Over our three hour (no martinis) lunch, Eric informed me that the incoming pro-abortion Democrats had taken my four years at that government post apart page by page, seeking any wrongdoing with which to charge me.  A felony is what they hoped for, but they had been ordered, Ruck assured me,  to brief even misdemeanors or ethical violations.  Mr. Rucker believed that this long term investigation of me (and all of Kline’s managers) is one of the reasons that Indiana took three years to process my application to join their bar.  Indiana was waiting, he opined, for Kansas to indict me based on my extensive email, correspondence and/or litigation trail.

Well if that were the case then Indiana was sorely disappointed, for the pro-aborts pouring over my four years as a manager of a million dollar plus state operation uncovered no indictable offenses — and not even offenses to report to the Office of the Disciplinary Administrator.  I was found clean as a whistle after the scouring by my enemies.  (I have been sorted like wheat.)

Eric and Phill Kline have not fared as well.  They have both been pulled through quite a harrowing process, a disciplinary process aimed at their law licenses.  Kline’s is yet ongoing and could prove fatal to his ability to be a Kansas attorney before all is said and done.  Rucker’s time of testing,  after more than three years, is now complete.

When I lunched with Eric he was rightly concerned about the outcome of his disciplinary action.  While it was unlikely, he did fear disbarment.  That is because of the Alinsky double standard routinely used against conservatives.  Progressives can murder their mothers and get away with it, but if a conservative steps on a crack … well then it is off with his head for breaking someone’s back!

Stan Hazlett heads up the Office of Disciplinary Administrator in Kansas and reports directly to the Kansas Supreme Court to discipline Kansas attorneys.  Mr. Hazlett  has proved himself much less tainted by politics than most in his position and enjoys a stellar reputation in Kansas for staying above petty politics.  After lunching with Rucker and hearing the inside story I posted this about Mr. Hazlett. He has maintained the integrity of his office against the great weight of an intense political firestorm.  The Indiana Board of Law Examiners, by comparison …. well there simply is no comparison to be made.  They denied me admission to the Indiana bar and ordered that I could not even SEEK admission again for five years  in a rambling and repetitious 3o page order that contained not one citation to case law (not one!) and  weighed none (not one!) of the proper statutory terms. It was unsigned, which would render it unlawful if submitted to the court during litigation pursuant to Rule 11.   It brought up substantive charges against me for the first time, without giving me any ability to respond — a blatant violation of due process stretching back hundreds of years. It ruled that my religion was my problem, and that until I found a new one I was unfit to be an Indiana attorney since I hold to the higher Laws paradigm. The neo-marxist Saul Alinsky (click here) would be proud of what Charlotte Westerhaus, Jon B. Laramore and Leslie Shively brought forth in that blatant political hit.  The fact that it was so effective is a testament to the power of the Left near the heart of the Indiana Judicial system.

But enough about my ongoing problems and remaining fallout from riding with Phil Kline and taking on the culture of death my entire adult life.  This post celebrates my friend Eric Rucker’s escape from these same “politics of personal destruction.”  Congrats to you, Ruck!

Here is Kathy Ostrowski’s post, with a link to another great source for Kansas news here.

Rucker’s attorney, Caleb Stegal, had this to say (click here for more) about the end of this road:

Yes, the decision found, and Mr. Rucker freely admitted and expressed his regret that some mistakes were made. He has now been informally admonished for those mistakes, the case is over, and I hope the public can finally be told what I have known all along—that Eric Rucker is an excellent lawyer and, more importantly, he is a good and honest man who has spent his career pursuing equal justice under the law for all people.

It is a dangerous thing to practice the politics of personal destruction—when a political win is not enough and instead one’s opponents must be personally vilified, financially ruined, and their reputations smashed. I think it speaks well of our legal process, of our Disciplinary Administrator Stan Hazlett, and indeed of the whole Kansas Bar, that in this case the politics of personal destruction—which some have fervently desired—has not prevailed.

The Pope told the gathered leaders: “Strictly speaking, these human rights are not truths of faith, even though they are discoverable – and indeed come to full light – in the message of Christ who “reveals man to man himself” (Gaudium et Spes, 22). They receive further confirmation from faith..” He continued  “The Church’s action in promoting human rights is therefore supported by rational reflection, in such a way that these rights can be presented to all people of good will, independently of any religious affiliation they may have.”

The Pope signals the way for all who work to confront the growing culture of death and make a defense for the dignity of life, marriage, family and authentic human freedom. We need a movement which defends true human rights such as the right to life, religious freedom and true marriage and the family and society founded upon it using this Natural Law framework and language.

The recent dismissal of Professor Ken Howell is being rectified. However, it revealed this danger. This Professor was a victim of the “Dictatorship of Relativism” which Pope Benedict XVI warned of. He simply taught what the Catholic Church teaches about the existence of the Natural Law and its binding nature on all men and women of every age in a course on Catholic teaching. The new censors could not tolerate it.

Ah yes, the New Censors.  I know them all too well.  They were not around in Kansas in 1996, for I was then admitted to the Kansas bar — despite having engaged in several acts of civil disobedience, including refusing to pledge unreserved obedience to the federal government.  All of these acts (which primarily took place in Kansas) did not preclude me from admission to the Kansas bar in 1996.

But these same acts were used to justify keeping me out of the Indiana bar for (at least)  eight years by the New Censors in 2009.  (Even after the federal district court of Northern Indiana noted to no acts of mine in Indiana justified keeping me out of the Indiana bar and that none of my arrests for civil disobedience even took place in Indiana, click here).

The New Censors were not around in Montana in 1996 either.  That state invited me into its bar without one question asked less than five years after I was released from 68 days of federal detention as a prisoner of conscience and less than six years after my arrests for loitering and trespassing for dear life.

The New Censors were not guarding the door of the United States Supreme Court in 2001, for I was then admitted to that most celebrated of all bars.  Such irony – the SCOTUS supervises the Indiana Supreme Court.  I am admitted to the SCOTUS bar without question but banned from even seeking admission to the Indiana bar for another five years, after three years of processing!  (The SCOTUS processed my application in a matter of weeks in 2001.)

I was similarly admitted to practice before district and appellate courts of the following federal  districts:  First, Second (argued this case before that appellate court), Third (argued this case before Sam Alito when he was on that appellate court), Fourth, Fifth, Seventh,  Eighth (argued this emergency appeal before that appellate court), Ninth (argued this case before that appellate court), Tenth, and Eleventh (argued this case before that federal appellate court).

Such irony … now I am likely barred from joining the federal court for the Northern District of Indiana due to the work of the Indiana Board of Law Examiners, even though I was admitted to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (the court supervising the Federal Court of  the Northern District of Indiana) more than a decade ago.

The most pressing irony is that the Indiana Board of Law Examiners barred me in 2009, due, in part, to the case the abortion industry brought against me in 1989, while the supervising court, the Seventh Circuit,  had no such problem when they admitted me in 1999 and after the very court that ruled against me on the 1989 case released me from all legal obligations, after noting that I had violated none of my legal obligations to that court, six weeks before Indiana slammed the door in my face!  (Click here)

The Indiana Board of Law Examiners thus disrespected the Honorable Judge William C. Lee to a greater extent than I ever have!  (And they accused me of disrepecting him, when he wrote in his order that I never did!)

It is a Lewis Carroll world that I live inhabit — with the New Censors playing the Red Queen.

Here is the first post of the operative ruling from Federal Judge William C. Lee that the Indiana Board of Law Examiners refused to interpret as issued, while alleging that I lacked respect for the same court!  The New Censors are unencumbered by that hobgoblin of small minds, consistency.

The New Censors were not able to keep me out of the Missouri bar in 2005. I was a Kansas Deputy Attorney General heading up the Consumer Protection, Antitrust and No Call Division at that time (click here), and was hated by the Left for riding with Attorney General Phill Kline.  Try as they might (and they did), they found no reason to bar me from admission, and cleared me to join the Missouri bar in 2006 – one year before I applied to the Indiana bar.

Some would opine that Missouri’s clearing of me –  years before the federal court would release me from Brane v. WHO — should have moved Indiana to clear me.   That is a strong argument, but an even stronger one exists.   One that even the most biased New Censor should have blushed to reject.

Most Boards of Law Examiners the nation over defer to the findings of the National Board of Law Examiners.  Not the Hoosier New Censors.  Missouri submitted my application to that professional, nonpolitical organization in 2005 and that organization found no reason to keep me out of any state bar.

Indiana was unmoved by this finding.  I was too politically incorrect to allow into the state bar, all previous clearances be damned.  I had stood up to “the authority” that the New Censor’s psychiatrist called “the abortion industry.” I would, by the powers of the goddess Choice, go to the stake for my rebellion against those butchers of mankind.  (Click here, paragraph 163)

This website, under posts discussing Chief Justice Randall Shepard and his hand-picked law examiners such as Charlotte Westerhaus, Jon B. Laramore and Leslie C. Shively, documents in posts such as this one how these jurists, dare I say these New Censors, employed ideology – even theology  — as the basis to slam the door to Indiana licensure in my “fat fundamentalist face”  (Click here if you do understand that taunt of the anti-Christ Left.)

Yes, Deacon Fournier, those who stand on Natural Law in the face of the New Censors feel the lash of the Dictatorship of Relativism.  My law license has been taken captive by these post modern despots and my family’s personal economy has been destroyed.  Such is the fate of those who stand up to the New Censors.    They will drive us out of the professions long before they drive us to labor camps.  They will bankrupt us long before they imprison us.  They will socially ostracize us long before they physically execute us.

Have no doubts, friend, the hand writing is on the wall.  Professor  Howell’s happy ending is not the only ending to such stories.  The dictatorship of the New Censors is on its way – my law license should serve as a fire alarm for all who hold to the Natural Law.

(Please pray that I, too, like Professor Howell, will soon be released from my neo-Babylonian captivity.)

The stakes in this hour are simply far too high to work for partial solutions and mere patchwork politics.  That is why this series is headed toward our argument that “Pro-life is not enough.”

To be continued …

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.

By way of example of this unempowered status, we received very little interest from our massive summer mailing.  A 1% return on the postcards inserted in the mailing.  It truly is a summer of discontent.  Another example – A Christian foundation actually contacted us and invited us to apply for one of their grants last Spring, only to turn us down on Mother’s Day for a reason that could not quite be articulated.  (That was hard on the wife.)

After those two setbacks and the SCOTUS denial we scaled down our hopes and budget.   We sent out a mere 800 post cards inviting to a screening of The Demographic Bomb and discussion of this most pressing issue.  (With  news releases to local papers and Catholic radio posts.)

About 60 came out to see this movie and hear it discussed by the leaders of the ArchAngel Institute.

Yes, the summer of discontent.  Our best laid plans are coming to naught.

So …. do we still believe?

Is Brown ready to abandon his faith to make it past the government checkpoint set up against him by the Board of Law Examiners (esp Charlotte Westerhaus, Leslie C. Shively, Jon B. Laramore)

At Mass this morning the readings and worship hit themes that ever keep Annie and me marching across the desert in which we find ourselves.

The first reading was on pascha, the most important meal on Earth.  A meal that begins in the Garden with the tree of life (Genesis) and ends with that tree fully restored in Revelations 22.  A meal that is prefigured in the covering sacrifice of  Genesis 3 and fulfilled at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19.  A meal that is found expressly defined in Exodus 12 for the Old Covenant and 1 Corinthians 11 for the New Covenant.   A meal that must not be understood outside the Divine Commentary of the Son of God found at John 6.   (Note the timing, verse 4)

We have written on the import of Passover in many previous posts — such as this one.  With this redemptive meal ours to enjoy, what else is needed in this life?

The second reading today is from Hebrews 11.  Abraham is a great role model.  He and Sarah crossed a very dangerous desert, one in which provisions had to be slim and hope at times almost extinguished.  Yet they still walked toward the promises of God, even when those promises seemed unfulfillable (due to Sarah’a age, among other reasons).

The Gospel reading also spoke to us.  It is our Lord speaking of priorities and His Second Coming in Luke 12.  (click for all readings)

His perspective on what is important in this life is all that matters.

Today’s celebration closed with a most appropriate hymn written during difficult times for Christians.  Times like those soon coming upon Christians in Europe, and perhaps even America.

Here is our previous post about this great hymn, Faith of our Fathers.

Anne and I had this song in our wedding — as the closing hymn.  We are dedicated as a family to its message.

Here is our reality:  Even in the summer of our discontent, even in the midst of a great desert, even in the time of our greatest trials, God’s Grace is sufficient.

May His will be done, may we have the Faith to know His Will and walk toward it without sight — and even alone if need be.

The lyrics of one of my favorite poets, Michael Been of the Call, come to mind:

Flat on my back
Out a sea
Hopin' these waves
Don't cover me
I'm turned and tossed
Upon the waves
When the darkness comes
I feel the grave
	But I still believe
	I still believe
	Through the cold
	And the heat
	Through the pain
	And through the tears
	Through the crowds
	And through the cheers
	Oh, I still believe
I'll march this road
I'll climb this hill
Down on my knees if I have to
I'll take my place
Up on this stage
I'll wait 'til the end of time
	for you like everybody else

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!

“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

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:

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.

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)

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 under Soviet rule.

Come to the class tonight to hear more on this and many other ideas affecting governance and the future of our social order.

p.s.  The hearing panel misconstrued my testimony to make the above case, which is why I have been posting the transcript at this website.  I merely argued my duty as a Christian directly from the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Martin Luther King, Jr’s letter from a Birmingham jail.  The State has rejected that teaching.  The issues on transcript are really that clear, and Indiana, much like the former Soviet Union, employed mental health “tools” to run the operation against me.  (See Brown v. Bowman for the details of that operation.)