U.S. Supreme Court
ICC v. Brimson, 154 U.S. 447 (1897)
Interstate Commerce Commission v. Brimson
No. 883
Argued April 16, 1894
Decided May 26, 1894
154 U.S. 447

“Power given to Congress to regulate interstate commerce does not carry with it authority to destroy or impair those fundamental guarantees of personal rights that are recognized by the Constitution as inhering in the freedom of the citizen.”

“The inquiry whether a witness before the Commission is bound to answer a particular question propounded to him, or to produce books, papers, etc., in his possession and called for by that body, is one that cannot he committed to a subordinate administrative or executive tribunal for final determination. Such a body could not, under our system of government and consistently with due process of law, be invested with authority to compel obedience to its orders by a judgment of fine or imprisonment.”

“Neither branch of the legislative department, still less any merely administrative body, established by Congress, possesses or can be invested with a general power of making inquiry into the private affairs of the citizen. Kilbourn v. Thompson,

Page 154 U. S. 479

103 U. S. 168, 103 U. S. 190. We said in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 116 U. S. 630 — and it cannot be too often repeated — that the principles that embody the essence of constitutional liberty and security forbid all invasions on the part of the government and its employees of the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of his life. As said by MR. JUSTICE FIELD in In re Pacific Railway Commission, 32 F. 241, 250, “of all the rights of the citizen, few are of greater importance or more essential to his peace and happiness than the right of personal security, and that involves not merely protection of his person from assault, but exemption of his private affairs, books, and papers from the inspection and scrutiny of others. Without the enjoyment of this right, all others would lose half their value.”

Now, see: 

The American Community Survey

~

Democrats Use Fiscal Crisis As Weapon To Bash GOP
Investors Business Daily Posted 12/27/2011 07:09 PM ET

Debt: Wasn’t it just last summer Republicans and Democrats nearly came to blows over raising the debt ceiling? Well, guess what — President Obama is back, asking for another $1.2 trillion. Are we being gamed here? (more…)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, we’re not done yet. I’ve got five more years of stuff to do. But
not only saving this country from a great depression. Not only saving the auto industry. But
putting in place a system in which we’re gonna start lowering health care costs and you’re
never gonna go bankrupt because you get sick or somebody in your family gets sick. Making
sure that we have reformed the financial system, so we never again have taxpayer-funded
bailouts, and the system is more stable and secure. Making sure that we’ve got millions of
kids out here who are able to go to college because we’ve expanded student loans and
made college more affordable. Ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Decimating al Qaeda, including
Bin Laden being taken off the field. Restoring America’s respect around the world.
The issue here is not gonna be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you
know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years
against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just
in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to
the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do. And we’re gonna keep on at it.

12-11-11 60 Minutes with Obama interview

From the ACLU 50-State Survey for January of 2012:

• Access to abortion and birth control. [Must keep killing babies.]
• Equal treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered. [Must treat those who display sexual preference the same as those who do not.]
• Protection against racial profiling and discrimination by law enforcement. [Must not profile those most likely to commit terrorism.]
• Equal access for eligible residents to vote. [As opposed to citizens.]
• Non-preferential treatment of any one religion by the government. [Except Islam.]
• Preventing the teaching of creationism and intelligent design from interfering with the teaching of evolution in public school science classes. [When government sanctions a theory it must be protected.  See global warming.]

Let’s see: infant death and dismemberment, sexual obsession, terrorism, illegal aliens, Sharia, spurious government science.  That’s an impressive series of harmful policies to rack up by one organization in one fund-raising mailer.  How did I get on this nutjob mailing list?  Yeah I’m going to send them a check, where’s my pen?

Thank you American law schools.

December 20, 2011
By WALTER E. WILLIAMS
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

Republicans and Democrats, liberals as well as conservatives, have bought into anti-Chinese trade demagoguery. (more…)

Problems with the 07-2011 Draft Oil & Gas Regs proposed for Elbert County Zoning

Page 5:  “…unless approval has been granted pursuant to these regulations from the Director of Community & Development Services (C&DS) or the Board of County Commissioners (Board).”
Are we setting up an unelected czar of oil and gas zoning enforcement, unaccountable to the voters?

Page 6:  “the County Attorney or where the Board deems it appropriate, the District Attorney……may [act]”
Here again, should enforcement of zoning be allowed without the approval of an elected official?

Page 21:  “Safety practices in accordance with state and federal law, including the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970….”
Elbert County should not be in the business of enforcing federal OSHA law.

Page 23:  “The oil and gas facility shall not cause significant degradation of wildlife, including any federal, state or Colorado Natural Heritage Program-identified species of concern, or to their habitat.  At a minimum, the operation shall comply with the CDOW’s recommended…..”
The CDOW, Colorado and the federal government can enforce their own wildlife regulations.  Elbert County does not need to duplicate those efforts.

Page 23:  “When planning facilities, the Applicant shall consult and reference the current wildlife concurrence data, including the CDOW’s Natural Diversity Information Source database…”
Bio-diversity is buzzword science with no greater purpose than stopping development.  It has no place in industry zoning regulations.

Page 25:  “install wildlife crossovers and escape ramps where the trench crosses well-defined game trails”
Presumably this would be for the really smart or well trained wild game, who know how to use such devices.

Page 26:  “The applicant shall identify the proposed source of fresh or potable water required for the oil and gas facility and dust control, along with a letter from the Colorado Division of Water Resources or a copy of the Water Court decree indicating that the water supply source is acceptable for the use at the oil and gas facility.”
Here again, water regulation falls outside of Elbert County’s jurisdiction.  It’s a matter for the State Engineer.

Page 37:  “the right of the county to determine land uses”
Isn’t it the people’s right to determine land use within allowed limits?  I thought government in America was based on limitations, not rights.

Page 39:  “No oil and gas facilities shall cause a reduction in solar radiation…”
Isn’t it a reach to blame the existence or absence of solar radiation on an oil well?

Page 39:  “Greenhouse Gas Reduction”
Zoning regulations should not incorporate the spurious science of global warming language.

Page 40:  “The county finds that the standard industry practice of injecting highly toxic substances under high pressure into the earth for the purpose of fracturing geologic formations poses an unacceptable risk of polluting these invaluable ground water resources.”
This statement ascribes a harmful intent to the oil and gas industry as a “standard practice.”  The statement is prejudicial, unfounded, and not conducive to sound science or good industry relations.

If the Community and Development Services department needs a toxic blend to regulate, look to the toxic combination of subjects below under which this post is filed.

“DECEMBER 14, 2011

Congress mandated purchase of 250 million gallons in 2011. Actual production: 6.6 million.

‘We’ll fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips and stalks or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years.”
—George W. Bush, 2006 State of the Union address (more…)

Obama’s Osawatomie speech

Obama’s change for America is to lower expectations by providing government enforced fair and balanced outcomes for all Americans.  Leave aside the thorny fact that government cannot succeed in producing such an outcome–that it’s completely impossible for government to do that.

Most importantly, the key takeaway from yesterday’s speech is that Obama’s version of the American Dream is an American nightmare where unlimited opportunity becomes ”a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement.”

Sounds all very pleasant, but it’s a far cry from the land of unlimited opportunity where anyone can do or become anything they want if they’re willing to work for it.

People don’t immigrate to America to get by modestly and then quietly die.  That is the life they want to immigrate from, not to!   The American Dream is about unlimited personal and societal growth and creative opportunity.  It’s about a life accessible to anyone that is not limited by heritage, not limited by any other man within a consensual framework, and especially not limited by a government “by and for the people.”

America has the largest middle class of any country because it’s where a lot of people end up after aiming for the top.  If Obama succeeds in convincing Americans to aim for the middle, he will have lowered expectations for all Americans, and the ranks of impoverished Americans will grow.

A president should lead the country by expressing high ideals, not low expectations.  This has always been a problem with both Michelle and Barack.

Passau

Veste Oberhaus

“The fortress was attacked five times between 1250 and 1482. Twice, 1298 and 1367, the citizens of Passau themselves rebelled against the Bishop.”

After a couple hundred years of open government in America and the advent of domestic terrorism, many of our government buildings have been converted to secure fortresses.  Public union demonstrators recently took over the Wisconsin state capital.  There’s no doubt that given access, today’s “occupants” would be camping in, and shouting down all visitors to, government buildings in cities across the country.  Fortress America must now protect itself from its own people.  The Founders would conclude that our republic has been forfeited.  Reasonable political debate does not occur under the threat of force, at the point of a leftist spear.

Landmark Speeches of National Socialism, Edited by Randall L. Bytwerk

• “National Socialism was the most prolific rhetorical movement of the twentieth century.”
• “…[R]hetoric moved a civilized nation to support Nazism, and to close its eyes to the crimes that were not difficult to see.”
• “Everything that Nazism intended was revealed in its rhetoric.”
• “[Hitler] thought that the average person is uninterested in complex arguments, being ruled more by emotion than intellect.  Nazi rhetoric therefore avoided presenting detailed solutions to complex problems.”
• “Propaganda also needed to be one-sided.  Since the masses did not understand complex issues, presenting balanced arguments would only shake their confidence in the rightness of a cause.”
• “A speaker, Hitler thought, should stand before an audience with the fervor of an evangelist preaching a religious faith.”
• “Just as a religion or a church can never stop preaching and explaining the faith in a thousand ways from the pulpit, no more can National Socialism surrender the direct and powerful effect of the speech, which ever and against strengthens the faith of the movement and provides new power for the never-ending struggle.”
• “To maintain power required unceasing efforts to persuade Germans that National Socialism deserved their unconditional allegiance.”
• “Germans did not support Hitler because they expected him to lead them into a ruinous war, but rather because he and his party drew upon deeply rooted values and beliefs.”
• “…Nazism presented itself not as a political party, but as a movement that encompassed everything Germans held to be true and just.”
• “What propaganda avoids saying is at least as important as what it does say.  The Nazis realized that blatant lying often fails, and that people accept some things in general that they reject if they know the details.”

The number of speeches Obama has given since taking office roughly equals the number of days he has been in office.

The editors and columnists at Investor’s Business Daily [Investors.com] regularly provide sound analysis of the Obama administration, however, they may be missing the real nature of Obama.

He’s not just campaigning.  He’s relentlessly propagandizing a dangerous mythology with himself at the center.

The Beasts of Buchenwald by Flint Whitlock

• “The persecutions did not come all at once; they gradually grew more onerous once the Nazis saw that the open harassment of Jews and the imposition of unreasonable restrictions on them were not being objected to by the great bulk of non-Jewish German society. There was, of course, no way for the Jews to know if the Nazi’s threats were substantive or merely idle. There was no way for the Jews of Germany (and, later, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, etc., too) to realize that concentration camps, death camps, gas chambers, mass graves, and ovens were in their future.”
• “By the time they comprehended the enormity of the danger, it was too late.”

A clear lesson from our recent visit to Germany and studies spawned from our visit to the Documentation Center is that, while Hitler was the fearless leader who catalyzed their national socialism, it was the millions of citizens and bureaucrats all doing their parts to fulfill his vision that did the damage. You can blame the leadership for initializing the movement and the programs, but then it took broad efforts by everyone to bring those visions into existence

Today in America we watch the President, and presidential contenders for warning signs. Meanwhile, bureaucracies in the federal, state, county, local and various tax districts grind out on a daily basis volumes of legal pronouncements about what we must do to be in compliance with their authorities. This is a pernicious fascism that proceeds pell-mell every day in pursuit of a mythical perfect society, and it can never reach fruition.

We need to stop this madness, unwind these fatuous authorities.  This myth of the perfectable society has caused enough damage in America.

Have the OWS useful idiots been set up, organized and funded through Obama and paid for by George Soros, to provide an expendable target for the national socialists?

We’ll see. National socialism needs an enemy. Conservatives are wise to this gang, they’re not going to play along, and they’re too well armed. Occupants, however, are stupid. It’s not plausible that Obama and Soros would make them the standard bearers for leftist policy. So they must be there for another purpose, and cannon fodder, so to speak, is about all that’s left.

Imagine what businesses and employment opportunities would arise in a free country without business taxation.