Nullification: The Rightful Remedy to Curb Federal Tyranny - Part II | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Simply stated, the bill "Prevents any agency, political subdivision, employee, or member of the military of Virginia from assisting an agency of the armed forces of the United States in the conduct of the investigation, prosecution, or detention of a United States citizen in violation of the United States Constitution, Constitution of Virginia, or any Virginia law or regulation." A true nullification bill would have prevented any enforcement whatsoever of the provision within the state borders.

    The bill was introduced by VA delegate Bob Marshall and he defended the bill strongly on the legislation floor. He spoke to the federal NDAA's vagueness as well as the attempt by Congress and the President to use military law to detain American citizens as a way to circumvent the Treason Clause. He also emphasized that under our system of dual sovereignty, state legislators have a responsibility to be watchdogs against the federal government. Delegate Barbara Comstock, on the other hand, opposed the bill by stating that state legislators have no business questioning the federal government.

    The reason the bill passed was not necessarily because of the noble intentions and affirmative action of the legislators. It was not passed because of an inherent obligation on the part of the state of Virginia to keep the federal government within its bounds. It was the will of the people that triumphed. When the VA Senate originally tried to hold the bill over until next year's session (effectively killing it), thousands of grassroots activists contacted their Senators to demand that they support it. Another vote was taken quickly and the outcome was quite a different story. It passed 39-1. And so it had to head back to the House for approval, where again, parliamentary tricks and maneuvers were used to try to stall and kill it. But again, the grassroots activists sprang into action. Activists from groups from all across the political spectrum called and emailed their representatives urging to move the bill forward. Finally, it passed.

    But there was still one other hurdle. VA Governor Bob McDonnell didn't want to sign it. He was clearly in a bind. If he vetoed the bill, he would be able to keep in good standing with the "establishment" which supports NDAA detentions, but then he would become hugely unpopular with a huge portion of his state's population - from all political parties - who wanted the state to take a stand against the indefinite detention of Virginians. On April 18, the deadline he had to either sign or veto the bill, he engaged in some behind-the-scenes negotiation with the sponsors and supporters. He recommended some changes, which were accepted, and the bill was enacted. It will take effect on July 1st.

    Delegate Bob Marshall released this statement: "Preserving public safety is the foremost priority of any government. Every day, state and local law enforcement personnel work together and work with the federal government to keep Virginians safe by fighting crime, responding to emergencies, and combating terrorism. The governor believes we must encourage and promote these collaborative efforts while ensuring that core constitutional principles enjoyed by all U.S. citizens are respected. He believes these standards are expected by all Virginians and want to take appropriate steps to reaffirm that position. In the governor's view, this legislation now accomplishes that goal."

    Virginia, Maine, Utah, and Arizona have passed bills opposing and nullifying the NDAA, and many other states have introduced similar bills. South Carolina will address a resolution just as soon as it goes into session. Many local governments and groups have already passed resolutions. On January 17th, 2012 the County Commissioners of Elk County, Pennsylvania unanimously passed a resolution opposing the NDAA, titled "To Preserve Habeas Corpus And Civil Liberties." Sheriff Mike McMoran, Comanche County, Kansas, Sheriff Grayson Robinson, Arapahoe County, Colorado, and former Sheriff Richard Mack have signed resolutions opposing the NDAA and ordering no one in their department to cooperate with the enforcement of the NDAA. And most recently, a Pennsylvania constable signed a resolution.

    Groups across the political spectrum are supporting the nullification and/or repeal of the NDAA, such as the ACLU, Demand Progress, Downsize DC, Gun Owners of America, Japanese American Citizens League, the Tenth Amendment Center, Oath Keepers, Amnesty International, the Patriot Coalition, PANDA - People Against the National Defense Act, Rhode Island Liberty Coalition, the John Birch Society, Tea Party groups, Reclaim Democracy, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, People's Campaign for the Constitution, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries, United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society, Physicians for Human Rights, Presbyterian Church (USA) Office of Public Witness, Rabbis for Human Rights -North America, and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. Ron Paul supports nullification as an American, a constitutionalist, and a Congressman, and he supported it publicly as a presidential candidate.

    On May 16th, Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA), and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) held a press conference about the Smith-Amash Amendment to the NDAA, which would repeal the indefinite detention provisions. Unfortunately, that amendment failed in the US House by a vote of 182-236. On the same day as the press conference, US District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan ruled to temporarily block Section 1021 of the NDAA pending the result of the Hedges v. Obama case. This will be a case to watch.

    The type of collaboration that took place in Virginia - between conservatives and progressives - is clearly what secured H.B. 1160's success. This might be the key to defeating the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA in other states. It is certainly the way to pique the interest of state representatives who otherwise would choose not to take a position.

How Will North Carolina Respond?

    My state of North Carolina is now one of about 11 states to address the NDAA. Luckily, it is home to the founder and director of the Patriot Coalition, a devoted organization which serves as a watchdog over the legislation and conduct of the federal government. The Patriot Coalition and Oath Keepers have classified the NDAA as an "Intolerable Act," referencing the time in our early history when England enacted a series of oppressive legislation on the colonies, denying them their rights as British subjects, and ultimately pushing them towards our independence.

    According to the Patriot Coalition and Oath Keepers, the Intolerable Acts embrace two time periods in American history. The first such acts were implemented by the British Parliament and the King of England against the American Colonies just prior to the American Revolution, and were also known as the "Coercive Acts." The second such period of tyrannical oppression on the God-given Rights of the People began shortly after the attacks of 9/11/2001, and included several Acts of Congress that were signed into law by Presidents G.W. Bush and Barack Obama.

    NC Rep. Glen Bradley introduced an anti-NDAA Resolution - H.R. 982 - in the general assembly a few weeks ago. Rep. Bradley is a strict constitutionalist which apparently has made him fairly unpopular with the establishment in Raleigh. The Patriot Coalition, which co-wrote the Resolution with Oath Keepers, along with many concerned citizens, have tried to convince legislators to take the resolution seriously and to push it through the Rules Committee so it can have its day on the legislature floor.

    Apparently, there are certain members of the NC Assembly that don't want to support the resolution simply because they don't care for Rep. Bradley. What a slap in the face for the people of North Carolina who care about how closely Big Brother is watching over them. The "litmus" test for whether to support legislation should NOT be whether the sponsoring representative wins a personality contest but rather whether the legislation is good for the citizens of North Carolina. H.R. 982 stands up for the Bill of Rights which protects each citizen from a government which may try to take away his rights to life and liberty. Every citizen deserves to be charged with a crime before being detained, have the opportunity to challenge his detention, have his day in court, confront his accuser, and have access to the information and evidence used to bring charges against him.

    And so the Patriot Coalition arranged a series of briefings for the benefit of educating the NC legislators and the public on the evils contained in the NDAA. The briefings took place all day on May 30th and again on the afternoon of May 31st.

    Mr. Stewart Rhodes, founder and president of Oath Keepers, volunteered his time and drove to North Carolina to offer a presentation to the NC General Assembly to educate them as to our history of applying the laws of war to American citizens, how that relates to the NDAA, and what the implications are in this slippery slope which now has the federal government spying on American citizens and taking away their liberty interests and in Obama's case, their lives.

    Towards the end of his most excellent presentation at the General Assembly on May 31st, Mr. Rhodes offered these words:

    "Obama is claiming, like Bush before him, that he has plenary (complete; broad) inherent power to detain American citizens, but even if that is not so, he is claiming, as a fall-back, that Congress authorized that power under the 2001 AUMF. What Congress did with the NDAA of 2012 was to affirm this interpretation. Congress affirmed that the Executive Branch has the right, during wartime, to declare people who fight against the United States 'enemy combatants' and thus restrict their access to the court system (ie, suspend their rights under the Bill of Rights). What Congress said with the NDAA is to say that 'Yes, when we voted to give authorization, we intended to allow for detentions and military trials.' Pursuant to the laws of war, the president is authorized to use any and all necessary and appropriate force to detain covered persons [see Section 1021(b)(2)] pending the settlement of hostilities and these include: (1) detention until the end of such hostilities; (2) military trials; (3) transfer to any other competent tribunal; and (4) repatriation or transfer to any other country.

    The AUMF has been interpreted by two administrations and by the Supreme Court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004) as applying to the detention of American citizens. 'Covered persons' under the bill includes 'any person.' It doesn't say 'a person other than a US citizen.' Lawyers use language for a reason.

    So where are we now? We are in a direct parallel to the abuses of the Crown and Parliament that were perpetrated on our forefathers. The exact kind of violations of our traditional rights is going on right now by our own government. It doesn't matter a hill of beans if only one or two Americans are affected or if the NDAA is ultimately used to catch a few terrorists. It's the principle that we must oppose before our government gets as bad as the English Crown in the years prior to the Revolutionary War. I refuse to wait for a concentration camp full of Americans or a fellow veteran to be targeted and killed by a predator drone.

    We are leaving life and death decisions in the hands of one man - the President. It's not about electing a man who won't use such powers; it's about making sure than no president can use those powers. Concentrated power in a president and the power to indefinitely suspend habeas corpus were not part of the constitutional design that our forefathers fought for. That is precisely what they fought against. Even King George never claimed a power that extreme. Our fathers and grandfathers fought in World War II and in the Cold War era to liberate people all over the world from rulers who claim the same power that our current leaders have assumed for themselves. Yet we the people are silent.

    One of the charges against King George is that 'He has placed us outside of his protection and has waged war against us with his actions.' I believe our current government is going down that same path. They are claiming to have the power to apply the laws of war against us as if we were al Queda or the Taliban. There is no difference between you or a goat herder in Afghanistan, according to Obama (or Bush before him, unfortunately). What can be done to a goat herder in Afghanistan? Well, US military doesn't have to go to an Afghan judge and get a warrant to arrest him for suspicion of being part of the insurgency. They can just go get him. The US military also doesn't have to put him on trial and convict him before they shoot him. They can just kill, capture, or try such an Afghani goat herder in a military tribunal somewhere, simply on the suspicion of being part of the insurgency.

    And now they claim the same can be done to us.

    There is no distinction between the power being claimed by the Obama administration under this law and the power assumed by every dictator throughout the course of world history. Every dictator, whether it was Mussolini or Stalin or Pol Pot or Hitler, or some tin-hat dictator in South America - like Chavez. Every one of them had (or has) the power to just point a finger at someone and say 'He's an internal enemy.' Despots like Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, or Pol Pot didn't have to go to a judge for a warrant or provide those they rounded up a jury trial. They just took them out back and shot them.

    Stalin used to have show trials. He would torture someone until he confessed to conspiracy over something or another, and if that person were really tough and wouldn't confess, Stalin would threaten to kill his family. Sometimes, Stalin would bring in family members and force the suspected conspirator to watch them being tortured or killed. This is the power of a dictator. This is not the power of a president under a limited government constitution with a Bill of Rights. This is not the power of a president in this Republic. This is an alien form to our system. This claimed authority to apply the laws of war to us as citizens, as if we were foreign enemies, wipes away our constitutional rights and protections. It destroys our constitutional or federal compact. It is a deal-breaker. It puts us in the same position as our forefathers leading up to the American Revolution.

    This legislature has an obligation and a duty to stand up to the actions of the federal government. As James Madison put it in the Virginia Resolutions - the legislature has a duty to interpose itself between the people of that state and an unconstitutional action by the federal government. He wrote that in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were gross violations of the First Amendment. Newspaper editors and publishers were being imprisoned simply for criticizing the actions of the administration. Both Jefferson and Madison understood that such a serious and dangerous usurpation of power and violation of the rights enshrined in the First Amendment by the federal government had to be opposed by the state legislatures.

    You should listen to Madison. He's the Father of our Constitution.

    We're pretty much in the same situation today. The indefinite detention provision of the NDAA as against American citizens is just as serious and dangerous a usurpation of power and as egregious a violation of basic and treasured civil rights. We need to put the proverbial genie back in the bottle because we're in dangerous territory. Now the Bill of Rights has essentially been reduced to the mere status of a statute rather than supreme law because Congress, enacting a bill such as the NDAA authorizing military force, is seen by the courts as setting aside the Bill of Rights for you and me and our children. Very dangerous territory for sure.

    We hope Congress will fix the problem, although it just had the chance to do so with the 2013 NDAA, but they failed us. So we're going to have to fix it. The States are going to have to fix it. We have to rollback the power of the federal government, and in this case, the power of the Executive. At the very least, we have to put them on notice.

    Consider what Montana did in the wake of the Heller decision - the historic 2nd Amendment case. [District of Columbia v. Heller, 2008]. As the Supreme Court was deliberating the case (whether Mr. Heller had an individual right under the 2nd Amendment to own and possess a gun in Washington DC), the Montana state legislature ruled that if the Court did not uphold the 2nd Amendment as an individual right but rather interpret it as a collective right (only applying when individuals are organized in a militia), they would consider it a violation of the compact, or agreement, under which Montana agreed to enter and be part of the Union.
b The United States Supreme Court in March, 2012: Above.     photo by Stan Deatherage
    This is not a Right or Left issue. It's a Bill of Rights issue. It's an American issue. Hitler held an arbitrary power to detain and execute the German people. I don't understand why people don't get that.

    We've all heard people ask the question: 'How could people as smart and cultured as the Germans allow someone like Adolf Hitler to come to power and do what he did?' --- Well, now we know. We are watching the same thing happen right here in the United States."

    How many legislators do you think attended this presentation, which took all of about 40 minutes and which was offered conveniently in one of the large, comfortable committee rooms of their office building? Only four legislators attended. There were far more organizations and ordinary citizens who attended. [See reference section for the video of that presentation]

    How can citizens expect liberty to last when this is the kind of response we get from that those entrusted with preserving the system provided to us by our Founders. How can citizens help but become apathetic and cynical with respect to government?

    As brilliant constitutionalists such as Judge Andrew Napolitano wonder: If we allow the government to target American citizens who might be hostile to the United States (as the NDAA allows), how long do you think it will be before the government uses the same power to go after those who are political opponents? Will we see the day when Americans are entitled to their protections under the Bill of Rights so long as they are citizens "in good standing"? Will the government determine (such as what Homeland Security is currently doing) what it means to be "in good standing"?

    North Carolina was the first state to urge the Continental Congress to adopt a formal declaration of independence from England. On May 20, 1775, Mecklenburg County adopted a resolution (the Mecklenburg Resolution) declaring that the British Parliament was an enemy of America and its people and violates the rights of man, and therefore the citizens of that county dissolve the political bands which connect them with the Crown. The Halifax Resolves, which were passed on April 12, 1776 by the Fourth Provincial Congress of North Carolina that met at Halifax County, were the very first instructions by any colony that authorized its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from Great Britain. 83 members voted unanimously to authorize North Carolina's delegates to vote for independence. Finally, North Carolina wouldn't ratify the US Constitution until a Bill of Rights was added; it wouldn't even consider joining the Union until individual rights were sufficiently protected from the reaches of a federal government. It ratified the Constitution on November 21, 1789 and was the second to last state to do so. Rhode Island was the last state to ratify and only did so by 2 votes.

    North Carolina seems to have a legacy to live up to. INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY COMES FIRST !! North Carolinians have always been patriots and not nationalists. We've pledged our loyalty to our country (and what it stands for) and not to our government. We've been beaten down since the Civil War and coerced by a government determined to weaken the states so that boundaries can become blurred, but my hope is that the spirit of 1775 and 1776 and 1789 isn't dead.

    During the question-and-answer period following Mr. Rhodes' presentation, a young man in the audience posed the following to Mr. Rhodes: "I'm a father of 4 young children and I'm a member of a Tea Party. I'm fairly vocal in opposing my opinions of what Obama is doing. We all know that Homeland Security has targeted right-leaning groups such as veterans, gun-rights activists, Christian groups, and Tea Party folks as domestic terrorists. We all heard about what happened to that Tea Party guy out in Asheville. How do I know that some night when I'm driving home and a police officer stops me for a 'traffic violation,' I won't be hauled off to some detention center or shipped to Guantanamo Bay, never to see my wife and kids again, and maybe tortured for what I believe?" [I've done my best to recall how he posed this question]

    Rhodes' response was quite a shock to me. He said that we couldn't imagine how many people have asked him the very same thing all over the country when he travels and speaks.

    Guess what? The people fear their government. That's tyranny.

    It is said that NC House Majority Leader Paul "Skip" Stam opposes nullification. He sees it as a racist doctrine. And yet he is an attorney. According to Stam's position, if our current president was Hitler and he just passed a bill suspending the civil rights of all those who did not vote for him and enacted legislation announcing that Jews were no longer citizens and could not own property or own a business, then North Carolinians would be have to help build concentration camps and simply hope that the next election votes him out of office and ushers in a new Congress which would repeal the laws. Yet as we saw under Hitler, so much can happen once civil rights are denied the people.