Constitutional Chaos : What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws

Rating:
Summary: State-worshippers Beware!
Review: "Unlikely to be a mere coincidence, federal prosecutors soon began an
investigation of a judge who had issued rulings unfavorable to the government."
--Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, Constitutional Chaos, pg 105.

The things Judge Andrew P. Napolitano reveals in his book are not breaking news. There are anecdotes from the judge's personal experiences on the bench, and also stories that have been told publicly by such mainstream media as CBS's 60 Minutes. The news is that Judge Napolitano is spilling the beans that these abuses of government power are not the aberration that the mainstream media might imply. These practices such as bribing witnesses, kidnapping suspects, false arrest, manufacturing evidence - even manufacturing the crime - are now accepted as standard operating procedure by law enforcement and - and, mind you - the judiciary all the way to the supreme court.

Judge Napolitano is the affable, suave legal commentator for Fox News Network, yet he is uncontaminated by the reputation of Fox as right-wing, knee-jerk conservative. He argues with Bill O'Reilly that the Taliban prisoners interned at Guantanamo deserve constitutional protection just as Americans do. He has the courage to tell the truth as he sees it, and he has seen plenty. The book is certain to annoy those in law enforcement and government. I wonder at this point whether the left and right will be equally offended by his depiction of the sinister, even wicked depths to which the state has descended in the name of maintaining order, protecting citizens, and preserving civilization.

The one criticism I have is that the judge presents this state of affairs as if it were a case of "government" gone wrong, the once-legitimate state straying from its intended purpose. My question would be "what would you expect a bunch of fallible humans to do when 'The People' grant them the power to tax and order everyone around?" Sooner or later, the bad guys (the ones we need protection from, lest we fall into chaos and anarchy!) figure out how to use the system to get themselves installed as our tax agents and rulers. It isn't an accident. It happens every time.

There are three ways to view the situation:

1) "Government" is a necessary evil, and we must tolerate some abuse of our rights on behalf of the greater good;

2) "Government" is a necessary evil, and we must keep our eyes on it to make sure it doesn't exceed the authority we gave it (the insane concept, by the way);

3) "Government" is in reality a gang of extortionist lawyers, thugs, and con artists operating a protection racket.

If you accept #1, don't bitch when you get locked in the tank for the crime of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. If you are persuaded by #2, you're bound to be disappointed, even if you do spend your time watching the badged thugs - because you will never get them to obey their own laws. Why should they (see the quote a the top)? You gave them your blessing to rule you. You agreed that their rules apply to you. They don't care that you want them to play fair. If you accept #3 as I do, you might be able to write the same book as Judge Napolitano, except that you would not wind up hoping the bad "government" will somehow purge itself of the bad apples who comprise it. You won't demand that congress pass a law requiring law enforcers (and congress, for that matter) to obey the law, because:

He notes early on that it should be against the law for the law enforcers to break the law. Wouldn't that be obvious in any system of law enforcement? Well, it isn't that way, is it. Why isn't it? It's not only because the bad guys get themselves installed in the system. Otherwise-good people eventually become corrupted by the system, too. What is it about "power corrupts" that people can't seem to figure out?

I highly recommend this book and challenge the reader to remember the three models of "government" above while reading it. When the judge writes that "government" does these things because it has found "crime pays," and that breaking the law can guarantee prosecutorial success, how could any model other than #1 or #3 make any sense?

--Jackney Sneeb, (...)

Rating:
Summary: Time to water the liberty tree...
Review: As an independant researcher of government fraud, I found Napolitano's book was a timely release. As much great material as he put in it - it doesn't have the space to elaborate on all of the dirt - even the stuff that effects almost everyone. One of the biggest examples came to my attention several years ago, when a former IRS-CID officer resigned his position & released the results of a 2 year study he'd done on fraud within the IRS & the gross misapplication of Federal Income Tax law. Since Agent Banister blew the whistle against the government - several other IRS agents have come forward with similar testimony. See Http://SueIRS.org . According to these agents: The way the income tax law is ACTUALLY written - it does not attempt to tax the domestic incomes of most Americans! The IRS however, has spent decades misrepresenting the law & the government has taken great pains to obscure the limited scope of the law. This growing body of well documented, professional research has caught the attention of the Educational Foundation: We the People - who have hosted numerous events in DC at the National Press Club - inviting both the tax researchers & the government to send it's best minds to discuss on video their positions. After several years of the government's refusing to answer ANY of the legal questions, the Foundation filed a federal lawsuit on July 19th of 2004 naming the US Government as defendant on 4 points. This lawsuit - with over 2000 people in the named class & potentially millions of Americans in the 'damaged class' is one of the most important court actions of our time. The suit filing was covered on C-Span. To tie this entire issue together - the Department of Justice has been engaged in egregious conduct against those fine citizens who have blown the whistle on this collossal fraud. The abuses that Napolitano cites in his book & more have all been used to abrogate free speech, steal videos, shut down web sites, rig trials, tamper with grand juries, malicious prosecution, acting under color of law, unlawful taking, obstruction of justice & flagrant violation of the Citizens Protection Act ... & the list goes on. Napolitano's book is a great "Head's up!" warning.

Rating:
Summary: Gets a point for attacking both sides of the fence...
Review: but that doesn't make it or FOX News fair and balanced. Everyone knows FOX and its television personalities are on the Right, and slick language manipulation or token criticism of some other villain on the Right doesn't change that fact.

If His Honor really believed police and prosecutors lied, bribed, and contrived as much as he says in his Courtroom, his option was clear: issue an order where it is contemptuous to lie, bribe, or contrive in his Courtroom and jail everyone for contempt who thinks is lying, bribing, an contriving. Since he didn't do any of that, I question his motive for his book. I would be impressed if he still were on the bench and wrote this book instead of being a Monday morning quarterback with nothing to lose for saying whatever comes into his head.


Rating:
Summary: Our Liberty Under Siege
Review: Here's a great Op-Ed Judge Napolitano wrote which is very representative of the great stuff in his book.


PRESIDENT BUSH recently signed into law the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004. It should have been dubbed an addendum to the Patriot Act.

Congress' rush to meet the artificial deadline of the end of this year for reorganizing the U.S. intelligence community has produced a 600-page, impossible-to-read statute that has clauses that significantly interfere with constitutionally guaranteed rights and were never the subject of any debate by members of Congress.

Sadly, there is precedent for Congress enacting bad legislation its members have not debated or even read.

The Patriot Act was cobbled together in secret after 9/11, and the final version contained language offensive to the Constitution that was not in the version distributed to members of the House and Senate. But Congress voted for it anyway.

For example, sections of the Patriot Act authorizing federal agents to write their own search warrants and making it a crime for their recipients to speak to anyone about them were never shown to Congress before it voted on them.

Members of Congress who objected to voting on legislation without first reading it amended the Patriot Act to include a "trigger" which provided that, upon the request of any member of Congress, the debate that never took place before voting would commence sometime afterward.

When Congress adopted the Intelligence Reform Act, it secretly squeezed in what I refer to as an addendum to the Patriot Act, also without debate, by making changes to elements of the Patriot Act itself.

Here's what the Intelligence Reform Act provides: At present, if the government wants a defendant held without bail, it must demonstrate to a judge that the defendant is a flight risk. Under this Patriot Act addendum, if the government declares a defendant a terrorist and a flight risk, the defendant must prove that he is not a flight risk, rather than the government proving that he is. This turns the presumption of innocence on its head, since in criminal cases, the Constitution requires that defendants don't have to prove anything in order to enjoy their freedom.

Even though Patriot Act-authorized self-written search warrants have been held unconstitutional by the only federal court asked to review them, in New York City, the new addenda broaden the category of permissible recipients of self-written search warrants. They now include automobile, plane, and boat dealers, telegraph companies, travel agencies, and jewelry stores. Lawyers' offices and the U.S. Postal Service were added last year. Congress merely ignored the unconstitutionality of the original law dealing with the warrants.

Until this addendum to the Patriot Act, it was unlawful to leak federal grand jury testimony, regardless of how noble the leaker's purpose. The secrecy of grand jury proceedings has been enshrined in Anglo-American law for over 600 years. Now, federal prosecutors -- and no one else -- may lawfully leak. This gives the government a tool permitting enormous harm since grand jury leaks can destroy a public figure's reputation. Just ask Jason Giambi or Barry Bonds.

And that trigger provision in the original Patriot Act? It is repealed in the Intelligence Reform Act. The 9/11 Commission wanted more spies, not less freedom. What's going on here?

The Patriot Act and its progeny are the most abominable, unconstitutional congressional assaults on personal freedom since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 made it a crime to libel the government. With them, Congress and the president have attempted to legitimize the exchange of liberty for security. In effect, the government says, "Give us your freedoms, and we will protect you." Such a satanic bargain misunderstands the nature of freedom and historically never has worked.

No rational person has ever voluntarily given up his own freedoms. Sacrificing freedom has never made us safer, just less free.

If we allow the president and Congress to treat our constitutional guarantees as if they were arbitrary gifts from the government, we will be doing the terrorists' work for them. The government doesn't give us our freedoms. We give the government its power. Our freedoms come from our humanity. Shouldn't the government be defending our freedoms rather than curtailing them? Didn't the president and members of Congress swear to uphold the Constitution rather than evade it?

After then-Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer arrested without charge over 1,000 Eastern European intellectuals during World War I and after the United States interned more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II, we looked back in horror at what was done.

Those useless, lawless, fruitless assaults on "their" freedoms so as to enhance "our" safety were condemned in 1988 when Congress passed, and President Ronald Reagan signed, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which compensated those still living who had been detained and declared: "Never again."

But we haven't learned. Since 9/11, hundreds of Arab-Americans have disappeared from our streets.

The wartime arrests condemned in 1988 were the unilateral acts of misguided elements of the government. But in the Patriot acts, President Bush and this Congress have written these nefarious powers into federal law, without debate. Congress may not read our laws; but it should read our history.



Rating:
Summary: That's ridiculous
Review: I have NOT read this entire book. I have, however, read parts, and have seen the judge on Fox many times. I've read the reviews here, and I felt I had to comment on the one thing I've seen and heard about that is TOTALLY WRONG; the statement that the U.S. Civil War was over slavery. That's just plain NOT TRUE.

I know many educators teach this, including well-known university professors. However, these people usually have a bias and a political agenda.

The Civil War was fought over the same thing the American Revolution was fought over; states' rights, taxation without representation, less and less voice in the government as time went by, and to a much less degree the right to make their own laws concerning slavery. Slavery, then, became the "political football" that was used as a cause for the war, but not until after Ms Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin", a very extreme and embellished story of slavery.

This is not to say that slavery is not wrong, and was not somewhat of a factor in the civil war. However, vey few soldiers in the North were fighting to abolish slavery. They were fighting to preserve their own way of life. Many were just as racist as those in the South. In fact, many white groups from various parts of Europe and the rest of the world, hated each other over their differences. They all wanted to be free to establish their own culture and way of life, and not be dominated by government and other groups they hated.

There you have it; the plain fact. That's the way it was. Abolishing slavery was not a factor until long into the war. Abraham Lincoln's original objective was to preserve the Union, and only to preserve the Union. Abolishing slavery was probably a distant second for him.

What most people don't understand is that some states in the North had threatened to secede before the South did, and over much the same reasons; not slavery.

The next time your college professor tries to tell you the fable about the "war over slavery" ask him to tell you the one about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. Fables make for good reading, as does a lot of fiction.

Rating:
Summary: This is a worthless book. Don't waste your time.
Review: I was so disappointed in this book. Napolitano documents nothing. There is not a single footnote or source in the book, so there is no way to check and determine the truth of what he claims. Even when he cites a court case, he doesn't give you the citation so that you could go to the reported case and read it to see whether he is factual in his reporting. And some of his opinions are so far from factual that they are laughable. As one example, in discussing the Second Amendment, Napolitano says that the Founding Fathers gave us the right to bear arms because they realized the police weren't going to be able to get there on time and we had to have the right to defend ourselves. This is so ridiculous. At the time the Bill of Rights was written in 1789 there were no police in the states. There were Sheriffs and Constables. The Sheriffs were primarily for collecting taxes. The first police forces were not created until several decades later, when almost all the Founding Fathers were dead. And Napolitano talks about the abuses of police and prosecutors and claims that the courts will not protect our rights under the Constitution. But he does not in anyway address the various Supreme Court decisions through the years that overturned criminal convictions based on violations of the Bill of Rights. At a time when many believe the courts are creating new rights that never were intended in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, Napolitano complains about police abuse. This book is a complete waste of time and I am sorry I wasted my money on it. Don't bother with it.

Rating:
Summary: Fair & Balanced!
Review: Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst, has written a "fair and balanced" look at some of the many ways the United States government, as well as state and local governments, have and continue to break their own laws. It is truly fair and balanced in that this man, who many on the left would view as a conservative hack due to his affiliation with Fox News, cuts no slack on attacking illegal government activities. This is particularly evidenced by the Judge's scathing attacks on John Ashcroft. As Americans, we tend to have a very short attention span and need to be reminded of governmental atrocities now and then. Napolitano does just that.

The Judge documents page after page of cases where federal, state and municipal governments have illegally exempted themselves from following their own laws. You will appreciate the Judge's writing style as this book reads quite easily. The book is broken down into several categories of governmental illegalities such as the misuse of eminent domain, bribing witnesses and even getting away with murder.

Chapter 4 in and of itself is well worth the price of the book. This chapter is on GRABBING GUNS, ENDANGERING CITIZENS and Judge Napolitano presents a rock solid case for the right to keep and bear arms by outlining numerous instances of genocide throughout the world on an unarmed citizenry. He destroys the anti-gun argument that the Second Amendment refers only to a state militia and not to THE PEOPLE as the Amendment clearly states.

I found Chapter 8, ASSAULTING THE PEOPLE, to be equally brilliant. Here, Napolitano revisits the illegal activities, including abuse of power and kidnapping, of mass murderer, Janet Reno.

The book concludes with an all too short chapter on what we, as citizens, can do to stop governmental law breaking. My only knock on this book is that this chapter should have gone into much greater detail. The Appendix includes a well written introduction to the Constitution as well as the document itself in its entirety with the Constitutional Amendments.

Monty Rainey, Chairman
www.juntosociety.com

Rating:
Summary: The Goverment Breaks Its Own Laws Everyday
Review: One would think that the government would carefully follow its own laws to set the moral fiber and to set the example for all of its citizens. Tragically, the opposite is often the case. The government breaks its own laws with impunity and undermines the goodness of the Country.

The author, Judge Napolitano, has written a very important book that states the true facts that our liberties are in grave danger and will fall unless we pay attention to this book and other books like it. The government's war on terrorism is of more danger to the citizenship than it may end up of being a hinderance to the terrorists. If we defeat the terrorists by defeating our own liberties we will have gained nothing, for sure.

From the introduction to the book - The government, federal, state, and local, is not bound to obey its own laws. I know this sounds crazy, but the events recounted in this book prove it to be true. This book should be a wake-up call for every American who prizes personal liberty in a free society. Because it breaks the law, the government is not your friend.

Rating:
Summary: Life-long Conservative Republican Recently Turned Liberal!!
Review: This is a book that EVERY American should read! THANK YOU, JUDGE NAPOLITANO!!!! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning the TRUTH about our current "just-us" system. Had my 32 y/o brother not been recently sentenced to 45 years for drug conspiracy (based solely on 'purchased' testimony) I would probably still be clueless and may have never read this book. My brother was given this unjust sentence because he opted to use his 6th Amend right (trial by jury) and refused to break the law (take compensation for testifying against another innocent individual: bribery??). This book tells exactly how the system works and I'm so glad, because when I tell my brother's story (www.JesseSkinner.com) most individuals have a difficult time believing our government is capable of such viciously evil criminal tactics. Judge Napolitano tells it all and as someone who has witnessed it, I couldn't help but cheer. I am saddened and frightened of what America has become, but at the same time overjoyed that finally someone within the system has the decency to stand up for justice and tell the ugly truth.

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." --Thomas Jefferson.

Thank you, again, Judge Napolitano!!!


Rating:
Summary: Napolitano Vilifies the American South
Review: To blame the post-Civil War American South for gun control which 'spread to New York' is absurd, and says much about Napolitano's ignorance or intentional distortion of history. He gives no mention that the American southern negro was incited to violence especially upon his fellow negro by northern carpetbagger governments installed 'at the point of a bayonet' by the Radical Republican national government from Washington. Furthermore, Napolitano's theme that the Civil War was over slavery was the knockout punch for me, and his neocon book went right in the trashcan.

Prospective buyers of Napolitano's book should perish the thought & get a copy of The Tragic Era by Claude Bowers for a truthful and accurate account of life in the Reconstructed South after The War for Southern Independence.

We know that the victors write the history books, and Constitutional Chaos is penned under that standard of disinformation.