Smith Act --the third in a series on sedition

     Question: Was Obama ever registered under the Smith Act and should he be registered now? 

     -----lee

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

     The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act (18 U.S.C. § 2385) of 1940 is a United States federal statute that makes it a federal criminal offense for

     “ Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof - Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction. ”

     It also required all non-citizen adult residents to register with the government; within four months, 4,741,971 aliens had registered under the Act's provisions.

     The Act is best known for its use against political organizations and figures. Prosecutions continued until a series of United States Supreme Court decisions in 1957 threw out numerous convictions under the Smith Act as unconstitutional. The statute remains on the books, however.

     The Act was proposed by Congressman Howard W. Smith of Virginia, a Democrat and a leader of the "anti-labor" bloc of Congressmen.[1] It was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Smith Act trials 

     The first trial, in 1941, focused on Trotskyists; the second, in 1944, prosecuted alleged fascists and, beginning in 1949, leaders and members of the Communist Party USA were targeted.

     1941: Minneapolis offender - Communism on TrialThe first Smith Act Trial occurred in 1941 with the prosecution in Minneapolis of leaders of the communist Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Minneapolis including James P. Cannon, Carl Skoglund, Farrell Dobbs, Grace Carlson, Harry DeBoer, Max Geldman, Albert Goldman (who also acted as the defendants' lawyer during the trial), twelve other leaders of the Trotskyist SWP, and union activists involved with Local 544 of the Teamsters union in Minneapolis where the SWP had had a degree of influence since the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934. The SWP had advocated strikes and the continuation of labor union militancy during World War II under its Proletarian Military Policy and had some influence in Minneapolis due to its involvement with the Teamsters Union. The US Communist Party-- which, during the period in which the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was in force, had opposed American involvement in the war--had become an advocate of a no-strike pledge since the beginning of Nazi invasion of the USSR. An SWP member edited the Northwest Organizer, which was the weekly newspaper of the Minneapolis Teamsters, and the local remained a militant communist outpost in what was becoming an increasingly conservative national union under IBT leader Daniel J. Tobin.

To continue ...

Alien and Sedition Acts ---the second in a series on sedition

     Question: under how many acts does Obama qualify for deportation?

     ----lee

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

     The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War. They were signed into law by President John Adams. Proponents claimed the acts were designed to protect the United States from alien citizens of enemy powers and to prevent seditious attacks from weakening the government. The Democratic-Republicans, like later historians, denounced them as being both unconstitutional and designed to stifle criticism of the administration, and as infringing on the right of the states to act in these areas. They became a major political issue in the elections of 1798 and 1800.

Acts

     There were actually four separate laws making up what is commonly referred to as the "Alien and Sedition Acts"

1.The Naturalization Act (officially An Act to Establish a Uniform Rule of Naturalization; ch. 54, 1 Stat. 566) extended the duration of residence required for aliens to become citizens of the United States from five years to fourteen years.

2.The Alien Friends Act (officially An Act Concerning Aliens; ch. 58, 1 Stat. 570) authorized the president to deport any resident alien considered "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States." It was activated June 25, 1798, with a two year expiration date.

3.The Alien Enemies Act (officially An Act Respecting Alien Enemies; ch. 66, 1 Stat. 577) authorized the president to apprehend and deport resident aliens if their home countries were at war with the United States of America. Enacted July 6, 1798, and providing no sunset provision, the act remains intact today as 50 U.S.C. § 21–24. At the time, war was considered likely between the U.S. and France.

4.The Sedition Act (officially An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States; ch. 74, 1 Stat. 596) made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government or its officials. It was enacted July 14, 1798, with an expiration date of March 3, 1801 (the day before Adams' presidential term was to end).

To continue ...

Sedition --the first in a series on sedition

Sedition--what's it good for? If not treason, why not try sedition? -----lee

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

     In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interests of sedition.
     Typically, sedition is considered a subversive act, and the overt acts that may be prosecutable under sedition laws vary from one legal code to another. Where the history of these legal codes has been traced, there is also a record of the change in the definition of the elements constituting sedition at certain points in history. This overview has served to develop a sociological definition of sedition as well, within the study of state persecution.
     The difference between sedition and treason consists primarily in the subjective ultimate object of the violation to the public peace. Sedition does not consist of levying war against a government nor of adhering to its enemies, giving enemies aid, and giving enemies comfort. Nor does it consist, in most representative democracies, of peaceful protest against a government, nor of attempting to change the government by democratic means (such as direct democracy or constitutional convention).
     Sedition is the stirring up of rebellion against the government in power. Treason is the violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or state, giving aid to enemies, or levying war against one's state. Sedition is encouraging one's fellow citizens to rebel against their state, whereas treason is actually betraying one's country by aiding and abetting another state. Sedition laws somewhat equate to terrorism and public order laws.

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Why President Obama is at Risk for Impeachment

Missed this earlier but it's more timely everyday.---rng

Preserve, Protect and Defend the Constitution

Mitch Biggs, Yahoo! Contributor Network

Aug 1, 2010 

In the United States, Federal Officials are exempt from a recall election. However, Article One of the Constitution does provide for impeachment. There are very compelling reasons why President Obama is at risk for impeachment. At the heart of the matter is the Oath of Office. On inauguration day, President Obama took the following oath:

     "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

    

     Rather than defend, preserve and protect the Constitution, President Obama has systematically set a course to dismantle the Constitution. The real question here is if President Obama has committed perjury. During his campaign he is documented stating that he wanted to fundamentally transform the United States. His appointments to the United States Supreme Court are clear evidence of a President seeking to create a judicial body that is biased toward liberal ideology rather than constitutional law. Furthermore, the President has been documented strongly suggesting that the Constitution is an impediment for his desire to redistribute the nation's wealth. (Politico.com)

     The Oath of Office specifically calls on the President to preserve, protect and defend. Immigration reform is another example where the President has condemned the Constitution. Securing our nation's border is a national security issue. Politics have been allowed to be center stage as a bargaining chip rather than uphold the law. We are a nation of laws. Illegal immigrants are breaking the law. The Federal Government must uphold the law. More troops have been sent to clean up the oil spill than defend our porous border. Litigation with Arizona is far removed from the fundamental responsibility of our nation's security.

To continue reading ...

GOP Congressional Candidate Walberg Suggests Using Impeachment To Get Obama’s Birth Certificate

from thinkprogress.org

By Zaid Jilani

on Oct 13th, 2010 at 9:56 am

     As ThinkProgress previously noted, Tim Walberg — a former GOP congressman and current Republican nominee for the House of Representatives from Michigan’s seventh congressional district — appeared on a local Battle Creek radio show last month and told the host that he doesn’t “know” if Obama is a Muslim or born in the United States.

     Now, video has surfaced of Walberg once again addressing the “birther” issue. The congressional candidate told voters at a recent meeting at a coffee shop that, while he’s going to “take [Obama] at his word that he’s an American citizen,” the reason the issue isn’t “resolved” is because the “president hasn’t resolved it yet.” Walberg suggested that Obama call in radio hosts Alan Colmes and Rush Limbaugh, congressional leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and “maybe one justice of the U.S. Supreme Court” and present his birth certificate to them in private. He then explained that there is little that Congress can do to force Obama from “showing certain things,” but suggested that Congress could use the threat of impeachment, but “Republicans don’t have that majority“:

     WALBERG: Well I’m going to take him at his word that he’s an American citizen. I don’t know why it’s not resolved, other than the fact that the president hasn’t resolved it yet. [...] If I had to do it I’d just simply of course I had to show my birth certificiate to be on the ballot. If I were gonna do it I’d call Rush Limbaugh, Alan Colmes, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and maybe one justice of the US Supreme court. Call ‘em all into a room and lay out my birth certificate on a table…and say all of you take a look at it show me what you find. Now go and report it. [...] The Executive has an awful lot of power to keep from showing certain things unless the courts will stand up to him. Or unless Congress in majority will stand up, up to and including impeachment. And Republicans don’t have that majority.

Watch it:

For more....

Talk of Impeachment

     The violation of public trust. We trust our elected officials to obey the laws and the foundation of our laws in letter as well as in spirit----the constitution. We trust our elected officials to protect our borders, i.e.. controlling immigration and keeping border battles on the other side of the border. We trust our elected officials to pass laws that don't result in tyrannical bureaucracies and the loss of freedoms guaranteed by the constitution. Yet another reason for impeachment: the violation of the public trust. ------lee

July 29, 2010

By Alan Caruba 

     The last time I recall the nation being this concerned over the state of the presidency was during the Lewinsky scandal and ensuing impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. Before that it was during the slow revelation of the Watergate scandal that finally forced Richard Nixon’s resignation.

     On Thursday, July 22, an editorial opinion by Tom Tancredo in The Washington Times called for the impeachment of President Obama. A column by Jeffrey Kuhner was titled “President’s socialist takeover must be stopped.”

     Tancredo, a former five-term member of Congress, is now the chairman of the Rocky Mountain Foundation. Kuhner, a Times columnist, is president of the Edmund Burke Institute.

     Burke, an Irish orator, philosopher and politician (1729-1797) is best known for his warning that “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”, but he also said, “Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time.”

     It is the conceit of every generation that those that preceded it were less sophisticated, but it is clear from Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Paper number 65, published in the New York Packet on March 7, 1788, that the question of impeachment as defined in the Constitution was being debated, the subtleties of the issue were not only understood by the author, but by Americans of his era as well.

     Hamilton wrote: “A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.

     They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused.”

     The removal of Barack Hussein Obama from the office of the presidency is increasingly spoken of among concerned Americans and now has risen to the level of discussion in print. The two Times articles enumerated the reasons why.

     Tancredo began by reminding us that “every citizen elected to serve in Congress or any person appointed to any federal position” must swear an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

     “For the first time in American history,” said Tancredo, “we have a man in the White House who consciously and brazenly disregards his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution.” Going straight to the heart of the issue confronting all Americans, Tancredo said, “Our president is an enemy of the Constitution and, as such, he is a danger to our safety, our security, and our personal freedoms.”

     Kuhner wrote that Obama is “slowly, piece by piece, erecting a socialist dictatorship. We are not there yet, but he is putting America on that dangerous path. He is undermining our constitutional system of checks and balances, subverting democratic procedures and the rule of law…”

     Tancredo listed what he regards as impeachable offenses which the Constitution describes as “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Impeachment has twice been attempted in the nation’s past and neither succeeded. Among those cited by Tancredo are:

    

     # Disenfranchising General Motors and Chrysler bondholders in order to transfer billions of investor dollars to his supporters in the United Auto Workers;

     # Implementing a third ban on off-shore drilling despite the rejection by two federal courts.

     # The appointment of judges who want to create law rather than interpret it.

     # The failure to defend the nation’s southern border against an invasion of illegal aliens.

     Tancredo could have added the questionable demand that BP create a $20 billion fund to cover the cost of the oil cleanup and the losses incurred by those affected by it. That was entirely without any previous historic or legal precedent.

     The creation, too, of an entire level of presidential advisors (czars) within the White House who appear to have been granted greater powers than Secretaries of various federal departments in determining policy is highly questionable. Few underwent any examination by the Senate.

     Kuhner warned about Obamacare’s funding of abortion, along with the creation of “a command-and-control health care system, “a frontal assault on property rights”, the new financial reform act that he deemed “essentially nationalize the big banks” while noting the same effect on the financial sector, and the student loan industry. He too noted the takeover of the automakers.

     Kuhner warned that Obama’s “comprehensive immigration reform” would grant amnesty to 12 to 20 million illegal aliens “would sound the death knell for our national sovereignty.” The Obama Justice Department’s decision to sue Arizona for its immigration law was deemed as “siding with criminals against his fellow Americans” and desecrated his constitutional oath. Kuhner deemed it “treasonous.”

     Kuhner urged that, should the Republicans win back Congress in November “formal investigations into this criminal, scandal-ridden administration” should be launched.

     I doubt that even Republican control of Congress in both houses would undertake impeachment proceedings against Obama. That did not go well when it was tried against Clinton.

     At best a Congress in which they controlled either or both houses would become a bulwark against further predations by the first Marxist president ever elected in America and, hopefully, the last.

    

Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/.

For more...

Meeting With The Boss

Hu Jintao has dinner with Obama---two leaders with the same political philisophy breaking bread. -----lee 

For more... 

http://www.nma.tv/hu-jintao-jets-washington-2/