The Xenia Mural Society, the Xenia Downtown Revitalization Committee, and X*ACT invite you to a Ribbon Cutting for Xenia’s New Downtown Mural!
When: Friday, August 05 2011 @ 06:00 PM
Where: Xenia Area Community Theater 45 E. Second St Xenia, OH 45385
By John W. Whitehead
“A person should feel secure in their own home. No matter black, white, Hispanic, Asian, I don’t care who they are, they should feel secure in their own home. The police have no right to come in your house and push you around and beat you up and do the things they did on March, 15, 2009.”—Ryan Deaton, defense attorney for Marco Sauceda
Too often, we elevate the events of the American Revolution to near-mythic status and forget that the real revolutionaries were neither agitators nor hotheads, neither looking for trouble nor trying to start a fight. Rather, they were people just like you and me, simply trying to make it from one day to another, a task that was increasingly difficult as Britain’s rule became more and more oppressive.
America was born during a time of martial law, when government troops stationed themselves in homes and trespassed on property without regard for the rights of owners. Prior to the American Revolution, there was virtually no right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. As a consequence, British soldiers entered homes and places of business, virtually at will. The effects on the American people were devastating and long-lasting. As one colonist wrote, “our houses, and even our bedchambers, are exposed to be ransacked, our boxes, trunks, and chests broke open, ravaged and plundered by wretches whom no prudent man would venture to employ even as menial servants.”
Fast forward more than 200 years and we seem to have come full circle, once again being victimized by government agents that show little regard for our property or our persons. Indeed, if you want to get a sense of what “justice” in America has been reduced to, just consider the case of 30-year-old Marco Sauceda, who was recently sentenced to serve 30 days in jail and pay a $500 fine for resisting arrest after police mistook him for a burglar in his own home.
Police entered Sauceda’s Texas home on March 15, 2009, allegedly after a neighbor reported seeing a black man kicking in the front door. Obviously frightened, Sauceda, a Honduran immigrant who speaks no English and has the mind of a child, barricaded himself in his bathroom in response to the police invasion. When police did finally get Sauceda out of the bathroom, they pepper-sprayed him, shot him with a pepper ball gun and wrestled him to the ground.
Anyone with an ounce of sense would recognize that there’s something wrong when an innocent man with the mental acuity of a child is not only subjected to a warrantless invasion of his home by police officers but is physically brutalized by those same government agents and then forced to serve time for resisting arrest. And in fact, the jurors in Sauceda’s case did recognize that he had been wronged, but other than asking the judge for leniency in sentencing, they did nothing to right that wrong—they rendered him guilty. The judge was no better, going so far as to suggest that the unarmed Sauceda should have been sentenced to six months in jail for, believe it or not, putting the police officers—who were armed to the teeth, no doubt—in harm’s way.
This case highlights everything that is wrong with the so-called criminal justice system in America, a system whose shortcomings are more often condoned by the judiciary than set right. Unfortunately, whatever protections we have under the law are being steadily eroded by legislation and court rulings that render the individual completely defenseless against the encroachments of the state. In a very real sense, we truly are back to where we started in those pre-Revolutionary War days, seemingly having learned next to nothing from those early days of tyranny at the hands of the British crown.
We are once again being subjected to broad search warrants, government agents trespassing on property without regard for the rights of owners and the blurring of all distinctions—for purposes of searches and seizures—between what is private and public property. Once again, the courts and state legislatures are seen to favor the interests of government officials, especially law enforcement, even if it comes at the expense of civil liberties. Indeed, there is no true justice in a court system where the judge, the prosecutor and the police form a triad against the accused. And once again, Americans are finding themselves underrepresented, overtaxed and forced at gunpoint, practically, to dance to the government’s tune. The similarities to pre-Revolutionary America are startling.
As government invariably oversteps its authority, Americans are faced with the pressing need to maintain the Constitution’s checks against governmental power and abuse. After all, it was not idle rhetoric that prompted the framers of the Constitution to begin with the words “We the people.”
We must remember that our freedoms were created with extraordinary care and foresight, but they were not meant simply for the moment. Our precious liberties were to be passed on to our descendants indefinitely. As the Preamble to the Constitution declares, the Constitution was drafted to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Formally adopted on September 17, 1787, it has long served as the bulwark of American freedom. And we the citizens are entrusted as guardians of those freedoms. When we shirk that duty, we leave ourselves wide open for an authoritarian regime to rise to power, place restrictions on our freedoms and usurp our right to govern ourselves.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Information about the Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
Posted in news
Tagged American Revolution, case of tyranny, criminal justice system, freedom, Third Amendment, U.S. Constitution
Last week, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against Texas Gov. Rick Perry citing that the plaintiffs, Kay Staley and the Freedom from Religion Foundation, had no standing in the case. Staley claimed that Gov. Perry’s call for a day of prayer for the nation and his participation in the prayer rally, The Response, were unconstitutional because they violated the Establishment Clause.
Liberty Institute filed a motion to intervene and argued in court today on behalf of the American Family Association (AFA), which is planning and promoting The Response, scheduled to take place August 6 at Houston’s Reliant Stadium.
“The dismissal was a total and complete victory,” said Kelly Shackelford, Liberty Institute president and CEO. “The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s attempt to stifle free speech and religious liberty failed miserably. Today was a victory — for Gov. Perry, for AFA, and for the First Amendment.”
Early this year, the Freedom from Religion Foundation was dealt a heavy blow when the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed its lawsuit against the National Day of Prayer. The court’s ruling in the case, which used arguments Liberty Institute made in its amicus brief representing Dr. James Dobson, Citizenlink, and dozens of state family policy groups, proved invaluable in winning today’s case.
Posted in news, politics, religion
Tagged freedom of religion, historcial free speech, U.S. Constitution
By Michael Ramey,
You’re probably tired of hearing about the debt by now, but did you realize the proposed Parental Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution will help keep us out of worse trouble in the future?
The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has been used internationally to urge nations to spend more on their children’s programs, and the CRC Committee has in multiple instances faulted a country for not investing more of its gross domestic product (or GDP) in child aid programs. The Committee has held these nations to be out of compliance with the treaty’s demands – including Moldova, the poorest nation in Europe, which was urged in 2009 to “further increase budget allocations for the implementation of the rights recognized in the Convention.”
Such criticisms may fall on deaf ears elsewhere in the world, but if we were to ratify the CRC here, “the judges in every State [would be] bound thereby,” regardless of any law or state constitutional provisions to the contrary (U.S. Constitution, Article VI). That means our own courts would be constitutionally bound to correct whatever the Committee says is out of compliance with the treaty.
So imagine if we had ratified the CRC last year. Added to the already deafening clamor of voices demanding various expenditures not be touched by Congress, our courts would likely be demanding an increase in federal funding of children’s programs to fulfill treaty obligations under the CRC.
The Parental Rights Amendment will prevent ratification of that treaty and preserve our national sovereignty. At a time when our Congress has been spending way too much already, the last thing we need is the international community (backed by our own courts) demanding that they spend even more!
The national debt is indeed a huge concern, but let’s not lose sight of how vital our parental rights are as well, for the preservation of our nation, our heritage, and our homes.
Michael Ramey is Director of Communications at the Parental Rights organization. To learn more about their work and the Parental Rights amendment, go to www.parentalrights.org
The only way people can successfully live together in community is to give up a measure of personal freedom. Personal choices that infringe on the life or livelihood of another human being must be legislated against. Therefore, it is impossible to justify abortion by simply arguing that women should be “free to choose”.
The above is a summary of a thought provoking web article on the necessary role of law in preventing morally criminal choices. Abortion is one of those non-morally neutral choices. This behavorial choice should be sanctioned against because it does harm a developing human life. Government exists to protect its present and future citizens that perpetually creates it. Abortion is a threat to our most important right of all: our right to life.
The author also reveals the dishonesty of pro-abortion advocates. Their choice of terminology is a dead give-away.
Go to the website http:www.abort73.com/abor www.abort73.com/abortion/the_role_of_law to read the article.
Posted in news
In the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF)’s new report on The State of America’s Children 2011, we give a comprehensive overview on the well-being of America’s children. But just who are America’s children and families today? Children make up almost one in four of the people living in the United States today. More than one-quarter of our nation’s children are young-infants, toddlers, or preschoolers. They are the poorest age group in America. And the younger they are the poorer they are-cheating them in the years of greatest brain development. In on child population and family structure we take a closer look, and a national child and family portrait begins to emerge.
One of the most striking facts about America’s children is the rapidly blurring distinction between who is a “minority” child and who is in the “majority.” Today, almost 45 percent of America’s young are children of color, and by 2019-just eight years away-they will be the majority of our child population. In fact, the majority of children are already children of color in the District of Columbia and nine states-Hawaii, New Mexico, California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Maryland, and Georgia. Of the 74.5 million children in America, 41.2 million (55.3%) are White, non-Hispanic; 16.8 million (22.5%) are Hispanic; 11.3 million (15.1%) are Black; 3.5 million (4.7%) are Asian/Pacific Islander; and 951,000 (1.3%) are American Indian/Alaska Native. The number of Hispanic children has increased every year since 1980, rising from 5.3 million in 1980 to 17 million in 2009. The number of White children has decreased every year since 1994, and the number of Black children has remained steady over the past two decades.
Behind these numbers and statistics is an urgent call to action. Throughout America’s history and still today, children’s life chances have always been unequal based on color, although God did not make two classes of children and every child is sacred. But practicality will force what morality has been unable to achieve. We can’t afford to keep leaving whole groups of children of color behind who are becoming our nation’s majority without condemning our entire nation to failure. Right now The State of America’s Children 2011 tells us children of color are behind on virtually every measure of child well-being. They face multiple risks that put them in
grave danger of entering the pipeline to prison rather than the pipeline to college, productive employment, and successful futures. Children of color are at increased risk of being born at low birth weight and with late or no prenatal care, living in poverty and extreme poverty, lacking family stability, facing greater health risks, lacking a quality education, being stuck in foster care without permanent families, ending up in the juvenile justice system, being caught in the college completion gap, being unemployed, and being killed by guns.
The multiple risks facing children of color are cause for great concern from us all who need to raise a next generation that can care not only for themselves and their own families but also our seniors of tomorrow. While today there are almost twice as many children as seniors, the national snapshot shows that by 2040, that gap will close. There will be 94 million children and 81 million seniors. Our children’s success in education and in employment will be essential to keep our society functioning, businesses running, adults teaching, and health care professionals serving everyone’s needs. Today’s children will care for all of us tomorrow, and we’ll be counting on them as the economic drivers of the future who will be raising their own families, assisting their parents, and investing in the economy and in Social Security to keep us all thriving. We must take extraordinary steps to address the crisis today-so we will have a generation who can succeed in life.
The snapshot of our nation’s families tells us a lot about where our next generation is heading, because family structure and stability make an enormous difference in every child’s life and impact the availability of resources-both emotional and financial-for children. Single parents often need extra support, and teen parents even more. About 70 percent of all children-but fewer than 40 percent of Black children-live with two parents. Twenty-three percent of all children and half of Black children live with their mother only. Black children are more than twice as likely as White children, almost twice as likely as Hispanic children, and three-and-a-half times as likely as Asian/Pacific Islander children to live with neither parent. Teen parenthood also varies widely; the birth rate for Hispanic teens ages 15 – 19 is twice that for White teens but just above that for Black and American Indian teens.
Taken together, all of these numbers paint a clearer picture of what our country’s children-and future-will look like. It’s clear that if we still want to see a strong, prosperous America tomorrow, it’s time to invest in a positive rather than negative future for millions of our children right now. There is not a moment to wait or a child to waste.
Click here to learn more about The State of America’s Children.
On August 8, The New American published its Freedom Index. In it, researchers scored the votes of members of both he U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate based on ten bills of Constitutional significance. The ten bills included (1) H.R. 2 “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act”, (2) H.R. 4 called “1099 Reporting Requirement Repeal” that was also part of Obamacare, and (3) H.C.R. 35 was a resolution to defund Obamacare.
The House passed all three bills but the Senate only approved because of its direct negative impact on business.
Because the Freedom Index is based on the founding legal view that freedom is protected by the strict limitation of Constitutional precept to all other federal law making, a vote for each of the three bills received a For Freedom score and a vote against each of them were given Against Freedom score.
So, how do Greene County, Ohio representatives measure up to protecting our freedoms?
Steve Austria scored 100% on the three bills and 70% on all ten bills.
Rob Portman also scored 100% on the three pro-Constitutional healthcare bills.
The scores of other notable Ohio politicians include:
Mike Turner (R-Dayton) who voted for all 3 bills (100%).
Dennis Kuninich (D) who received a score of 0 and only 1 out of the ten (Libya Troop Withdrawl bill)
Sherrod Brown (D) did vote for HR 4 “1099 Reporting Requirement Repeal” and the only other bill voted for was the Ethanol Subsides Repeal bill.
It is also worthy of mention that only the above republicans voted for legislation to end taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood’s abortion business.
To read the entire Freedom Index report, go to The New American website www.thenewamerican.com.
Posted in Greene County, health care, news, Ohio, politics
Tagged Constitution, freedom, legislation, Obamacare
By Gary Palmer
While Republicans and Democrats have thus far accomplished nothing in regard to the debt limit, one thing they have succeeded in doing is raising the frustration limit for millions of Americans.
American voters are accustomed to political drama and gamesmanship in Washington and, for the most part, have largely ignored it at election time. The emergence of the Tea Party movement in April 2009 was the first evidence that voters were fed up enough to organize against the political establishment in both parties. This new level of frustration among voters was displayed by the impact of the Tea Party in the 2010 election.
So while Congress and President Obama have failed to do anything about the debt limit, recent polls indicate they have certainly succeeded in raising the public’s frustration limit to an all-time high. New polling data now indicates that deadlock over the debt limit and the failure to enact sensible cuts in government spending have turned public opinion against Obama, as well as the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress.
The Pew Research Center poll released on July 28th reported that only 41 percent of all registered voters say they want Obama to be re-elected, a ten-point drop since May. Among critical independent voters, there has been a steep drop-off in support for him, with only 31 percent supporting his reelection. In fact, among independent voters, a generic Republican candidate holds an eight-point advantage.
Public frustration is even worse when it comes to Congress.
According to a July 27th Gallup daily tracking poll, 41 percent approve of the way Obama has handled the negotiations to raise the federal debt limit, while only 31 percent approve of the way Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner has handled it and only 23 percent approve of Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s efforts. In fact, the only good news for Republicans is that even at 48 percent, Boehner’s disapproval rate is lower than the 52 percent disapproval rating of the President and Harry Reid. Interestingly, only 36 percent of Democrats approve of Reid’s handling of the debt limit.
For most voters, there are two things on their minds-excessive government spending and jobs. The outcome of the debate over raising the debt limit affects both. If the debt limit is raised without spending cuts, the U.S. could see its AAA bond rating reduced. This will cost the federal government about $100 billion more in interest costs each year, plus it will also increase the interest costs for consumer credit and mortgages and inflict even more stress on our economy.
According to David Beers, Standard & Poor’s government credit ratings expert, there is a 50-50 chance of a downgrade in our bond rating if there is not a serious agreement on cutting spending. But Obama and the Democrats have thus far refused to agree to any debt limit increase that includes major spending cuts without a major tax increase along with the cuts. They want to add over a trillion dollars in taxes which will further undermine the ability of the economy to create new jobs.
In other words, the Democrats are holding the economy and the nation’s credit rating hostage until their demands for a massive tax increase are met. The problem for the Republicans is that they have been outmaneuvered and are in a lose-lose situation. If they don’t raise the debt limit, the economy will take a hit and the U.S. credit rating could be lowered. If they do raise the limit and don’t get substantial spending cuts in the deal, the economy and credit rating could still take a hit, and politically they will get hammered by their conservative base.
Thus, it appears that both parties and the President have put political gain ahead of what is best for the country despite potentially catastrophic consequences for the American people and even for the financial markets and economies of other nations. In the process, the unfavorable ratings for Obama and both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress are climbing higher by the day.
The truth is that this debacle is the fault of both parties. Both parties have recklessly spent not only our money, but borrowed money as well. And now the American people are reacting with a continuously level of frustration that may not reach its ceiling until the 2012 elections.
Politicians in both parties should take note that campaigning on the hope that voters are only slightly less fed up with your party than they are with the other party is not exactly something incumbent congressmen should hang their political hats on.
Gary Palmer is president of the Alabama Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit research and education organization dedicated to the preservation of free markets, limited government and strong families, which are indispensable to a prosperous society.
National Inflation Association (NIA) hasn’t written about the whole debt ceiling issue over the past few weeks because in our minds it is completely irrelevant. Our elected representatives in Washington along with the mainstream media have been wasting thousands of hours of time and hundreds of millions of dollars debating a topic that has no meaning at all. The President, Senate, and House of Representatives are putting on a show to make it look like they care about cutting spending and balancing the budget. Except for a select few elected representatives like Ron Paul who care about protecting the U.S. Constitution and preserving what little purchasing power the U.S. dollar still has left, every other politician in Washington is putting on a complete charade in order to trick their constituents into believing there is a difference between the proposals from the Republicans and Democrats.
While our incompetent and corrupt mainstream media has been proclaiming there are major differences between the two bills proposed by House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, NIA believes John Boehner might as well be a Democrat and Harry Reid could easily pass himself off as a Republican. There are absolutely no meaningful fundamental differences between Boehner’s plan that was approved by the House of Representatives yesterday evening, before being killed by the Senate two short hours later, and Reid’s bill, which was just rejected by the House today in a pre-emptive vote before the Senate even had a chance to vote on it.
Both bills are estimated to reduce the U.S. budget deficit by approximately $900 billion over the next 10 years. Of the $900 billion only about $750 billion are actual discretionary spending cuts with the rest being an expected reduction in interest payments on the national debt as a result of either bill passing. When you have an unstable fiat currency that is rapidly losing its purchasing power and could collapse at any time, it is impossible to accurately project what our budget deficits will be 5 or 6 years from now, let alone 9 or 10 years from today. As far as the next two fiscal years are concerned, both proposed bills from Boehner and Reid are estimated to only cut spending by a total of about $70 billion in fiscal years 2012 and 2013 combined. Continue reading
By Nicholas Dunn
NEW YORK (C-FAM) When a young person attending this week’s UN Youth Conference stood to ask a question and identified himself with a pro-life NGO, the moderator of the side event informed him that the panel was not interested in hearing his perspective. Such disinterest in discussion with youth characterized the closing meeting for the UN’s International Year of Youth, themed “Dialogue and Mutual Understanding.”
Weeks before the conference, organizers forced NGOs to limit themselves to sending five young people, despite the fact that many young people had already received their confirmation letter and made travel arrangements. A representative from the UN Program for Youth told the Friday Fax that because over 1,200 young people had registered for the conference, conference planners had to limit attendance and participation due to a lack of space and security reasons.
On the first morning of the conference, many young people showed up to register, confirmation letters in hand, only to be turned away. What is worse, the hall of the General Assembly was empty for most of the conference. Many of the young people who attended the conference were puzzled at the lack of attendance and participation from youth. In his opening address, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon asked those in attendance whether more could be done for youth. His question was met with a resounding “yes” from the crowd. Yet many felt as if the UN was merely paying lip service to youth.
Often, moderators of side events allowed no time for interaction between the panelists and the young people in the crowd. In one side event on the subject of HIV/AIDS, entitled “Crossfire: a dialogue between young leaders and policy decision-makers,” five young people were pre-selected and given scripted questions. At many meetings, only ministers and heads of state spoke, while the youth in attendance listened.
Of the youth issues that were discussed at the conference, most concerned the “sexual and reproductive health and rights” (SRHR) agenda. UNFPA sponsored nine side events, many of which focused on promoting young people’s “sexual rights,” such as comprehensive sex education, the abolition of parental consent laws, as well as contraception and the decriminalization of abortion.
When SRHR advocates were confronted with questions from conservative and pro-life young people, they simply ignored them. At a meeting sponsored by Y-PEER, the youth arm of UNFPA, a young person in attendance cited data from the World Health Organization (WHO), which shows a 190% increased risk of breast cancer in women who use oral contraceptives for at least two years before the age of twenty-five. Panelists reacted with frustration at his use of statistics and discredited the information.
In stark contrast to the SRHR agenda promoted by UN officials at the conference was the overwhelming presence of pro-life and pro-family young people. The International Youth Coalition (IYc), formed at last year’s World Youth Conference in Leon, Mexico, issued a “Statement of Youth to the U.N. and the World,” which was presented to the UN General Assembly during a high level thematic panel discussion.
Nicholas Dunn writes for C-FAM. This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.
