Wednesday, November 11, 2009 may one day be known as the day the American People convened, for the first time in over two centuries, an Assembly of representatives of the People in order to fully exercise of the “Capstone Right” — i.e., the Petition clause of the First Amendment.
At approximately 3:00 pm Wednesday, WTP Chairman Bob Schulz convened the Assembly to begin the selection of Congress officers from the ranks of elected Delegates who will preside over the 11-day long Assembly. Constitutional scholar and former Presidential candidate Michael Badnarik was selected as the presiding officer of the Congress while Delegate.
Ohio delegates include Trisha Connell (Twin City), Jim Davis (centerville), and Ron Dickerhoof (Cuyahoga Falls). First alternate is Steve McMasters (Findlay) and second alternate is David Macko (Solon).
For over a decade, WTP Foundation has championed an intensive, well-researched and coherent effort to hold the Government accountable for its escalating violations of fundamental Rights and the Constitution through use of the Right of the People to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Those ongoing abuses include violations of the Constitution’s tax, money, war, general welfare, privacy and other clauses that are at the heart of the conditions that now plague our nation.
Although the public has known little about the history or nature of the Right to Petition, scholarly and historical research has established without argument, that the Right, first articulated as the cornerstone of Western Law in Magna Carta (1215), provides the People an individual Right to hold Government peacefully accountable for its abuses.
Far beyond the right to merely send “complaints” to the government (which are virtually ignored by all officials), the Right of Petition embodies the profound Right to enforce the Right to Petition by withdrawing support from the Government until Redress is secured.
Summaries of this important research can be reviewed as part of the legal pleadings of the 2004 landmark WTP lawsuit, We The People vs. United States, which sought to have the Judiciary declare – for the first time in history – the legal and constitutional meaning of the last ten words of the First Amendment. In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear this controversial case involving the essence of Popular Sovereignty.
Continental Congress 2009 will take the process of holding Government accountable and restoring the Constitution to the next level by first creating a formal record of the vast violations of the Constitution and Individual Rights now suffered by the People. Next, the Congress will debate and decide upon a series of practical but strong “Civic Actions” the People may take in order to restore their Liberty.
The agenda for the CC2009 Assembly also provides for the development and adoption of formal “Remedial Instructions” to be served upon federal and state officials, in essence ordering them to cease and desist their official abuses and giving them formal Notice as to the “Civic Actions” of (peaceful) resistance the People may take, en masse, if those officials, yet again, choose to ignore the People’s Petitions for Redress.