interferes with rights protected under its amendments. Such conduct should be considered grounds for immediate termination from any government job, and a court should impose fines or even criminal penalties against any person or entity which engaged in such behavior.

The current civil rights law, set out in 42 U.S. C. Section 1983, is wholly inadequate to the task. It only stops a very limited range of constitutional violations, and the exceptions made by judges have nearly swallowed the rule.

THE FIX:

Add an amendment to allow simple enforcement in court of ANY violation of the clear words of the constitution by any government agent in any department, branch or agency, whether executive, judicial or legislative, and whether that violation consisted of exceeding an enumerated power, or by infringing on a right protected by the document.

After such an amendment was in place, Congress would only need to meet a few days each year. Bureaucrats would fear to tread before they took any action.

As Jefferson pointed out, government should fear the people, not the other way around.

5. The Constitution does not forbid a central bank.

The Federal Reserve System, usually called "The Fed", was the unrealized goal of Alexander Hamilton, and the most anti-Jeffersonian institution one can imagine. In theory, the Fed's twin mandates are to keep the currency and employment stable. Under its stewardship, the U.S. dollar has lost 97% of its value in a century and unemployment has soared. Someone must be unclear on the concept.

In essence - and this is greatly simplified - it creates money out of thin air by having one of its member banks, and then end users, borrow vaporous funds. Poof, there is money. If we did that, we would be in jail. When central bankers do this, they go to nice parties with rich bankers and important Beautiful People.

The Fed is unaccountable to anyone but the shadowy bankers whose interest it serves. It refuses to be audited, another ticket to jail if any other financial business likewise refused to be investigated by regulators. It could be, and probably is, running an operation about as ethical as the one run by Bernie Madoff.

At two other points in our history we have had central banks, but they were each dissolved in time. The current system has been in place since 1913, and was passed into law by Congress under quite suspicious circumstances on Christmas eve. Then president Wilson signed the bill into the law.

Where did the other 97% of the value of our money go? It did not just evaporate. Holders of dollar-denominated assets lost value to insiders due to inflation caused by the fed, and to those at the front end of the Ponzi scheme of money creation, just like Madoff's customers.

THE FIX:

First, audit the fed, and its handmaidens, Fannie May and Freddie Mac, the godzilla sized mortgage buyers. Then, eliminate them and never let another Bank of the United States arise again, via constitutional amendment. The Constitution already allows the federal government to "coin" money, meaning to use rare metals as a store of value and a medium of exchange. Handled properly, even a sophisticated economy can prosper on a metal standard. In fact, it absolutely cannot prosper if it is not on such a standard. No nation has.

The dollar should again be defined as a particular weight of gold and silver. History shows that works as a means of thwarting inflation, except when ruthless tyrants "clip" the coins or debase the metal in them. That would be hard to do in our technological society.

Lastly, anyone in charge of The Fed needs to stand trial for counterfeiting and for high crimes, for sinking our economy. Bernie Madoff needs some company in jail.

6. The Constitution does not limit spending, taxation and borrowing.

The Constitution does limit Congress to enumerated powers, and to spending money only for those purposes. However, Congress just acts as though there are no limits to spending, taxing and borrowing, by relying upon several clever work-arounds in the document itself, such as the "general welfare clause", the "necessary and proper clause", and the "commerce clause", among others.

This spending profligacy is not new. Madison himself had to admonish Congress that if can spend on anything it wants under the pretext of the "general welfare", then it negates the whole idea of enumerated powers. Why specifically list them as the only powers which Congress may exercise, if the "general welfare" clause expands its authority to an unlimited extent. Alas, Congress did not listen to Madison then nor to anyone now.

Congress has always been fond of spending, taxing and borrowing, but it could not indulge its wasteful ways as heroically in the past, as it has now been able to do in the last few decades. Wealthy and gullible Japan and China have lent us nearly a trillion dollars each, allowing Congress to live well beyond its means. The Fed has bellied up to the bar and thrown a lot of money around for deficit spending.

Congress had trouble collecting huge amounts of taxes in an earlier era, when there was no income tax. Presidents Taft and Wilson solved the problem, and ensured an unlimited flow of pilf to the federal government, via a constitutional amendment that for the first time allowed an income tax to be collected. The 16th Amendment states:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Since that time, the Congress has extracted breathtaking amounts of wealth from us. But, unsated, it continued to spend and borrow trillions of dollars from our citizens which we will never be able to pay back, in the form of T-Bills, T-Bonds, savings bonds, and looting of the Social Security trust fund.

In sum, we have been on a decades-long spending binge, borrowing binge, taxing binge, and inflation binge. Our poor old body politic can't take it any more, and it shows.

THE FIX:

Congress won't respect the limits of the powers enumerated in the constitution, so it doesn't make sense to pass even more laws that it will also ignore. That is what modern Solons do when the existing laws fail, in order to make themselves feel better about failing to obey the laws that they already passed. "Stop us before we kill again," they seem to be saying. "We can't respect the law, so we should pass some more laws, and see if we might obey those." They will not, of course.

So, the fix cannot just be a new law or even a constitutional amendment. Congress doesn't care for such trifles, nor does just about anybody in Washington.

The only thing which such incorrigible delinquents understand is to take their toys away. So, the other two branches need to ignore the artifice of immunity claimed by the Members of Congress, prosecute them ruthlessly for exceeding their enumerated powers, and eliminate all perks, pensions, and even their salary for non-compliance. If it still keeps up, they can join the folks from the Fed in jail.

We are dealing with little brats, who need a good whoopin'. It is the only thing they will understand.

7. The Constitution Does Not Restrain the Fourth Branch of Government - the Administrative state.

Most of the accretions of government addressed in this essay fall under the category of the "administrative state", which has become a fourth branch of government unto itself. This branch is dangerous, because agencies combine the powers of all three constitutional branches into one unit, thus losing the checks and balances which the constitution took pangs to construct.

The so-called alphabet soup agencies that we are familiar with, such as the IRS, the FDA, the FCC, the FTC, the EEOC, the EPA, agencies inside HHS, and literally thousands of other players big and small, function like little dictatorships, because they are allowed to exercise all government functions which we constitutionally separate. Here is how it works:

Congress delegates its legislative power to an agency, by allowing it to write and pass laws which they call 'regulations', as though the agency was Congress. After the agency enacts its own laws, it starts imposing them on the victimized populace, using executive power. Then, if the people fail to obey the laws, the agency convenes its own pretend courts, dress up people like judges in black robes, and exact penalties as if they were actually courts. These 'courts' do not hew to our traditional notions of due process or the rule of law which citizens expect from actual courts.

For example, take the IRS. The Internal Robbery Society, like most other agencies, makes and enacts its own voluminous regulations as though it had the legislative power of Congress, which must be followed as though they were law. These regulations are not uniform or fair, and favor certain politically connected groups and disfavor others.

The IRS also administers the regulations, as would any executive agency, by making everyone file tax returns, collecting money, and tormenting the citizenry.

Finally, it exercises the judicial power by running a so-called "tax court", which Congress oversees. This is a fake court, not authorized under the judiciary power of Article III of the constitution. However, you would not know this, since the fake judges wear black robes. However, they steal the citizen's real money, and throw them into real jail for non-compliance.

Most agencies, on both the state and federal level, have devolved into these hybrid monsters, exercising the powers of all three branches, which our founders carefully intended to keep separate.

THE FIX:

End the judicial and legislative powers of agencies. It is bad enough that they exercise often unconstitutional executive power, but they must never be allowed to exercise the other two functions. In reality, most agencies would be wholly eliminated by an honest application of constitutional limits. Clipping their legislative and judicial wings would be a good start.

8. The Constitution does not provide for secession from the union.

Oh, c'mon. This issue was fully and finally decided back in 1865, at Appomattox Courthouse, and doesn't need to be reconsidered.

Yes, it does. It is the only escape hatch for responsible persons who simply want to live under responsible constitutional government, but cannot, because Congress, Courts and the executive agencies simply will not let them.

When the several states decided to cede certain powers to a central federal government, the states deliberately retained most of their powers, including the power to secede. Under the Tenth Amendment, all powers not specifically delegated to the central government are reserved to the states and the people. Since there is no clause concerning perpetual union in the constitution, or a prohibition on secession, the power to withdraw from the union is reserved to and may be exercised by the states.

THE FIX:

Let's put it right in the constitution in black and white: A clause which explicitly allows a state to peacefully withdraw from the union, by a two-thirds majority of its voting citizens.

Conclusion

We may now be seeing past errors in the Constitution with more clarity, which had been long dormant. We may now be experiencing the unraveling of a good experiment in nation building, because of treasonous modern leaders who refuse to respect the provisions of the constitution. Either way, we should consider the foregoing matters of grave concern, and set about repairing them before further damage is done.

Mr. President, Have Pity on the Real Working Man

2011-02-19T11:18:00.025-05:00

In the streets of Madison, Wisconsin, union teachers cry out, "It's for the children", meaning, give us more money. The Jesse Jackson sycophants join them, screaming, "No justice, no peace." President Obama sides with the union. More to the point, commentator Gary North asks if we are seeing a replay of the movie, Blazing Saddles.

But I say: Mr. President, have pity on the working man. You know, the productive class, the taxpayers, the ones who pay those hundred thousand dollar teacher's salaries. The real working man.

But there will be no pity from the president. Mr. Obama pretends that he is on the side of the working man against the evil forces that oppress the noble laborer. But he is on the wrong side of history here. It will eventually be acknowledged that it is the unions who are at war with the productive citizens. Meanwhile, as Randy Newman sang, "Mr. President, have pity on the working man!"

My, how things have changed. These striking teachers are not the poor "working man" of Randy Newman's song, who tries to elicit pity and help from an aloof president.

We've taken all you've given,
But it's gettin' hard to make a livin'.
Mr. President have pity on the working man.

We ain’t asking you to love us.
You may place yourself high above us.
Mr. President have pity on the working man.

Unions once pretended to represent the working man when most unions were in the private sector. Now that the public sector unions have ascended to power, they take from the working man to support themselves at a lofty station. The president won't admit it, but he has oppressed the real working man, by taking the sides of the parasites and the barbarians. Long live the government unions, where a government job doesn't mean actually working.

No Justice, No Piece (Of the Pie)

Ironies abound in Wisconsin union politics. Teachers there have twisted the urban street chant, "No justice, no peace", into a greed-fueled demand, oblivious of its true meaning. They don't want 'justice'; They want money, and to use government power to get it from the parents of the children they are employed to teach, most of whom make less money than the teachers do.

Maybe they could justify their pay if they were actually educating children. However, according to an article in townhall.com, the high school graduation rate in Milwaukee public schools is 46 percent. The graduation rate for African-Americans is 34 percent. Only 32% of eighth-graders are proficient in reading, per the U.S. Dept. of Education. As Dire Straits sang in Money For Nothing, "That ain't workin'."

Maybe the children and parents who are subject to such sub-standard performance by their teachers should be out there on the street yelling about, "No education, no peace."

Is it justice to take the pay of the poor person at the point of a gun to give to richer teachers? Is it justice to demand that parents pay a teacher's health insurance premiums of over twenty thousand dollars per year, when many of the parents have no insurance at all? Is it justice to demand full time pay for part-time work, a status not enjoyed by most of those dragooned into paying for la dolce vita enjoyed by teachers?

To Mr. Obama and the teachers, 'justice' means that the state must give in to the union demands for more money and benefits. So, collecting more from the working man is the only path to peace. That sounds more like extortion than justice. Since the teachers unions made their demand for justice while illegally playing hooky from their posts at school, then maybe they should feel the sting of actual justice, and should be fired. Maybe they would learn the correct meaning of the term. When this is over, how will teachers ever have credibility in the eyes of parents and children to teach a moral world view?

When Jesse Jackson shows up at a protest, cameras following of course, and the cries of "No Justice, No Peace" begin to ring out in the street, the evil overlords are supposed to give way to the demands of the downtrodden union mooks.

It wasn't supposed to happen the way it did so far. The protesters were not supposed to be exposed as the overlords, and the taxpayers were not supposed to create a ruckus. They should pay. The state always makes them pay, so why shouldn't they pay this time, too?

The Worm Has Turned.

This Wisconsin incident has confounded the usual analysis about who are the good guys and the bad guys. The teachers and President Obama have used the usual class-warfare rhetoric of the socialist left to fool the lumpenproletariat. But it hasn't worked this time, perhaps because the teacher's exalted financial station has been exposed as much better than that of the guy watching the protest on TV. Can a teacher earning a hundred grand a year really be a victim of injustice?

The teachers have nonetheless attempted to portray themselves as victims, while the reality of their over-abundance has been revealed. This typically did not happen when the state controlled the flow of information, but the stubborn facts are now disclosed rather quickly to the watching public. The teachers are revealed to be out only for themselves, rather than "for the children", as that famous Clintonian justification goes. It worked for him.

Maybe none of the time-tested script will work this time. Maybe the government "haves" have finally overplayed their hand at the expense of the "working man" in a time of widespread economic trouble. Maybe the slogans will not inspire the poor and middle class to proffer yet more of their incomes to the government class. Maybe the cry, "It's for the children" won't be as effective a means to guilt manipulation as it was in the hands of the master manipulator himself, Bill Clinton.

Maybe this trend will even spread to other states, and public servants earning a hundred thousand dollars plus per year will not be able to continue to intimidate the working man who must support them on only a fraction of that salary. Maybe the worm has turned.

If Obama Really Had Pity on the Working Man

Mr. Obama, when are you going to get on the side of the real working man? You must snub the union in favor of taxpayers, but that is not nearly enough. To really affirm justice and peace, you must side with families over the state, and get the government out of the education business entirely. Then the fight over stealing from the working man would cease. It is only a conflict because of the decision to take education out of the home and put it in the hands of the state. It there was no giant pile of tax money to fight over, then there would be no fight in the street right now.

Here is the right message for Mr. Obama to deliver to the long-suffering citizens of Wisconsin if he has any pity for the working man. It would insure his re-election in 2012:

"Workers of the world unite! The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. (Tip of the hat to Karl Marx and The Communist Manifesto.) Throw off the chains of government union oppression and breathe the air of free men. Reject the incompetent government schools who take your children and mis-educate them. I've got your back, and I will ask Congress to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, and to stop subsidizing local schools.

"Parents, you are hereby liberated from the shackles of state control of your family. You may now educate your children in the way that will most benefit them, not by our 'one size fits all' method. Justice and Peace are now yours."

How LOW Can The High Court GO? - Judges Can Now Legally Do The LImbo With Insider Lawyers

2011-01-29T21:31:00.012-05:00

When doing the Limbo, they ask, "How LOW can you GO"? I think we just found out.

I always feel a pang of outrage when I see the picture feature every week on the back page of the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly newspaper, depicting judges and insider lawyers partying and hanging all over each other, drinks in hand. How can these judges remain objective when they are drinking - and surely discussing cases with - favored insider big-firm lawyers? Of course, they cannot. In fact, it violates both the judicial canons of ethics and the lawyer ethics rules.

But never mind. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, whose judges also routinely engage in such fraternization, have given all the judges a pass. Judges and lawyers can now party hearty, without fear of transgressing any of the ethical rules. Well, it still violates them of course, but they will now pretend that it does not. Here is an excerpt from a Lawyer's Weekly article:

Opinion: OK for judges to party at bar events

Published: 12:53 pm Thu, January 27, 2011

By Christina Pazzanese

Event organizers and party planners are breathing a sigh of relief these days.

In a surprise move that should spice up guest lists around town, the Supreme Judicial Court has issued a Code of Judicial Ethics opinion declaring that judges can attend bar association functions, including educational conferences, receptions and even gala balls free from worry that doing so will violate their ethical obligations.

In a five-page opinion, the court describes an anonymous judge’s dilemma over whether it’s proper to accept an invitation to serve as moderator of a bench-bar panel at an unnamed bar association event — a gathering that sounds suspiciously like the Massachusetts Bar Association’s centennial conference, a two-day celebration in May marking the organization’s 100th anniversary.

The event in question features a bench-bar panel and the award of a scholarship to a needy law school student. Tickets are priced at around $150, and the program is supported by a broad array of sponsors, including law firms, law schools and “many entities similar to those that typically advertise in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly,” the court writes. Boston attorney Douglas K. Sheff, vice president of the MBA and co-chair of the conference, says he can’t confirm whether the opinion arose from the batch of invitations handed out for the upcoming celebration.

“It looks like our function,” he says, “but it’s broad enough to apply to anyone else.”

Sheff calls the opinion “a great thing” for everyone in the legal community because it clears up what has long been a source of confusion for judges and frustration for bar associations, and it expands the kinds of activities judges can now participate in without having to think twice.

Yep, it's a "great thing" to party with a judge if you are a lawyer. As the old saying goes, there are lawyers who know the law and lawyers who know the judge. Guess which type wins more often? I rather envy those who are not constrained by the obvious ethical problem here. The so-called lawyer "ethics" rules have not had very much to do with ethics for a long time. They now appear to be little more than a pretextual means to do away with those who may not find favor with insiders for other reasons.

Here is a typical Boston Bar Association party with the lawyers and judges having fun:

When they say "bench-bar" panel, I'm sure they mean something more like OPEN-bar panel.

Since the high court now approves bench and bar Bacchanalia, will some judges with a conscience still maintain their integrity and avoid such events? Will some judges realize that attendance at this type of affair grossly compromises their integrity and makes a serious appearance of impropriety?

It will be interesting to see which judges maintain an appropriate distance from such events, and which ones will be doing the Macarena or the Raisin Dance at some bar association party. Or maybe the Limbo: "How low can you go....."?

You can read the Supreme Judicial Court's opinion here: http://www.mass.gov/courts/sjc/cje/2011-1n.html

Shoveling is For Thee, Not For Me.

2011-01-03T15:25:00.001-05:00

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has made a new rule that we have to shovel our side-walks or be liable for falls. Until now, a property owner was only liable if someone slipped on an "un-natural" accumulation of ice or snow, rather than on ice or snow as distributed naturally from the heavens. In other words, if the property owner caused a hazard by moving snow around and someone slipped on it, he was liable. But he was not responsible for snow or ice that occurred naturally.

The Boston Herald found, however, in this article, that three of the seven justices of the Supreme Judicial Court don't shovel their own walks. That's only for the little people, of course. One of the Justices judge gave this excuse:

“We plowed, we put down salt. We’re doing the best we can,” said Cowin. “I was trying to take some time off this week.”

Yeah, that would work in her court. I'm sure she would excuse a property owner from any liability, in a lawsuit filed by a person slipped on the ice. "Hey, I was busy trying to get some R & R."

The other part of this decision that flies in the face of our legal system is that only the legislature can pass laws, not the Supreme Judicial Court. It continues its tradition of illegally taking power which is not permitted to it by our State Declaration of Rights, which asserts, "The Judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers."

That statement seems simple enough that even a judge could understand it!

Judges Have An Unstated Agenda

2010-11-25T08:01:00.003-05:00

The most transcendent, mist-enshrouded, bedrock first-principle that guides judges in their work is: "Be objective. Have no bias." Most judges seem to ascribe to this maxim, and believe that they bring objectivity to their work.

In reality, the law itself is not objective nor are the judges. The price which we have paid for straying so far from the legal ideal has become intolerable to a large and ever-growing pool of Americans. These are the citizens who have been partially or even utterly ruined by the judicial system, or have had their property or families taken away by it. It is not a light matter when judges have the power to intrude that deeply into lives, and often on the most flimsy and unreliable of evidence. It is then that the bias and the agenda of the law are at their most flagrant and visibly destructive.

After appearing before maybe one hundred state and federal judges over nearly twenty years, I believe that few judges operate without either a known or unknown bias. In areas of the law where discretion is the largest part of the judge's work, such as family and juvenile law, the biases interfere with justice on a widespread scale. Most persons who get entangled in the system, whether intentionally, thinking that justice will be done, or unintentionally, because the system drags them in, find out to their horror that the system is a disaster for everyone who touches it.

Virtually every person who enters a family or juvenile courtroom - whether voluntarily or involuntarily - exits that same court room later with the firm conviction that the system is grossly unfair, and that the judge operates with at least a tacit, if not a downright clear agenda or bias. Why are litigants across every demographic category, gender, social station and educational level, so universally convinced that the system is utterly ruined? Because, for the most part, it is true.

Lesson of the Lord High Chancellor

Charles Dickens put the most trenchant comment about these equity-based courts ever uttered into the mouth of a character in his 1852 serialized novel, Bleak House. As only Dickens can, he mercilessly skewers the pompous be-robed and be-wigged Lord High Chancellor sitting on his bench in the British Court of Chancery, and then offers this advice to potential litigants: "Suffer any wrong to be done to you, rather than go there."

The be-wigged Lord High Chancellor Campbell
(1779-1861), sporting court dress (Harumph)

Nearly every litigant whom I have personally represented, or observed in my sojourns into court, would echo that sentiment. Nor is it a new belief, as illustrated by Dickens' comment of over 150 years ago. In fact, Jesus also said, "Settle with your opponents on the way to court", because the system will crush and ruin you. Rather, this is a universally understood sentiment, reflecting a systematic, long-term failure of the judicial departments of every legal system. Yet, not one time or in one place, has the system done anything meaningful to remedy the dreadful deficiencies that are so painfully obvious to all those who have been exposed to then since time immemorial.

What is happening here? Why do courts persist in their same stubborn path, despite widespread recognition that they have failed to serve their constituents? And, most important, what can be done?

I grit my teeth every year as our own "Lord High Chancellor", the head of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (pronounced "Cawt" here in Massachusetts) gives her annual address and report on the judiciary to the assembled grandees in the Massachusetts State Legislature. To hear these fairy tales, one would think that justice is always being done for the lumpen masses, that judges are all noble, good. wise and true, that clerks are helpful, and are being overworked to the point of exhaustion (for that nice six-figure salary), and that the only problem is just not enough money to extend these benefits with even more efficiency.

The lesson of the Lord High Chancellor hasn't gone too far. One ought to suffer any wrong to be done to him or her rather than go to our hallowed halls of justice, either, but no one will admit it. All is well. Just give us more money, and it will be even better!

This blog post cannot become a lengthy historical treatise, explicating the historical developments which landed us in the present continuation of a long-term court crisis. Rather, this post will explain my conclusions and recommendations from long years of courtroom observation, from reading thousands of pages of judges' opinions, and from living through the cases in real time, which involve real people with real problems. That will likely be more useful than some dry historical treatise. We know what we have and how we got there. The real need is to get away from the status quo to something better.

Political Agenda in the Family Court

Judges in family and juvenile courts have the most opportunity to exercise bias and discretion, because they are so-called "courts of equity", like that of the Lord High Chancellor". That means that they operate with few rules, and give the judges substantial discretion to do what they think is fair. There are no juries in these courts, and many juvenile courts are even closed to the press and public. With fewer rules, discretion and wisdom must take the place of rote imposition of legal remedies. That presents an opportunity for bias and hidden agendas to become the premier factor in guiding judicial decisions.

Fifty years ago, men were favored in family courts, and women were treated shamefully, as though they were not equal. Now, the pendulum has swung grossly the other way, and women are favored as against men, and the state is favored over both, when it comes to children. Domestic abuse restraining orders are now given out freely, without adequate due process, to break up with boyfriends, as first strikes in a divorce, or even as a cheap eviction procedure. Women get the kids most of the time, along with child support and alimony, and fighting for shared parenting puts a man into pariah status.

In the child protective services area, single women with children are most commonly preyed upon by these agencies, the men are ignored altogether, and the kids are routinely kidnapped from fit parents with hardly a reasonable basis to do so.

My shorthand formula for the unstated court bias in these matters, admittedly a reductio ad absurdam, goes like this:

Men are evil abusers;

Women are victims;

Children belong to the state.

The outcome of most matters in family and juvenile court can be predicted using that formula. Courts have always had a "default" setting which pre-disposes them to enhance state power, or to favor the litigant which most identifies with state power.

The New Fourth Branch of Government

Today, the government has expanded into so many areas which are either explicitly forbidden by our federal and state constitutions (e.g. regulation of campaign finance or of gun ownership), or which are not enumerated in a strictly limited list of powers permitted to the government. (e.g. toilet water limits or rutabaga regulations).

Because of this massive accretion of power, government has made virtually every interaction between humans, or humans and any other animal, vegetable or mineral, a matter of crushing over-arching regulation and legal jeopardy.

One of the most significant ways that government has done this, is to create a semi-autonomous fourth branch of government on the federal, state, and local levels, which is a hybrid of the three functions which we have traditionally separated under our constitutional system: the legislative, executive and judicial branches. This fourth branch is the Regulation State. It contains its own legislative function by making up regulations without approval of Congress or state legislatures except in broad terms. It contains its own executive function, through its "swarms of officers", to use Jefferson's term. And, it has a court system, which appears to be real, including people in robes, when they are not appointed under Article III of our constitution or their state cognates.

For example, in the environment area, states and the feds have environmental agencies (i.e. the Environmental Protection Agency) which write wetland laws, and which administer those laws that they write, and then enforce them if landholders do not comply. They have local and state tribunals like Conservation Commissions, and Departments of Environmental Protection, which issue orders to not use land in accord with their rules. Non-compliance results in huge fines or land confiscation. Continued non-compliance lands you - at last - in court. But, here is the rub. Judicial review of Fourth Branch proceedings only looks at whether the agency was "rational" in what it did, or whether it obeyed its own unconstitutional regulations, not whether what they did was lawful, fair, constitutional, or with due process. Guess who almost always wins?

The New Crimes

A second major trend is that most laws passed in the last forty years are crimes against the state, not against persons or property, as our laws used to be. Lawmakers have, in their drafting, bypassed almost all of our traditional notions of fairness and due process, and replaced them with low standards of proof, one-sided hearings, non-judicial tribunals, non-availability of juries, and limited judicial review. The current crop of laws would have been ruled entirely out of line in days past, since they changed every premise on which our system was originally premised.

Topping it off is a thick veneer of official "immunity" for government employees, which is legalese for not being accountable for most of the depredations which these people commit in the name of the government, as long as they are "discretionary", and within their illicitly obtained jurisdiction.

Sovereign Immunity was a doctrine which protected the King of England from legal process. The king could do not wrong, so you could not sue him. That legal doctrine, which now protects government employees from their wrongdoing, may be the most destructive thing we have ever imported from a foreign land.

There Is No Right Or Wrong, Just Arguments

One of the first things that fresh-faced, earnest law students learn in law school is that the system does not believe in right or wrong, only in arguments. Whose argument is best. "Right" and "wrong" are concepts for moralists, not jurists. The law changes with the needs of the people, and shifts with the times. This collections of relativistic principles is called "legal realism", and became part of our system through figures such as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes.

Another permutation of anchor-less law is called "legal positivism", where law can be binding on courts, rather than merely drifting with the whim of the judge. However, that law is usually created out of the fevered minds of do-gooders, who enact layer upon layer of arbitrary regulations, based primarily on a philosophy which believes that only government can bring about good behavior in the lumpen masses. Have a problem, pass a law, is their credo.

Both of these philosophies have combined to destroy a legal system which could have evolved to become better, not worse, had it not fallen into the hands of the relativists or statists.

They Really Do Have Principles - Just the Wrong Ones - And They Won't Admit It.

The legal elite who declaim the existence of universal natural law principles, still have quite a quiver-full of their own inviolable presumptions. The difference is, they will not admit that they all share an unstated but iron-clad agenda. Variance from this agenda - which I will set out below - is a basis for expulsion from the inner circle, and it is rarely done.

While stating that there are no absolutes, the elite cling to these absolutes nonetheless, and will never concede an inch of ground in their defense. Also, they will almost never mention them. They are like the secret Masonic rituals cannot be known by non-Masons, but are binding upon their members.

What are these non-negotiable principles, hidden in plain site, which the elite cling to? Here is my list. See if your experience verifies that they must necessary exist, even if they cannot be seen, just like chemists can predict that an unknown element must be there, because of a hole in the periodic table. They are simple, just like the periodic table, and appear to be almost as certain as those elements in the table.

1. The state is god. The statist revolution to save mankind from itself must triumph at all costs, even if it destroys most of mankind in the process. See Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler.

2. Feminism is catechism. Men are evil, women are victims, the children belong to the state.

3. Abortion is the high, holy sacrament. Don't touch it, ever.

4. Government agents are priests. Let them operate unimpeded.

5. Dependency on government must be widespread. Only then will freedom be undermined.

6. Resistance is futile. Our agencies and courts will ensure it.

7. Wealth is evil. Fairness demands it be equalized.

8. War is the health of the state. Empire is inevitable.

Massachusetts Chief Justice Mulligan Knew Nothing Was Happening in the Probation Department, Doncha Know?

2010-11-24T21:41:00.025-05:00

An incredible thing happened last week (November 9, 2010) to the Massachusetts Court System. A special investigator exposed about 5% of its corruption, a root-shaking cataclysm which has never occurred before. That only leaves about 95% of the corruption in the system to be addressed.

OK, Ahem, tongue is now removed from cheek.

Justice Mulligan "Seeing Nothink"
at the Probation Department.

Last week, the largest bloc of Massachusetts court employees, the 2200 member (ultra hack-bloated) probation department, was rocked by a scandal. It's management, including its commission John O'Brien and several high level assistants, as well as a number of state representatives and other state cronies, were larding up the payroll with worthless friends and relatives of said state reps. These fine elected officials would then see the need to pass very very very large budgets to fund the Probation Department, thus enhancing the power and prestige of the Commissioner of Probation and his management team who were directing the hiring scheme.

One Western Massachusetts rep appeared to have sponsored about 100 such candidates, along with having two family members directly on the Probation payroll, his wife and son. (They were only hired after a nationwide search for the best candidates, of course). He became known as "Mr. Probation".

In Massachusetts, in order to maximize the number of tax-eaters on the state payroll, we have SEVEN different divisions of our trial court, such as family, juvenile, superior, district, land, housing, and the icing on the cake - a second completely separate Boston district court division. Each of these departments has its own full management structure, chief judges, judges, clerk-magistrates (earning six figures), clerks, support staff, opulent high-rent headquarters, courthouses (some combined in various places), procedures, rules, forms, computer systems which can't talk to any of the ones in the other departments, and so forth. About the only thing they do together is buy paper clips.

Each division also has its own probation officers, even the family courts, where they are euphemistically called "Family Service Officers", and instead of monitoring criminals, they act as semi-demi ineffective mediators. . . sorta. With 2200 people, probation has the largest workforce of any court department in this little state.

Anyway, when the scheme began to unravel, our Supreme Judicial Court hired a prestigious Boston lawyer, Paul Ware, to do an investigation. To his credit, he kicked some serious butt in his report - until the butts got a little too important to kick. And then, well, the important people didn't really know what was happening with their largest and most important court work force.

Chief Justice Mulligan Oversight of Probation Dept.

The greatest recipient of the storm shield was the Commissioner's direct boss, Chief Justice for Administration and Management, Justice Robert Mulligan. According to the report, he sternly admonished Commissioner O'Brien every few years or so - wink, wink - that he really oughta clean up his act. But horrors, despite this strict and careful oversight by Justice Mulligan and his predecessor, thousands of these unqualified candidates were hired anyway during the twelve years of Commissioner O'Brien's tenure.

How could this be? Pretty easy, I guess. No one noticed for twelve years. However, it is preposterous to suggest that the uppity-ups didn't know about this scale of fraud and corruption occurring in plain sight all that time.

My concern is that this tiny little first start at exposing the corruption will start and end here. Congratulations will be extended all around for a job well done, and it will deflect any further attention from the other 95% of the corruption that is still in the system. I wonder if that was the idea.

Important New Law Firm Announcement

2010-11-24T20:19:00.006-05:00

____________________

The Very Important Boston Law Firm of

Doolittle & Doolittle et al.

AND

The Even More Important Boston Law Firm Of

Billem, Fore, Ayotte

are combining into the Gallacticly Important

Boston Law firm Of

Doolittle & Billem, Fore, Ayotte

_________________

This enlightened merger developed when the Very Important Lawyers at Doolittle & Doolittle were at a wine and cheese party with the Beautiful People at the Boston Bar Association. Suddenly, the Even More Important Lawyers at Billem, Fore, Ayotte alighted from their harbor launches at the waterfront quarters of the Bar Association, and the Doolittle lawyers burned with envy.

After earnest and furrowed-brow discussions over much Bordeaux, Gewertztraminer, pate fois de gras, and Camembert, the firms agreed to merge. Good thing, as the bar tab had become quite enormous.

Anyway, the new combined firm will now not only be able to do very little, but will also be able to bill their clients for even more magnificent maritime floating palaces, designed to arouse uncontrollable lust and acquisitiveness in their lawyer colleagues.

Additionally, Doolittle & Billem, Fore, Ayotte will now host bigger and better wine and cheese parties for the Beautiful Legal People, (paid for by their clients, of course, who will be allowed to mingle and buy influence with large gobs of cash). These improved parties will also feature more malleable judges in attendance, and even better wine.

So, congratulations to the newest and Most Very Important Boston Law Firm, at least for today.

Two More Places TSA Hasn't Looked Yet

2010-11-24T19:13:00.027-05:00

This may be a bit indelicate, but the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) sexual assault artists at airports have not yet been instructed to look in the two most secure places in the human body where a real hard-core suicide bomber would be likely to hide his or her explosives.

Illustration From the Animal Kingdom of One of the Places They Don't Yet Check For Explosives

Despite searching millions of persons per day, they have caught no terrorists yet. Nor will they. When the next blast occurs, the mule will have carried the Semtex or C-4 plastic explosives in an intimate place where the TSA is not yet authorized to probe.

So what is the point? Why inconvenience all these people with ineffective semi-intrusions on their privacy, which will not make any difference? They have already clearly signaled to the terrorists what the safe zones on their bodies are, and that the TSA will not check those places, particularly if you are a Muslim.

Thus, they have rendered all such superficial searches meaningless, like stopping every single car on every single road or highway, every single day, to search ONLY the trunk for illegal drugs. It will be pretty clear to controlled substances transportation specialists that drugs can be hidden in other places, and the drugs will never be found.

With the simplest of logic, and a willingness to believe that gubmint is not always honest, the only conclusion is that another agenda, rather than passenger safety, must be at work.

The Two Janets: Operation Shutty Uppy

2010-11-23T22:15:00.020-05:00

With the recent notoriety and anger over the Airport Sexual Assault Squad of the TSA, we have all become much more aware of the execrable Janet Napolitano, (mocked as "big sis"), and who heads up the Dept. of Homeland Security. Her ugly mug now shows up everywhere, promising to protect us from the bad guys, if we will just her goons molest our loved ones. But she wasn't the original Janet with the itchy trigger finger.

Does everyone remember Janet Reno: Bill Clinton's attorney general, alligator wrestler, child murderer, and smirking monster face of the federal regime? Janet The First, front and center.

Will Ferrell as Janet Reno
in Operation Shutty Uppy

Saturday Night Live did a great parody of Janet Reno, played by Will Ferrell, where he boxed the actual Mayor Giuliani of New York. As Janet donned the boxing gloves, she told him, "It's time for operation shutty uppy." The skit perfectly captured her bottomless cruelty and her ability to care not a whit about it. The point: Shut up, or I'll kill you. She meant it, and that was Janet I in a nutshell.

Some younger readers may not know of Janet Reno's heroic exploits in Waco, Texas, in 1993, at the communal home of a whackadoodle cult leader named David Koresh. She authorized a cross-agency death squad of federales, after a standoff involving deaths on both sides, to go in and kill everything. She did this by pumping poisonous CS gas into Koresh's large dwelling, setting it on fire, and then machine-gunning the screaming survivors as they exited. Fifty-four adults and twenty-one children died. An exciting day for Janet, I'm sure.

Janet I also socked it to a woman who was holding a baby, who happened to be near a fellow who may have had a gun that was slightly too short for federal regulations. Her F.B.I. hit-man, Lon Horiuchi, shot the woman dead in her house in 1992, along with a child, but was not held liable for his crime. Another great day for Janet.

Janet Reno was also the hero of Child Protective Services agents everywhere when she sent the now-famous gummint raiding party to kidnap Elian Gonzales at gunpoint in 2000, and accomplish some foreign policy objective with Senor Castro in Cuba. The classic photo of this encounter, which will stand for all time as the premier symbol of government child protection, is here:

The raid was described in legal documents as follows:

In the pre-dawn hours of April 22, pursuant to an order issued by a federal magistrate, eight SWAT-equipped agents of the Border Patrol's elite BORTAC unit as part of an operation in which more than 130 INS personnel took part approached the house; they knocked, and identified themselves. When no one responded from within, they entered the house. Pepper-spray and mace were employed against those outside the house who attempted to interfere. Nonetheless, a stool, rocks, and bottles were thrown at the agents.

Child protective services at the point of an HK MP-5 submachine gun. Now THAT'S child protection. The photo, which horrified America, likely spawned the fevered aspirations of thousands of social workers all across the land: "If only we had that kind of power....."

So, that is Young Person's Short Guide to Janet I, Janet Reno. She performed a permanent "Operation Shutty Uppy" on a lot of Americans.

Now, of course, we have a new Janet II at the helm - Janet Napolitano, and a shiny new Gubmint Department for her to run, one that Janet I would have salivated over. The Department of Homeland Security, which might have even made Mussolini envious, has not had the good fortune to commandeer a nice standoff where women and children can be gunned down in cold blood, but give it time.

Napolitano's TSA Sexual Assault Specialists are the friendly folks bringing you our new enhanced airport security, and much, much more in their own new Operation Shutty Uppy. If you say anything at the airport, they will haul you away to a place where you can learn to not be so impertinent to your betters. Unless you are like Neo here in the famous "lobby scene" from The Matrix, where he takes out a small army of security guards, I wouldn't try it. (It only works because every guard misses with every one of the thousands of shots from their sub-machine guns, but that is another story.)

There are more "non-existent" black-op agencies in her department than at the Pentagon. Most are doing dastardly things in our name, spending billions of our money, and creating world-wide blow back against America by projecting our empire and power around the world in a most unpleasant manner. All the while, they recoil in mock puzzlement when various foreign nations squawk at being brutalized, dominated, tortured, stolen-from, and manipulated in order to push our will on them. How dare they complain, the ingrates.

It remains to be seen whether Janet II has the utter ruthlessness and lack of conscience of Janet I, which are necessary to really get it done in this world of Obama tyranny. I predict that President Obama will put Janet II to the test, and that she'll be making her bones soon, as she steps up to take control of some ghastly project where children will die hideous deaths at her hands. She will then appear on the news, and say it was for their own good.

Is Janet II Ruthless Enough?

If Janet II can perform to the low standards set by Janet I for cruelty and venality, and then (and this is where the champs show their real colors), react utterly cavalierly and unconcerned, while "taking full responsibility" with a straight face, then her position in the Obama orbit is ensured.

Hey, you gotta check out the Saturday Night Live parody of Reno, with Will Ferrell as Reno and Rudy Giuliani as himself, called "Operation Shutty Uppy.", where she beats up Hizonner the Mayor. Here is a sound clip.

The Dreadful Fate of An Angry Man in Court

2010-07-18T09:07:00.004-04:00

A man goes to family court for a divorce, most likely filed by his wife and pained that his marriage is breaking up, but with the belief that a judge will be fair and impartial. Then it happens: The court gives almost total control of the situation to the woman.

She gets a restraining order based on lies. She gets the children almost all of the time. She gets the house. She gets the money. She gets sympathy from the judge.

You get almost no time with your children, and maybe even supervised visitation in some small room with florescent lights and indoor-outdoor carpet, and you pay for the privilege. You pay support and/or alimony, and live in some dank basement at your mother's house, because that is all you can afford. Your stuff is stolen by the ex or by the state. Your life is ruined.

This is not how it is supposed to be. You thought if you simply told the truth at court, the judge would see through it and at least be fair. You are a fit parent; Why can't the children be with you as well as her?

All good questions, to which the hideously biased system has one answer: "Men are evil, women are victims, the children are ours."

So, you get angry. Very angry. And, you seal your fate in court. You will surely lose, which is the whole thing your anger was meant to prevent. If you had known what the anger will get you, you would not do it, but you don't know. The anger will guarantee that the outcome in family court will be dreadful.

Worst of all, your children will react to it - because kids work on an emotional level - and they will say they want to be with mommy. You won't understand why, because you are a good dad. But it is because of the anger. The judge will react to it. The GAL will react to it. The clerks will react to it. Even your lawyer will react to it.

So, what should you do? Forgive your ex and lose the resentment. Forgive the judge and lose the resentment.

Oh, that is ridiculous, you say. What good will that do? I've lost everything, and you want me to just shut up and not say anything. How stupid. They punch you in the nose and don't expect me to react, but to just stand there and take it. I must defend my children from these child abusers who want to keep them away from their father. The judges don't begin to understand the frustration they cause, and don't even seem to care.

Yes, it appears wrong to not react, to not be angry, to not resist, to not tell the judge the truth. But, please hear me out. By doing all those things, you will make it even worse, and the judge will feel totally justified in nailing you.

I certainly understand the issue. I am not saying that justice is being done, or that you should not try to fight. Just don't do it that way, which is proven again and again to make things worse.

But you feel that your anger is righteous and proper, because the judge is hurting the kids and stealing your stuff. You have a right and duty to set this injustice straight. It is proper to be angry at evil and false allegations and unfairness. All true, but you cannot do it in family court, or you will lose your case and you will lose your children.

However, if you think that delivering a speech to the judge about what a biased jerk he or she is will make the judge sit up and pay attention, you are mistaken. They are in the grip of an agenda, and your anger feeds right into that expectation, and only affirms that the judge did the right thing by punishing you. The judge can justify keeping your kids from you and taking your stuff from you, and even feel good about it.

We are in a police state. Don't think otherwise. This is no longer the land of the free and home of the brave. When courts can kidnap children and steal everything a man owns, and slap a restraining order on you without due process and then throw you in jail if you don't pay, or contact the kids, it is a police state. So, why are you fighting as though all you have to do is lecture the judge, and he or she will see the light. There is no light. They know their role, and you will not tear them away from it.

All you can do by the anger is ensure that you will never re-gain what you lost, you will lose your kids, you will lose your soul, and you will even lose your friends. In other words, you may not regain what you lost in court, but anger will ensure you lose a lot more.

In some cases you can get what you lost back. Forget it, you say. I can't live with myself if I don't fight everything with every ounce of strength I have. Manly sounding, but ineffective. Why do things that will insure you lose? Why not try to at least realize what a police-state disaster you are in, and stop doing things that make it worse? Have you ever tried to cop and attitude with a cop? Be prepared to be charged with disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace and resisting arrest, even if the thing you were arguing about isn't even the real issue.

The men who learn this lesson can often come back from the unjust temporary situation and win the judge over at some point. The ones who succumb to anger will assuredly lose the main issue, which is the respect of their children. And they will lose the case as well.

Your ex may be the biggest psycho-chick on the planet, and the judge may be quick to judge you are a bad guy, and not be the least bit fair. In that situation, you may get a terrible order, but you then have a choice: You can become bitter and resentful, or you can forgive the judge and the ex, and can go about the process of winning the war through other means.

You are not ready to go to court until you learn to forgive. What are you, some kind of wimp, you say. No, I want to win, and angry men lose. In fact, those who show anger lose bigger than any other quality in family court.

But there is a bigger reason to lose the anger. Your children need a loving father, not an angry one. If you stay resentful, they will react against you, because they do not want someone criticizing and being angry at their mother. If you forgive, and teach them love and strength, in spite of the spiteful way you have been treated, you will give them a legacy of character that will stand them in good stead all their lives.

Because the courts are so terribly biased and unjust, and so quick to do harm to children by keeping them from their fathers, I have dealt with an endless stream of angry men in my law practice. Many of them will not relent, but are determined to make that judge see, and the ex see, just who is right and who is wrong here. It won't work. They have the power, and a direct assault on power almost always fails. Stonewall Jackson won because he always went around the enemy and attacked at a time and place no one was expecting.

Only the indirect method of winning over the children by your wisdom and character, and remaining steadfast and implacable in the eyes of the judge has a chance of success.

The alternative is dreadful: Most angry young men die angry old men, with their children estranged and bitter at them. Don't compound the family court's wrongdoing by adding anger to an already bad set of circumstances. You will be its prisoner until you see it and break out of it.

You can't replace something with nothing. You cannot merely stop being angry. You have to be something else instead. That "something else" is to be forgiving, loving, and peaceable.

How does that fix anything, you say. It may not fix it. Really, it may not. But it may, and it is the only chance of improving the situation. Whereas, being angry and asserting your rights and telling the judge off will guarantee - lead pipe certain - that you will lose. So, you can either lose big, or have a chance to redeem things and maybe restore your dignity and honor.

But I can't let them do this to my kids, you say. Well, they did. The police state owns them now, with the filing of a divorce. Your anger won't get them back, and will only make them even less able to endure the wrong which the court is putting them through.

How can one forgive in the face of an ex who mocks and steals and tries to turn your children against you? She goes into court and whines and cries, and acts pathetic, then walks out smirking and gives you the finger, when the judge gives her what she wants. You can't just let that go, can you? Yes, actually, painful as that is.

Jesus said, "Forgive your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." When one wants to learn peace instead of anger, I know of no other answer than to turn to the one who showed this by his whole life. In the Lord's Prayer, he said, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors". We are not forgiven our own offenses unless we forgive others. To do that requires an inner transformation that can only come by submission to the one who came to replace our hearts of stone with a heart of flesh.

Otherwise, your fate is to die an angry old man.

Child Support Guidelines Case at the Mass. Supreme Court: Challenge to the Regulatory State

2010-06-26T20:03:00.000-04:00

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has decided to take the appeal of a case challenging the way child support guidelines were manufactured out of thin air by one judge and a secret committee. This case goes way beyond the actual issue of child support guidelines, and challenges the very heart of the way government now does business - it imposes law by fiat of bureaucrats and judges. If the appeal succeeds, it could be the beginning of the restoration of constitutional limitations to the leviathan state. If it loses, it could cement the regime's iron grip on the culture even more securely.

Here is why this matters. We challenged the imposition of new child support guidelines, not on the basis of them being too high, although they surely are. The challenge was too the METHOD of how they were made into law, namely being imposed by one judge, relying on the recommendation of a secret committee that the judge hand picked to give him the results he wished have.

Chief Justice of Administration and Management (abbreviated the CJAM) Robert A. Mulligan is the one who actually made this determination. When challenged with a lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court, the judge there justified Justice Mulligan's action, and dismissed the case. I guess it didn't help that we were suing his boss, who could have sent him to preside in Gopher Gulch District Court for the rest of his life if he didn't do the "right thing", i.e. rule in favor of Justice Mulligan's unilateral imposition of child support guidelines.

In federal law, child support guidelines may be established by administrative, judicial or legislative action. However, in Massachusetts, as in most states, our constitution requires that laws be passed by our legislature. The original Massachusetts Constitution, including a 30-article Declaration Of rights, was written by John Adams (yes, THAT John Adams) in 1780. Here, we can pass laws in only one way.

Article 30 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights contains the most clear, unambiguous, impossible to misinterpret clause about the legislature being the only body which can pass laws. It says, in pertinent part:

In the government of this Commonwealth. . . The judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.

Could it be clearer? Even the most slippery slimeball of a weasel lawyer couldn't twist that into saying that a judge could pass a law instead of the state legislature, could he? Well, he did.

And to add insult to injury, the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General is defending that hypocritical position. Shouldn't the highest legal officer in the state defend the Constitution? One might think so, but one would be wrong. They are defending the chief justice, not the law.

The principle involved in this case goes far beyond the establishment of child support guidelines. The executive and judicial branches go around the legislature on a daily basis. If this appeal is successful, it would re-establish some limits on the power which these departments have illegally grabbed.

Ironically, the courthouse in which the hearing in this matter will take place is named after the very man, John Adams, whose timeless Declaration of Rights rebukes the government's raw power grab in this case, and its cowardly defense of that usurpation. I wonder if the justices on the Supreme Judicial Court will take note of the irony.

Memo To the Chief Justice.

2010-05-30T23:56:00.000-04:00

Memo to Hon. Margaret H. Marshall, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court:

"Wake up Maggie, I think I got something to say to you," sang Rod Stewart some years ago. The hoi poloi who experience the court system from the OTHER side of the bench from you, see things spinning out of control. They want your attention, and have something to say, because they are the ones getting hurt by it.

Every year, it is your duty to give a report to the governor and both houses of the state legislature, about how the system is delivering justice. But that justice looks a lot different from the perspective of the masses who sit behind the bar in the courtrooms and pay the salaries of all those expensive public servants whom you are reassuring.

In brief, many judges run amok, imposing their vision of positivist law and their humanistic biases upon their decisions, while ignoring the weightier matters of the law, and real morality and procedure. Many clerks couldn't be bothered to serve the public, and project annoyance when asked for help. Agents of the system continue to pile more and more strict, complex, and inexplicable procedures on the backs of the honest, simple litigant, while depriving him or her of justice in return for the trouble of bearing those burdens.

A visitor from another place would conclude that justice is not being delivered effectively or efficiently. And sometimes not at all.

Justice is Not Happening According To Our Declaration of Rights

Article XI of our Massachusetts Declaration of Rights states:

Every subject of the Commonwealth ought to find a certain remedy, by having recourse to the laws, for all injuries and wrongs which he may receive in his person, property or character. He ought to obtain right and justice freely, and without being obliged to purchase it, completely and without any denial; promptly without any delay; and conformably to the laws.

Honestly, can you not see the numerous ways that the system fails to deliver the kind of basic justice referenced in that provision of our constitution?

So many predations of government now have no remedy in court whatsoever. Since agencies have taken over much of government, the system simply defers to the "expertise of the agency", when many, if not most, have no provable expertise. Cases involving restraining orders, family matters and parental rights in juvenile court seem to have almost no remedy at all, when rogue litigants, social workers, and therapists are allowed to have primacy over parents.

How many "injuries and wrongs which he may receive in his person, property or character" have any means of redress? Far fewer than anyone will admit. When social workers take children and allow harm to befall them, we interpose immunity. When GALs make harmful decisions or DAs maliciously prosecute one who is innocent, the immediate refuge is immunity.

When agencies trample on property rights, the system validates those intrusions with the artificial excuse that government may do so as long as it has a rational reason for it. By lowering protection for property rights, we insure that "injuries and wrongs" to property will find no recourse in the courts of the Commonwealth.

Each court charges huge fees merely to file a lawsuit, thus negating the requirement that justice be free and that those who vindication of their personal or property rights should not have to purchase justice. The incredibly complex rules for all but the tiniest civil matters require litigants to purchase justice by hiring a member of the bar, a lawyer. Even to appeal a driving violation to a clerk now requires a fee, and yet another additional and larger fee to have a judge review it. Freely, indeed.

Opportunities for redress of government action against citizens are being progressively closed, and even using the common law means of suits for abuse of process and malicious prosecution have now been eliminated by your court's interpretation of the anti-SLAPP laws. The window of potential redress has become exceedingly small and is nearly shut.

Structural Problems in the System Go Deep.

Families are being ruined routinely by the family court, as children are kept from perfectly fit fathers for long periods. Restraining orders are issued to the best liar in District Court. The juvenile courts terminate parental rights, without clear standards. Court rules in all the departments are now so complex that pro se litigants are virtually doomed without a lawyer.

Despite these modern accretions of complexity, the system operates in most ways like it was in the 19th century. Everyone is summonsed to court at the same time, oblivious to the fact that many persons must then wait all day for their one-minute hearing in front of the judge.

Minor procedural hearings are multiplied, requiring hundreds of dollars of lawyer-time, when a simple phone or video conference would do. One cannot generally even change a hearing date by phone, so surly and maladjusted are the clerks. A request to send an order by fax to the other end of the state will be met by incredulity, and a demand to drive hours to come and get it.

The long-promised court computer system is not even close to working in a coordinated fashion (tens of millions of dollars later), so lawyers are double and triple booked in overlapping hearings at different courts all the time, and cannot even get simple case information from most courts on-line.

Courts are not managed by administrators and managers, but by judges who are trained to think about case matters, not about paper clip inventories, hiring of clerks, and hearing times. So, we get things like having to pay $50.00 for a CD containing a one-minute hearing, which they won't even mail to the other end of the state. This place runs like it never heard of the internet, and like it still uses quill pens.

You've seen the recent report from March of 2010 on the management of the court. An excerpt:

The lack of meaningful authority is evident throughout the courts. Each layer of management has little ability to direct the next and little accountability to the one above. Reporting lines are vague and do not reflect natural working units. Basic tools of authority are undermined or absent; consequences cannot be tied to performance; resources cannot be removed or redirected; even the selection of those in key positions is often outside of a manager's control.

But the worst thing is what your system does to children. Family, Juvenile, and District Courts are destroying thousands of families a year in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is rotten to steal time, money, property and justice from tens of thousands of people each year. It is unforgivable to do that to their families, yet that is what is happening.

Family Courts

Your family courts, charged with the extraordinarily difficult task of finding an orderly dissolution to families, more often harm or even destroy them instead, by making an already bad situation worse.

They allow manipulative litigants to go to District Court for a restraining order, and then come there and file their complaint for divorce or paternity. By then, the conniving party is fully in charge of the children, with the argument all over and done. The percentage of woman who start a divorce by getting a restraining order, rather than by a complaint for divorce, is staggering. No one says a thing, or stands athwart this common practice and says, "Enough."

The custody and parenting orders issued by the family court remove fit fathers, disregarding the sad eyes of children crying for their daddies, who don't understand why they can't see them. Parties endure endless waits for hearings, which ensures that these little innocents are harmed for long periods. Your judges give cronies the license to charge tens of thousands for GAL reports and more thousands for therapy, evaluations and more. The system guts most families's finances, and gives most of it to lawyers, therapists, GALs, and many other parasites.

Bias is rampant. Rather than insure that children get to have the maximum possible relationship with both parents, except in cases of actual unfitness, primary custody is almost always awarded to a woman. The rhetoric of equality gives way to the reality of feminist dominance.

Juvenile Court

Equally ruinous are your juvenile courts. You keep them secret from the press and the public, so that no one can see what is happening there, as many fit parents are wrongly and permanently kept from their children.

These courts operate without rules of civil procedure or the rules of evidence (!), and thus the proceedings are often a mockery of justice. There is no disinfecting sunlight of public scrutiny. Your judges conduct 72-hour hearings after removal of a child from a home, which become permanent orders of adoption at the whim of a judge without any legal standard upon which to judge such a weighty matter. Oh, it is in the case law that it requires a preponderance of evidence, but that matters little.

There are no juries, no reasonable standard of proof, no requirement to even inform the parents that waiving the initial custody hearing means they may never see their children again in their lifetimes. Thousands of parents would be cursing your name right now if they knew who was to blame here.

Restraining Orders

And what about 209A abuse restraining orders? This spawn of some Soviet socialist regime cannot be redeemed, changed, reformed, or given any gloss to improve its looks.

Restraining orders are the singular greatest mockery of due process ever perpetrated upon our system. Operating essentially on a probable cause standard (I know, it's officially "preponderance of the evidence"), they are given out for any reason by almost all of the judges. Fear of backlash is the ACTUAL standard by which they are issued, rather than whether the defendant abused the plaintiff.

A restraining order hearing is usually a free-for-all. There are no rules of evidence, no due process, no juries, no recourse when it is discovered that a plaintiff testified falsely. It is widely known that a mere claim of fear will usually be sufficient to obtain an order, whether true or false. Your system will not prosecute gross perjurers or expunge the records of those who are the victim of such easy, unaccountable perjury.

Because there is no accountability, restraining orders have become the method of choice to evict a boyfriend, to get custody of children, to start a divorce, to punish a straying lover, to assert control over the object of jealousy, or effectuate any number of other malign abuses of process.

In a series of decisions interpreting the anti-SLAPP act, your court has all but eliminated the opportunity to obtain redress when an order is used for an improper motive, or just plain maliciously.

So, Justice Marshall, Where to From Here?

My apologies for being so direct. When the dreams, finances, property and children of so many families have been negatively affected by court action, the need for delicacy is perhaps lessened.

Thousands of families wanted truth, and all they got was lies. Thousands of families counted on the court for justice, and instead received empty, hollow choruses, without honesty. Some were simply destroyed, by any reasonable definition of that word, without any possible accusation of hyperbole in that description. Thousands of families thought that if they just came before the court and told their story, that it would recognized as such, and their precious children would be returned, or their property restored, or their reputation vindicated.

But it never happened. It rarely happens. These families left their court experience ruined, many of them forever. So, please remember that these things are how the system and its operation really looks to us rabble who sit behind the bar, the ones the system is supposedly meant to serve. It doesn't. Most persons who walk into one of your courtrooms or clerks offices almost immediately figure out that something else is actually happening - that the system really serves itself, not the ones forced to be there by life's exigencies.

All of this can be fixed if you want to fix it. All the heartbreaks of the past cannot be redeemed, but your judges need not crush the hopes and dreams of any more children and families.

Simple measures would suffice, if you had the political will: Stop the abuse of restraining orders, the abuse of secret juvenile courts, the abuse of biased family courts which use children as props and pawns. Change procedures so that they are fast and efficient. Use the internet, video, phone and other modern tools. Ditch the quill pens, the surly clerks, the hacks, the users and abusers inside the system. Punish perjurers, not those who tell the truth.

If these matters are as important as the soaring language in your report to the governor asserts, then the people in your system should be held to a higher standard, not the lower one you have allowed them to adopt. Immunity is an absurdity, a mockery of our system. Article XI mandates a system which demands accountability and redress, not excuses its absence because government agents should be above such legal scrutiny.

If you do these things, you will really have something to tell the governor and the legislature in your next annual report. It could be titled, "Massachusetts Finally Gets Justice System".

Family Court- Harmful to Children and Other Living Things

2010-05-30T14:06:00.000-04:00

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Divorce ruins children. Failing to marry your partner ruins children. Family Court often makes a bad situation worse.

I have practiced law in the family court in Massachusetts since 1993. Other than state child protective services agencies (DCF, CPS, DYS, etc.) and the IRS, no government entity causes more problems to families than family court. Whether intentional or not, their chief function appears to be to keep children from fit fathers, and to vacuum as much wealth out of the family as possible and give it to lawyers, guardians, mothers and to the system itself.

No cynicism here, eh?

The court can't take all the blame. How about all of us who had children without getting married? How about all those of us who can't get along and go to court to ask it to divide up our families somehow? The court is left to pick up the pieces of all those messed up relationships, and it cannot reasonably do it. However, if the court is going to take responsibility for that duty, it should do it right. For a little levity on the subject, look at the great Delbert McClinton singing, "You're the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly".

Kacey Jones and Delbert McClinton - You're the Reason Our Kids are Ugly - watch more funny videos

It Couldn't Get Much Worse.

The system is structurally rotten, and needs to be changed from the ground up - its rules, its practices, its hours, its methods, its judges, its clerks, and especially its biases. I'll give you some examples from the Massachusetts version, which is, with certainty, just like your family court wherever you may be.

Nothing about family court makes much sense. In Massachusetts, there are 7 different sets of procedural rules used by the Court, rather than one unified family code, and who can keep all that straight?

There are almost no objective criteria for deciding issues of custody, alimony, parenting time, property division, and other ultra-critical matters. It is all just left to the whim and discretion of a judge or a court employee. Incredible, child-destroying decisions are put into the hands of people like our former Judge Beverly Boorstein, who was caught shopping when she was supposed to be judging.

   The system is so old and creaking, it cannot even function. In Middlesex County in Massachusetts, files are kept in some belfry somewhere, and they have to literally walkie-talkie up to some unseen guy (probably named Igor) in the tower to fetch them, and they are fed down a chute and land on a desk. Half the time they are missing. I now have to bring duplicates of everything at hearings, because the files are more often not there.

A Nineteenth Century System for a Twentieth Century World.

   The system is set up for the 19th century. They summon hundreds of people to show up at the same time, knowing they don't have the personnel to process them, and just make everyone waste all day, as though there is no cost to people for missing work. The truth is, the court wastes millions of dollars a week of the productive time of its victims.

   The worst problem is that children are harmed the most. Hearings have to wait until the assigned judge gets back from vacation, and no one gives a darn if a kid can't see her daddy for a month or two. Changing a hearing date is like getting an appointment with the U.N. Secretary General.

The court acts as though it is a contest, rather than a means to ensure that children see both parents. When the court does make a decision, it is usually to perform a "father-ectomy" on a perfectly fit father, and reduce the child's opportunity to have a lifetime of love and care of his or her father. Plus, the court will usually tack on a massive carrying charge to the man, to pay the woman for deciding to end the marriage.

  I couldn't finish writing today if I had to list all the substantial problems with family court. It needs a serious re-boot. It needs to start all over from the ground up and act like it is actually dealing with issues which harm kids, and stop being a third rate hackarama, in thrall to the radical elements of the feminist movement.

Until family courts are run with efficiency, and with the child's needs in mind, there will be no justice. The overarching principle must be: Children Need Both Parents. That leads to the corollary that both parents must provide for their children, not just the father. May that day arrive with haste, before any more families and children are ruined by so-called "family" courts.

Domestic Abuse Restraining Orders/Orders For Protection - Divorce First-Strike Weapon of Choice.

2010-05-30T13:25:00.000-04:00

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Of all the modern and illegitimate additions to the valid moral core of the law, restraining orders/orders for protection are perhaps the most offensive. They transgress every notion which the law has always proclaimed to hold dear: No due process, no fairness, no rules of evidence, no juries, and no objective standard in the law.

Every State Has One

Every state has had a law establishing these domestic abuse protection orders since the 1970s. Different states call them variously restraining orders (RO), orders for protection (OFP), protection from abuse orders (PFA), domestic violence protective orders, or other names. Whatever the label on the bottle, it is full of poison for the unsuspecting victim. That victim is usually the defendant, the person against whom the order is issued, rather than the person pretending to need protection from abuse.

Every state has blogs and web sites attesting to the horrible abuse of these orders, which are supposed to stop abuse, but often only serve to harm the one accused. See one in California, and Massachusetts. How do we know that these orders do not work? The statistics of alleged abuse are the same as thirty years ago. If they stopped real abuse, that is, assault and battery, then the statistics would reflect that success.

What are these monstrosities, and why are they so unfair?

Restraining order laws are one of the most unconstitutional acts ever passed by state legislatures. Under them, a court can issue an order that boots you out of your house, never lets you see your children again, confiscates your guns, and takes your money, all without you even knowing that a hearing took place! Then, when you do finally get to talk to a judge, if your accuser merely whines about feeling afraid, the order will usually stay in place, and your life may be ruined - forever.

How Orders Work In Practice

Even though the burden of proof is supposedly upon the person seeking the order, it rarely is in practice. In a contest that comes down to "he said - she said", she will almost always win. Only when a person can bring undeniable, insurmountable proof that the allegations of abuse are false, does a court deny an order. In other words, the best liar usually wins.

For example, if the plaintiff or petitioner (the person seeking the order) claims you called her and threatened to kill her, and you have no proof otherwise, you are likely to be the unhappy recipient of a shiny new order that throws you out of your house and keeps you from your children.

Only if you come in with phone records, and with a priest, a minister and a rabbi, plus 17 alibi witnesses saying you were in church praying at the time she alleged you made the call, will a judge maybe not issue the order. Even then, it could be iffy.

No Due Process

In a criminal trial, defendants have rights protected by the state and Federal constitutions. Defendants are presumed innocent. They have a right to a trial by jury. They have the right to face their accusers and have evidence presented, and cross examine any witnesses. They may not be deprived of property or liberty without due process of law. The state must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The law has to be clearly defined. Defendants have a right to a lawyer, and to be provided one if they cannot afford one.

The abuse protection laws throw out all of those protections, and turns our system of justice on its head. With mere allegations, no proof, and virtually no opportunity to respond, a defendant can be deprived of family, property, guns, money, children, job, future employment, and reputation, all in a matter of seconds, without having a clue what just happened.

A person who commits the most trivial "normal" crime - even speeding - has all his or her rights preserved and carefully guarded when before a court, even when the penalty, if found guilty, is only a few dollars. Never is the loss of that person's family, liberty, guns, home, job or children at issue, and yet the court is careful to explain and watch over every constitutional right of that defendant. Not so with restraining order hearings, where a defendant may lose all those things, with NO due process at all.

As bad as this is, it is only half of the story! A Violation of one of these orders is a criminal offense, and you don't have to even have known or intended to violate it. The ‘victim' could have even asked you to do it! All a ‘victim' has to do is allege a violation, and the defendant is arrested, and prosecuted, regardless of the merits of the case. Many district attorneys around the country have a "no-drop" policy on violations of restraining orders, to satisfy the clamoring abuse victim lobby.

Many of these prosecutions are pure political lynchings, rather than prosecutions of crimes. Because of the stupidity of this policy, it allows unscrupulous ‘victims' who know how to manipulate the system to get the state to prosecute you as a free method of harassment, which costs them nothing. No wonder it is done so much!

So What Can Be Done

Frankly, there is no plan that will improve these laws. They are so evil and against the spirit of everything the legal system claims to stand for, that mere tinkering is not going to help much. They need to be totally eliminated, and we should fairly and vigorously enforce real criminal law. If someone assaults another person, we have a system to prosecute that crime. If someone threatens to assault another, that too is a crime, and can be prosecuted in due course.

Most laws passed within the last thirty to forty years have been layered on top of perfectly OK existing laws, rather than simply enforcing the laws which are there and which would work to combat the evil targeted by the new redundant law.

Let's just dump these restraining order laws for good. For more information, see www.massoutrage.com, and click the links on restraining orders.

Thirty Days in the Hole - You Can't Take On the Regime Directly.

2010-05-29T22:33:00.000-04:00

So you think you can beat the system, the legal system. They've done you wrong, and you are going to sue the agency and show them a thing or two. You know what they did was unjust, and you are right on the law and the facts. All you need to do is get in front of the judge and tell the truth. The judge will have to see the correctness of your argument and rule in your favor.

Well, it does not work that way. Clients think I am exaggerating when I warn them, "Suffer any wrong to be done to you, rather than go there." (Dickens, Bleak House) Then, when they come out of court, battered and beaten, shaken to the core, they often say that I didn't tell them the half of how bad it would be. They forget that the judge is on the same team as the rest of the gummint, and they don't know about the barriers to accountability which they have built such as a gem called "sovereign immunity", meaning, "the king can do no wrong."

There was a time near America's founding when few persons ever dealt with the legal system in their entire lifetimes. Now, the system has made everything a matter of law: a couple kids fighting on the playground, divorce, owning a gun, possessing an herb, driving a car, owning a toilet, or just about anything else. In fact, you cannot likely name one thing that the law does not regulate in America right now.

The reality is that we live in a police state. Defy it, and you get 30 days in the Hole. You can't fight SWAT teams with guns, judges, and prisons, and a willingness to use them. ("The Hole" is slang for solitary confinement in jail, usually along with nasty mistreatment by the guards.) And when the system messes up, they don't pay for it - you do.

A French bureaucrat named Etienne de la Boetie, (1530-1563, pronounced Ay-TIEN de La Bwet-tie), came up with a theory about involuntary servitude. He stated that:

It is therefore the inhabitants themselves who permit, or, rather, bring about, their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude. A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or, rather, apparently welcomes it.

We have enslaved ourselves, and a large portion of our populace ridicules any attempt to cut the size and scope of government. If you don't believe me, check out the Huffington Post sometime. In the preceding link, a bunch of smug statists ridicule some Maine Republicans for voting to adhere to the written limits in our constitution, without ever explaining why they despise such behavior. I'll explain for them. Their unstated premise is: "Expand government, and don't take my goodies away. Those who want freedom are the enemy."

The reality is that most people at most times in history have chosen slavery and servitude over liberty and individual responsibility. HuffPo dolts are just doing what Greeks, Romans, Slavs, Europeans, and many others have done throughout recorded time. They willingly took the yoke of tyrants upon themselves. And they actually felt pain when the yoke was broken and lifted. Rome mourned Nero. Many Russians still mourn the death of Josef Stalin, the most monstrous mass murderer of all time after China's Mao Tse Tung. The U.S. mourned FDR.

Our permanent parasite class, in choosing a yoke for themselves, have also fixed it around the necks of those of us who have to pay for their barbarism and indolence. Our leaders have much to gain from encouraging this dependence, and so they pander and get elected by promising to give everyone two shirts off your back. It works well for demagogues like Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, and Strom Thurmond, who each stayed in the U.S. Senate for over 50 years, using that tactic, and disguising it as "compassion".

The enemies of liberty are now militant in every way against the friends of liberty. They demand we pay for their free lunch or else. We must license our every possession, or else. We must bow to the gods of government, or else. Or else, what? Thirty days in the hole.

How do we then throw off tyranny? That is the theme of this blog - Free the Law. We will clearly trumpet the answers to that question in great length in future posts. It involves finding ways to withdraw our consent to be placed in involuntary servitude.

As a practical matter, we will have to implement massive education of the citizens on the subject of how to start to think about liberty, since all such thoughts seem long lost. Once we begin to start thinking about the unthinkable, we need a mass-movement of non-violent resistance to tyranny which begins to toss out every politician and popinjay who continues to grow, rather than to shrink government. Finally, we must explore the political secession of a chunk of the U.S. as a viable option.

In the meantime, just don't try to take on the government head on. You will lose big, and end up doing your thirty days or more in the hole.