Category Archives: Civil Liberties

Bill Lockwood: The Rabidly Anti-Christian Biden Administration 4 (1)

by Bill Lockwood

Christians and conservative Americans have lost their government. The sooner constitutionally-minded citizens awaken to this fact, the better. Individual freedom is a thing of the past, and no amount of “suing the government” is going to recapture it. Through the Biden Administration the liberal, Neo-Marxist, post-modern humanists, atheists and God-haters make up a Deep State.

If one doubts that assessment, consider the current lawsuit against the Administration by the College of the Ozarks.

According to The Federalist, the “College of the Ozarks in Hollister, Missouri, is suing the Biden administration over a directive from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development forcing religious institutions to permit students of the opposite sex in the same bathrooms, dorm rooms and dormitories.”

Here is the White House’s “justification.” It announced in February that “it will administer and enforce the Fair Housing Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Religious liberty legal group Alliance Defending Freedom filed a suit on behalf of the Missouri college, asserting Biden’s decision “requires private religious colleges to place biological males into female dormitories and assign them as females’ roommates.”

In other words, the Biden Administration is in the business of forcing private institutions to open girls’ dormitories to males based upon their “perceived” sexual identity. What high-handed arrogant atrocities by rulers! Biblical teaching regarding sexuality, marriage, chastity, and social order is under direct attack. As Dr. Jerry Davis, president of the school, announced, “To threaten religious freedom is to threaten America itself.”

Davis went on to make clear that “College of the Ozarks will not allow politicians to erode the essential American right or the ideals that shaped America’s founding.”

Recent History

In the above, I stated that “suing the government” is not going to fix this hedonistic communism that has taken over America. For proof, examine a source of this moral sepsis. In part, they go back to the outrageous “ruling” by the Supreme Court last summer in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia.

In that case, six justices “turned themselves into legislators, rewriting the intent of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to fit the current narrative, ruling that there is to be no ‘discrimination’ against the LGBTQ community, regardless of rights guaranteed in the Constitution protecting religious freedom.” This ruling was a 6-3 decision, in which supposed-conservative Neil Gorsuch, writing the majority opinion, stated that Title VII protections extended to sexual orientation and gender identity. “Sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes will prove unsustainable after our decision today,” he opined.

No, what is “unsustainable” is a Supreme Court, and Socialistic/Marxist government that intrudes upon all freedom—religious and otherwise. The federal government, and particularly the judicial branch in this case, has radically overstepped its constitutional boundaries. What solace therefore, should Christians take in “suing at court” the Biden Administration? And, even if there is a win in the College of the Ozarks’ case—what security has Christian America that these God-hating totalitarian trends will not continue?

The Constitution

Besides the obvious fact that the bounds of propriety, common-sense, decency, and morality have been trampled by Gorsuch and the Court, what about the Constitution? Ours is a Republic—the rule of law. This eliminated from the beginning the “rule by mob”, riotous mutineers, or even black-robed propagandists who goose step to political correctness. Adherence to law has been the hallmark of American society.

To change the law, specific provisions were instituted by our founders. These begin and end with the lawmaking branch of government—the Legislative. There is absolutely no lawmaking power granted by the Constitution to the judicial branch. Instead, they are sworn to uphold the Constitution as written.

However, in the Bostock case, the Supreme Court legislatively declared that that 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, must now include the non-scientific categories of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” Gorsuch and crew enlarged the meaning  of the 1964 law so that “sex” now includes “manipulations in the biological makeup of human beings or conduct that is clearly forbidden by the Almighty.” These six justices brazenly and boldly cast science and God behind their backs and inserted their modernistic version of what they believe we should be doing in America.

In sum, we have no rule of law. It is the whim of the Judicial Branch, among other areas of deterioration. So, again, I ask, what will be accomplished by suing in the courts the Federal Government? Justices are making it up as they go along. Christians, beware!

Civil Liberties? 0 (0)

Civil Liberties?“Civil Liberties is by political scientists and legal experts defined as the limitation on government power …”

by Bill Lockwood

Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan signed a bill into law that bans “material support or resources” for warrantless federal surveillance programs (reported by the tenthamendmentcenter.com). The bill originally was introduced in the Michigan House by Rep. Martin Howrylak (R-Troy) last spring (HB4430).

The new law prohibits the state and its political subdivisions from assisting, participating with, or providing “material support or resources, to a federal agency to enable it to collect, or to facilitate in the collection or use of a person’s electronic data” unless certain conditions apply. The Right to Privacy is to be sacrosanct.

Howrylak commented that this bill “safeguards the fundamental rights of all Michigan residents, who are guaranteed protection of their property and privacy rights by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”

The Fourth Amendment, which some Constitutionalists argue, is the most abused portion of the law by government entities, is the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, shall not be violated; and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

Civil Liberties

Civil Liberties is by political scientists and legal experts defined as the limitation on government power intended to protect the liberty of the citizen. These rights may not be legally trampled upon by government powers.

To get a clearer picture, step back a moment. The entire framework of our Constitution was crafted to control our government. To be a governor on the powers-that-be was the very intention of having a written Constitution.

Before publishing it, many of the framers, such as Patrick Henry and George Mason, refused to sign the Constitution unless a Bill of Rights be attached that pointedly specified once more a “thou shalt not” list to the Federal Government. This attachment was finally made and the entire compass of our Charter is characterized by Thomas Jefferson as “chains that bind” leaders of government from wayward legislation, which he called “mischief.”

Therefore, America legislated a limited government in order that the individual might enjoy the maximum freedom God intended for him or her. All this because history is replete with freedoms lost or removed from people by their own governing authorities—elected or not.

Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights, or the First Ten Amendments, is not designed to be an exhaustive list of liberties to be retained by the people and the states, but to recognize some of the basic God-bestowed liberties that the founding generation recognized would be necessary to safeguard.

That it is not to be an exhaustive list is seen clearly from the 9th Amendment which basically states that all rights belong to the people and if we (the writers of the Constitution) fail to mention some of these liberties in the amendments themselves, it does not mean the federal government can remove these either!

The 10th Amendment re-phrased the same, except from a different angle. The states and the people retained all rights and freedoms unless it has been specifically delegated by the Constitution to the States or to the People. One cannot even pretend that America has been faithful to these bold laws.

The famed 5th Amendment prohibited the government from depriving persons of life, liberty or property without due process of law, which simply meant there must be government fair play in the legal and judicial process. It assumes the fundamental idea that I myself am to be regarded as a unique creation of God and that my property is an extension of myself. Further, I am to have the presumption of innocence if charged with a crime.

To witness how far our leaders, who are tolerated by the voting populace, are from these basic concepts of liberty, consider this amazing statement from Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), which she tweeted in December in the wake of Trump’s Tax Reform. Pelosi’s tweet, before she removed it, gives a window into the socialist soul, which is in direct opposition to basic liberty.

I am disgusted with ‘President’ Trump allowing people to keep more of the money they earn. It is this type of wide spread theft of public resources that keeps American from being great ‘Mr. President.’ Dec. 20, 2017.

The masses, excluding the ruling elite such as Pelosi herself, who revel in their wealth, are not entitled to private property at all. As a matter of fact, there is no such thing as “private property” with this view. Instead, “we the people” and all of our possessions are merely “public resources” to be used at the whim of the rulers! No such thing as individual rights from God. This goes a long way explaining why the Left so vehemently hates Trump. Rolling back the leviathan socialist government is not easy when this is the mindset in Washington, DC.

The Fourth Amendment

The Fourth Amendment protects people against illegal searches and seizures by governing authorities. The Founding generation had experienced a “train of abuses” of their persons and properties by the Crown of England by what were called “Writs of Assistance.” These were generic “search warrants” which allowed the government to engage in fishing expeditions to discover smuggled goods among the colonists’ possessions. James Otis in 1761 referred to them as a “form of tyranny.”

That we have practically lost this liberty to an all-powerful manager named Uncle Sam goes without saying. The 16th Amendment, the Income Tax Law, actually shreds the Fourth Amendment, by allowing the government to search through all of private affairs and financial transactions during the year, and shifts the burden of proof upon the citizen that he or she has not committed a crime!

The American taxpayer is now faced with the onus of “proof”—which by nature ought to be borne by the accuser (in this case, the government)—and forces him to be a “defendant”. This in spite of the fact that the Bill of Rights requires the accuser to have “probable cause” against me. The IRS is the enforcement arm of this tyranny one can understand how the Lois Lerner’s of the world can transform the tax-collection agency in America into a despotic piece of equipment by targeting conservatives. It is not a coincidence that this liberty to be “free from warrantless searches” was lost during the period of Progressive (read, Socialist) Woodrow Wilson.

NDAA

The sweeping National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which funds military spending, allows the United States to capture and detain “enemy combatants”—including Americans, indefinitely. A clear violation of the 6th Amendment which guarantees a speedy trial before an impartial jury to American citizens.

Because we are continually involved in a “War on Terror” those arrested can be designated “enemy combatants” by whichever administration is in power—perhaps those who have “guns and religion.” That this involves a clear violation of the Bill of Rights can be seen in the first iteration of the bill in 2012. The Obama Administration threatened to veto the bill if wording in one of the bills’ sections designed to protect American citizens was not removed.

Then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta sent a letter to Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) stating that adding such wording to protect the citizen “restrains the Executive Branch’s options to utilize, in a swift and flexible fashion, all the counter-terrorism tools that are now legally available” (as reported by Steve Byas, The New American, 3-19-18).

Shades of King George! Now we understand why Gov. Rick Snyder signed the Michigan bill into law which forbids warrantless searches via federal surveillance programs. The trampling of our Constitution by the Federal Government, which Founding Charter was designed to restrain, is fast underway. It has not changed with a Republican Administration.