Tag Archives: history

DUMP DOBBS

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The United States Supreme Court has gone beyond the bounds of  Article Three of the Constitution in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) 597 U.S. 215. Thereby the Court has ignored Amendments to the Constitution, ignored the legislative history of the Constitution and breached the Separation of Powers set forth in the Constitution.

The Constitution makes the American people the sovereign, not the states, which have no powers over their residents not granted to states by “We the people.” The states can only exercise policing powers within Constitutional guidelines. Post Civil War amendments of the Constitution state the individual states had no authority to define or interfere with freedoms and rights of American citizens. The Thirteenth Amendment and subsequent amendments provide many times:Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Neither the Courts nor the states have power to define or delineate unenumerated rights retained by and held by THE PEOPLE. 

The status of future generations came up in the 1787 Philadelphia Convention. It is well-recognized many delegates were well-educated and well-read, being the best lawyers and many were the most experienced legislators in the United States. They knew the laws regarding future generations because each state had adopted the statutes of Great Britain to limit the activities of their citizens. They knew Biblical law, from the LORD God, stating life begins with the first breath: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Genesis 2:7. Thus, there was no debate of when life and the human soul began, with the first breathe. The Bible explains the origin of man as God brought human beings to the earth — the same God that gave Moses the Ten Commandments — the same God who is the father of Jesus. 

For three centuries and longer the laws of Britain did not recognize a child in the womb as a human being. They were expectancies, who became human with the first breath at birth. Men of the 1787 Convention chose to follow Genesis and not to change those statutes of expectancies.

The reasons to have a child in the womb be an expectancy multiply: Stop tax evasion, prevent confusion of land titles, prohibit restrictions of land sales and easier management and oversight of trusts. Eventually the British Parliament in the seventeenth century formulated the Rule Against Perpetuities to prevent fraud and abuses by citizens. Every law student in America, and thereby every attorney, judge and justice remembers encountering this collection of Anglo/American jurisprudence in law courses of real property, future interests, probate and trusts, and generally disliking those subjects.

The Dobbs unilaterally changed and completely disregarded the Old Testament, the LORD God’s making of man and delivering the human soul starts with the first breath from God. Making expectancies of unborn, non-breathing human beings (no definition in law) with Constitutional rights is religiously and legally untenable. Dobbs and more recent opinions are so poorly written, reasoned and analyzed that the Supreme Court and other Courts have wantonly omitted the Biblical authorities and centuries of controlling authorities in Anglo/American jurisprudence, rendering them a mere fillip of unlearned hands.  

Answers are found in the 1788 state conventions ratifying the Constitution. Those are the legislative history of the Constitution, not the Federalist Papers which are mere newspaper articles informing the residents of New York about the Constitution.

The United States Supreme Court has gone beyond the bounds of its jurisdiction under Article Three of the Constitution in Dobbs. The Court has disregarded whether a right exists is not a determination that can be made under Article Three of the Constitution. Whether a Right exists is a Political Question, not a legal question under Article 3. Article 1 of the Constitution sets forth the frame work by which Americans exercise their sovereignty. The American people can also enumerate Constitutional rights and freedoms through super majority amendments to the Constitution.(Article 5 ) 

The Founding Fathers determined the issues in Dobbs by identifying them as unenumerated rights. (Virginia State Constitutional Convention, June 24,1788). Enumerated and unenumerated rights were hot topics, cooled by Edmund Pendleton, the best judge/justice in America and in the English speaking world. The American people were the sovereign but every right could not be enumerated – too many situations, too many people living in a expanded land of liberty. Pendleton recommended, “Declare the principle as more safe than the Enumeration.” James Madison did so in the Ninth Amendment of the Bill of Rights: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Rights not enumerated in the Constitution remain with the American people. No Congress, without going through the amending process, and no State, and no Executive, and certainly no Supreme Court justice can “deny or disparage” unenumerated rights “retained by the people.” Unenumerated rights are political questions to be decided by the American people. 

References supporting the enumerated/unenumerated Constitutional rights follow: 10 Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Virginia, vol. 3, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, 1993, June 24, 1788, p. 1520, Madison at ratifying convention: “If an enumeration be made of our rights, will it not be implied that everything omitted, is given to the General Government? Has not the Honorable Gentleman [Patrick Henry] himself, admitted, that an imperfect enumeration is dangerous?” David John Mays, Ed., The Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendleton, Uni. Press of Virginia, Char., 1967, vol. 2, p. 533, Pendleton to Richard Henry Lee; Oliver Ellsworth, Landholder VI, 3 Doc His of the Rat of the Const, Connecticut, St His Soc. of Ws, Madison, 1978, December 10, 1787, p. 481; PJM, vol. 10, Uni. Chi, Chicago, 1977, p. 315, 317, George Lee Tuberville to JM, December 11, 1787, make sure enumerated rights not listed not “surrendered.” House Annals RE: Bill of Rights debates, August 17, 1789, p. 783-784.    

The Dobbs court in its ignorance intentionally disregarded the Ninth Amendment, and relied on the Tenth Amendment, as though the states have general sovereignty, all the while ignoring (1) the final four words of the Tenth Amendment: …or to the people, and ignoring (2) the effect of post-Civil War Amendments eliminating powers of individual States to restrict rights of Americans.The failure of research, understanding and writing in Dobbs is appalling. 

Pretending to overlook the Ninth Amendment and failing to discuss its controlling effect is beyond pathetic. Any parent would be justified in whipping a child who claimed unenumerated rights are bogus and factitious. Yet the Dobbs Court, purportedly representing the most elevated legal minds that Harvard and Yale Law Schools can produce, wrote, “…the Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any Constitutional provision.”.”   

It is easy say that abortion is not found in the Constitution, just as the right to privacy is not there. Related ninth Amendment rights affected by Dobbs flow beyond abortion: Male/female relationships, families, confidentiality of marital communications, marital privileges, making medical choices, making financial choices, planning a life together or live separately, and on, and on and on, so many, they cannot be listed. Those rights are unidentified and unenumerated under the Ninth Amendment, retained by the people.

Yet, the Supreme Court ruled, if it’s not enumerated in the Constitution, it does not exist, while overlooking the Virginia Constitutional Convention: If an enumeration be made of our rights, will it not be implied that everything omitted, is given to the General Government? The existence of unenumerated rights protected by the Constitution have been long understood by the American people. Loretta Lynn wrote The Pill and sang it in the early 1960s:

All these years I’ve stayed at home,

while you’ve had your fun.

And every year that’s gone by, 

Another baby’s come.

There’s gonna be some changes made 

right here on nursery hill. 

you’ve set this chicken your last time,

‘cause now I’ve got the pill.

That is the current public opinion, which now supports broader establishment of unenumerated rights in this area of personal health, family matters, societal-well being, child upbringing and community welfare. In lower Federal courts and in states today are cases using the Dobbs opinion to restrict and to eliminate these unenumerated rights of Americans of the Ninth Amendment. These court rulings should stop.

The Supreme Court has authority to control those cases by (1) lifting impositions and impediments made by the lower courts, or (2) to overrule Dobbs and move all cases to Supreme Court jurisdiction. (3) There, the nine people can easily write an opinion: “We forgot about the Ninth Amendment. Sorry, Loretta. The unenumerated rights of Americans remain undisturbed. Dobbs is overruled. The End.”

THE SECOND AMENDMENT

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l786 Western Massachusetts, rebels yelling about liberties and freedoms and disrupting the local governments, alarmed local citizens and the population of the United States. [T.H. Breen, The Will of the People, the last chapter of three pages describes the distinctions between liberties and freedoms.] The persons who fought and guided the United States through the Revolutionary War saw danger from Shays Rebellion, and meet in Philadelphia eight months later to write a Constitution. One man had spent years reading and researching problems of governing a country as diverse as the United States with odd components, varied interests and factious political forces – elements seemingly to preclude Union. He was James Madison. 

In the 1787 Philadelphia Convention the Founding Fathers relied on experience in government and in the country, and rejected experiment. They finished their work in September 1787, uncertain it would work. Upon exiting the Hall, a citizen asked what sort of government the men had come up with. Benjamin Franklin responded: “A republic, if you can keep it.”  Although called the Father of the Constitution, Madison responded the Constitution was a product of “many hands and many minds.” The States ratified the Constitution in 1788.   

As a Congressman from Virginia in June 1789, Madison wrote and introduced 17 Amendments to the Constitution. They remained on House table. In August 1789 Madison got the 17 Amendments under debate and voted on. Many Amendments were approved by the necessary two-thirds (2/3) vote. Americans did not need legal training to understand the Second Amendment. The legislative history is a sufficient guide.

The Second Amendment in Madison’s original group read:

“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed;

a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a 

free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms 

shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

The House changed words but left principles from Madison’s original: The Senate revised: being the best security of a free country to being necessary to the security of a free State. The change of language “being the best security” to “being necessary to the security” shifts the emphasis from the Well-regulated militia being the best security to The well Regulated militia being one element to the security of a free State. 

The change from country, an area of landmasses and people suggests a liberty or a freedom. It implies an individual right. However, the Second Amendment reads Security of a free State, saying that the State is the government and is an element of many to be balanced with others  Hence the right to bear arms is not the best security of the State; instead the right is one element of the security to be balanced with other elements. e.g. how violent are the people bearing arms. (See The Will of the People, supra; see Shays Rebellion.)

The Senate also used a grammatical device, an asyndeton, a favorite tool of eighteenth century writers. The asyndeton in the Second Amendment uses fewer words, supplies a legal condition, thus modifying the one clause, its phrases and words; and the condition compels that all words be read together, each given a meaning consistent with other words, and with experience. In the 1789 Senate the Second Amendment became as is read today, 

A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free 

state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The legislative history of the Second Amendment includes Madison’s original version where the right to bear arms stands alone, and implies an individual’s right to keep and bear arms is construed without limitations.  

But the Senate version and the Second Amendment itself imposes restrictions and limitations by setting forth a condition: A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state. Reacting to the violent experiences during Shay’s rebellion, the founding fathers in the Senate restricted the right and expressly  “ being necessary,” “keep and bear arms for…” “a well-regulated militia.” Although the final version makes keeping and bearing arms a right, it makes significant changes by replacing necessary to the security of the country to necessary to the security of a free State. The State which the Second Amendment refers to was the national government, the only state which the Constitution restrained. It is the same meaning given to State by Louis XIV, “I am the State.” The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) made the United States Constitution applicable to the states of the Union.

Since militias are no long used by the United States government (the last was Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders?), the absence of Militias today does not  eliminate “well regulated” in the Second Amendment. “Well regulated” implies the men are disciplined, their weapons are in order and each is under command. In the amendment individuals are not mentioned, meaning that to keep and bear arms is a right, which must benefit the security of the government. Men running around with arms but not under command, are not well regulated; they are a mob of armed Americans whatever the mindset, collective or individual.

The Second Amendment itself produces the safeguard. The people keep and bear the nation’s arsenal which is A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free 

state,logically is the major premise of the Amendment.The right to keep and bear arms is the minor premise, which is subordinate to the security of a free State, meaning the security of the government: The right to keep and bear arms, being subordinate to security, are subject to a State’s (government’s) statutes, rules and regulations.

Exactly what have the American people imposed on themselves for “the security of a free State?” A grand old man of Virginia politics, George Mason, supplies the answer:

We came as equals into this world, and equals shall we go out

of it. All men are by nature equally free and independent. To

protect the weaker from the injuries and insults of the stronger

were societies first formed; when men entered into compacts

to give up some of their natural rights, that by union and 

mutual assistance they might secure the rest. But they gave

up no more than the nature of the thing required…

The American people have limited freedoms and rights. The Second Amendment includes a “right.” Rights differ from liberties and freedoms. Narrower than liberties, they are not freedoms. Rights existed during the eighteenth century, and were well-known to the Founding Fathers. The sovereign, the King of Great Britain, George III, created a right when he allowed the East India Company to market tea. Americans objected with the 1773 Tea Parties in Boston and other harbors. Rights exist today: Social Media companies have rights granted by Congress which prohibits lawsuits. 

The King of England could dissolve the monopoly of the East India Company. And today Congress can remove immunities afforded Social Media companies. Throughout history and our experience as Americans, rights are political decisions; they can be created or changed by the legislature, or perhaps by the Executive. The Supreme Court can scrutinize a right under the rules of judicial review, but it cannot formulate a right, a freedom or a liberty, which raises and involves political questions.

Madison agreed with this understanding of Rights. In 1799 Madison wrote The Report of 1800, a ten-year evaluation of the United States under the Constitution. An issue Madison addressed was the common law of England. Must American courts be bound by that common law, post-Constitution, as it existed before the Constitution? Madison’s response was NO. The American people did not ratify the Common Law of England in 1788; it is not part of the Constitution. However, Madison recognized that English common law words and definitions, (which he called technical phrases) were incorporated in the Constitution itself, into state constitutions and into statutes. However each usage had to meet the requirements of the United States Constitution.

In Marbury v. Madison (1803) 5 U.S. 137, John Marshall, Founding Father and Chief Justice of the United States, set forth rules of the effect of the Constitution for Judges and Justices:

It cannot be presumed that any clause in the Constitution is 

intended to be without effect; and, therefore, such a 

construction is inadmissible, unless the words require it.

(5 U.S. at 174)

In some cases…the Constitution must be looked into by 

judges. And if they can open it at all, what part of it are

they forbidden to read or to obey?

(5 U.S. at 179)

As a starting point Justice Marshall looked solely to the words in the Constitution, which sets the rule, sweeping away all prior authorities, acts or practices from previous courts, legislatures, Constitutions, common law practices and experiences. That cleansing is the effect  of the United States Constitution, its meaning and enforcement. Interpretation of the Constitution’s words is a stand alone supreme law and set of rules. Prior inconsistent amendments, statutes, court opinions, rules and experiences are irrelevant, immaterial and incompetent: Those once-time infamous rules and statutes were the reason for the United States Constitution of a new governing document, which the American people ratified.

In 1791 James Madison in an argument before the House of Representatives set forth rules of interpretation for the Constitution:

An interpretation that destroys the very characteristic of the 

Government can not be just.

Where the meaning is clear, the consequences, whatever 

they may be, are to be admitted – where doubtful, it is 

fairly triable by its consequences.

In controverted cases, the meaning of the  parties to the

instrument, if to be collected by reasonable evidence, is 

a proper guide.

Contemporary and concurrent expositions are a reasonable 

evidence of the meaning of the parties.

In admitting or rejecting a constructive authority, not only

the degree of its incidentally to an express authority is to be

regarded, but the degree of its importance also, since on this 

will depend the probability or improbability of it being left

to the construction. (Annals of Congress, February 2, 1791, p. 1946)

Hence, the right to bear arms is modified by the security of free governments, which can impose statutes, rules and regulations arms. 

In its opinions the current Supreme Court cited no authority from the Constitution, James Madison, John Marshall, or well known rules of interpretation. Indeed, this Supreme Court dismissed controlling interpretations and construction in Heller, 554 U.S. 590, 603:  It is dubious to rely on history [proposals in state conventions, debates in Congress] to interpret a text that was widely understood…] This non-judicial, reckless statement invites courts nationwide to reject legislative history of any statute, amendment or regulation, whatever the subject.

Proclaiming such idiocy, the Supreme Court cases have left the Second Amendment a shambles. Supreme Court opinions tell individual Americans to buy guns and have them at all times in their lives, yet there is no inkling that any Supreme Court Justice has read the Second Amendment or considered its legislative history. The Justices refused to construe and interpret it. No Justice understands the effect of a Constitution; ignoring distinctions among liberties, freedoms and rights. All Supreme Court justices treat the Constitution as though it were a statute, changeable at will by Congress, any legislature or a Court. The Justices have ignored the historical experience of the Second Amendment which gave rise to the language of the Amendment. Heller, 554 U.S. at 603, dismissing the historical setting giving rise to the 1787 Philadelphia Conventon, Ratification of the Constitution in 1788 and the legislative background of the Bill of Rights in 1789. The Supreme Court writing is soggy, flabby and non-legal. And Supreme Court justices have amended to Constitution by saying there are “fundamental rights” with no support from any provision or language in the Constitution. The Supreme Court claims the Second Amendment has a “guarantee” and has an “unqualified command,” telling Americans, to own [and use] guns is O.K.

In at least two Supreme Court cases, District of Columbia v. Heller (2014) 554 U.S. 570 and New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022) 597 U.S. 1, the justices demonstrate they are illiterate; they do not know what an asyndeton is or its function within the language. Instead, they claim, 

The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its 

prefatory clause and its operative clause. The former does not 

limit grammatically, but rather announces a purpose.

A comedian could not write a better joke about the English language, but the Supreme Court’s statement is false, non-legal and demonstrates illiteracy, ignorance and sloth. These Justices ignored guidelines from Chief Justice John Marshall by divorcing one clause in the Second Amendment from the other, and Marshall’s instruction to read all the words together. Indeed, in these Supreme Court cases, the justices have cobbled together definitions, polemics, law review articles and errant commentaries leading to omissions, absurdities and unintended outcomes which actually threaten peacefulness in the United States through their opinions of the Second Amendment.

The Supreme Court repeats more mistakes. 

“In Heller, 554 U.S. 570 and McDonald, 561 U.S. 742  we held ,

that the Second Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment protect 

an ‘individual right to keep and bear arms’ for self-defense.” 

Where does the Constitution explicitly say that? The Supreme Court Justices delete from the Second Amendment, keeping and bearing arms as “being necessary to the security of a free State,” preferring current Supreme Court words, “self-defense.” Who allowed Supreme Court Justices to expunge language from the Constitution and replace it with their own whims and fantasies plus deluded speculations, and historical misstatements giving the Second Amendment an entirely different meaning – individuals have unfettered rights to bear arms? The American people did not; Supreme Court justices are not legislators. They are unelected members of the Judiciary restricted to follow Article III and have hereby demonstrated they are illiterate and uneducated.

In Bruen 597 U.S. 1 the majority of the court claimed Heller, 554 U.S.570, supplies “a textual analysis. “ The fake analysis is devoid of relevant and pertinent American history (e..g Shay’s Rebellion); it lacks the experience, the fears and anticipations of the Founding Fathers ( e.g. Benjamin Franklin). It omits the legislative history of the Second Amendment (Madison’s original submission, changes in the House and the Senate final version); it fails to construct and interpret the amendment by calling such analyses “dubious.” And the Justices make a right, a freedom tending toward unfettered liberties. Finally each Supreme Court justice has demonstrated that each flunked Contract and Constitution Law courses at Harvard and Yale: Cited in the opinions are cases, commentaries and statutes from the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, words and stuff which the United States Constitution eliminated and replaced upon ratification in 1788. Hey! But most of these Supreme Court justices graduated from the lesser law schools at Harvard University and Yale. Plainly, the Supreme Court did not arrive at a “normal or ordinary meaning” of the Second Amendment understandable by any competent, literate American. (Heller, 554 U.S. at 576-577) Indeed it would take a team of experienced research attorney three months plus a slew of law librarians to collect the antiquated, arcane, obscure references which the Supreme Court cited in Heller and Breun, each citation is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial.

The Bruen court ignores the role and function of a Constitution. By definition a Constitution, including the United States Constitution, set out rules on specific matters. When a court, or state finds circumstances on point, that person, party, state or court must follow the language of the Constitution. Marbury (1803) 5 U.S. at 174. A court, a party or a state cannot bring added words and terms and claim this is what the First Congress, and all the ratifying states, meant. John Marshall observed, “Such a construction is inadmissible..”

To construct and to interpret a right using legal opinions from cases, commentaries and law review articles are the wrong sources. The outlook of the judiciary — attorneys, judges and justices is much too narrow, much too constrained, much too susceptible to prejudices, biases, irrationalities and incorrect thinking, and finally, those people lack imagination. Yet, these are the citationswhich the Supreme Court used to support its Second Amendment speculations, flights and wanderings. A right and a freedom represents what society thinks and is willing to accept as the basic law. Sometimes whether a right exists comes from newspapers. But the Second Amendment itself provides metes and bounds: “…being necessary to the security of a free State.” Eliminate that, and America is endangered, in 1786 Western Massachusetts and today, when the current invitation from the Supreme Court is: Violence be damned! Buy guns! Carry them around. Use them and kill other Americans. Claim self-defense! Indeed, it is completely absurd that state and local laws forbid citizens from carrying knives and other weapons, but the Second Amendment, according to  the Bruen Supreme Court, allows any American, no matter the citizen’s state of mind, to buy, carry and use guns.

Right off, the Founding Fathers knew the United States had a precarious foundation. Even in the First Amendment Americans have the freedom to assemble, but Americans must do it peaceably, a restraint that many Presidents of American Universities have overlooked. Americans do not know one another, but they understand the Constitution. Consent and compromise are most likely without carrying arms: As George Mason observed Americans are give up rights for the betterment of the greater society under the Constitution.

This Supreme Court current Second Amendment opinions also are logically inconsistent within themselves. If Militia means “all able bodied men” as the Heller court wrote, then the Second Amendment can be read,”well regulated able bodied men, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Well regulated able bodied men cannot be interpreted to mean the Second Amendment supports mob action, or bestows individual rights. The amendment means each man is physically and mentally fit, and their arms and weapons are well regulated, subject to rules, regulations and statutes of the military controlled by civil governments. 

Yet, this Supreme Court envisions the United States to be a country of the 1820s:

[I]n 1827 Representative Vinton of Ohio apparently ran little risk of disfavor among his constituents when he said that, no matter to what distant district the Indians might be removed, “The pioneers would be there in advance of them; men of the most 

abandoned and desperate character, who hang upon the Indians to 

defraud them. You cannot run away from these men nor shut them 

out from access to Indians, scattered over the wilderness; for,

with the pioneers, the law is a jest, and the woods, their element.”

Clark, Dan Elbert, The West In American History,  Thomas Y. Crowell,

N.Y. 1937, p. 223.

The Supreme Court has completely discarded George Mason’s statement of government: Rights and freedoms are limited to protect society, not to afford individuals liberty to abuse and kill other Americans under the guise of self defense. The Supreme Court Second Amendment opinions dismiss the United States Constitution and any role of government to control citizens in a civil society, especially when any individual is holding and using a gun.The example given by Representative Vinton is a statement of Americans running amok, which has recurred throughout American history and sometimes in big cities. Armed with weapons Americans are now prone to believe each is King of the Mountain and pull the trigger. The Supreme Court, justices each having security, have legislated that the remainder of society ought to live in a chaos of violence, and be subjected to violence by whim and fancy.   

How to make up rights and freedoms, enumerated and unenumerated, in the Constitution? It is a political process under Article One of the Constitution, not a judicial process under Article Three. Rights and freedoms come from the education, experience and knowledge beyond any single individual, especially justices ensconced in chambers or on gifted-vacations. Formation of rights comes by “many hands and many minds” splashing across disciplines, thinking, judgments and communications. Rights are primarily a legislative function. The Judiciary is not the forum to conceive and to entertain such processes and procedures to arrive at creating and expressing such rights.

The Second Amendment Supreme Court cases must be overruled immediately. Peace and security can come to the America.

United States Constitution: Experience not experiment, Supreme Court Legislators, Justices Changing Words of United States Constitution; Distrust of Supreme Court Justices

CONGRESS DECIDES VOTING RIGHTS

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Spring 2026 the Supreme Court will decide a Voting Rights case, Louisiana vs. Callais, and in its ruling the Supreme Court is likely to disregard American history, American experience and the express language of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, when the court rules that southern states can create white congressional districts to the disadvantage of citizens of color.  Other Amendments may come into play. Voting Rights encompasses gerrymandering, racial unequal representation, eliminating representatives of persons of color, sex (women) and youth (eighteen year old voting), imposing conditions to vote, impeding voting registration, allowing individual states to interfere during elections, corruption and many other activities and deeds which encumber the access of Americans to the ballot box. 

The Supreme Court has explicit Constitutional restraints, prohibiting it from ruling on any voting rights issue. Congress sets the rules. The Constitution makes voting rights, political issues, not legal issues, which Constitutional Amendments give entirely to Congress:

The Fifteenth Amendment, section 2, reads: The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. (1870)

The Nineteenth Amendment reads in part: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. (1920)

The Twenty-Third Amendment, section 2, reads: The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. (1961)

The Twenty-Sixth Amendment, section 2, reads: The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. (1970)

Each of these Amendments changes the Constitution of 1787 which originally left voting rights to the states and the Courts.. Since the Constitution was ratified, Americans adopted and advanced these Amendments to “form a more perfect union.”

When Congress makes legislative choices, founded on facts and opinions about American society, it sets the rules on voting. Under Article Three of the Constitution the Supreme Court does not carry out those legislative functions when deciding voting rights laws. It has no power; voting rights do not come within judicial processes for judicial review.. The Supreme Court likes to say nonjustiability. Nor do voting rights come within the purview of any other inferior legislative body or court. Each court must follow Congressional Acts and its legislative history. Hence, the United States Supreme Court is unable to interpret the Voting Rights Act contrary its provisions and to the words of the Fifteenth Amendment.

Indeed, the Supreme Court must defer to Congressional legislation and enforce the Act favoring its legality and legitimacy from every inference and implication. The Supreme Court no longer has the ability to interpret legal issues of equal protection, states rights, or privileges and immunities, or other legal theories to be decided by a court. INSTEAD, each case involving the Voting Rights Act becomes a matter of Constitutional construction, and the only remedy action of any person has are legislative remedies in Congress.

The Rules of Construction include (1) reading and comprehending all words of each amendment to give each of them the greatest effect. (2)  Words, provisions and rules which add to governmental powers must be read in conformity with already present words, in concert with such powers in the original. And (3) provisions and rules that are contrary to or which do to meet the prescriptions of the amendment are superseded, removed and replaced. (4) An amendment may cause a reconstitution of Presidential powers under Article Two.

In 1789 James Madison attempted to eliminate the third general rule in Congress. He proposed interlacing each amendment into the Constitution in the area where it changed the Constitution. Contrary words would be deleted. Annals of Congress, August 13, 1789. Madison’s rational came from the experience of Virginia where a Constitution and Supplemental Amendments presented difficulties. Selby, John The Revolution in Virginia, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamburg, 1789, p. 103-104. The First Congress failed to adopt Madison’s approach to amending the Constitution.

To analyze the effect of an amendment, the court should compare facts, circumstances and situations before the amendment to those after the amendment. Along with the Fifteenth Amendment the effect of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) comes into play. Again the Amendment provides Congress has plenary powers, and the States have lost powers and authority to perform or do an array of deeds and acts against their own residents after 1869: The Bill of Rights is extended to residents of each state. Residents have equal protection rights, which belongs to individual human beings. Due Process and rights to jury trials are guaranteed. And the right to vote and equal representation are civl rights. And a state can be penalized if a state legislature bars targeted residents from voting or from gaining full representation which acts might include gerrymandering, Section 2, Fourteenth Amendment:

But where the right to vote at any election for the choice of

electors, for President and Vice-President, the Executive

and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the 

Legislature of such State, is denied to any of the male

inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,

abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other 

crime, the basis of representation there shall be reduced

in the proportion which the number of such male citizens

shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-

one years of age in such State.  

Americans should observe the powers and authority of each state are greatly diminished. Every right, power, freedom and immunity is held by residents, each a citizen of the United States. Those rights, powers, freedoms and immunities are not States Rights, presumably existing before the Civil War. 

That issue raises old claims and arguments about States Rights, see the Kentucky Revolutions and Virginia Resolutions (both available online). Observe in its final form the Kentucky Resolutions are unlike the original which Thomas Jefferson gave to Wilson Cary Nichols for delivery to North Carolina in 1798. In the Report of 1800 James Madison responded to the opposition to States Rights in an analysis which is incomplete. The Fourteenth Amendment wiped away all States Rights issues. Today, residents, not the State, may bring lawsuits, individually or collectively. A State itself can petition Congress or it can contact its Representatives and Senators. 

The Fourteenth Amendment and all Voting Rights Amendments come from American experience, the Civil War. Today, Americans owe a debt to the 642,427 Union soldiers who were casualties of that War to save the Union, the Constitution and its framework. Thereupon, the Constitutional Amendments and the Voting Rights Acts should be given full force and effect.

Distrusting Supreme Court Justices comes from long and familiar American experiences. Thomas Jefferson warned his friend, James Madison, about wild, ill-balanced, unlearned, unelected justices with life-time appointments who would make political decisions and undermine or destroy the Constitution. While the Constitution was being argued and ratified in state conventions in 1788, other Americans gave the same or similar opinions. Fearful an active debate over the Supreme Court would derail the Constitution Ratifying conventions, Madison buried the best of The-Supreme-Court-Is-Dangerous essays, Brutus, so they were not collected and printed until 1971. PJM, vol. 10, Uni. Chi, Chicago, 1977, p. 200, note 4, citing William Jeffery Jr., University of Cincinnati Law Review XL, 1971, p. 665-777; 13 Doc His of the Rat of the Constitution, Commentaries, Vol. 1, St. His Soc of WS, Madison, 1981, p. 347, the New York Brutus should not be confused with Bruti from other states e.g Virginia. 

First-hand Americans have suffered from reckless, ignorant, bigoted, stupid justices using Supreme Court opinions to make political decisions and to force judicially-created law on Americans. Roger Taney, slaveowner of Maryland and Chief Justice of the United States, wrote Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) 60 U.S. 393, wherein that Chief Justice wantonly and recklessly expressed hatreds, biases and prejudices through hundreds of pages of the official reports. Dred Scott is the worst opinion the Supreme Court has ever published..

By breaching the Separation of Powers in Dred Scott, Taney wrote: Slaves were property to be moved anywhere within the United States without a change of legal standing; slaves, and perhaps freed African-Americans, were not citizens of the United States (hence being born in the United States now makes one a citizen); slaves were not human beings, they were property; slaves had no protection under the Constitution. Congress itself never had Constitutional authority to control slavery or control its spread into territories. Thereby Slavery could not be barred from any Territory or possession of the United States.

Taney was wrong about no Congressional powers to control slavery and limit it. In August 1789 James Madison had the first congress ratify the Northwest Ordinances which prevented slavery in the Northwest Territories. President George Washington signed that statute.  

The Dred Scott opinion helped bring on the Civil War (1861-1865). After the War, Congress overruled the Dred Scott case by passing the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment, forbidding involuntarily servitude, and in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment, forbidding state interference with all rights and freedoms enjoyed by Americans throughout each of the United States, and the Fifteenth Amendment. Each of these Amendments reaffirms distrust of Supreme Court Justices by moving powers, authority and jurisdiction to Congress: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Replacing the collective thinking of Congress and the President with that of a judicial majority, the Supreme Court Justices, today, advocate a return to the glory years of Roger Taney.  In a recent voting rights case in 2025 the Supreme Court asked on March 2, 2023 for further briefing to consider a legal theory – Independent State Legislative Doctrine. Does the Independent State Legislature Doctrine remotely sound like it complies with restrictions in Amendments 14, 15, 19, 23 and 26, above, giving power only to Congress? NO!. The Supreme Court was acting as a legislature, breaching the Separation of Powers in the Constitution, using wishes, biases, prejudices, ignorance, and the narrow thinking of non-elected Justices to move and to delegate Constitutional duties obligations to individual States. That Court considered the Independent State Legislative Doctrine was legitimate and wrote an opinion, rather than give it a curt per cerium send off denying it completely.

Today, the Supreme Court in Louisiana vs. Callois is wondering whether to eliminate language of race and color from the Fifteenth Amendment, plus completely ignore instructions of paragraph 2 of that Amendment. 

However any Supreme Court opinion about Voting Rights should be 9-0 in favor of the existing the Voting Rights Act passed by Congress.The Court should make all inferences in favor of the Constitutionality of Voting Rights Act and overrule all contrary prior decisions. Thereby, the Supreme Court will take a lesson from Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers and stop Judicial Tyranny in the United States of America. Thereafter, integrity can begin to return to the Supreme Court..

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S MORON AT UNITED NATIONS POST?

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At a Senate hearing, President Trump’s moron (unemployed white guy, sketchy beard, about 50, overweight, memory deficient), had a confirmation grilling about thoughts he wanted to advocate at a United Nation’s post. He lamented the decline of white culture in America, especially in churches and in music. He could provide no examples except for Bad Bunny.

White churches are much more submissive than Black churches, where congregations are explosive, interrupting and responding to ministers, pastors or priests. There may also be movements like dancing, and always good singing. Which America should we follow to Make the country Great Again? The fantasies of a 2026 white moron who knows nothing about the histories of white churches and dominations: Congregationalists banished Anne Hutchinson; Congregationalists despised Quakers and reacted violently; Eighteenth century reactions in the South against Methodists and Baptists (savior James Madison); violence against Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists, camp meetings like the ones described in Huckleberry Finn and by Sinclair Lewis in Elmer Gantry?

If there is one arena where black culture might be reduced, it is politics and religions in churches. African Americans used churches as xantionaries making politics part of many sermons. That affinity is why Black Americans are well-versed in the Old Testament. Litwack, Leon, Trouble In Mind, Vintage, N.Y. 1998, Chapter 7, p. 340. However, since white people cannot learn politics through discourse and discussion, they now need distorted versions of faith to guide themselves the wrong, winding way.

President Trump’s U.N. moron is so far removed from Making American Great Again that he should leave the country and return to his chemical roots.  

MUSIC.  Bad Bunny is the end for Trump’s moron. President Trump’s clown likely came from an Elon Musk test-tube. By simple, direct and honest public performances, music of Black Americans brought jazz, syncopation, the blues into music of the nineteenth/twentienth centuries. Americans should think of composers: Dvorak Symphony Number 9; George Gershwin, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Rachmaninoff (Fourth Piano Concert played by composer) for boosts from Black themes and rhythms, plus earlier expressions by Louis Moreau Gottschalk whom Frederick Chopin heard play and approved his music.

Of course, Americans all know that Elvis Presley always had to sing and appear in white-face, so he could sing, You ain’t nothing but a hound-dog. just a-crying all the time….

I hope President Trump’s moron-nominee succeeds because I don’t want anymore sway from Black Society and culture – like faith, hope and charity – to seep into American white society and influences, bearing and attitudes to change the country. 

TO THE BOYS AND GIRLS OF THE SUPREME COURT

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Sammy Alito’s draft opinion to overrule Roe vs. Wade argues, “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision including the one on which defenders of Roe…now chiefly rely – the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

God help us! And God Bless the Founding Fathers! The 1788 Constitutional Conventions of the states reveal the legislative intent and legislative history about enumerated and unenumerated rights and freedoms, according to James Madison. Madison was a complete, recognizable authority of the Constitution in 1788. In 1789 Madison wrote what became the Bill of Rights.

The Virginia Constitutional Convention is the most complete record. A Bill of Rights came up in June 1788. Opponents of the Constitution used every argument to block the paper: Should there be a constitutional ratification conditioned on a Bill of Rights being adopted? Or should there be ratification plus recommended supplementary amendments? Madison did not like either proposal. He disengaged ratification from conditions, and he diminished the value of the subsequent amendments.

Enumerated and unenumerated rights were hot topics, cooled by the best judge/justice in America and in the English speaking world. Edmund Pendleton knew the American people were the sovereign and that every freedom and right could not be enumerated – too many situations, too many people living over a expanded land of liberty. Pendleton recommended the negative: “Declare the principle as more safe than the Enumeration.”

James Madison did so in the Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Rights and freedoms enumerated in the Constitution stay with Americans, the sovereign. No Congress and not the Executive, and no Supreme Court justice can “deny or disparage” unenumerated rights “retained by the people.”

So boys and girls, study the 1788 Constitutional Conventions. Americans have enumerated and unenumerated rights. References follow:

10 Doc His of the Rat of the Constitution, Virginia, vol. 3, St His Soc of Wisconsin, Madison, 1993, June 24, 1788, p. 1520, Madison at ratifying convention: “If an enumeration be made of our rights, will it not be implied that everything omitted,
is given to the General Government? Has not the Honorable Gentleman [Patrick Henry] himself, admitted, that an imperfect enumeration is dangerous?” David John Mays, Ed., The Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendleton, Uni. Press of Virginia, Char., 1967, vol. 2, p. 533, Pendleton to Richard Henry Lee; Oliver Ellsworth, Landholder VI, 3 Doc His of the Rat of the Const, Connecticut, St His Soc of Ws, Madison, 1978, December 10, 1787, p. 481; PJM, vol. 10, Uni. Chi, Chicago, 1977, p. 315, 317, George Lee Tuberville to JM, December 11, 1787, make sure enumerated rights not listed not “surrendered.” House Annals, August 17, 1789, p. 783-784.

Next write another draft opinion and submit it to the sovereign, the American people, for their ratification.

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WARLORD

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Carlo D’Este

This excellent history/biography uses Winston Churchill as a model to show British ways of war, the British mindset during war and British systems of making war. This biography is enlightening yet unsympathetic to Churchill and British diverting methods as World War II dragged on. The book overall tells the World War II perspective of the British.

For a long time before D-Day Churchill was against any landings in Northern Europe. He proposed and applauded Anzio in Italy which was greatly pared down (five divisions to one and reduced logistics and supply). {Politicians have long been deceived by U.S. Grant’s amphibious landing south of Vicksburg in May 1863 and eventually surrounding and obtaining the surrounding of that river town.] Churchill devised and held to the idea that taking over Greek islands in 1944 in the Aegean Sea was the masterstroke that would end the War in Europe. He insisted Rome be taken in June 1944 rather than attack and weaken the German army. Churchill opposed the American invasion of Marseilles in August 1944, opening a second supply route for American armies: Forty (40) percent of the supplies for those armies came through Marseilles.

Meanwhile, the British used Montgomery (seemingly the best general the British could produce). Churchill did not like other generals and summarily dismissed them. Between August 1944 and November 1944, Montgomery lengthened the war by losing opportunities to destroy German armies at Falaise Gap in Normandy; he did a risky, men-wasting incursion of Belgium and Holland called Market Garden – supplies had to go up one long road; he failed to open the Scheldt Estuary, depriving the allies of using the port of Antwerp for three months.

So the British fought World War II using men expensively, and Winston Churchill was a Warlord, not a cabinet position of the British government, but akin to Warlords of yore commanding armies, promoting strategies, wanting to join the fight, always in political control, urging actions leading to non-profitable military measures, sanctioning incompetence from military underlines, and craving compliance from the British people and every person in government for each of his decisions.

MORGAN

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Jean Strouse, AVOID

This fat, prolix book suffers from the weight it carries. It is the Life And Times of JP Morgan, meaning that the world JP Morgan knew and grew up into should be told in this volume.

Immediately, the times of JP Morgan are misrepresented and erroneous by relying on cliches. Cliche #1 is Alexander Hamilton prepared to use government spending to support industry. Jefferson and Andrew Jackson disliked government and government spending and tried not to do that. Note the national debt under Jackson nearly disappeared, but canals and roads were built. Observe also that the United States had more miles of railroad track than Europe by 1855.

Relying on Hamilton/Jefferson-Jackson distinctions when writing about the 1850s misses issues, points and the whole political and social situation. This biographer is a complete novice about writing history. Either that or the times of JP Morgan, indeed, allowed him to know nothing of issues giving rise to the American Civil War. That is a too secluded life for America’s foremost banker.

DAWN OF BELLE EPOQUE, TWILIGHT OF BELLE EPOQUE

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MARY MCAULIFEE

These books tell of a completely defeated France (1870), loser of the Franco-Prussian War, and for the next 44 years France’s imagination became culture and industry reinventing its thinking, culture and society, and somewhat its politics. Those achievements in the Arts, in literature, education and scientific endeavors (Pasteur, Pierre, Marie Curie) drove France into the Twentieth Century.

The innovation of this history is an original telling in its approach, beginning in 1870 and year after year going through 1918 (end of World War One). Culture enters the story and artists, including industrialists, struggle for recognition, succeeding as years pass. Politics and foreign affairs are included but not emphasized. Georges Clemenceau, a friend of all the painters and writers, gets the most attention.

The text is easy to follow. Its argument builds with humor, and terrific antidotes, while the Art, society and politics progress. One wonders how Paris was livable. Of the many histories I’ve encountered, this is a brilliant survey presentation. Its style gives the essence of France and the French in a studied, flippant, and charming manner.

NARRATING A STORY

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“In the middle of an exacting history course, it takes a high degree of moral courage to resist one’s own conscience to take time off; to let the imagination run; to give serious attention to reading books that widen our sympathies, that train us to imagine with greater precision what it is like to be human in situations very different from our own.

“It is essential to take that risk. For a history course to be content to turn out well-trained minds and deeper sympathies would be a mutilation of the intellectual inheritance of our own culture, of an element of imaginative curiosity about others whose removal may be more deleterious than we would like to think to the subtle and ever-precarious ecology on which a liberal western tradition of respect for others is based.”

Brown, Peter, SOCIETY AND THE HOLY IN LATE ANTIQUITY, p. 4.

This grand three-sentence, two paragraph statement somewhat expresses the point. I found it of interest and read on in this book. There was something wrong with the writing, though, and I remembered that this book was a collection of the author’s lectures. Apparently, nothing had been edited to remove the oral-nature of the lectures. Reading became problematic especially when the author did not develop the point, mentioning it as though it was an advertising teaser in a commercial. So I stopped reading.

Fortunately, I have been reading Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. That book is told in narration, by one man to another about what happened to a subordinate office of a ship who abandoned it with all the ship’s crew, while leaving all the Muslim pilgrims aboard a sinking ship. LORD JIM is not always easy to read. Passages and paragraphs can run two pages, and sentences… The narrative style of telling anything can make the story difficult and the writing impossible. Conrad writes Lord Jim about as well as can be done, using that voice.

Yet, this is exactly what the problem historian, Peter Brown, faces in his collection of lectures. In an exacting history, no historian writes, “Once again…” and that sort of parenthetical is littered in the pages of Brown’s book I read, 30-40 pages. I quit. I have read books that develop the passage, above, from page 4, and upon reading it, I hoped Brown would give greater and deeper analyses. Nope.

PUT YOUR BODIES UPON THE WHEELS

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KENNETH HEINEMAN (226 PAGES)

Some arguments and assessments in this history of the Sixties are off, but this book is short and invaluable; it describes many people prominent during the Sixties: Have a name, and likely there is a short reference in the index. The shortcomings of the book is a lack of footnotes and a truly functional bibliography.

What was written about West Coast events is largely in error. There are arrests and generally the dates are accurate, but what happened is wrong. The easiest of such issues happened at San Francisco State, escalating riots about minority studies. Administrators were frozen. S.I. Hayakawa, set up a mass arrest in late 1968 and let it be known he – Hayakawa – was ready to talk. He talked with each minority and hammered out solutions. The only group Hayakawa would not negotiate with were whites. Hayakawa had the blessing and backing of Governor Ronald Reagan. Hayakawa did not cave into leftist demands as Heineman says. Hayakawa’s success was felt across San Francisco Bay in Berkeley, where University Administrators were wondering, What is Hayakawa’s secret?

In its organization the book suggests much more organization the leadership of the Left had over events and happenings. Thee are names and in some places, those names may have had great sway over events, which had repercussions elsewhere. Kent State was a multiplier. But many of those issues were national in origin, not local which also could give rise to protests and violence.

Primarily, the names who wrote were not read. No one wanted to slog through Marxist-Stalinist- Maoist tripe. Whereas writers in the feminist, the ecological and in the disability movement were read. They discussed issues pertinent and common sensical to the American future, for young and old. Women, ecology and disability arose during the last Sixties but are little mentioned in this book.

Heineman does not otherwise sugar coat much when describing youth and their times: I did not know to get James Meredith’s admission into the University of Mississippi (October 1962), the Kennedy’s assigned U.S. Marshalls to protect him; they could not use their weapons. In a riot 166 Marshalls were injured including 28 gunshot wounds. 1962, was the first violent campus riot of the Sixties. It was also buried by the Cuban Missile Crisis beginning two weeks later.

I never liked George Wallace, but I did not know he rallied hecklers at his political rallies: Wallace said they liked four letter words, and offered two of his own: Soap. Work.

Needless to say Old Miss rioters and shooters were not the ideological companions of rioters and protesters elsewhere, except for the hate, loathing and disregard for law and civil order. Issues of these leaders and rioters are set forth in this book, briefly and intelligently.

In the final sum-up Heineman short-shrifts the counter-culture as causing long-lasting effects of those events and forces. The primary manifestations are drug usage and loud music. And today many Boomers are hard of hearing, are reliant on pharmaceuticals (One pills makes you bigger, and the other makes you small) and they think little. Obscurantism is an American problem.

It should be observed that many of the incidences directed at the Fifties and Sixties Civil Rights Movements and at its leaders are present today.