Dreaming of Freedom AND Talking About Liberty

It is sad that the supporters of Obama cannot win an argument with ideas. It is sadder that they believe censorship of opposing points of view is a good idea. It is sadder even yet, that the chairman of the Democrat Party would lament those pesky First Amendment Rights, which allow people to openly express disagreement with the direction this country is going.



Obama critics speak minds in face of vandalism

By MELISSA TOPEY | Monday, August 31, 2009 1:57 AM EDT

A local couple discovered expressing their political views can come with a backlash -- but they aren't backing down.

Since June, the Morin family has had their home egged, a garage window broken and signs speaking out against the policies of President Barack Obama torn down.

"Why can't I have free speech?" asked Paula Morin, who lives at 328 Fulton St. "I'm very concerned about the direction this country's heading."

Paula said she disagrees with the government bailout of the auto industry and banks, as well as health care reform.

Paula and her husband, Desi, filed a complaint June 10 stating a small window on their garage had been broken out, according to Sandusky police reports. A "Stop Obama Now" cardboard sign taped outside of a bay window had been turned backward in an apparent act of censorship.

Undaunted by the vandalism, she proudly posted a new sign in her home's front window.

"I wasn't going to be deterred. This is my property," Paula said as she sat in her living room with her granddaughters on a recent Friday.

The sign continues to attract attention. Last Sunday, Desi met with officers at the house after noticing someone had thrown a dozen eggs on the house by the sign.

"I hope the police presence was seen," Paula said.

She said they did not report the numerous times signs were torn down.

She doesn't know who is responsible but said she hasn't had any recent trouble with her neighbors. Paula said during the presidential campaign, neither her sign for presidential candidate John McCain nor her neighbor's Obama sign was damaged.

Amy Grubbe, chairwoman of the Erie County Democratic party, said while she and others may disagree with Paula's views, no one has the right to target another person's property in protest.

"She has her First Amendment rights," Grubbe said. "I may disagree with her view, but expressing them is her right. Vandalism of someone's property is not the right way to go about it. It's unfortunate someone has chosen to go about it in that manner." Click Here to Read More..

Upcoming Events Planned

For those who wish to join in and
Water the Tree of Liberty:


1) Children of Liberty Rally

Who: The Children of Liberty

What: Nationwide Recess Rally

Where: Marcy Kaptur's Toledo Office

When: Saturday, August 22, 2009

Time: 12pm

In Association with: American LibertyAlliance http://recessrally.com/

Why: To send Representative Kaptur a clear message that the citizens of the 9th congressional district of Ohio say NO to the nationalized healthcare bill, as proposed by President Obama and the United States Congress.

Toledo, Ohio: On Saturday, August 22, The Children of Liberty will sponsor a local recess rally outside Marcy Kaptur's office. We will gather at 11:15 at International Park and march, together, to Marcy's Maritime office. We are calling on ALL citizens in Marcy Kaptur's districts in Lucas, Erie, Ottawa and Loraine counties to come together and show our discontent with the healthcare legislation. We will not stand for socialized, government controlled healthcare and this staged protest will say loudly, "Marcy, we said NO! Once arriving at her office, we will have speakers regarding healthcare issues. And, a healthcare "town crier" will also be present to read a summary of the bill aloud for all to hear. For more information, contact The Children of Liberty at thechildrenofliberty@yahoo.com or call 419-705-3702.

2)9/12 Protest at the Capital
We (Freedom Works Foundation) will be putting together the details of the week’s events soon. For now, this is our tentative agenda for 9-10 through 9-12.
Thursday, 9-10:
Morning: Liberty Summit with select Congressmen and Senators
Afternoon: Grassroots visits with Representatives and Senators
Evening: Time to explore Washington

Friday, 9-11:
Morning: September 11th Never Forget memorial
Afternoon: Grassroots leadership training seminars
Evening: Special Dinner

Saturday, 9-12:
8:00am Set up for stages and volunteers
10:00am Events begin at U.S. Capitol, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial
2:00pm March begins at Lincoln Memorial and ends at the U.S. Capitol Building

3) On Sept 15 Audit the Fed Ohio Rally Point.
We (Ohio Campaign for Liberty) will deliver the audit the fed petitions you have been helping to gather to our senators. If you can make the time please join us Sept 15th at 12:30 to delivery those petitions. More details soon but we plan to meet at the Ohio Statehouse west side (High Street).

Senators who have failed to co-sponsor S 604, the Federal Reserve Sunshine Act: Senator Voinovich, Senator Brown

Representatives who have failed to co-sponsor HR 1207 the Federal Reserve Transparency Act: Driehaus (1), Wilson (6), Sutton (13), Kilroy (15), Ryan (17) Click Here to Read More..

Ohio Judge upholds the Constitution

Judge's ruling is called 'unprecedented' when all he did was uphold the Constitution!


U.S. seizure of charity's assets ruled unlawful
Muslim group's rights violated, judge asserts
By ERICA BLAKE
BLADE STAFF WRITER

The U.S. government violated the constitutional rights of a local Muslim charity when it froze its financial assets in 2006 and prevented it from adequately defending itself against allegations of ties to terrorism, a federal judge in Toledo has ruled.

Judge James Carr released a 100-page order Tuesday that favored arguments by KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development Inc., which sued the government in October.

The ruling, which attorneys have called unprecedented, agreed with the organization's assertions that KindHearts was denied due process and subjected to the unlawful seizure of its property.

However, the ruling did not go so far as to label as unconstitutional or even vague the legislation used by the government to investigate organizations with potential ties to terrorism.

"Judge Carr's historic ruling makes clear that the government can't circumvent the Constitution, which protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures and affords us the due-process rights of notice and a chance to be heard, even when the government invokes national security as an excuse. We should all celebrate the vindication of those crucial principles. As for KindHearts in particular, Judge Carr's ruling is a critical step toward its goal of defending itself against the government's allegations," said Fritz Byers, one of KindHearts' attorneys.

KindHearts, founded in 2002, was targeted in 2006 by federal agents, who in turn froze the charity's financial assets. According to court documents, the organization was under investigation by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Treasury De-partment and would potentially be labeled as a "specially designated global terrorist."

Jihad Smaili, a KindHearts attorney who has since relocated to California, said yesterday that in the days and weeks after the organization's shutdown, he repeatedly tried to learn what evidence had been collected about the group's alleged affiliation with a militant-terrorist group. He said KindHearts was not allowed access to any information, including the group's own seized documents or its funds to hire attorneys.

"The opinion vindicates KindHearts' position all along, which is that it was shut down without evidence or without any opportunity to present its side to any court," Mr. Smaili said. "And 42 months later, a judge has recognized that there were constitutional violations."

Earlier this year, Judge Carr ordered the government to produce copies of all materials seized in 2006 from KindHearts' headquarters and the home of its president.

The organization's attorneys had argued that without access to the information, it could not defend itself against charges of terrorism by showing where its money was spent. The government countered that opening access could compromise its investigation.

The attorneys, including those from the American Civil Liberties Union, further argued that the government violated search-and-seizure laws when it froze KindHearts' assets without showing probable cause and without obtaining a warrant.

In his order this week, Judge Carr wrote, "KindHearts is indisputably one of 'the people' protected by the Fourth Amendment. If the Constitution affords KindHearts no protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, whom among 'the people' does it protect and who among the people can be certain of its protection?"

The judge further noted that finding the Fourth Amendment inapplicable to the government's "block actions" would disregard its "role as a bulwark against the abuses and excesses of unchecked governmental power."

Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, said the lengthy opinion will be analyzed so it is wholly understood. He declined comment on the judge's conclusions.

"We're going to review it and then ultimately make a determination of how the government will proceed in this matter," he said yesterday. "It's not just a simple case of reading it, it's a matter of reading the nuances of what it means and then [figuring] out how to proceed."

Though the judge found the organization's rights were violated, he offered no opinion on to what extent KindHearts suffered as a result of the government's actions. Instead, he asked attorneys for both sides to submit additional information and set a Sept. 21 hearing date to review the matter.

Mr. Smaili said KindHearts had about $1 million in its coffers in 2006 that was headed to Pakistan for earthquake relief. Though the group now has access to its funds to pay attorneys, he questioned what will happen to the money he said was at one time slated for humanitarian relief efforts.

"It's a great thing to read, but in reality, KindHearts is shut down forever," Mr. Smaili said.

Judge Carr's decision may be appealed to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. At a May 1 court appearance before the judge in which both sides argued their cases, the government indicated if the judge ruled the freeze of assets lifted, it would request a stay until the appellate court hears the case.
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We the people...Constitution rally in Perrysburg

Local Rally draws media attention.



We the people...Constitution rally in Perrysburg

Written by JENISE FOUTS Sentinel Staff Writer
Saturday, 01 August 2009 20:02

PERRYSBURG - Saturday's Northwest Ohio Pro-Constitution Rally at Hood Park was not organized by veteran protestors, irate taxpayers or disgruntled citizens. Its sponsors were two young women in their 20s who want to preserve the future of America.
Sara (George) Lewis, 24, co-organizer with her friend, Adrianne Lee, 25, was pleased it turned out to be a positive event, one of their primary goals. "All of our speakers kept focused on the Constitution and focused on positive activities," said Lewis, adding, "We weren't here to complain. We were here to celebrate the Constitution."
She has attended two TEA party protests which were much larger, while Saturday's rally had a steady crowd of 100 during its two-hour length. "I think one of the differences with the TEA parties, they had an organization behind it, not just two people behind it," said Lewis. "This is an independent cause started by two citizens."
One reason they organized the rally is because "it just seems like people aren't aware what's going on, and people have stopped reading (the Constitution) and understanding what it means," Lewis said. "Even though we still are young we have our futures in mind. When we have children we want them to have the same quality of life and liberty we have today.
"It's looking in the future and making sure we preserve what we have."
When it concluded, her husband, Army Tech Sgt. Joe Lewis, stated, "I think after this people'll open their books and read the Constitution and find out what this is going on. ... I just hope people take action."

Many of the speakers interwove ways to take action within their speeches. Jeffery Webber, 37, a father of four and founder of Network 1776, (www.network1776.org) suggested, "Call radio stations. Start your own Web site. Start a MySpace page. Twitter. Do whatever you can do to make your voice be heard."
Webber brought a huge American flag which he found in a gutter, frozen and tied to a 2-by-4. He had two volunteers hold it up so the audience could see how battered it was. Then Webber had the men turn it upside down.
"This reminded me about our country," he stated, noting its tears, rips and holes. When it was upside down he continued, "This represents our country in distress. America's back is against the wall. Nobody thinks they can make a difference. We can't do it one at a time. We have to do it together and make a stand."
He referenced speaker Scott Allegrini who started Children of Liberty. "There are groups out there. (Or) start your own. We're running out of time. Start doing your research."
Guests heard about a rally in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 12, as well as a class on the Constitution which speaker Ken Matesz will teach in October in Perrysburg. In addition, after the event, attendee Sue Goliver mentioned We By For (the People), a brand new organization which is attempting to preserve the country as a constitutional republic.
Speakers addressed issues such as why the Constitution was written, economic freedom, freedom of speech, the right to bear arms and the cost of freedom.
Co-organizer Lee welcomed the audience. "We gather today to celebrate nothing short of a miracle: The Constitution." She noted the country's Founding Fathers "certainly did not want us controlled by a Nanny State. We are paying attention."
Speaker Joel Rossol said the Founding Fathers understood negative rights, writing into the Constitution what Congress cannot do to impinge upon the rights citizens have.
The youngest speaker, Raymond George, 17, spoke about the Second Amendment's right to bear arms and asked, "If (it) is nullified by some form of law, what's there to stop other amendments from being changed? What about freedom of speech? ... If you start, where will it stop?"
Iraqi War veteran Corey LeRoux announced, "I learned what happens to a country, a people, that do not have a Constitution. Imagine your children playing in a street where a foreign army patrols it, and a bomb can go off. ... It means we must stand together, that with faith with a loud enough voice we can take action, turn our flag the right side up." Click Here to Read More..

A Great Moment in our History

by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

Keynote speech at the Ohio Rally for State Sovereignty, August 1, 2009.

Full Text and Audio HERE.

Let me set down a couple of fervent beliefs that animate everything I do and everything I say.

I believe that God created heaven and earth and every single individual on the planet.

I believe that the God who gave us life gave us liberty and that freedom is our birthright.

I believe that the States created the federal government and not the other way around. And that the power that the States gave to the Federal Government - they can take back.

When we were colonists, and the King and the Parliament needed money from us, and they always seemed to need money, they devised ingenious ways to tax us. One of them was called the Stamp Act. The Parliament decreed that every piece of paper that the Colonists had in their homes; every book, every document, every deed, every lease, every pamphlet, every poster to be nailed to a tree had to have the King’s stamp on it. You think going to a Post Office is bad? You had to go to a British Government office and buy a stamp with the King’s picture.

Question. How did the King know that his picture was on every piece of paper in your house? The Parliament enacted a hateful piece of legislation called the Writs of Assistance Act which let the king’s soldiers write their own search warrants, and bang down any door they chose to look for the stamps or anything else that they were looking for.

It was the last straw.

We fought a revolution. We won the revolution. We wrote the Constitution. The constitution doesn’t grant power, it keeps the government off our backs.

When they were debating the Constitution in the Summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, there were two great arguments - one by the Jefferson and Madison crowd and one by the Adams and Hamilton crowd. Jefferson argued, though he wasn’t physically there in Philly, as he did in the Declaration of Independence that our rights are ours by virtue of our humanity. That as God is perfectly free, and we are created in his image and likeness, we too are perfectly free. The big government crowd - yes they had them even in those days - argued that you can’t have freedom without government, and that government gives us our rights, and therefore, that government can take them away. This is not an academic argument. Jefferson and the natural law argument prevailed because the Constitution was written to keep the government from interfering with our natural rights.

And so, your right to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say, to travel where you want, to worship as you see fit, to keep and bear arms to defend yourself against a tyranny. And, after the right to life, the greatest and most uniquely American of rights - and I say this in front of the seat of the government - is the right to be left alone.

We wrote a Constitution to ensure that the government would never interfere with these rights. Think about it - if rights come from the government, then the government, by ordinary legislation, or presidential decree can take them away. But if the rights come from our humanity, then unless we violate someone else’s natural rights, the government cannot take our rights away.
This is not just a democrat, upper case D, or a republican, upper case R, problem. It’s a problem with government today. There’s a republican version of big government just as assaultive to our liberties as there’s a democrat version of big government.

We fought a revolution because British soldiers could knock on our doors and demand that we house them, and demand that we turn over property to them because they could write their own search warrants. In the Patriot Act, the most hateful piece of legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts, a republican congress and a republican president authorized federal agents to do the unthinkable - to write their own search warrants. And the republican administration didn’t even let members of the House of Representatives read the Patriot Act before they voted on it.

Why should the government be able to spy on us? We should be able to spy on them!

When some judge is rationalizing away our liberty, or some congressman is plotting to take away your freedom or your tax dollars, we should know what they do every minute that they do it.

I was speaking to a group of congressman from a neighboring state - I won’t tell you which state it was, but they don’t play football there - and they came up to me and said “this is the first time we have heard that the Patriot Act allows federal agents to write their own search warrants.” Remember, in the Constitution, we put in the 4th Amendment, the right to be left alone, to make sure that if the government had a target, no matter how guilty the target, no matter how widespread is the belief in the guilt of the target, no matter how dangerous is the target, the government has to go through a neutral judge with a search warrant before it can get to that target. These members of Congress said, “we didn’t know that the Patriot Act allowed the government to bypass the courts and write any search warrant they wanted.” Then I asked them a question I knew the answer to already - did you read the Patriot Act before you voted on it? The answer - no. What were you voting on? A summary we received. Let me guess who wrote the summary - some lawyers in the justice department, right? Of course.

Would you hire anybody to run your business that committed you to a violation of the very reason you’re in business if they didn’t even the document by which they were making that committment? Of course not.

The camera is the new gun. There’s nothing that government dislikes more than the light of day, and cameras recording what the government is doing, whether it’s on a street corner, or in there, or in Washington D.C., we have the right to know everything that they do and why they do it, and when they do it, and how they are taking our freedoms.

I have another one of my basic core beliefs. The individual has an immortal soul. Every individual is greater than any government.
Your government is based on fear and force. You don’t have to take my word on it. The 2nd president on the United States, John Adams, said “Of course the government is based on fear.” And the first president, George Washington, said “Government is not reason, it is force.” I think they knew what they were talking about.

Now fast-forward to modern times. Whenever the government wants something, it scares us. During the civil war, Lincoln tried civilians in this state where no battles occured, by military tribunal. After he died the supreme court invalidated everything the military tribunals did. During the first world war, the Wilson administration locked up 2000 people called anarchists - same thing as enemy combatants. No trial, no charge, just jail for the duration of the war. In world war II, FDR locked up 150,000 Japanese Americans, people born in the United States, who got no trial and had no charges, and when the war was over were given $25 and told to go home.

Today we have federal agents. You know I get in arguments with my friends at Fox News, and one of them, I don’t have to tell you who it is, but is truly the most irascible person there. And he said to me, you know you have a problem with Guantanamo Bay, and you have a problem with the Patriot Act, what will you do if I get sent to Guantanamo Bay, will you visit me? And I say, Bill - no, because they’ll probably keep me there as well.

Government likes to say that it’s taking an oath to uphold the Constitution. In the years that I was on the bench, it seemed that every time government lawyers were in my courtroom, if the government was prosecuting someone who was legitimately guilty or whether it was a mistake, or whether somebody was suing the government because government contractors or government doctors, or government workers made a mistake - the government doesn’t come in to the courtroom to enforce the constitution, it comes into the courtroom to evade and avoid it. That, ladies and gentlemen, must be stopped.

This is a great moment in our history. A crowd of this magnitude on a beautiful day, in the boiling sun, in the most middle-American of great middle-American states…comes together not because the president is a democrat, not because his predecessor was a republican, not because a war is just or unjust, not because the Fed is stealing or printing - you’re here because you believe in human freedom.

It is the essence of our existence that we should be free. But remember this: the government hates freedom. It is an obstacle to every one of their designs. Whenever they write laws, whenever they take your tax dollars, whenever they regulate your private behavior, whenever they tell you how to spend your money, whenever they tell you what medicines to take, whenever they tell you what food to eat, whenever they tell you with who you may or must associate, they are taking away your freedom and they love to get away with it. And they cannot get away with it any longer.

In the long history of the world, very few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger. This is that moment and you are that generation! Now is the time to defend our freedoms.

Jefferson was no saint but he was the greatest of our American presidents. He believed that the individual was greater than the state. He believed that the states were greater than the federal government. And when he wrote that our rights come from our creator, and that our rights are inalienable, he forever wed the notion of natural rights to the American experience and the American experiment. We must be vigilant about every right that the government wants to take away from us.

You’ve heard the president say, present president and his predecessor, “my first job is to keep you safe.” He’s wrong! His first job is to keep us free. It is his only job to keep us free.

Shortly before he died, Jefferson lamented, that in his view of the world that is was in the natural order of things for government to grow and freedom to be diminished; how ardently he wish that that wouldn’t happen. And in order to prevent it from happening he had a very simple remedy, “When the people fear the government, that is tyranny. When the government fears the people, that is liberty!”

Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], who was on the bench of the Superior Court of New Jersey between 1987 and 1995, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel. His newest book is Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America, (Nelson, 2009) His previous books are A Nation of Sheep, The Constitution in Exile and Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws.

Copyright © 2009 Andrew P. Napolitano
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August 1, Rally at the Satehouse

The Ohio Liberty Council held a Rally in Columbus this weekend. Here is some after-Rally media coverage of the event.

Fox 8 News:
Ohio Group Protest Federal Government Power

and,
The Columbus Dispatch:

Anti-tax activists stage protest
Group slams federal, state, local government at Statehouse
Sunday, August 2, 2009 3:24 AM
By Jim Siegel
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Shari Lewis | Dispatch
Cheering messages of limited government, lower taxes and states' rights, thousands rallied yesterday at the Statehouse, hoping to continue a movement that began in the spring with nationwide tea parties.

The enthusiastic crowd took aim at government bailouts, rising national debt, "socialized" health care and even Columbus' proposed income-tax increase.

If approved, the tax would increase from 2 percent to 2.5 percent and generate $90 million to $100 million a year. City voters will decide the issue on Tuesday.

"That's $1 billion over the next 10 years taken out of wallets and given to an institution right over there that has proven to us that they can't manage our money at all," City Council candidate Matt Ferris told the crowd while pointing toward City Hall.

"Say 'no' to this massive tax."

Organized by the Ohio Liberty Council, people arrived by the busload and expressed anger over issues such as taxes and government intrusion.

Some collected signatures in hopes of eliminating Ohio's estate tax with a 2010 ballot initiative. Many wore or carried messages with them, such as a sign that read, "Grow your own dope plant a politician."

"I want the right to drive a gas-guzzler and choose my own health care," said Amy Chauvette, 45, of Toledo, who held a sign that read, "America home of the free? Not lately."

"Government is losing sight of what they are really there for. They are not there to run car companies or health care. They are there to keep this country free."

The featured speaker, Andrew Napolitano, a New Jersey Superior Court judge and a Fox News commentator, got the crowd into a "freedom" chant and blasted the expanded government authority and lack of oversight contained in the Patriot Act.

"Remember, the government hates freedom. It is an obstacle to what everyone there desires," said Napolitano, whose speech ended with Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It blasting from the speakers.

Though there was plenty of anti-Obama sentiment in the crowd, speakers took aim at both parties.

Liberty Council co-founder Mike Wilson asked everyone to punch the numbers of U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown and George V. Voinovich into their cell phones.

"If they have voice-mail, I suggest you blow them up today."

Jason Rink of Clintonville, a member of the Liberty Council, reminded the crowd that President George W. Bush got the ball rolling by approving the federal bank bailout.

"Now that Obama is in office, all of the Republicans oppose the bailouts," he said. "They are born-again fiscal conservatives. That's convenient."
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July 4 T.E.A. Party in Perrysburg

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Obama's revealing body language

Come with me,
Over here.......
I want to show you something.

This picture truly is worth at least a thousand words. Click Here to Read More..