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BONFIRE FOR THE CONSTITUTION
By Executive Order
On June 3, 1994, President Clinton signed
Executive Order #12919 gathering together into a single document all the power
and authority of a multitude of Executive Orders issued by preceding presidents
from John Kennedy on. Recent examination of this Executive Order has brought to
light that the consolidation of previous presidential orders deliver
unprecedented authority into the hands of the Chief Executive that exceed those
powers granted him under the U.S. Constitution.
Incorporated under the aegis of President Clinton's EO
#12919 are powers originally claimed by President Kennedy in a series of
Executive Orders signed into "law" in February of 1962 which, if
invoked, would virtually suspend the greater portion of liberties guaranteed by
the United States Constitution.
In Section 3 of Kennedy's original EO #10995 entitled,
"ASSIGNING TELECOMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS" there is the vague
statement, "Such authority shall include the power to amend modify, or
revoke frequency assignments." Innocuous as this sounds, it embodies the
power of the Chief Executive, in time of "national emergency", to
seize control of all radio and other telecommunications.
On the same day that President Kennedy signed EO
#10995, he also gave birth to four successive Orders that Clinton included in
his EO containing provisions to disable constitutional rights. Executive Order
#10997 empowers the Secretary of the Interior to seize all energy production
facilities--specifically, "electrical power", "petroleum",
"gas", "solid fuels", and "minerals". Section 3,
subsection (d) of that order, entitled " Claimancy" states:
Prepare plans to claim materials, manpower,
equipment, supplies and services needed in support of assigned
responsibilities and other essential functions of the Department...to insure
availability of such resources in an emergency.
Note the word
"claim" in reference to "materials, manpower, equipment, supplies
and services". The legal definition, as supplied by Black's Law Dictionary
is, "To demand as one's own or as one's right...means by or through which
claimant obtains possession or enjoyment of a privilege or thing. Demand for
money or property as of a right...." This means that the government may,
upon declaration of a state of local or national emergency, seize any of the
above, private or otherwise, including "manpower".
As to what constitutes a national emergency again
Black's definition is quite revealing:
"A state of national crisis; a
situation demanding immediate and extraordinary national or federal action. Congress
has made little or no distinction between a "state of national
emergency" and a "state of
war." Brown v. Bernstein, D.C.Pa., 49 F.Supp. 728, 732.
- EO #10998
places all food resources under authority of the Secretary of Agriculture.
- EO #10999
invests the Secretary of Commerce with control over all means of
transportation, public and private.
- EO #11000
provides for the establishment of manpower resources at the discretion of
the Secretary of Labor, with the authority to "claim"
services (labor) and involuntary relocation of workers. Collateral authority
for this conscription of labor is given in Title 50 app. United States Code,
Section 2153 "WAR AND NATIONAL DEFENCE" under the section
addressing civilian disposition entitled, "DEFENSE PRODUCTION ACT OF
1950" in which is set forth that civilian personnel may be assigned
work without regard to payment or reimbursement.
It is important to
note that according to the "War and Emergency Powers Act" the United
States has legally been under a state of national emergency since its enactment
in 1933. It has never been repealed, thus leaving the president with instant
powers to suspend the constitution. Most legal scholars and legislators who have
studied the matter concur that the War and Emergency Powers Act has, in reality,
already suspended the Constitution since the moment the act was signed into law
by President Roosevelt. The actual suspension of those constitutional rights
awaits only the impetus of a national emergency requiring it.
In 1933 a U.S. Congressman entered the following
statement into the Congressional Record:
"I think of all the damnable heresies
that have ever been suggested in connection with the Constitution, the
doctrine of emergency is the worst. It means that when Congress declares an
emergency, there is no Constitution. This means its death. It is the very
doctrine that the German chancellor is invoking today in the dying hours of
the parliamentary body of the German republic, namely, that because of an
emergency, it should grant to the German chancellor absolute power to pass any
law, even though the law contradicts the Constitution of the German republic.
Chancellor Hitler is at least frank about it. We pay the Constitution
lipservice, but the result is the same....the Constitution of the United
States, as a restraining influence in keeping the federal government within
the carefully prescribed channels of power, is moribund, if not dead."
The introduction to Senate
Report 93-549, entered into the Congressional Record forty years later in
1973 states:
"A majority of the people of the United
States have lived all their lives under emergency rule....For 40 years,
freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in
varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of
national emergency....And, in the United States, actions taken by the
government in times of great crisis have from, at least, the Civil War, in
important ways shaped the present phenomenon of a permanent state of national
emergency."
Following the
introduction the report's opening statement goes on to say:
"Since March the 9th, 1933, the United
States has been in a state of declared national emergency....This vast range
of powers, taken together, confer enough authority to rule the country without
reference to normal constitutional processes. Under the powers delegated by
these statutes, the President may: seize property; organize and control the
means of production; seize commodities; assign military forces abroad;
institute martial law; seize and control all transportation and communication;
regulate the operation of private enterprise; restrict travel; and, in a
plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens."
Not overlooked by
those drafting the Constitution was the possible need to address national
emergencies. The document contains certain provisions indicating that its
signatories conceived of the possibility that some guarantees of personal
liberties may, in the national interest, require suspension.
Article 1, Section 9 states: "The privilege of the
writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion
[an internal occurrence] or invasion [external] the public safety require
it." This grants the citizen the freedom from imprisonment or
detention without due process. The proviso "unless when in cases of
rebellion or invasion the public safety require it" indicates the necessity
to provide for some contingencies that may also carry with them the possibility
for abuse. No document of liberty, however, could possibly proscribe all
potential for misuse of those liberties without actually eliminating them in the
process. It has been said that communism is nothing more than democracy with all
potential for abuse legislated out.
As a result of the Executive Orders listed above, in
concert with the War and Emergency Powers Act, there exists within the United
States a government within a government. It is hidden, semi-covert in nature,
and does not recognize the U.S. Constitution or its constraints. It functions
autonomously as a form of totalitarian regime in suspended animation, awaiting
its time of activation. It is a government driven by presidential Executive
Orders to be executed by federal agencies run by non-elected officials.
Executive Orders amount to ready-wired buttons by which
the president can suspend constitutional rights at any moment he determines that
a "national emergency" exists. The great problem inherent is that no
binding legal definition exists as to what constitutes a "national
emergency". That definition lies entirely with the Chief Executive. When he
declares a state of emergency, the aforementioned documents can be used to
activate whatever federal agency is most suited to address the emergency. Those
agencies include, but are not limited to, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and
Firearms (BATF), the FBI and the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA).
Because this nation is under a continual state of
emergency due to the War and Emergency Powers Act, and the Constitution granting
somewhat elastic powers of emergency in "cases of rebellion or
invasion", the president can circumvent such fundamental protections as the Posse
Comatatus Act which forbids the use of the military against U.S. citizens.
This slow motion decay of constitutional rights was not
unforeseen by the Founding Fathers. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, James
Madison once wrote, "I believe there are more instances of abridgment of
freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than
by violent and sudden usurpations...."
The Constitution of the United States of America, once
the hub of American law and freedoms, has been moved to the position of the hub cap.
It has become merely an ornamental relic that serves no real function other than
that of making the American people feel as if the document still matters to
those who govern.
It appears that the modern electorate chooses their
leaders for the same purpose that they attend a magic show. Their actual desire
seems to be that the performer deceive them.
"The prophets prophesy falsely, and the
priests bear rule by their money; and my people love to have it so: and what
will ye do in the end thereof?" Jer 5:31
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