Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Elections Override the Constitution?

It’s amazing how hard anti-constitutionalists fight when you question their authority. Our eligibility cases simply point out that the Supreme Court has already decided that no person can serve as President unless both of their parents were U.S. citizens at the time of their birth. Our reward for making this simple observation is to be called liars, unethical, stupid, and many other slanderous names. But the most amusing accusation thrown our way so far is that our eligibility challenge itself is unconstitutional.

Last week Liberty Legal Foundation filed documents in both the Arizona and Tennessee eligibility lawsuits, opposing the Defendants’ multiple motions to dismiss our cases. In their motions the defendants claim that our lawsuit is unconstitutional because, according to them, the electorate has the authority to determine whether a candidate is constitutionally qualified to serve as President.

Considering the poor job our public schools have done teaching about the Constitution, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear this argument coming from a member of the media. But to have this argument actually filed in federal court, by an attorney that supposedly understands constitutional law, is surprising and sad.

Our response remains the same: The Constitution is an anti-democratic document. One of its primary functions is to protect the rights of individuals against a tyrannical majority. In other words, some rights cannot be taken away even if 99.9% of the population wants to take them away, at least not without first amending the Constitution. So, 99.9% of the population can vote for Obama, but he is still Constitutionally barred from serving as President because his father was never a U.S. citizen. The electorate simply does not have the authority to change the Constitutional requirements for the President.

This is Constitutional Law 101, but apparently we’ve fallen so far away from our Constitutional Republic that we have to remind attorneys and courts of this basic fact.

The defendants also argued that granting our lawsuit and preventing the DNC from sending nomination letters stating Obama is eligible for the Presidency would violate the Democratic Party’s First Amendment rights. We responded that the First Amendment does not grant the Democratic Party a right to commit fraud.

Of course the defendants also tried their favorite argument: that we don’t have standing to sue. However, the 9th Circuit recently ruled that Independent Presidential candidates have the right to sue competitor Presidential candidates. Our first named Plaintiff is Independent Presidential Candidate John Dummett. Mr. Dummett clearly has standing, according to the 9th Circuit. It is also well established that if one Plaintiff has standing to sue, then all the Plaintiffs can proceed with their lawsuit which includes every Liberty Legal Foundation member that has joined the Certification Class Action. So, assuming the courts follow precedent, we should defeat these motions.

The defendants argued several other grounds, all of which should fail. You can read their motions and our responses on the Tennessee and Federal Ballot Challenge pages. As always, we will keep you up to date as new developments occur.

Thank you all again for your continued support of Liberty Legal Foundation. With your continued help we will restore our Constitutional Republic.

For Liberty,

Van Irion, Founder

LIBERTY LEGAL FOUNDATION


No comments:

Post a Comment