The NRA announced its strong opposition to the confirmation of Elena Kagan for the U.S. Supreme Court in a letter to the U.S. Senate on July 1. Today, they announced the release of a television ad:

Both her political career in the Clinton Administration and her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee make it clear that Kagan would be a serious opponent of our Second Amendment Rights.

Last year, Sonia Sotomayor deliberately misled the American people by claiming she believed it was “settled law” that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to keep and bear arms. This year, she proved she never really believed that by voting against the Second Amendment in McDonald v. City of Chicago.

Elena Kagan used the same phrases – “settled law” and “precedent” – to describe her view of the Second Amendment in the hearings. It is critical that the members of the U.S. Senate not fall for the same trick twice….

Here’s the ad that the NRA will be airing across the country. Watch, and then contact your Senators at 202-224-3121 (Senate switchboard) or look up their email and office phone numbers here — Senators of the 111th Congress. Urge them to oppose and filibuster Kagan’s confirmation. The future of our Second Amendment rights depends on it!

For more detail read — NRA Opposed To Kagan Nomination To U.S. Supreme Court.

The National Rifle Association has sent a “letter of opposition” regarding Elena Kagan’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court to the principals of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

The Honorable Patrick Leahy
Chairman
Senate Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Jeff Sessions
Ranking Member
Senate Committee on the Judiciary
152 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Sessions:

We are writing to announce the National Rifle Association’s position on the confirmation of Solicitor General Elena Kagan as Associate Justice ofthe United States Supreme Court.

Other than declaring war, neither house of Congress has a more solemn responsibility than the Senate’s role in confirming justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. As the Senate considers the nomination of Solicitor General Kagan, Americans have been watching to see whether this nominee – if confirmed – would respect the Second Amendment or side with those who have declared war on the rights of America’s 80 million gun owners.

During confirmation hearings, judicial nominees make carefully crafted statements regarding issues with which they do not personally agree. They often speak in terms of “settled law” or “I understand the right”. When those statements are contradicted by an entire body of work over a nominee’s career, however, it would be foolhardy to simply take them at face value. In Ms. Kagan’s own words, “you can look to my whole life as to what kind of justice I would be.” We agree.

As she has no judicial record on which we can rely, we have only her political record to review. And throughout her political career, she has repeatedly demonstrated a clear hostility to the fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

As a clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall, Ms. Kagan said she was “not sympathetic” to a challenge to Washington, D.C.’s ban on handguns and draconian registration requirements. As domestic policy advisor in the Clinton White House, a colleague described her as “immersed” in President Clinton’s gun control policy efforts. For example, she was involved in an effort to ban more than 50 types of commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms – an effort that was described as: “taking the law and bending it as far as we can to capture a whole new class of guns.” And as U.S. Solicitor General, she chose not to file a brief last year in the landmark case McDonald v. Chicago, thus taking the position that incorporating the Second Amendment and applying it to the States was of no interest to the Obama Administration or the federal government. These are not the positions of a person who supports the Second Amendment.

During her confirmation hearings last year, Justice Sonia Sotomayor repeatedly stated that the Supreme Court’s historic Heller decision was “settled law”. Even further, in response to a question from Chairman Leahy, she said “I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized in Heller‘.” Yet last Monday in McDonald, she joined a dissenting opinion which stated: “I can find nothing in the Second Amendment’s text, history, or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as ‘fundamental’ insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes”.

We would also note that both Heller and McDonald were 5-4 decisions. The fact that four justices would effectively write the Second Amendment out ofthe Constitution is completely unacceptable. Ms. Kagan has repeatedly declined to say whether she agrees with the dissenting views of justices Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg and Sotomayor, which leaves unanswered the very serious questions of whether she would vote to overturn Heller and McDonald or narrow their holdings to a practical nullity.

This nation was founded on a set of fundamental freedoms. Our Constitution does not give us those freedoms – it guarantees and protects them. The right to defend ourselves and our loved ones is one of those. The fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms is another. These truths are what define us as Americans.

Any individual who does not believe that the Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right and who does not respect our God-given right of self-defense should not serve on any court, much less receive a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land. Justice Sotomayor’s blatant reversal on this critical issue requires that we look beyond statements made during confirmation hearings and examine a nominee’s entire body of work. Unfortunately, Ms. Kagan’s record on the Second Amendment gives us no confidence that if confirmed to the Court, she will faithfully defend the fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms of law-abiding Americans.

For these reasons, the National Rifle Association has no choice but to oppose the confirmation of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court. Given the importance of this issue, this vote will be considered in NRA’s future candidate evaluations.

Thank you for your attention to our concerns. Should you have any questions or wish to discuss further, please do not hesitate to call on us personally.

Sincerely,

Wayne LaPierre
Executive Vice President
NRA

Chris Cox
Executive Director
NRA-ILA

cc: Majority Leader Harry Reid; Republican Leader Mitch McConnell; Members of the United States Senate

In a 5 to 4 decision announced by Justice Alito the Supreme Court decided McDonald v. Chicago in favor of Chicago resident Otis McDonald. McDonald was represented by lawyer Alan Gura, who had argued and won D.C. v. Heller in 2008, exactly two years and two days ago.

Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas supported the Second Amendment. Despite the recent death of her husband, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg returned to vote against gun rights. Justices Breyer and Stevens both voted against gun rights and wrote dissenting opinions. Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor concurred with Breyer’s dissent.

Wikipedia — McDonald v. Chicago, read this for complete background.

On June 28, 2010, the High Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the Second Amendment was incorporated under the Fourteenth Amendment, striking down Chicago’s gun restrictions.

NRA-ILA — National Rifle Association Hails Historic Victory:

National Rifle Association Hails Historic Victory on Second Amendment Freedom in McDonald v. City of Chicago
Monday, June 28, 2010

Fairfax, Va. — The National Rifle Association of America today praised the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic decision in another landmark Second Amendment case. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that the Second Amendment applies not just to Washington, D.C. and other federal enclaves, but protects the rights of all Americans throughout the country. The opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago brings an end to the nearly 30 year-long handgun ban that the city has imposed on its law-abiding citizens….

As a party to the case, the NRA participated in oral arguments before the Court in March. The NRA persuasively argued that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment and that handgun bans, like those in the City of Chicago and the Village of Oak Park, are unconstitutional under any standard of judicial review. This same view was shared in friend of the court briefs by a bipartisan group of 309 members of Congress from both chambers, 38 state attorneys general, and hundreds of state legislators. Public opinion polls show that it is also shared by the overwhelming majority of the American people….

Oral arguments transcript (PDF) — Here.

Cornell University Law School — Syllabus: M c DONALD et al. v . CITY OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, et al.

EYEWITNESS REPORT
Mar. 2, 2010

This case was way more complicated than Heller.

Both attorneys faced hostility from the bench. Chicago’s lawyer got hit from all sides with little in the way of what you might call support. But the surprise was the way Alan Gura got blasted, even by the best friend gun-rights has up there, Justice Scalia.

Whoever or however we believed the Court might be ready to review the Privileges or Immunities clause of 14A was totally wrong. Every Justice had problems with the scope of such a decision, and poor Gura had to withstand withering assaults on his reasoning and approach.

I definitely need a transcript to go over what exactly happened, I thought audio was weak in chambers, complexity was way large, and in chatter afterwards found I wasn’t the only one. How those aging Justices keep up — and they did, note for note, cite for cite — is a bloody miracle.

BOTTOM LINE — it looks like the Heller majority may hold together for this case, and the Second Amendment will be incorporated against the states, under the familiar selective incorporation of Due Process. The same 2A that controls federal activity will apply to the states, no more, no less, though that issue of degree got a lot of attention. Not that the scope of 2A is all the well defined, but there was animus to the idea that incorporation would yield a “shadow” version for the states.

Gura may get the win, but not for any brilliant strategic planning — there was open hostility to the idea, central to his arguments, of 2A being a Privilege or Immunity of citizenship (I’ll discuss soon). The win, if there is one, may be more of a result of the bench being unprepared to treat 2A as some special bastard child the states do not have to follow, unlike the rest of the Bill of Rights that has been incorporated so far.

And let me tell you, thank God for the NRA. They took a lot of heat for asking for and getting some of Gura’s oral argument time, using Paul Clement who had argued the government’s unsavory position for a low standard of scrutiny in Heller, getting their hat in the ring. That turned out to be baloney, they were life savers. Considering the ferocity with which Gura and P&I were attacked, we were lucky to have an elegant, articulate, eloquent voice to apply 2A through Due Process. (Don’t get me wrong, Chicago fared just as poorly, but for different reasons.)

Clement’s arguments were so well made and so compelling, he got to speak at length without interruption, with the Justices in rapt attention. I asked him about that afterwards and he said yeah, it was really nice getting some “air time.”

There’s so much more to tell, the back-and-forth over substantive and procedural due process, and the — un-frickin-believable — lengthy consideration by the Justices of how much RKBA we’d enjoy if there was “no Second Amendment” (protected instead as a privilege or immunity), plus Breyer’s astounding hostility towards guns in general (“guns kill!”), and Stevens’ ‘parading around with guns’ concerns… it’ll have to be later (been on the go since 5:30 a.m., probably when I return to Phoenix, beginning of next week.

It was an honor and a thrill witnessing it all.

Alan.

Recently decided tenth amendment cases support constitutional challenges to ObamaCare. Here is evidence that my battle in Printz v. United States was not in vain, as so many liberals would have you believe! From FOXNews — An Obamacare Shocker:

….there’s another key provision in Obamacare that probably violates the Tenth Amendment: the state exchanges.

The Tenth Amendment went for so many years without being used to strike down any law that it came to be regarded as what is called a “dead letter” in the Constitution, meaning a provision that says some sort of obvious statement, but that isn’t actually used by the courts for anything.

Then, in the 1990s, the Supreme Court shocked the legal world by striking down two laws for violating the Tenth Amendment. The first was New York v. United States in 1992, where the Court struck down a federal law requiring states to pass state laws for the disposal of radioactive waste, and to issue regulations for implementing those laws. Then in Printz v. United States in 1997, the Court struck down a provision of the Brady Act — a federal gun-control law — that required state and local law enforcement to run background checks on handgun purchasers.

From these two cases emerged the anti-commandeering principle, holding that the Tenth Amendment forbids the federal government from commandeering — or ordering — any branch of state government to do anything. The states are sovereign and answer only to their voters, not to Washington, D.C.

Therein lies the problem for the Senate’s Obamacare bill. It requires each state to pass laws setting up a statewide non-profit insurance exchanges. It then requires the states to pass regulations for implementing those laws. And it further requires the states to dedicate staff and spend state money to administer those programs.

In most respects, this is a straight-out repeat of those 1992 and 1997 cases. The main difference is that Obamacare violates the anti-commandeering principle in a far more severe and egregious way than those previous laws ever did.

This is really stunning. If New York and Printz had been decided as far back as 1910, then maybe you could imagine Congress deciding to roll the dice with a completely new Supreme Court a century later. But these are recent cases with conservative outcomes, and the only difference is that the Court has become a bit more conservative then it was in the 1990s when it decided those two cases….

The only way the Dems can get around this is to drag out the constitutional challenges until Obama, in a second term as president, may have a chance to replace two conservative Supreme Court justices with liberals.

The American public must deny Obama a second term, and the certain destruction of states’ rights.

An analysis of the dissenting opinion in the case DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA V. HELLER has just been published in the Cardozo Law Review. Written by second amendment expert David T. Hardy, it is thorough and meticulous.

The dissent in “Heller” is laughably flawed and it scares me to think that those four liberal Justices are so stupid as to think we would stand for their outright mockery of the Constitution! Incredible!

Read it here:

DUCKING THE BULLET

A storm is brewing — clouds are again gathering over gun rights.

After health care and cap and trade, the next major battle will be gun control. The antis are adept at coordinating news stories to editorials to columnists to the legislature and they follow a predictable pattern. Typically, it starts with a high profile news story. That is followed by media hype through the editorial page. Then the columnists get in gear to demonize the gun, gun owner, the NRA and decry the laxity in guns laws that if only were made more sensible, all the carnage would never happen.

The difficulty is that this strategy consistently and completely misses the mark. None of the laws proposed will have one ioita of effect upon the criminal and serve only to impede the law abiding. And that, my friends, is precisely the point. Gun control is not about guns — it is about control.

Currently, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY4th) have introduced The Gun Trafficking Prevention Act of 2009. The bill is enthusiastically supported by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, his Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) lobbying group and a host of anti-gun individuals and organizations.

You can track the progress of this legislation at Open Congress, and the website also offers you an opportunity to vote whether you support or oppose the bills:

• In the Senate — S.2878
• In the House — H.R.4298

While professing to protect the law abiding, this bill would ultimately require a National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) background check for every firearm transfer including private sales and gifting to a family member. It would also spend upwards of $370M to fund an additional 500 ATF agents. This would place every dealer transaction under an unparalleled level of scrutiny and red tape. More ominously, it would allow the US Attorney General (Eric Holder) discretionary authority to impose “special restrictions” on so-called high risk dealers. These are sensible and reasonable? I think not. Gillibrand knows that if you can choke off the dealers, you can choke off the supply.

Enter Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne Jr. He not only thinks laws like this are reasonable, he would have you believe large numbers of NRA members disagree with NRA leadership and are in favor of such “sensible” laws.

Beyond the NRA’s absolutism
By E.J. Dionne Jr.  |  Thursday, December 10, 2009

The National Rifle Association wields power that would make an Afghan warlord jealous because the organization is thought to command legions of one-issue voters ready to punish any deviationism from the never-pass-any-new-gun-laws imperative. Many legislators fear that casting a vote for even a smidgen of restraint on weapons sales could be politically lethal.

But imagine if NRA members were more reasonable than the organization’s leaders and supporters in Congress in understanding the urgency of keeping guns out of the wrong hands.

NRA leaders, meet your members.

It turns out that the people in the ranks actually are much wiser than their lobbyists. In a move that should revolutionize the gun debate, Mayors Against Illegal Guns decided to go over the heads of Beltway types and poll gun owners and NRA members directly….

In his survey of 832 gun owners, including 401 NRA members, Luntz found that 82 percent of NRA members supported “prohibiting people on the terrorist watch lists from purchasing guns.” Sixty-nine percent favored “requiring all gun sellers at gun shows to conduct criminal background checks of the people buying guns,” and 78 percent backed “requiring gun owners to alert police if their guns are lost or stolen.” Among gun owners who did not belong to the NRA, the numbers were even higher….

I think these supposed NRA members are what Rush Limbaugh refers to as seminar callers. You know, the ones who say “I’m a Conservative, but I think we’ve really missed the boat on this one.” Dionne would have you believe that a survey company, with no access to NRA membership lists, can randomly survey 832 gun owners and come up with 401 NRA members. If we assume a population of 100 Million gun owners and 4 Million NRA members, the probability is remote that you could draw a 48% (832/401) relationship sample out of a 4% population (100M/4M). You don’t suppose the left would distort and make up the numbers to make their case, do you?

Gillibrand argues that her law would stem the flow of illegal guns to Mexico where our government recently reported tht 90% of crime guns recovered there were traceable to the US. That was clearly an abuse of statistics, a distortion and a lie. The correct number of 17% is still overstated because of a blatantly biased sample.

Doesn’t matter to the left or the state run media. They will continue to demonize, demagogue, distort and demean because the end justifies the means. Make no mistake. The end is your disarmament and their ever-expanding goal of government control. By the way, have you noticed the effort being put forth by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the UN to address international trafficking in small arms?

The storm pressure is building.

The United Nations seeks to destroy our civil liberties and nullify the Second Amendment with a treaty.  We urge all of our readers to watch this video to the end.

Another landmark gun rights case goes to the Supreme Court. Today, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear the case of McDonald v. Chicago, a challenge to Chicago’s gun ban similar to the one struck down last year in the Heller v. DC decision.

This is good news and I feel very positive about the case. I think we will probably see another 5 to 4 decision, but I am confident it will be in our favor. Besides Heller, this will be the most important case of the century! Cristopher Cox, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association (NRA), said via email:

Today, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear the case of McDonald v. Chicago, a challenge to Chicago’s bans on possession of non-grandfathered handguns and on keeping operable firearms for self-defense in the home. NRA’s press release on the Court’s announcement is attached. Oral argument will take place late this year or early next year.

As you know, the laws challenged in this case were based directly on those found unconstitutional last year in Heller v. District of Columbia, so the issue in the McDonald case is whether the Second Amendment applies to all law-abiding Americans, regardless of the state in which they live.

The McDonald case is one of two cases challenging Chicago’s handgun ban; the other is National Rifle Association v. City of Chicago. The cases were consolidated for purposes of appeal, and in June the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states. That decision was incorrect, for reasons described in the press release, and both NRA and McDonald appealed to the Supreme Court.

If the Supreme Court reverses the Seventh Circuit’s decision, it will be a major victory for NRA and for all Second Amendment supporters throughout the country.

In addition to the McDonald petition and the NRA petition, the Court also has a petition pending in the case of Maloney v. Cuomo—the Second Circuit case challenging New York State’s ban on possession of nunchaku [a pair of hardwood sticks joined by a chain or cord and used as a weapon]. The Supreme Court will withhold any decision in Maloney and in NRA v. Chicago until it resolves the incorporation issue in McDonald.

We are proud of our efforts to bring this issue to the court’s attention, both through the coordination of briefs filed in the Heller case, and through multiple lawsuits filed to overturn local bans on gun ownership and self-defense immediately after Heller. Now, we look forward to participating in McDonald v. Chicago by filing a friend-of-the-court brief and by working once again with other like-minded groups to achieve victory in this case.

The NRA issued the following statement:

The National Rifle Association applauds the Supreme Court’s decision, announced today, to hear the landmark Second Amendment case of McDonald v. Chicago. The case will address the application of the Second Amendment to the states through either the Due Process clause or the Privileges or Immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case has major implications for the legality of restrictive gun laws not only in Chicago, but also in other cities across the United States. The decision to hear the case, which will be argued later this year or early next year, gives Second Amendment advocates across America hope that this fundamental freedom will not be infringed by unreasonable state and local laws.

“The Second Amendment applies to every citizen, not just to those living in federal enclaves like Washington D.C. In the historic Heller decision, the Supreme Court reaffirmed what most Americans have known all along — that the Second Amendment protects an individual right and that it applies to all Americans. The government should respect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens throughout our country, regardless of where they live, and NRA is determined to make sure that happens,” said Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive vice president.

In the June ruling that the Supreme Court will now review, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that the Second Amendment does not apply to state and local governments. That opinion left in place the current ban on the possession of handguns in Chicago.

However, the Seventh Circuit incorrectly claimed it was bound by precedent from 19th century Supreme Court decisions in failing to incorporate the Second Amendment. Many legal scholars believe that the Seventh Circuit should have followed the lead of the earlier Ninth Circuit panel decision in Nordyke v. Alameda County, which found that those cases don’t prevent the Second Amendment from applying to the states through the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. To the contrary, a proper incorporation analysis supports application of the Second Amendment to the States.

“It is an injustice that the residents of Chicago continue to have their Second Amendment rights denied,” said Chris W. Cox, NRA’s chief lobbyist. “It’s time that the fundamental right of self-defense is respected by every jurisdiction throughout the country. It is our hope that the Supreme Court will find, once and for all, that all law-abiding Americans have the God-given, constitutionally-protected right of self-defense, no matter what city, county or state they call home.”

Barack Hussein Obama already has the legal authority to enslave the United States citizenry. That power was allocated to the office of President of the United States in a series of executive orders signed into law one by one throughout the last several administrations.

The persuasion for enacting these orders was to

• postulate some imaginary crisis that MIGHT occur — devastating hurricane, massive terrorist attack, virulent pandemic, and
• define draconian authority for the president to deal with the hypothetical emergency.

The tools for a Marxist takeover of the United States are already in place. All that remains is to manufacture a crisis to trigger the implementation of these executive powers. Hurricanes are still random events of nature, so the socialist revolutionaries in the executive branch must look at the other two options.

The sudden attack on the Central Intelligence Agency that we are currently witnessing will weaken our ability to forestall a terrorist attack. The vaccine for the H1N1 virus being forced on the citizens without adequate testing has the lethal ability to CAUSE a pandemic. So the flashpoint for implementing the “new order” may be one of these two catastrophes.

Most citizens are blissfully ignorant of the state defined by the executive orders, one in which the government can forcibly take control of every aspect of their lives. They are preoccupied with the activities of everyday life — working, raising their children, going to church, enjoying their vacation days. Those of us who have become aware of the “clear and present danger” must alert everyone to the scope of these executive orders — before it is too late.

And this must be done immediately, in light of the power grab currently being undertaken by the Obama administration. In a bill currently before the Senate, Obama is seeking authority to shut down the Internet. Note that he already has the power to suspend the Constitution and to nullify habeas corpus and all other personal liberties and rights, which would include the power to confiscate our guns.

The Executive Orders

Here’s a partial list of executive orders that already have the force of law — The FEMA list of Presidential Executive Orders. All of these were in place before Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office:

• #10995 by John Kennedy, 1962: ASSIGNING TELECOMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS — Seizure of all communications media in the United States.
• #10997 by John Kennedy, 1962: ASSIGNING EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS FUNCTIONS TO THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR — Seizure of all electric power, fuels, and minerals, both public and private.
• #10998 by John Kennedy, 1962: ASSIGNING EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS FUNCTIONS TO THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE — Seizure of all food supplies and resources, public, and private, all farms and farm equipment.
• #10999 by John Kennedy, 1962: ASSIGNING EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS FUNCTIONS TO THE SECRETARY OF COMMERCE — Seizure of all means of transportation, including personal cars, trucks or vehicles of any kind and total control over all highways, seaports and waterways.
• #11000 by John Kennedy, 1962: ASSIGNING EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS FUNCTIONS TO THE SECRETARY OF LABOR — Seizure of all American population for work forces under federal supervision, including dividing families as necessary according to governmental plans.
• #11001 by John Kennedy, 1962: ASSIGNING EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS FUNCTIONS TO THE SECRETARY OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE — Seizure of all health, education and welfare facilities, both public and private.
• #11002by John Kennedy, 1962: ASSIGNING EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS FUNCTIONS TO THE POSTMASTER GENERAL — Empowers the Postmaster General to register all men, women and children in the U.S.
• #11003 by John Kennedy, 1962: ASSIGNING EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS FUNCTIONS TO THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE FEDERAL AVIATION AGENCY — Seizure of all airports and aircraft.
• #11004 by John Kennedy, 1962: ASSIGNING CERTAIN EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS FUNCTIONS TO THE HOUSING AND HOME FINANCE ADMINISTRATOR — Seizure of all housing and finance authorities, to establish Forced Relocation. Designates areas to be abandoned as “unsafe,” establishes new locations for populations, relocates communications, builds new housing with public (‘tax-payers’) funds.
• #11005 by John Kennedy, 1962: ASSIGNING EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS FUNCTIONS TO THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION — Seizure of all railroads, inland waterways and storage facilities, public and private.
• #11051 by John Kennedy, 1962: PRESCRIBING RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE OFFICE OF EMERGENCY PLANNING IN THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT — Provides the Office of Emergency Planning complete authorization to put the above orders into effect in times of increased international tension or economic or financial crisis.
• #11490 by Richard Nixon, 1969: Assigning emergency preparedness functions to Federal departments and agencies — Combines Executive Orders #11001 to #11005 and #11051 into a single Executive Order.
• #11921 by Gerald Ford, 1976: Adjusting Emergency Preparedness Assignments to Organizational and Functional Changes in Federal Departments and Agencies — F.E.M.A. is authorized to develop plans control energy, prices and wages, credit and the money supply to U.S. banks in the event of a ‘National Emergency.’ Congress may not review a President’s decision to enforce a ‘National Emergency’ for six months. (emphasis mine)
• #12656 by Ronald Reagan, 1988: Assignment of Emergency Preparedness Responsibilities – The National Security Council given authority to determine requisite emergency powers (increased domestic surveillance, isolation of communities, restriction of movement for groups and individuals in the USA, control of airspace, use of the national guard to enforce laws and seal borders).
• #12919 by Bill Clinton, 1994: NATIONAL DEFENSE INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES PREPAREDNESS – “National Defense Industrial Resources Preparedness” delegates authorities, responsibilities and allocations of F.E.M.A.’s Executive Orders for the confiscation of ALL PROPERTY from the American people, and their re-location and assignment to ‘labor’ camps. This Executive Order also supersedes or revokes eleven (11) previous Executive Orders [from 1939 through 1991] and amends Executive Order #10789 and #11790. The declaration of a ‘National Emergency’ by the President may immediately lead to the implementation of all or part of these provisions and if he so desires he may implement martial law, suspend the Constitution, nullify habeas corpus and all other personal liberties and rights.

---

UPDATE, Sept. 2, 12:29AM:  A reader refers to A PRIMER ON “MARTIAL LAW” by Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.

It is difficult these days not to come upon some pessimistic patriotic commentator expressing the fear that something called “martial law” may soon be imposed on this country, as the General Government’s response to a new “terrorist attack”, or to the economic and social chaos arising out of a collapse of the monetary and banking systems, or to some other dire event that frightens hapless Americans into trading a sure and certain loss of their liberties for a dollop of conjectural safety.

An optimistic patriot might scoff at such fears. But both pessimists and optimists typically share the same implicit first premise: namely, that the form of “martial law” they have in mind is legitimate. Most of the time, this is a rather glaring and dangerous error.

This is a detailed and scholarly analysis (our correspondent calls it a “two-cup-of-coffee” article) but it only deals with various modes of martial law under the US Constitution. It does not take into account the damage done by the Executive Orders if the Constitution is suspended, and that is exactly what we are trying to warn our readers about.

After a catastrophic event occurs, legal challenges to government oppression during the post mortem may indeed show the illegitimacy of Orwellian measures. But by then the legal status is moot. For those who believe it cannot happen, let me point out that it already has. During the crisis of hurricane Katrina, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin had his police force confiscate the guns of the law-abiding citizens. Then they were forced to watch helpless as marauding mobs vandalized and looted their homes.

The National Rifle Association brought suit against the City of New Orleans and won after a three-year legal battle. Only then could the citizens try to recover their property. Some never did, and others had watched as police deliberately smashed their heirloom firearms out of perversity. All had been without their means of self-defense for three years.