FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT: SECTION ONE

Amendment XIV
Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

TOPEKA, KS BANS OPEN CARRY IN PUBLIC PLACES

Here is an open carry/firearms ban from Topeka,KS similar to the recent illegal and unconstitutional open carry/firearms ban enacted by the Mayor of Ruidoso. Click on the title to read the information.

CORAM NOBIS: WRIT OF ERROR

A writ of coram nobis is an order by an appeals court to a lower court to consider facts not on the trial record which might have changed the outcome of the lower court case if known at the time of trial. Coram nobis is a Latin term meaning the "error before us."

In deciding whether to grant the writ, courts have used a three-part test: a petitioner must

1. explain her failure to seek relief from judgment earlier,

2. demonstrate continuing collateral consequences from the conviction, and

3. prove that the error is fundamental to the validity of the judgment.

An example of when it might be used includes prosecutorial misconduct hiding exculpatory evidence from the defendant. A writ of coram nobis is issued once the petitioner is no longer in custody. Its legal effect is to vacate the underlying conviction. A petition for a writ of error coram nobis is brought to the court that convicted and sentenced the defendant.

Coram nobis is limited to cases in which a "fundamental error" or "manifest injustice" has been committed. A high burden of proof is required. It cannot be used to reopen and reargue points of law the courts have decided, but only to raise errors of fact that were knowingly withheld by the prosecutor from judges and defendants. A writ of error coram nobis is an extraordinarily rare remedy, known more for its denial than its approval. It is distinguished from a writ of error coram vobis which brings before the court certain mistakes of fact not put in issue or passed upon,such as the death of a party, coverture, infancy, error in process, or mistake of the clerk.

Although the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure expressly abolished the use of coram nobis in civil cases in the United States, see Fed. R. Crim. P. 60(b), the issue of the writ's availability to correct fundamental errors in criminal cases remained uncertain for many years. In United States v. Morgan, the Supreme Court resolved this question, holding that coram nobis was still available in federal court for criminal cases. See 346 U.S. 502, 512 (1954).

PRESSER v. ILLINOIS

Case from 1886. In the Supreme Courts decision included interpretations of a citizens or a militas right to bear arms and how a state violates the 2nd and 14th Amendments.

Columbia v. Heller

U.S. Constitution: Second Amendment

Second Amendment - Bearing Arms

Amendment Text | Annotations

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.


Annotations

Prior to the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller,1 the courts had yet to definitively state what right the Second Amendment protected. The opposing theories, perhaps oversimplified, were (1) an "individual rights" approach, whereby the Amendment protected individuals' rights to firearm ownership, possession, and transportation; and (2) a "states' rights" approach, under which the Amendment only protected the right to keep and bear arms in connection with organized state militia units.2 Moreover, it was generally believed that the Amendment was only a bar to federal action, not to state or municipal restraints.3

However, the Supreme Court has now definitively held that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that weapon for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Moreover, this right applies not just to the federal government, but to states and municipalities as well.

In Heller, the Court held that (1) the District of Columbia's total ban on handgun possession in the home amounted to a prohibition on an entire class of "arms" that Americans overwhelmingly chose for the lawful purpose of self-defense, and thus violated the Second Amendment; and (2) the District's requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock also violated the Second Amendment, because the law made it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense.

The Court reasoned that the Amendment's prefatory clause, i.e., "[a] well regulated

Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," announced the Amendment's purpose, but did not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause, i.e., "the

right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Moreover, the prefatory clause's history comported with the Court's interpretation, because the prefatory clause stemmed from the Anti-Federalists' concern that the federal government would disarm the people in order to disable the citizens' militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule.

Further, the Court distinguished United States v.Miller,4 in which the Court upheld a statute requiring registration under the National Firearms Act of sawed-off shotguns, on the ground that Miller limited the type of weapon to which the Second Amendment right applied to those in common use for lawful purposes.

In McDonald v. Chicago,5 the Court struck down laws enacted by Chicago and the village of Oak Park effectively banning handgun possession by almost all private citizens, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Second Amendment right, recognized in Heller, to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense.

The Court reasoned that this right is fundamental to the nation's scheme of ordered liberty, given that self-defense was a basic right recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present, and Heller held that individual self-defense was "the central component" of the Second Amendment right. Moreover, a survey of the contemporaneous history also demonstrated clearly that the Fourteenth Amendment's Framers and ratifiers counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to the Nation's system of ordered liberty.


Footnotes

554 U.S. ____ (2008).

A sampling of the diverse literature in which the same historical, linguistic, and case law background is the basis for strikingly different conclusions includes: Staff of Subcomm. on the Constitution, Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 97th Congress, 2d Sess., The Right to Keep and Bear Arms (Comm. Print 1982); Don B. Kates, Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment (1984); Gun Control and the Constitution: Sources and Explorations on the Second Amendment (Robert J. Cottrol, ed. 1993); Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right (1984); Symposium, Gun Control, 49 Law & Contemp. Probs. 1 (1986); Sanford Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 Yale L.J. 637 (1989).

SeePresser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 265 (1886); see also Miller v. Texas, 153 U.S. 535 (1894); Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U.S. 275, 281-282 (1897).

307 U.S. 174 (1939).

No. 08-1521 (June 28, 2010).

Crowds gather in NYC, DC after bin Laden killed

Crowds gather in NYC, DC after bin Laden killed

OSAMA DEAD

Sorry to burst anyone's bubble...this is not a factual report. ORF is simply sharing another view of the Obama administration announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden.

This morning, like many other Americans, ORF staff were diligently listening to several media sources giving accounts of or discussing the announced death of Osama Bin Laden. The announcement was made public last night.

As this morning's radio talk shows focused on the meaning of Osama's death to Americans and the President...a disturbing call came into the Peter Boyles show...Denver...KHOW 630AM.

The caller alleges the gatherings of Americans outside the White House and at Ground Zero were SEIU members (Service Employees International Union). The caller alleges the SEIU members were gathered at near the White House and Ground Zero when the public
announcement of Osama's death was made. Jubilant celebrations by patriotic Americans at these two locations were immediate.

ORF asks: what political expediency would President Obama garner from the death of Osama? At a time when the birth certificate issue is being hotly debated, the South has been ravaged by tornadoes, fires plague the West, and the 2012 Presidential elections are looming
in the future...who would profit from the death of Osama Bin Laden? Has Osama been dead for some time...killed in the past and the fact with held from Americans?

If the threat of retaliation from Al Queda is deemed a national security risk, what extreme measures would this President impose on Americans to protect us from terrorists?

Again...ORF is simply asking the questions after hearing the public discourse.

ORF

http://oteroresidentsforum.blogspot.com

THIS IS ANOTHER REASON CELL PHONES SHOULD BE BANNED IN SCHOOLS

Title click to read article on FOXNEWS website.

Some brat called 911 on her teacher...because he rattled a table in class.

USATODAY: TEACHER 9 MONTHS ON THE JOB/QUITS TO GO ON HAJJ/RETURNS AND SUES SCHOOL

Okay: you're on the job 9 months...and you tell your employer you want 3 weeks off for a religious pilgrimage. I don't have that in my benefit package. I'm expected to abide by the conditions of employment I agreed to when I was hired. (I hold the flashlight for a mechanic at a local shade tree garage).

http://www.usatoday.com/_ads/interstitial/2008/page/interstitial_new.htm?http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250

CONTINUED DEVALUATION OF WOMEN IN AMERICA: TWO EXAMPLES

FOXNEWS story on sexual discrimination allowed in the media against conservative women. ORF has to ask: When we encounter the comlib leftist feminist seaweed eating self-indulgent emotional cripples earth mothers who have bits of tree bark stuck to their face from embracing trees who hurl acceptable taunts and insults at conservatives with opposing political and social views but rejoice at sexist insults intended to show the liberal superiority to all things non-globally joined by a regulatory umbilical cord and where as as Orwell penned, "Some pigs are more superior to other pigs", or something like that; ORF can only discard anything they (the seaweed munchers) say and focus on what they (the seaweed munchers) are directed to do.

Read the FOXNEWS article on two of America's most courageous bed wetters.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/03/25/maher-george-lopez-war-women-attacks-conservative-women-given-just-shrug/

And the there's this:

Community blames 11 year-old rape victim.

http://hellobeautiful.com/hellobeautiful-original/laurenminogue/an-11-year-old-girl-was-raped-town-blames-victim-why/?omcamp=outbrain&obref=obnetwork

ROSS McKITRICK ON EARTH HOUR

Title click to read article on RUSH LIMBAUGH'S 'STACK OF STUFF'.

Earth Hour: A Dissent

Ross McKitrick

In 2009 I was asked by a journalist for my thoughts on the importance of Earth Hour. Here
is my response.

I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human
liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended
on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity. Giving women the freedom to
work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time
from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on
the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading.
Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely
impossible. The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition,
depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady
indoor supply of hot water. Many of the world's poor suffer brutal environmental conditions
in their own homes because of the necessity of cooking over indoor fires that burn twigs and
dung. This causes local deforestation and the proliferation of smoke- and parasite-related
lung diseases. Anyone who wants to see local conditions improve in the third world should
realize the importance of access to cheap electricity from fossil-fuel based power generating
stations. After all, that's how the west developed.

The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I
celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity. Earth Hour celebrates ignorance,
poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an
hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off
trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction
called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous,
reliable electricity. People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their
fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a
month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off
there too.

I don't want to go back to nature. Travel to a zone hit by earthquakes, floods and hurricanes
to see what it’s like to go back to nature. For humans, living in "nature" meant a short life
span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work for the end of poverty
and relief from disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave their lights on.
Here in Ontario, through the use of pollution control technology and advanced engineering,
our air quality has dramatically improved since the 1960s, despite the expansion of industry
and the power supply. If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air
emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and that we ought to be shamed into
sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing
something bad, then we are setting up unspoiled nature as an absolute, transcendent ideal
that obliterates all other ethical and humane obligations. No thanks. I like visiting nature
but I don't want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilization with all its
tradeoffs is something to be ashamed of.

Ross McKitrick

Professor of Economics
University of Guelph

'Earth Hour' won't change the world - USATODAY.com

'Earth Hour' won't change the world - USATODAY.com

From the article:

When we switch off the electricity, many of us turn to candlelight. This seems natural and environmentally friendly, but unfortunately candles are almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs, and more than 300 times less efficient than fluorescent lights. Using one candle for each extinguished bulb cancels the CO2 reduction; two candles emit more CO2.

Burt's Bees founder wants to donate national park - The Denver Post

Burt's Bees founder wants to donate national park - The Denver Post

From the article:

Quimby wants to give more than 70,000 wild acres next to Maine's cherished Baxter State Park to the federal government, hoping to create a Maine Woods National Park. She envisions a visitor center dedicated to Henry David Thoreau, the naturalist who made three trips to Maine in the 1800s.

The park would be nearly twice the size of Maine's Acadia National Park.

In a giveback to sportsmen, her vision is to set aside another 30,000 acres of woodlands north of Dover-Foxcroft to be managed like a state park, with hunting and snowmobiling allowed.

TEXAS TEA PARTY TO RECRUIT 1 MIILION VOLUNTEERS TO MONITOR ELECTIONS

Title click to read article on TEXAS INDEPENDENT website.

From the article:

Lodging a rhetorical attack against Democrats, Breitbart argued, “liberal policies have destroyed African-American communities,” alleging the Democratic Party is guilty of an “unspeakable crime” to those communities, while refuting accusations that tea partiers are adversaries to African Americans.

Spotted Owl Condoms Save What?

So, are we going to start arresting Barred Owls? This whole thing is assinine.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Spotted-Owls-New-Nemesis.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0722_040722_tvspottedowl.html

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008109742_spottedowl13m.html

http://www.fws.gov/news/newsreleases/showNews.cfm?newsId=F249DF19-AA25-7508-E5CDC37376B18630

I could go on but you get the picture. This is not new information. It has been around for years. What is new is that you can now get Spotted Owl condoms:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/11/condoms-for-endangered-sp_n_459251.html


Janet

NEW MEXICO WATCHDOG: UNION PACIFIC JOBS COME TO SOUTHERN NEW MEXICO

Title click to read article on NEW MEXICO WATCHDOG website.

"Construction is scheduled to start later this year and supporters say Union Pacific is investing $400 million in the facility and the New Mexico economy can realize an overall impact of $500 million."

AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY: IT'S BACK!

Title click to read article on HSLDA website.

Congress introduces legislation to make American Community Survey optional.

From the HSLDA article:

On March 3, 2011, Congressman Ted Poe (TX) introduced H.R. 931 to the House of Representatives. H.R. 931 would allow most of the questions on the American Community Survey to be optional. If H.R. 931 became law, the only questions that would be mandatory would be questions on your name, date of response, contact information, and number of people living at the same address (similar to the information asked on the original census in 1790).

HSLDA has long been concerned about the level of personal information collected and the invasiveness of the American Community Survey. We are grateful to Congressman Poe for introducing H.R. 931 and giving the American people control of what personal information they share with the government.

REDSTATE: IT IS AS WE FEARED

Title click to read article on REDSTATE website.

From the article:

Conservatives are, therefore, getting played by Republicans leaders in the House. Compounding that, House Republicans are making insignificant spending cuts and refusing to pick a fight over Obamacare. They do not, under any stretch of the imagination, want a government shut down. House Leaders know the only way to shut down Obamacare is to shut down the government and negotiate Obamacare out of existence.

So they’d rather keep Obamacare.

Crude Jokes About Victims of Japanese Tragedy

Gilbert Gottfried lost his job as the voice of the AFLAC duck for a crude joke he cracked about the disaster in Japan. Title click to read the article on this idiot's remarks on the TORONTO SUN on-line edition.

Rapper 50 Cent Tweeted insensitive remarks about the Japanese. (ORF raps: ORF don't Tweet and the rapper ain't sweet...boom da boom da boom)


http://clutchmagonline.com/newsgossipinfo/no-laughing-matter-50-cents-distasteful-tweets-on-the-disaster-in-japan/

NEW MEXICO WATCHDOG: GARY JOHNSON ON THE GOV OF WISCONSIN

Title click to watch the video on NEW MEXICO WATCHDOG website.

Interesting and better that Inside Job...