Showing posts with label jury trials. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jury trials. Show all posts

Saturday, March 2, 2013

A Reading List For Libertarian Activists

Essential Reading Regarding Jury Rights, Especially For Libertarian Activists:

Send In The Waco Killers
by Vin Suprynowicz

This book will help define the problem of tyranny, for those who think that America is still a free country, with equality under the law. It's an excellent overview of the largest and most important power-grabs made by government in the past 100 years. This book is well worth reading to get everyone on the same page about what the most important problems are, as far as American liberty is concerned. The freedom movement is useless, unless it has clear solutions for those problems that can be implemented, starting now. This book contains arguments in favor of "jury nullification of law," specific examples of it, and an accurately-prioritized description of how the current legal system has been corrupted by the unconstitutional courtroom procedure of "voir dire" (prosecutorial jury-selection).

Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine
by Clay Conrad

This book will show you your full power as a member of the jury, and how to exercise that power. It's an excellent overview of the largest and most important power-grabs made by government in the past 100 years, with a clear and detailed insight as to how to reverse them. You hold the power as a member of the Jury, you just need to reach out and claim it.

Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice
by Paul Butler

Historically, juries exist to answer three questions: (1)Most importantly: Is the law in question legitimate? (2)Second most importantly: If legitimate, is it being fairly applied in this case? (3)Least important: Did the accused break the law? In addition to covering different areas of the topics covered in Conrad's book, this book argues for a compelling interpretation of point number two prior. This book makes a case for "political jury nullification," when justice systems refuse to apply legitimate laws evenly, against minorities. For example: In California at the turn of the century, there was a law that made it illegal for Chinese people to testify against white people in court, due to the prejudice whites had for the large numbers of Chinese railworker immigrants. So, civil rights activists encouraged white jurors not to convict chinese people of murder, until the situation changed (which it eventually did, due to the pressure put on the courts). Butler argues (with mountains of well-researched evidence) that the current war on drugs has always been racist, and seeks a similar solution. Well worth reading.


The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Volume II: The Methods of Nonviolent Action
by Gene Sharp

This book deals with eliminating the causes of tyranny by appealing to broad public opinion, using nonviolent tactics. This book will be especially useful for activists who are concerned with the problem that the freedom movement is seemingly "outgunned" by the government.


Works That Explain How Libertarian Movements Can and Have Succeeded:

Freedom for Alaskans
by Dick Randolph

A book about the prospect of electing libertarians to office in Alaska, the state with possibly the most inherently-libertarian demographics in the nation. In Alaska, from 1978-1982, there were more Libertarians elected (to offices capable of significantly expanding individual freedom) than there have been anywhere else, before or since. The result of this accomplishment (and the ballot access initiative promoted by Dick Randolph) is that it is illegal for Alaska to have a State income tax. If the Libertarian Party wants to replicate this accomplishment, then why don't they learn from the successes pioneered by Randolph? I understand why Libertarians place more emphasis on philosophy than strategy, but I strongly disagree with that emphasis. Both are essential to any legitimate freedom movement, as is this book.

The Triumph of Liberty: A 2,000 Year History Told Through the Lives of Freedom's Greatest Champions
by Jim Powell

A book precisely described by its subtitle. This book is a broad and general high-hierarchical level overview that allows people to see many avenues toward effectively advancing individual freedom. Most chapters are no more than 5 to 10 pages, but they are information-packed pages. "Triumph" introduces the reader to the people who advanced freedom the most rapidly, and briefly explores the strategies they used. This book serves as an excellent "starting point" for those who want to get a handle on how quickly the cause of individual liberty can be advanced, and what strategies are most likely to rapidly advance the cause of liberty. Some of the movements and individuals outlined in this book served to keep the ideas of liberty alive, others organized mass movements that directly reduced state interference with people's lives. Well worth reading for those who want to understand, historically, the answers to the questions, "What has expanded individual freedom the most?" and "What tactics work best to expand liberty?"

Top Futurist Works on Life Extension:
Fantastic Voyage
by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman

Perhaps the best book on extending healthspan that currently exists. Contains the best up-to-date health information available, as well as information about how one can stay on top of emerging life-extension technology. This is the information and cellular-reprogramming approach to diet and health, par excellence. Contains a lot of information that is immediately useful, as well as a look at what is likely to come in both the short and long term. "Reprogramming Our Biochemistry for Immortality" Interview with Ray Kurzweil

Ending Aging
by Aubrey de Grey

The book "Ending Aging" deals with eliminating the causes of aging, beyond heart attack, cancer, and stroke (the big 3). Going far beyond extending healthspan, de Grey's book focuses on eliminating the buildup of cellular garbage that contributes to age-related decline in biological functioning. If you want to know whether this book contains information of interest to you, you should read de Grey's "Bootstrapping Our Way to an Ageless Future" (free online copy).

World Without Cancer
by G. Edward Griffin

In the age of Obama, we all need to individualize our personal approach to medicine, or allow the socialized government medical cartels to pump us full of patented pills. This phenomenal book explains how individuals can best prevent and possibly defeat cancer, using a simple, natural preventative diet, commonly found. The second half of the book is a fascinating look into how the private sector of chemical processing industry merged with government allowing legal monopolies to defeat medical freedom in the USA, in the early 1900s.

Friday, January 13, 2012

The Most Important Court Case in the USA

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/01/activist-appeals-felony-ruling-for.html
If this court case is lost, then free political speech no longer exists in the USA. Watch the videos, pay close attention. If Mark Schmidter loses his case, we're all going to wake up the next day with no Bill of Rights. If you've ever wondered how the Weimar Republic caved in to nazism, it probably looked a lot like this.

Monday, January 2, 2012

What Will Iowa's Legacy Be?

If Iowa's Republicans don't vote for Ron Paul, they will forever be remembered as the state Republicans that eliminated all hope of returning America to the constitutional rule of law. They will go down in history as "Republicans" who could not define the term "republic."

A republic is defined by a constitution that limits the power of government, no matter what 51% of the voters decide. A republic's constitution is the sourcecode or DNA of country that determines what form its body politic will take. Even if 51% of the voters decide to eliminate jury trials, or build gas chambers for Jews, a constitutional republic does not allow them to have their way. A constitutional republic allows multiple overlapping checks on government power to say "That's too far, this government action cannot be allowed." The president or governor can pardon those who acted in violation of unconstitutional government laws. The congress can pass a law providing relief to the people, and the State legislature can pass laws that offer relief from congress's laws and the president's executive orders. Judges can soften a punishment even when the jury returns a guilty verdict. And juries can outright refuse to return guilty verdicts. Even one single juror can hang a jury, based on his individual conscience.

This is the very core of what it means to be a Republican, and the very core of what it means to be an American.

Ultimately, We, the Jury, are the final check on government power. The government's prosecutors must ask a jury for permission to enforce the law. They must get 12 people to give them the word "GUILTY."

But Republics don't always last. In Germany, in 1934, the Nazis won a decisive plurality of seats in the Reichstag. A false flag attack then rallied the German people into giving up jury trials, and freedom of speech. The German state consolidated power, and began to use state power to destroy its opponents, internally. By the time the German public woke up to this fact, to speak out was to be raided by SS storm troopers. Those nice young men in uniform who were "keeping the order" were no longer protectors, but victimizers who served a political master, not the public peace.

Before the Civil War, in our own USA, jury trials were attacked by the government, and prosecutors were allowed, for the first time ever, to question the jury for agreement with the Fugitive Slave Law. Northern abolitionists like Lysander Spooner saw through this barbaric and unconstitutional practice, and reported it to the press. Juries responded to the state's efforts to return escaped slaves to slavery by getting smarter, and lying to state prosecutors, so they would be seated, and get the chance to acquit runaway slaves and their neighbors who harbored them. After the civil war ended, this practice of allowing the prosecutor to question the jury was not repealed, and is the reason for unconstitutional laws being enforced today.

...But we still have jury trials, and those determined to send a message can still present themselves as willing to enforce unjust laws, and can still veto unconstitutional laws. ...So prosecutors must still be wary not to punish those who are too obviously innocent of wrong.

Once Germany's nazis had eliminated jury trials, the life-blood of the economy, Germany's industrialists, were no longer safe from being looted under the "color of law." There were no longer legal protections in courts of law for them, and no longer jury trials. If they wanted to survive, they had to bow and scrape, and give Germany's nazi politicians everything they wanted. They were taxed and looted into bankruptcy. Before the war was over between six and eight million Jews were murdered, but people forget that that genocide is less than half of the murdering that took place. The rest of the murdering was democide. Approximately twelve million non-Jews were also murdered, for opposing, or simply being victimized by, Hitler's unconstitutional police state. They were not murdered for their race, or "genes," they were murdered for their beliefs, speech, or political identity. What if they had taken up arms against Hitler when he had passed his "Enabling Act?"

Germans in 1933 had to choose between marxists, social democrats, and fascists. But here, in America, we have a final shot at a better alternative: A true Republican. A man who favors proper constitutional limits on government power. A small-L, philosophical libertarian in the mold of Thomas Paine.

Nearly everyone disagrees with one or another constitutional limits on government power. Nearly everyone believes that if government power were expanded in some area, it would be able to do more good, or accomplish more to benefit society in some way. It's been pounded into every American in the form of "social studies" classes, since they were children.

The same thing happened to Germany, in the 1920s. For many years, Germans had been indoctrinated by tax-financed government schools to favor unlimited taxation. This was the genesis of the decline of the German Republic. Gradually, the Weimar Republic eliminated the already weak limits on government power that it had.

In modern Germany, grandparents now need to explain to their grand kids how they either supported or opposed the nazi police state. Young, curious minds want to know how such a betrayal was possible.
How would you explain to your grandkids, if they cracked a book open, years after the fall of America? Would you tell them something like this?: "I was on the wrong side. I was stupid. I didn't read about how jury trials had been eroded. I didn't think about the loss of free speech, or the NDAA's new executive-enabling powers. I just didn't understand what was going on." ...Do you think they'd forgive you their impoverished, hard-scrabble existence? Do you think they'd forgive the fact that you took the last of America's wealth, and spent it putting innocent people in prison, and bombing goat-farming foreigners into pre-industrial oblivion? Do you think they'll forgive the fact that you were willing to allow the police state to make exceptions to property rights for marijuana, guns, and gold (real money)? Do you think they'll forgive you for not ever cracking a proper economics or history book? There's some indication that Iowa is snapping out of America's socialist delusion. There's some indication that just because socialism is labeled "Republican," some of the voters are daring to ask bold questions of the candidates. There's some indication that the voters won't betray their grandparents, who marched into Germany to prevent world fascist domination by a superpower gone terribly wrong.

Let's not make America into another rogue superpower. Let's not share in the disgrace of Hitler's Germany. Germany lost their Republic, but we can keep ours. Germany allowed Hitler's enabling act, but we don't need to allow Bush and Obama their "PATRIOT Act", and "NDAA" that allows the elimination of trials by jury.

TRIALS BY JURY! That's what Obama and our congress has now put on the chopping block! Since 1215, we've had to fight to keep trial by jury! Almost 800 years of relative freedom and progress! The foundation of our civilization! Citizens must agree that their neighbor's transgression deserves government punishment! A last-ditch means of preventing government from going "off the rails" and into despotism! All of the progress of the industrial and information revolutions made possible by juries that would not punish the organizing free speech of factory migrant workers, or of modern computer and internet innovators!

All this will be lost if Ron Paul does not win the Republican nomination.

Is your own individual freedom not worth showing up, and being counted as a supporter of the derided, criticized, insulted, and ridiculed?

If you feel your childrens' freedom is not worth the effort, then how about simple self interest? How about keeping the interest on your paychecks, instead of giving it all away without a fight to Federal Reserve bankers? Most of your savings have already been eaten by this monster! The purchasing power of the dollar of 1900 has fallen by 98%! Will you just idly stand by while your legacy is devoured?

Or will you risk ridicule and social discomfort to do what is right?

YOU KNOW IN YOUR HEART THAT RON PAUL, FOR ALL HIS FAILINGS, IS RIGHT: THE UNITED STATES CANNOT SURVIVE THE LOSS OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS, IT CANNOT SURVIVE THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM, IT CANNOT SURVIVE WARS WITHOUT CLEAR END GOALS.

DO THE RIGHT THING ON JANUARY 03, 2012.

STAND UP AND BE COUNTED.

VOTE RON PAUL IN THE IOWA CAUCUSES.

Friday, December 30, 2011

Jury Nullification is the Solution to the Problem of Tyranny

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/22/montana-jury-marijuana-mutiny_n_800074.html

Ron Paul and R. J. Harris advocate jury nullification of law, as the proper constitutional remedy for overbearing government tyranny. Keep in mind that you're under no obligation to comply with answering intellectually dishonest and unconstitutional (and thus unlawful) "voir dire" (jury selection) questions from the prosecutor when you're called as a juror. Also keep in mind you'd be stupid/servile to plea bargain with a prosecutor if a jury couldn't be seated. You're always stupid not to fight with 100% of everything you have. Never accept injustice.

Friday, December 23, 2011

The True Nature of Our Government

A legitimate government is based on consent of the governed. Our Declaration of Independence clearly states this.

However, in a free, enlightened society with individual rights, there is more than just consent. After all, the majority of Germans consented to the rise of the nazi police state, and that state was so illegitimate, that it was overthrown by force, and few people would argue that that outcome was rightfully so.

In a free society, people can't be deprived of their freedom or property without due process. A part of due process is the establishment of a reason for depriving someone of their freedom or property. One legitimate reason might be that the person has committed a crime.

There are two categories of crime. One is legitimate (mala in se - "a crime, in and of itself"), and one is an illegitimate excuse for a tyrant to interfere with a previously free human being (mala prohibita - "a crime created solely by the act of legislation" - "a victimless crime").

So what constitutes "mala in se," or actual crime? Well, every malum in se has two elements:
1) Injury
and
2) Intent to Injure

These two elements constitute the "cause of action" or "corpus delecti" (body of the crime). The body of the crime must be provided (this is called "habeas corpus" or "provide the body"), or there is no legitimate "cause of action" against anyone. As a matter of due process, the "corpus delecti" must be proven, with evidence (such as witnesses, material evidence of an injured party, a complaining party, etc.).

Does anyone here ever remember being taught that if they were accused of a crime, they had a right to confront the witnesses against them? If so, please follow the following link, and see if you can find any opportunity for someone accused of tax evasion to argue their innocence, or confront the witnesses against them.

http://marcstevens.net/cos/cos20111201.html

In the audio at the prior link, lawyer Marc Stevens shows that, in our illegitimate and unconstitutional police state, the state no longer follows due process, and no longer presents evidence of wrongdoing before it attempts to punish us. For this reason, our consent to the government should no longer be considered implicit, since the government has broken its obligation to abide by the rule of law.

If there is no due process, there is no social contract.