The Constitution Has Been Suspended

Forty-two years ago an American pastor named Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by the US government. But his conspirators weren't bold enough to declare their participation in the act. Instead, a patsy was blamed for it. But such secrecy is no longer required. In 21st century America, the President of the United States can kill anyone that he deems is a threat to national security, and not face any justice. It is another illustration that the will to power, once fully in motion, can commit any number of crimes against the innocent and still rule. The will to power inside the United States government has reached the point where murdering an American citizen in broad daylight is admitted, and even applauded. There is no longer a place for the law in America. Only the gun is king. There are no trials. Charges are not pressed. The accused are not convicted, they are framed, or shot to pieces. And all this is justified in the name of democracy, liberty and security.

Author and journalist David Swanson writes:

President Obama has ordered the murder of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Like the innocent but tortured Abu Zubayda (innocent at least of any of the crimes he was accused of), Awlaki is now the mastermind terrorist of the universe. And once he's dead, who's to say he wasn't? Who can demand a trail or access to documents? He'll be dead. See the beauty of it?

Was al-Awlaki innocent? Who knows. It's too late to be the judge of his innocence. Was he a radical? Maybe. But so what? Wasn't Martin Luther King Jr. a radical? Weren't the Founding Fathers radicals? Weren't the Abolitionists radicals? Barack Obama is the recipient of generations of radicals, who fought against government oppression to advance the cause of human rights, and here he is, destroying the legacy that was handed down to him. What a sick human being! Anybody who supports him, excuses his actions, or defends his policies, is even more delusional than the last bastions of the Bush supporters.

In "The Accomodationists: Memo to Liberals on the White House Death Warrants" Chris Floyd lays out very clearly what it means to be an Obama supporter at this stage in the game, and it is not flattering. Floyd says:

Now, there can be no shuffling, no waffling on the matter. Obama has made it crystal clear for even the most avidly self-duping progressive: He will murder his fellow citizens without trial or evidence if he sees fit. The state can murder whom it pleases. This is the system we have. This is what you support when you support Barack Obama. You cannot escape this logic, this judgment. If you support Obama now, in this, then there is no crime he can commit that you will not support.

II. More And More Revelations

The innocent blood that has been shed in this maniacal and evil "War on Terror" is only slowly being realized. The video that was recently released by WikiLeaks, showing two Reuters journalists and several others being gunned down without provocation has helped raise awareness. But murder of the innocent is the most extreme example. Torture has yet to be eliminated. And its effects are even more damaging than unprovoked murder, because for the living the scars remain.

Colonel Wilkerson, a former senior Bush Administration official, has issued a declaration that his former bosses were aware that the vast majority of detainees who were sent to Guantánamo Bay in the initial hunt-n-grab phase of the War on Terror were in fact innocent. The Times of London:

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

Colonel Wilkerson, who was General Powell’s chief of staff when he ran the State Department, was most critical of Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”.

General Powell, who left the Bush Administration in 2005, angry about the misinformation that he unwittingly gave the world when he made the case for the invasion of Iraq at the UN, is understood to have backed Colonel Wilkerson’s declaration.

Lawmakers in Congress and the POTUS ignored the US Constitution long ago, in 1913 to be exact, upon the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, but in 2010 the lawlessness is no longer a secret, everything is official; everything is permitted. Printing fiat dollars endlessly? Check. Spying on citizens? Check. Bailing out private institutions despite a popular consensus against using tax dollars for such purposes? Check. Torture? Check. Murdering innocent citizens? Check. Invading innocent countries? Check. Disbanding Posse Comitatus? Check. Confiscating the property of citizens? Check.

The all-powerful rulers of America, and the corrupt face of the Empire, Barack Obama, don't accept the rule of law. They are killers. It is who they are. The hidden rulers of American foreign policy commit, and endorse acts of terror. Obama murdered an American citizen with a pen when he signed the executioner's order for Anwar al-Awlaki. The blood of innocent men is now on his hands. No justifications or rationalizations can make might right. Nobody can honestly deny that Obama is not a war criminal. He was once a community organizer, but not anymore. As President, he has become a community destroyer. So much for hope and change. Bush's crown was in the sewers of Washington, and Obama picked it up.

III. Restoring the Constitution - Reclaiming Liberty and Justice

In an article that was published on The Daily Beast on April 6 called "How to Sober up Washington" two board members of Change Congress, Lawrence Lessig and Mark McKinnon, call for a Constitutional Convention to force Congress to act in concert with the American people. They write:

Some will resist the idea of a convention because they fear a “runaway” in which fringe elements would take over the agenda and propose radical amendments. But the framers anticipated such a danger and established a very high bar against it. Amendments are ratified by legislatures (or state conventions), not by referenda. And if even one chamber in 12 state legislatures refused to ratify an amendment, it would die. There will always be twelve solid blue states and twelve solid red states in America. There’s thus no danger that one extreme can overtake the other.

Conventional wisdom will argue that constitutional conventions or amendments are just impossible. Just like it was impossible to wrest a republic from the grip of monarchy or abolish slavery. Or impossible to elect Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama. But conventional minds are always wrong about pivotal moments in a nation’s history. And this is a pivotal moment in ours, when a movement to restore democracy is possible.

Indeed, the movement has already begun. Legislators in South Carolina, Virginia, Oregon, Rhode Island and Florida are already throwing sparks that could soon become a brush fire across the country. More and more are coming to see that if reform is necessary—as most all of us, whether from the right or left believe—this is the only way.

You can learn more about their call for a Constitutional Convention by visiting the website www.callaconvention.org. Such calls have been heard across the political spectrum for a number of years. Last November, Michael Badnarik, a former presidential candidate who ran on the Libertarian ticket, hosted and organized a Continental Congress. Participants assembled in St. Charles, Illinois, and over the course of eleven days, they developed The Articles of Freedom, which can be read in full here. In the preface, the members of the Congress declared:

Across many administrations and years, by each branch of government, through each major political party, the Constitution for The United States has been violated. The People have formally Petitioned the Government for Redress of the violations in the most humble of terms. The People and their Petitions have been ignored. Each un-remedied violation has taken its toll with dire impact on our economic interests, our people, our quality and way of life and our international and national reputations.

But the participants held no illusions about their immediate prospects. A peaceful revolution doesn't occur overnight. They were not children playing with fire. Rather, they were an early expression of a political storm that has been rising for some time, a storm that could potentially oust most, if not all, the current representatives in Washington D.C. Badnarik has written up his memories of the significant occasion in his article "Continental Congress remembered." He says:

I am very proud to have been a part of this historic gathering, but I am very conscious of the fact that the Continental Congress enjoys no legislative or legal authority of its own. The truth is that a relatively small number of Liberty-minded patriots gathered together to document government abuses. Unless the Articles of Freedom can generate widespread public support, there will be no change in the political status-quo.

It is my hope that Lawrence Lessig, Mark McKinnon, and the members of Change Congress, join forces with Michael Badnarik and the individuals involved with the Continental Congress. The common aspects of the two separate endeavors are striking, and should not go unnoticed. If each camp wants to be successful, and stop the US government's abuses of human rights and civil liberties at home and around the world, then they must converge, and make some compromises if need be. This is not the time for Americans to hold close to their individual blankets and pray that will alone help them keep warm through the night, but rather, Americans must come together in cooperation and wrestle their ideas and plans with each other. Libertarians, progressives, independents, conservatives, liberals, all must find a spot in the battlefield, join the common fight, and rise up shoulder to shoulder against an overweight government and the many fatty corporations and banks who circulate like parasites around it.

No doubt, the Republicans and Democrats, along with the media, will resist such a unified and focused coalition, for all three parties profit greatly from their special relationships with each other, but history demands such a coalition to form now. If the left and right continue to be dislocated and divided, then the only change that will come from Washington D.C. will be more of the same; more taxes, more wars, more spying, more torture, more barbarity, more lies, and more deceit. I don't know about you, but as a neighbor and a dedicated friend of America, more tyranny is not an option that is on my table.

IV. The Sacred Oath

The abuses of the Constitution by the President of the United States should not be received lightly by the American public. Every public and military official takes an oath to the Constitution, and to the defense of the country from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and it is a sacred oath. The word of a nation is all that matters. It is sometimes paid in blood. Soldiers die to protect their country, once it has taken a course of war. They don't die so that politicians like Bush and Obama overturn their sacrifices, and then neglect their oath in the middle of the night. What if a Military General decides to desert his post in the middle of a war? Imagine the outrage! Such a desertion is what every POTUS, whether republican or democrat, has done for the last several decades; his post is the Constitution, the law of the land, and yet, he is nowhere to be found.

"The oath of allegiance in America is to the nation only. The putting any individual as a figure for a nation is improper. The happiness of a nation is the superior object, and therefore the intention of an oath of allegiance ought not to be obscured by being figuratively taken, to, or in the name of, any person." - Thomas Paine

*Update: I thought Al-Awlaki's death was confirmed, but only his order has been handed down. So his assassination is not official. This article goes into detail about the case.


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