Monday, December 30, 2019

Memo I to Nancy Pelosi

(She is a pill, but I misspelled her name. Mea culpa.)

Finem respice.

Hint: Both are Latin.

Memo I to Nancy Pelosi

Finem respice.

Hint: It's Latin.

Sunday, December 29, 2019

Another description of the Washington, DC, elite: "quinta columna"

During the Spanish civil war, in 1936 a rebel general boasted that his forces would take Madrid because his four infantry columns would be joined by underground sympathizers already in the city. A newspaper reporter dubbed them as the "Fifth Column," and the term stuck. It can be aptly applied to the deep state, which subverts today's government while more open columns -- the media, faithless judges, cultural institutions -- openly attack the current administration.



Saturday, December 28, 2019

Memo for the 2020 election

"The foundation of all democracy is that the people have the right to vote. . . . At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth. . . ."

Winston S. Churchill

Friday, December 27, 2019

The justice was mistaken

"The rise of administrative bodies probably been the most significant legal trend of the last [19th] century and perhaps more values today are affected by their decisions than by those of all the courts, review of administrative decisions apart. They also have begun to have important consequences on personal rights. . . . They have become a veritable fourth branch of the Government, which has deranged our three-branch legal theories as much as the concept of a fourth dimension unsettles our three-dimensional thinking." (Holzer italics.)

Robert H. Jackson, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; Chief America prosecutor at the post-World War II Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.

Justice Jackson was mistaken because, as time has shown irrefutably, congressionally-created  independent agencies--possessing combined executive/administrative power (commissioners and staff), judicial power (administrative law judges) and legislative power (rule-making)--do not mimic the separate Articles I (legislative), II (executive) and III (judicial) of the Constitution of the United States of America.

The independent agencies stand outside the Constitutional framework. As such, rather than being a fourth branch of government, independent agencies are a parallel government, with little Article III oversight and thus even less accountability.

Thursday, December 26, 2019

Are you sure?

"Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes, that a name, a phrase, a standard has meaning only when associated with the considerations which gave birth to the nomenclature." (Holzer italics.)

Fred M Vinson, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Among the many recipients of this blog are some of my former constitutional law students. They may recall that whenever a student made this ridiculous statement, I would ask "are you certain.?" The responses were usually very entertaining.

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Memo II to the House of Representatives democrats

"Life is made up of a series of judgments on insufficient data, and if we wanted to run down all our doubts, it would flow past us. But the rock on which a democratic state is most apt to split is that passion of faction which will admit no mediation, and demands the extinction of all opposition." (Holzer italics.)

Judge Learned Hand.

Monday, December 23, 2019

Memo to the House of Representatives democrats

"In law, it is good policy to never plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you can not."

Abraham Lincoln

Saturday, December 21, 2019

Democrats and inferences

"An Inference, though never so rational, should go no farther than to justify a Suspicion, not so far as to inflict a Punishment. Nothing is so apt to break with Stretching, as an Inference; and nothing so ridiculous, as to see how Fools will abuse one." (Italics in original.)

George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax.

Friday, December 20, 2019

Re Pilosi's refusal to perform her constitutional duty

"We will not sell, or deny, or delay, right or justice to anyone. (Holzer italics).

Magna Carta (1215), Clause 40.

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Rawls, Rand........and "White Privilege"

"The new 'theory of justice' [of John Rawls] demands that men counteract the 'injustice' of nature by instituting the most obscenely unthinkable injustice among men: deprive 'those favored by nature' (i.e., the talented, the intelligent, the creative) of the right to the rewards they produce (i.e., the right to life)--and grant to the incompetent, the stupid, the slothful a right to the effortless enjoyment of the rewards they could not produce, could not imagine, and would not know what to do with it."

Ayn Rand.

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Holmes, J. on "due process"

"Whatever disagreement there may be as to the scope of the phrase 'due process of law'," there can be no doubt that it embraces the fundamental conception of a fair trial, with opportunity to be heard."

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Frank v. Morgan, 237 U.S. 309, 347 (1954).

Monday, December 16, 2019

Re the impeachment fever..........

"The difficulty of proving a fact will not justify conviction without proof." John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States."