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Voices For American Direct Democracy |
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Dorf Concludes SD Legislative Felony Is Legal
© 2005-2006 by Stephen Neitzke -- stephen
@ddleague-usa.net
It's the law, stupid -- not the politics.
By their nature, socio-political writings are auto-marginalized against the harsh realities of legal abuse authored by political leaders. If the Nixon experience taught us anything, it is that constitutional crooks must be thrown into the legal arena before they can be stopped. When the powerful are guilty of authoring depraved, unconstitutional, anti-law regimes, the only proper response is to go after them with the law -- not with socio-political mealy-mouth.
South Dakota's anti-abortion HB 1215, the "Women's Health and Life Protection Act", passed by the legislature on 22 February 2006 and signed by the governor on 06 March, is just such a depraved, unconstitutional anti-law regime. Those who enacted it are not only constitutional criminals, they are also co-conspirators in a clearly defined federal felony under the federal statute, 18 USC 241 -- conspiracy against rights.
But instead of producing legal-leaning commentary, the highly controlled and coerced media, mainstream and alternative, produced a nation-wide blizzard of auto-marginalized, socio-political mealy-mouth. No talk of legally defending the Constitutional abortion right against the felonious cheap-shot of an unconstitutional statute. No talk of legislative immunity being forfeit under the South Dakota constitution in the perpetration of a felony. No talk of the need to force a federal prosecution of the obviously felonious co-conspirators under 18 USC 241. No talk of the 1980 SCOTUS decision in Gillock barring a defense of legislative immunity in a federal prosecution of federal criminal statutes. No talk of the parallel between the findings of treason of the 1860s secessionists and the treason of the South Dakota HB 1215 co-conspirators. No talk of the additional federal conspiracy felonies that will occur with every enforcement instance of HB 1215's unconstitutonal anti-law regime. No talk of the need to legally defend this Constitutional right for fear of losing others to emboldened, pandering, and criminal state governments who represent money-power, not the Constitution, and not the sovereign people. Nothing but a blizzard of marginalized and inconsequential, socio-political mealy-mouth and white noise.
My legally-bent project essay, "Killing Rights -- Anti-Abortion Legislative Felony", (on this site) was ignored by the editors of about 30 publications. Mustn't offend money-power with talk of legal consequences for the felonious actions of governing elites. Mustn't say anything about how governing elites elevate themselves above the rule of law -- and get away with it.
Note that all of those publications who ignored my legal analysis make their money by seeming to fight for the people. The hypocrisy is thick enough to cut with the proverbial knife.
While hypocritical editors -- whose cowardice, advertising payola, or class-driven bigotry pull back from urging the people to get legal -- help to mold protections for the Bush-Cheney fascist despotism and corrupt state governments, the lack of public concern for the lawful defense of rights is at least as big a problem. The public's lack of rights-defense sophistication is probably at an all-time historical low.
Perhaps we the sovereign people have been shut out of the political debate for so long that we've pretty much just given up.
Perhaps we're too collectively worried that money-power, topping nearly every hierarchy of our lives, will take away our jobs and our incomes. Perhaps we're too collectively worried that the bible-thumping extremists, pushing their bigoted "values" to the exclusion of legally established human and political rights, will wreck our businesses, social standings, families, and faces.
Perhaps we're so numbed by governmental legal abuse that we can't raise our eyes far enough to see that the rule of law is still ours. Perhaps the rule of law seems unobtainable through the criminal collusions of agencies, Congress, and the federal bench -- all of which have collapsed our vaunted checks and balances into money-power's mutual admiration society. Perhaps the Ashcroft-Gonzales spearhead of collapsed law at the OJD (Obstruction of Justice Department) seems unsurmountable. If money-power's dual-party, three-branch, Bush-Cheney despotism has captured all of the federal prosecutors, how can we prosecute any crimes committed or approved of by the Bush-Cheney despotism?
Or perhaps the Progressive way -- the demonstrations so easily marginalized by money-power and the hand-wringing of instantly marginalized commentary, taking things apart to show us what's wrong, but rarely showing us how we can put things back together with improvements -- perhaps that Progressive way has shuffled us into a narrow, blind alley.
Perhaps that Progressive way has habituated us into rejecting anything that doesn't fit with its formula of politics-only demonstrations and destructive analysis. Perhaps we automatically reject anything biased to the hard, legal stuff -- the doing of constructive analysis and argument, and the understanding and forcing of rights-protecting court-room action. Pity. Our adversaries in money-power easily use the hard, legal stuff to regularly cut us off at the knees. Perhaps the Progressive way has stuck us with trying to stop surgically amputational law with marginalized fluff. It's the law, stupid -- not the politics.
The Progressives of a hundred years ago, in Reform Era I, taught themselves the hard, legal stuff so that they could defend their increases of democracy and rights in 26 states. Their rights-protecting sophistication was about 8.5 on the 10-scale.
Reform Era I, circa 1898 to 1918, was the greatest democracy movement in recorded history, because activists topped many tens of millions of votes with the hard, legal stuff. Their court-room defenses of increased democracy and increased rights created an awesome legacy for us. They locked their democracy/rights legacy into state constitutions, where predator politicians couldn't directly meddle.
The predators learned new tricks, as predators do. They quickly learned to meddle indirectly. They passed unconstitutional statutes, directing executive branch officials to violate constitutional "separation of powers" provisions so that the citizen-proposed law of I&R petitions could be delayed, altered, and/or rejected before the proposals could reach a ballot. Under a variety of unconstitutional statutes, Secretaries-of-State and Attornies-General arbitrarily bar the sovereign people from voting on constitutionally-defined, I&R-proposed laws, especially when the proposals offended money-power. The public officials would be immediately impeached and removed for doing anything similar to legislature-proposed law -- and they know it.
Imagine an Attorney General telling a state legislature that its members are barred from voting on a bill in committee because the bill's provisions do not agree with standing state laws. It's a routine occurrence in citizen-proposed law.
State judges are instructed to take jurisdiction over I&R-proposed law and to perform "binding judicial review". The binding judicial review arbitrarily delays, alters, and/or rejects I&R proposals offensive to money-power. No US constitution defines the judicial power to include binding judicial review of proposed law. Judges would be immediately impeached and removed for doing anything similar to legislature-proposed law -- and they know it. Imagine a state judge telling a state legislature that its members are barred from voting on a bill in committee because the bill's provisions are too vaguely worded. It's a routine occurrence in citizen-proposed law.
State governments in all 23 active I&R states are very practiced at this tactic of overturning constitutional rights with unconstitutional statutes. South Dakota has been an I&R state since 1898. South Dakota's criminal and treasonous state government has been overturning the sovereign people's constitutional rights with unconstitutional statutes for over a hundred years.
The hard, legal stuff is easy for the predators and, apparently, just too hard for we the sovereign prey. We're now intensely squandering our Reform Era democracy/rights legacy with our ignorance, lack of concern, near-pointless demonstrations, and fluffy destructive analysis. Our rights-protecting sophistication is about a 0.5 on the 10-scale.
Of course, the lack of concern for defending rights is not universal. Throughout the month of my 'SD legislative felony' project (22 February to 22 March 2006), there were some concerned individuals out there willing to get legal. There were a few chinks in the controlled-media armor.
Bev Conover, at Online Journal, published an early version of the project essay, titled "Anti-Abortion Legislative Felony", on 09 March, causing it to be picked up by Google News. The essay quickly migrated into the online "clipping services" that feed state legislatures and governors. However, public response was almost nonexistent.
Powerful predatory legislators have been put on notice that some ordinary people have spotted the South Dakota legislative felony. We should not be surprised that they have read and understood the broad public lack of concern. We should should not be surprised that many right-wing extremist majorities of other state legislatures go right on with their own legislative felonies. Our lack of concern has given them every reason to widen and deepen their illegal abuse of our rights. We've told them -- we are not concerned, and you can get away with this.
There have been no emails from the general public commenting on my project essay's content. Several blog self-publications, as well as additional blog insertions by Michael Boldin at Populist Party of America -- which published the pre-signing version of the project essay, "SD Anti-Abortion Legislation & Consequences", as well as the post-signing, 09 March version -- drew online comment from only one individual.
The one commenter was trollish "So Blue" on the MyDD blog. "So Blue" spewed personal attacks and, relentlessly, the notion that the South Dakota legislature has a blanket immunity against any criminal prosecutions or lawsuits. Academic vocabulary and tricky sophisms made So Blue sound very much like a governmental agent provocateur.
As discussed in the project essay's final version, "Killing Rights", South Dakota's HB 1215 does not have legislative immunity. First, Article 3, paragraph 11 of the South Dakota constitution bars legislative immunity in cases of treason, felony, and breach of peace. Second, 18 USC 241 defines every conspiracy that violates a citizen's rights "secured to him by the Constitution or laws", as a federal conspiracy felony. Third, the SCOTUS decision in United States v. Gillock, 445 U.S. 360 (1980), established that state legislators do not have legislative immunity when being prosecuted under federal criminal statutes.
In addition to its legislative felony, HB 1215 is very probably treasonous, under the same arguments that established treason for the 1860s secessionists. The authors of HB 1215 failed to protect the rights of South Dakotans. They violated both state and national constitutions. They violated their oaths to uphold both constitutions. Collectively, those are established acts of treason.
Taking it to the legal arena, I submitted "Killing Rights" to FindLaw's "Writ" on 14 March 2006. It was a hardship to read, 15 March, the contradictory piece in "Writ" by Professor Michael Dorf, "Does South Dakota's New Abortion Ban Cross The Line ... ?".
Professor Dorf, at the end of long and tortured political commentary, draws this conclusion.
"One can think, as I do, that the new South Dakota law is unwise. One can also think, as I do, that it is unconstitutional. But granting all of this, South Dakota still acted within its rights in asking -- in the only lawful way open to it -- for the Justices to reconsider their abortion jurisprudence."
It's a conclusion based on bald assertion. It puts the lie to the South Dakota government's creation of a federal conspiracy felony against citizen rights, as well as to the South Dakota enactment of an unconstitutional anti-law regime intended to be enforced under the color of law. The enforcement itself would involve public officials and judges in separate federal conspiracy felonies against rights, as well as in federal civil actions for the deprivation of rights under federal statute, 42 USC 1983.
Any law professor knows better than to call the enactment of HB 1215 'lawful'. The limitations of legislative immunity are a governmental-workings high-ground in both criminal and tort law. The traditional felony, treason, and breach of peace limitations -- as well as the Congressional findings of treason for the 1860s secessionists and the glaring 1980 SCOTUS decision in Gillock -- establish that 'legislative immunity' was never intended to cover for the flagrant criminality perpetrated by the enactors of HB 1215.
Contrary to Dorf's conclusion, the South Dakota government clearly and obviously did not act within its rights. Its action in passing and approving HB 1215 was purely unlawful and its enactors purely criminal. HB 1215 is a felony against the nation, and Dorf knows it.
Using the ethos and authority of Dorf's high standing and accomplishments in the legal community -- as well as the high standing of FindLaw -- Dorf's conclusion points readers away from the felonious conspiracy against rights. Dorf's conclusion "... relieves, comforts, or assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension, trial, or punishment ...". That's the definition of "accessory after the fact" in the federal statute, 18 USC 3. In an honest prosecution of the South Dakota co-conspirators, Dorf would likely be convicted as an accessory after the fact.
Did FindLaw's "Writ" editors give equal time to my reasoned and documented conclusion that the enactors of HB 1215 had committed a federal felony? Of course not. They simply followed the 4th Law of the CRC ("Cheney-Rove Catechism for GW Bush") -- saying a thing is so, makes it so.
The 4th Law is especially appropriate when players are gathered round, working up whatever makes money-power look good. Dorf's pronouncement that HB 1215 is lawful is money-power looking good. It invites other players to gather round, agree with Dorf, and load another power-reality into the Empire. Look, Ma, another statute that guts the Constitution and gives us players life without consequences. (For the players, everything goosesteps to the CRC's 1st Law -- a lie delayed is an Empire reality lost.)
Dorf has proven himself another opportunistic WSC mouthpiece for the massively corrupt establishment and the massively corrupt status quo. Whitewash, stonewall, and coverup are some of the best blunt-force-trama tricks in predator elitism's age-old Machiavellian toolbox. The powerful leaders of a state government have spoken and the parasites of money-power's corruption, including Dorf, have gathered round to protect them.
You can read all of Dorf's WSC essay on the South Dakota legislative felony, "Does South Dakota's New Abortion Ban Cross The Line Between 'Test' Legislation and Defiance of the Supreme Court?" on the FindLaw site at --
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20060315.html
Powerful leaders in about a dozen other state governments want to duplicate South Dakota's legislative felony in this powerfully divisive and diversionary issue. The more depraved state governments that successfully duplicate South Dakota's conspiracy felony without suffering the legal consequences, the more firmly the precedent is set that governments can use unconstitutional statutes to overturn constitutional rights. We can thank Dorf for helping to protect that unconscionable deceit, too.
Dorf ratchets us another notch closer to complete rigidity between money-power's greed/corruption camp and the sovereign people's democracy/rights camp. The truthful application of the law is the only safety valve between those two age-old centers of bloody conflict. When opportunistic thuggery such as Dorf's takes away the safety valve, we are ratcheted another notch closer to social explosion and bloody revolt.
Nothing political happens in a vacuum. Dorf's South Dakota conclusion should not be abstracted out of the climate of corruption. It should be properly fitted into the bas-relief of corruption that rules our society. Its fit is in the corruption fabric of both the legislative and judicial wrecking of rights for profits and power.
Dorf's South Dakota conclusion is not his first accessory-after-the-fact move against the sovereign people. It's not his first move to bolster legal abuse and corruption. He did the same in his rubber-stamping of the fascist thugs masquerading as Supreme Court judges in Gonzales v. Raich, 03-1454, 06 June 2005.
Raich, of course, ruled constitutionally-legal medical marijuana to be illegal under a Commerce Clause screwed up beyond all recognition. It proclaimed clearly unconstitutional and illegal sections of a federal statute, "The Controlled Substances Act of 1970", to be constitutional and legal. It barred states rights to determine legitimate medical practice -- a states right recognized in law for over two hundred years -- and it shredded over two hundred years of jurisprudence in the 9th Amendment, as well as in federalism and equity. Raich is a purely unconstitutional ruling -- as were the SCOTUS rulings in Bush v. Gore, which founded the horrendously unconstitutional Bush Illegitimacy in December 2000, and Kelo v. City of New London, which redefined constitutional eminent domain so that wealthy predator elitists all over the world can have any US property they want through unconstitutional statute law.
Normal judicial immunity does not apply to the judges in Raich. As with the South Dakota legislative felony, the ruling in Raich creates a federal conspiracy felony, violating citizen rights as defined in 18 USC 241, as well as an unconstitutional anti-law regime.
We have impeached and removed many federal bench judges for unconstitutional rulings and felonies in the past. The six Supremes who approved Raich -- Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Scalia -- violated the Constitution as well as their oaths to uphold the Constitution, failed to protect the rights of all citizens, created a massive anti-law regime affecting millions of citizens, committed treason against the nation, and began the 18 USC 241 conspiracy felony against the rights of all citizens to enjoy a federal governance in accord with the Constitution. The six Supremes assenting in Raich are all constitutional criminals and felons-in-waiting. Their only rightful place is in federal prison.
You can read Dorf's WSC essay on the Supremes' judicial conspiracy felony in Raich, "The Supreme Court Upholds Congressional Power To Override California's Medical Marijuana Law ... ", FindLaw, 08 June 2005, at --
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20050608.html
Raich is unconstitutional for several reasons. See my essay, "Fundamental Governance Rights", section 3, "Emergent Rights", on the DDL site's home page at --
http://ddleague-usa.net
Dorf is a distinctive accessory after the fact to the Raich decision's felony against the nation -- as he is to the South Dakota legislative felony. His only rightful place is in federal prison.
Meanwhile, Dorf gets extra career points in money-power's class war on the little people. He gets extra air miles to fancy conference destinations for hammering the wedge deeper into the emotional abortion rift -- and the emotional medical marijuana rift. Anything that divides the contemptible little people against themselves is the stuff predator elistist legends are made of. The predator elitist Legend Of Dorf is well on its way to greatness in fascist circles around the world.
The wider section of corruption's legislative and judicial bas-relief so well benefited by sophistic opportunists such as Dorf is as depressing as it is politically threatening.
Sandra Day O'Connor, speaking to an audience at Georgetown University, 09 March 2006, made the connection between governmental corruption, the slide to dictatorship, and judiciary problems. Her primary concern seemed to be in maintaining the Court's integrity and the independence of the judiciary against the threats and coercion of right-wing extremists. However, she remarked that judicial reform and the massive impeachment of judges can be debated in the interest of rights and justice -- as long as the debate is not manipulated by and for political hacks.
We should not ignore Mrs. O'Connor's remarks. They were unprecedented in the annals of commentary by Supreme Court judges. They should be considered a major warning, not only of judiciary future, but of judiciary present.
Many of us want the judicial reform and punishment debate. Many of us think that the Court's integrity has long since disappeared. Many of us think that an 'independent judiciary' is primarily an 18th Century sophistry and Machiavellian deceit to ensure control of the commoners by the elites, while boosting predator elitism's gaining, holding, and increasing of social, economic, and political power. Yes, it has, in the past, aided the broader elites community in controlling potential despots. However, that function has been lost in the post-WW2, still accelerating, collapse of checks and balances into collusions.
Today, we live with the usurpation of the presidency done by the independent judiciary. In Bush v. Gore, the Supremes violated the Constitution as well as their oaths to uphold the Constitution, failed to protect the rights of all citizens, created the most massive anti-law regime of our national history, committed treason against the nation, and began the 18 USC 241 conspiracy felony against the rights of all citizens to have a president elected in accord with the Constitution.
By January of 2001, the co-conspirators in that felony against the nation involved the five Supremes (Kennedy, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas), Clinton and many members of his administration, many members of Congress, as well as Bush-Cheney and many members of the Bush Illegitimacy. They are all constitutional criminals and felons-in-waiting. Their only rightful place is in federal prison.
The "independent judiciary" has obviously and massively failed us. The class-race elite and money-power brokers have turned the 'independent judiciary' into an attack vehicle against citizen and states rights for the benefit of profits, power, and the ideology of the far right. Many of us want the class-driven, ideology-driven, coercion-driven federal judiciary made dependent on direct, nonpartisan election and recall by the citizens of the court's jurisdiction -- after the current crop of judicial criminals are impeached, removed, and criminally prosecuted.
Given obvious and pervasive governmental corruption that we cannot control, the time of zero judicial accountability to the sovereign people is past.
Eventually, we the sovereign people will have to adjust our indifference to the slam-bang destruction of our rights. It's not clear to me how much more our massively corrupt state governments and the Bush-led fascist despotism have to do to show us that our citizen and states rights are under attack for the benefit of profits and power. Somebody needs to explain to me what it's like to be under attack and not know it.
We also need to adjust our attitude toward money-power parasites such as Dorf. Their lies break the law when those lies stonewall, whitewash, and cover up to hinder or prevent the apprehension, trial, or punishment of powerful individuals who have perpetrated felonies under the color of law.
Ignoring the violation of constitutional rights with unconstitutional anti-law regimes, we're riding the proverbial greased rail to hell. There seem to be many predator elitists out greasing the rail, and very few riders showing any concern.
Comments? Please Email
Stephen Neitzke, DDL Founder
stephen@ddleague-usa.net
Dura lex, sed lex.
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Page last revised Fri 06 Jul 2007
