Who Attacks Our Bill of Rights--Who Defends Them
Posted by Zenphamy 9 years, 11 months ago to Government
The link I offer in this discussion is for the decision released by the US 2nd Circuit on Wednesday determining that the NSA 'Bulk Collection of Telephone Meta Data' is illegal by the justifications offered by the President and the DoJ: " In a sweeping decision out of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, ACLU v. Clapper, the federal court has ruled the National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk data collection program, which sweeps up millions of Americans’ phone records without a warrant, to be illegal." I've just finished reading the entire 97 pages of the decision. I often do this tedious task on issues that interest me as well as many of the case filings leading up to the decision and it's a revealing effort to undertake, particularly in attempting to understand how and why our legal system and our government operates the way it does. This is not an exercise I recommend for a relaxing evenings read by the firelight. These cases are not easy to read, nor understand, and finding and reading the cites which then leads to further cites will drive you up a tree -- not to mention digging into their procedures and rules, logic and word definitions.
What this case, as so many others in the past, brings to mind, besides the facts and reasonings revealed in the documents and arguments, is the question I ask of all of you in the heading to this post:
Who Attacks Our Bill of Rights--Who Defends Them -- and I might add, Where Do We Find Justice?
In the last few years, I've read literally hundreds of case decisions that affect my individual and natural rights, as discussed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and by Ayn Rand throughout her writings. And in nearly everyone of those cases, those arguing for a literal and liberal interpretation and application of those rights are individuals and organizations outside of government--never government. The government represented by the Solicitor General of the United States or the Dept. of Justice, or the Attorney General of a State, always take the position that the right doesn't exist, or needs to be ignored in a particular case, or the interpretation of the right is different than what you think it means, or the right doesn't apply, or the individual bringing the case lacks standing, or that if the right does exist it should be limited in pursuance of a necessary operation, or good by the state or Federal government.
Those men and women arguing against individual rights all have had to pass their state bar, the Federal bar, and the Supreme Court bar, or in the case of the federal to have been specifically accepted. These aren't just your everyday run of the mill divorce, personal injury, cooperate and contracts, tax, prosecuting, or defense lawyers. For the most part, these people are the cream of the crop that have studied long and hard to reach this point in their careers and their compensations and their future careers. And while I fully understand the adversarial basis of our court systems, everyone of these attorneys have studied the Founding Documents and as a requirement of their office, have sworn an Oath to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.
Yet while they're in court representing their government, they're given a pass on that Oath part and are actually encouraged by their ruling attorneys' doctrine (and threatened with the most dire attorney's punishment of disbarment if they fail), to vigorously defend and attack, against the individual's attempt to claim and defend his individual rights. Further, in reading the writings of several of these attorneys in cases and in other writings, they don't even personally believe much if not at least some of what they're arguing, and some even bemoan the rulings and decisions that they win, yet are still proud of their work.
Why, you may ask, is it our government with all of its tremendous financial and manpower might that attacks us at every step in cases such as these in court, while we are limited to the picayune resources available to us, unless we're able to interest the ACLU, go pro se, or qualify as a pauper from prison or on death row? Particularly when it comes to an issue of individual rights protection which is the sole purpose of the government as spelled out in the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Oath all governmental officials take.
Indeed, Why You May Ask! Why are we named as enemies of the state, why do the police lie, brutalize, and kill us, why are we thrown in jails and prisons at inordinate numbers, why do bureaucracies and regulators seem to fight us at every breath, why do our legislators agree to all of this? WHY??? WHO Defends our Rights???
What this case, as so many others in the past, brings to mind, besides the facts and reasonings revealed in the documents and arguments, is the question I ask of all of you in the heading to this post:
Who Attacks Our Bill of Rights--Who Defends Them -- and I might add, Where Do We Find Justice?
In the last few years, I've read literally hundreds of case decisions that affect my individual and natural rights, as discussed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and by Ayn Rand throughout her writings. And in nearly everyone of those cases, those arguing for a literal and liberal interpretation and application of those rights are individuals and organizations outside of government--never government. The government represented by the Solicitor General of the United States or the Dept. of Justice, or the Attorney General of a State, always take the position that the right doesn't exist, or needs to be ignored in a particular case, or the interpretation of the right is different than what you think it means, or the right doesn't apply, or the individual bringing the case lacks standing, or that if the right does exist it should be limited in pursuance of a necessary operation, or good by the state or Federal government.
Those men and women arguing against individual rights all have had to pass their state bar, the Federal bar, and the Supreme Court bar, or in the case of the federal to have been specifically accepted. These aren't just your everyday run of the mill divorce, personal injury, cooperate and contracts, tax, prosecuting, or defense lawyers. For the most part, these people are the cream of the crop that have studied long and hard to reach this point in their careers and their compensations and their future careers. And while I fully understand the adversarial basis of our court systems, everyone of these attorneys have studied the Founding Documents and as a requirement of their office, have sworn an Oath to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.
Yet while they're in court representing their government, they're given a pass on that Oath part and are actually encouraged by their ruling attorneys' doctrine (and threatened with the most dire attorney's punishment of disbarment if they fail), to vigorously defend and attack, against the individual's attempt to claim and defend his individual rights. Further, in reading the writings of several of these attorneys in cases and in other writings, they don't even personally believe much if not at least some of what they're arguing, and some even bemoan the rulings and decisions that they win, yet are still proud of their work.
Why, you may ask, is it our government with all of its tremendous financial and manpower might that attacks us at every step in cases such as these in court, while we are limited to the picayune resources available to us, unless we're able to interest the ACLU, go pro se, or qualify as a pauper from prison or on death row? Particularly when it comes to an issue of individual rights protection which is the sole purpose of the government as spelled out in the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Oath all governmental officials take.
Indeed, Why You May Ask! Why are we named as enemies of the state, why do the police lie, brutalize, and kill us, why are we thrown in jails and prisons at inordinate numbers, why do bureaucracies and regulators seem to fight us at every breath, why do our legislators agree to all of this? WHY??? WHO Defends our Rights???
