June2002

__________________________________________________________________________________________

The Armed M is a publication of the 2nd Amendment SIG, a special interest group of American Mensa Ltd. Opinions expressed herein are the opinions of the writers, and not of American Mensa, Ltd., which has no opinions. This newsletter is linked to the Mensa web page WWW.Mensa.org as WWW.webcatt.com/2ndAmend_SIG

I have moved and am now in Wilmington North Carolina. My E-Mail address is Smith705@Juno.com. I can always use contributions to the newsletter. If you write something or find something e-mail it to me I'll put it in the newsletter as space and theme allows. Bob Smith -----

I have been having problems with ATT Internet service. They put a sieve on e-mail limiting address to twenty-five. I couldn’t just split the mailing list because by anti virus does not like sending repeat messages. I think I have it all fixed. I was deeply mistaken when I wrote this. I will be using juno who lets me do 50 at a time. Juno doesn’t give me opportunity to do to hide recipient so you will lose some of your privacy. Sorry about that

__________________________________________________________________________________________

BY AMELIA GRUBER MEDILL NEWS SERVICE Posted on Thursday, May 2, 2002 CHICAGO –

A Park Forest man with cerebral palsy is challenging the city of Chicago's gun laws that prevent him from carrying a concealed weapon. In a lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court this week, Christopher Morley argues that the city's ban on handguns prevents him from defending himself against muggers. Morley, 34, alleges that he is an easy target for attacks while he travels to his job at a graphics arts firm on Chicago's West Side. The suit says he walks with the assistance of a cane and has been the victim of four crimes, including assault, stalking and menacing, near his office. "Every day [Morley] faces a dilemma," said John Birch, president of Concealed Carry Inc., an Oakbrook-based advocacy group that plans to pay roughly one-third of Morley's legal fees. "Either he can carry a handgun and run the risk of getting arrested, or he can walk around defenseless and risk getting mugged or beaten. "Morley's complaint alleges that Chicago's ban on handguns violates the Illinois and U.S. Constitutions, which grant citizens the right to bear firearms and legally conceal and carry them for self-protection. The suit also alleges that Chicago's ban on handguns conflicts with the Illinois municipal and criminal code, which gives state residents the right to defend themselves against attacks by using equivalent force. The city's handgun ban has never been disputed on that basis before, said Morley's attorney, Walter Maksym. In addition to the city, the complaint names Mayor Richard Daley, Chicago Police Supt. Terry Hillard, Gov. George Ryan, Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan and other state and local officials as defendants. A spokesman for the attorney general declined to comment on the suit. Morley is not asking for any money. His attorney said he is only interested in overturning Chicago's ban, which has been in effect since 1983.Offenders caught carrying a handgun within city limits could face up to a year in prison or a $500 fine. Washington D.C. is the only other major U.S. city with a comparable ban. "This is an evil law that disarms the most vulnerable citizens in a city with the number one murder rate in the country,"Maksym said. "We don't want to arm minors or felons. We just want normal, law-abiding citizens to be able to exercise their right to protect themselves. "But Kirsten Curley, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, questions the notion that handguns, especially concealed handguns, are necessary for protection.” I don't agree that Morley is defenseless without a handgun," she said. "He thinks he's a target. But this isn't a new law. It's been in effect since 1983, and we've all dealt with it. "Curley added that she believes the law has helped reduce Chicago's crime rate. "Would you want the person sitting next to you in the movie theater or behind you on the El to be carrying a concealed weapon?" she asked. Concealed Carry Inc. has taken up Morley's cause. "If we could raise enough money, we'd fund the entire suit," Birch said. He added that he believes Chicago's strict gun laws are "getting people killed" because they create a "target-rich environment that leads criminals to be brazen. "Maksym said he thinks Chicago residents are feeling especially vulnerable after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "Baggage screeners can carry guns," he said. "And you can have a gun to defend money at a bank. But you can't defend yourself on the street. Or how is an elderly lady who lives alone supposed to defend herself if someone breaks into her home? "But Curley said the majority of Chicago voters support strict gun laws. "This comes up every year, and every year the politicians uphold the laws because that's what the people want."

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department has declared that the Constitution gives individuals the right to own a gun--a position that largely reverses six decades of federal policy and raises thorny questions about the legality of existing firearms restrictions. In briefs filed late Monday with the U.S. Supreme Court, the Justice Department rejected the long-held interpretation that the 2nd Amendment guarantees gun rights only to militias, not to individuals.

The department's stance elevates a long-simmering battle between the gun lobby and gun control advocates to the high court, with Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and the Justice Department voicing their strongest support yet for the gun lobby.

The National Rifle Assn. applauded the Justice Department's stance, but scholars and gun-control advocates said they were alarmed because they believe the "radical" shift in position threatens to undermine a wide range of gun laws already on the books.

Current state and federal laws subjecting law-abiding citizens to background checks, regulating concealed weapons and banning the purchase of certain guns, such as assault rifles, could all be vulnerable, experts in gun law said.

Since the 1930s, the federal government and the courts have declared almost without exception that people have no constitutional right to own a gun and that the government can thus pass laws restricting who can own a gun and what types of weapons they can own. But in a pair of pending appeals, the Bush administration asserted for the first time before the Supreme Court that it believes that legal reasoning is flawed.

"The current position of the United States ... is that the 2nd Amendment more broadly protects the rights of individuals, including persons who are not members of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to possess and bear their own firearms," Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson wrote in a footnote to the briefs.

That right, Olson acknowledged, is subject to certain restrictions that allow the government to keep weapons out of the hands of "unfit persons" and to ban certain types of weapons often used by criminals.

Ashcroft's aides said initially that the letter reflected only Ashcroft’s "personal" opinion, but it became clear in subsequent actions, including a memo last November to federal prosecutors noting an appellate court's ruling in the Texas gun case, that the department was moving toward a major shift in federal interpretation of the 2nd

The Supreme Court would have to validate the Justice Department’s view of the 2nd Amendment for it to become the rule of law, at least at the federal level. Experts said they doubted the Supreme Court would move to overturn gun laws in either of the two pending cases.

Even so, the Justice Department's official position offers powerful ammunition at the state and local levels to pro-gun rights forces who may seek to challenge severe gun restrictions and handgun bans in effect in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, Franklin Zimring,a preeminent scholar on gun law at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, said in an interview.

"If there's an individual right for the average citizen, those types of regulations may very well be at risk from this sea change," Zimring said. (snip)

Justice Department officials downplayed the significance of the Supreme Court briefs.

"We intend to both enforce and defend existing gun laws," said a department official who asked not to be identified. "This is just us following through on what we said we were going to do a year ago. You can have an individual-rights view of the 2nd Amendment and still think there are certain restrictions that survive constitutional muster."

Justice Department officials say that a series of "internal deliberations" in past decades support the rights of individual gun owners. But they have refused to publicly release documents on that point, and scholars say that, based on the public and judicial record, the Justice Department's current position marks a sharp departure from past precedent.

"There's never been any disagreement before this: The Department of Justice has been a sworn enemy of any individual right to bear arms over the course of the entire history of federal gun control legislation," dating back to the 1930s, Zimring said. Mathew Nosanchuk, legislative counsel for the Violence Policy Center, a pro-gun control group in Washington, said he was deeply troubled by the department's position. "Here you have an attorney general flouting decades of precedent to embrace an expansive view of a heretofore unrecognized individual right to own a gun, and that could put many gun laws at risk," he said.

Michael D. Barnes, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, also charged that the Justice Department's position could undermine existing gun laws, making them more difficult to defend in court and making it easier for judges to declare them unconstitutional.

"The Justice Department now will invite federal judges to make their own judgments about whether the gun law at issue is 'reasonable,' " Barnes predicted. He noted that in the Texas case, a federal district court judge "did not think it reasonable to bar [defendant] Timothy Joe Emerson from possessing guns, even though Emerson had threatened his wife and child with a pistol, owned an arsenal of weapons and had a domestic violence restraining order against him.

"This action is proof positive that the worst fears about Atty. Gen. Ashcroft have come true: His extreme ideology on guns has now become government policy," Barnes said.

Law: The Justice Department's stance reverses six decades of federal policy. By ERIC LICHTBLAU, Times Staff Writer

"There's never been any disagreement before this: The Department of Justice has been a worn enemy of any individual right to bear arms over the course of the entire history of federal gun control legislation," dating back to the 1930s, Zimring said. Mathew Nosanchuk, legislative counsel for the Violence Policy Center, a pro-gun control group in Washington, said he was deeply troubled by the department's position.

"Here you have an attorney general flouting decades of precedent to embrace an expansive view of a heretofore unrecognized individual right to own a gun, and that could put many gun laws at risk," he said.

"This action is proof positive that the worst fears about Atty. Gen. Ashcroft have come true: His extreme ideology on guns has now become government policy," Barnes said.

Pravda West has given a huge parting shot(last 5 paragraphs) of this article to VPC and Brady Campaign for Gun Prohibition--249 out of the 1105 total words (Word is so handy;), or 23% of the total article. Not to mention they are lies.

In your cover story regarding the Justice Departments support of the 2nd Amendment, dated May 8, 2002, you repeat untrue and misleading "facts" espoused by the Brady Center. Your author did not verify the statements by Michael D. Barnes, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Specifically, talking about a Texas federal case, Mr. Barnes stated that "Emerson had threatened his wife and child with a pistol", an untruth.

The wife alleged that Emerson had threatened her boyfriend over the phone, and showed her a pistol at his office.

The judge found no evidence of the allegation, just her word against his, part of a nasty divorce proceeding. Barnes also said that Emerson "had a domestic violence restraining order against him". Neither Barnes nor your reporter indicated that the restraining order was a "boilerplate" order routine in divorce cases, and the judge declared such blanket restraining orders unconstitutional! There is NO evidence of any domestic abuse by Emerson in the past.

Your anti-gun editorial bias over the years is legendary, but you should do your homework on hard news stories, and not repeat lies. I suggest that the record be made clear, and you apologize for printing the slander against Mr. Emerson.

The Journalist's Guide to Gun Policy Scholars and Second Amendment Scholars http://www.gunscholar.com/

In his brilliant essay, "The Anatomy of the State," Murray Rothbard wrote that state power always relies on the manipulation of public opinion perhaps as much as its use of force and coercion (See his Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays). Since the class of people constituting the state always necessarily consists of only a small portion of the population, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that "their government is good, wise, and at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives." This is where intellectuals come in: "Promoting this [statist] ideology among the people is the vital social task of the 'intellectuals.'"

The intellectual's livelihood in the free market is never too secure, but "the State, on the other hand, is willing to offer the intellectuals a secure and permanent berth in the State apparatus; and thus a secure income and the panoply of prestige." Thus, there has long been the tradition of the "court historian" who is "dedicated to purveying the rulers' views of their own and their predecessors' actions." This doesn't apply to all intellectuals, of course, nor is it restricted to historians; economists are as guilty as anyone.

A sterling example of this phenomenon is how intellectuals have dealt with the abuse of civil liberties. During the Clinton administration, for example, the war on drugs was greatly escalated, which involved mass confiscation of private property under asset forfeiture laws and an assault on privacy rights. The government began spying on internet communications, the administration used confidential FBI files against its political enemies, there was the use of fraudulent search warrants, roving wire taps, IRS prosecutions of political opponents, attacks on the Second Amendment, and on and on.

While some intellectuals were concerned about these civil rights abuses, a large number of academics, journalists, and "public intellectuals" defended them vociferously by attacking the integrity of federal judges who were investigating the abuses, issuing statements that Clinton was "no worse" than some of his predecessors, and even inviting Clinton as an honored speaker at the American Bar Association convention after he was found in contempt of court for lying under oath. Only with the support of the intellectual class can our rulers get away with the destruction of civil liberties. This effort is perhaps why Clinton was impeached but not convicted.

Having just written a book on Abraham Lincoln that includes a chapter on Lincoln's suspension of civil liberties in the North, I have been struck by how so many intellectuals, for more than a century, have behaved in manner similar to the Clinton court intellectuals in providing intellectual cover to Lincoln's demolition of civil liberties in the Northern states.

One recent example is Richard Ferrier, who in an interview on WordNetDaily defended the Lincoln administration's arresting without a warrant, brief imprisonment, and ultimate deportation of Ohio congressman Clement L. Vallandigham for making speeches in opposition to the Lincoln administration in and around his hometown of Dayton, Ohio.

Vallandigham was snatched from his family in the middle of the night by federal soldiers and sent to the Southern states, after which he went to Canada. The Ohio Democratic Party made him its gubernatorial nominee in absentia.

Ferrier defends Lincoln, who had suspended the writ of habeas corpus to make such military arrests possible, by saying that Lincoln was especially gentle in just escorting Vallandigham to the Southern states (Vallandigham's wife and children might not have agreed), and that Vallandigham was a trouble maker anyway. Ferrier further argues that Vallandigham organized sometimes violent protests in Canada.

This is a completely bizarre argument, considering that at the time another Ohio resident, General Ulysses S. Grant, was intentionally waging war on civilians in the Shenandoah Valley by burning hundreds of houses to the ground , burning all the crops, and killing or confiscating all livestock. Hundreds of New Yorker draft protesters were shot dead by federal soldiers during the New York City draft riots of 1863. But Ferrier is concerned about a single man, Vallandigham, organizing allegedly "violent' anti-war protests in Canada.

According to Mark Neely, author of Fate of Liberty, there were more than 13,000 arrests of Northern civilians during the war after Lincoln had (unconstitutionally) suspended the writ of habeas corpus, including dozens, if not hundreds, of newspaper editors and owners who were critical of the Lincoln administration. Ferrier brushes this off by saying that many of these people were Confederate spies. But how could he know this if there were no trials and no due process? As Dean Sprague wrote in Freedom Under Lincoln, with all these civilian arrests and imprisonments by military authorities,

The laws were silent, indictments were not found, testimony was not taken, judges did not sit, juries were not impaneled, convictions were not obtained and sentences were not pronounced. The Anglo-Saxon concept of due process, perhaps the greatest political triumph of the ages and the best guardian of freedom, was abandoned.

Neely gives an account in his book of how Lincoln's military became quite proficient at torturing Northern civilians who had been arbitrarily arrested without a warrant. On page 110 of Fate of Liberty he writes, "Handcuffs and hanging by the wrists were rare, but in the summer of 1863, the army had developed a water torture that came to be used routinely." Upon learning of the use of torture, no one in the Lincoln administration "expressed any personal outrage or personal feeling at all" over it, "including Lincoln's secretary of state" William Seward.

Another part of Ferrier's "defense" of Lincoln's civil liberties abuses includes his argument that civil liberties abuses also occurred in the Confederacy. He apparently believes that two wrongs make a right.

Ferrier is carrying forward a long tradition of court intellectuals who have excused the tyrannical behavior of the state during the Lincoln administration. After writing of Lincoln's "amazing disregard" for constitutional liberty and calling him a "dictator," Clinton Rossiter in Constitutional Dictatorship nevertheless referred to Lincoln's "superlative example" as a "true democrat" whose actions established an "illustrious precedent." Literally hundreds of newspapers were shut down by the Lincoln administration, but "freedom of speech and press" somehow "flourished almost unchecked," wrote Rossiter.

In his otherwise masterful book, Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln, James G. Randall says there are no hard data on the exact number of civilian arrests, but he is nevertheless sure that the reported number must be "exaggerated." Mass arrest of civilians without a warrant or charges being filed was not an attack on constitutional liberty but merely "out of keeping with the normal tenor of American law." And Lincoln, after all, ordered the thousands of arbitrary arrests, "with the best of motives."

In his otherwise outstanding book, Freedom Under Lincoln, Dean Sprague "defends" Lincoln by observing that "no political prisoner was put to death." Along these lines, Randall even went so far as to say that, yes, Lincoln established a secret police force under Secretary of State William Seward that arbitrarily arrested thousands of Northern citizens, but "it was exceedingly mild by modern standards." Writing in 1950, Randall was making the "he wasn't as bad as Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini" defense.

In 1862 there was a small "war" between federal soldiers and the Santee Sioux Indians of Minnesota. At the end of the hostilities 303 Indians who were merely present at the conclusion of the fighting were arrested, imprisoned, and scheduled to be executed after military "trials" or tribunals that lasted about ten minutes each, according to David Nichols, author of Lincoln and the Indians. As Nichols explains, Lincoln was fearful that the European powers might be encouraged to be more supportive of the Confederacy if they learned of a mass execution of 303 men whose guilt had not been proven beyond reasonable doubt, so he pared the number down to just 39. This turned out to be the largest mass execution in American history yet, incredibly, some historians praise rather than criticize the Lincoln administration for it because "it could have been worse."

One frequently finds an "ends-justifies-the-means" mentality in all the "defenses" of civil liberties abuses during the Lincoln administration. Randall was a progressive, and he applauded the fact that disposing of the Constitution allowed Lincoln to destroy the system of states rights and federalism, which Randall euphemistically called "federal-state readjustment." Lincoln "believed in purposeful government," said Randall, and all outstanding presidents were "strong executives" who enlarge the size and scope of the state. He used the phrase "living constitution," perhaps coining it for the first time.

Literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote in Patriotic Gore of how Lincoln can be compared to Lenin and Bismarck because he, like the other two, "established a strong central government over hitherto loosely coordinated peoples" by becoming "an uncompromising dictator." Lincoln, Lenin and Bismarck were all succeeded by newly formed government bureaucracies so that "all the bad potentialities of the policies he had initiated were realized, after his removal, in the most undesirable way."

Mark Neely excoriated Wilson's views, however, as being wrongheaded and based on "Wilson's own extremist theories of individual freedom" (Fate of Liberty, p. 231). But Wilson's views of individual liberty seem to have been almost identical to the views of Thomas Jefferson and many other founders who feared centralized governmental power. They are "extremist" only to those who are comfortable with such powers and the loss of individual liberty they entail.

But it is just this kind of argumentation that apparently won Neely a Pulitzer Prize for Fate of Liberty, where on the back cover it is announced that, thanks to Neely's literary efforts, "Lincoln emerges from this account with his legendary statesmanship intact . . ." A job well done.

May 2, 2002 Subject: GN: Reagan wanted to legalize cannabis UPDATE> 6th newspaper prints Walter's OPED Reagan Wanted Marijuana Legalized

In newly released audiotapes of Ronald Reagan's broadcast commentaries, Reagan made clear his view that individuals should be allowed to use marijuana if they wanted to. The Reagan broadcasts come from the days before Reagan became president and were believed to be lost.

But in the new audio set "Reagan In His Own Voice" the unedited version of Reagan's most controversial broadcasts are now available. In one broadcast, Reagan declared it was an individual's choice if they chose to smoke marijuana, as long as they were aware of the health risks.

Reagan had a strong Libertarian streak, though he also held strong views about prayer in school, abortion, sex-ed in schools and other social concerns. To find out about "Reagan In His Own Voice" and other issues Reagan spoke about in the newly released tapes. Click here: http://www.newsmax.com/reaganaudio

CRRH is working to regulate and tax the sale of cannabis to adults like alcohol, allow doctors to recommend cannabis through pharmacies and restore the unregulated production of industrial hemp.

Secret court subpoenas, examinations of bookstore records, revised immigration policies and other uses of sweeping new powers have some Senate Democrats taking a new critical look at the USA Patriot Act, enacted in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), the lone senator to vote against the measure last fall, has been its most vocal critic, warning that the act infringes on constitutional freedoms.

"I would cast the same vote today, but even more confidently, as we see how law enforcement is beginning to use the new powers in the bill and how the Department of Justice has proceeded on a variety of fronts not directly addressed in the bill," he said last week.

But Feingold is not alone in his concerns. He has been joined by other Democratic senators, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (Vt.), Richard Durbin (Ill.) and Maria Cantwell (Wash.).

The act was hurriedly signed into law with overwhelming approval within six weeks of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington - without hearings or without being marked up by a congressional committee.

Particularly troubling to Feingold is a business records provision that gives the FBI new powers to subpoena records in its investigations of international terrorism. "The subpoenas are obtained from a secret court, and the records sought don' t even have to be records directly connected to a suspect in such an investigation," Feingold noted.

"We now know that bookstores and libraries have received such subpoenas asking for the purchase or lending records of their patrons. It is a truly frightening day in America when bookstores are considering destroying their records so when the government comes knocking at the door to find out what their customers have been reading they will have nothing to turn over," he said.

Feingold and Rep. Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii) joined a coalition of groups to talk about infringements on constitutional freedoms in the wake of the act. Feingold told The Hill that he might hold hearings to examine the issue, but that he was not yet ready to announce his plans.

Durbin said he too has concerns about the way the law has been implemented. "I've contacted the FBI and INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] about specific cases that I thought were unfair," he said. "And, in most instances, they have responded quickly. I think that there was clearly a quick effort to try to apprehend suspicious people, and the net was thrown in a way that it brought in too many. I hope that we can learn from this experience and protect our country without endangering our liberties."

As chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Leahy led the negotiations on the Patriot Act with the Bush administration. He warned at the time that vigorous congressional oversight would be needed. In the months following the act's passage, Leahy brought Justice Department officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, before the panel. He has followed up with numerous oversight letters to the department asking specific questions about the implementation of the bill's provisions.

Leahy's concerns also include broader administration plans to combat terrorism, such as an executive order allowing noncitizens to be tried by military tribunals and the lack of information released on detainees in the Sept. 11 investigation.

Senate Judiciary Committee member Cantwell said the combination of executive orders and the Patriot Act "blurred the line" between the laws governing criminal procedures and foreign intelligence gathering. "I think we have to be on our toes about that," she said.

Cantwell added that she is worried about the Justice Department's decision to allow the government to listen in on attorney-client communications in certain cases. "I've heard discussion of it on some of the talk shows in our state, that they were concerned about those provisions," she said. "Attorneys [were] calling in and saying that that information, their private conversations between them and their client, is being gathered."

But Cantwell stopped short of calling for amending the law. "I think now it' s just a matter of doing our job and staying on top of it, and seeing how it 's being implemented and then making a decision," she said.

Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), another member of the committee, said he has heard anecdotal stories about misuse of the act. But he added that there's a need for more concrete evidence about what's actually happening. "I just think we have to continue to monitor it very closely because of the broad powers we gave in that act, which I supported. I think we have to stay on top of it and make sure there are no abuses," he said.

However, several fellow committee Democrats have not joined in the criticism. "I think we're in a very difficult time where our national security is threatened," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). "I think before people rush to judgment on the Patriot Act we ought to have a substantial period of time to let it sort itself out."

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) characterized the administration's use of the act as "so far, so good," adding: "I think by the time it got through Congress, it was a balanced act, making us more secure, but at the same time not going overboard, and I think it's working pretty well."