Category: Legal Analysis

WHO’s In Charge?

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently requested that governments from around the globe send in their input on what should be included in a new international agreement, which is currently being drafted.

The new document is being referred to as “the pandemic treaty.” By obtaining political commitments from potential signer-nations, the WHO is evidently seeking to bolster support for the latest addition to an already sizable body of existing global law.

Concerns are being raised by organizations and informed citizens about the sovereignty of established nations, as well as the public health care systems located within their purviews.

In a simultaneous unfolding of events, another international agreement is undergoing a substantial revision. It’s called the International Health Regulations (IHR), and it has been around for more than five decades. However, the United States didn’t sign on to it until 2005.

The purported role of the IHR is to provide public health guidance to the governments of nations throughout the world.

This past January the Biden administration submitted new amendments to the IHR, which will likely be subsumed within the proposed pandemic treaty. This would result in a global governance apparatus that would be tailor-made for the WHO.

Back in December 2021something called an “intergovernmental negotiating body” was established, the purpose of which was to draft and negotiate the pandemic treaty that is currently being designed.

The WHO’s primary funder is Bill Gates. Gates is reportedly forming a pandemic response team made up of thousands of disease experts who would work with the WHO.

The United States had withdrawn from the WHO under the Trump administration, due to the organization’s failed leadership and loss of trust in parts of the world, especially with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the Biden administration rejoined the WHO and is now looking to strengthen the organization’s ability to direct health-related decisions internationally.

Despite the fact that the final text of the treaty has not yet been completed, documents from groups that are working on the international agreement indicate a significant expansion of the term “pandemic.” The WHO had already transformed the word’s definition to an “epidemic of a disease” that affects the world population, without requirements of high morbidity.

The treaty’s drafters are seeking to broaden the categorization of what would constitute a “pandemic.” If they succeed, it would allow the WHO to classify just about any potential malady as a “pandemic,” in effect granting the organization the power to direct the administration of health care responses worldwide.

Proposed amendments from the United States to the IHR would allow the director-general of the WHO to declare a public health emergency of international concern, without having to obtain agreement from the government of an affected country.

Former WHO legal consultant Silvia Behrendt, along with University College Dublin law lecturer Amrei Müller, criticized the Biden administration’s proposals.

“The proposed US amendments to Article 12 IHR will both considerably extend the executive powers of the WHO Director-General to declare global emergency-like situations and centralize this power further by removing the need to consult and find agreement with the respective state party,” the authors wrote.

The World Health Assembly (WHA) is meeting to vote on the IHR amendments, with the apparent hopes of making them an established part of international law.

The authors of the above referenced article call upon the members of the WHA to carefully consider the implications of the U.S.’s proposed amendments before endorsing and adopting them.

The following rhetorical question was posed by Behrendt and Müller:

“Have technocratic, biomedical approaches, developed and implemented from the top down primarily through executive action, worked well in response to Covid-19, justifying a further extension and centralization of global emergency powers at WHO?”

The authors also asked whether mechanisms need to be set up to ensure that the WHO complies with its “responsibilities for human rights that derive from international human rights law.”

The ultimate goal of the WHO and WHA appears to be a desire to make the proposed pandemic treaty enforceable in the United States and throughout the entire planet.

The Treaty Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2, spells out the process by which a treaty becomes domestic law. The primary negotiator of agreements between the United States and other nations is the president. The agreements become binding federal laws after they have been ratified by a two-thirds vote in the U.S. Senate.

Additionally, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article VI, Paragraph 2, grants to ratified treaties the status of being the equivalent of duly passed statutes, i.e., the “supreme law of the land.”

The most compelling issue for the American people right now can be summed up in two questions:

Do you want an alphabet of international agencies controlling your personal health care destiny? Or do you want to control your own?

Better look both ways before crossing this street.

The Targeting of Supreme Court Justices

The United States Supreme Court has just suffered an unprecedented attack on its fundamental integrity. A draft opinion, penned by Justice Samuel Alito and relating to the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health case, has been made public.

An investigation is currently underway to try and determine the individual or individuals who are responsible for the leaking of the document, which was intended to be held in confidentiality, as it historically has always been, until an official ruling has been reached.

What has taken place is so egregious that words seem to be an inadequate means of conveying the gravity involved. The breach of the High Court’s deliberations is unparalleled. So, too, will likely be the ramifications of the leak as well as the aftermath of violent protests that are being fomented.

The High Court’s ultimate ruling in the case, which is still presently unknown, is expected to be finalized shortly and will likely be released at the end of the Court’s term.

The past few days have seen even more vitriolic speech and vile behavior piled on top of the dung heap. A group called Ruth Sent Us published six Supreme Court justices’ home addresses, accompanied by a map that outlined the locations of personal residences.

The group scheduled protests in the form of a “walk-by” outside homes of Justices Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Chief Justice John Roberts. Protestors have already staged demonstrations in front of the homes of Justices Roberts and Kavanaugh.

Ruth Sent Us is named for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who actually took the position that Roe vs. Wade was ill-reasoned law.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki initially failed to condemn the targeting of Supreme Court justices and their families and homes. When asked specifically for the White House’s reaction to the release of justices’ addresses for the purposes of supposed protest events, Psaki failed to denounce the tactic and went as far as making statements to minimize the ploy.

When the press secretary finally made reference to the Oval Office, she said, “I think the president’s view is there’s a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness from many, many people across the country about what they saw in that document.”

The fact of the matter is interference with the administration of justice in the manner in which it has recently been occurring is illegal.

Federal statute 18 U.S.C. 1507 states that whoever has the intent of “interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice,” or “influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer” and “pickets or parades…in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer,” may be fined and/or may receive a prison sentence of up to one year.

Pro-abortion protests have already gotten violent. Protestors in front of the federal courthouse in Los Angeles, California recently clashed with the police, and at least one officer was injured.

A fire at a pro-life organization’s office in Madison, Wisconsin, is being investigated as an arson case. Found inside the building was an un-ignited Molotov cocktail.

For people of the Roman Catholic Christian faith, things have become more deeply disturbing. Ruth Sent Us has called for the desecration of the most sacred doctrine and personhood of the Catholic Church itself – the physical presence of Jesus Christ in the form of the transubstantiated Eucharist.

Over the weekend protestors descended upon the iconic Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in New York City. As reported by Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review, pro-abortion activists proceeded to block the front doors of the church, where Catholic believers had gathered together to celebrate Mass.

As they have for the past fourteen years, some of the attendees at the conclusion of the Mass make their way toward a Planned Parenthood clinic, where they engage in a separate sacred practice involving prayers recited with the use of Rosary sacramentals. On this day, however, police officers advised against the visit to the clinic for their own safety and protection. Despite the warning, a number of the devoted pro-lifers managed to keep the vigil.

Parishioners at Boulder, Colorado’s Sacred Heart of Mary Church arrived at morning Mass only to find that the church windows had been smashed, and the front entry doors had been spray-painted with the words “MY BODY, MY CHOICE.”

Ruth Sent Us states on its website that it is targeting “six extremist Catholics” who voted against Roe vs. Wade.

The organization spurred on disruptions of Catholic Church services with a posting of a video that depicts its own group members interfering with a Catholic Mass, while dressed in costumes worn on a fictional streaming series.

What the group is calling for is, in fact, criminal behavior.

Federal law, 18 U.S. Code § 247 states that anyone who “intentionally obstructs, by force or threat of force…any person in the enjoyment of that person’s free exercise of religious beliefs” at a place devoted to religious worship, has committed a federal crime.

CatholicVote, a Catholic advocacy group, issued a statement demanding that elected Catholic leaders publicly condemn the group’s supposed protest methods and has asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to enforce the law and protect churches from threats.

Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote, called the group’s plans “religious bigotry of the worst kind.”

In what many are saying is too little, too late, following the past turbulent weekend Psaki released a statement via Twitter that read as follows:

“@POTUS strongly believes in the Constitutional right to protest. But that should never include violence, threats, or vandalism. Judges perform an incredibly important function in our society, and they must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety.”

The administration has yet to explicitly and directly address the attempts to influence the deliberative process, the doxxing of Supreme Court Justices, the targeting of houses of worship, the interference with the free exercise of religion, and the efforts to intimidate those with opposing viewpoints through the use of fear tactics.

All are an egregious affront to the Constitution.

And one more affirmation that liberty itself is in freefall.

Elon Musk Takes On Senator Warren

High-tech prodigy, recurring start-up success, and business visionary, that’s Elon Musk.

Time Magazine just crowned him 2021’s “Person of the Year.” One more accolade added to a list that appears to have no end.

Elon took an interest in computers at the age of ten. By the time two years had passed, he was self-schooled in computer language.

In a micro-foreshadowing of things to come, the code for a video game that he had created fetched five-hundred bucks.

Like other kids whose IQs are seemingly in the stratosphere, peer equals tend to be in short supply, which sometimes leads to major misunderstandings. This was the case for Elon.

An undeserved share of childhood time was spent warding off attacks by bullies. On one occasion, he had to be hospitalized after being thrown down a flight of stairs. It happens way too often. Guess it’s just the perpetual price that has to be paid for being different.

In 1995, Elon co-founded a web software company called Zip2, which in 1999 was sold to Compaq for over $300 million.

He racked up another fortune in 2002, when PayPal was sold to eBay. During the same year, he founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, where he now serves as CEO and CTO.

The year 2004 would turn out to be a big one. Elon joined a company that would eventually become electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, Inc. He rose to CEO in 2008. The value of Tesla soared, as did Elon’s share. This would propel him past his billionaire rivals right to the top of the world’s richest list.

It’s no stretch to say that the media have had it out for him for a while now. One blaring example is an incident that occurred in 2018, when he appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast. He sampled a single puff from a cigar that Rogan described as consisting of tobacco laced with cannabis.

Many in the media conflated the whole thing into a story that questioned Elon’s stability as a business executive. The negative coverage caused Tesla shares to drop in value, which in turn created a crisis in confidence. No problem for the tech mogul, though.

He explained to CBS’s “60 Minutes,” “I do not smoke pot. As anybody who watched that podcast could tell, I have no idea how to smoke pot.”

Elon has been an adept Twitter user since 2009. His followers clock in at almost 68 million people.

It’s an understatement to say that he has mastered the medium. Over the years he used it to communicate business and tech ideas. But he has also jousted with debaters as well as detractors, one of the most recent being Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

After Time named him “Person of the Year,” Sen. Warren launched a social media attack. She kicked off the virtual war with the following tweet: “Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.”

She also took out Facebook ads that accused him of being a “freeloading billionaire.” Evidently seeking to impose a wealth tax on him, the ads asked for people who agreed with her to chip in $10.

Elon was not about to take all of it lying down. He responded with his own tweet.

“You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend’s angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason,” he posted, adding, “Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen.”

He noted the following in a separate tweet: “If you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year.”

In an interview with the Babylon Bee website, he elaborated. “She struck first, obviously. She called me a freeloader and a grifter who doesn’t pay taxes, basically,” he noted.

“I’m literally paying the most tax than any individual in history has ever paid this year, ever, and she doesn’t pay taxes, basically. And her salary is paid for by the taxpayer like me. If you could die by irony, she would be dead,” he said.

Elon is reportedly set to pay an unprecedented tax bill of $11 billion, due to the sale of some Tesla stock. He has been critical of a tax on unrealized gains, which has been advocated by Sen. Warren and other Democrats.

He had previously commented on his Twitter account, “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.”

Interestingly, he does not receive a salary from Tesla, having agreed to a compensation plan that ties his personal earnings to Tesla’s valuation and revenue.

As a matter of fact, he has repeatedly described himself as “cash poor” and has “professed to have little interest in the material trappings of wealth.”

On a celebrity note, he has become an integral part of the global pop culture, having appeared in films such as “Iron Man 2,” “Men in Black: International,” and “Why Him?”

He has also been featured on television shows that include “The Simpsons,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “South Park,” and “Saturday Night Live,” where he served as host of the show.

In China, he has become a “trademark phenomenon,” according to the South China Morning Post, which reports that over 270 different companies have registered trademarks using his name.

Pretty good for a kid who taught himself how to speak computerese and then clicked his way to the top of the world.

Tim Tebow, The Christian Comeback Kid

Tim Tebow is heading back to his primary sport, returning once again to the days of being a professional player in the NFL, after a stint on another field.

Back in the day when his NFL career appeared to be over, rather than leave professional sports behind, the versatile Tebow turned to the game of baseball. In 2016 he signed a minor league contract with the New York Mets, handling the positions of left field and designated hitter until retiring in February of 2021.

Now the Jacksonville Jaguars have signed the former Heisman Trophy winner to a one-year contract, with the understanding that he will switch positions from quarterback to tight end. The same day the Jaguars made the announcement, Tebow was spotted on the practice field wearing a No. 85 Jacksonville jersey, a truly unexpected sight for a whole lot of folks.

The sports star had plenty of detractors in the past, and unfortunately the menacing trend continues to this day. As a bona fide celebrity phenom, his solid beliefs on religious, cultural, and moral issues have resulted in him becoming a target for those with opposing viewpoints.

Acknowledged for being outspoken regarding his Christian faith, Tebow has publicly expressed strong pro-life convictions and has also openly advocated for faith-based abstinence.

He has been fearless in stating that he has lived his life in a way that is almost unheard of in today’s celebrity vortex, exercising restraint and maintaining self-control when it comes to the ways of the world.

It turns out he became very well known for engaging in a unique prayer practice, which routinely takes place right out on the playing field. Kneeling on one knee, he bows his head and rests his arm on one bent leg. The form of prayer expression ultimately reached fame status as “Tebowing” and was even included as a feature in a Madden NFL video game.

In terms of prior regular NFL seasons, Tebow spent his first two with the Denver Broncos and additionally made two starts for the New York Jets. He primarily played one position, that being quarterback, during his entire professional football career.

As Tebow’s detractors like to point out, he hasn’t played a down of professional football since the 2015 pre-season with the Philadelphia Eagles.

In relation to his current newfound position, he already has a relationship with Jacksonville head coach Urban Meyer, who was his coach at the University of Florida, where he was the first college sophomore ever to win the Heisman.

Friends of Tebow say that he is enthusiastic about attempting to make it back on the field in a new position at the highest level of play for any football player. He said in a statement via a team release, “I want to thank the Jaguars for the opportunity to compete and earn the chance to be part of this team. I know it will be a challenge, but it is a challenge I embrace.”

So how can a guy who has not played in a regular season NFL game since 2012, had only one snap as a receiver, and is about to turn a relatively mature 34, still have the confidence to embrace the challenge in an NFL comeback as a tight end?

The answer is in Tebow’s heart. He appears to have a type of celestial advantage when it comes to his athletic pursuits, which is most likely attributed to his ironclad faith-based attitude and irrepressible work ethic.

Fans in Denver remember that back in 2011, when he became the Bronco’s full-time starting quarterback, an amazing metamorphosis of the team seemed to miraculously take place. Tebow was able to transform a 1-4 Broncos team into a genuine contender, with seven wins in eight starts.

Sports journalists were awed by the then-quarterback’s unexpected late-game turnarounds, where the Tebow-led team often came from behind late in the fourth quarter. The Broncos, with Tebow as the QB starter, won their first playoff game in years and managed to snag the AFC West title as well.

Tebow has always had a knack for leadership, inspiring his teammates to work together to achieve. He also consistently remembers at post game interviews to thank his “Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” never seeming to flinch as the harsh backlash inevitably follows.

He continues to be a voice of encouragement for people of faith everywhere. One sterling example is a sort of mini-sermon that Tebow delivered in April of 2020, in which he used his Instagram account to touch upon the subject of player trades and compare the practice to what he referred to as “the greatest trade in the history of the world.”

What is the trade? The old you for the new.

And why does he consider the trade to be the ultimate one? He says it in a way that only a Christian who is running the race can.

Tebow muses aloud, “Why is this the greatest trade? You need to understand this, so you can understand the old versus the new. Do you know what the old is? Sin, dead, darkness, bondage, separation, lost, baggage. Do you know what the new is? Righteousness, alive, light, freedom, united in Christ, found, child of God, purpose, son, daughter, home in heaven, paid for. That’s what the new is.”

A trade worthy of anyone’s consideration.

Nineteen States Take the EPA to the Supreme Court

A recent appeals court ruling granted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) authority to control energy consumption across the country.

As a result, nineteen states are now attempting to limit the EPA’s authority via court action.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is representing his own state as well as leading a group of attorneys general from the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming, and the governor of Mississippi has also signed on.

The 19-state coalition is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse an appeals court ruling that gave the EPA the unprecedented authority.

Morrisey contends that if the ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit were left in place, the EPA would have “virtually unlimited authority to regulate wide swaths of everyday life with rules that would devastate coal mining, increase energy costs and eliminate countless jobs.” (https://wvrecord.com/stories/593830432-morrisey-leads-19-state-petition-urging-supreme-court-to-limit-epa-authority)

More specifically, the documents filed by the coalition of states assert that the lower court misinterpreted Section 111 of the Clean Air Act, granting to the EPA the ability to exercise overly broad powers to radically transform the nation’s energy grid and force states to fundamentally alter their energy sources.

The transformation would be accomplished without any legislative input from Congress, allowing the federal agency to alter virtually any and all sectors of the economy, including factories, power plants, small businesses, and residential housing, with coal mining and natural gas production being placed in jeopardy.

The coalition argues that if the High Court were to delay a review, this would likely lead to even more significant and irreparable damage while simultaneously forcing states to invest time and resources into uncertain enterprises.

Back in 2015, Morrisey had filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over a policy that sought to severely cut carbon emissions, alleging that the implementation of such a policy exceeded the EPA’s mandate.

Morrisey’s legal actions resulted in the Supreme Court issuing a stay, which prevented the policy from being rolled out. However, the D.C. Circuit Court vacated the ruling, thus opening the door for the incoming administration to implement even wider-reaching carbon reduction policies.

The petition of Morrisey and the other attorneys general alleges that the appeals court ignored the rationale for the Supreme Court stay.

The new petition comes as the current administration has announced the most excessive climate initiatives in history, with an intended goal of cutting U.S. carbon emissions in half by the year 2030 and ultimately reaching zero carbon emissions by 2035.

Morrisey spoke against the White House target goals, arguing that the change would have a negative economic impact that would be detrimental to our nation’s international energy standing and calling the emissions cut “a self-inflicted wound to our economy and our national security.” (https://ago.wv.gov/Documents/Statement%20of%20West%20Virginia%20Patrick%20Morrisey%20on%20President%20Biden’s%20Climate%20Plan.pdf)

Critics of the administration’s aggressive carbon reduction plans point out that China and other major polluters will continue to increase their emissions, which will presumably undercut any carbon reductions by the U.S., while at the same time increasing electricity and energy costs for all Americans.

Critics also voice concerns for the segments of our country that rely on fossil fuels and related industries, asserting that these areas would be disproportionately affected by such severe reductions.

If West Virginia’s top law enforcement official and the attorneys general from the coalition of states are successful in convincing the Supreme Court to accept the case, our nation’s people will witness the biggest legal battle involving climate change policy that has occurred in over a decade.

This is the kind of court proceeding that will potentially expose the judicial philosophy of each of the justices on the Supreme Court.

It will also likely define the judicial branch itself and, in the end, determine whether our nation takes the road not traveled.

California Bill Flies in the Face of James Madison

James Madison was a giant of a man.

Born on a Virginia tobacco plantation in March of 1751, he was the eldest boy in a family of twelve children.

Being smaller of stature and suffering from ill health, he would be unable to see battle during The Revolutionary War. But fight for his country he would in more ways than he could ever have imagined.

Young Madison attended the College of New Jersey, which would eventually become more famously known as Princeton University. At the time, the institution was actually an evangelical seminary.

A protégé of sorts, he studied directly under the tutelage of the college president, Reverend John Witherspoon. This would be where young Madison would develop an untold appreciation for individual rights, limited government, and, most importantly, the freedom to worship.

Reverend Witherspoon was attune to the importance of the development of an internal moral sense, an ethical compass, if you will, which he viewed as being instilled in all human beings by God.

As destiny would have it, Reverend Witherspoon would not only influence young Madison, but he himself would go on to be the only active clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence.

One time during his travels in Virginia, Madison came across a jail in which a group of Baptist preachers were being detained. The ministers had been arrested as a result of their open expression of their religious beliefs.

Madison was so deeply affected by the injustice he had witnessed, he rushed off a prayer request to his friend William Bradford “for Liberty and Conscience to revive among us.” The experience would further spur him on to become a fierce advocate of religious liberty.

He expressed his passion for religious freedom in his involvement with the new constitution that was being written for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Strengthening a clause that was written by George Mason, he transformed the language of the text from a government grant to an inalienable right.

Over the next decade Madison would be involved in various other religious liberty battles. And in 1785, he would pen one of the most powerful defenses of religious liberty ever written, the “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments.”

After the Constitution, as Madison wrote it, was ratified by Congress in 1788 and came into effect in 1789, many leaders wanted to add additional material containing the fundamental rights with which government could not interfere. However, the Constitution itself specifies that the adding of such material can only be done through amendments.

Madison initially opposed the idea of putting additional amendments into the Constitution. As the author of the Constitution, he considered his work so complete that no additional amendments were thought to be needed.

He and his colleagues believed that the Constitution placed enough limits on government, via the separation of powers, to safeguard individual rights.

Madison was also concerned that listing some freedoms in amendments, but not others, would lead government officials to believe that they could do whatever was not explicitly forbidden by the document.

It was providential that Madison had a friendship and political alliance with Thomas Jefferson. He actually served as the third president’s secretary of state.

Jefferson had written a series of letters from Paris, France, attempting to persuade his friend to change his mind about the Bill of Rights. Madison did eventually come to believe that amendments setting forth our rights might impress upon the nation the importance of placing limitations on state power.

Madison became the point man for the Bill of Rights, taking on the mantle not only of drafting the amendments, but of also shepherding the founding document through the legislative process. Drawing on Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights and Britain’s Magna Carta, he wrote the Bill of Rights and presented it to Congress in June of 1789.

The Bill of Rights, which of course includes our cherished First Amendment, was ratified on December 15, 1791.

Among myriad other amazing accomplishments, Madison served as secretary of state in the Jefferson administration. Then following in the presidential footsteps of his friend, he became the fourth president of the United States in March of 1809 and served until March of 1817.

President Madison would be cut to the core if he were here to witness what is currently being proposed in California – a bill that would actually dismiss from service those members of law enforcement who hold certain religious and/or political beliefs.

Under the pretext of seeking the elimination of “hate speech,” the proposed law would virtually place the government in the position of denying police officers the ability to be employed or to remain employed, based on their Christian beliefs and/or conservative principles.

The legislation’s name is a misleading one, the California Law Enforcement Accountability Reform Act. It would require law enforcement agencies to determine if potential hires are guilty of thought crimes. It would also allow existing officers, who are subjectively determined to hold incorrect or unapproved beliefs, to be fired.

The California Assembly Public Safety Committee is scheduled to consider the piece of legislation on April 6. But its language is so broad and ambiguous it stands as a textbook violation of the protections of religious liberty and freedom of speech, which are engraved in the First Amendment.

While our First Amendment rights weren’t specifically enumerated in the original text of the Constitution, Madison ensured that the rights would be enshrined within the amendment process.

He authored the inspired words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Read it and weep California. Madison is.

The Wayward Seven

To the heartbreak of millions of Americans who were hoping that the Supreme Court would give justice a fighting chance in the current fog of electoral war, seven of the nine members of the High Court simply slunk away last Friday without even lending an ear.

Just about a week ago, shortly before midnight, the state of Texas filed a lawsuit directly with the U.S. Supreme Court. In the suit, Texas challenged the election procedures that had taken place in the states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

The seven members of the High Court, who took the position that Texas and the other co-plaintiff states would not be allowed to have their case heard, committed a fundamental error.

The justices may have been influenced by a slew of legal prognosticators, some of whom had taken to the Democrat dominated media to ridicule the Texas attorney general for having initiated the action in the first place.

Others spread a message that conveyed an overly simplistic analysis, claiming that the process of selecting electors to send to the Electoral College is a matter that is handled by individual states, and therefore if a federal court, in this case the Supreme Court, were to hear it, the court would be intruding on state sovereignty.

The fact of the matter is the U.S. Constitution uniquely prescribes the manner in which presidential elections are to be implemented, and exactly where the authority for such implementation resides.

The authority is granted exclusively to the state legislatures of each respective state. The High Court has referred to this power to select electors as a “plenary” one, i.e., all encompassing.

The statehouses are given an exclusive grant of authority to determine the manner in which the states’ presidential electors are chosen. This is a distinct and explicit constitutional mandate, a federal matter, appropriately decided in the federal court system and, if necessary, the court of last resort, the Supreme Court.

The textual constitutional language in this regard is specific and unambiguous, setting forth a singular authority that precludes state officials, state executives, and even state courts from altering or contradicting statehouses, when it comes to the selection of electors for the purposes of choosing the President of the United States.

The Constitution also specifies that the Supreme Court will have original jurisdiction over “disputes among the states,” meaning that when Texas needs to adjudicate a matter involving a disagreement with another state (or states), the Supreme Court is the only place to go in order to seek resolution or remedies in law or equity.

Texas and its fellow co-plaintiff states were not questioning the election laws of the defendant states, but rather they were claiming that “non-legislative actors,” i.e., governors, secretaries of state, election officials, and state courts, unconstitutionally altered and overrode the election laws that had been duly passed by state legislatures.

The threshold issue that was before the Supreme Court was whether the constitutional prescription for the selection of electors had been violated by non-legislative actors. This was, and will always remain, central to the functioning of our republic, and it is a premise that is vitally important for all of the justices to recognize.

Seven simply did not. These wayward seven failed to allow the case to move forward.

How were their decisions justified?

They avoided hearing the case on the merits, claiming that the prospective plaintiffs in the case lacked “standing.”

Standing is the principle that limits the hearing of cases to those individuals or entities that demonstrate specific harm has been suffered or that a particular legal interest has been detrimentally affected.

The harm in this case is quite obvious — unconstitutional behavior that results in illegal voting in one state damages legitimate voting in other states.

In this case, electors in Texas were canceled out by electors in states where illegitimate votes were produced by unconstitutional processes.

A huge segment of the American population believes that the 2020 presidential election was illegitimate, due to widespread and multifaceted fraud. This huge segment yearns for, and is entitled to, a judicial review of the mounting evidence.

Thus far, no determination with regard to the merits of the case has been made.

Similar, if not identical claims from other plaintiffs, ones that possess a stronger argument on the issue of standing, will arrive at the Supreme Court soon.

The seven members of the High Court get another shot at justice.