Question of the Day

Yesterday, a listener posed a question at the Event wall for our Constitutional Radio show: he asked what made us different from 'all the other' radio talk show hosts. I replied thusly.

I'd like to thank you for raising that question! Firstly, I think it is a mistake to disparage talk show hosts, as we are now the only respite from the propaganda machine that has supplanted the news source that was once main stream media. We are the last bastion that stands between fact and complete lack of information, total disinformation, news suppression and out and out propaganda. Secondly, it is always a mistake to make generalizations because of the vast difference and array of talk show hosts, topics and objectives. Thirdly, what distinguishes drkate and me [a/k/a Dame Central] in our Constitutional Radio initiative is that we strive to EDUCATE ourselves and our listeners so that we are AWARE of both the LAW and our OPTIONS in working to restore our Constitutional Republic. We take great care with respect to whom we invite as guests, always keeping in mind that our goal is to EDUCATE, MOTIVATE AND ACTIVATE concerted response to the issues our country faces today.

We continue to be at the forefront of NETWORKING, MOBILIZING and ORGANIZING Americans to EXERCISE THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS of FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, RIGHT TO ASSEMBLE, and right to bear arms, these being the First and Second Amendments to our Constitution, and the first two amendments of the 10 that comprise our Bill of Rights. Why do we do this? Because we see a great need for Americans to have places to gather and learn, to support one another and our Constitution, and exercise their role as citizens in the greatest Constitutional Republic in the history of the world.
Again, many thanks for asking the question, and for giving us the opportunity to answer! For that's what America is all about! Stay tuned for things to come, and ever more news about what we are all doing to preserve and protect our Constitution, our Country and our Freedoms.

Plus Sa Change, Plus C'est La Meme...or, SSDY

I live in an old house, by New World standards, and, in my town, the oldest. Built of stone in pre-Revolutionary America, it has weathered the storms of time, both atmospheric and political, and remained, by some miracle, solid if not terribly straight, steadfastly refusing to buckle under either.

Thomas Paine, in his 1776 treatise, "The Crisis", wrote, "These are the times that try [our] souls." Written as part of a series of 16 pamplets over the course of the American Revolution, his intent was to inform, rally and motivate, in this case, the troops at Trenton. It is devastating to realize that the same is true today: our nation and indeed the world faces dire straits and rough waters ahead as the economic forecast blows closer to tsunami than soft breeze, and scary words like New World Order, Middle East Conflict and Economic Meltdown threaten to pull us down on the dangerous undertow from the illusory waves of hopeychange rhetoric that promised to lull America's furrowed brow back to the familiar complacency to which it had grown so accustomed. We hear, too, words like Foreclosure and Ford Foundation, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, Warburg, Bailout, World Bank, Brzeznski and The Fed, and wonder where our money went besides the pockets of Enron heads, bonuses for bank breaking C suite cabals and Bernie Madoff's cache cow. And, thankfully, too, we hear familiar, comforting words like Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution, Federalist Papers, Bill of Rights, Amendments and Committee of Safety.

It occurred to me suddenly yesterday, while writing a letter, that we in present day America share more than a few similarities with pre Independence America, and that there are many among us upon whom this irony is not lost...that after 250 years, we are once again facing some of the same issues that led to our declaring independence from the British Empire, except that THIS time, we have a blueprint from which we can draw solutions--IF those in power are willing to take their oath to defend it seriously enough to uphold it. Tax issues, First and Second Amendment rights, trust in government, universal suffrage and human rights are just a few of the issues which continue to challege us as a People and a Nation.

At the time of the American Revolution for Independence, and Thomas Paine's 'The Crisis", the house in which I now live was already at least ten years old. The people who lived here at that time had no Constitution. They had little else but grit, conviction and a supreme unwillingness to be used, bossed and beggared by distant, uncaring imperialists.

From Indiginous Peoples to Immigrants, Americans have long come here to make better lives, to be able to live as they choose and answer to no one, and the same holds true today. Americans are by and large a hearty lot, bringing strength in their diversity, courage and their desire to succeed through willingness to work. The individualist spirits of America and its people have become legend as a beacon to those who would withstand the test of hard work to overcome the yoke of tyranny.

Those were scary years, with Patriots and Loyalists at odds, each taking actions they felt best; they certainly heard about, read about, talked about and thought about the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, the Committee of Safety, the Bill of Rights. The people who lived in this house or members of their family fought in the War for Independence and worried about how they would survive in a nascent country in the dead of winter with the threat of the King's soldiers banging at their doors, forcing them to house foreign troops taking their food or arresting them for treason. Surely they were anxious about their future and that of their new country, just as I now am concerned about some of the same things as I live in that same house.

I know how it turned out for them: those documents and those people did bring forth a great nation, after many years of war, privation and turmoil. Living near the Hudson River between New York and Albany, the people here saw a lot; the town was burned during the War of 1812 but survived to host some of the oldest stone houses in the state.

Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, George Clinton, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington all traveled through here on their ways back and forth to the Newburgh and Trenton encampments, to New York, Albany, Philadelphia and beyond; in some ways, the average yeomanry was probably better informed than are much of the populace today. They had a reasonably free Press, and television was centuries away from existence.

As I watch my Goldens play in the the falling snow outside my window on lands that were farmed those centuries ago, I take comfort in the strength, courage and conviction of the American People and our Troops, and the knowledge that our country was born and survived what seemed like unbeatable odds when this house was new; and as we face some of the most serious times in our history since, I know that as always, our American spirit will once again prevail.

As for taking action--today, as then, there are many of us who continue to fight for our Constitution, both here and in lands far away. "Constitutional Radio" is just one of many efforts afloat to educate and remind ourselves and others about its beauty, perfection and importance in maintaining our nation of laws. I hope you'll click on the Constitutional Radio logo at the right for a link to Blog Talk Radio's 'My Two Cents Presents Constitutional Radio with the Central Park 7, tonight and every Tuesday at 10:00 PM EST, and join us all in the love of country.

The Significe of Papers

From the Federalist Papers, a series of essays under the nome de plume Publius, supporting the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison in the 1780s to the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam, commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in 1967 and never intended for publication, two hundred years have passed.

Leaked to the public in 1971 and exposing the administration of U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, in contrast with the Federalist Papers, written for publication in support of a system of rules from which to govern a new nation, the Pentagon Papers, according to Daniel Ellsberg, the individual who eventually leaked them to NY Times reporter Neil Sheehan, "demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates" and stated that he had leaked the papers "in the hopes of getting the nation out of "a wrongful war."

In that two hundred years, our nation went from one seeking truth in government for and by the People to one seeking to hide the truth from them in secretly commissioned studies, never intended to reach the public eye. In the decades since the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers have receded into the dusty shelves of library history stacks as we continued to face an onslaught of growing deception at the hands of a government once lauded for its populist view. The protection of checks and balances informed by the founding fathers continued to erode, leaving more room than ever for abuse of power and spurning of the Constitution and those transgressions for which Nixon finally fell have continued-- agreements with Iran to hold hostages until after the Reagan election, Oliver North and the Iran Contra affair, the Weapons of Mass Destruction fable floated to gain approval for the Iraq invasion and subsequent violations of privacy and human rights under the auspices of Homeland Security concerns.

Despite these tragedies, we have continued to survive as a nation even as the current administration has lowered our standing in the eyes of the world and the economic meltdown continues to unravel and unnerve the very fabric of our everyday life. As Joe Biden and Colin Powell make dire predictions of imminent food and water shortages, we struggle to recover from what appears to be yet another stolen election, this time by an entity whose very origin remains for the most part unknown, and whose titular head is most certainly not even qualified to hold the office of POTUS by the standards enunciated by Article II Section I of the U.S. Constitution and elucidated in U.S. Code, Title 8,§ 1401. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode08/usc_sec_08_00001401----000-.html

Rather than restate the arguments and their citations here, interested readers can refer to the excellent essay containing documentation links, by drkate, published on the TD site. http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/stand-by-me/#comment-27587

In recent years, freedom of the press has become little more than license for media to promulgate untruths and suppress truths, further hobbling the electorate's ability to make sound decisions at the voting booth. Schools and even institutions of higher learning have so curtailed basic civics and Amerian history classes that fewer and fewer of the American public have even the slightest idea as to how the papers of our founding fathers worked to form the structure from which our system of government grew, have almost no idea how our voting processes should work, or even the contents of our Constitution and its amendments, the first ten comprising our Bill of Rights. As a result, through ignorance and bad information from media, we are faced with a candidate who is ineligible to hold the office of POTUS,and our nation now faces the worst consitutional crisis in our history aside from the 1861 secession of the Confederate states. Perhaps saddest of all is the fact that few Americans seem to realize this or even care. Pravda, long dismissed as Russia's cold war propaganda paper, has scooped the American media on this momentous news. Not because no one knew it, but because, in spite of the thousands of entreaties by concerned Americans, the American media refused to cover it or even mention it until Friday, December 5, and when they finally did, couched the reports in snide looks, rolling eyes and pronouncements that the nearly 20 lawsuits challenging this ineligible individual's attempt to seize the White House through fraud are little more than political ploys.

Mounds of paper have already been drawn and served, and mounds will continue. Over 60,000 letters had reached the Supreme Court by the December 5 conference which was convened to examine the merits of granting certiorari for the Donofrio, and many more will follow. Lawsuits continue to mount as those who hold our Constitution dear try to wrest its destruction from the hands of the enemy within. The vigil of work and prayer continue as we strive to save the blueprint of our Democracy.

For updates see http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/ , http://drorly.blogspot.com/
To assist in the efforts, visit the links above or email RichardLawrenceMusic@gmail.com

Giving Thanks Amidst Adversity

Tomorrow our nation will celebrate a day of Thanksgiving, first signed into being by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 during the War Between the States in October of that year and written by then Secretary of State William Seward. Its purpose was to "set apart the last Thursday of November "as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise." http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm

Something for which we can all be grateful this year is that, for the first time, our nation will add another long awaited, highly important observance: On October 8 of this year, the Native American Heritage Day Act of 2008 [Public Law #110-370 http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=hj110-62] was signed into law to honor the achievements and contributions of Native Americans to the United States on November 28, 2008 and every year thereafter. At long last we have set aside a day on which to celebrate the People who were here before any of us, and whose iconic cultures have set the standard for honor, courage and reverence for the natural world.

Today, as then, our nation faces multiple major crises, perhaps even more serious than ever before: an unending war, loss of world stature, financial and economic crisis, human rights violations and indeed our very way of life at risk, as our Constitution and Bill of Rights remain under constant assault through the abrogations which have already occurred throughout the tenure of the present administration and already the next, with their insistence on running a candidate whose previously held citizenships in Kenya and Indonesia automatically render him ineligible, not being a natural born American citizen.

It can be difficult indeed to summon an attitude of gratitude and thanks while we labor under this cloud of chaos and fear. Interestingly, late last night as I surfed the channels for a brief distraction, "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" appeared...it is too good a film to pass by, so I watched. After that came "Fast Food Nation," followed by "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Shawshank Redemption," all of which I had seen before, and all of which are so compelling as to make it impossible not to see them again. Like a tongue obsessed with seeking a broken tooth, films like this compel us to watch them, again and again. Why? Because they tell the truth. Regardless of outcome, the Truth is all we have, and if we don't accept it we cannot begin to set things right. As painful as it is, we cannot ignore it, lest it happen again, lest we become so dead to reality as to become bigger pawns than we already are.

And so, I watched. Strange as it may seem, and painful as it is, I salute those about whom these films are made; I salute the actors, directors and producers who are willing to make them, and thus spread truth to the mainstream, where action takes root. And, often, just when I find it most difficult to bear, I remember that, no matter what, we shall always have truth, and for that alone, I have gratitude. Truth is always there, if we let it in and share it. It may be brutal sometimes, but it is always clean and direct, and provides the ground from which to build.

Yes, there are still thousands of troops in the Middle East and still more waiting to deploy, many for their third and fourth tours; our nation is still plagued with all manner of crisis, our government has instituted rendition torture policies, [if you do nothing else today, see SusanunPC's NoQuarterUSA article on "Alienable Rights," http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/11/24/alienable-rights/#comment-1062483] trampling our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Staggering amounts of money continue to be funneled to ailing corporate institutions who have failed to observe sound business practices and now demand--and GET!--humungous bailout after humungous bailout as our deficit soars, and main stream media has completely abdicated its responsibility to report any of it, its most recent transgression being the refusal to carry the biggest news in election history: namely, there are some 17 lawsuits going forward to challenge the president designee's citizenship eligibility, two of which have now landed in the U.S. Supreme Court. The issue is not about where the president-designee was born; it is the fact that he is NOT a natural born American citizen and thus by running, has violated Article II Section 1 Clause 5 of the United States Constitution. [See http://www.essence.com/news_entertainment/news/articles/alankeyesobama for an excellent explanation] The fact that our Constitution has been abrogated is horrifying; the fact that there ARE people who realize that and are working to protect it is a source of eternal gratitude.

Be that as it may, we still have much to be thankful for: the love, support and delight of friends and family; duty, honor, courage and integrity; love and compassion wherever we may find it; the special brand of creativity, innovation, commitment, passion and patriotism that can be found in so many--the list can be endless, and, in times like these, it is ever more important to remember to give thanks every day. And, always and all ways, it is Truth we must hold most dear, for it is only in Truth that we can find our way.