When I (Bryan J. Brown) was last in Topeka I lunched with my former boss and current friend Eric Rucker.  “Ruck” was Chief Deputy of the Attorney General’s Office, reporting directly to Phil Kline, while I was Deputy AG and Chief of the Consumer Protection, Antitrust and No Call Division.  (I supervised about 20 employees, Assistant Attorney Generals, Investigators, paralegals and other staff.)

Over our three hour (no martinis) lunch, Eric informed me that (more…)

The following (in red)  is more text from Deacon Keith Fournier’s essay on the need to embrace the Natural Law as the cure for our national apostasy.  This is the same Natural Law that animated our nation’s birth (in the Declaration of Independence and almost every state’s constitution).  Note that Christ is not – simply cannot be – divorced from this explanation of the rightful foundation of our social order since we find ourselves standing in Christendom – the geopolitical fruit of the Christian faith.  This Christian-faith informed Natural Law is the only wooden stake that can pierce the rapidly metastasizing cancer (more…)

This one will not hurt the new Justice’s feelings one bit.

At the beginning of the summer the ArchAngel Institute sent out a mailing to more than 2500 local households presenting my (brown’s) predicament before the Indiana authorities (click here for a nutshell on that) and an aggressive summer educational and committee program.  We also noted that things were going badly on the national level, and that our summer was thus best called a summer of discontent.

Our new SCOTUS “justice”, Elana Kagan, certainly demonstrates the source of our discontent.  Add this to our analysis of her:  Elana Kagan is no Bryan Brown.  Consider:  She has a pro-abortion activist background, Brown has a pro-life activist background.  She has an allegation of gross misconduct pending before the United States Supreme Court that could, if true, result in disbarment; Brown has had two minor complaints filed against his Kansas license in 12 years — both were dismissed on the merits without any disciplinary action taken (and both arose out of my work in the culture wars and were filed by those advancing pro-abortion agendas).  Brown is a conservative, white, Christian, heterosexual male (zero diversity points — or is it -10?), Kagan is a … well let’s just say she hits a bullseye on diversity points.  Kagan’s religious perspectives are lauded, her arguing with an “orthodox” rabbi and all, Browns are vilified, him defending the Blessed Virgin Mary and all.  (Click here)  Brown cited Sir Thomas More as his hero, Kagan cites a socialist Israeli judge.   Kagan is respected by the Left for her “over the line” work to ensure the right to kill babies at birth, Brown is derided by the government for his actions on behalf of a tramautized 83 year old woman.  Kagan enjoys the full and unified support of the Left, Brown enjoys little to no support from the Right, local or national.

Last but not least, Kagan has no view affirming the clear teaching of the Declaration of Independence and was bold in stating that fact before the Senate, Brown defended his belief in this teaching before the Indiana Board of Law Examiners, and was then punished for that audacity of Hope. (Click here and click here)

Elana Kagan is now one of the most powerful judges on Earth, and will likely remain in that position for the rest of her life.

Brown, by comparison, has been denied admission to the Indiana bar and told that he cannot even ask for admission again until 2014, at which time he will presumably meet the same religious biases if he has not abandoned his historic Christian faith.

Kagan empowered to the max, Brown unempowered to the max. (more…)

This video is dedicated to the government agents who determined that my view of abortion and God’s Law should be used to ban me from the Indiana bar for eight years (three processing, five by order) when child molesters, those who out and out lie to them (I never did, even to my great harm) and serial drunk drivers often get less than two years banned.

The attorney from Springfield, Illinois who became the 16th President of these United States had a lifelong dedication to the Declaration of Independence. Early and late in his political career Abraham Lincoln was quoted as saying

Senator Coburn tossed Elana Kagan a softball at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.  Had she been of the same mind as Lincoln she would have hit it over the fence.

She instead let it scream past her, a choice that should count as a strike.  Added to her slavish devotion to the culture of death and political correctness, Kagan should be back on the bench at this time.

Here is Kagan refusing the hit a pitch that Abraham Lincoln would have sent out of the ball park:

KAGAN:  Senator Coburn, t-t-to be honest with you, I — I — I don’t have a view of what are natural rights, independent of the Constitution.  And my job as a justice will be to enforce and defend the Constitution and other laws of the United States.

COBURN:  So you wouldn’t embrace what the Declaration of Independence says, that we have certain God-given, inalienable rights that aren’t given in the Constitution? That they’re ours and ours alone and that government doesn’t give those to us?

KAGAN:  Senator Coburn, I believe that the Constitution is an extraordinary document, and I’m not saying I do not believe that there are rights pre-existing the Constitution and the laws, but my job as a justice is to enforce the Constitution and the laws.

COBURN “Well, I understand that.” As a justice you’re going to do this and do that, but, “Well, I’m not talking about as a justice. I’m talking about Elena Kagan. What do you believe? Are there inalienable rights for us? Do you believe that?”

KAGAN:  Senator Coburn, I — I think that the question of what I believe as to what people’s rights are outside the Constitution or the laws, that you should not want me to act in any way on the basis of such a belief if I had one or –

COBURN:  I would want you to always act on the basis of a belief of what our Declaration of Independence says.

KAGAN:  I — I think you should want me to act on the basis of law, and, uh — and that is what I have upheld to do if I’m fortunate enough to be confirmed is to act on the basis of law, which is the Constitutions and the statutes of the United States.

SO,  the “law” stops, the nominee Kagan assures us, begins and ends with the federal statutes and Constitution of these United States.

One of Lincoln’s biographers, Harry Jaffa,, wrote in Crisis of the House Divided that

“Lincoln did not appeal to the Declaration of Independence merely because it was our first and foremost founding document. It was, he said, the immortal emblem of man’s humanity and the father of all moral principle because it incorporated a rational, nonarbitrary moral and political standard.”

How then might Lincoln have replied to Senator Coburn?  Probably in a similar fashion as he did in his debate against Democrat nominee (for U.S. Senate) Stephen Douglas in Lewiston, Illinois in 1858:

The Declaration of Independence existed eleven years before the United States Constitution or any federal statutes.  It is our American Creed.  A creed that the nominee Elana Kagan runs from, just as the slave holders did in Lincoln’s day.

His advice to her would likley fall along these lines …. from the same 1858 debate ….

Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflict with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated in our charter of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the revolution. Think nothing of me — take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever — but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles.

There can be little doubt that the Great Emancipator, the father of the Grand Ole Party in most respects, would have had little use for a Solicitor General and academe who was embarrassed to claim the Declaration of Independence as her own creedal statement.

There can be little doubt that a Senator Abraham Lincoln would have voted against putting Elana Kagan on the High Court given her lack of allegiance to the “sacred” document that he considered the most preeminent in our national heritage.  Alas, he lost the 1858 election to Stephen A. Douglas, a man pledged to the abortion industry of his day — the slave system.   It appears that America is about to lose out once again as the Democrat Party’s affinity with the culture of death bears its awful political fruit, and puts on the High Court a tool slavishly  loyal to the abortion industry.

Worse than slavery? Ask the baby. Or ask Elana Kagan, she defends this as a constitutional right.

The question is only this — who will stand in the shoes of the Great Emancipator?  Senator Richard Lugar’s feet have proven way too small for that task.

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God Help Us!

Honesty has long been a trait highly valued among statesmen and allegedly at a premium in our nation.  Our Founder was lauded for his honesty,  a reputation which he greatly prized:

“I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.” – George Washington

President Teddy Roosevelt likewise valued honesty, even brutal frankness.  This great statesman believed that the failure of honesty in government was a harbinger of doom.  Consider:

“We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity.”

Elana Kagan is, we are told, brilliant.  But is she honest?

Serious and substantial questions have been raised — now even before the United States Supreme Court — about this nominee’s candor to the court.  Were she a conservative these allegations would be the death knell of her nomination.  She is no conservative, and so these serious and substantial charges are ignored.

Consider this document recently filed with the High Court

Legitimate questions have been raised as to whether Elana Kagan is an honest attorney or pro-abortion shyster.   These questions are far more substantive and documented than the personal, private and quite subjective allegations raised against Justice Clarence Thomas during his confirmation, allegations which resulted in show trial-like hearings in the Senate.

Here is a fine presentation of the case against Kagan based upon her misuse (via misrepresentation) of sworn testimony toward the goal of protecting infanticide.   Kudos to Jill Stanek for getting this out where the main stream media could completely ignore it.

The crux of the issue, the smoking gun, is pictured below:  Kagan, in her own hand, is found helping the abortion industry escape from legislation designed to stop them from sucking the brains out of babies being born in the third trimester of gestation.  (Heads too large to clear the cervix, thus the need to collapse the skulls for choice and profit.)

These hand written notes could constitute the suborning of perjury.  Or at least a lack of candor to the court.  Shall we let the SCOTUS consider that question, or shall we rush Kagan to the High Court to rule upon her own complaint?

Teddy Roosevelt would have advised great caution in such a situation, of that we can be certain:

The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth. Roosevelt, T, The Man with the Muck Rake

If we assume preborns having their brains sucked out to be honest men, is the act of killing them not, by definition, knavery?  And what of those who clear the legal obstacles between the killer and the innocent, honest victim?  Especially if that path is cleared via a shading of testimony, a form of slander?  Is this not open to the charge of lies in support of murder?

Ancient parallels beg to be made.

The fate of the Republic now rests in the hands of the Imperial Senate.  Do the Senators have the courage to stand up and ask the necessary questions in this hour, or will they instead cower before the secular progressive media machine and Orwellian Obama octopus, allowing Elana Kagan to be placed on the High Court without as much as an inquiry into the pending allegations of the gross misuse of her government office as an officer of that very court?

Senator Lugar, if you have any cajones now is the time to show it.   Saddle up in the spirit of the Rough Riders and get to the bottom of these most serious and substantial allegations.

Or reveal yourself to be nothing but a sunshine patriot, at the very best.

hattip to Darl D

Some reading our recent posts might think we stand against SCOTUS nominee Elana Kagan simply because she is a liberal Jewish progressive instead of a conservative Christian traditionalist.

That would be an erroneous conclusion.

The Roman Senator Cicero was not a Christian traditionalist.

We could support Kagan, without reservation, if Elana Kagan were a Cicero.

Elana Kagan is no Cicero, as she more than aptly demonstrated before the Senate when questioned by Senator Coburn. (Click here for her testimony.)

Cicero died more than 40 years before Jesus Christ was born.  He was a great Roman statesman who stood in the tradition of the great Roman Republic — the political association that inspired more than a few of this nation’s Founding Fathers, as well as our governmental structure and architecture.

Cicero is a father of these United States.

According to W. Cleon Skousen, in his 5000 Year Leap, ““To Cicero, the building of a society on principles of Natural Law was nothing more nor less than recognizing and identifying the rules of ‘right conduct’ with the laws of the Supreme Creator of the Universe.”

This is not what the nominee Kagan believes, for she is no Cicero.

Like Martin Luther King, Jr., like the Founding Fathers, like statesmen of the past 2000 years (minus the past 40 in this country, that is), Cicero believed that law was not merely the statutes of the most powerful government entity in the land.  That is positivism.  That is Kagan’s view.  (See previous posts for a definition of positivism.)

Cicero believed that the true law was written Above, and reflected below via “right reason.”

Cicero penned the following:

This is the third post in our series about the SCOTUS nominee that Senator Richard Lugar plans to approve for the High Court.

In her testimony before the Senate, Ms. Kagan uttered these revealing phrases: “I don’t have a view of what are natural rights, independent of the Constitution” and “I think you should want me to act on the basis of law … which is the Constitutions and the statutes of the United States.”

These views reveal Ms. Kagan to be no Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Consider his opinion, written from a jail cell, on the law behind the law:

One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.” Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust….

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

The Reverend Martin Luther King. Jr., thus articulated the American view of law better than almost anyone else ever had.  He remains a great icon of the Left to this day.  They almost venerate his very image.

Yet they, most all, like nominee Kagan, like the Indiana Board of Law Examiners (click), like Dr. Steven Ross (click), like Charlotte Westerhaus (click), deny the very core of the good Reverend’s teachings.

While this tea party activist celebrates the Reverend and his teachings, both.  (Click)

(Such irony)

The nominee Elana Kagan knows of no law above federal law.  For this reason the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. would have found her unacceptable as a jurist.

So should the Senate.

So should Senator Richard Lugar, unless he, too, rejects the Natural Law foundation of our Constitutional Republic.

I (Bryan) doubt Ms. Kagan will be crushed to be told this.  A Blackstone Fellow is a member of the Blackstone Fellowship,  a fraternal organization attached to the ADF (Alliance Defense Fund).  This Fellowship originated in the fertile mind of one of my mentors, Bruce Green.  He envisioned it, launched it, built it up and then turned it over to others. Bruce is a man’s man, a great Christian leader looked up to by all persons of good will who know him.   He taught me much about litigation and honor in our years together, and I miss him much.  Bruce was Chief Counsel of AFA, VP of ADF, the founding dean of Liberty University School of Law and, as stated, the founder of the Blackstone Fellowship.

His story – from “Ponyboy”  (disaffected youth in East Texas), to Bible College and Dallas Theological Seminary, into the Presbyterian Eldership and Church courts, to a member of Regent University School of Law’s founding class, to federal district court, to AFA, to ADF, to the Continuing Anglican Tradition as a deacon, to Liberty University — and then into the Roman Catholic Church and back to East Texas in the spirit of the Southern agrarian movement is unique, inspiring and rarely told.   I am proud as a Technicolor peacock to state that Bruce W. Green is on the ArchAngel Institute’s Board of Advisors –  (Christian media looking for a great interview?  Contact Bruce via this website.)

Enough about Bruce.  Let’s talk about the SCOTUS nominee that Senator Richard Lugar plans to approve for the High Court.

In her testimony before the Senate, Ms. Kagan uttered these revealing phrases:  “I don’t have a view of what are natural rights, independent of the Constitution” and “I think you should want me to act on the basis of law … which is the Constitutions and the statutes of the United States.”

Sir William Blackstone was one of England’s greatest jurists — as well as America’s.  Which is quite a trick since (1) he never came to America and (2) he never much cared for the American cause.  Even so, his Commentaries on the Laws of England were used to educate generations of American attorneys, pretty much all up to the Civil War.   According to Wikipedia, “the United States Supreme Court quotes from Blackstone’s work whenever they wish to engage in historical discussion that goes back to the era of the nation’s founding, to illuminate the legal and intellectual culture that helped to shape the intent of the Framers of the Constitution).”

If Sir Blackstone had been asked his view of the law he would not have started or ended with the law of his monarch.  He would have instead replied like this:

Dropping back a century before Sir William we find another great English jurist. According to Wikipedia, “Sir Edward Coke (pronounced “Cook”) (1 February 1552 – 3 September 1634) was a seventeenth-century English jurist and Member of Parliament whose writings on the common law were the definitive legal texts for nearly 150 years.”

Sir Edward Coke answered the question about the true foundation for the law in this way in a reported decision that is now 400 years old:

Calvin’s Case, 77 Eng Rep 377 (1610)

The nominee Elana Kagan does not agree with Sir William Blackstone or Sir Edward Coke.

It is unlikely that such a legal opinion would have allowed her to become an attorney  in any state of our Union until the 1930’s.

We have come a long way, baby.

Source for quotes:   Professor Charles Rice’s (also delighted to report that he is on the ArchAngel Institute’s Board of Advisors) 50 Questions on the Natural Law (click)

In tonight’s Academy of Christian Thought we will study the Roman Republic and the statesman Cicero as contributors to American Order.  We will be introduced to C. Cleon Skousen, author of The 5000 Year Leap.

Class begins in the downtown Allen County Public Library at 7:15 pm.  The Demographic Winter will be shown at 6:15 pm.

Here is a foretaste of Cicero (pictured) , a statesman of the Roman Republic who had great impact upon our Founders:

But the most foolish notion of all is the belief that everything is just which is found in the customs of laws of nations … What of the many deadly, the many pestilential statutes which nations put in force?  These are no more deserve to be called laws than the rules of a band of robbers might pass in their assembly.  For if ignorant and unskilled men have prescribed deadly poisons instead of healing drugs, these cannot possibly be called physicians’ prescriptions; neither in a nation can a statute of any sort be called a law, even though the nation (in spite of it being a ruinous regulation) has accepted it.

It is interesting to juxtapose the above over and against the order of the Indiana Board of Law Examiners denying my motion to enter the Indiana bar — and sentencing me to not even so move again for five years (the maximum sentence) when child molesters are routinely given a two year sentence and serial drunk drivers less than that. What is my “crime” that renders me unfit to be an Indiana attorney?

Here is their final verdict on me:

The Applicant now has obtained [a federal court] order vacating the federal district court judgment requiring him to pay $61,000 [directly to the abortion industry].  He no longer is under that legal obligation.  But he made clear to the Hearing Panel that would not pay that judgment even if collections efforts were made because he could not provide financial support to the plaintiffs in that lawsuit, who were providers of abortion.  He testified at the hearing to his obligation to disobey laws that contradicted his religious beliefs under certain circumstances.  … the Hearing panel believes that a member of the Indiana bar must obey Indiana law and federal law, even when doing so violates an attorney’s conscience, and that an avoweed willingness not to do so is disqualifying.

Unsigned order of the IBLE, September 25, 2009, reviewed and upheld by the Indiana Supreme Court.

I was forced to choose between the rule of Cicero and the reign of Justice Randall Shepard (pictured), between the principles of natural law and the power of legal positivism.  I went with the former in both instances, and so now am paying the price.  Religious dissidents must be punished.  I have been.

Just like I would have been (more…)