Friday, May 30, 2008

The Mark of the Beast?

British MP Tim Yeo MP, promoting conservation or fulfilling prophecy?
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.—Revelations 13:17
Every adult should be forced to use a 'carbon ration card' when they pay for petrol, airline tickets or household energy, MPs say.-- David Derbyshire
Despite the scientific proof that Anthropogenic global warming is a fraud Europe is pushing ahead with the idea to brand each of it’s citizens with a 666 to be placed in the palm of their hand. This Carbon Credit card will be mandatory so that Europeans will not be able to buy, sell or trade without it. (see remarkable story here)

We reported that huge corporate investors are applying pressure to the United States Congress by letter to Sens. Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell to get Congress to mandate that the United States join the Carbon credit markets too. (see here)

However Great Britain MP Tory leader Tim Yeo is seriously considering linking the British citizen’s ability to conduct the daily affairs of life to a tax system which will tax citizens for their daily pursuits.

This is an outrage; any person who would allow their government such authority over them is not a citizen but a slave.

The United States Congress will soon debate the Lieberman-Warner bill that would surely introduce this sort of practice into the United States of America. (see here)

The question is are Americans so brainwashing with all of the global warming hype that they would allow their government to print a 666 on their foreheads or place a card in hand and force Americans to use it in order to buy, sell or trade?

Thursday, May 29, 2008

31,000 Scientists reject Anthropogenic Global Warming


An incredible 31,072 Americans with university degrees in science, including 9,021 Ph.D.s, have signed a petition that flatly denies Al Gore’s claims that human-caused global warming is a settled scientific fact.--Philip V. Brennan,also (See here)and (here)


But it doesn’t matter because global warming is not about science, global warming is about money big money!
A multi-trillion dollar coalition of investors, including US pension schemes Calpers and Calstrs, is pressuring the US Senate to set binding targets for the reduction of the country's carbon dioxide emissions.

The investors, with a combined $2.3 trillion (€1.5 trillion) under management, have written to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and Senate Republican chief Mitch McConnell, calling for a national climate policy to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60 to 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
—Mark Cobley
(See letter here)


You could have 1 million scientists say that Global warming is a farce yet the economic interest that have aligned themselves behind this new multi-trillion dollar revenue source are not going to relent. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius for Corporate investors.
The reduction is similar in scope to that proposed in a climate bill from Senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner, which is set to be debated next month. The Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have also unveiled policies for reductions.

Most of the proposals envisage emissions being cut through a "cap-and-trade" system, similar to the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme, which has created a $50bn (€32bn) market in carbon permits.
--Mark Cobley

We are on the brink of an enormous social economic change. Just as the western world transitioned from the agrarian to the industrial to information base economies we are poised to transition to the global free market base economy.

Unlike its predecessors the global free market base economy will not produce it will only generate revenue based on trading and manipulating commodities such as air, water, food, energy or any such thing of value. So let the sun shine in.

The Global Free Market based economy will control every aspect of one’s life where one will work, what one will buy to how much carbon dioxide one can emit.
But now that the politicians want to decrease those emissions, the government must create a new commodity – the right to create CO2 – and put a price on it. This is an unprecedented tax that would profoundly touch every corner of American life.

The policy preferred by the environmental lobby is called cap and trade. The government would set a limit on emissions that declines every year. The goal of Warner-Lieberman is to return to 2005 levels by 2012, and to reduce that by 30% by 2030.

"Allowances" for emissions would be distributed to covered businesses – power, oil, gas, heavy industry, manufacturing, etc. If they produced less than their allotment, the companies could sell the allowances, or trade them.

Cap and trade limits on energy are thus sometimes misleadingly described as a "free market" policy that would create the flexibility for CO2 reductions how and where they are least expensive. But the limits are still a huge tax.

And for the most part, the politicians favor cap and trade because it is an indirect tax. A direct tax – say, on gasoline – would be far more transparent, but it would also be unpopular. Cap and trade is a tax imposed on business, disguising the true costs and thus making it more politically palatable.

In reality, firms will merely pass on these costs to customers, and ultimately down the energy chain to all Americans.
The Wall Street Journal
The on coming Global Free Market based economy is a crap shot; it is stocks and commodities trading on steroids. It is global speculation on world resources thus controlling world supplies of food, supplies and goods, energy and money. The Global Free Market based economy is the one world government that was foretold to come.
Business groups from the Group of Eight (G8) member countries have called on their governments to push for innovation to fuel the fight against climate change.

It is essential that the governments of the seven leading industrialised countries and Russia cooperate with business to promote research, development and investment in technologies that produce lower emissions of carbon dioxide, said a joint declaration issued at the end of a meeting of the G8 business groups in Tokyo.
The European Weekly

So what does all of this have to do with global warming you ask? Well you wouldn’t allow a small group of investors to take control of the world’s economies if they just came out and told you that they intended to control the world’s economies now would you?

But if someone told you in order to save the planet from the threat of Global warming we have to reduce carbon dioxide by 50% by 2050 which means that you will have to be taxed and you will have to purchase various things to comply with the new laws which they are implementing for your own good. You would gladly allow it now wouldn’t you?

You might even help implement the policies that would transfer your wealth to those who are implementing such policies. You might even give up your freedoms for what you think is the good of the planet. This is called misdirection.

Against all of the scientific evidence that is coming forward that disproves global warming you are still convinced that Al Gore, World governments and the now Corporate investors have your best interest at heart by herding you into a global taxation scheme using your fear of Global warming as a prod by which to convince you to give up your freedoms and economic power.
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate.

Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the earth.”--Topix
Anthropogenic global warming is a farce and you and I have allowed unelected and unrestrained corporate power to seize control of world governments including the United States of America by ceding them power over the free markets by which they control all commodities, resources and Government’s economies.

World governments will now be controlled by huge business conglomerates to do business’s bidding in pursue of multi-trillion dollar markets.

"If we will not endure a king as a political power we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessaries of life."—John Sherman

Welcome to the Age of Aquarius brought to you by the unfounded threat of Global warming!

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Olbermann Speaks for America

Keith Olbermann

[Sen. Clinton] [a] woman uniformly described by her close friends as genuine, principled and sane has been reduced to citing the timing of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination as a reason to stay in the race -- an argument that is ungenuine, unprincipled and insane.—Eugene Robinson, Washingtonpost

Every so often there occurs an act so devastatingly startling that political partisans lay down their differences if only for a moment. 9/11 was such a day that such an act was committed.

That day and subsequent days that followed we were all Americans not Republican or Democrats not Liberals or Conservatives.

Keith Olbermann, a shill for the far left and the Liberal’s attempted answer to Rush Limbaugh, recently commented on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s justification for remaining in the presidential race.

Olbermann’s comments are visceral and bombastic yet they are the kind of rebuke that Sen. Hillary Clinton so rightly deserves from Americans, from all Americans.

And in this one isolated insular case Keith Olbermann speaks for me! (see video)

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Hillary’s Hate spreads to Fox

Liz Trotta

Well I thought that the flames on this story had died down but it looks like someone keeps fanning the coals. Veteran reporter, editor and contributor to T.V. ‘s Fox news Liz Trotta reporting on Sen. Clinton’s assassination remarks seems to have made news herself when she joked about “knocking off Obama.”

A bad idea is like a virus whether intended or not Sen. Clinton dropped an idea into the social psyche that is still working itself through.

Like a bad cold Fox’s Trotta, a former Washington Times editor and three-time Emmy winner apparently infected with the thought of assassination attempted to make light of the situation adding her own comic twist with a play on Sen. Obama’s name apparently confusing it with Osama and then suggesting that maybe both Osama and Obama should be “knocked off” in keeping with the spirit of Sen. Clinton’s reference of assassination. (see video)




In a later interview with Fox Ms. Trotta is asked to further analyze Sen. Clinton’s assassination remarks and compare them to the Senator’s explanations and apologies.

After which Ms. Trotta was ask about her own remarks to which Ms. Trotta apologized. She intimated that diversity was a problem in this year’s campaign and because of it people were going to have to be careful of what they say. (see video)



I’m not so sure that people have to be careful of what they say Ms. Trotta but here’s a quick rule of thumb, just steer away from intimating the death of a rival candidate and do not attempt to tie a candidate’s name association with known terrorists or to religious extremism.

You do that and you should be okay.

And the same applies to you Sen. Clinton!

Monday, May 26, 2008

Sen. Clinton Assassinates her own Campaign

"I regret if my referencing of that moment of trauma for our entire country and particularly the Kennedy family was in any way offensive."—Sen. Hillary Clinton
(Play video)

She’s a Yale trained attorney and a consummate political animal both attributes lend themselves to an above average skill with words.

She's a control freak that over prepares and has to be in control of every appearance and in control of every detail of her campaign.

Yet according to Jake Tapper, reporting for ABC news when interviewing before the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader's editorial board and when asked about calls for her to drop out, Clinton said, “This is part of an ongoing effort to end this before it’s over. I sure don’t think it’s over." She mentioned how non-frontrunners took their delegates to the convention in 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992.

Suggesting that Obama's campaign has been the source of stories about a unity ticket with her as vice president, Clinton said, "people have been trying to push me out of this ever since Iowa."

Clinton was then asked if she doesn't think that those calling for the ticket are actually interested in uniting the party.

"I don’t because I’ve been around long enough," she said. "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know, I don't understand it. And there's lots of speculation about why it is."

These words just may have ended Sen. Clinton’s run at the 2008 Democrat nomination for president. Two days after Sen. Clinton's comments a magazine placed Sen. Obama in the Crosshairs on front of their magazine.

Three things, if you are the candidate of experience the one who will be answering that phone call at 3am in the morning then please don’t trot out your surrogates to say that you speak thousands of words therefore you’re tired as justification for perhaps the most politically repugnant statement of the 2008 Presidential campaign.
Truly if that is it, you were tired Sen. Clinton then we have no assurance that if you are awaken in the early hours by a ringing phone you would say something appropriate.

Second, the question was why you remain in the race with Sen. Obama when it is apparent to everyone but you that you should get out.

Your answer was that you remain in the race with Sen. Obama because anything could happen. Like for instance even an assassination?

Let me ask then, the assassination of whom? There is only one answer Sen. Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama.

However, in your apology you mentioned the American people and the Kennedys but you failed to mention the one person that was directly impacted by your reference to assassination, Sen. Obama.

I think that was the worst slight of all! In addition to that, I’ve always been taught that if an apology had the word “if” in it, it wasn’t an apology at all.

Third, any student of politics knows that Governor Clinton wrapped up the Democratic nomination in March early April 1992 not mid June but coming from someone who can’t distinguish between sniper fire and poems and flowers given to you from a little girl on the airplane tarmac in Bosnia I’d chalk this point up to another of your delusions.

A lot of delusion going on this presidential campaign and it seems most of it is coming from the Clinton campaign and Clinton supporters.

What would you call campaigning as if Sen. Hillary Clinton is a civil rights champion for women who is qualified to be president based on her experience as first lady and two terms in the Senate if not delusional?

But she was right if she stayed in long enough something would happen only it just did Sen. Clinton you've assassinated your own campaign and you're in such a delusional state of denial that you don't even realize it.

What has happened is the candidate of experience just made a campaign ending gaffe and she’s too inexperienced to know it or accept it.

Or maybe she's too tired to realize it.

By the way Sen. Clinton claims that she ahead in the popular vote another delusion! By Sen. Clinton's count she's including the Florida and Michigan vote both where discounted by the DNC national rules committee, Sen. Clinton and all the other candidates because these states broke Party rules and had their primaries out of turn.

Everyone agreed even Sen. Clinton that the Florida and Michigan votes do not count. Sen. Obama is actually ahead in the popular vote Sen. Clinton!

To claim that she is ahead in the popular vote based on Florida and Michigan is wishful thinking in the least and almost as delusional as intimating that harm could come to your opponent just like in June 1968, just like it did to Bobby Kennedy!

Friday, May 23, 2008

Send a Message to China!!!!!

Are we Americans as dumb as we appear, or is it that
we just do not think?

While the Chinese, knowingly and intentionally, export
inferior products and dangerous toys and goods to be
sold in American markets, the media wrings its hands
and criticizes the Bush Administration for perceived
errors. Yet 70% of Americans believe that the trading
privileges afforded to the Chinese should be suspended.

Well, duh..why do you need the government to suspend
trading privileges? DO IT YOURSELF!

Simply look on the bottom of every product you buy,
and if it says 'Made in China ' or 'PRC' (and that now
includes Hong Kong ), simply choose another product or
none at all. You will be amazed at how dependent you
are on Chinese products, however, you will be equally
amazed at what you can do without. Who needs plastic
eggs to celebrate Easter? If you must have eggs, use
real ones and benefit some American farmer. Easter is
just an example. The point is, do not wait for the
government to act. Just go ahead and assume control
on your own.

If 200 million Americans refuse to buy just $20 each
of Chinese goods, that's a billion dollar trade
imbalance resolved in our favor...fast!! The downside?
Some American businesses will feel a temporary pinch
from having foreign stockpiles of inventory.

The solution? Let's give them fair warning and send
our own message. We will not implement this UNTIL June 4,
and we will only continue it until July 4. That is only
one month of trading losses, but it will hit the Chinese
for 1/12th of the total, or 8%, of their American
exports. Then they will at least have to ask themselves
if the benefits of their arrogance and lawlessness
were worth it.

Remember, June 4 to July 4. Send this to everybody you
know. Show them we are Americans and NOBODY can take us
for granted.

If we cannot live without cheap Chinese goods for one
month out of our lives, WE DESERVE WHAT WE GET!

Pass it on America! This is still our USA !!!"In God we trust"

God Bless America !!!

COME ON WHAT DID YOU THINK GREEN MEANT?

Eco Label

Investors managing more than $2.3 trillion urged the government on Tuesday to enact strict laws to cut greenhouse gas emissions, saying lax regulation could hurt the competitiveness of U.S. companies.

The group of some 50 investors, including the world's biggest listed hedge fund firm, Man Group Plc and influential venture capitalist John Doerr, want U.S. lawmakers to pass laws to reduce climate-warming emissions by at least 60 to 90 percent by 2050.
—Andre Grenon
What do you suppose companies organized under the name Investors and Environmentalist for Sustainable Prosperity is intending to do about Global warming? Hum?

I’ll tell you what they’re going to do, they are going to profit from Global warming that’s what they’re going to do and you’re going to pay for it!


Over 50 companies that manage 2.3 trillion dollars in assets are in the process of attempting to influence your government to enact the Lieberman-Warner climate bill calling for a national climate policy to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60 to 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

You know Sen. Joe Lieberman he was Al Gore’s running mate in 2000 not to mention that he is a close friend of president hopeful Sen. John McCain, well Sen. Lieberman is the coauthor of a bill that will change the U.S. economy forever using global warming/climate change as a front. I guess changing the economy is what they really mean when they say “climate change!”


I don’t know how many ways I have to say it before you realize it but this is a bad thing. I’ve been attempting to warn you that there are forces behind global warming that are not concerned with health of our planet. Again these Investors and so-called environmentalist are set to change the world’s economy using global warming as a front to achieve that goal and they are using the public’s ignorance and the public’s willingness to participate in its own demise to bring about the most significance economy change in recent human history.

How is that bad you ask well I’ll tell you how. How’s gas prices, are you enjoying paying $4 to $5 dollars for gasoline which no doubt will get higher. Or when have you ever heard of world food shortages until now?

You see, what these two things have in common is the free market. Investors and speculators are using the free market to make commodities like food and gasoline or energy to profit from by artificially raising prices and creating scarcity.

These investor and other like them have already created a market for buying and selling Carbon credits so if the Senate passes legislation and the President signs that legislation into law these companies and investors will profit from the regulations that will be imposed on you and me by law when we have to buy their carbon reducing products.

Just who are these Companies, Investors and Government entities that are posed to profit from global warm/climate change? I thought you’d never ask, they are:

PENSION FUNDS, STATE TREASURERS, AND STATE / CITY COMPTROLLERS

California Public Employees' Retirement System
John Chiang, California State Controller
California State Teachers' Retirement System
Bill Lockyer, California State Treasurer
Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds
Alex Sink, Florida Chief Financial Officer
Nancy K. Kopp, Maryland State Treasurer
Timothy P. Cahill, Massachusetts State Treasurer
Orin S. Kramer, Chair, New Jersey State Investment Council
William G. Clark, Director, New Jersey Division of Investment
William C. Thompson, New York City Comptroller
Thomas P. DiNapoli, New York State Comptroller
Richard Moore, North Carolina State Treasurer
Randall Edwards, Oregon State Treasurer
Robin L. Wiessmann, Pennsylvania State Treasurer
Frank Caprio, Rhode Island General Treasurer
Stephen Abrecht, Service Employees International Union Master Trust Fund
Jeb Spaulding, Vermont State Treasurer
Joseph A. Dear, Executive Director, Washington State Investment Board

ASSET MANAGERS, VENTURE CAPITALISTS, AND FINANCIAL SERVICES FIRMS

Geeta Aiyer, President, Boston Common Asset Management
Bennett Freeman, Senior Vice President for Social Research and Policy, Calvert Asset Management Company
Mike Johnston, Executive Vice President, The Capital Group Companies (firm name for identification purposes only)
Mindy S. Lubber, President, Ceres and Director, Investor Network on Climate Risk
Francis G. Coleman, Executive Vice President, Christian Brothers Investment Services
Kevin Parker, Global Head of Asset Management, Deutsche Bank
Adam M. Kanzer, Managing Director & General Counsel, Domini Social Investments
Alain Grisay, CEO, F&C Investments
Generation Investment Management
Kristina Curtis, President, Green Century Funds
Vinod Khosla, Founder, Khosla Ventures
Peter D. Kinder, KLD Research & Analytics, Inc.
L. John Doerr, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Jonathan Naimon, CEO, Light Green Advisors
Rob O. Challis, Global Head of Corporate Responsibility, Man Group
Mark Schwartz, Chairman, MissionPoint Capital Partners
Joseph Keefe, CEO, Pax World Funds
Stephen Dodson, President, Parnassus Funds
Joan Bavaria, President, Trillium Asset Management
Tim Smith, Director of Socially Responsive Investing, Walden Asset Management
Jack Robinson, President and CIO, Winslow Management Company

FOUNDATIONS, ENDOWMENTS AND OTHER INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS

Pam Solo, President, Civil Society Institute
Jesse Fink, President, Betsy and Jesse Fink Foundation
Germeshausen Foundation
Rev. William Somplatsky-Jarman, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Michael Crosby, OFMCap, The Province of St. Joseph of the Capuchin Order
Sisters of St. Francis of Dubuque, Iowa
Barbara Kraemer, OSF, U.S. Provincial, School Sisters of St Francis, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Patricia A. Daly, OP, Executive Director, Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment
Timothy Brennan, Treasurer, Unitarian Universalist Association
Timothy E. Wirth, President, United Nations Foundation
V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation
Wren W. Wirth, President, The Winslow Foundation

So Al Gore was right the debate is over your Government and 2.3 to 5 trillion dollars says that global warming/climate change is real and that they are going to proceed in enacting change in our laws by the Senate that will force Americans to pay for it. (Listen to Ceres press conference on investors for climate change laws.)

These investors and environmentalist have already written a letter to Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell which demands that Lieberman-Warner bill be passed by the Senate.

And you though going green is for the planet, boy are you wrong!

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Statesmanship verses Staymanship

Senator Clinton: She won’t quit

Rebuffing associates who have suggested that she end her candidacy, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has made it clear to her camp in recent days that she will stay in the race until June because she believes she can still be the nominee — and, barring that, so she can depart with some final goals accomplished.>Patrick Healy, NYTimes
In the Presidential election of 2000, if Vice President Al Gore would not have called Governor Bush back and taken back his concession and had Gore bowed out gracefully in 2000 maybe Democrats would have won the Whitehouse in 2004 and maybe our politics would not be the al Qaeda cut throat politics we presently have today.

Putting the country's interest before your own political ambitions is an act of a Statesman however no one ever accused Al Gore of being a Statesman.

It seems to me that Gore and Sen. Clinton have something in common and that is the lack of care for the greater good of the country, they seem only to focus on what is good for their own political careers.

Amazingly the split that is how showing in the Democrat party is a microcosm of the split that the entire country showed in 2000 after the Florida debacle and Chadgate both splits are symptomatic of a Democrat who doesn’t know when to quit.

It’s like when is an artist's painting finished, which one is the last stroke? Hillary Clinton’s Don Quixote tilt at the Democratic nomination is as real to her now as her made up stories of her experience and her courage and valor under fire (not metaphorically speaking here). Yet on the strength of her Kentucky win Sen. Clinton vows to remain in the race for the Democrat nomination.

Some times you just have to concede defeat and work to win another day. Somehow that lesson has been all but lost on Democrats who belly up to the bar way after the last call for alcohol. And as a good barkeep once said, “You don’t have to go home but you’ve got to get the hell out of here!” Apparently that doesn’t apply to Democrats who tend to stay way after closing.

Yet there is always some rational why a narcissistic Democrat candidate won’t quit. Mrs. Clinton latest rationalization is that she’s staying in because of women and little girls to show them how to fight sexism.
Rather, in private conversations and in interviews, Mrs. Clinton has begun asserting that she believes sexism, rather than racism, has cast a shadow over the primary fight, a point some of her supporters have made for months.

Advisers say that continuing her candidacy is partly a means to show her supporters — especially young women — that she is not a quitter and will not be pushed around.
--Patrick Healy
That is a preposterous claim for a woman who built her entire campaign on Sexism, on the fact that she is a woman and that she would be running against an old boys club of White man.


Senator Clinton is a reverse Sexist and a political opportunist who would have gained her Party’s nomination if not for the fact that her minority status claim to the nomination was cancelled out by another minority status claim… a Black man.

There is nothing laudable about Mrs. Clinton’s refusal to accept the inevitable. She has lost the Democratic nomination with an amateurish managed campaign that continually over spent because she hasn’t the power to raise taxes and ironically she has lost because she hasn't the experience that she talks about. She's never ran a competitive campaign for office, much more she hasn't the experience to run anything that resembles running a country! In fact she has less political experience, not more, than Sen. Obama!

Sleeping in the Whitehouse is not equal to gaining presidential experience if it where then any Whitehouse maid or cook could claim that they have the experience to be president, Sen. Clinton.

Alas there is nothing ennobling or classy about the way that Sen. Clinton has conducted her campaign on the contrary she has left a lasting impression of all that was wrong with Clinton White house and she has further made the name Clinton synonymous with sexism and racism.

Most of that could have been avoided had she not stayed so long and had she showed an inkling of Statesmanship a trait that apparently is lacking in Democrats these days.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Groups Use Endangered Species Act for Global Warming Politics

Kassie Siegel, climate director for the Center for Biological Diversity
Conservation groups returned to court to challenge Bush administration efforts to help save the polar bear, saying federal officials' refusal to include steps against global warming violates the Endangered Species Act. —Dan Joling
Oh boy did I call it! I warned that the Bush Administration’s Interior Department move to put the Polar bear on the Endangered Species List was caving in to special interests who were attempting to use the endangered species act as back door way of imposing global warming regulations on the United States.
That’s right the polar bear population is actually increasing and has in fact doubled since the late 1960’s from 12,000 bears to 25,000.

Those are the facts but because some discredited global warming computer models projected that someday maybe 50 years out the bear could possibly be in danger the Interior Department has caved to it’s trial lawyer friends who hope to use this new protection as a way to impose global warming laws on the United States by the Endangered Species Act.
Alaphiah
Well the special interests have come forward in plain sight to verify my contention. The Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council have filed Court documents demanding that the Interior Department include steps against global warming. Their argument is, in making the Polar bear an endangered species, as the government did, not to force the reduction of carbon emissions to protect the bears would violate the Endangered Species Act.

So the let’s see the Interior Department added the Polar bear to the endangered species list because they would not stand up to special interests’ outlandish law suit and now the special interest wants to use the Endangered Species Act to fight global warming.

I’d say the Bush administration just showed us another example of the “false comfort of appeasement” by putting the Polar bear on the Endanger Species List in the first place.

It seems, if I can borrow President Bush’s words, that some in the Interior Department believed that they could negotiate with environmentalist, Greenpeace terrorist and radicals, as if some ingenious acquiescence would persuade these radicals or even satisfy them.

As Special Interest filed their law suit to force the Bush Administration to add the Polar bear to the endangered species act Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne probably declared, ‘Lord if only I could compromise with them just maybe this can all be avoided.’

Well apparently not and its about time Secretary Kempthorne we call this what it is—the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history and every time the Bush administration caves in to or attempts to work with Liberals or Democrats.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Tar, Feathers a Rail and a little Second Amendment

Chief Justice Ronald M. George

Chief Justice Ronald M. George’s majority opinion is as arrogant as it is confused.

Never mind that, as his opinion concedes, “[f]rom the beginning of California statehood, the legal institution of marriage has been understood to refer to a relationship between a man and a woman.” Never mind that the very right to marry that he so wildly misconstrues is built on that understanding.

Never mind that California voters in 2000 overwhelmingly ratified that understanding by adopting by initiative — by a 61.4-percent majority — the California Defense of Marriage Act.

As associate justice Marvin R. Baxter aptly stated in dissent, “Nothing in our Constitution, express or implicit, compels the majority’s startling conclusion that the age-old understanding of marriage — an understanding recently confirmed by an initiative law — is no longer valid. California statutes already recognize same-sex unions and grant them all the substantive legal rights this state can bestow.

If there is to be a further sea change in the social and legal understanding of marriage itself, that evolution should occur by similar democratic means.”
Editors, National Review Online


In a more sensible time when morals where not confused and men where men and women were women if such a court would have made the ruling as the one hailed in California by it’s Supreme Court each justice would have been tarred, feathered and ran out of town on a rail. Ah the good ol’ days!

But alas today we allow judges to play legal jujitsu with the law we allow our politicians to fornicate in the oval office of the White house and afterwards blame the vast right wing conspiracy for their impeachment ills and finally we allow presidential hopefuls to spin yawns about danger, intrigue and qualifications without even just one little boy exclaiming, “But he (or she) has on no clothes, the Emperor has on no clothes!”

We are indeed a confused people, not knowing right from wrong or light from darkness we just allowed four California Justices to use invisible tread and invisible looms to manufacture the finest whole cloth that the People of California would ever want to wear.

Homosexual marriage.

California schools will be all the fashion as the K through 12 children will be fitted with the latest Heather has two mommies or the immortal and immoral “the tale of two Princes” the homosexual love story for Kindergarteners and 1st grade students that made its debut in the state of Massachusetts the only other state that sanctions legalized homosexuality.

Massachusetts parents attempted to complain that homosexuality was being forced on their little innocence 5 year-olds they even filed law suits but alas the Massachusetts Courts threw out their cases because after all homosexuality is the law! Isn’t there something weird here? A case can be thrown out because homosexuality is the law and when homosexuality isn’t the law the law can be thrown out. Hum?

I think Thomas Jefferson understood the tyranny that dwells in the hearts of men best when writing an amendment concerning religion for the state of Virginia Constitution Jefferson’s concern was that Judges would substitute their opinions for law which would cause them to override the People’s liberty by rule of their personal preferences, opinions and prejudges.

That is exactly what has happened in the state of California. Four Justices have negated the vote of millions of Californians, 61% of the vote on the 2000 proposition 22, to exact their opinions as the rule of judgment.

[T]he opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them. —Thomas Jefferson, Bill Establishing Religious Freedom in the State of Virginia, 1786
What is Political Correctness if it isn’t the opinions of men and women? Four California Supreme Court Justices; Ronald M. George, Carlos R. Moreno, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar and Joyce Kennard were persuaded by politically correct arguments that had no basis in law, particularly California constitutional law yet these legal tailors thought that they could fool the whole village of California by weaving invisible cloth and calling it the right to gay marriage.


The California Court’s ruling on marriage has disenfranchised tens of millions of Californians of their civil rights. These millions of Californians were denied their right to vote by California Supreme Court Justices; Ronald M. George, Carlos R. Moreno, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar and Joyce Kennard. These Justices have violated the very laws that they have sworn to uphold.

Its Government officials like these that the founding fathers wrote the second amendment for.

It was always the founder’s idea that if government ever usurped the will of the People or oppress the people through tyrannous acts that government should be rebelled against.

Most of us have forgotten that our history is a country birth out of rebellion. The Constitution was written so that never would the People be put under the edict or the rule of Kings or dictators ever again.

California’s Supreme Court has taken the misguided steps toward oligarchy by placing the opinion of four Justices above the Constitution and above the People.

I think such an act should prompt us to remember what the second amendment of the Constitution is really about.
Assessment of the accuracy of Second Amendment interpretation requires an understanding of the specific political situation of the time. Early America thrived on a long history of independence and rejection of centralized governmental authority, particularly when that authority was perceived as abusive or out of touch with the people.

The early American statesmen inherited a rich history of autonomy and suspicion of centralized power. It was this suspicion that motivated the introduction and ratification of the Bill of Rights, designed to protect the people from federal abuse.

There is a second, more radical sense in which the Second Amendment was intended to prevent governmental tyranny, however. Early American leaders believed that an armed populace would serve as a strong deterrent to any sort of governmental abuse. “Although the proposed Constitution offered sufficient guarantees against despotism by its checks and balances,” Vandercoy remarks, “the real deterrent to governmental abuse was the armed population.”[8]

The Framers, with Locke, believed that unchecked by the salubrious fear of its armed populace, government will follow its natural tendency to despotism.”[9] In the presence of an armed populace, however, government will be dissuaded from violative policies. As James Burgh said, There is no end to observations on the difference between the measures likely to be pursued by a minister backed by a standing army, and those of a court awed by the fear of an armed people.[10] Thus, the Second Amendment was intended as a deterrent to federal abuse of power.
--The Rebirth of Freedom Foundation

If every citizen was armed, the Founders reasoned, it then would be a relatively easy task to form them into a militia should the need for the states to protect themselves from tyrannical overlords become necessary.Bryan Fischer
Tar, Feathers a rail and a little Second Amendment is what is needed to stop this lurch toward activist Courts and tyrannous Government.

Americans should be up in arms against anyone or any entity that would take away the rights of the people and California’s Supreme Court ruling to overthrow the People’s vote must not be allowed to stand.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Heterophobic California Justices denies Voters Rights

Pictured en banc in the Supreme Court Courtroom in Sacramento are the court’s seven justices, from left to right: Associate Justice Carlos R. Moreno, Associate Justice Joyce L. Kennard, Associate Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, Chief Justice Ronald M. George, Associate Justice Ming W. Chin, Associate Justice Marvin R. Baxter, and Associate Justice Carol A. Corrigan. (Photo: Sirlin Photographers)
[A] bare majority of this court, not satisfied with the pace of democratic change now abruptly forestalls that process and substitutes, by judicial fiat, its own social policy views for those expressed by the People themselves.

Undeterred by the strong weight of state and federal law and authority, 4 the majority invents a new constitutional right, immune from the ordinary process of legislative consideration.

The majority finds that our Constitution suddenly demands no less than a permanent redefinition of marriage, regardless of the popular will.
Marvin R. Baxter, Justice

May these four names forever go down in infamy, Ronald M. George, Carlos R. Moreno, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar and Joyce Kennard. These four Justices on a Seven Justice Court decided to invent law as preposterous as Hillary Clinton’s claim of Sniper fire or Al Gore’s claim that he invented the internet the difference is these Justices actually did invent a new law out of whole cloth. (Invented California Law)

In a Constitutional Democratic Republic the government’s primary duty is to protect its citizens from enemies both foreign and domestic but what the Justices of the California Supreme court have done by over turning the people’s vote, which rightly defined marriage in California, is judicial tyranny. For all of you who cry about Homeland Security and wiretapping taking away your constitutional rights this judicial fiat is one hundred times worst than anything that President Bush has ever done.

The people voted in 2000 on proposition 22 in a 61% to 39% margin defining marriage in California as an institution that legally is only between a man and a woman.

In an act of straight judicial tyranny this group of black robed Oligarchist has subverted the will of the people whom attempted to insulate themselves from the Homosexual special interest Nazis that are infiltrating every part of America’s social order. The California Supreme Court sided with the homosexual Nazis against the people of California.

These justices didn’t uphold any constitutional principle they who were in the majority merely imposed their will on 31.1 million people. In California every vote does not count only the ones cast by people in black robes and only if you are the small majority of four does your vote count in California. Tyranny! Judicial tyranny.

The California Supreme Court in the slimmest of margins, a 4 to 3 vote, has trounced the civil rights of 31.1 million California citizens, trounced the separation of powers, so essential in the working of a democratic constitutional republic, and therefore they have trounced the very constitution which they claim was violated when 31.1 million people of California voted for proposition 22 eight years ago.

Yet there was a voice of reason on the Court yes three voices that argued for the people which makes this decision all the more egregious this Court didn’t overturn millions of votes and the rights of millions of Californians because everyone on the court believes the way the majority does but they did it in spite of the dire warnings of the minority on the Court.

A warning that predicts that the majorities vote for over turning the vote is unconstitutional in itself.

Justices Marvin R. Baxter, Carol A. Corrigan (in a separate dissent) and Ming W. Chin say that their own courts’ decision was wrong. Not only wrong but unconstitutional and they say it better than I.

Concurring and Dissenting Opinion By Baxter, J.

The majority opinion reflects considerable research, thought, and effort on a significant and sensitive case, and I actually agree with several of the majority’s conclusions. However, I cannot join the majority’s holding that the California Constitution gives same-sex couples a right to marry. In reaching this decision, I believe, the majority violates the separation of powers, and thereby commits profound error.

Only one other American state recognizes the right the majority announces today. So far, Congress, and virtually every court to consider the issue, has rejected it. Nothing in our Constitution, express or implicit, compels the majority’s startling conclusion that the age-old understanding of marriage — an understanding recently confirmed by an initiative law – is no longer valid.

California statutes already recognize same-sex unions and grant them all the substantive legal rights this state can bestow. If there is to be a further sea change in the social and legal understanding of marriage itself, that evolution should occur by similar democratic means. The majority forecloses this ordinary democratic process and in doing so oversteps its authority.

The majority’s mode of analysis is particularly troubling. The majority relies heavily o the Legislature’s adoption of progressive civil rights protections for gays and lesbians to find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. In effect, the majority gives the Legislature indirectly power that body does not directly possess to amend the Constitution and repeal an initiative statute. I cannot subscribe to the majority’s reasoning, or to its result.

As noted above, I do not dispute everything the majority says. At the outset, I join the majority’s observation that “[f]rom the beginning of California statehood, the legal institution of civil marriage has been understood to refer to a relationship between a man and a woman.” (maj. Opn., ante, at p. 23, fn. omitted.)

Moreover, I endorse the majority’s interpretation of California’s Domestic Partnership Act (DPA; Fam. Code, § 297 et seq.). As the majority makes clear, the DPA now allows same-sex partners to enter legal unions which “afford … virtually all of the [substantive] benefits and responsibilities afforded by California law to married opposite-sex couples.” (maj. Opn., ante, at p. 45; see also Fam. Code, § 297.5.) As the majority further correctly observes, California has done all it can do with regard to providing these substantive rights, benefits, and responsibilities to same-sex partners. (Maj. Opn., ante, at pp. 44-45.)¹

I also agree with the majority’s construction of Family Code section 308.5. As the majority explains, this initiative statute, adopted by a popular vote of 61.4 percent and thus immune from unilateral repeal by the Legislature (Cal. Const., art. II, § 10, subdivision (c)), does not merely preclude California’s recognition of same-sex “marriage[s]” consummated elsewhere, but also invalidates same-sex “marriage’s]” contracted under the name in this state.²

In addition, I am fully in accord with the majority’s conclusion that Family Code sections 300 and 308.5, insofar as they recognize only legal relationships between opposite-sex partners as “marriage[s],” do not discriminate on the basis of gender.

Finally, I concur that the actions in Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund v. City and County of San Francisco (Super. Ct. S.F. City & County No. CPF-04-503943) and Campaign for California Families v. Newsome (Super. Ct. S.F. City & County No. CGC-04-428794) should have been dismissed as moot in the wake of this court’s decision in Lockyer v. City and County of San Francisco (2004) 33 Cal. 4th 1055.

However, I respectfully disagree with the remainder of the conclusions reached by the majority.

The question presented by this case is simple and stark. It comes down to this: Even though California's progressive laws, recently adopted though the democratic process, have pioneered the rights of same-sex partners to enter legal unions with all the substantive benefits of opposite-sex legal unions, do those laws nonetheless violate the California Constitution because at present, in deference to long and universal tradition, by a convincing popular vote, and in accord with express national policy (see fns. 1,2, ante), they reserve the label “marriage” for opposite-sex legal unions?³ I must conclude that the answer is no.

The People, directly or through their elected representatives, have every right to adopt laws abrogating the historic understanding that civil marriage is between a man and a woman. The rapid growth in California of Statutory protections for the rights of gays and lesbians, as individuals, as parents, and as committed partners, suggests a quickening evolution of community attitudes on these issues. Recent years have seen the development of an intense debate about same-sex marriage. Advocates of this cause have had real success in the marketplace of ideas, gaining attention and considerable public support. Left to its own devices, the ordinary democratic process might well produce, ere long, a consensus among most Californians that the term “marriage” should, in civil parlance, include the legal unions of same-sex partners.

But a bare majority of this court, not satisfied with the pace of democratic change now abruptly forestalls that process and substitutes, by judicial fiat, its own social policy views for those expressed by the People themselves. Undeterred by the strong weight of state and federal law and authority, 4 the majority invents a new constitutional right, immune from the ordinary process of legislative consideration. The majority finds that our Constitution suddenly demands no less than a permanent redefinition of marriage, regardless of the popular will.

In doing so, the majority holds, in effect, that the Legislature has done indirectly what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly. Under article II, section 10, subdivision (c), that body cannot unilaterally repeal an initiative statute, such as Family Code section 308.5, unless the initiative measure itself so provides. Section 308.5 contains no such provision. Yet the majority suggests that, by enacting other statutes which do provide substantial rights to gays and lesbians – including domestic partnership rights which, under section 308.5, the Legislature could not call “marriage” – the Legislature has given “explicit official recognition” (maj. opn., ante, at pp. 68, 60) to a California right of equal treatment which, because it includes the right to marry, thereby invalidates section 308.5.5

I cannot join this exercise in legal jujitsu, by which the Legislature’s own weight is used against it to create a constitutional right from whole cloth, defeat the People’s will, and invalidate a statute otherwise immune from legislative interference. Though the majority insists otherwise, its pronouncement seriously oversteps the judicial power. The majority purports to apply certain fundamental provisions of the state Constitution, but it runs afoul of another just as fundamental – article III, section 3, the separation of powers clause. This clause declares that “[t]the powers of state government are legislative, executive, and judicial, “and that “[p]ersons charged with the exercise of one power may not exercise either of the others” excepted as the Constitution itself specifically provides.

History confirms the importance of the judiciary’s constitutional role as a check against majoritarian abuse. Still, courts must use caution when exercising the potentially transformative authority to articulate constitutional rights. Otherwise, judges with limited accountability risk infringing upon our society’s most basic shared premise – the People’s general right, directly or through their chosen legislators, to decide fundamental issues of public policy for themselves. Judicial restraint is particularly appropriate where, as here, the claimed constitutional entitlement is of recent conception and challenges the most fundamental assumption about a basic social institution.

The majority has violated these principles. It simply does not have the right to erase, and then recast, the age-old definition of marriage, as virtually all societies have understood it, in order to satisfy its own contemporary notions of equality and justice.

The California Constitution says nothing about the rights of same-sex couples to marry. On the contrary, as the majority concedes, our original Constitution, effective from the moment of statehood, evidenced an assumption that marriage was between partners of the opposite sex. Statutes enacted at the state’s first legislative session confirmed this assumption, which has continued to the present day. When the Legislature realized that 1971 amendments to the Civil Code, enacted for other reasons, had created an ambiguity on the point, the oversight was quickly corrected, and the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman was made explicit. (Maj. opn. ante, at pp. 23-36.) The People themselves reaffirmed this definition when, in the year 2000, they adopted Proposition 22 be a 61.4 percent majority.

Despite this history, plaintiffs first insist they have a fundamental right, protected by the California Constitution’s due process and privacy clauses (Cal. Const., art. I, §§ 1, 7, subd. (a)), to marry the adult consenting partners of their choice, regardless of gender. The majority largely accepts this contention. It holds that “the right to marry, as embodied in article I, sections 1 and 7, of the California Constitution, guarantees same-sex couples the same substantive constitutional rights as opposite-sex couples to … enter with [one’s chosen life partner] into a committed, officially recognized, and protected family relationship accorded the same dignity, respect, and stature as that accorded to all other officially recognized family relationships.” (Id., at p. 81.)

To the extent this means same-sex couples have a fundamental right to enter legally recognized family unions called “marriage” (or, as the majority unrealistically suggests, by another name common to both same-sex and opposite-sex unions), I cannot agree. I find no persuasive basis in our Constitution or our jurisprudence to justify such a cataclysmic transformation of this venerable institution.

Fundamental rights entitled to the Constitution’s protection are those “which are, objectively, ‘deeply rooted in this [society’s] history and tradition,’ [citations], and ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,’ such that ‘neither liberty nor justice could exist if they were sacrificed, [citation].” (Washington v. Glucksberg. (1997) 521 U.S. 702, 720-721 (Glucksberg); see, e.g., Dawn D. vs Superior Court (1998) 17 Cal.4th 932, 940.) Moreover, an assessment whether a fundamental right or interest is at stake requires “a ‘careful description’ of the asserted fundamental … interest. [Citations.]” (Glucksberg, supra, at p. 721; Dawn D., supra, at p. 941.)

These principles are crucial restraints upon the overreaching exercise of judicial authority in violation of the separation of powers. Courts have “‘always been reluctant to expand the concept of substantive due process because guideposts for responsible decision making in this unchartered area are scarce and open-ended.’ [Citation.] By extending constitutional protection to an asserted right or liberty interest, we, to a great extent, place the matter outside the arena of public debate and legislative action. We must therefore ‘exercise the utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground in this field,’ [citation], lest the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause be subtly transformed into the policy preferences” of judges. (Glucksberg, supra 521 U.S. 702, 720.)

It is beyond dispute, as the Court of Appeal majority in this case persuasively indicated, that there is no deeply rooted tradition of same-sex marriage, in the nation or in this state. Precisely the opposite is true. The concept of same-sex marriage was unknown in our distant past, and is novel in our recent history, because the universally understood definition of marriage has been the legal or religious union of a man and a woman.6

One state, Massachusetts, has within the past five years recognized same-sex marriage. (Goodridge, supra, 798 A.2d 941; see fn. 4, ante.) However, as the Court of Appeal majority in our case observed, “the Massachusetts Supreme judicial Court’s decision establishing this right has been controversial. (See, e.g., Note, Civil Partnership in the United Kingdom and a Moderate proposal for Change in the United States (2005) 22 Ariz. J. Internat. & Comparative L. 613, 630-631 [describing the controversy engendered by Goodridge]; see also Lewis v. Harris [(n.j. Super. Ct. App.Div. 2005) 875 A. 2d 259, 274] [concluding from ‘the strongly negative public reactions’ to Goodridge and similar decisions from lower courts of other states, that ‘there is not yet any public consensus favoring recognition of same-sex marriage’].) Several other states have reacted negatively by, for example, amending their constitutions to prohibit same-sex marriage. (See Stein, Symposium on Abolishing Civil Marriage: An Introduction (2006) 27 Cardozo L. Rev. 1155, 1157, fn. 12 [noting, as of January 2006, ’39 states [had] either passed laws or amended their constitutions (or done both) to prohibit same-sex marriages, to deny recognition of same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions, and/or to deny recognition to other types of same-sex relationships’].)”

California’s history falls squarely along this nationwide spectrum, though at its more progressive end. As the majority itself explains, despite the legislature’s passage of the DPA and other statutes pioneering gay and lesbian rights, California law has always assumed that marriage itself is between a man and a woman. In recent years, bother the legislature and the people themselves have enacted measures to make that assumption explicit. Under these circumstances, there is no basis for a conclusion that same-sex marriage is deeply rooted California tradition.

Undaunted, the majority nonetheless claims California’s legal history as evidence of the constitutional right it espouses. According to the majority, the very fact that the Legislature has, over time, adopted progressive laws such as the DPA, thereby granting many substantial rights to gays and lesbians, constitutes “explicit official recognition” (maj. opn., ante, at pp. 68, 69) of “this state’s current policies and conduct regarding homosexuality,” i.e., “that gay individuals are entitled to the same legal rights and the same respect and dignity afforded all other individuals and are protected from discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation.” (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 67-68, fn. omitted.) “In light of this recognition,” the majority concludes, “sections 1 and 7 of article I of the California Constitution cannot properly be interpreted to withhold from gay individuals” full equality of rights with heterosexual persons, including the right to same-sex legal unions that are fully equivalent – including in name – to those of opposite-sex partners. (Id., at p. 69; see also id., at pp. 81, 101-119.)

This analysis is seriously flawed. At the outset, it overlooks the most salient facts. The Legislature has indeed granted may rights to gay and lesbian individuals, including the right to enter same-sex legal unions with all the substantive rights and benefits of civil marriage. As the majority elsewhere acknowledges, however, our current statutory scheme, which includes an initiative measure enacted by the People, specifically reserves marriage itself for opposite-sex unions. (Fam. Code, §§ 300, 308.5.) Under these circumstances, it is difficult to see how our legislative history reflects a current community value in favor of same-sex marriage that must now be enshrined in the Constitution.7

Of even greater concern is the majority’s mode of analysis, which places heavy reliance on statutory law to establish a constitutional right. When a pattern of legislation makes current community values clear, the majority seems to say; those values can become locked into the Constitution itself.8

Of course, only the People can amend the Constitution the Legislature has no unilateral power to do so. (Cal. Const., art XVIII.) However, the effect of the majority’s reasoning is to suggest that the Legislature can accomplish such amendment indirectly, whether it intends to do so or not, by reflecting current community attitudes in the laws it enacts.

The notion that legislation can become “constitutionalized” is mischievous for several reasons. As indicated above, it violates the constitutional scheme by which only the People can amen the state’s charter of government. It abrogates the legislative power to reconsider what the law should be as public debate on an issue ebbs and flows. And, for that very reason, it may discourage efforts to pass progressive laws, out of fear that such efforts will ultimately, and inadvertently, place the issue beyond the power of legislation to affect.

As applied in this case, the majority’s analysis has also given the Legislature, indirectly, a power it does not otherwise possess to thwart the People’s express legislative will. As noted above, under article II, section 10, subdivision (c) of the California Constitution, “[t]he Legislature may amend or repeal … an initiative statute by another statute that becomes effective only when approved by the electors unless the initiative statue permits amendment or repeal without their approval.” Family Code section 308.5, adopted by Proposition 22, includes no provision allowing its unilateral repeal or amendment by the Legislature.

According to the majority, however, the Legislature’s adoption of progressive laws on the subject of gay and lesbian rights, including the DPA, makes it impossible not to recognize a constitutional right to same-sex legal unions with full equivalency to opposite-sex legal unions. This development, the majority ultimately concludes, requires the invalidation of Family Code section 308.5. In other words, in the majority’s view, the Legislature’s own actions have, by indirection, caused this initiative statue to be erased from the books. To say the least, I find such a constitutional approach troubling.9

Other grounds advanced by the majority for its claim of a fundamental right are equally unpersuasive. The majority accepts plaintiffs’ unconvincing claim that they seek no new “right to same-sex marriage” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 51), but simply a recognition that the well-established right to marry one’s chosen partner is not limited to those who wish to marry persons of the opposite sex. However, by framing the issue simply as whether the undoubted right to marry is confined to opposite-sex couples, the majority mischaracterizes the entitlement plaintiffs actually claim. The majority thus begs the question and violates the requirement of “ ‘careful description’ “ that properly applies when a court is asked to break new ground in the area of substantive due process. (Glucksberg, supra, 521 U.S. 702, 721-722.)

Though the majority insists otherwise, plaintiffs seek, and the majority grants, a new right to same-sex marriage that only recently has been urged upon our social and legal system. Because civil marriage is an institution historically defined as the legal union of a man and a woman, plaintiffs could not succeed except by convincing this court to insert in our Constitution an altered and expanded definition of marriage – one that includes same-sex partnerships for the first time. By accepting that invitation, the majority places this controversial issue beyond the realm of legislative debate and substitutes its own judgment in the matter for the considered wisdom of the People and their elected representatives. The majority advances no persuasive reason for taking that step.

In support of its view that marriage is a constitutional entitlement without regard for the genders of the respective partners, the majority cites the many California and federal decisions broadly describing the basic rights of personal autonomy and family intimacy, including the right to marry, procreate, establish a home, and bring up children. (See maj. opn., ante, at pp. 49-65.) However, none of the cited decisions holds, or remotely suggests, that any right to marry recognized by the Constitution extends beyond the traditional definition of marriage to include same-sex partnerships.

Certainly Perez v. Sharp (19480 32 Cal.2d 711 (Perez) does not support the majority’s expansive view. There we struck down racial restrictions on the right of a man and a woman to marry. But nothing in Perez suggests an intent to alter the definition of marriage as a union of opposite-sex partners. In sum, there is no convincing basis in federal of California jurisprudence for the majority’s claim that same-sex couples have a fundamental constitutional right to marry. 10

In a footnote, the majority insists that , though same-sex couples are included within the fundamental constitutional right to marry, the state’s absolute bans on marriages that are incestuous (Fam. Code, § 2200; see Pen. Code, § 285), or nonmonogamous (Pen. Code, § 281 et seq.: Fam. Code, § 2201) are not in danger. Vaguely the majority declares that “[p]ast judicial decisions explain why our nation’s culture has considered [incestuous and polygamous] relationships inimical to the mutually supportive and healthy family relationships promoted by the constitutional right to marry. [Citations.]” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 79, fn. 52.) Thus, the majority asserts, though a denial of same-sex marriage is no longer justified, “the state continues to have a strong and adequate justification for refusing to officially sanction polygamous or incestuous relationships because of their potentially detrimental effect on a sound family environment. [Citations.]” (Id, at pp. 79-80.)

The bans on incestuous and polygamous marriages are ancient and deep-rooted, and, as the majority suggests, they are supported by strong considerations of social policy. Our society abhors such relationships, and the notion that our laws could not forever prohibit them seems preposterous. Yet here, the Majority overturns, in abrupt fashion, an initiative statue confirming the equally deep-rooted assumption that marriage is a union of partners of the opposite sex. The majority does so by relying on its own assessment of contemporary community values, and by inserting in our Constitution an expanded definition of the right to marry that contravenes express statutory law.

That approach creates the opportunity for further judicial extension of this perceived constitutional right into dangerous territory. Who can say that in ten, fifteen, or twenty years, an activist court might not rely on the majority’s analysis to conclude, on the basis of a perceived evolution in community values, that the laws prohibiting polygamous and incestuous marriages were on longer constitutionally justified?

In no way do I equate same-sex unions with incestuous and polygamous relationships as a matter of social policy or social acceptance. California’s adoption of the DPA makes clear that our citizens, find merit in the desires of gay and lesbian couples for legal recognition of their committed partnerships. Moreover, as I have said, I can foresee a time when the People might agree to assign the label marriage itself to such unions. It is unlikely, to say the least, that our society would ever confer such favor on incest and polygamy.

My point is that the majority’s approach has removed the sensitive issues surrounding same-sex marriage from their proper forum – the arena of legislative resolution – and risks opening the door to similar treatment of other, less deserving, claims of a right to marry. By thus moving the policy debate from the legislative process to the court, the majority engages in faulty constitutional analysis and violates the separation of powers.

I would avoid these difficulties by confirming clearly that there is no constitutional right to same-sex marriage. That is because marriage is, as it always has been, the right of a woman and an unrelated man to marry each other.

From this conclusion, it follows, for substantive due process purposes, that the marriage statutes are valid unless unreasonable or arbitrary (see, e.g., Kavanau v. Santa Monica Rent Control Bd. (1997) 16 Cal. 4th 761, 771), and are not subject to the strict scrutiny that applies when a statute infringes a fundamental right or interest. As I discuss below, California’s preservation of the traditional definition of marriage is entirely reasonable. Accordingly, I would reject plaintiffs’ due process claim.

Besides concluding that Family Code sections 300 and 308.5 are subject to strict scrutiny as an infringement on the fundamental state constitutional right to marry, the majority also independently holds that such scrutiny is required under the equal protection clause of the California Constitution. This is so, the majority declares, because by withholding from same-sex legal unions the label that is applied to opposite-sex legal unions, the scheme discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation, which the majority now deems to be a suspect classification.

I find this analysis flawed at several levels. For two reasons, I would reject plaintiffs’ equal protection claim at the threshold. And even if that were not appropriate, I disagree that sexual orientation is a suspect classification. Hence, as with the majority’s due process theory, I would not apply strict scrutiny, and would uphold the statutory scheme as reasonable. I explain my conclusions.

“The general rule is that legislation is presumed to be valid and will be sustained if the classification drawn by the statue is rationally related to a legitimate stat interest. [Citations.] When social or economic legislation is at issue, the Equal protection Clause allows the States wide latitude, [citations], and the Constitution presumes that even improvident decisions will eventually be rectified by the democratic processes.” (Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc. (19850 473 u.s. 432, 440 (Cleburne).)

“The initial inquiry in any equal protection analysis is whether persons are ‘similaryly situated for purposes of the law challenged.’ [Citation.]” (In re Lemanuel C. (2007) 41 Cal.4th 33, 47.) A statute does not violate equal protection when it recognizes real distinctions that are pertinent to the law’s legitimate aims. (E.g., People v. Smith (2007) 40 Cal.4th 483, 527; Cooley v. Superior Court (2002) 29 Cal. 4th 228, 253; Coleman v. Department of personnel Administration (1991) 52 Cal. 3d 1102, 1125; Purdy & Fitpatrick v. State of California (1969) 71 Cal.2d 566, 578; see Cleburne, supra, 473 U.S. 432, 441.) In such cases, judicial deference to legislative choices is consistent with “our respect for the separation of powers.” (Cleburne, supra, at p. 441.)

Though the majority insists otherwise (see maj. opn., ante, at p.83, fn. 54), I agree with Justice Corrigan that same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples are not similarly situated with respect to the valid purposes of Family Code sections 300 and 308.5. As justice Corrigan indicates, the state has a legitimate interest in enforcing the express legislative and popular will that the traditional definition of marriage be preserved. Same-sex and opposite-sex couples cannot be similarly situated for that limited purpose, precisely because the traditional definition of marriage is a union of partners of the opposite sex.

Of course, statutory classifications do not serve legitimate state interests when adopted for their own sake, out of animus toward a disfavored group. (E.g., Romer v. Evans (19960 517 u.s. 620, 633, 634-635 (Romer): U.S. Dept. of Agriculture v. Moreno (1973) 413 U.S. 528, 534; see Lawrence, supra, 539 U.S. 558, 582-583 (conc. Opn. Of O’Connor, J.); see also Cleburne, supra, 473 U.S. 432, 441.) Here, however, the majority itself expressly disclaims any suggestion “that the current marriage provisions were enacted with an invidious intent or purpose.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 119, fn. 73.) I therefore concur fully in Justice Corrigan’s conclusion that plaintiffs’ equal protection challenge fails for this reason alone.

I also disagree with the majority’s premise that, by assigning different labels to same-sex and opposite-sex legal unions, the state discriminates directly on the basis of sexual orientation. The marriage statutes are facially neutral on that subject. They allow all persons, whether homosexual or heterosexual, to enter into the relations called marriage, and they do not, by their terms, prohibit any two persons from marrying each other on the ground that one or both of the partners is gay. (Cf. perez, supra, 32 Cal.2d 711, 712-713 [statutes prohibited marriage between certain partners on the basis of their respective races].)

The marriage statutes may have a disparate impact on gay and lesbian individuals, insofar as these laws prevent such persons from marrying, by that name, the partners they would actually choose. But, as we explained in Baluyut v. Superior Court (19960 12 Cal.4th 826, a facially neutral statute that merely has a disparate effect on a particular class of persons does not violate equal protection absent a showing the law was adopted for a discriminatory purpose. In this regard, discriminatory purpose “ ‘implies more than intent as volition or intent as awareness of consequences. See United Jewish Organizations v. Carey [(1977)] 430 U.S. 144, 179 (concurring opinion). It implies that the decisionmaker… selected or reaffirmed a particular course of action at least in part “because of,” not merely “in spite of,” its adverse effects upon an identifiable group.’ (Personnel Administrator of Mass. V. Feeney [(1979)] 442 U.S. [256,] 279.)” (Baluyut, supra, at p. 837.)

There is no evidence that when the Legislature adopted Family Code section 300, and the People adopted Family Code section 308.5, they did so “ ‘ “because of”’” its consequent adverse effect on gays and lesbians as a group. On the contrary, it appears the legislation was simply intended to maintain an age-old understanding of the meaning of marriage. Indeed, California’s adoption of pioneering legislation that grants gay and lesbian couples all the substantive incidents of marriage further dispels the notion that an invidious intent lurks in our statutory scheme. As indicated above, the majority itself expressly disclaims any suggestion that the laws defining marriage were passed for the purpose of discrimination. For this reason as well, I believe our equal protection analysis need go no further.

Even if the distinction were subject to further examination under the equal protection clause, I disagree that strict scrutiny is the applicable standard of review. This is because I do not agree with the majority’s decision to hold, under current circumstances, that sexual orientation is a suspect classification.

The united States Supreme Court has never declared, for federal constitutional purposes, that a classification based on sexual orientation is entitled to any form of scrutiny beyond rational basis review. (See Cleburne, supra, 473 U.S. 432, 440-441 [recognizing race, alienage, and national origin as suspect classifications requiring strict scrutiny review, and gender and illegitimacy as quasi-suspect classifications requiring “somewhat heightened” review].)11

Moreover, as the majority concedes, its conclusion that sexual orientation is a suspect classification subject to strict scrutiny contravenes “the great majority of out-of-state decisions” – indeed, all but one of those cited by the majority. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 95, & fn. 60.)12

As the majority also notes, the issue is one of first impression in California. I find that circumstance highly significant. Considering the current status of gays and lesbians as citizens of 21st-century California, the majority fails to persuade me we should now hold that they qualify, under our stat Constitution, for the extraordinary protection accorded to suspect classes.

The concept that certain identifiable groups re entitled to extra protection under the equal protection clause stems, most basically, from the premise that because these groups are unpopular minorities, or otherwise share a history of insularity, persecution, and discrimination, and are politically powerless, they are especially susceptible to continuing abuse by the majority. Laws that single out groups in this category for different treatment are presumed to “reflect prejudice and antipathy – a view that those in the burdened class are not as worthy or deserving as others. For these reasons, and because, such discrimination is unlikely to be soon rectified by legislative means,’ the deference normally accorded to legislative choices does not apply. (Cleburne, supra, 473 U.S. 432, 440, italics added; see also San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez (1973) 411 U.S. 1, 28 [noting relevance, for purposes of identification as suspect class, that group “is relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process’].)

Recognizing that the need for special constitutional protection arises from the political impotence of an insular and disfavored group, several courts holding that sexual orientation is not a suspect class has focused particularly on a determination that, in contemporary times at least, the gay and lesbian community does not lack political power. (high Tech Gays, supra, 895 F.2d 563, 574; Conaway v. Deane, supra, 932 A.2d 571, 609-614 [same-sex marriage]; Andersen v. State, supra, 138 P.3d 963, 974-975 [same].)

In California, the political emergence of the gay and lesbian community is particularly apparent. In this state, the progress achieved through democratic means – progress described in detail by the majority – demonstrates that, despite undeniable past injustice and discrimination, this group now “’is obviously able to wield political power in defense of its interests.’” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 98, quoting the Attorney General’s brief.)

Nor are these gains so fragile and fortuitous as to require extraordinary state constitutional protection. On the contrary, the majority itself declares that recent decades have seen “a fundamental and dramatic transformation in this state’s understanding and legal treatment of gay individuals and gay couples” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 67), whereby “California has repudiated past practices and polices that denigrated the general character and morals of gay individuals” and now recognizes homosexuality and “simply on of the numerous variables of our common and diverse humanity” (ibid.). Under these circumstances, I submit, gays and lesbians in this state currently lack the insularity, unpopularity, and consequent political vulnerability upon which the notion of suspect classifications is founded.

The majority insists that a determination whether a historically disfavored group is a suspect class should not depend on the group’s current political power. Otherwise, the majority posits, “it would be impossible to justify the numerous decisions that continue to treat sex, race, and religion as suspect classes.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 99. fn. omitted.)

I do not quarrel with those decisions. At the times suspect-class status was first assigned to race, and in California to sex and religion, there were ample grounds for doing so. They well still exist in some or all of those cases. Moreover, I do not suggest that once a group is properly found in need of extraordinary protection, it should later be “declassified” when circumstances change.

I only propose that, when, as here, the issue is before us as a matter of first impression, we cannot ignore current reality. Insuch a case, we should consider whether, despite a history of discrimination, a particular group remains so unpopular, disfavored, and susceptible to majoritarian abuse that suspect-class status is necessary to safeguard its rights. I would not draw that conclusion here.

Accordingly, I would apply the normal rational basis test to determine whether, by granting same-sex couples all the substantive rights and benefits of marriage, but reserving the marriage label for opposite-sex unions, California’s laws violate the equal protection guarantee of the state Constitution. By that standard, I find ample grounds for the balance currently struck on this issue by both the Legislature and the People.

First, it is certainly reasonable for the Legislature having granted same-sex couples all substantive marital rights within its power, to assign those rights a name other than marriage. After all, an initiative statute adopted by a 61.4 percent popular vote, and constitutionally immune from repeal by the Legislature, defines marriage as a union of partners of the opposite sex.

Moreover, in light of the provisions of federal law that , for purposes of federal benefits, limit the definition of marriage to opposite-sex couples (1 U.S.C. § 7), California must distinguish same-sex form opposite-sex couples in administering the numerous federal-state programs that are governed by federal law. A separate nomenclature applicable to the family relationship of same-sex couples undoubtedly facilitates the administration of such programs.

Most fundamentally, the People themselves cannot be considered irrational in deciding, for the time being, that the fundamental definition of marriage, as it has universally existed until very recently, should be preserved. As in New jersey Supreme Court observed, “We cannot escape the reality that the shared societal meaning of marriage – passed down through the common law into our statutory law – has always been the union of a man and a woman. To alter that meaning would render a profound change in the public consciousness of a social institution of ancient origin.” (Lewis v. Harris, supra, 908 A.2d 196, 922.)

If such a profound change in this ancient social institution is to occur, the People and their representatives, who represent the public conscience, should have the right, and the responsibility, to control the pace of the change through the democratic process. Family Code sections 300 and 308.5 serve this salutary purpose. The majority’s decision erroneously usurps it.

For all these reasons, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal.

BAXTER, J.

I CONCUR:

CHIN, J.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Super Thin-Skinned?

I’m puzzled! Why would Obama and the entire
Democratic party be so upset about remarks made
by President Bush, at the 60th Anniversary of Israel?

With no names mentioned, or even hinted at, where
did all these wackos get the association with the
presumptive Democratic nominee? Was it because
they know that Obama thinks that way?

When the President of the United States, visits Israel
for the 60th Anniversary celebration, why shouldn’t he
mention the pains and suffering that the Jews have and
are still suffering at the hands of terrorists and tyrants?
If something more aggressive had been done with the Nazi
situation, instead of “diplomats” getting assurances from
Hitler, the world would be a very different place today.
President Bush knows that you cannot negotiate with
one hand tied behind your back.

To bring attention to that fact, and to mention that to
meet or negotiate with rogue states and terrorists is not
the way to go, was definitely the right thing to do.
I applaud our President, for his timely comments, and
only those defenders,who know that Obama will meet, with
our enemies are upset.

Obama himself admitted that he would meet with the
heads of North Korea and Iran, without any pre-conditions,
so how could they have the gall to make Bush’s statements
seem “unethical and political”? Probably because that
statement hit too close to home.

Governor Romney hit the nail on the head when he stated,
in defense of President Bush................”When you throw a
rock over the wall, the dog that barks is the dog that got
hit”. Very appropriate, Governor.

Like it or not Obama, you aren’t qualified to judge the
President of the United States. And from the absurd
reaction from the DemocraticCongress .......... neither are they.

They are still talking about President Bush’s low approval
rating..........but do they ever mention that theirs is even
lower?

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Science put on Endangered List

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne
The polar bear "already is the most protected (animal) in the world and needs no additional protection," maintained Hopper. He noted the number of polar bears have more than doubled since the late 1960s from 12,000 to about 25,000 across the Arctic region from Alaska to Greenland.-- H. JOSEF HEBERT
You’ve heard the latest right? How special interest managed to get government to cave in to their politically correct cause.

It’s the would’ve, could’ve, should’ve world of far left thinking and it has the Interior Department putting the already highly protected Polar bear under the protective umbrella of the Endangered Species Act on Wednesday. (See here)

There is no danger to Polar Bears and the bear’s numbers are increasing however there could be a danger a half century away based on unfounded computer generated projections that are in dispute so what does the Interior Department do?

Using the corrupt science of global warming Secretary Dirk Kempthorne of the Interior Department bowed to the pressures of special interest groups in the face of evidence that shows that global warming is actually good for Polar bears.

That’s right the polar bear population is actually increasing and has in fact doubled since the late 1960’s from 12,000 bears to 25,000. Those are the facts but because some discredited global warming computer models projected that someday maybe 50 years out the bear could possibly be in danger the Interior Department has caved to it’s trial lawyer friends who hope to use this new protection as a way to impose global warming laws on the United States by the Endangered Species Act.

This is no more that politics posing as science and corrupted science gone wild.
The alarm about the future of polar bear decline is based on speculative computer model predictions many decades in the future. And the methodology of these computer models is being challenged by many scientists and forecasting experts. U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works(See here)And(here)

Polar bear’s numbers have doubled; it is already one of the most protected animals on earth so one must conclude that is new policy is not about saving one single solitary bear. On the contrary, It is a brazen attempt to impose global warming laws by stealth into the American legal system.

This is but another example of corrupted science and radical far left politics that will reject facts for “sniper fire over Bosnia” thus proving again that it is science that is endangered not Polar bears.