Submitted by Greg Dixon

 

Following is a speech by Barbara Ketay, President of the United States Bar Association, that was presented to the Constitution Networking Center - 1776 Take Back America Initiative, which met at the Holiday Inn Airport Convention Center at Kansas City, MO this past July 31.  Barbara’s nationwide radio program Liberty and You can also be heard at 8 am EST weekdays at www.restoringamericanetwork.net. She is the author of several books including Church in Chains and is also the Legal Associate for the Biblical Law Center. Her web site is: www.unitedstatesbarassociation.com

 

  

I was asked to comment on the question, “Has the Judiciary Destroyed the Constitution? My first response was, “Is the Pope Catholic?”  My answer was an unequivocal  “Yes”! But where was my evidence? Where were the facts? How and why did it happen? Why didn’t “we the people” stop it? Was it done with malice? Was there specific intent? Is it still going on? Can it be stopped? And, on and on ad nauseam.

 

This question lead me on an incredible journey of 250 hours research and review of 100 plus cases, reading and review of five books, i.e. A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law, Justice Antonin Scalia; The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, Phyllis Schlafly; God Betrayed: Separation of Church and State: The Biblical Principles and the American Application, Jerald Finney;  Men In Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America, Mark R. Levin, and The Constitution in Exile: How the Federal Government Has Seized Power by Rewriting the Supreme Law of the Land, Judge Andrew Napolitano.

 

With all of this research, you would think I would be ready to write. Wrong! How do you start and how do you condense this amount of information into a 30 minute presentation? You go back to the beginning, the genesis, the root – the Constitution. It is my belief that the Founders knew exactly what they wanted when they created a republican government with the primary purpose being to divide and diffuse all power between the states and federal government and among all three branches. Originalists,  which I am, believe in a narrow and common sense interpretation of the plain meaning of the law and clearly delineated separation of powers. This belief, “…seeks to promote the rule of law by imparting to the Constitution a fixed, continuous, and predictable meaning.” (Robert Bork). They wanted a government which could protect and nurture this fledgling country, but one limited in its power so that it could not stifle the state’s right or their citizens’ liberties. Remember the states were sovereign entities that the Continental Congress could not directly control because there was essentially no binding central government.  Above everything else was the Founders concern to prohibit any concentration of power to a small group of institutions or individuals.

 

This being said, can anyone tell me how we have ended up having a judiciary with its nose stuck in every aspect of our lives, i.e., controlling school systems, prisons, flag burning, welfare, taxation, childcare, throwing out God, prayer, and the Ten Commandments from public schools, hiring/firing practices of private business, states grants for illegal immigrants, election processes, partial birth abortion, limits on political speech, terrorism, same sex marriage, promoting racism, telling states to increase private property taxes, rewriting immigration laws, and perhaps the best ruling was, “…that morality was an insufficient basis for legislation.” etc, etc.

 

One of the reasons we ended up where we are today is because of the infamous decision, Marbury vs. Madison, 1803. In this decision, Justice John Marshall gave the federal judiciary the power to rule on the constitutionality of both statutory law, the behavior of the executive branch, and Congressional actions. This means that the Supreme Court granted itself the authority to declare the will of the people . . . null and void. This was politely called judicial review. This of course has caused endless tyranny and is the reason for the Court’s runaway power which they exercise today. In no section of the Constitution were the Courts granted the authority to overrule Congress and the President. John Marshall “spent the remainder of his career finding clearly disingenuous, historically inaccurate and highly questionable justifications for ruling that federal power is not limited.” Judge Andrew Napolitano. For my money, Marbury v Madision was enough of a disaster to last him a lifetime.

 

Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal judiciary expressly given authority to interject itself into every facet of federal and state operations. They have accumulated this power under the ruse of “judicial review”, overturning an act of Congress or the executive branch on the grounds that the act in question contravenes the federal Constitution. It is founded on the joke that the Courts will be the unbiased guardians of the clear meaning of the Constitution. When in essence what we have are judicial activists, because of their high position, imposing by fiat, that which should be determined through the democratic process. They continue through their absurd, inane and socialistic decisions, substituting personal policy preferences for Constitutional imperatives, which has destroyed both the intent and the spirit of the Constitution.

 

Along with this is their fraud of the supremacy clause which only grants to the central government seventeen specific functions which are delineated in the Constitution in Article I, Section 8, many of which involve waging war and foreign policy. Period!!!!!! This power has been grossly abused by the Court’s implication that the federal government is somehow “supreme” in anything and everything vis-a-vis the citizens of the states.

 

The second most deadly act from the judiciary was their expansive definition and abuse of the commerce clause, which allowed them to justify virtually unfettered federal intrusion into the conduct of state and local governments, and to defend the establishment of massive bureaucracies and their seemingly endless regulations on private enterprise. As a result, the government is now centralized…enter socialism on the hoof. Their expansive use of the commerce clause violates the Tenth Amendment. The Founders believed that individual liberties could be better protected when the power is retained by the state and local governments. The state is better prepared to develop solutions at a grassroots level which reflects the desires of the community. “Between 1937 and 1995 not one single federal law was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Not one piece of legislation was seen as exceeding the scope of Congress’s commerce power.” Judge Andrew Napolitano. Well, so much for the phony argument that “judicial review” by the federal courts acts to protect liberty. Instead, it does exactly the opposite: It expands the size and scope of government at the expense of liberty.

 

Rather than upholding the Constitution, the Supreme Court helped Congress use the commerce clause to get power at the expense of the state and local authorities in direct violation of the Constitution and in denial of liberty to the America people. The Founders wanted to increase commerce between the states and trade between their citizens. But typical of the court’s deceit, they have turned the commerce clause into exactly the opposite. Through all of the federal regulations, statutes, rules, mandates, licenses, permits, and registrations, etc., they are destroying the ability of both individuals and businesses to succeed, and creating a vehicle to strengthen federal power, deny authority to the states, and once again deprive the American people their God given rights.

 

The third disaster, as I perceive it, is that lingering misinterpretation of the phrase “…a wall of separation between church and state.” Nowhere in that statement does it refer to separation between God and state. God is not a church. God is not religion. God is not prayer. God is not the Ten Commandments pasted on a school wall or in front of a Courthouse. God is not the Pledge of Allegiance; God is not an invocation or benediction. God is not only the Creator of the universe and all things therein, He is the sovereign ruler of every individual, family, church and nation. The Bible has laid out the specific jurisdictions and principles for the functioning of each one of these governments. The courts, and therefore America, has violated its God given jurisdiction and principles.

 

Let’s look at the Establishment Clause in the Fistt Amendment. The Framers understood the word “establishment”, and they meant this clause, “… to involve actual legal coercion and that government practices that have nothing to do with creating or maintaining coercive state establishments simply do not implicate the possible liberty interest of being free from the coercive state establishments.” Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas said further in Van Orden v Perry 2005, “The unintelligibility of this Court’s precedent raises the further concern that, either, in appearance or in fact, adjudication of Establishment Clause challenges turns on judicial predilections…The outcome of constitutional case ought to rest on firmer grounds than the personal preferences of judges.” There you have it from one of their own. This is the crux of the entire problem and the cause of the chaos in our Country…the courts, through their activist judges position and power, conjure up the ideas that they are righting wrongs or doing justice and impose their will and warped beliefs by fiat.   

Confusion is the court’s stock and trade. They have no standards of operation. They talk about interpretive problems presented by conflicts between the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. They have problems because they have no knowledge of God and His sovereignty. Therefore, they have to twist meanings; they have no standards  upon which to base their principles, because they use different standards than the standard which was used to formulate the thing they are judging; and, they have no knowledge of the true history and intent of that which they are judging. The courts and the other branches of the federal government have let us know that with enough liberals and moderates, they can reconstruct the Constitution into whatever form they want, completely ignoring history, logic and totally discounting God.

 

Yes, the judiciary has destroyed the Constitution. They are unelected and unaccountable, and have rejected and violated their Constitutional role and continue to legislate from the bench. When they make decisions beyond their authority, they are violating and destroying the will of the people. An opinion from these courts, instead of remaining a simple decision, becomes law, a precedent if you will, which further perpetrates the fallacy of stare decisis, which by its very concept violates our rule of law… that each case shall be judged on its own merits. But more importantly, the federal government, through its laws and its courts, has rejected God. From this decision America will not escape

 

I am praying this group will come and reason together to formulate a plan, which will be pleasing to God, for taking America back. May God bless each of you and may God bless the United States of America. Thank you.

 

 Barbara Ketay, President

United States Bar Association