“”Citadel”" A Defensible Community of Patriots

A group of like-minded patriots, bound together by pride in American exceptionalism, plan on building an armed community to protect their liberty.

The group, named Citadel, intends to purchase 2,000 to 3,000 acres for the project in western Idaho.  The community will comprise of 3,500 to 7,000 families of patriotic Americans who “voluntarily choose to live together in accordance with Thomas Jefferson’s ideal of Rightful Liberty.”

According to the Citadel website, Rightful Liberty means that “neighbors keep their noses out of other neighbors’ business, that neighbors live and let live.”

for full article: http://cnsnews.com/blog/gregory-gwyn-williams-jr/patriotic-group-build-armed-defensible-neighborhood-fortress

America Under Surveillance: Judge Napolitano Asks “Where’s The Outrage?”

OpEd from FoxNews contributor Judge Andrew Napolitano:

For the past few weeks, I have been writing in this column about the  government’s use of drones and challenging their constitutionality on Fox News  Channel where I work. I once asked on air what Thomas Jefferson would have done  if — had drones existed at the time — King George III had sent drones to peer  inside the bedroom windows of Monticello. I suspect that Jefferson and his  household would have trained their muskets on the drones and taken them down. I  offer this historical anachronism as a hypothetical only, not as one who is  urging the use of violence against the government.

Nevertheless, what Jeffersonians are among us today? When drones take  pictures of us on our private property and in our homes, and the government uses  the photos as it wishes, what will we do about it? Jefferson understood that  when the government assaults our privacy and dignity, it is the moral equivalent  of violence against us. The folks who hear about this, who either laugh or  groan, cannot find it humorous or boring that their every move will be monitored  and photographed by the government.

Don’t believe me that this is coming? The photos that the drones will take  may be retained and used or even distributed to others in the government so long  as the “recipient is reasonably perceived to have a specific, lawful  governmental function” in requiring them. And for the first time since the Civil  War, the federal government will deploy military personnel inside the United  States and publicly acknowledge that it is deploying them “to collect  information about U.S. persons.”

Did you consent to the American military spying on Americans in  America? I don’t know a single person who has, but I know only a few who are  complaining.

-It gets worse. If the military personnel see something of interest from a  drone, they may apply to a military judge or “military commander” for permission  to conduct a physical search of the private property that intrigues them. And,  any “incidentally acquired information” can be retained or turned over to local  law enforcement. What’s next? Prosecutions before military tribunals in the  U.S.?

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/06/07/where-is-outrage/?test=latestnews#ixzz1xEVULtP7

Thomas Jefferson’s Concerns About Government “Debt”

Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1798 to liberal political theorist and Virgina Senator John Taylor that he wished the constitution included strict debt limitations: “I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing. I now deny their power of making paper money or anything else a legal tender. I know that to pay all proper expenses within the year would, in case of war, be hard on us. But not so hard as ten wars instead of one. For wars could be reduced in that proportion; besides that the State governments would be free to lend their credit in borrowing quotas.”

What Jefferson meant by a “single amendment” is a balanced budget amendment, which would require revenues to equal expenses. While I cannot argue with the sapience of TJ, I have an unfair advantage with my 235 years of hindsight.

full article @ http://townhall.com/columnists/alfredregnery/2011/07/14/fixing_thomas_jeffersons_debt_celing_regrets

ObamaCare, the Food Modernization Act, and Jefferson

     One would have thought that this was just said in a recent campaign:

 “If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”

~Thomas Jefferson, 1781

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”
…………………………………………………………… ~Declaration of Independence

 

Firearms Refresher Course

FIREARMS REFRESHER COURSE  1. “Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not.” ~Thomas Jefferson 2. Those who trade liberty for security have neither. ~John Adams 3. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms. 4. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject. 5. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them. 6. Gun control is not about guns; it’s about control. 7. You only have the rights you are willing to fight for. 8. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety. 9. You don’t shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive. 10. Assault is a behavior, not a device. 11. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday. 12. The United States Constitution (c) 1791. All Rights Reserved.  13. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others. 14. What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ do you NOT understand? 15. Guns have only two enemies; rust and politicians. 16. When you remove the people’s right to bear arms, you create slaves.  17. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.

The Constitution and ObamaCare

When asked last fall where the Constitution authorizes Congress to require citizens to buy health insurance, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was temporarily caught off guard, finally sputtering, “Are you serious? Are you serious?” She then quickly turned to another reporter without further comment.

Another Democrat, Rep. Phil Hare of Illinois, reacted similarly when recently posed that question by one of his constituents: “I don’t really worry about the Constitution on this, to be honest.”

While the thought that the Constitution actually limits the power of Congress to enact legislation may be foreign to some Democrats, the framers of the Constitution intended for the federal government to be limited to the powers that are specifically enumerated, or listed, in the text of the document.

In the Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote: “[T]he proposed Government cannot be deemed a national one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.”

For full article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100427/cm_csm/297094

A Constitutional Find in the City of Brotherly Love

from America’s Right:

In today’s Inquirer is the story of how a researcher looking through documents in the reading room at the Historical Society of Philadelphia stumbled upon an early draft of the United States Constitution.

On the back of a treasured draft of the U.S. Constitution was a truncated version of the same document, starting with the familiar words: “We The People. . . .”

They had been scribbled upside down by one of the Constitution’s framers, James Wilson, in the summer of 1787. The cursive continued, then abruptly stopped, as if pages were missing.

A mystery, Toler thought, until she examined other Wilson papers from the Historical Society’s vault in Philadelphia and found what appeared to be the rest of the draft, titled “The Continuation of the Scheme.”

Anyone concerned, for example, about possible ambiguity with regard to the individual right preserved by the words “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” can look to John Adams’ A Defense of the Constitution, in which he wrote that “[a]rms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion … in private self-defense,” or James Madison’s note that the Constitution preserves “the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … [where] the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

Nevertheless, that an early draft of the United States Constitution, in James Wilson’s own handwriting no less, has been just stumbled upon here in Philadelphia only reaffirms what the City of Brotherly Love does well and what it unfortunately does even better — remind us of what happened during the time of our nation’s founding, and remind us of how far we’ve fallen from those ideas and ideals set forth by our founders.

For full post: http://americasright.com/?p=2935

P-O-R vs. Thomas Jefferson

http://factreal.wordpress.com/

Remembering our Nation’s Religious Heritage

Text of plaque proposed to be placed in the Capitol Building:

 

‘‘The first Christian church services in the Capitol were held when the Government moved to Washington in the fall of 1800. They were conducted in the Hall of the House in the north wing of the building. In 1801, the House moved the church services to temporary quarters in the south wing, called the ‘Oven’, which it vacated in 1804, returning services to the north wing for 3 years. During church services, the Speaker’s podium was used as the preacher’s pulpit.

‘‘Within a year of his inauguration, President Thomas Jefferson began attending church services in the Chamber of the House of Representatives. Throughout his administration (1801—1809), Thomas Jefferson permitted and encouraged church services in executive branch buildings. Sermons regarding the Old and New Testaments of the Bible were even conducted in the Supreme Court chambers while the judicial branch was located in the old north wing of the Capitol.

‘‘The term ‘separation of church and state’, not found in the Constitution, was rather first used by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptists. Though Jefferson saw no problem with having nondenominational Christian services in government buildings, he affirmed that the Government should not choose an official Christian denomination. The worship services in the Government-owned House Chamber—a practice that continued until after the Civil War—were acceptable to Jefferson because they were nondiscriminatory and voluntary.

‘‘President James Madison, the recognized author of the Constitution, followed Jefferson’s example. In keeping with Madison’s understanding of the first amendment, church services were permitted in the halls of State on Sundays during his administration (1809—1817). However, unlike Jefferson, who rode on horseback to attend church in the Capitol, Madison traveled in a coach pulled by four horses. The services were interrupted in 1814 after the interior was burned by the British and had to be repaired.

‘‘Preachers of every Christian denomination preached Christian doctrine in this Chamber. On January 8, 1826, Bishop John England (1786–1842) of Charleston, South Carolina, became the first Catholic clergyman to preach in the House of Representatives. The first woman to preach before the House, and likely the first woman to speak officially in Congress under any circumstances, was the English evangelist, Dorothy Ripley (1767–1832), who conducted a service on January 12, 1806.’’

 

From Rep. Gohmert’s website:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) introduced legislation today that seeks to preserve our nation’s religious heritage in the face of politically correct attempts to sterilize America’s rich religious history. The Congressman’s bill would memorialize the tradition of our founding fathers and historical leaders holding church services in various locations within the U.S. Capitol Building.

 

Gohmert’s Congressional Hope for Uniform Recognition of Christian Heritage (CHURCH) Act of 2009 will direct the Architect of the Capitol to procure a historical plaque for display in National Statuary Hall to recognize the seven decades of Christian church services that were held in the Capitol from 1800 to 1868. Participants of this historical tradition include President Thomas Jefferson, who within a year of his inauguration began attending church services in the U.S. House Chamber, and President James Madison, who carried on the practice by holding Christian church services in the halls of State during his administration.

 

Today, despite the rich religious history surrounding the founding of our nation and U.S. Capitol Building, efforts to censor references to these important, defining events and values have stirred significant controversy. Such efforts have even been targeted towards the U.S. Capitol’s new Visitor Center that opened just this year, where reprints and photos of historical documents and monuments displayed within the exhibits were intentionally scrubbed of references to God and other statements with religious connotations – a rewriting of history vigorously opposed by Rep. Gohmert.

 

However, the Congressman hopes his bill will help protect, as well as raise awareness of, the fascinating facts that illuminate our nation’s religious heritage.

 

The text of the plaque has been verified by the Congressional Research Service.

Thomas Jefferson’s Words of Wisdom